» Sun Jun 03, 2012 12:26 pm (Note: It says why I don't like Skyrim. Not why Skyrim is an objectively bad game. Please consider before responding.)
1. Graphics
Is there anything good to say about the graphics? I guess some of the interiors look nice, such as Dragonsreach. Overall, it looks like a game from 2006-2007, though. And I don't think "consoles" is a good reason to accept that. They could easily add variables to enable/disable specific shaders, and package the console versions with lower resolution textures and reduce the 3D model LOD level by 1 or 2 (If they even had an proper LOD system... will comment on that later).
> Shadow mapping is implemented terribly. The shadows are blocky as we all know, and there aren't enough slices, so distant objects either don't cast shadows, or the blockiness becomes insane. Terrain also doesn't cast shadows. Why not? It looks terrible to be standing behind a huge mountain at sunset and see yourself and trees around you fully lit, even though you should be in the shadow of the mountain.
> No implementation of modern graphics techniques. This is obvious, and there are some remedies for it, but nothing completely effective. For example, the particle and light systems look almost exactly like Oblivion. The falloff on light sources is incredibly unrealistic. Particles aren't affected by ambient light or light sources. Fog isn't affected by light sources. Grass isn't affected by ambient light or light sources. Most light sources don't cast shadows. There's no SSAO, HBAO, light propagation/reflected light, or any kind of global illumination attempt. There is no displacement for water, "foamy edges" for water, caustic seafloor textures, or nice underwater fog. Underwater looks almost the same as it did in Morrowind. And what's with the distant water? It's always a solid color, and you can often see the edge of the model, instead of it going all the way to the horizon. The subsurface scattering is a joke and looks terribly fake, Crysis 1 from 2007 had better SSS, as well as a lot of the other features I covered. I'm not forgetting FXAA, but that's hardly an improvement. MSAA looks better anyway. There are rarely "decal" objects to add unique texture detail. It would be easy to add a lot more single-polygon objects with alpha channels and a shader that projects their texture onto close objects in the direction of their normals. Then you could have some unique dirt texture decals in various places and not need to store every detail in the main texture.
> The textures and models are horrible. This is obvious as well, as there are tons of texture mods already. All of the rocks and cliffs in the game use literally two textures. Their UV maps are terrible and their detail level ranges from incredibly detailed (and thus too noisy), to so low that they look like textures from Doom. The equipment textures are equally bad - look at the orcish armor for example. There are no advanced shaders to add texture detail either. They could have had a "detail texture" which would have a much higher tiling size and would become visible while getting close to a model. They could have also added DX10 tesselation displacement for the PC version. The models are obviously low-poly, and I don't think there's a proper LOD system. Models for weapons and armor, for example, only have a first and third person model. They're both at full detail until they fade out of the scene completely. To improve visuals, there could have been 3+ LOD levels, with the nearest ones being higher quality than the models currently in the game. If done correctly, this could even improve performance.
> Covering up the lack of modern graphics techniques and lack of proper lighting model with screen shaders. This isn't as obvious, and I've mostly "fixed" it with one of my mods. There's bloom everywhere, and it's basically the same bloom from Oblivion. The eye adaptation is fake, and doesn't actually adjust the "exposure", it just makes the screen dark or light for a second if you look somewhere that's a lot darker. You can compare by using my new version of Realistic Lighting with the custom shader in ENB. It has real adaptation. There's a forced contrast increase in the game. This causes a "black crush" thing in dark textures, where detail is lost. I think the objective of this was to make the shadows look darker, but a better way to go about that is to actually lower the ambient color and increase the light brightness. There's also the unnatural "tint" over everything on exteriors that looks like a yellow photo filter, and saturation is very inconsistent. There's no shader for making lit areas be more saturated than dark areas (as it would be in reality). Nights and dungeons are way too bright, but this is more of a design decision, so I'll cover it in the art section.
2. Gameplay/Mechanics
So much is stripped down in this area that it's ridiculous to me.
Obviously there are some "changes", and some positive additions, but overall there's less depth to the gameplay.
