Yah Really....Games with stories about bandits molesting children is really aimed for kids....Games with stories about necromancers fantasysing about milk maids and turning them into his undead servants is really aimed for kids....Yah...game with racist Nazi Elves are really aimed for kids...Games with public executions are really aimed for kids...Games with rooms filled with..Odd objects and a note saying "The person is skilled in the dibellian arts" Is really for kids...I could go on and on.

I haven't played an RPG game with puzzles that were even moderately difficult for well over ten years..so i'm not sure where this idea of new dumbing down comes in. I remember games from the ps1 and old PC RPG's that had puzzles that were just a non-puzzling as Skyrims.

Putting spoiler tags just to be safe but...


I assume those are the "puzzles" you guys are talking about?

The reason why it's rated for advlts but aimed at children is because the biggest target demographic for video games is the north american manchild.

The mechanics suffer, but the puzzles can be overlooked as an RPG is not about puzzles.
The mechanics, gameplay, lore, story, characters, and the world matter above anything else. The lore, world, and mechanics are at the top of this list.

talk about a bunch of cry babies. Its obvious that Bethesda put more effort in other features and took less time on others... Its sad people expect to have a 100% perfect game handed to them. I dont think you people realize how long it takes to create a next generation game like this. If you dont like it then dont buy it simple as that, nobody wants to hear a bunch of "advlts" cry, you say your advlts try acting like it.

i feel bad for Bethesda, they create such an awesome game and they have to deal with cry babies nit-picking their games on minor nonsense. Try appreciating whats given.

I would love to have seen a post better written.
More conscious use of spacing, interpunctuation.

As it is, I agree with the title.
Its quite the hur-dur.

Profit can be a tempting concept for developers in such a rapidly exspanding market, this can lead to alot of disatisfaction to the audiance that brought the media to the forefront as it is today.

Its not just skyrim thats suffered this fate, alot of video games have slipped in recent years.
Lets look at cod eliet quickly, when it was released you had to imput your dob so it locked out 75% of activisions customers, 'luckly' as online is not rated they just stripped out the age test. This massive customer base cant be ignored but when they are aiming/altering content at that audience insted of the intended audience its a bit of a back stab.

Skyrim imo has had some similar design problems that i dont think are just about aiming for new players, but younger players.
For starters:
Dialogue in skyrim is poor, really empty in some places. Space maybe an issue for audio, so this may be exscusable, but not how childish it often sounds. That said with a text bases replys system there is no reason to not have variable or interedting retorts, in game they are very short or non existant. NV imo showed of good varible dialouge that didnt seem jarring that it often led down to the same out come. This illusion of interaction and sway on the world is important imo.
Tes(and fo) makes great use of text, be it notes or quest books, but now they are rarely lengthy and the journal has been reduced to a list?!(you want streamed lined, thats fine. Try more tab/pop ups, what ever, just dont leave it all out...) oh as for puzzles?! match the pictures?! i just bought my brothers three year old son a book with the same mental strain as the skyrim dungeon puzzles...I know they are new and no one likes being pointlessly stuck but seriously afew teasers or latteral thinking puzzles would not have gone amiss!

I wont touch on spell making or repair or any of the other features that have had alot of air time, i believe the words in beths rpgs are what holds alot of its substance, outside the gameworld, its self, alot of the features beth use are no way ground break, they need this intellectual high for there games to truly get back there old life span and prestige of 300hrs+(more like 1000 )

Hopefully we can see what beth are really capable of once more with some serious dlc, because Im fed up of really looking forward to what is apprently going to be a mature exsperenice, completly flattened by a lack of in depth elements and generaly pooh-poohing of text and speech, and real depth and maturity.
And know i dont mean it 'dont have enough blood, briasts and swearing init.'

Im going to have to start renting games again to see if the target audience is the same as there rating... Please Bethesda there are few good games companies left. I wish you had a more open repore with us here on the forums, i know there are alot of voices and some shout really load, but when alot of those voices have agreed and are passionate about it, it would be worth, at least, saying if you agree or disagree and why you think so.

EDIT: Hope this is better.

