OP doesn't understand what linear game play is.
OP doesn't understand what a linear game world is either.

OP...do you even understand "linear"?

Wait what? I never said the phrase "not well written" once. The civil war questline actually does have a great concept and backstory. It's the in-game delivery which is really poor.

Skyrim's game world isn't linear, but dungeons and quests are. The game world is basically just a hub for experiencing linear mini-adventures.

I understand why such prompts exist in Skyrim, given that many of my friends couldn't figure out where to go or what to do in Morrowind and even in Oblivion, and refused to play afterwards.I personally disapprove of them, as I feel they take some of the free spirit I felt playing other TES games.

I agree. I never played Oblivion, but you don't have to to know Skyrims got major problems in comparison.

The worlds huge, but you get railroaded into quests constantly.
If I want to do a quest I will do the damn quest ON MY OWN FREAKING TIME!
And if I don't want to do it, I won't do it! I won't seek out the npcs or anything to do with it, other than killing them, maybe.
I don't need railroading or them trying to force or trick me into joining factions I don't want to.
And I really don't want a freaking reminder, permenantly stuck in my quest log!
I can find quest npcs on my own!

It would be nice to be able to walk into a town for the first time, and just see the town.
Not get forced into a quest.

The worlds big and freeform, the games linear.

The questlines are so short with near immediate "you're the leader" payoffs simply to satisfy the ADD casuals who would quickly lose interest otherwise. Ok, I was being a little facetious when I started writing that sentence, but on second thought, it wouldn't surprise me.

The gameworld isn't linear, but it feels linear. It feels like everything is scripted and just waiting for you to walk by and set things into action, like some Disney World ride. Outside of Markarth, there's a bridge with like 8 dudes on the other side standing there looking at each other. Day or night, 24/7, rain or shine, there they'd be. All just waiting for me to get close enough to kick off some calamity that would require my intervention. Maybe it has something to do with that Redguard woman? Oh no, wait, she doesn't have the scar. Everywhere I go, I see people standing in a daze from a distance... waiting for me to get close to start the ride up. So in that sense, along with the funneled routing, the game does feel very linear. With earlier games in the series, I felt like I was exploring a living world where things happened on their own. In Skyrim, I don't get that feeling. In fact, I don't think that anything happens unless I'm around. That also lend to the perception of things being linear.

This. The world doesn't feel alive. It never stops reminding you that you're the main character, that everything revolves around you, and nothing can happen without your permission or involvement. At the same time, most if not all quests have no branching paths, leaving little to see on your subsequent playthroughs.

Every npc even stands around, waiting for you to get within a few feet of them so they can robotically turn and say some one liner to you.

I will say I agree with this guy, to an extent. Whiterun hold is just rolling hills. You can cut through the roads very easily, just walk to Rorikstead from whiterun and back without using roads. It's pretty easy. Also, places like The Pale (the area surrounding Dawnstar) is also pretty easy to not use roads there.

I don't think the mountains is such a concern. It's true, you learn to stick to the roads, but if that's the scenery, that's the scenery.

The quests however, yeah.
TES used to have this attitude of "I'm gonna put something cool here and I don't care if anyone finds it or not." It was the same philosophy used by people who like dry humor; make a joke, don't care if people catch onto it or not.
Now TES seems to be taking on the philosophy of slapstick humor with it's quests. Suddenly it cares if you find the quests. It cares a LOT. The game basically says "LOOK AT ME LOOK AT ME I HAVE A NEAT QUESTLINE OVER HERE" the whole way through.

The problem? Some of my fondest memories of Fallout 3 involved going into locations that weren't tied to any quest and actually finding a unique NPC or a unique weapon. Oblivion had some unmarked quest in a dungeon to find a unique dagger or sword in the middle of the woods, and that was also something special. What Skyrim has done is streamlined content amongst players so that every player experiences the same thing. I remember when Morrowind had that water cooler effect. When I was 16, there was a time when I would literally wake up and go to school, and in the morning I'd chat with some guys about what they did in Morrowind. "I found some cursed dagger and the moment I picked it up some guy appeared and killed me!" "The hell where are you? I'm near some orc worshippers or something." "I found a shop that was LOADED and I robbed it blind!" "I found Umbra in the middle of nowhere!"
Oblivion had it to a lesser extent, with some quests involving the unbeaten path and others involving the player to get the right rumor overheard from an NPC conversation.
Skyrim doesn't have this because everyone is forcefed the same content with these scripted cutscenes. We all know the conversations by heart, practically. There's also no unique factor like...Like if you made three Thieves in Oblivion, one might find the guild himself via his own cunning, another might get caught and jailed immediately and sent a note about the guild, whereas another might spend months stealing and never being caught and thus never being found by the Thieves' guild. No, ALL of your characters are gonna get the SAME quests at about the exact SAME time because they all get shoved in your face based on which location you visit.



