Let me preface what I’m about to say with the following statements. My experience is only on the Xbox 360. I’m a huge Elder Scrolls fan and thoroughly enjoyed Morrowind and Oblivion. The game world Bethesda designed is amazing. It’s huge, detailed, and exists with out the interaction of my character. I love a lot of things about the game world that was created. Even the handful of bugs I’ve encountered do not detract from the game world’s sheer awesomeness.
That being said, there are several game play mechanics that are terrible. The combat is horrible! There is no other way around it. Even with the added perks the combat is seriously lacking. In no particular order I’ll explain my problem with the combat and other issues.
The dodge feature was removed. I’m not sure why Bethesda scraqed this. Combat now only consists of trying to dps down you’re opponent before he kills you. Your only combat skill to help you is blocking. This leads to very boring fights with any class you play. The controls are already set up perfectly for dodging with the sprint button. Just tap your movement direction while pressing sprint and you could dodge, have it take stamina, and have armor and perks affect it and problem solved.
The sword combat doesn’t feel fluid, and it should (and could) be a lot better. The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was one of the first games to be release with Xbox 360, since then dozens of great games of come out. The boring, straight up combat that we experienced in Oblivion, should have evolved with the release of Skyrim. Simply beating on your enemy while their health bar goes down is outdated. The combat should be something more like Assassin’s Creed, with parries and counter attacks. The only thing Bethesda added was the cool kill animations, but they come off like an after thought because they are triggered randomly and not by the players use of a skillful move. The only things the kill animations show me is that because they sometimes happened in first person view, that is totally possible to have a badass looking fight in Skyrim, if the game developers had put the mechanics in their. I want to be able to side step a weak enemy, like a standard bandit, as he does a power attack and bring my sword across the back of his neck, cleanly removing his head from his shoulders. Or, parry an attack with dual daggers, and find the exposed flesh between armor joints and slice the tendon that holds pectoral muscle to the clavicle, weakening my enemy as I gracefully step away from the encounter. Picture the scene from Game of Thrones when Bronn the sell-sword is fighting in only leathers against the fully plated knight in the Eyrie throne room. Sure, there should still be moments when I bash against someone blow for blow because an opening hasn’t presented itself, but the level system, perks, and enemy level (from basic bandit to knight) allow for a seamless transition.
The magic system (at least on 360) is terrible. You can only use 2 spells at a time, and have to pause combat every time with the favorite button to reassign spells. It was a cool idea, taking a direction from Bioshock and binding spells to your hands. The only problem is even utility spells need to be cast that way. This was a huge mistake. Certain spells should be able to be hot barred to some button on the d-pad (there are still 7 buttons left and for non-casters, potions and scrolls could go there). Without breaking combat I should be able to cast fire spells, summon an undead baddy, and still have my summoned sword out and refresh my armor spell if I need it. Just think of that scene from The Fellowship of the Ring when Gandalf has his sword and staff and is fighting the Balrog. I know Gandalf is a super badass, but you’re the freaking Dovahkiin! There also isn’t a good way to slow enemies down as they are coming at you. I’m talking like trapping their feet in ice and then lighting bolt there [censored]. Some people might say that it would be too easy, but there are usually quite a few enemies to engage at the same time. Sure if you want to kill one guy then run away and hide until the remaining guys stop looking for you, that’s one incredibly boring way to play.
Which segways me into my next point, the AI is lame. On adept difficult (which is normal difficulty), I can sneak into a room full of people, slit one guys throat, run away and hide, and once all the chaos is over, it’s back to business as usual for the remaining bad guys. There friend is still sitting in the chair at the dinner table, neck sliced open and they will sit down across from him and continue there disjointed conversation they are having with themselves. Yes, I know assassin characters need to be able to attack again from sneak or they won’t have a chance, but come on, there are much better ways to do it. Something like jumping down from above onto the dinner table, driving my daggers into the guys neck and then throwing a knife into a dudes face, something. The patrol routes don’t make sense a lot of the time, they walk in circles or are triggered by you entering the room. Why is the bandit leader at the top of the tower walking in circles with one of her guards? The AI in general is unrealistic and all around not great. If I’m beating on a guy at the beginning of a bandit hideout and he turns and runs away yelling, “I yield, please don’t hurt me” I’m thinking he should be running further into the hideout yelling “Help, this crazy cat guy is trying to kill me, get your arses up.”