> Firstly, the compass and journal system feels identical to Oblivion. And that system is incredibly boring, because it leads you right to your destination. There's no thought required, and you actually -can't- play the game without this, because nobody gives you directions. You have to at least enable the map markers to be told where to go, or else there's no way to find it at all. Something in between would have been nice... The fast travel system is also similar. There's a huge world, but it's all for nothing because nobody (or most people?) is walking through it to go where they need to go. They're just fast travelling. I think part of the reason we don't want to walk is because... the world is boring! I'll address this in the world design section. The map svcks. Obviously the quality map with roads mod is an improvement, but it still looks horrible with polygons visible around lakes and other places.
> Magic has about half or less of the spells from the previous games, and they're horribly balanced. Spellmaking is gone, and there's just a serious lack of spell effects. There was a lot more variety in previous games. Enchanting can make you cast for free, and the destruction perk can allow you to lock enemies in place every time you damage them. Mysticism is gone, and the other schools are mostly useless. What's useful in Alteration? Paralyze? I don't think the armor rating spells are useful because they add only a fraction of what you would get from regular armor. And none of the other ones even need to be mentioned. Illusion? "Calm" is useful, but if you put effort into leveling illusion, you will probably be weak in other areas, and then you'll be stuck using calm on enemies and not being able to kill them. Restoration is fine, I guess, but lacks a lot of spells like cure disease, cure poison, etc. I haven't really used conjuration, but it looks like there are less summons than before.
> Combat is about the same as Oblivion... what's changed? You can bash while blocking now? Cool... I also personally can't stand being "locked" into actions... for example, running forward and power attacking makes the character continue running until the attack has finished. Combat seems to have auto-aim, and there's no locational hit detection. Finishing movies seem to happen randomly. The range of attack types is extremely limited. There are few animations, only one "combat style", and combat is slow. The animations look pretty bad and are jerky in third person. Weapons swing really slowly, and with evenly matched enemies, battles take a while even though you're constantly making hits. It feels like they've added some gimmicks to make players THINK they're doing something special in battles, but they're still just stat-based, not skill-based... which is fine, but lame gimmicks to cover it up are not. And it's also not fine when the game is badly unbalanced, which it is.
> Archery uses auto-aim... and still doesn't have locational hit detection...
> Arrows and other projectiles still stick in solid metal, and the amount they stick in an object isn't related to their velocity. A character can take 10 arrows through the eyes, mouth, and neck, and walk away like nothing happened. There's also no blood dripping out, but I guess that's more of a graphics complaint.
> Phyiscs are still bad. Can't rotate items that you pick up. Can't "lock" items in in their place, so setting a table, for example, is almost impossible. Items are too light, their centers of gravity are too high, and their collision models are too big. Lots of physics bugs, etc...
> Smithing and enchanting are too easy and unbalanced. You don't have to look for armor now, because you can create every good item in the game! Everything you can create at a high level is better than any artifact you'll ever find.
> Speechcraft is boring now. No more ability to actually persuade shop owners to give you a better price. You just get it automatically. Persuasion for other NPCs happens automatically, you don't have to think of it yourself, and you can't even do it any time you want.
> Armor/weapon degradation is gone. This would have been great in combination with smithing, but it's gone now and you have one less thing to worry about (and one less thing making the game more interesting).
> Blade and blunt are grouped into single skill categories now. One less thing to worry about (and one less thing making the game more interesting).
> Difficulty level fails is pretty much the same as Oblivion, which means it's just linear damage scaling that increases damage the player takes, and decreases the damage that enemies take. It's also not balanced with levels, which is pretty obvious by high level characters with enchanted/smithed items being able to win any battle easily on master difficulty, but low level (5-30?) characters will have a very difficult time with that. More about battles being boring in the NPCs section of "content".
> No Acrobatics skill/jump height is locked
> No Athletics skill/speed is locked
> I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff...
3. Content: World/Level design, NPCs, items, etc
Probably the worst part of the game.
> World Design: It's okay, probably the best thing in this category. The terrain is more unique than Oblivion and there are a variety of regions, and obviously the world is huge with lots of places to explore. Unfortunately, some places feel pretty cliche. Like in Oblivion, there are about 10 tree models for the entire world, and you -will- recognize the same fallen log in several places. Since the models for the game are often only 100-200 kb, I think this is lazy.
