What is with with Bethesda Games...

[StrangerGuy]

Bethesda wanted to be lazy, and the mindless masses wanted a game a mile wide and millimeter deep with DDD boob mods.

And that is what we get.

What's everyone talking crap about Bethesda's writing? I happen to think it's great. Those endless and awesome little tales I read in random books in Skyrim, no game ever came close to making me so excited to read something. And I loved the way the people in Skyrim have different reactions to each side, are the imperials tyrants or fair rulers, are the stormcloaks freedom fighters or racist fascists?
Morrowind was ok, but people just say it's better out of nostalgia, it was made in the Bethesda building's basement by three people.

All those "endless and awesome little tales" you are talking about was written for a game released way back in 2002.

 

[NIGELG]

They should remake Morrowind.

 

[runzwithsizorz]

I never played an RPG until Witcher. I found I really liked the idea of exploration, a good story line a relatively open world. Then I played ME2 and liked that. I am now playing Oblivian (with mods and DLC's) and find it fun...and less intense. I can take my time and explore, choose which side quests to do (or not), and not worry about dying every half hour. I definately agree TES games are half finished on release and without the dedicated modding community would not be as successful as they are...a clever and cost effective way to release games and then let the gamers fix/upgrade/add to them. What it comes down to is what do you want in a game. Sometimes all I want is a leisurely stroll; other times I feel like a fast paced shooter.
Personally, my goal is not to "beat" the game on hardest difficulty because I can, but just to enjoy the game for what it is, and if I think the game will not be something I 'd enjoy, I just don't buy it.

The Wife

 

[zerocool84]

What's everyone talking crap about Bethesda's writing? I happen to think it's great. Those endless and awesome little tales I read in random books in Skyrim, no game ever came close to making me so excited to read something. And I loved the way the people in Skyrim have different reactions to each side, are the imperials tyrants or fair rulers, are the stormcloaks freedom fighters or racist fascists?
Morrowind was ok, but people just say it's better out of nostalgia, it was made in the Bethesda building's basement by three people.

Their writing and voice acting is horrible. The way the random characters say things is ridiculous and what they say is even worse. I understand that making such a huge game and have so many different characters talk is a huge undertaking but if you're going to have voice acting in your games, it has be to good. Bad voice acting in a game is just like bad acting in a movie.

 

[Stringjam]

Their writing and voice acting is horrible. The way the random characters say things is ridiculous and what they say is even worse. I understand that making such a huge game and have so many different characters talk is a huge undertaking but if you're going to have voice acting in your games, it has be to good. Bad voice acting in a game is just like bad acting in a movie.

I would have to agree here. They have a few good voice actors, but those actors are so overused and applied to multiple characters it just becomes ridiculous, and it really breaks the immersive feel these games are supposed to have.

The writing and dialog is about as base / cliche as can be written for a video game. Definitely not Bethesda's strong suit.

Really, that goes for most games like this, though. The human element takes a back seat to the nerd element, and I lose interest. I don't really care about the lore of the glowing enchanted ball of whatever (not that it isn't important, but all that stuff has no point without some kind of deeper, personal implication). I'm much more interested in character interaction and stories.....real character development -- so that you actually give a sh#t if so-and-so dies.

I think a dev like CDPR gets this human aspect so much better than Bethesda.

 

[Via]

They should remake Morrowind.

They should remake Daggerfall.

 

[OCNewbie]

They should remake Daggerfall.

They should remake the one before the one you just mentioned.

 

[MarkT800]

It's not about beseda games. Almost every rpg game is pretty easy to exploit if you have some brains. The problem is about us, players. We are playing single player game like its some kind of MMO. Fast leveling, best gear, exploits etc. There is just no sense it it. Single player games are made for relax gaming, questing, not grinding.

 

[shortylickens]

I use a different drive for games so I never have this issue.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I use a different drive for games so I never have this issue.

I like the basically seamless transition opening doors and going into new areas on my SSD though.

I don't even like loading times on regular HDD's anymore.

 

[shortylickens]

I like the basically seamless transition opening doors and going into new areas on my SSD though.

I don't even like loading times on regular HDD's anymore.

It doesnt matter much for me. I got that 10 gig texture pack for New Vegas. Doesnt matter how fast my hard drive is, loading always takes a while. I'm maxing out memory usage too.

 

[slpnshot]

My main criticism with Skyrim had to be the combat. Combat in Skyrim was never fun, scary, or hard(outside of Beth scaling enemies to have additional HP to scale difficulty). It was often more of a chore to fight enemies and since fighting was something that came up often in the game, it really dragged the enjoyment at times.

I personally felt it was because the game had an option for first person combat. In FO, it's not so bad because gun focused games play well with first person gameplay. But Skyrim had a decent amount of focus with melee combat mechanics. Unfortunately first person makes it incredibly limited to introduce combat variance. Things like dodging, rolling, and counters would have really spiced up the fight.

 

[stockwiz]

They introduced a higher difficulty level that made the game enjoyable where enemies could get in some good hits and magic could kill quickly if I wasn't paying attention. That made it enjoyable again. I'd love to roll another character.

