Of course it is, what is more roleplaying than decapitating someone with a mace? :wink_smile: So that's why they left out spears? Beheading would just get too far fetched??? :bolt:

Because of Skryim's huge sales figures more developers will make this type of game.

Its a tough type of game to make but its my favorite type

How can it be dead if it was never really alive in the first place? Other than Beth RPGs, there really is no other Open World RPGs.

Skyrim is an improvement on Oblivion in many many ways. Its got some places its not as good but it is a far better game.
Oblivion was game of the year 2 years in a row.

Skyrim is making boatloads of money just like Fallout 3 did. EA is looking at Bethesda's success with lustful eyes and is coming out with there own open RPGs call Kingdoms of Alasomething. Looks like a mix between zelda, wow, and skyrim.

So no, open RPGs are not dead they are stronger than ever. Are there whiners? Yes there are whiners.

Are whiners going to kill the genre? HAHAHA! No.

Stats are the laziest implementation of character customization possible..

If you can't see how perk trees are better implementations of character customization than stats, then then.. idk

Skyrim is a great game for sure, but nowhere near the 10s it's getting (review scores for big games are ALL inflated anyway). The exploration and adventure side is fun, but after some hour, you start to see the skeleton of the game under all the fluff. Skyrim is not much different than any linear action/rpg, the major difference is that all "levels" are connected via a huge hub-world. Sure it's beautiful and all, but they don't even use the fact that it's an open world game to their advantage. They don't try to ground you into the world. Each quest you get grants you a marker on your map, and either you find your own way through the wilderness, or you fast travel to the nearest place you discovered. Besides the very limited carriage system (only the 5 major cities offer them and can you to 4 others), there's no way to get around, no directions on how to reach somewhere. No unique artifacts hidden in dungeons, making all treasures basically the same. And then an even more big portion of your quest is dungeon-crawling.

Most of the perks are just stats. Hell, everything in the game that is a variable is a stat.




Anyway, I agree with the poster that said RPGs are dying out. Which they definitely are. There has never been this few RPGs, especially compared to their heyday in the 90s and 80s.

Surprisingly that doesn't always seem to be the case. I always thought the Total War series was a breakthrough into huge scale historic battle and strategic simulations, but nothing like it (in my knowledge) has ever been produced.

The real value of Skyrim can be seen after a few years. Most of people waited something different or something more than Skyrim really is. When they'll forget what they expected and they launch patched Skyrim with open mind they'll find the greatness of the game.

Ah absolutely, this game will be incredible on the PC in one or two years time.

I always thought this too. Then I came to realize that the other 99% of the industry doesn't care about ambition, especially if they can turn a profit with a mediocre product. Hell, Morrowind and Oblivion were very popular for their time. How many open world RPGs did we get after them? Two Worlds?


I'm going to have to sig the bold.

I'd just like to state my primary issues with the RPG mechanics:

Joinable factions barely exist. Really... Bethesda should have done better with them with more of them and/or more significance to being one of any given one. We don't even get the list of joined factions and rank within them (coupled with pretty, symbolic pictures) we did in Oblivion.

The reputation system is nonexistent (No "fame", no "infamy", no ranks of respect, revilement, or acknowledgement whatsoever... not even for being dragonborn). This is just poor. There is no reputation system and that's that. What gives? Seriously... this one just ticks me off so much.

Armor pieces didn't need to be further combined. Really, they just didn't.

Attributes could and, in my opinion, should have been worked in. Also, the "perks" should really be perks in that they're bonuses on top of skills (which Skyrim renders quite pointless without the respective "perks"). They should not be the undoubtedly sole factor in any character progression, but I do like perks and would just love them more so if they were actually just perks. No, I want to keep perks, but I'd like some more depth to the system.



As a whole, there's just so very little to actually define my character within the gameworld. If factions are barely there, choices and consequences don't really exist, and I have literally no reputation, then how is this supposed to be the "ultimate open-ended RPG"? It's an RPG, still, but a weak one, at that. Similar complaints go for all Bethesda games post-Daggerfall, really, but despite my love of all TES games and my continual playing of them, I don't like where it's heading.

Two Worlds was bloody awful, I couldn't bare changing from magic user, ranger or fighter at the push of a button, killed it for me. I also don't like the fact you can enjoy a banquet in the middle of a combat in Skyrim. Silly things like that should be dealt with. That was one thing the old D &D dice roleplaying stayed faithful to, a certain level of logical realism. No DM I ever played under would allow you to eat a meal in combat, sneak the odd potion perhaps if you pulled back out of combat, but these are schoolboy errors which should be addressed? :grad:

Thing is, the moment something becomes popular, you're doomed.

