I do kind of enjoy Skyrim for what it is, but as a TES game, not so much. Whatever, I still play through it. I enjoy playing as a Vampire Lord and tossing Giants around for my amusemant. Those things are finally getting what they deserve after what they've put me through!

Anyways, the company of Bethesda just seems so...different. I was reading the Daggerfall manual and I came across this, straight from the mouths of Bethesda:


This kind of philosophy given by Bethesda is some solid advice. The fact they tried to accomodate failure is in credible. They really had an emphasis on role playing, in contrast to today where the emphasis is on action and graphics, rather than gameplay. They are more focused on creating a nice looking world than a game of complicated politics, storyline and dialogue.


Wow. Just wow. That entire statement seems to be in conflict with Skyrim. Skyrim's emphasis is on a nice looking world(I will give props where they are due, places such as the Forgotten Vale, the Soul Cairn and the final location for the MQ are all breath taking.) and action. Skyrim does away with dialogue, story and the likes for action. There are very few instances where I am blown away by story because honestly, there isn't much. Same goes for dialogue. The most you'll ever get is a sob story from Ulfric and Galmar, which has lots of emotions and fire. Perhaps the next best person with any interesting dialogue is St. Jiub. Not to mention that you, the character, have almost nothing to say. You are ALWAYS the bystander just walking into something. You are never included, minus Season Unending. Your dialogue choices always consist of "Yes, I'll gladly do it!" and "No, I refuse to take part!" but both answers are the same because you take up the task regardless. Most of the time you only have ONE dialogue option. Often a person will ask you "Have you heard of ____?" and your choice is usually no.

So, what happened? My point mostly lies in the second quote. Bethesda clearly did a 180 and did the exact thing they said they didn't want to do. Who knew that such a great RPG would eventually become an action adventure game, with almost no emphasis on the character?


Just something to think about, really. Oh how ideals and philosophies can change due to something as trivial as time.

Yes, it's pretty obvious they have different priorities now. Which is weird since it's the same Todd that lead Morrowind as it is who lead Skyrim. Pre release Skyrim PR pretty much read nothing like that. It was filled with "Pick up and play, don't need character choices, just change on the fly," and "lets take this this and that RP mechanic out because some people couldn't understand/take the time to read what was happening."

Yeah. Screw the gamers and come with the money. They are not the same anymore. Perhaps if we, the forum users, protested enough the bethesda dudes would listen. That or we would be silenced

I do believe they went too far in the wrong direction. But I have a problem complaining about a game that I've spent hundreads of hours playing.

Will never happen to many new Gamers or what they call casual games out there to sell half baked games too now. These new gamers are destroying the games that we like. Every game is going to Eyecandy and Kill everying in sight. Why put all this hard work into a game when they can sell a half-baked Eyecandy game for $60 a pop and the Casual Gamers will just buy them up. Its very sad, hell 10 years ago real gamers would be up in arms over this, but not now days. Kid now days just want something to tie up there time for awile then off to another ***** of **** game. Hell I still have games on PC, PS 1/ PS2 that I still play to this day. Even though the games have 1980 to 1990 graphics the story or game play still can keep me playing them.

Our consolation is that the old games are still great RPGs (namely Dagger and Morrow). They're not pretty but still more than playable. I still play both.

I think there is a legitimate concern here, but I wouldn't go overboard with the vitriol. As that-guy-again stated, we're all here and playing, investing hundreds of hours in the game. There is obviously something of substance here. It may not be the same philosophy that drew you to the series in the first place, but there is still a passion for creating an immersive, story-driven experience at Bethesda, or we would have moved on.

In a game industry where 30 hours of playtime is considered lengthy and respectable for a $60 game, Beth is still giving us virtually unlimited playtime by building vanilla games that can handle 200+ hours of original content, as well as planning expansions and continued technical support.

Don't you think we're a little spoiled as far as fans go?

