He did. He's a dutch native, is as proficient in English as my German dog and he's got the attention span of an archetypical Call of Duty addict. He called me to say he just got a new game, I asked him which one. He said 'modern warfare with swords'.

I know the Elders Scrolls franchise truly got mainstream attention since Oblivion, but is this one of the effects of all the streamlining? Or is this purely a result of the insane amounts of media attention this game has been getting, and is for the better? I know it's an utterly childish attitude of mine, and I love my obnoxious nephew all the same, yet somehow it annoys me tremendously that him and his anklebiter friends bought Skyrim. Irrational and childish, I know I know.

It's annoying the demands some of the younger generation make. I don't know whether it's good or bad. The Good is that higher sales = higher chance of another TES came. The bad is that they may take out key elements that make an TES games a TES game due to the whining of the younger, shorter attention span, generation.

so much for pegi 18?

Does your nephew live in a remote area? I mean, I would call it "modern warfare with swords" too if I was Amish and the most advanced thing I ever saw was a carriage.

i dont think bethesda aimed for kids in that age with skyrim anyway, it does have pegi 18 on it right?

lol, "Modern warfare with swords" that kills me XD, well, he is a child, so if that's the only violent game he knows of, then that's going to be what comes to mind for him, I'm sure he'll figure out that it's not quite like he expected soon enough XD

Game reviewers start dissing CoD. Game reviewers test Skyrim. Skyrim blows them away. Game reviewers that normally review CoD and say it rocks before it went down the tubes say that Skyrim rocks.

Every god-damned CoD fan that pays attention to any amount of gaming news buys Skyrim.

Doesn't bother me. Just means Bethesda gets more money to produce awesome games. The CoD fans don't browse the forums, so they can't offer suggestions or bother us. That's the glory of a single-player game.

There is more than a good chance that he'll be bored and give up before the tutorial ends... ADD is the hallmark of the current generation.

I wasnt much older when i bought morrowind...

But you should kick him in the face because of that "modern warfare with swords" comment.

Interesting he was able to buy it since it's rated mature.

You should tell your nephew about mount and blade.. you should say its swords and awesome sauce..

Why, Morrowind was Quake with Swords


Seriously, he's saying this because the only FPS he knows is CoD, and Skyrim is in, guess what, first person.




Also, I'm quite sure most people started playing Morrowind way beyond their 20s back in the day.

maybe its just a kid not knowing much about video games?

ZOMG THINK OF THE CHILDREN.

This post doesn't make any sense at all to me. I have ADD and, even before I was getting it treated, I found games like COD incredibly boring, and RPGs like TES to be fun and engaging. I mean, with COD you're doing the same thing over and over. Not appealing to someone with ADD. With TES, you have a huge, incredibly varied experience. Appealing to someone with ADD.

This is what people were saying when Xbox 360 was the lead platform for Oblivion. "It doesn't bother me, it won't affect the TES series."

Now we have Skyrim which, while it is an awesome game, it's been "streamlined" (read: Dumbed down) so much to suit a wider audience that it's become an action RPG more on par with Mass Effect than Morrowind. Mark my words, the next TES game is probably going to be and out-right first/third-person hack and slash action game with a better story, something like Assassin's Creed.

I've yet to enter one store here where they give a damn.

I got Daggerfall when I was 12. I also had an incredibly deep understanding of the rules of AD&D, and was better at min-maxing in RPG's than I am now. I'm 27 now, with a wife and son, and a successful career. Never confused fantasy with reality. Just sayin'.

There is absolutely no solid evidence that points the a correlation between violent media and violent behaviors. My friends and I were all playing Golden Eye, Mortal Kombat, and even Metal Gear (although the story wouldn't entirely make sense until years later) in the late 90's when we were in grade school and we all turned out just fine. Kids aren't dumb. We might not like some of their tastes in games or other pop culture things (I can't stand most teen's fascination with Call of Duty, Katy Perry, and reality tv), but they aren't dumb. If I was 11 and "getting" Morrowind, I think thing will be fine.

Edit: I'm American btw, my parents just had a very lax attitude towards what I saw on tv or in games.

we're dutch
our kids have the sense to distinguish reality from videogames and not go around shooting up schools or something (though we're slowly moving in that direction)
Played nothing but mortal kombat and carmegeddon as a youngster and I turned out just fine (well I'm not violent or anything)

They might get those ideas from video games or movies, but they absolutely would not believe them to be real if they weren't mentally ill.

Nostalgia is a powerful state of mind.

I'm sorry, but that's a gross exaggeration. I've played every Elder Scrolls game since Daggerfall, and I've never thought an iteration was "dumbed down" from the previous, only made more intuitive and enjoyable. There is almost nothing in Morrowind or Oblivion that is not in Skyrim that I miss, because they both had a ton of superfluous, poorly designed features and mechanics, to the point where, IMO, neither were playable without a ton of mods.

Skyrim is the first TES game that I could play with no mods and feel like many of its mechanics aren't inherently broken.

There's a difference between "dumb down" streamlining and streamlining for intuitiveness.

I think if he takes the time to play it more, he will appreciate how deep the game is. I was always surprised by all the things I could do in Oblivion. I think as he gets older, he will appreciate the single-player gaming experience more and not be so concerned with the competition and peer-approval that is a big part of multi-player gaming.

This could go either way, I don't think Skyrim is that oversimplified, and having mainstream success might show developers that sophisticated games are economically viable, and show mainstream gamers that sophisticated games can be fun. Also, bringing more money into the business is going to attract more developer talent, and good devs are going to make good games. Mass Effect 2 is incredibly simple by RPG standards, but it's still a phenomenal game in my opinion based on the depth of the writing and quality of the voice acting, two things that are likely to improve with a better budget.