I can confidently say I'm probably not the only one who, within the first 5 hours of my gameplay, learned to avoid crowds of people as approaching them probably meant I'd get railroaded into some quest. Crowd of people = scripted convo intended to trigger a quest.

Which means the game is completely non-linear.
That fact that you can avoid quests and let the scripted events continue without you being a part of them, and still progress yourself and immerse yourself in the game shows it's non linear.

Scripted does not equal linear. Totally different things.

The fact that certain guild quest lines are linear...well...they have to be. The idea is to progress you through the guild. However...you can chose to ignore those quests too. The thieves Guild, for instance, you can do dozens of non-linear quests involving burglary, forgery, etc., and totally bypass the main quest line.

And really....complaining about travel away from the roads? Roads are built to improve travel and make an easier route to travel versus undeveloped terrain. I'm not sure where you live in real life...but in mountainous areas, traveling in a straight line via foot or horse without using a road is pretty much impossible. I'm in N. Arizona and I can't run in undeveloped areas (no roads or trails) for more than 1/8 mile without having to reroute due to a canyon, steep dry wash, mountains, or other impassable terrain.

Travel off roads SHOULD be difficult.

Like I said before....I'm thinking most of you don't know what a linear game is.

Deus Ex:Human Revolution, Donkey Kong, Pac-man, Half-Life, every Final Fantasy game....those are linear.
TES games are nothing like them. At all. You can go where you want, when you want, why you want...and you can skip just as much if you want.

How the HELL does scripted not equal linear?

Fact of the matter is Oblivion's dialog is more dynamic than Skyrim's. Why? Because Skyrim's is SCRIPTED. IT'S ALWAYS THE SAME. Oblivion would randomly generate dialog conversations, and the quests were fluid in the sense that they could be activated or completed in multiple ways. The Alyeid Statue quest is a great example.

And no, you CAN'T always avoid them, or even if you can, it's a huge freaking inconvenience. For example the Battleborn and the Whitemanes. They have a scripted convo RIGHT in the middle of the market district. If you don't listen or pay attention, then later you may find yourself trying to purchase something from that lady only to be tossed into a convo where you have NO idea what's going on, because it relates to the scripted convo you weren't in the mood to listen to ages ago. Whiterun, Solitude, Markarth, Riften, Dawnstar, Falkreath, Morthal....They ALL force a scripted convo on you the moment you enter the town. It's downright ridiculous.
And avoiding them doesn't make the playthrough different. You're lying to yourself there. I'm talking one character discovers something another character does not, such as a murderer discovering the DB, a thief discovering the Thieves' guild and a dungeon diver discovering the Alyeid statue quest. Here? Every single quest is obvious as day, sitting there waiting to be activated via a scripted convo. There's no difference in my mage, thief and warrior when it comes to these quests; all three of them will discover the quests equally.

I'm so sick of this apologist attitude where we the player should be expected to PRETEND we didn't see that scripted convo. No, I didn't pay 50€ to pretend the game has more content than it actually does.

Perhaps some of you should just Google "linear gaming" so you understand what it means.

Dynamic content ftw~

RPGs, for me, require dynamic content~

Skyrim is a little linear for me, in what I prefer to call a 'branching linear trees' system Sure you got choices, but they start at one point and end at another, just like many games like chrono trigger if you consider a bunch of opportunities to put the main story on hold to run side quests. You can explore wherever you want more or less but you are generally directed somewhere specific.

Quests need more choices these days since we evolved passed dice rolls, and with added optional mission objects or alternative solutions (IE Fo:NV / ME1-3) .. and in regards to topography, I always try to go off the beaten path with climbing etc but.. the game just doesn't give you that explorational ability that it ought to in evolution to Oblivion. No wall scaling around thin mountain ledges, or leaping from rock to rock while ascending mountain tops or jumping across a fast paced river.

Instead we get a grain mill that does nothing but spin around.. skyrim needs too much imagination too few consequences, too few choices, and a combat system that needs just a little more..

radiant story IMO has been a real let down, considering the 'impact' of it is so terribly minor

Because those scripted events don't involve you and don't have anything to do with your character unless you chose to allow them to. Linear means you're forced along a certain path with no option to deviate from it. You can deviate from everything in Skyrim if you want to...and still advance your character in your own way.

The only linear scripted event in the game is the opening sequence involving the Helgen dragon attack. Well...I guess you could put killcams in that pile too, since they are scripted and involve you, but i don't really see one event/movement as something that can be linear.

I must be playing a different game. Not a single quest has ever been forced on me. I've been asked to do all sorts of things, but never once has the whole world closed off to me except for a narrow path to do a mandatory quest. Not once.