I understand the lament for the removal of extensive stats and character building. But I also respect the idea that most gamers today aren't interested in that, and if Bethesda doesn't adapt they won't get the funding, time, and talent to continue with the series. We are the minority, and we continually become the minority as fans get older and drift away due to taste changes or lifestyle choices. How many people in this forum started out with Daggerfall? Less and less as the years go by. They have to adapt to find the players who may have never heard of Daggerfall, but love the idea of playing a good RPG over a first person shooter game. They are making our style of play more accessible to the masses, and honestly, that's ok by me. I want to see people put down Call of Duty in favor of Skyrim, even if it means I lose a little customizing in the process. I want to see gamers making intelligent choices with their games, so the entire industry has to sit up and take notice. And that's what I feel Bethesda does.

Spoiled, no. Not when they were giving us more over a decade ago. ES games can only be compared with each other, not the "random 10 hour shooter," or any other game for that matter. Compared to previous ES games, Skyrim is lacking in several departments. Skyrim would have sold the same regardless if we had more choices, RP mechanics and the cut features back. The grand majority on new money from Skyrim didnt know a thing about it, or the ES series. Panhandling to the lowest common denominator is not what old Beth would have done. And now we have a Elder Scroll *gags* MMO. Good gods.

who cares if most gamers aren't interested in deep extensive game play and consequence, you CANNOT sound sensible arguing against that. and you know what I DON'T believe Gamers aren't interested, I DON'T believe the mass success of COD means thats the only way to success. Gamers are of a vast spectrum of folk, and there lies no direct evidence that the quote of the OP cannot work in this day and age. its a vastly different Bethesda from those years ago, Gamers didn't change Companies did.

Peeps working in Beth now are the ones who played and enjoyed those games back then, so who really are the culprits for this fascination for Graphics and easy beating/no consequence

Nicely put. While Bethesda is trying to reach a broader base of gamers, they consistently put out high quality games. I've played TES games since Daggerfall, and I've loved each one, so no complaining here. I save my vitriol for the Total War games that, once Creative Assembly lost control to SEGA and/or Activision, have totally sold out to make shiny toys for the masses and not good games. As to RPG fantasy, why in the heck haven't they revisited the Baldur's Gate series?

The guy who wrote that blurb in the manual probably doesn't work at Bethesda anymore. That was, what... 16-17 years ago?
Here's something people need to understand about Todd Howard. He gets paid a lot of money to sell video games. He doesn't make them and I seriously doubt he plays them. His job is to make the maximum amount of money for Bethesda Software, not spend endless unprofitable hours polishing the perfect RPG magnum-opus.
Hopefully, the guy who wrote so idealistically about RPG's in that manual made enough to retire or start his own business. Maybe he runs an AD&D room in the back of a quiet comic book store somewhere.

A game can have both graphics and depth. Skyrim didn't have both though.

You don't know that, honestly, and I would assume that you are wrong, completely. I'm sorry to put it so bluntly, but I have ran into hundreds of people online who have just been introduced the TES series through Skyrim, so we fans cannot say that the success of the game is purely because of us. I know that's a very small samplling, but logic would constitute that if extrapolated exponentially, that means a decent portion of Skyrim's sales can be attributed to new players who are attracted to the streamlined process. I myself have heard several times from new players that they were previously intimidated by the amount of information players had to juggle in order to play more traditional RPG's.

A good story doesn't always necessitate immediate success, unfortunately. I myself did not play Daggerfall first, although I had been introduced to it. Having never played a PC game before, I was overwhelmed by the amount of information and very little support (at the time) for newbie players such as myself. I gave it up after an hour because even though I was interested, I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong, and the game did not have an intuitive playing style

So I guess I can empathize with those who first look at the history of TES and go "Wow, those games look amazing, but I wouldn't know where to begin."

Nope. Their success is because of us (we buy the games). There was plenty of new blood that bought the games not knowing anything about ES. People wouldn't have said "wait, they are giving us more? No, not buying it now." As most new payers didnt even follow the PR and pre release information. Hell, they would have probably sold more if they would have had more stuff ( I know hundreds of people online that didnt get Sky because of the cutting). Everything Ive said stands.

What has changed in this? Nothing! Can't you accomodate this with pretty graphics? Anybody can, you just have to do it.