Well said.
I really detest the whiners on this forum. Before I got Skyrim I was playing Oblivion a bit and on that forum I often read people remarking how awful it was on the Skyrim forum with all the 'manchild' whiners etc....now I know what they meant.
Personally I am very grateful to Bethesda for the great games they make...and that they make them for the gaming community...ie they make them completely modable.
Does that mean I think the games are perfect and just the way I would want them to be?
No! of course not.
But I appreciate the overall quality and good things in these games. And I am looking forward to seeing where the modding community will take this game.
By then all the whiners will have moved on...and be whining on some other forum.

Well said.
I really detest the whiners on this forum. Before I got Skyrim I was playing Oblivion a bit and on that forum I often read people remarking how awful it was on the Skyrim forum with all the 'manchild' whiners etc....now I know what they meant.
Personally I am very grateful to Bethesda for the great games they make...and that they make them for the gaming community...ie they make them completely modable.
Does that mean I think the games are perfect and just the way I would want them to be?
No! of course not.
But I appreciate the overall quality and good things in these games. And I am looking forward to seeing where the modding community will take this game.
By then all the whiners will have moved on...and be whining on some other forum.

Oh, "manchild" is the new "hater", I guess? No need to anolyze or understand the reasons for peoples' complaints, when you can just put them in neat little boxes. Life is easy, and you can just keep on chewing your cud. Many of us complain because we've played the past games in the series, and find the future of TES games worth caring for. People wouldn't complain if they didn't care.
RPGs are a dying breed, and there aren't that many more options to choose from anymore, if you don't like this particular flavor. There's only TES and Bioware games left, plus a handful of independents. If we want RPGs, this is pretty much all we have. That's why so many people care so much about the games being developed for their personal tastes.

I agree the over all quality is better, i was mainly focused on dialogue, text and its importance and comparing that to a trend in the industry to cater to a larger audience that a single produce really can without disatisfing part of the original audience. That is important, its also not whinning, i have alot of goid to say about skyrim but how many times do beth rearly need ppl to [censored] there leg. Its not going to make better games.
Where as negatives that can be ironed out will make better games.
If you disagree with my original points please say, its fine if the think the dialougue is mature and deep and the lack of text is a good idea, thats fine thats your opinion and your letting beth know it, but lets not have repeat after repeat of 'complainers' vs 'appolagists'. Its no fun and gets us no were.
To follow up one of your points i dont think mods are an excuse for empty systems or the generic aim of elements to appeal to as wide an audience as possible, to be thinking its fine, and wait for modders to take it in a different direction is not suitable imo infact id call it denile at the exstent of the problem.

Some dialogue in Redguard is more complex and 'mature' than in Skyrim. Another thing, go back and read some Morrowind books, then read some Skyrim exclusive books. The writing style, vocabulary and literary devices used for the most part in the older titles is far superior.

Only dialogue I was ever impressed with was one with the Grey Beards, especially the last ones you get with them when you kill Pathx. Besides that they should definetly be more blood, gore & swearing lol.

Have you seen some of Daggerfall books, in particular Barenziah volumes? It's quite lewd and can be posted on a pron site. Morrowind began watering down from that. You can read them on the UESP though.

Imagine if we had Lufia 2 puzzles.

Lets describe a proper RPG puzzle for a second.

Final Fantasy XII: Sometime in the 2nd half of the main quest, you came along a weird snowy area, full of ancient shrines. You would try to exit it, but you would always come to the right place. The only hint you had is a voice that echoed when you passed over a shrine: "In this sanctum shall the pilgrim find truth and illusion both. Illusion betokens the true way"
What was the solution? If you were careful enough, looking throough one of the many arcs of the shrine you'd see the illusion of a jungle, instead of the snow there was around. You had to go through that door, to the shrine straight ahead and do the same, until you reahed the last one.
In the next area, you had much more similar shrines and a magically locked gate in the end. You had to do the same as in the last area to unlock the bindings, then the gate will present you with a riddle, that mentions something about the summoner of the Gigas. One of your summonable espers happens to be called Belias the Gigas - you must summon it and only then can you open the gate.

Not that hard, but it can easily have you stuck for weeks if you refuse to look it up in some walkthrough.
And that was the easy part. Because, when you reach the center of the ancient city within these gates, you get to http://images.wikia.com/finalfantasy/images/4/4c/Final_fantasy_xii_giruvegan_crystal.png... and without any in-game map...

No its really not. Thats why its rated M.