I...okay I guess you really liked Dark Messiah but I gotta say I played it and aside from a few "gimmicks" it's not nearly as great melee combat as you're playing it up to be. It's good don't get me wrong, but other than a few overused little tricks it was not really that different than Oblivion. Also we're talking apples and oranges here. DM was a level FPS with really not much off the beaten path and surprisingly short; the TES games are massive "sandbox" titles.

You need to read what I wrote again, and listen to me. Take this from someone who was in the Infantry for a while (I'm 30, been a TES player since Arena) and in Afghanistan so I'm not talking out of my ass here. When someone shoots at you, you can pretty quickly figure out where that came from. That's with a bullet, a small fast-moving object. An arrow is going to be even easier to spot where that came from because you can SEE IT. People whined and complained, perhaps rightly so, about the vacant AI during sniping in Oblivion. You don't sit and fire, that's how you get spotted. I'm sorry you can't cheese the system and it's realistic where if you want to keep sniping people you have to stay on the move, but it's a change for the better.

DM was kinda just... set up so you could kick people into things over and over. Although I'll admit, I'm not digging the combat in Skyrim as much as I would have hoped.

I did. It was partially because of the melee combat and mostly because of the awesome stealth system.

The reason I can compare the two is that dungeons in Skyrim are self-contained areas. Outdoors in the rest of the world, mantling objects would be difficult to implement but not impossible. It's simply like a jump. There are flat ledges on rock right now in the game that you could have been able to mantle up to, simple. The AI would have to be changed in Skyrim as well to have the same kind of stealth combat, but that has nothing to do with the open world nature of the game. In DM if you assassinate someone, and the AI spots the body in the open, the AI will investigate. Why is that too much to ask for in a sandbox world?

agree with op on almost every level

To the OP: Tell me this is the game better than Oblivion?

In my opinion yes it is. That means the game has gotten better and is going to be come better in future games(I hope). No need to fret if you think the game is bad it's you opinion. IF you think it has some bad stuff and some good stuff PLAY IT and IGNORE the bad stuff. Am I right?

You could kick people over and over, and it was fun but it wasn't very effective. The fact is that I wasn't forced to kick people an insane number of times to stagger them, I could circle and use power attacks or stealth them. What I AM forced to do is to accommodate the stiff combat system in Skyrim to kill things. I have to block and shield bash to open people while instantly falling back to block once I have slashed once. There's no sense of dynamism. Or, I can use the wonky stealth system with enemies who are either clairvoyant or oblivious. DM proves that you can strike a middle ground, and I'm disappointed that combat in a game 5 years older than DM is not as good.

Despite all my ragging on the combat, I assure you I'm still enjoying the rest of Skyrim

didn't feel like reading all the posts in between first and last but here's what i have to say


Get over it. There is not a single thing in skyrim that is not an improvement from oblivion. The game stays true to its roots while improving upon everything done in its predecessors.


There is always room for improvement in any game but skyrim just about nails what the definition of "perfect sequel" is.

Mad respect to you dude.

I've only been playing since Oblivion so maybe I'm not seeing the improvements Sorry for asking, but don't you rely mostly on sound to find out where a shot came from? Arrows, apart from the whistling, are mostly silent and don't lead back to the guy shooting.

Sound can be very deceiving depending on weather, terrain, and many many other factors. The best indicator is angle of impact, pretty readily noticeable from an arrow (it would usually even almost "point" back to the area it was shot from). Also the fact you'd be much much closer sniping with a bow compared to a rifle and hence much easier to locate.

My expectations were pretty high and they've been exceeded. Bethesda did a great job in fixing many of the complaints of Oblivion and then some.

The game is more like living out a fantasy novel or movie than it is a hack and slash. RPG's never really have exciting melee combat. Ironically, my favorite Warrior gameplay is WoW (ducks).

I did indeed and Indeed I did agree with him.

THE GAME IS ONLY 5.6 GIGABYTES BIG FOR GOODNESS FRICKEN SAKE!?
What the heck!?
I was expected a 12 Gig, No, FIFTEEN or so GB of space requried for this game. No! it was only a 1.6GB difference from Oblivion.

Not much was changed other then the graphics, a bit of AI, voice acting and combat here and there.
They removed alot, they put in some new stuff.
I mean, I haven't even fought that many different enemies....Skeevers, bandits, Draugr, some skeletons, some unique hard guys here and there, and then the dragons of course.
Where is everything else?
Seriously...
I LOVE the game. So far it's AWESOME. But It could be SO much MORE! Why isn't it?

