It doesn't even require you to do any college quests either. You can just walk past Mirabelle and Ancano and go straight to the arcanium.

...which, technically, automatically "inducts" you into the college.

They say that there aren't any consequences in Skyrim - but there are. Want to save the world? You're going to need the scroll, and the only people who have a chance of knowing where to find it are in the College of Winterhold. As a consequence of wanting to save the world from Alduin, you're going to need to visit the college. Besides, would YOU jump at the chance to have the DRAGONBORN join your College?!

Here is how I see it (and I use cars for an example).


We love the engine of a Ferrari
We love the handling of a Lotus
We love the comfort of a Range Rover


Now we just want it all complied into one car.

Essentially, most games have some ground breaking feature. All we want is for them to compile all these ground breaking features so that they become the standard. However, because the game industry is hyper-evolving there is always something new and hence the frustration.

Mind you I would be happy with shortswords, crossbows and more follower features. lol

Some quests require you to enter the college to speak to certain people. To do this requires doing magic before you can even gain entry. For a strict non-magic user, this is a problem and to do it as a one-off to gain entry breaks the RP aspect.

This is true, but then you have to pretend that you didn't hear the spiel from Faralda about being an excellent addition to the College and imagine that you aren't a new student when everything you're told by NPCs and that you read in your journal tells you that you are. I'm pretty sure Mirabelle will also stand rooted to the spot 24/7 waiting for you to come and introduce yourself to her.

Your imagination is having to work around the game trying to shove more content in your face when all that was really needed was the option to say "I'm the Dragonborn here on important business. Please just let me come in and talk to your librarian".

people is never happy. give someone what he want and he won't be happy anyways...

There was a thread a while back about whether you needed to join the Mages College or not.

The upshot was: there is a way to access the college without joining. You just need to have a look around for a bit.

Interestingly, I think that thread also talked a bit about imagination (I remember saying that I didn't even think about snooping around before going to the college doors).

For me, one thing that Skyrim could have more of is different ways to approach and complete quests. I like the Hitman games for that kind of thing: it's really easy just to go in and kill the guy, but there are any number of other ways you can get to the target, do the killing, hide the evidence or not depending on how you want to approach it.

To be fair, TES have always lacked a little in that way (it was almost impossible to play Morrowind as just a sneak character, unless you had some dramatically overpowered chameleon spell - Skyrim is probably a step in the right direction in that sense.

Ironically, it is not that we have forgotten to play.

People are nitpicking and complaining because, they have become BETTER players.

They have seen more games, are more experienced, more skilled, and demand perfection.

It's like for WoW. When you first started playing, you were a noob and didn't know anything about MMOs. You didn't care that someone else kept winning loot, because loot was just a means to an end. All you cared about was beating the dungeon.

Nowadays, you get mad if someone keeps winning loot. Loot was no longer a means to an end, it has become an end itself. You are more skilled, and cannot tolerate the 4 hours of wipes you had when you were a noob. You expect to clear a heroic perfectly with no wipes.

On an unrelated note, do you think this is why marriages are failing nowadays? People sleep around more, are more "experienced" and cannot settle for less than perfection in their spouse, which is unrealistic because nobody is perfect.

No need to pretend you didn't join. You did join, but you only did it in order to get in and talk to the librarian. The rest of the game doesn't grind to a halt until you become archmage, so no, the game isn't forcing you to do anything.

So the mages are being awkward. As if you've never seen a company/institution be awkward IRL.

Then you could try to sneak in. And funnily enough there is a back door into the college...

This works if your character is a sneaky or morally grey type who thinks that the ends justifies the means, but would my noble warrior stoop to such deception?

There's awkward and then there's "we know you need this thing to save the world but we're no way no how going to let you in the door unless you sign up for classes".

They know that? Last i checked, most people were oblivious to what you were up to.

Anyhow, a complete stranger shows up at the door saying they need something to save the world, and they automatically believe you? That strikes me as a bit off. As I said, there's a backdoor your noble warrior could utilise. Then again it's not like he's in the wrong if he leads them on to gain entry. Would they rather feel minor irritation at being fooled, or get nommed by Alduin?

EDIT: And more to the point, yes you can shout, but you aren't the only one with the thu'um. There's no proof for them that you are who you say you are.