I wish they actually focused more on the action in their games. The combat is barely adequate. It doesn't have to be a binary issue concerning roleplaying depth and action. Thankfully they put a lot of work into the musculature of their models at least and the animations.

If you hate action and graphics so much, there are a million old games you can enjoy. Why do you need new games if they're so shallow and beneath you?

Or, look at the other side of the coin: Rather than dumb down this franchise for casual gamers, maybe make other vapid action oriented games that appeal to you and leave TES for those who actually enjoy depth?

This assumes two things:

1) That the new games don't have depth, which is debatable.

2) That without streamlining certain aspects of the game, Bethesda wouldn't have the funding, time, and staff to continue the series.


I'll address the second point, because the first one is a can of worms. Game development is a finite process- there has to be an end point, a time when the game is 'done' and released, or else it would be in development limbo for years as you tweaked and refined the game. Remember, while they are working on the game, technology is moving ever forward, so the longer the process is, the more outdated certain components can become. So there is a huge time issue when going into development.

Now, on to that actual development. You have a finite time window. Check. You also have finite resources, in that you only have so many people on staff. So you have to allocate responsibilities appropriately, and decide what projects have the highest priority. Certain things, like the game engine, the story, and so on, absolutely HAVE to be done in order for the game to function properly, for instance. Assignments are prioritized, and although there may be hundreds of fantastic story, lore, and game mechanic ideas, not all of them can be made. It's humanly impossible for the reasons stated above.

Now let's look at you, for instance. You want them to work on the action elements of the game. You also want game depth. Both of these are incredibly complex 'wants', and they only have so much time to work on the game. Sometimes something must be sacrificed in order to meet the time and staffing limitations. I'm not saying that one is more important than the other, and I don't think Bethesda would say that either. But sometimes you only get 80 or 90% of what you want, and not 100. That's just how it is.

Bull. They set the time limit (gimmick release date) and resources, and they were doing more with less people back in the day. If it was time and or hardware limitations, that was their fault.

Welcome to the dark age of gaming OP, where the meaning of RPG has been twisted and contorted and instead games placed under that catagory should instead be in the Action Adventure catagory, Skyrim included.
Multi corporations/media have caught on to gaming and see it as another fast sorce of income, pumping out games you dont want to play, but what they want you to play, even though the last release is exactly the same thing, it has just had a paint job *COD is a prime example here*.
The west scorned and mocked Japan for it's RPGs and effectively [censored] them and destroyed RPGs that had meaning, that wern't depressing and were trying to get across a powerful message, now instead we are left 'RPGS' like Fallout and Skyrim where all you do is kill kill kill, nothing positive ever happens, and if it does? It is quite a neutral positivity.
True gamers saw this comming quite a while ago, the future is bleak now for games, especially when big companies literally squash any smaller ones trying to do their own thing...

What is wrong with positivity? What is wrong with being happy? What is wrong about doing true good and bringing justice to those who deserve it? Think about it.

It's a bubble. A bubble that I hope implodes similar to the gaming crash of the early 80s.

I don't think it's that the company has changed, the market has changed. I won't say "dumbed down," because I came to TES with Oblivion and after playing Fallout 3, so I'm part of the casual audience they cater to (sorrrryyy). Part of it is just the reality of what you can do with all voiced dialogue versus text boxes, and the diversification of platforms. I still think they make great RPGs, though obviously I don't have the experience to compare them to past games. It just seems like these nostalgia type threads are very glass-half-empty.

Also I think people perceive nostalgia based on their own subjective experience of those games. If it was new and exciting back then when you picked up Daggerfall or Morrowind, the later games aren't going to be able to duplicate that sense of wonder.

Honestly, I wouldn't have cared if they had just reused the Oblivion engine for Skyrim. I want meat, not garnish.

Some of it may be nostalgia but plenty still play the older games (which means it cant be nostalgia on the whole) as they play them to get and do things you simply cant in the newer ones. Why I still play Dagger, Morrow, and even OB.

Is ultima IX considered an rpg?