I never said explore, I said discovery. You never really discover anywhere yourself, they're all shown for you on the compass. Maybe learn to read a little better?

All that moolah but no heart and soul. Its like radio music or when you see someone just sing a song instead of "SING" the song. Maybe I'm being overdramatic but it's really all downhill from here. I just got FO3 and I'm loving it. Where is that love?

I think you might've misread my post. I was saying that Mirror's Edge is extremely fun, and a very innovative game.

Pfft.. that isn't hand-holding, it's just a really badly designed puzzle. Also maybe a bit of common sense.

Woops.. that was a bit of a mistake, hahah. XD.

Nontheless, it's still my opinion of it :3

actually, it is an incorrect answer that is more akin to the "talking points" of the political parties.

it is a quick response to a deep problem. it is without thought or truth and is, in fact, pure speculation.

it is used in a way that expects obligatory agreement without actually providing the rationale behind it. it's like making up a word, providing the definition for it and then expecting others to accept both the word and definition when you debate them.

"better in the old days" is, at times, undeniably true. to off-handedly mock it is for fools.

besides, games can be objectively compared. opinions can be laid out so everyone can see, backed up with facts and proven to be true or false.

in this case, his and yours assertions can be proven false with objective data.

Hmm. You may be right. In my perspective it is unlocking a door with a key, not a puzzle. But it is possible that it can be seen as this:
http://i.imgur.com/ELNrG.jpg

It is a puzzle, I guess.

This thread is pointless.

^ That post is pointless.

This post is pointless as well.

This post self answers.

Mass Effect got dumber and dumber, it lost RPG features and eventually became a casual Action Cover Shooter with a lame story straight out of PG-13 hollywood.

And it made more money as it got dumber.

People buy Chris Brown on iTunes. The world is overflowing with stupid people who have terrible taste in music/art/gaming.

I can't tell if that's supposed to be sarcastic or not :l


My only point is showing everyone that there is more to meet the eye. Bethesda stops holding your hand after the events of High Hrothgar. At that point, it's a 'do whatever you want' type thing.

While I probably would have said it nicer, I agree. In no place can you see this better than in today's cinema. Last summer I watched Lawrence of Arabia with Peter O'Toole for the first time and I was blown away by the sheer quality and thought put into the movie, vs. today's 'big explosion, cleavage-heavy, eyegasm' blockbusters.

Of course some people would argue this for music too - a lot of pop music and rap have little musical talent compared to some of the sheer beauty of the old 'classics' and the choirs. But nowadays virtually everyone has enough disposable income to buy (or pirate >_>) a great deal of music and entertainment, so they vote with their pocket books.

I think people are confusing "Hand Holding" With "Railroading" a lot. Both are problems, but Railroading is more damning in an RPG like Skyrim/Oblivion/Morrowind in my opinion.

People like to blame EA for Dragon Age II. But the actual facts are Bioware/EA (as they are known now) were responsible for DA2. Bioware.

A primary Dragon Age Origins lead quit Bioware when he saw what was happening with Dragon Age 2. He has a blog about the whole story. It's easy to say "it is EA's fault". But Bioware owns the blame here.

BioWare dumbed down Dragon Age 2, just like they dumbed down Mass Effect. The odd part is most people actually liked Mass Effect 2 more than Mass Effect 1, while DA2 is usually hated by most.

I think the reason there is that Mass Effect 2 at least has decent gameplay mechanics and while the main story is super lame (BRO, GO MEET MORE BROS AND GET ALL BROSEPH ON THE BIG BAD! While taking orders from the Smoking Man from X-Files) It had some really cool side stories and people like Miranda's ass

Someone wrote a pretty cool article about how Mass Effect 2 is basically laid out like a TV show with episodes and a big bad, and like something akin to Buff the Vamp Slayer, the episodes flesh out the characters and that's what you come to love about it. Very good point.

The overall story in ME2 is paper thin and boring. But Tali is so cute I want to eat her up so I keep playing. I didn't care about that Jacob dude, but his side story was cool. In fact the best missions in ME2 are the side stories.

ME1 was actually a fantastic open world Space RPG. Which is what I really wanted to play with ME2 but they kind of removed the RPG part. Frustratingly, they improved the galactic map interface in ME2, but removed the point of exploration (gameplay) and turned it into resource mining.

