..for me. I know there are a lot of gripes with the series in the general direction that it's going. And that's understood.

But for me, personally, I enjoy Skyrim and I think it is a genuinely better game than Oblivion. I'll go ahead and say that. As far as gameplay, graphics, and mechanics goes, it's a better game. There's no question.

But the thing that just bothers me about Skyrim is the fact that not everyone has a name. "Bandit", or "Traveler". Huh? Ever since Morrowind, every NPC in the game has a name. That is what makes everyone UNIQUE. It makes the gameplay fun, because it feels like a real world. I could RP in a way that allowed me to ask someone what their name was, and I'd get a response.

Morrowind: "What's your name, traveler?" "Vels Sarethi."
Oblivion: "What's your name, knight?" "Edonius Septimus."
Skyrim: "What's your name, prisoner?" "..well, it's..it's prisoner, actually." -____-

I mean, come on? Now, bandits and stuff like that, yes, I get. Morrowind was an exception because named bandits did not respawn. Once you killed them, guess what, they were dead, and the dungeon was cleared. With the introduction to respawning dungeons in Oblivion, they had to rework that, and that's fine.

But, say for instance the quest I'm working on right now for the 834th time. "In my time of need". The Redguard woman has the "Alik'r Warrior's" after her.

..why can't they have a name? Why is the guy in prison just named "Prisoner"? How hard is it to slap a name on the fellow? Really? It exudes laziness, no offense.

That's my gripe. It truly is. It bugs the heck out of me.

Ha ha. Not really helpful comment, but like just like in real world, we are just numbers , names are pleasantries. To all enemies, I am sure our health bar says Dovahkiin.

But it isn't only that, but there is not many real connection between any of the npc's, guilds, or other things. It is almost hard to care sometimes. And it seems like just naming everything bandit is a base for all the other problems. But I still like Skyrim. All the things it doesn't do, it does way more than many other games

It really doesn't bother me, to be honest. And it's only on a handful of occasions - it's not like its a common thing.

I completely disagree, it's a far too common thing.

It's rather realistic, actually. Irl you don't know the names of everbody you run across. And it's not like bandits are going to stop and introduce themselves.

? Because you never asked their name of course. Honestly, it seems more immersion breaking when you know people's name without asking first.

I'm used to Fallout 3, which has gobs of nameless folks. So it doesn't bother me much.

All true. But wouldn't it give some depth if the random bandit camp F had a named bandit that sullied women and kill countless men rather than go to camp F and kill everybody. Heaven's knows if they actually did anything wrong. Why I usually try to play most of my characters as if they attack, I defend. Find this hard with my mage tho.

But I drove off-course. I wonder if OP just feels the normal disconnect that plagues some people about Skyrim and couldn't place it

I agree with Aurora Winter. It seems a little wierd to me - and has seemed wierd to me for over ten years - that my Elder Scrolls characters somehow magically know the name of every NPC they pass in the street, even if they have never been in that town before. Personally I prefer the Fallout3/Fallout New Vegas/Skyrim approach.

Name tags. Required if you want a job at TES

It actually always irked me that people I somehow knew the names of citizens who..never said their names? Or at least their full names.

I agree with the OP in that Skyrim is a vastly superior game to Oblivion.

I didn't hate Oblivion - I rather enjoyed it. But it never really felt..........EPIC to me. Skyrim EASILY does.

This does not mean there is no room for improvement. Skyrim needs expansions and large DLC's that have strong stories and that have CONSEQUENCES based on your choices - both in dialog and in actions. Fallout 3 and NV did it; so did KOTR 1 and 2. It's very doable.

Yes, I know - Skyrim is so vast that it would have been quite painful to include such an 'accountability' system and make sure it was verified cleanly across all possible quests, actions, scenarios and NPC encounters. But if it's not there now, it could be included later. YES, I MEAN THAT SERIOUSLY. Skyrim is a giant canvas that, despite the insane amount of quests and activities in it, is still a very incomplete 'painting.' Rather than spend the next 4 years exclusively dedicated to building a brand new game, Bethesda needs to also update the content, capability and playability of Skyrim. They'll make a FORTUNE on it, and we'll get to enjoy it until TES 6 roles out with it's own uniqueness (likely a new, large, unexplored province.)

There's a few problems that follow in this direction, however I don't actually agree with your original thought. A lot of people have already pointed out that there would be no logical way to know every bandit by name, however in Skyrim, there's cases of "Learning" a bandits name through context, conversation and the like.

There's two things in Skyrim that really shatter my immersion while exploring the "Emergent" gameplay. (Stuff not related to scripted quests)

No1. The "Boss Chest". Sure, boss chests can work in certain context, but that context is rarely realized in Skyrim, How much sense does it make that a Bandit would be using an Iron Sword, when a Daedric War Axe of the Inferno was in a chest two feet away from him? I'd rather see the Bosses themselves be the "Boss loot" repository.

