No. Some flames are deserved. You are now only derailing the thread further. Keep the drama to yourself.

(deleted by user)

Fixed it for you.

Thanks.
Can you explain though, I said hand as in the motive operator, tongue is more apt?
I do like language

The thing to remember is that many of the locations that are used by the main quest are not exclusive to it. Unless I'm mistaken, the only areas that require progress in the main quest to access are:

Some of Ustengrav
Sky Haven Temple
Sovngarde
Thalmor Embassy and
Throat of the World

Any other location used in the MQ is fully accessible. This includes Bleak Falls, by the way, which I consider more of a prequel to the MQ. As far as a non-MQ playing character is concerned, this is just a fetch quest given by a shopkeeper. The player can do this quest and still entirely avoid triggering any serious MQ business.

I don't think anyone's being punished here.

So true. I hadn't even paid any thought about that part with Camilla. But you're right, it really doesn't occur again on side quests.

I tell you what I think... If some of you were my kids then I would ground you for two weeks with no games and no Internet. All you could do is read a book so that you could learn to appreciate computer games again. You cannot even appreciate one that is game of the year! There are millions of kids out there who do not even know what a computer game is or hardly get one meal per day. And you think you can accuse Bethesda of creating show cases and then stretch your little hand out to them all while you are guests on their forum. You are completely out of your mind!

I hope this is enough explanation for you to get your head right.

but what about those of us who don't agree? i think the best dungeons in the game have nothing to do with the main quest.

What kind of books?
Can I read Dr. Seuss, Roald Dahl, Kierkegaard et de Saint-Exupery?
May I be your kid for two weeks?
Im almost halfway through my thirties though.

So you think you are a big boy then? Well, big boys get big books. You can have a carpet sample book.

I haven't noticed it that much. Maybe a little. My favorite town is a small town (Dawnstar.. bigger than Riverwood.. but mostly uneventful.. Yet for some reason I like it).

The game could use more "Wow" set pieces though. Especially of the "fantasy/outlandish" variety.

I rather disagree.

Camilla chatting and showing the way to Bleak Falls IMO is more of a tutorial than a show-off. It's the first side quest one gets after escaping Helgen, so it's a helping hand to a starting player. The dungeon isn't impressive at all compared to what one sometimes gets to see while doing some random side and not to mention daedric quests, yet it seemed shockingly long. Didn't work as a showcase for me at all. I also fail to see how Riverwood is any prettier than other villages; in fact, it was Morthal that left quite an impression on me.

Umm, no, flaming someone on a thread is never deserved, debate the topic not the poster. Do not escalate a debate into a flame war.

And you should follow your own advice, no posting with nothing constructive to say. I find your attitude to be exactly what you seem to be so adamantly against.

As for the topic, as I have said before, some dungeons do look as though they are lacking in effort. This post is valid, even if it's unlikely any game developer will put 100% effort into each dungeon. So, they have deadlines, just because they want to sell the product faster, I sincerely doubt they were hurting for money.

Yeah, I don't get this 'showcasing argument' - for example Lost Knife Hideout only features in radiant quests and is just a bandit dungeon, but it's beautifully designed with the huge indoor space with the waterfalls. Some of the random draugr dungeons are way more impressive than Bleak Falls Barrow which I see as being distinctly average. .
Some dungeons are certainly better than others, but the more impressive ones are IMO certainly not clustered around the main quest or any other big quest.

Developers can use showcasing to trick unknowledgeable reviewers. My solution is finding and reading reviews by those who play open-world games as open-world games. You can tell what kind of player a reviewer is by reading his review and seeing how he plays. If how he plays isn't clear, then beware. If how he plays isn't how you would play, then beware.

Showcasing is a problem of game reviews, not of games. Getting rid of showcasing doesn't fix the problem of too few high-quality areas.

The evidence that Bethesda showcased Skyrim is weak at best. I find Meridia's dungeon and the East Empire Company Warehouse, among other places, more intriguing and more fun to explore than Bleak Falls Barrow. If you yourself built numerous places, some of those places would be more interesting and some would be less interesting. If you built quests, you would try to make each as entertaining as possible, so you just might choose to host them in the most interesting places available. An attitude of "let's impress reviewers in the first 20 hours" is not needed for putting more attention into areas visited early and often. Such results come naturally without it.

It is deserved. If you like it or not is a different matter. The thread was doomed to end this way from the start. The accusations are baseless and the arguments that were brought were ignored. It is arrogant of you to judge the work of the game designers without knowing the reasons for their decisions, instead, you accuse them openly of being lazy. You are just as spoilt and your snotty remarks show this.

Honestly, if you made a game, and you had one village and one dungeon that *every* reviwer would see before release, would you not spend some extra effort to polish it?

As Todd said at DICE, they can do anything, but not everything. So in the end it's the choice between 200 dungeons at 80% quality or 100 dungeons at 90% quality. People always complain that something is "half assed" and could have been made better with "little effort", but most of the times this is just not true, and even if it was the effort would haven been removed from somewhere else which would then suffer from the same problems.

Just be happy that Skyrim is this successful, it means Beth can have more staff for the next game.

Can't believe the flack Merari copped in this thread.

He's completely right.
Its not an opinion, that's like saying if I drew a straight line, someone might perceive that as a circle. Sure, and idiot would...

The first portion of Skyrim is CLEARLY more detailed then the last portion.

Bleakfalls Barrow.
The explanation behind the dragon stone and introduction of Delphine.
Thalmor Embassy.


Compare that to Sovngarde. Sovngarde is all cosmetic.
There is more dialogue about the first dragon you kill then there is when you kill Alduin.

The encounter at Dragonsreach. I mean a dragon takes us to Skuldafn. That was well fleshed out wasn't it....

Sky Ruler temple.
A temple built by the Akavir, and NOTHING more about it other then some waffling by Esbern on the way to Alduins wall, which is basically a brief run down in its self.

So you complain about people being off-topic and then proceed to post loads of off-topic stuff just to flame people for having an opinion? Please practice what you preach.

Yeah, who are we to judge the work of game designers? We are just the ones who buy the games and decide if we wish to in the future. What right do we have to complain about things we find lacking in a game, I mean why do we even have these forums?
I never said they were being lazy, please don't put words in my mouth.

I accept that you feel that way, even if I don't agree with it, but could you provide some examples?

This, I would dearly love to see a huge detailed dungeon like Bleak falls or a mission like the Thalmor infiltration else where in the game...

What you do with this thread is to flame the devs. There is no complaint here.

There clearly is, its been illustrated numerous times by numerous members besides the OP?

I was talking about cities, not small towns.