There is a serious lack of diversity in settlements. There are only 5 "human" architecture styles in the game: Solitude, Whiterun, Windhelm, Riften, Farm. Arguably Markarth, but since dwarven ruins look the same, I'm not including it. Each of the hold capitals have essentially the exact same things: A few of the most stereotypical store types ever (blacksmith, alchemist, general goods, etc.), a few houses, a temple, a cemetary/hall of the dead, and a Jarl's castle/house. There's a serious lack of buildings, with the capital of Skyrim having a total of about 15 different buildings. Considering the size of the game world, I think that's quite lame. Many of the other "hold capitals" have 10 or less. How are these hold capitals? They're basically tiny towns. Also, the amount of "towns" and rural settlements in the game is extremely low. With a world so huge and full of empty space, why aren't the cities larger, and why aren't there more settlements? I'm sort of blaming the building sizes. It was similar in Oblivion - Buildings are about 2-3 times the size that would be realistic, presumably to make third person camera views more comfortable. They didn't do this in Morrowind, and the game had decently sized cities and third person worked fine. At the least, they could've made interiors slightly larger than exteriors (maybe they did already?). I would expect the amount of buildings to increase with each game, not decrease.
> Dungeons/level design: They are boring. Almost every dungeon goes like this: Walk through a series of caverns, killing enemies in each one, looting a few chests full of the most generic leveled items you can imagine and have seen 1000 times before, getting to a large final cavern with a slightly more powerful enemy, looting a chest with slightly more valuable leveled items, then find the super-mega-convenient secret passage that leads you right back to the exit! This dungeon style existed in Oblivion as well. Most dungeons are very linear, traps are easy to spot, and the puzzles take 5 seconds for anyone with an IQ above 80.
> NPCs: The biggest disappointment of the game for me. I've found about 3 NPCs in the entire game which seem to have any character at all. I don't know if this is from the dialogue being voice acted everywhere, or if the dialogue writers are just shallow people? There's also a serious lack of diversity in the NPCs. I don't mean that there's a lack of Argonians or Khajiits, because that fits fine with the lore. I mean that there's a lack of named NPCs in general. I've met thousands of NPCs called "Bandit", hundreds of NPCs called "Guard", and many more who just have absolutely no character at all. There are hardly any named NPCs in comparison. A city often has more generic guards than it has citizens. I can only think of a few NPCs who travel on the roads who have a name: Talsgard the wanderer and the Khajiit caravans. Normal "city" NPCs never go out on the roads, they never visit anyone, and they always have the same greetings every day. It's almost exactly like oblivion, but with EVEN MORE generic NPCs. There's also a serious lack of variety in enemies that can be fought. Most of my encounters have either been with undead, Bandits, or animals. What happened to Daedra? What happened to powerful weirdos with strange names and unique locations and unique items? This brings me to...
> Leveled content: The second biggest disappointment of the game for me. Aside from the hundreds of faceless, nameless, boring non-characters that are found in the game, there's an equal multitude of nameless, boring non-unique items to be found. How many times have you seen "Ring of alteration"? 100? 1000? Every time you fight a seriously hard battle, you will find the same crap in the chest. It's going to be the same armor you already have, rings with enchantments that are the same as yours or worse, and some random gold. Nothing interesting at all. Bandits and other enemies always carry the same stuff too. Every Bandit wears fur armor or hide armor and uses terrible weapons. I guess it goes with them all having the same name. This extends further than just loot: Every shopkeeper has the same crap. You can find the same ingots and weapons at every blacksmith, you can find the same potions and ingredients at every alchemist, and you can find the same magical and misc items at every mage and general goods store. You can easily predict that your level 5 character is never going to see Elven weapons at any store, no matter how hard it's looked for. On the other hand, you can predict that your level 20 character will see Elven weapons in every single store in the world, as if there was suddenly a trend which made these things the most popular item in Skyrim. The only unique items are either artifacts or quest items, and they're always still "leveled", so if you obtain them at level 10, you're going to find a random leveled weapon at level 20 which is more powerful than the famous Daedric artifact. This also extends to battles: Guards are always going to be an even match for your character. You can be level 10 and lose a battle with Whiterun guards. You can be level 30 and lose a bttle with Whiterun guards. You can be level 10 and Dragons are easy to kill. You can be level 40 and dragons are still easy to kill. You won't encounter bears in the wild before level 15 or so, but after that you will encounter them all the time. After a few days of playing the game, it becomes so incredibly obvious and unnatural, and all battles become so much of the same difficulty level, that it's boring to get into a conflict at all unless it's part of a quest.