Even worse in ME3 they turned it into "Galactic Readiness" and force multiplayer on you. Shameful

TC,

RPG are getting shallower, but not only in the way you describe it.

You're mentioning about the amount of content. This gets less and less, true, but that isn't my biggest concern. Skyrim is still a huge game, and even ME3 is lengthy enough. I'm not getting younger and I have less time for games so its okay by me that 150+ hours for a playthrough is now 30+ hours.

However I'm not okay with dumbing down RPG. Less complex stories, less complex leveling systems, less/no loot, less freedom, etc. Skyrim could have featured more guild content, but in general there was enough gameplay. Storylines could have been MUCH better though. Bethesda is wealthy enough to hire some good writters, me thinks. Just get a bunch of them and have each of them work out a guild storyline.

To op, I havent played any of the other games you mentioned, but I could not disagree more with what you said about morrowind, its an immensely broken game.

Oddly I've played it start to finish 2x GOTY edition and it wasn't broken. Yet Skyrim was completely unplayable on my PS3 for 2 patches.

lol! touche

I think what's interesting is looking forward, and where Beth would draw the line before removing any more of the RPG elements from the game?

While Skyrim is a brilliant game, I do miss spell creation and having spell equivalents to alchemical effects. Not being able to cast weakness to fire, feather etc. just takes away that little edge to the experience.

There will come a point where Beth can remove no more, because with my strawman hat on, you might just end up with the option of a sword or fireball offensive, and little else!!

many have said similar things.

i know i've said, that for the first time the next tes game will not be an auto-buy. that's huge, for me. i will wait and consult this forum and others to get a very detailed and in-depth look at the game.

it will be very interesting to see what happens in the next bethesda game, whatever, it is.....

I've stated this again and again. I might be one of those very rare type of people. But I like Morrowind and I liked Oblivion. I have stated over and over again. That I felt Oblivion did it the right way. It still had elements of Morrowind, cut back a little. But they did in the right way. A way that still catered to my style of RPG. And to my style of role playing. I enjoy class systems, so naturally Oblivion was good.

Both Morrowind and Oblivion provided quest choices, character role development not just character roleplay, both provided a new and exciting alien world. Oblivion was a little cartoony compared to Morrowind, but it was fine and appealed to me in some adorbale way.

I think Oblivion did it right when it came to Morrowind and Oblivion. And I like both main stories in Morrowind and Oblivion.

I'm so tired of comments like yours, where you stereotype what people are like and who these people are like. I liked Morrowind and Oblivion, and compared to both games Skyrim is horrible. It's basically the same stab wound given to me when Dragon Age Origins was so amazing and then they crapped out Dragon Age 2.

I bought Skyrim, thinking both worlds Morrowind and Oblivion much like Oblivion did. But instead it did not. It did not deliver.

Several things happened:
1.) Game developers are targeting a broader audience. The "good ole days" were a much smaller audience. So for broader appeal, they have to make something that most people will like, as opposed to a specific set of people. They are in this for the money after all.

2.) Hybridization of genre's. It used to be that a FPS was a FPS, and an RTS was an RTS and that was that. Over the years however, there's been increasing number of games that take aspects of multiple genre's and blend them together. This relates to above mentioned point 1 on broader audience. Also, some game genre's are just dead end's monetarily speaking or were just fads at the time.

3.) Consolization. Yeah i said it (again). PC's are no longer the only platform. Game developers are designing things so it will work across multiple platforms. These other platforms do not have the the same processing power or RAM. If they coded something to run on just the PC, it would run like crap on a console, and that cuts into their profit margin.

4.) The Industry is much larger and more compedative then before. In case anyone hasn't noticed, the days of the small independent game developer are arguably over. Over the years many small developers have been gobbled up by larger publishers, or have gone out of business. EA and Activision being the two powerhouses now.

Perhaps broken is not the right word, but really the only thing morrownd has going for it is the world, none of the aspects of gameplay are very thought out. I recommend you download btbs game improvements mod for morriowind, and read the read-me included, that can give you a good idea.

But that isn't an excuse to give less depth in the writing or less interesting quest.