There is no climbing. Why is there no climbing? Example, I’m sneaking up a mountain camp. The path makes a U-shape as it climbs higher up the peak. I cast a detect life and see a guy standing at the end of that U path. I look to my right and coming out of the mountain are these ruins that make a perfect ramp up the side of the mountain. I think to myself, “Awesome, I can stand on any thing in this game let me use this to my advantage and get behind the sentry and I’ll introduce him to my Dwarven dagger. But to my dismay once I reach the top of the ruins, the ledge to the path, which is only about to my shoulders while crouched, is out of my jump reach. So I get out of crouch, now the ledge is to my stomach and I still can’t jump up high enough and the second I try to the sentry hears me. I want to be an assassin pirate pulling up over the side of ship with a dagger in my teeth. The recent release of Battlefield 3 shows that climbing and vaulting animations can be done really well in the first person and again the game already has controls that can accommodate these features. Hold jump button to climb over obstacles (I’m talking about flat surfaces, not jagged mountains, but I’m pretty sure with current programming abilities other surfaces wouldn’t be a problem to a certain extent).
There are also dozens of other things that should and could have been made better, changed, or added in that bug me, but are not game changers like my major grips above. Here’s a few:
Horse back combat (including archery). Since the domestication of the horse up until World War I, troops have fault on horseback. Since riding is already in 3rd person in Skyrim, it’s set up perfectly.
Getting off the horse when I’m being attacked. I can understand if I was wearing 100lb plate armor, the need for slowly dismounting while feral dogs are attacking me, but why can’t I jump off quickly while I’m wearing cloth or leather?
Lock picks are made of a rare brittle metal and I’ve got a heavy hand. I’m not sure how ancient, or medieval locks worked (I imagine a simpler version of modern locks), but the lock picking in Skyrim is very dated.
All the cool utility spells are gone. They just keep whittling down magic with each new Elder Scrolls.
The dragons (at least the early ones) don’t do cool combat like tail whips, or chasing me down on my horse, or trying to pick me up.
The conversations are lacking, with speech leveling up as I sell things seems like no thought was put into that part except for the perks which are meh.
I’ve been waiting for Skyrim for a long time, and now that it’s here, I’m disappointed and I know exactly why. In technical terms, the game lacks, when it comes to your character, a sense of bad-assery. Yes, the environment is badass. The dragons are pretty badass (except for the things mentioned above). How the environment (not the world), lives on without you, animals fighting and people killing each other, thieves stealing and what not is badass. But even though my character is the “chosen one”, first dragon born in centuries, I’m not a badass, I can’t do badass stuff. My interactions in the huge, supposed sandbox environment is stifled and boring. I’m very disappointed in Bethesda for not evolving their game to the quality level I was expecting. All the components are there, and the game should be able to accommodate. As my gripes affect every aspect of the game, except for the crafting (which isn’t great either), I think I’m going to Craig’s list it.
Am I the only one that thinks this?
And when responding to this post don’t use the lame argument that combat isn’t the main focus of the game. That just isn’t true. Every where you go, every place you explore, and almost every quest that isn’t a fetch quest involves combat. That ends up being at least 70% of the meat of the game.
Your expectations are unrealistic. You can't have a game that perfectly does magic, assassin, and warrior builds. The great thing about TES is it encompasses all of them. No, you can't hold a dagger in your mouth. No, you cant wield six spells and two weapons at the same time (which sounds more like WOW than a good RPG to me anyways), and no, you can't aim for specific arteries. I mean seriously, how are they supposed to make a well rounded, cohesive game when they have to spend 2 years developing software to allow you to pick out a shot at the jugular with a throwing knife? Mounted combat is just another difficult addition to incorporate into the software, and would, in many ways, make the game feel smaller. If you could charge from Solitude to Riften on a horse swinging at anything in your path, you would hardly have a reason to dismount and enjoy the world. It would also make all battles outdoors, including all dragon battles, exceptionally easy. If you could ride away while shooting arrows at a dragon, you could defeat it without being touched each and every time. And just so you know, dragons do pursue you when you are mounted and do attack by smacking down their tails, which is why you can't just hide behind them and swing away with an axe. And please, fighting through twenty huge cave bears which you can throw across the room with just your voice isn't "badass" enough for your character? You have to look at the bigger picture of the game before nitpicking, perfection in each aspect of such a huge game is unrealistic, and many of your propositions would be more detrimental to the experience than beneficial.
» Fri May 11, 2012 5:39 pm 