The civil war is absolutely not well written.
Its a copy/ paste job.
Even the dialogue the other side has is exactly the same.

Then there is that completing the questline does not matter as nothing changes, there are still enemy patrols, enemy generals are still essential and no-one in the game world knows the war is over.
There is no moot to elect a new high king.

Well written?
Absolutely not.

Doing and not doing as choices does NOT make something non-linear. By that argument, every game from Goldeneye to Starcraft to Super Mario World is non-linear because you can friggin' choose what level you want and choose if you want to bother playing the game or not.

The difference between Skyrim's world being non-linear (which it is) and Skyrim's quests being linear (which they are) is that in the world, YOU choose where to go. You can run in any direction you like. The quests however? You don't choose anything. You get scripted conversations when the game wants you to, you get very little actual choices (consequences and effects) and the only way you even CHOOSE to delay a scripted quest start is if you recognize one coming (sometimes impossible) and it's somehow avoidable (again sometimes impossible or incredibly impractical). The quests tell you "I'M HERE, TAKE ME" and don't let you take the initiative.

Would you say the first three hours of New Vegas are non-linear? I wouldn't. Sure, you COULD argue "but you CAN go anywhere you want. It's your choice to make if you wanna walk the path intended or fight your way through swarms of deathclaws at level one," but let's be honest here, the game is obviously nudging you in a direction and not leaving you to take the initiative. Skyrim does the exact same thing in it's quests.

That's what Skyrim has lost: it doesn't let the player take the initiative anymore. You're simply a passenger in a ride, with Skyrim taking the initiative in what quests you should probably do now.



And I mean cmon now:
A country fighting for independence after being denied religious freedom.....OH BUT UUUUUUHHHH THEY'RE REALLY RACIST, YEAH, REEEEEEEALLY RACIST.
That is the weakest grey vs. grey I've ever heard. Just because Billy Joe Bob is racist and thinks black people are inferior does NOT give me a right to deny him religious freedom and prosecute him for believing the way he does. His racist ideals and his right to freedom of religion don't have jack to do with each other.

The Civil war is poorly written in that there is nothing FUNDAMENTALLY different between the Nords and the Imperials. Take for example the warring factions in New Vegas. Why can't they have peace? Because they have philosophies that take them in completely different directions. The entire factions are FUNDAMENTALLY different in how they believe in solving problems. The NCR would never surrender personal freedoms for stability and security whereas the Legion would never compromise down the quality of their leader for the sake of fairness in a democracy whereas House would never agree with the Legion's "all-for-one and one-for-all" hivemind ideology and prefers a more consumerist culture with competition.
Here? The only fundamental difference between the Imperials and the Nords is they disagree WHEN to take the fight to the Thalmor. That's it. Everything else is pure fluff tacked on that, objectively, has jack [censored] to do with the war itself. "Oh the Nords are racist." The hell does this have to do with the Thalmor threat? "The Imperials have torture rooms!" Again, the hell does this have to do with the Thalmor? "Ulfric Stormcloak just seeks power" or "The Imperials have incompetent leaders in charge!" This is mud-slinging; even if true, this strays away from the threat of the Thalmor and the right of the Nords to have religious freedom; if the people of Skyrim are fine with Ulfric leading as a whole, then that's that. The two sides have exactly the same goal, but with different opinions on WHEN to carry out that goal. The Nords are speaking from the heart, the Imperials are speaking from the mind, that's it. That's all.

Fundamental differences like that are what make factions grey, and unfortunately the Skyrim armies only have that single fundamental difference, which simply isn't enough to fuel huge debates about what's right and wrong. Even when there is a debate, you can end it respectfully. Legion supporters are looking at solving the problem logically but holding more people together to fend of the Thalmor, Stormcloak supporters are focused more on their own civil right to worship who they like and to bail out of a nation they're unwilling to defend. By the end of the day, the fact is Skyrim is being occupied by what's basically an invading force at this point, being persecuted for worshipping the way they do. Sure, some Skyrim citizens might not care or might be disgusted by the racism of their brethren. However, again, who among you would say it's just perfectly ok for the Legion to deny freedom of religion to ALL Nords even if 51% of Nords prefer the Legion? We're talking about a basic civil right here....

Long story short, the war is nothing but a question of civil rights and freedom of religion, but with a bunch of non-issues tacked onto it to PRETEND it's morally grey. It's not.

Okay...now I KNOW you're clueless.
After a silly comment like that, nothing you say matters anymore.

You may argue all by yourself now.
I'm done in this thread.

Good job editing out the part in the middle. Sure it wasn't important at all.

Help! My life is linear! I was born; someday I'm going to die! Every night I fall asleep until I wake up in the morning. No!!! I want off of this conveyor belt! I want to have choices!

