The Patient Gamer: Skyrim

[zinfamous]

I agree about RPG being no bueno for FPS. That's why Elder Scrolls games are 3rd person .....you do play them in 3rd person, right?

What kind of masochist wants to run around swinging a sword in FPP with those janky Elder Scrolls combat mechanics?

 

[DigDog]

i .. dont.
camera positioning doesnt matter - RPGs should not have the player element when it comes to their actions in the game world - it should be based on the character stats. I'm ok with you being able to move the character in 3D but when it comes to the fighting, let the computer do the dice rolls. Otherwise, it's an action game.
NWN was an absolutely brilliant example of this. You know i really love that game (i recently re-installed NWN1 on my pc and my god it's so ugly), because you can move via mouseclicks, but you can't abuse game geometry, and all combat is handled by dice rolls. You can't beat a grossly out-levelled mob by dodging.


Also i dont want to look at my lizardman's butt all day long.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Getting a little stuffy in here ?

I would not consider Skyrim an RPG at all really. It's missing a lot of the hallmarks of an RPG (Choice and consequence, player skill over character stats, in depth dialogue and character building, etc) and I figure it strays more into FPS with RPG characteristics. It just happens to have an open world. And that's fine. It's a huge amount of fun regardless.

I hope these posts get people to go back into their backlogs and play a game that they might have passed over or might not have been ready at launch. The whole idea of "patient gaming" is to play stuff for cheap, usually with all the DLC bundled, and all patched up well after release. Plenty of time to set expectations after the community has died down around a game as well.

It sounds like you were expecting the next Oblivion at launch, Dig, and got Skyrim instead. It's why I stay far away from titles at launch and wait till the criteria above (cheap/complete/patched) is met so I don't have the same kind of expectations to meet. Disappointment is measured in the distance between expectation and reality after all.

 

[Stg-Flame]

i know i know. .. you guys love skyrim.

I don't. I only played about 30 hours of it before I was beyond bored. The way they dumbed it down even further to placate the console crowd was too much for me to handle. I kept telling myself that I'd give it a few months for some good mods to come out and then I'll try it properly. I've been telling myself that since it was released, so we will see if I ever get around to actually playing the game.

I still play through Morrowind and a heavily modded (FCOM) Oblivion.

 

[Borealis7]

Happy 9th Birthday, Skyrim!
big celebration next year if we survive the pandemic?

 

[Elfear]

Happy 9th Birthday, Skyrim!
big celebration next year if we survive the pandemic?

Let's hope so. I can't believe it's taking Bethesda this long to release ES VI when Skyrim was so popular. We need our fix!

 

[zinfamous]

Let's hope so. I can't believe it's taking Bethesda this long to release ES VI when Skyrim was so popular. We need our fix!

I'm beginning to think it's not real. I mean, there have been some vague suggestions about it in their forecast, but is it verified by Bethesda that it's happening? I've just assumed that Bethesda defines ESO as their next, and final ES game.

10 year anniversary would be a good time to release something....

It's not like they can't make it official before the end of this year and have it ready by next Fall, assuming they really have been working on it all this time, and their normal practice of the community finishing the remaining 20% of the work, anyway.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

Let's hope so. I can't believe it's taking Bethesda this long to release ES VI when Skyrim was so popular. We need our fix!

-Their next game is going to be"Starfield" right? Maybe they'll get some more manpower after the MS acquisition, but I doubt it.

MS seems to be content letting studios run themselves for the time being.

 

[Fallen Kell]

I'm beginning to think it's not real. I mean, there have been some vague suggestions about it in their forecast, but is it verified by Bethesda that it's happening? I've just assumed that Bethesda defines ESO as their next, and final ES game.

10 year anniversary would be a good time to release something....

It's not like they can't make it official before the end of this year and have it ready by next Fall, assuming they really have been working on it all this time, and their normal practice of the community finishing the remaining 20% of the work, anyway.

Well considering Todd Howard has talked about the Elder Scrolls 6 in recent pod casts when discussing the evolution of the engine, I would say yes, it is real. However, he also used the words when describing the Elder Scrolls 6 with "is really out on the horizon". So I would believe that to be something that is several years away given typical lengths of time for development of RPGs and open world RPGs.

 

[Borealis7]

4 years between Morrowind and Oblivion
5.5 years between Oblivion and Skyrim
10+ years between Skyrim and 6?

Bethesda clearly has no notion of the word "Momentum".

 

[SAAA]

4 years between Morrowind and Oblivion
5.5 years between Oblivion and Skyrim
10+ years between Skyrim and 6?

Bethesda clearly has no notion of the word "Momentum".

At least they know how to count past 2. Well, with patience… Let's hope twice the wait is worth twice the fun, meanwhile all the mods keep up the entertainment.
As some commented above I hope this time the warmer colours take precedence, and while good graphics is a must it would be even better if gameplay got a huge improvement over the basic style.
AI could get a nice boost too, don't know why it isn't the main focus in open world games like this. Same world but semi-intelligent NPCs doing their things (for real, not scripted, with some kind of purpose sort of like X4 simulations).
Imagine merchants moving from town to town, trying to make profit, mercenaries and soldiers doing their job, random farmers… farming and so on.
Outcast felt ten times more alive, Shamazaar and Talanzaar in particular, 20+ years ago. 2020 and we could get mindless scripted NPCs? No way.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I don't like that each successive generation of Elder Scrolls games becomes more-simplified than the last. I actually enjoyed Daggerfall. Morrowind and Oblivion never really had the level of detailed class creation that Daggerfall had, and Daggerfall had the most-interesting spellmaker of the entire series. Skyrim is barely recognizable as being in the same game series as Daggerfall. It's okay for what it is, but even the SE is a glitchy mess full of goofy exploits. Take a look at some of The Spiffing Brit's Skyrim videos. He exploits it to the hilt using some well-known (and a few not-so-well-known) exploits. Pretty funny stuff.

 

[GodisanAtheist]

4 years between Morrowind and Oblivion
5.5 years between Oblivion and Skyrim
10+ years between Skyrim and 6?

Bethesda clearly has no notion of the word "Momentum".

- To be fair, the elder scrolls was bethsoft's only property between morrowind and oblivion. They then picked up Fallout between Oblivion and Skyrim. Now they have TES, Fallout, and "Starfield", and appear to be taking the layered dev approach so they can keep their people occupied at all times.

Makes sense that dev times have increased as active properties have been added.

 

[Stg-Flame]

They also have the merger going on which is going to drastically change their development times. Plus with a pandemic going on, I can only imagine it's much harder as well.

 

[Igo69]

Big games like Elder Scrolls, Witchers, Cyberpunks, StarCitizens(lol), etc. require more resources, people, and time. There are a lot more things to be done and a lot more platforms to work on these days.

 

[Borealis7]

a trip down memory lane:
i played Morrowind on a GeForce2 GTS 32MB, and it was so unlike any other graphics engine i had seen before. the architecture was so detailed and the world was so expansive.
upgraded my PC to a C2D E6550 + ATi X1950Pro 256MB(i think) for Oblivion back in 2007 and again was so amazed by the "colorfulness" of the engine and excessive bloom effects in the lush green hills around the main city.
i didn't upgrade for Skyrim, played it for the first time on a Core i5-2500K and an HD5850 and it ran pretty well with some of the useless settings turned down.