Skyrim's Strengths:
Graphics
Fun Factor
Majesty
Realistic and varied environments
Role-Play Capable (IE: Food to eat, beds to sleep in, churches to go to, good/evil decisions and paths)
Item Creation
Quest system
Open World
NPC's with personalities

Skyrim's Weakness:
Open world that scales to your level, thus making every area virtually the "same" and also, "too easy".
Bugs. Lots and lots of bugs.

Dark Souls' Strengths:
Addictive Game-play
Huge number of varied armor/weapon sets
Open(ish) World, with consequences
DIRE consequences for death (That's a good thing? YES. Here's why: the fear that is created from this is what sells an entire franchise. Horror games.)
Auto-Save system keeps you honest
A mysterious story-line, that keeps you guessing and imagining
Bosses. BIG bosses.

Dark Souls' Weakness:
A VERY linear world. Quite literally there is a right way to go, and that's it.
Lack of closure in either ending. I know I JUST listed the "mysterious story" as a strength, but I feel the ending MUST deliver closure.
Area transition is non-existent. I can go from poison swamp to lava lake with a doorway. That kind of drastic change is unrealistic and reminds me I'm playing a video game.

If a game were released that had all of the strengths of both, and none of the weakness, it'd be perfect.

Opinions?

I never played Dark Souls but from your list, it would be alright I guess.

Can you save the game? Load after death?

Edit: Darksouls that is.

I'd put that as a plus. Of course, I don't find it "too easy".


And those as minuses.

But, then, that's what opinions are for.

(As you might have guessed, what I've seen & heard of the two Souls games has made me very unlikely to ever try them. Not a fan of maschism-level difficulty or "learn & practice the precisely-timed pattern & phases of the Big Boss Monster fourteen times to beat it" gameplay. Or of the really dull grey/brown/iron "real/gritty" art scheme.)

You can quit, but no there is no saving. No loading after death, either. If you die, you must suffer.
(which makes sense if you think about it)

No, you cannot load the game after you have died. Dark Souls saves the progress almost every step you take and every action you do.

edit: too slow...

Everyone is defiantly entitled to their opinion. But I'd just like to say that I thought the same thing about the series, until I played it.
I REALLY hated it, at first.
But
Something about it just... taunted me. I ... just ... had to play it. Once I got past the initial RAGE moments and came to accept that death is bad, I really - REALLY got into it.

Dark Souls doesn't sound terribly interesting to me. Sometimes it's fun to play a game with hard consequences to dying, and a restricted save function to back that up, but I'd never want to see that in an Elder Scrolls game. If I'm looking for a game that emphasizes skill and difficulty I'd rather play sometime built around that - I play TES games for the world and exploration, not to show just how "hardcoe" I am or whatnot.

Yeah, I don't do well with that kind of stuff. Getting slammed by an unexpected phase change (and massive party death since I wasn't equipped to counter the new attack) after a half hour of beating on the final boss in Final Fantasy 13 made me almost hurl my controller. Shaking, I was so angry and frustrated. Didn't go back to the game for a day or two. And only after looking up the exact strategies - there was no way I was going to beat my head against that fight over and over, trying to figure out WTF the counter was. I play games for fun, not to have a stroke.

Luckily, there's a variety of game types out there to cater to different styles.

For some reason, all of the talk about Dark Souls that I've read online makes me think of it as being exactly the same thing as Dragon's Lair.

There's no real good/evil decision path system in Skyrim. Sure, you can join the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild if you want, but it ultimately doesn't affect the outcome of the story and only works as a good/evil type system if you think of it in your mind that way.

I personally liked Oblivion more than Skyrim. I felt as if there was more to do, and the side quest-lines (Dark Brotherhood, Thieves Guild etc.) were much more in-depth and engaging than the ones in Skyrim. The crafting in Skyrim was definitely a strength, as were the varied environments (I would have liked to have seen more snowy settings in Oblivion). Ultimately, though, I felt Oblivion was a deeper game.

Your idea could work, though I think Oblivion would probably be a better game to take the story/elements from.

Ugh that DOES sound frustrating. I only played up to FF 12, and had a rage quit moment. It was not due to difficulty, though. It was when Fran pounced Bahamut as "Ba-Ha-moot" that I lost it.
What? He's my favorite and that was simply unforgivable.


I didn't play that one... wasn't it the one with the cartoon cut scenes? What system was it for?

Good point... I really disliked how my actions did not actually impact the world.