that wouldn't surprise me much

Hi Dragonborne. How are you doing?

It's a valid question. One quest in particular comes to mind, The Golden Claw. I though it was well fleshed out and proceeded into believing it was representative of the overall standard, which turned out not to be true. Conversely, I did find some of its most alluring elements, the claw itself and the Bleak Falls barrow dungeon, duplicated throughout other quests and dungeons, much to my disappointment. So, to answer your question, Yes, to an extent.

Not been there! looks stunning. I've not been to Aus..

I just thought of that actually happening and it was both hilarious and saddening.

I totally disagree.

I have found unique cool places in all of the holds. A lighthouse that opens onto an adventure. A vampire's lair that is a tower rising within a cavern. A base for a pirate gang of walkways and a ship. Lairs of Dragon Priests with intriguing dungeon quests. A 2-part return of a powerful queen. A devious trap set by a scheming Warlock. And there are many, many more.

Whiterun, Markarth, Windhelm and Solitude are all excellent cities in my opinion with far more character than Oblivion's had.... Riften is a close second and then the rest.

I feel there are many, many cool places scattered all across the realm and then there are more mundane places - which makes sense.

Skyrim stands head and shoulders abover Oblivion and Morrowind and the other ES games for its unique dungeons and many different types of environments.

you are saying only MQ stuff is appealing, I showed you generic caves that ARE appealing and look like skyrim ones

True. What you are saying is that it needs more drama on the forum.

I read your OP and then the thread. That was my response to you. Sorry you don't like it.

I suppose I could say the very first quests/areas are specifically designed to showcase the game, hold the hands of new players and get you to buy into the world in a way other areas don't. But other people have already done that already.

I'm interested in your examples of games that have done a better job with what you're complaining about.

It's common sense to ensure that the first impressions of a game are made memorable, Riverwood & the excellent Camilla hand holding walk with dialogue stand out as one of the most enjoyable & standout moments for me, Highly immersive.
Bethesda made it that way, As do every other company or profession in existance & it's called making your mark or setting your stall out as you will.

Mass Effect 2 opening scene as you look out of the broken ship at the blue planet, Everything is silent in the vacuum of space. Nothing else in the rest of the entire game came close to it & that left a stunning first impression, I accepted that & enjoyed it.

Butchers & Bakers always put the best cuts of meat & bread at the top, The first page of an artists portfolio will contain his most profound work in most cases, A real estate agent will not have images of a crappy housing estate taking pride of place in his shop window.

Trying to keep excellence going in a straight line is impossible, There will always be dips & deviations & it's impossible to keep everything unique or to the same standard, Bethesda do not have a thousand years.

It's bloody obvious that there are places in Skyrim that were purposely designed to leave an impression, No idea why people do not understand this & i have no idea why people will think it is wrong to do it.

But if all dungeons are either amazing/dull, that essentially makes all of them dull, since they are all on the same level. In reality, not all places are equaly beautiful, and exactly that makes sure that really beautiful places are just that bit more beautiful. Besides, it is impossible to make all 300 or so locations in the game completely unique and beautiful. In this case it is quantity over quality indeed, but that does extend playtime by a lot, and puts the real good-looking dungeons on an even higher pedestal, which is good IMO.

I've said my fair share of bad stuff about this game. I think it's by far the worst Elder Scrolls. I don't agree with this though. There's plenty of dungeons better then Bleak Falls.

Well there's a number of reasons they don't. 1) They are far more detailed and dynamic than Skyrim caves, which are mostly collections of premade rooms 2) They are photorealistic and enhanced by the prospect of them being real 3) There are many different types of cave on that image search, Skyrim has 2 cave sets, normal and frozen. 4) These caves do not serve as dungeons for you to explore in, just places to sightsee and learn about nature and geological activity (also not a part of Skyrim's caves since that's far from the point of the game). Skyrim is very different to seeing a cave IRL, and there is more to a dungeon than just the formation of the cave. Size, inhabitants, detail, purpose, related quest design, unique features, fantasy vistas, routes, puzzles etc. are all a part of Skyrim's dungeons (the good ones). The comparison of real life caves is almost completely irrelevant. The point is, as it has always been, the predisposition of certain dungeons (not just caves) to have far more of that than others (in the main quest and early game, not evenly dispersed). And like I said I never mentioned anything against the existence of standard fare caves.

I see this is almost every work related situation at one time or the other. People are given a time line and at the beginning the level of quality is quite high. As deadlines draw near corners are cut and hope is that the work done at the beginning will mask close inspection of later work. I can't say if that is the case with Bethesda games - we don't know the basic development plan and it could be that starting areas are meant to be slightly more polished as a matter of course. It is a shame that small settlements like Rorikstead, Dragon's Bridge, Shor's Stone and Ivarstead aren't fleshed out a bit better. Then again, Morthal and Winterhold aren't particularly overflowing with content either. Cities in Oblivion seemed to have more content even if dungeons were a bit lacking by comparison with Skyrim's.

I found this post to be very enlightening, thank you for that. In fact it pretty much ends the discussion for me. =3

Well- you (I) must expect that the golden road of the main quest (the goal of the majority) has a couple more bells and whistles on it than a random tangential path through the game.

If everything was the best, then nothing would be.

So no, i can't say I mind, and surely do not feel "punished" by this logical decision.

Hi there MoggyW! How's your day going?