If they put "as much stuff as they could" into this game...then where is it, because it's not there.
This new "radiant AI" that's all so smart and such...Where is it? Because it's not here.
Where is this cool marriage/romance system? Theres no feeling in the romances, theres nothing special with that.
Look at Mass Effect or Baldur's Gate 2. Much older games yet the romance system in both games were phenomenal. They felt special, and nice.
The fact that when the person I was romancing died in BG2 (one of my favorite RPG's of all time) I scream at the game and yell
"NOOOOOOOOOOO AERIE!!!!!!!!!!!!" Because it felt special to me.

Again...I love the game...But it's lacking, soo much...I'm sorry Bethesda, you did great but failed at the same time.
I will take my leave with this.

If you are expecting flawless AI you are going to be waiting a loooooooong time. AI is a weakness in virtually every modern game ever made and even games that seem to have good AI only seem that way because of game limitations or hacks, not because the AI is actually good.

You're definitely right then about the arrows.

I feel the rest of my comments on the combat still stand though. The wonky melee fighting doesn't stop me from playing the game, it's just something that could be improved on in future games, and it's painful to see the combat in a game from a big studio look primitive and shoddy in comparison to the combat in a game that's five years old.

I just don't think that the age of a game has all that much to do with anything aside from the graphics. Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! has better combat than most action games I've played.

lol can you imagine that in Skyrim? Now we're getting into areas of "cannot compare"

Wow!

I so agree with you!

I'm going to favorite this page and show people this when the chance comes! I so,so agree with this.

Don't listen to the people who trash talk to you!

Good Job OP!

I kind of agree. The vast amount of content in the landscape, quests, dialogue is great but there's nothing else that stands out in this game. The combat isn't that fun and is outdated and there are too many bugs and balance issues.

As the first TES game I've played can't really compare it to an earlier version. That said most any fight will be a dps race. For this older non-twitch player will have to find a way to finish opponents thru non-button mashing. Probably will be a lot of Pause, choose Item, Un-pause, Use item, rinse, repeat.

See above. And on a PC myself so can only imagine how jarring it must be on a controller if one can't map favs,

As a long time player going back to the 8-bit days AI has never been good enough. Will take some new kind of code to make games intelligent and adaptive. We're not there yet.

Got around the Frost Troll by finding little places but concur with another poster that there should be climber friendly cliff faces, and unfriendly ones as well. Skill: Climber.

Concur and concur. Got a bow begging to be used, wolves surrounding my horse and all I can do is slooowly climb down into the rauaging pack, ready the melee weapons and start swinging hoping I don't kill my horse or companion.

It's a bit wonky but using a light touch myself.

Can't speak to the first.
Dragons, in 3rd person view, are quite the rage machines.
See AI comment above.

Prob not but can't agree with it all. A few points are well thought out but many of the concluding opinions seem based on your preconceived notions of what you felt the game was going to be and not on what it is.

Would suggest keeping it around and playing something else for a bit. Come back in a few days and play it again as what it is.

Well, yeah, but you get the idea. I haven't played Dark Messiah, but, even if the combat is better, I don't see why it matters that it's a 2006 game and Skyrim is a 2011 game. I don't think that there are many, if any, combat systems in games from this year that couldn't be implemented in 2006. As far as the hardware goes, it certainly doesn't matter, since we're still in the same console generation.

I imagine that the better lock, the heavier or stronger torque (tension? I don't the proper term) the lock, thus requiring you to use more force to open the lock. So if you aren't opening the locks properly, it will snap the lockpick.

Also nice Game of Thrones reference. By the way you mentioned it I assume you have read the book and not just the TV series?

When i saw the download size and realized it was almost identical to Oblivion 6 years ago i knew something was wrong.

They added pointless flash to cover up the fact this is a clone of Oblivion, with zero improvements anywhere.

Oblivion was good in 2006, it is not good in 2012.

TC is taking a near perfect game and nitpicking that it isn't perfect.

Oh the shame, Bethesda. Oh the shame.

I haven't used a shield since the first dungeon. You aren't forced to play block and slash, you seem to force yourself to. Try dual wielding, its really effective when you use the power attacks correctly and you can gain multiple enchantment/perk benefits from the weapons.

Sure, there haven't really been any innovate combat systems in a game for a while. But the fact is that Bethesda had a chance to improve radically from Oblivion and only made a few aesthetic improvements like the slo-mo death shots without actually changing the plodding combat in the first place. And a bunch of the things they added, like shield bashing (which is now my fav go to move!), came from Oblivion mods which is just a little thoughtless.