I do alchemy first, going around level 1 harvesting everything in sight. That takes care of my cash issues. Then I do smithing or enchanting or level up conjuration so I can summon a dremora lord. I admittedly do cheat by raising up my speech so I can get vendors to have more money. The idea that they can have all these tens of thousands in inventory but only 800 cash is just not realistic. I should just mod the game to give them more cash.

I don't even kill the first dragon until my character is well developed. I do all the development first then progress with the story. Bonus to this.. no dragons suddenly showing up when I don't want them around.

I've got several large and smaller mods installed and a massive texture pack.. no doubt I'd have some updating and relearning to do.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I tend to find their games have more side missions and distractions than they do core story plot, which has the unfortunate side effect for all the gamers who like to 100% everything and they get lost in an endless maze of side quests, eventually burning out to fatigue.

I did that with Fallout 3 and Oblivion, both amazing games but got to about 80 hours of mostly side quests and simply lost interest. With FO NV and Skyrim they had a slightly more compelling story lines and I tried not to deviate too far from it which lead me to completing them and hoovering up the side quests after the main story.

I went back and completed FO3 and Oblivion in later years and enjoyed them, but again used the tactic of not getting terribly distracted from the main story elements and left the side missions more to the end.

 

[Wardawg1001]

I think its mostly that there is no incentive to do the main story quests, or at least not much of an incentive. Its only marginally more interesting than some of the other quest lines, and once you get away from it there is nothing to really draw you back. I got a solid 120-140 hours out of Skyrim and after heading up that mountain during one of the early story line quests, I never bothered with it again. I don't even remember what the next quest objective was. I just got sidetracked doing some side quest and picked up 5 more side quests while doing that one, and it just went on and on like that until I got bored of the game.

 

[VulgarDisplay]

I used to be a main quest adventurer like you until I took a side quest to the every conceivable part of my body

 

[jimhsu]

Finishing the main quest, at least for any Beth game, is probably the least substantial thing that you can do.

Me? When that happens, time to fire up the editor, download some mods, and ... get working:

- Implement an entire, realistic economic system in game from scratch,
- Create awe-inspiring locations for screenshot porn,
- Get your favorite videogame characters in-game,
- Tweak water caustics to get the underwater scenery just right,
- Write up sorely-missing romance convo options
- Write AI to play the game for you (seriously).

And probably hundreds of more things. It's a reason why I still have my Morrowind install up and running (though with 2010-class graphics instead of 2003(?)).

PS Except dealing with the crashes. Argh....

 

[magomago]

Not a hardcore gamer - I played Skyrim for maybe 60 hours, got completely lost into side quests after the main quest where I needed to speak to those old men on the mountain (I didn't even choose to level up so I never got awesome gear at all...still level 5) and here are my thoughts

- Side Quest stories are awesome. Some are lame, but most are really interesting. The best are obviously the main side quests, but I quite enjoyed the small stories. I played for nearly 60 hours only doing side quests and levellng up my skills (which had zero practical use because I was at level 5 haha)
- There is an incredible amount of lore in the game with all the books. Its literally hundreds of pages long.
- The voice acting is great, but it was obvious they had a limited number of voice actors.
- The characters did have feeling and emotion to me in those with quests. I can forgive random npcs with zero story value.
- The game gets much more visually awesome with mods.

Don't be a skyrim hater - 'nuff said.

 

[jimhsu]

Oh yea, the lore. If you actually try to understand Morrowind's story (as opposed to Skyrim's "evil dragon wants to take over the world" stuff), you'll start to appreciate the depth of the lore in the game. The next step, of course, is to start writing fan fiction (haven't done that yet, unfortunately). The UESP wiki is a good place to start.

PS The fact that (almost) none of the dialogue in Morrowind is voiced helps a LOT with the depth. Personally, I wish that more RPGs would use that form of storytelling and spend less $$$ on overpriced voice actors and short lines.

 

[Achilles97]

They should remake Daggerfall.

This ^

 

[Red Storm]

My favorite part of every Elder Scroll's game has always been the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild quest lines.

 

[werepossum]

Finishing the main quest, at least for any Beth game, is probably the least substantial thing that you can do.

Me? When that happens, time to fire up the editor, download some mods, and ... get working:

- Implement an entire, realistic economic system in game from scratch,
- Create awe-inspiring locations for screenshot porn,
- Get your favorite videogame characters in-game,
- Tweak water caustics to get the underwater scenery just right,
- Write up sorely-missing romance convo options
- Write AI to play the game for you (seriously).

And probably hundreds of more things. It's a reason why I still have my Morrowind install up and running (though with 2010-class graphics instead of 2003(?)).

PS Except dealing with the crashes. Argh....

LOL

I think I still have Morrowind somewhere, got it with a video card and never loaded it, but if I ever do I'll certainly load on up mods as I'm a bit of a graphics whore. However, as my favorite game of all time is probably Fallout New Vegas, my whoredom has been somewhat tamed.

Speaking of crashes, I replayed the Lonesome Road mod for two hours last night and with over sixty mods loaded, did not crash once. Frankly it kind of creeped me out, like maybe I've been sucked back into the Matrix.