So after playing Skyrim, my Critique

Post » Wed May 30, 2012 1:58 am

I've been a fan of the Elder Scrolls for a long time as you can tell by my forums join date. I started out with Morrowind and instantly fell in love, when Oblivion came out I was disappointed by a stale and generic fantasy scape. But the game was redeemed in my eyes by the release of the Shivering Isles. And I would like to express my thanks to Bethesda Skyrim is golden in my eyes, a good 9 - 9.5/10. The game was well executed and put together from what I have played so far and I really hope you actually read the forums because even with this game being good in my eyes I still feel as though their could have been much improvement.

The Radiant AI and quest I have to say were a nice touch to the game it made sure things were not to bland. But while we are here why don't we talk about the Aesthetics and Dialogue behind the A.I. There is a funny new meme going around about the "arrow to the knee" joke with the guards. This probably wouldn't have come into existence if there was some script that didn't let more then a few guards in separate towns say this. For example something like, it would select 3 random guards from the separate holds and it would assign them the dialogue. Its not just the arrow to the knee saying also. Its all of them, "Hey, I know you you are, hail Sithis" I laughed hard in real life after hearing that joke. Then I realized it was common amongst every single guard. It just degraded some of the realism that was put into the game for me.

And because I was terrible at transitioning when I wrote a report for my senior project I will just get to my next point instead of making this a fancy essay. The Factions in this game I don't want to say were terrible, but I feel as though some of them were not put together well. The Bards Collage had almost no quest to it, and you couldn't even learn to play an instrument. Would it not have been interesting to play a flute, lute, or drum in front of an audience and have them come give you some chumps change until you leveled up an invisible Musicians skill. The College of Winterhold, the first mission was fun because I felt like I was in a school but that quickly falls off as you get embraced in an epic quest where you find absolutely know background knowledge on what the Eye of Magnus really was this faction had the same problem as the Mages Guild from Oblivion yes you learned things, but you did not feel academic. I remember in Morrowind.

And one of my biggest peeves was with the Imperial Legion/Storm Cloaks. Because they were almost complete mirrors of each other outlined with quests that did the same exact thing. Defend City - Take over fort - Assault capital. I feel as though this could of been handled better by adding more quests into them. Also the rewards for the imperial legion were just generic leveled weapons. Not some fancy officers uniform, or maybe an enchanted imperial sword. The Thieves Guild felt the most finished, and the Dark Brotherhood I feel came in second place.

And the third and last major point I would like to make out is Werewolves, they are bad ass yes. But you are forced to join the companions to become one. You can't fight one in the wild and drink its blood to become one, you HAVE to go into a faction and this severely limits role playing. Also I feel as though manually being able to become a werewolf was kind of stupid. There could of been more improvements for aesthetic purposes also, I loved that people would comment on you with quotes like "Have you been tending to your hounds? You smell like a wet dog!" or Arnbjorn from the Dark Brotherhood noticing as well. But I think normal wolves, low level and standard always easy to kill enemies should not attack you even in human form, it would just be a nice effect to have in the game. I just feel as though it was slightly half done look at the vampires and then look at werewolves it really is dumb.

Also this wasn't a big deal, but I do feel as though you should not have been allowed to smith Dwemer or Daedric armor. Aside from other small things those were the major ones that came to my mind and I hope Bethesda takes a look at this and maybe will make some improvements.
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Kortknee Bell
 
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Post » Tue May 29, 2012 9:43 pm

You aren't even supposed to be able to buy or sell dwemer... Yet daedric you can either use the atronach forge with default smithing and get it or make it yourself at 90 smithing..doesn't really matter, all depends on your RP style.

Lore wise though..i agree
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Harry-James Payne
 
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Post » Wed May 30, 2012 1:04 am

I think I can relate to the issue of smithing Dwemmer and Daedric armaments. With the correct book (not meagrely the correct materials), it might make sense but, otherwise, I'd expect to see more conventional forms smithed from Dwemmer metal ingots or using Daedric "recipes". I would have liked to have seen smelting and smithing "recipes" only become known and available after correct experimental combination (in the case of smelting) or after the recovery of some long lost tome at the end of a quest (in the case of smithing). There was and, for modders, still is a great opportunity to develop a rich series of quests revolving around a smithy where the smith keeps his/her secrets (as was the custom of the period) and one was expected fo discover ones own secrets...
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My pet peeve is the game's steel recipe. I am far more familiar with the idea that an iron slat in the hands of a blacksmith gets the carbon from the charcoal (perhaps as a consequence of smithing while inebriated - or so the old Irish fable goes) - and not from corundum (the extremely hard aluminium oxide whose varieties include sapphires and rubies). I somehow doubt that iron and aluminum would alloy otherwise we'd have some very interesting low fatigue airframe and bicycle frame alloys. Who knows? Throw in some charcoal, a bit of chromium (from emeralds or rubies), a bit of gold (to take the place of molybdenum - from a septim or a dozen), some silver and something to act as the metallic equivalent of lecithin (a powerful emulsifier) and you might have a half-convincing "recipe" for the mythical "mithral" alloy.
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I think some basic materials research could have been done - but given that materials research is the last thing that modern academics think of when pushing a pet idea, I can't help wondering if this is yet another timely parody of a real life farce on behalf of the game's developers. It is, after all, art - where sometimes the artist chooses to make a point instead of regurgitating exactly what we want. By way of example there is the a story of a certain painting ("Virgin on the Rocks"?) by which Leonardo da Vinci positively scandalised his customer in making his own statement and, subsequently, had to paint the painting again - this time in accordance with the customer's expectation. The moral of the story being that art can be a vehicle of expression, but it is only effective if it is pleasing enough.
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I'd like to thank you for expressing your views. The process of responding to them has provided the perspective necessary to resolve an unrelated real life conundrum which I've been working on for about three months now.
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[EDIT]Added three characters dropped due to the absence of a keyboard buffer[/EDIT]
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Rachyroo
 
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