> Lack of unique items, lack of variety in non-unique items. This goes with the previous complaint, mostly. Every iron sword, every steel sword looks the same. There's no indication of an item being used, old, new, unique, or anything. There's no variety in weapon style between smiths. There are hardly even any items with names or unique enchantments, and it would be easy to add a variety of names, damage ratings, and enchantments to weapons but use the same model. At least there would be some unpredictability.
4. Storyline(s) - (Spoilers ahead)
Spoiler
Another failing part of the game. The main storyline is okay, but every other one is pathetic. I never really have that much hope for storylines in games, but the guild storylines are seriously bad. The number of quests was extremely small for how large the world was and how many locations could have been used. "Radiant quests" are so boring and lacking in character that I don't think they count. I'm only referring to the scripted ones. The scripted ones also lack depth. Let's take the companions storyline for example. I started playing it, and on the first day I found out that the leader is a werewolf and he wants to cure himself. I thought: Oh, well, I guess I'll help him until we found out what the -real- overarching problem is. I finished the quests and realized that this pathetic thing WAS the entire "problem" of the companions storyline. Seriously? There was hardly any dialogue about it, I was informed of it near the very beginning of the questline, and there were absolutely no "plot twists" or unpredictable events. The dark brotherhood had one of the better quest lines, with a small plot twist, but it was still short and underwhelming. Especially because I found both black doors by myself before I even started the questline. None of the characters in any of the questlines have shared much background information, and when they have, it's been super generic, shallow, or doesn't make sense. Some examples: Tolfdir from the college of winterhold. When he talks to the character, he sounds like he doesn't know anything. He doesn't talk about anything "mystical" or anything that makes him sound like he has a higher understanding of magic or magical items than the player. Another example: the members of the dark brotherhood share about two lines related to their past. Babette, the child vampire, was an interesting character, but there was nothing in the storyline related to her, we didn't find out anything about her past other than how she became a vampire, and we didn't find out anything about her character. Even for more "main" characters, like Delphine, hardly anything is shown. We know she's a blade, and has been in hiding. Why? Why did she choose to be a blade? What kind of person is she? Should we trust her and the other guy (I forgot his name)? There's no way to seriously consider these options because there's nothing to be learned about the characters' background and personality. There's no life to the "story" of the blades. They're just some random people who want to stop the dragons for no apparent reasons. The same goes for the greybeards and just about everyone else. We don't learn a lot about their purpose, and we're done with them after one or two quests, and I personally feel like I don't know their characters at all (or that they have none) after completing the questlines.
The characters of the game, in general, also seemed completely stupid and lacking in knowledge. I felt like almost nobody knew anything about the current events, history of the area, combat, magic, etc. If they did, they never shared that information.
I think the only character that was decent was Paarthurnax, but he's still hard to believe at times. He's been around for thousands of years. Why doesn't he have the elder scroll himself? If he cares about defeating Alduin, and he know that the "return" was coming, why didn't he prepare for it better? His attitude made it seem like he cared about it, because he was extremely kind to the player. If he didn't care, why did he help the player at all? He would have been useless without the player. He doesn't even do anyhting to help during the storyline.
Aside from the characters, we haven't really learned much. Why is the player dragonborn? How did the greybeards know that the player was dragonborn right away? Why didn't Alduin attack the player sooner if he knew? I'm sure he wasn't stupid enough to underestimate the player, or too weak to attack. Why did Shor let the player leave sovngarde so easily? Why weren't the dragon priests and dragon priest masks involved in the main quest? (It would have been more interesting). How did the blades know anything at the start? How did Delphine know where that horn thing was? Why wasn't that dungeon clear when the player went in there? Why didn't the Thalmor become more involved? They didn't seem to take notice of the dragons at all, and even after the blades invaded their Embassy, they didn't seem to care at all.