No2. Warlocks. They have an unshakable dedication to the "Black Robe" look, and it'd be nice if occasionally you'd see a battlemage mixed inside the group, but no, it's all robed wizards, all the time. This is the kind of formulaic crap that ruined emergent gameplay utterly for me in Oblivion. The bandits in Skyrim are a lot better, with a mix of Ranged, Heavy Melee, Defensive and even Hedge-mages. Yet warlocks (And Vampires) all look and act the same.

If there was a name for every bandit my characters have killed, they would have run out of ideas and be desperately raiding the book of cantonese boys' names by now. At least there aren't guys in full glass, with Daedric weapons dripping off them, still called 'bandit'.

Also, "what's your name. prisoner?"
"Bite me."
"Is that a common name in Whiterun hold?"

Anyway, Whiterun alone has the same amount of named NPCs as Rivet City and Megaton together, didn't bother me seeing 'citizen' in FO3, no problem with 'farmer' in Skyrim.

I think that it was a extremely bad idea to name every character in the first place.
Not everyone needs to have a name because not everyone is going to be even remotely important.
So focusing your writing talent on fewer NPC's could give the game lots of generic NPC's but those who do have names area actually interesting to talk to.

And finally, TES is situated in a fantasy universe, a fantasy universe with made-up names.
How am I supposed to care to remember anyone's name when they're just cardbord cutouts?
Since there is names here and names there and names everywhere it's really hard to remember any name.

I really see nothing positive with it, it's quantity over quality with TES. I want quality over quantity.

The rot actually started with Oblivion, where bandits became generic. Morrowind wasn't perfect though: guards etc were generic. Then, as now, the issue was respawning: if you want characters to respawn in a cell, you can't name them. They have to be generic. As Beth games have gone on, the number of respawning places has increased: Skyrin not only has random respawns in towns and dungeons, but out in the open all over the place. I agree whole-heartedly with the OP, and would love to see every last NPC have a name, but it's not going to happen.

This doesn't bother me so much, as long as the nameless npcs are more or less living scenery, or random bandits. Perhaps "Bandit Chief" could use a name, but the countless minions don't need them.

I don't think of it as much as named npcs but unique npcs I mean every bandit cheif is the same in oblivion there was umbra and a few other cool npcs in dungeons skyrim really doesn't have that except dragon priests which are really cool but they could've added a few npcs with dwarven armor that are really hard or something

Invisible Walls.

Any time anyone suggests using invisible wall as a barrier, I would fire that person. There are ways to use invisible walls that arent irritating. For instance, in a few places in Oblivion where there were evil cliffs that were hard to see and would invariably kill you you will find a hidden wall. not many places like this, where the drop is truly not obvious. But where it is, theres an invisible wall.

But when its around things like, say, High Hrothgar, we start having a problem. Clearly, there is land around it. I can see it. But when I jump over to it, I hit the invisible wall.

Even this wouldnt be so bad, except that the invisible wall doesnt stop you from leaving at all -- its far enough out that you'll hit into it and fall off the mountain. To allow players to be killed by an invisible wall should make developers hang their heads in shame.

Maybe so, but this new labeling system makes one thing absolutely unmistakable: no name = I can kill without worrying a quest is closed out.

When I first played Skyrim, I entered a ruin and there was a Nord standing there. Without hesitation, I put an arrow in him, and he dropped like a stone. The problem? He had a name, which instantly put me into reload mode. When I entered the ruin again, and spoke to him, turns out I was to help him find his aunt and take down someone who was desecrating his family's burial site.

In Oblivion, I could not make this distinction. I had no idea if who I killed was related to a quest or not, because everyone can die. Yes, it added realism, but it also blows because archers usually will remove targets before they're noticed as threats.

This sets up an extremely bad mechanic for gameplay. I would rather have quests where my targets are identified for me, and having a character with no name is this identification system. It may be a slight pain in the rear to reload having to read a name on a dead body, but it's a small price to pay than having names and never realizing if the person was a quest starter or not.

Eola was lucky I didn't shoot her when she started charging me wearing attire identical to a nameless bandit. In fact, several residents of Skyrim should be thankful they have names.

I just remember a case where it's really stupid that some NPC's don't have names: when you get inheritance letters or hired thugs sent after you by "Whiterun Guard" and the like. In those cases, it would have been better if it was "Gunnar, Whiterun Guard" who sent the thugs.

This. There are Garbage Men, there are Postal Carriers, there's the FedEx Guy, Ms. Supermarket Cashier, that cop in the 100 car, the guy down the road who walks the poodle, and so on.

My mother-in-law has a tendency to call everyone by their name. She sold har apartment recently, and started to tell me about how this guy had say that and that guy had said this, using only their first names. Finally I had to stop her and ask who those people were. Turned out they were here real estate agent and the guy who had bought her apartment. And no, she didn't know them before this. She does this all the time and it's incredibly annoying, since there's no way I remember what her dentist, massage therapist or neighbor's daughter are called.

what bothers me is dialogue doesnt update properly..."you're the new companion, so what you fetch the mead" actually i've been the harbinger for months so a whiterun guard should know and respect me

You could just use an random name generator so it's no huge problem. However having an bandit at an camp being named bandit you know it was not somebody useful,