Seriously, if Skyrim is linear, then so is every game ever released. If you're going to broaden the definition to such a ridiculous extent, then it no longer means anything.

But you can pass almost every single mountain in this game... And if you have a choice of 5 roads, that's not linear, even if they are all roads...

This game is very open. I spend about 90% of my time in uninhabited wilderness... Not sure what game you're playing. O.o

.|
.|
.|
V

Look, the point is the game presents an open world structure but then continually gives you either prompts or scripted cutscenes to railroad into doing certain things. Yes you can refuse to play along, but the game does not expect you to have any initiative whatsoever and does not give you any real choice about how those quests are going to pan out.

Every time you walk into Markarth for the first time - even a 2 in the morning when it doesn't make any sense - the same scripted scene is going to play out and the same NPC is going to harass you into doing his quest. Frankly I'm sick of that guy. Every character I play is going to get the same scripted routine and he'll go and wait in exactly the same place forever on the assumption I want to do what he wants. The game would have been a lot more interesting if the event was scripted to occur the first time you enter time between, say, 8am and 8pm - so you might miss it and discover it on subsequent playthroughs - and you had to find the questgiver by deciding to investigate what happened off your own initiative and ask around. But Bethesda are obviously frightened 'mainstream' players might miss something and they have to adopt a FPS strategy of 'you've reached point X, here's your scripted cutscene that tells you what's happening and what to do'.

With the thieves guild the game suddenly decides to stop holding your hand and not give you any indication you can bypass Brynjolf's task entirely and thus initiating the questline because Bethesda seem desperate to say "here's the thieves guild! They have a questline! It's content, so you'll want to be doing it!". They basically force you to end up joining the college of Winterhold, and it's difficult to play for any length of time without encountering some kind of prompt to talk to Aventus 'most irritiating child ever born' Aretino. The game would have been so much better if you could have discovered the DB in several ways and leave them a bit subtle with some obscure ways of encountering them. Instead of making you do one of the most badly written tasks in RPG history (still not as bad as lLittle Lamplight though - I'll never understand Bethesda's obsession with crap stories about irritating children) with virtually zero chance you're not going to be aware of it fairly early in the game. Why a barkeep in Riverwood knows what a child on the other side of Skyrim is doing in the privacy of their own home is quite beyond me. And why none of the advlts in Windhelm tell him to get back to where he should be or they'll put him over their knee is equally mystifying. What's even worse is the first ti,me I did that task I I did it stealthly - it didn't occur to me you'd be able to march in there and do the deed in front of everybody and get away with it as I thought that would be too asinine and immersion breaking. But no. You needn't worry about that because Bethesda blessed you with not having to even think about it, because they're desperate for you to get on the quest path they have for you. To cap it all, a strictly moral character has to do an immoral task they accept without knowing anything about the real situation - and you can see what they're getting at but Grelard is a caricature made really far too mild to deserve murder - in order to be able to take on the DB. In essence, a character must become an assassin order to take on assassins.
And you cannot, of course, take on the TG even if you agree with Mjoll. Instead, the game encourages you to be both a thug who makes life miserable for people in Riften and makes the place more corrupt while simultaneously being made thane for being an upstanding citizen. The game should force you to choose - are you on the side of corruption, theft and intimidation or are you going to play batman? But Bethesda are obviously terrified that forcing the player to make meaningful choice would mean you can't be all things to all people and upset players. Consequently, Skyrim is structured to encourage the player to be a morally upstanding, benevolent, helpful, theiving, cannibilistic, psychopathic cold blooded assassin stealth warrior mage. If they could have figured out a way you could support both sides in the civil war, they'd probably have done that too. The different questlines are probably clones of each other so they can satisfy themselves no single character is missing anything by making a choice.

It's a beautiful, fun game but Bethesda seem now bound to making the RPG equvilalent of a mainstream Hollywood action flick - all setpieces with nothing to challenge the audience or make them think - because it's such a big game. Their writing and characterisation isn't great to begin with, and this just makes it worse.

I agree with everything you have written.

I don't care about Hod searching for that damned dog, I don't want the vigilant to ask me about that cursed house the eleventh time, I don't want Brynjolf bothering me with his "sceme".
Beth seemed to forget, that they were making a roleplaying game, a single character shouldn't have to play trough the whole content, and they don't have to shove content in the player's face.

TC, Skyrim added a bit too many forced storydriven segments, These segments are fine on their own but they should have been optional.

However that doesn't make the world linear. What sort of nonesense is that? There aren't any games as 100% open as TES games! Except for important quest related dungeons you can go ANYWHERE from the get-go! Yes there are mountains, does that mean Switzerland is a liniear country as well? Morrowind had mountains too, it makes the world much more interesting. Oblivion was a fake looking bowl of auto generated forrest. I'd take Skyrim's world over that of Oblivion's anytime.