I agree with OP in general. It feels more like a singleplayer version of the grind that the MMOs have, but slightly more sophistocated.
It started off feeling epic and more impressive but you soon come to realise the very structured nature of the game. Each town has a Jarl, that Jarl has 1 or 2 main quests, then offers you a position as thane, then you have to please 3 or 5 people in the town, etc etc
The Jarls even have the same script, what really irritates me is that they took the time and effort to pull together all these different voice actors but then they didn't bother to actually write unique lines for some of the core game dialogue, literally line for line the Jarls will say the same thing.
It reminds me of Assassins creed and FarCry2, they're large open worlds and cities but they struggle to fill that size with unique content, so they pick a mission "structure" and then repeat that over and over, it can feel a bit grindy.
Even if the quests themselves are compelling, and you can get past the wooden NPCs, I still can't help escape the feeling that I'm following a line of quests that were designed on a whiteboard in a boardroom by the developers, it's too symetrical, too even, too neat, once you've learnt the rules for the structure it ultimately becomes predictable.
Still I love the game despite it, there would no other way to achieve 100 odd hours of gameplay without this repeating nature of game design, I think the trick is to not burn yourself out on side quests and try and finish the main story while the game remains enjoyable, i made that mistake with Oblivion and after 55 hours had never completed it, I'm 53 hours in to Skyrim and I'm still compelled to play so hopefully this time around I'll finish it before that feeling of grind sets in.
It started off feeling epic and more impressive but you soon come to realise the very structured nature of the game. Each town has a Jarl, that Jarl has 1 or 2 main quests, then offers you a position as thane, then you have to please 3 or 5 people in the town, etc etc
The Jarls even have the same script, what really irritates me is that they took the time and effort to pull together all these different voice actors but then they didn't bother to actually write unique lines for some of the core game dialogue, literally line for line the Jarls will say the same thing.
It reminds me of Assassins creed and FarCry2, they're large open worlds and cities but they struggle to fill that size with unique content, so they pick a mission "structure" and then repeat that over and over, it can feel a bit grindy.
Even if the quests themselves are compelling, and you can get past the wooden NPCs, I still can't help escape the feeling that I'm following a line of quests that were designed on a whiteboard in a boardroom by the developers, it's too symetrical, too even, too neat, once you've learnt the rules for the structure it ultimately becomes predictable.
Still I love the game despite it, there would no other way to achieve 100 odd hours of gameplay without this repeating nature of game design, I think the trick is to not burn yourself out on side quests and try and finish the main story while the game remains enjoyable, i made that mistake with Oblivion and after 55 hours had never completed it, I'm 53 hours in to Skyrim and I'm still compelled to play so hopefully this time around I'll finish it before that feeling of grind sets in.
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