I won't even comment on the civil war storylines, because there was a lot of potential there and they were completely pathetic.
Another failing part of the game. The main storyline is okay, but every other one is pathetic. I never really have that much hope for storylines in games, but the guild storylines are seriously bad. The number of quests was extremely small for how large the world was and how many locations could have been used. "Radiant quests" are so boring and lacking in character that I don't think they count. I'm only referring to the scripted ones. The scripted ones also lack depth. Let's take the companions storyline for example. I started playing it, and on the first day I found out that the leader is a werewolf and he wants to cure himself. I thought: Oh, well, I guess I'll help him until we found out what the -real- overarching problem is. I finished the quests and realized that this pathetic thing WAS the entire "problem" of the companions storyline. Seriously? There was hardly any dialogue about it, I was informed of it near the very beginning of the questline, and there were absolutely no "plot twists" or unpredictable events. The dark brotherhood had one of the better quest lines, with a small plot twist, but it was still short and underwhelming. Especially because I found both black doors by myself before I even started the questline. None of the characters in any of the questlines have shared much background information, and when they have, it's been super generic, shallow, or doesn't make sense. Some examples: Tolfdir from the college of winterhold. When he talks to the character, he sounds like he doesn't know anything. He doesn't talk about anything "mystical" or anything that makes him sound like he has a higher understanding of magic or magical items than the player. Another example: the members of the dark brotherhood share about two lines related to their past. Babette, the child vampire, was an interesting character, but there was nothing in the storyline related to her, we didn't find out anything about her past other than how she became a vampire, and we didn't find out anything about her character. Even for more "main" characters, like Delphine, hardly anything is shown. We know she's a blade, and has been in hiding. Why? Why did she choose to be a blade? What kind of person is she? Should we trust her and the other guy (I forgot his name)? There's no way to seriously consider these options because there's nothing to be learned about the characters' background and personality. There's no life to the "story" of the blades. They're just some random people who want to stop the dragons for no apparent reasons. The same goes for the greybeards and just about everyone else. We don't learn a lot about their purpose, and we're done with them after one or two quests, and I personally feel like I don't know their characters at all (or that they have none) after completing the questlines.
The characters of the game, in general, also seemed completely stupid and lacking in knowledge. I felt like almost nobody knew anything about the current events, history of the area, combat, magic, etc. If they did, they never shared that information.
I think the only character that was decent was Paarthurnax, but he's still hard to believe at times. He's been around for thousands of years. Why doesn't he have the elder scroll himself? If he cares about defeating Alduin, and he know that the "return" was coming, why didn't he prepare for it better? His attitude made it seem like he cared about it, because he was extremely kind to the player. If he didn't care, why did he help the player at all? He would have been useless without the player. He doesn't even do anyhting to help during the storyline.
Aside from the characters, we haven't really learned much. Why is the player dragonborn? How did the greybeards know that the player was dragonborn right away? Why didn't Alduin attack the player sooner if he knew? I'm sure he wasn't stupid enough to underestimate the player, or too weak to attack. Why did Shor let the player leave sovngarde so easily? Why weren't the dragon priests and dragon priest masks involved in the main quest? (It would have been more interesting). How did the blades know anything at the start? How did Delphine know where that horn thing was? Why wasn't that dungeon clear when the player went in there? Why didn't the Thalmor become more involved? They didn't seem to take notice of the dragons at all, and even after the blades invaded their Embassy, they didn't seem to care at all.
I won't even comment on the civil war storylines, because there was a lot of potential there and they were completely pathetic.
5. Artistic vision/lore (this isn't really something I dislike, but I will address it anyway to be fair)
Probably the only somewhat good thing about the game... I don't really have a lot to say about it, because I think it was mostly good. It was less cliche than Oblivion, and a lot of stuff was unique and interesting and awesomely inspired from norse mythology. But... it still could have been pushed a lot further. The only really bad thing, for me, was the design of the weapons and armor, which were often highly unrealistic and "high-tech" looking.
Alright, that's it. I probably won't respond to this, and will probably be insulted by people who love the game, but I had to write it. Forgive any grammatical mistakes, I didn't "proofread" it.