Companies are on the market, people buy your shares and thus become investors, giving money for the developer to make games. They not only want their return of investment, but more as capitalism dictates. Video games start slowly, it's for nerdy people and all. It gets a bit more popular along the way, and developers manage to make more money. Other people buy shares because they're doing good, and now there's more pressure for the developers to sell more. As video games become more popular and accessible, this game continues to go up. And at some point, they have no choice. Bethesda HAVE to do what their publishers/investors want, because they won't be happy and leave. And then Bethesda don't have the money to make increasingly costly games. Basically, the way our system works, it's a deal with the devil. Look how CoD's sales evolved, and look how the game themselves evolved. Not the best example since the games didn't change much, but still. The campaigns increasingly became more like Hollywood action movies, the games became increasingly like interactive movies, rather than an actual video game. And that's because it's the only way you're going to sell more. It's all about MORE, even if you have enough. The games were also increasingly hyped, with increasingly more cover stories or articles, more "exclusive" previews, etc. More pressure for reviewers to give better score, to tell the gamers what they want to hear so they can buy the game. Then you got the video game awards to help boost the sales of your games before their prices go down. The more money is involved, the more crazy things become.

OP, just because you have a bunch of whiney forum posters does not mean the game is seen as a failure. For all my problems with it, Skyrim is still the best open world RPG ever released. Yes, it has some stupid silly flaws that should be ragged on in such a great game but it is what it is.

If nothing else, I dearly hope other developers will take note of this game’s success and create competing products with *GASP* new, marketable, intellectual properties of their own for more open world RPG games.

Skyrim can’t be characterized as anything other than one of the bestselling, most played, money raking, releases in modern times and it has only been out a month….

Totally agree regarding the perk system. I play as a warrior, that what I like and my skills an perks are honed to that end. My char couldnt conjure up a chicken even if he was starving to death but, man can he chop of heads.
Haven had this much fun with a game since...well, a long time

Chop off heads with a mace as well? Now that is a perk. :celebration: Maybe with a girdle of giant strength... oh no, my D & D nostalgia is coming back to haunt me. AGHHHHHH

lol at people that think numerical statistics in the form of lets say, attributes, are mutually exclusive to perks. Half of which are just themselves, numerical variables. I'll never understand the "I apparently cant count to 100" crowd.

Good bye you arrogant altmer!

And they say Skyrim has no roleplay?????????

"Open ended world RPG's are dead and Skyrim is a failure" is a big statement to make, and I don't think neither is true.

I see a lot of minor and larger things that could have been done a lot better with Skyrim (less guiding along the way, more choice during the quests (not just either or) and even more details, mysteries and charachters of different kinds) but I still feel priveliged to get to play this game. I'm in my mid 30's, and remember the first video games my generation tested out on black and green screens.

For open world action RPG it's a fine balance between improving graphics and action-related gameplay versus writing good storylines and chiseling out interesting charachters that gives depth to the open world.

WTB Warhammer to the face ripping the head off animation

That made no sense.

Hmm, is the genre dead? Lets see there are 34 users reading this thread at the moment. Uhh, no. Not many RPG's get that number of users going to a forum! Are people disappointed - YES. Better balance, better factions and choices! I am especially disappointed after Bethesda tried out Fallout and Fallout New Vegas. I was expecting some advancement in the quest writing. Seems Bethesda dropped a ton of money to hire level designers (dungeons are GREAT here compared to Oblivion even Morrowind). But really skimped on quest design. Obsidian proved in Fallout New Vegas you can have awesome opened game world combined with open ended quests! Even though the game world was not nearly as good as Bethesda game.

The two were just made for each other! Man I really hope Zenmax buys Obsidian next! Merge the two studios. Gives us completely wide open game wolds with multiple factions/paths. What more could a RPG gamer want!?

That's true enough, but you should know that how much a game sold in the first weeks isn't a result of how good it is. It means the publishers did their job; promo, PR stunts, constant influx of positive previews/reviews, pre-order incentives and such. Unless you started gaming this year, you HAVE to have seen how it all exploded tenfold over the last couple of years, AS the sales. There's more people who play video games than ever, more video game events, the hype machine is at its more ridiculous, with people updating threads each day for a year the second a new info comes out, watching every single video or interview even if they all say the same thing, the same things that WORK in the game or would be the biggest incentives. It's all about showing what people want to show and tell them they have to buy it. How successful it is depends on several factors. The reviews are more inflated as before, with games from big publishers having the biggest scores, etc. Just look Skyrim's or Mass Effect 2/3's websites, they are FILLED with promotions and stuff. With scores of reviews which wouldn't have been possible if the writers were known to not write good things about the publisher's games - remember the Kane and Lynch gamespot incident? even the not so good second game got very high scores. Sure a good game helps the sales, but not all that much considering all I said. And yes, all this affects how much you initially play the game to a certain extent. The more excited you are about a game, the more you're going to play it, unless it svcks. And the more time it will take for you to see the flaws.

I'm more concerned about the fact I'm a level 21 fighter/ stroke destruction mage using a f******g mace?