Skyrims been great so far, I love the environment, although I’d rather travel through dense rainforests and swamps rather then... white, snow, it still looks amazing. The game overall is great, but the one thing missing, and is missing from Fallout as well is character development.

Most of the NPC's are so 2-dimenionsal and boring. I'm put in this large sand-box world, but i find myself not giving a [censored] about anybody. Bethesda really needs to nail character development and then they can start creating wonderful games, take DA:O for example. (Two different games, skyrim is a large sandbox game while DA is more linear i understand) what DA:O does soooo good is character development, I find myself caring for the characters around me instead of just myself.

In skyrim you're thrown into this large world to explore... on your own, that can get tiresome, sure you can have companions but they're like mindless zombies that follow you and hack at whatever you hack at. There’s no dialog, no history behind the character that you’re with, no unique quests and no opportunities to form relationships.

What i loved about DA was the fact that my companions seemed like real people, I cared about what they thought about my actions. the whole "Your the chosen one" thing has been done too many times in rpgs and I believe it would be so much better exploring this world with other companions who feel like real people and who have different reactions towards the decisions you make.

I loved how in DA I could get the opinions of my companions on main quests and find out what they think, giving me insight and also history. The characters felt real and genuine and I believe Bethesda really should try work on this for their future games.

Skyrim had such a great opportunity to take advantage of something like this as well, i mean, you could go through the game and come across more companions, each with their own history, different personalities etc and end up creating your own 'guild' in a way, so instead of you being the only dragonbore lone wolf hero, you are still the hero, the dragonborn, but now you have companions to aid you, all with different skills etc, etc.

tldr: Bethesda really need to start expanding on deep character development for their future games, esp TES and Fallout

keep in mind that nine tenths of the npcs in da origins are pointless and have absolutely nothing at all to say.
i dont neccassarily disagree with you, in that i want bethesda to give me more and better always. and if there is a company that will do that its bethesda.
but understand that da gave like ten people backstories. skyrim gives like 300 people backstories..

with backstories do you mean that a npc tells you everytime you cross him that he is working at the general good store?

and i completly agree with OP

with backstories i mean, storys for specific npcs, not obviously all the npcs in the game, lets take Lydia for example, she becomes the players housecarl early in the game and can accompany you through the game, but she has zero backstory, nothing. shes like a mindless zombie, it be great if she had her own past, unique quest line , a way that the player can properly form relationships etc.

Gotta love how every single guard took an arrow to the knee at some point.

i completly aggree with you
i didnt get that she is a person Oo i always though she is a human atronach!

i agree with you, my post was more an answer to "skyrim gives like 300 people backstories.." from Haffitstrauss Von Falcon

It's funny but Lydia has no back story or deep personality and yet I care about her. I know she can't die unless I hurt her myself but whenever I lose sight of her in a particuarly tough skirmish I always quickly search for her possible limp corpse.

You can create meaningful connections to characters without pre-made story so long as they have a purpose and value.

That being said, the problem with games like Skyrim is similar to the uncanny valley - the closer it gets to realism the more the unrealistic things stick out. Little touches like Lydia rolling her shoulders after downing the last enemy draw me in, but then the hearing exact same line when I trade items snaps me back out.

But the practicality is that games like Skyrim would take forever to develop if every character had a deep background. It would also be boring - too much of a good thing and all.

Yeah, it could take a while i agree, thats why when i compared skyrim to DA:O i did mention how it was an un-fair comparion as DA:O isn't a large open-world sandbox, and is more focused on delivering a well written story, but if bethesda did start exploring this in their future games it would be perfect for TES and Fallout.

bump this, wanna see what others think

I'd rather hundreds of believable NPCs than three waifu simulators and a bunch of static NPCs that do nothing or say just one thing and do nothing of any importance but stand in place.

Yeah, FO:NV did such a great job with companions. It's a shame Beth decided we should have tons of personalityless zombies instead of several well crafted companions that actually had something to do with the world they are in.

the whole" open-word, do what-ever you want" formula doesn't really cut it anymore in 2012, not without good writting and storytelling as well. bethesda really need to invest in writers for their future games and start exploring mature relationships as seen in DA