» Sat Feb 16, 2013 12:41 am Let me point out that there are FOUR factions in the game that have little to no quests involved with them, despite two of those factions arguably having more presence on the game world than the actual playable factions. The factions being The Silver Hand, Vigilant of Stendarr, Forsworn and Thalmor. The latter two have a fairly big impact on Skyrim, and it seems kind of baffling that they don't have their own quests associated with them while the friggin' BARD'S COLLEGE does(Despite the character not being able to learn how to play an instrument......wut?). I'm left to come to the conclusion that these two factions were originally going to be given more depth and quests, but were scrapped halfway through development due to time constraints, budget constraints, or size constraints. The problem is they left these plot points within the game. So story is there, but it essentially comes off as content that the player has no access to. It feels...unfinished. Now you have to factor in the relative shortness of all the other faction questlines. The Companions and College factions are noticeably short and not very ambitious, as opposed to the Thieves and Dark Brotherhood. I personally figured, while playing through the The Companions, that it was building up towards you either siding with the Silver Hand and taking out the Companions, or ending the way the game did. But no. I don't think any Silver Hand even got names. What leads me to believe that this whole quest line is incomplete and WAS originally intended to be what I had theorized, is that if the Silver Hand were a bunch of inconsequential, nameless, humanoid foes, than the game developers would have been better off sending us on random adventures in dungeons involving treasure and monsters, rather than boring fort clearing. If the Silver Hand were more characterized or in depth, than it would makes sense to spend so much time on them. The fact that they are still there(and will attack even a non-Companion on sight), leads me to believe that a lot of stuff involving them was scrapped halfway through production, but it was too late to change much else, thus resulting in the worst faction questline in the game, despite having a brilliant set-up. This is just an example of course. I could bring up how the Vigilant of Stendarr serve absolutely NO purpose in the gameworld at all until the first quest of Dawnguard. They even had a Hall on the World Map. It seemed obvious to me that they were meant to have quests at one point. Forsworn, obviously a missed opportunity that could have brought back Witch Covens for the first time since Daggerfall. It;s a good thing Dawnguard came along, because then there would be virtually NO quests for Vampires, aside from curing your own Vampirism. then the biggest problem is that the Thalmor, who the game keeps yelling at us about, doesn't have many quests associated with them at all, despite being important plot wise as the Imperials and Stormcloaks, if not more so. I don't care if we couldn't join their faction, but the lack of quests associated with them and the overall lack of a sense of conclusion with their role in the game also feels like inaccessible content. This at least seems posed to be fixed in potential DLC(if there is anymore). There's also a lack of quests that have nonlinear ways of completion. Not as many choices or gray areas in this game,...though still quite a few, not as many. However the quests are step up in scale fro Oblivion's...so that could be expected. I would also like to point out the VERY conspicuous lack of an Arena from Windhelm and quests associated for it.
There's other things that bother me too. Unlike Fallout and Oblivion, there is no "Good or Evil" Karma system that alters the game and how people interact with you. They defended this in pre-release interviews claiming it now works on a more realistic person-to-person basis. But it doesn't feel like it does. Everyone seems to treat you the same, And being a world heavily influenced by Gods and Daedra, they seem pretty indifferent towards your actions. You don't find better or worse treasure depending on your karma level, people don't give you things, or put out bounties for you depending on your karma. You don't get better or worse prices/blessings, etc. Now this stuff doesn't seem like an oversight to me, given that all the ingredients for it are there. It just seems like for whatever reason, it was left unfinished.
You also have to deal with more technical stuff. Lack of First-Person Horse Riding, Lack of Ranged and Magic finishers UPON RELEASE, later implementation of Kinect control, lack of enemy variety, they re-used Hjaalmarch textures/props for Pelagius's head, some weird effects not being optimized properly(The effect for when summoning something or transforming something is the most damning), it just gives off the impression that the projects ambition really overstretched itself and in the end comes off feeling incomplete in compared ot previous games from Bethesda. it's still probably their best, though.
Anyone else feel similar?
Also, I don't know why Werewolves are in the game. It would have made more sense(especially lore-wise) if the Companions were all secretly Werebears. It would certainly make things easier for them down the road to Dragonborn in terms of sense and plotting things out with the Skill Tree, as then no one would be able to [censored] about it, really.