Let me attempt to explain, then. I see th Golden Claw quest as one of the better fleshed out ones. Would I have liked for every single quest to meet that standard? Absolutely. Would it have been really possible? Probably not. So while it's not wrong for some quests/dungeons to be better designed than others, it certainly isn't right either. It's just inevitable.

I would consider this logical in a game that is not supposed to be open world. But it is, and my options are supposed to be open, and every route is supposed to bring me to new exciting stuff, not just by freakish coincidence one storyline leading me to every amazing place. I realise the commercial aspect, I just think it's lousy from the perspective of their supposed game ideology and from the perspective of someone who wants to follow that ideology and be who I want, instead of just being the dragonborn who saves the world. I have similar feelings in regards to the dragon shout system and pressure to accept my position as dragonborn, but that's a somewhat different topic which I already know a lot of mainquest single-role centric people do not agree with me on. I guess I just have a more open-world loving perspective of open-world games than most people, who would like to be funneled through a thin route into the most enjoyable experience.

Hi again!
That is quite a strong point I had forgotten about. Well pointed out.

closed for review

Ok, it isn't too bad but folks please be careful not to take differences of opinion to a personal level and thus flame someone. Respect one another for differences of opinion.

One mans trash is another mans treasure and we all perceive things differently and that's just fine. Putting in a variety of towns, architecture, npcs, dungeons, and all other things can only serve to please more people. If you don't like something about the game and someone else does like it, chalk it up to differences in latitudes and attitudes and realize that we are not all put off by or elated by the same things.

Don't insult one another's opinion. I sure wouldn't come in here to insult someone because they like aspects of the game I don't like. Different strokes for different folks and so on and so on...

Please continue and leave out the personal attacks, the disrespect for others opinions that are now your own opinion and this thread might make it to 200.

Wasn't that Chekhov?

This I absolutely agree with.

It's perfectly natural that the game starts with a well-designed quest in a beautiful location. If I was to produce a game, I'd make sure that the beginning is gripping and unique - first impression is what keeps the new player in, it should be the best possible.

Also, it's logical that people and locations you discover during the main questlines are among the best in the game - they're what most players are likely to see, especially since some of them are never going to explore the countryside (fast-travel's in, so why go anywhere on foot?). I don't see why it should be any different, I mean, would you rather have all MQ locations bland and generic? Sure, it would make all other places look awesome in comparison, but that’s not quite what we’re aiming at.

“Vilverin syndrome” means that only the features you see at the very beginning or during the MQ are fleshed out, the rest being rushed, generic, simply not attractive. I don’t believe this is the case with Skyrim.

There are lots of locations not tied to any questlines that are extremely well-designed, memorable and fun to explore. The post I quoted above lists some of them; there are many others. I never felt that areas outside the MQ are lacking in any way. In fact, I was pleasantly surprised at all the effort put into creating locations in Skyrim. It felt very refreshing after Oblivion, but even not comparing to that title the dungeons are satisfying.

I don’t expect every single location to be breath-taking – to be honest, I’d be disappointed if it happened. Variety is always good, even if it means that some places will be boring; it makes the interesting ones even better.

If you think that only MQ locations are properly fleshed out, then you simply haven’t explored enough.

Blast am I remembering things wrongly again?
Ive always been a scatterbrain.

Long ago I wrote a poem entitled "imperfect perfection". It had to do with the world having so many imperfections and less than beautiful sights and life being full of greatness and the most mundane. And it was about how we can't appreciate the greatness, the beautiful, the spectacular if we have only known those things and that in order to be perfect, there must be imperfections or we would never know what we had. Without a bit of sadness, how would we know glee and without some trash along a roadside looking ugly, how would we know to appreciate seeing a snow covered mountain or a patch of wild flowers.

This game should reflect a real world and in a real world, there is imperfect perfection...both the beautiful and ugly, the great and the mundane, the best day ever and the worst day ever. It should mimic life and in my opinion it does a fine job of it. Life in a fairytale world with excitement, joy, disappointment, beauty, ugly and all in between.

It brings life's varsity to our virtual world and I like it.

I was reading the first page and saw that at least one person, if not more were all "Bait and switch". Allow me to state my opinion as a member, rather than a moderator - but that is just a silly statement. Bait and switch implies that you were led astray purposefully. It's a con-artist tactic. If you are implying that Bethesda somehow said "let's fool people early on with one or two dungeons", then clearly you have not played the game very far. Or just play games to have fun anymore.

I feel like people have just lost some sort of common sense perspective. You are playing a game - there is programming, assets and scripting behind the curtains. It's not bloody magic, folks. I have 250 hours in. I was still running into things that made me smile. Unique items placed deliberately, some telling a story, some obviously to make me smile. A different trap. A small story within a random dungeon. A view or interior that is cool. I am damned impressed with the scope of the dungeons in this game. Some have been spectacular set pieces, in the service to a significant story. Some have been clever, one-off finds, in service of nothing more than rewarding you for going into a random cave. And some of have just been dungeons, that I can clear, find loot, sometimes a tough fight, sometimes a statue, or a skill book or whatever.

I was "sold" a game that says "go, explore, have fun." And that is what I got.

Hi moderator Summer. How's your day coming along?

I seem to detect a hint of Zen in your remarks above.

"Water which is too pure has no fish" - Ts’ai Ken T’an (Hong Zicheng)

"If you understand, things are just as they are;
if you do not understand, things are just as they are" - unknown author