So yeah, NPCs acknowledging your enrolment even if you skip past mirabelle is a tad clumsy, but they could move the trigger for that further along the questline methinks, and then it's problem solved

But there should be an option to tell them. We're talking end of the world here, and there's really no choice but to enrol into a school in order to talk to the librarian? OK, it's possible that the mages really were intended to be that awkward but I personally apply Occam's razor here and think it's just lazy writing.


According to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:The_Midden (caution! spoilers!) "it is possible to enter the Midden Dark through this cave with a combination of sprinting, jumping and persistence". That doesn't sound to me like something they intended the player to use but rather like a glitch you can exploit.

Shoot... at least Zork had a compelling plot. Sorta.
I'll go out on a limb and throw out a fuzzy line of demarcation - 1990 (which is around when I graduated HS). So we have folks born pre-1990, and those born post-1990.

I think the 'Imagination Problem' isn't really a problem with imagination in people, but a problem of conditioning with the games that post90 individuals have been exposed to. Video games that they would have played (say, starting around the year 2000) were far more flushed out, and imagination was used to 'fill in the gaps'. Whereas in 1985, imagination necessarily had to fill MUCH LARGER gaps. Shoot, good RPG video games were so few and far between, that we would mostly play AD&D at that time with, yes, the Rush mix tape and a 2 liter of Shasta. That game is completely mental picture-painting.

Skyrim (2011) vs. Badur's Gate II (2000) vs. The Bard's Tale (1985)

Ok, so the point I think I'm trying to get at is that games have progressively occupied more and more of the free roaming imagination space over time. You don't have to imagine what your player home looks like anymore... there it is in 3D. You don't have to imagine what it sounds like in the dungeon... you hear it, carefully crafted by sound engineers. You don't have to imagine what dragon fire coming at you looks like... you see it in completely fluid animation. And because we are asked to use progressively less and less of our own faculties to flush out game worlds, we progressively rely on it less. And, for the sake of argument, I'd say this is more of an issue with the post90s who have less experience with 'worse' games

Caveat: I just woke up and had 2 sips of coffee before writing this, so this is all probably [censored].

Fine. I'll just beg to differ. It's obvious we have two different ways of interpreting the way things pan out, something that cant be helped.

In all fairness though I wouldnt have objected if it panned out the way you would have preferred, or had a problem with it. Id probably be too eager to head back out to start hitting things again, but hey, that's just me

You forgot one KEY WORD. It's not just PLAY, this isn't an arcade game nor an FPS nor any other casual game. It's ROLE PLAY, this is SUPPOSED to be an RPG. You can't remove the ROLE from ROLE PLAY.

Now to answer your question, I love to play and I have a very vivid imagination, had one since I was a kid. However, TES isn't just about PLAYING it's about ROLE PLAYING.

The problem is that there aren't enough people who understand that ROLE PLAYING is very much different than just PLAYING.

Then teach us, o wise one, what is a proper Role Playing!

Sorry, Jcote. but you must be mistaken you're probably thinking of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.

Bigredpanda, must of took the red pill. There were no sequels to that movie maybe you seen a wikipedia stub or something for them but anyone with a internet connection can make one of those. With all the photoshopping and movie-maker software you probably just seen a fan made tribute to them someone was probably trying to pull the wool over your eyes, it's like Internet Rule 34 you can find anything on the internet.

On topic though Skyrim is a good enough game it isn't going to join my list of stuff that never happened. I rather enjoy killing dragons and absobing their souls reminds me of the quickening from Highlander. That and when I land a decapitation I'm always thinking 'There can be only one'.

?
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0424345/

Some people (well, MOST people) just have standards so high they can't even comprehend how awesome video games are these days

I mean, come on people. Remember Contra? Tetris? Super Mario Bros? Centipede?

They don't even have any slight bit of story, and the graphics were ewwww compared to today. You're an Italian plumber who for some reason lives in a kingdom where your princess is annually kidnapped, eating flowers allows you to spit fires and eating weird mushrooms allows you to skip past the teen stage right to advlthood and back, oh and your enemy is the mega-rich turtle who managed to build fortresses and recruit henchmen for the annual kidnapping despite annual losses.

I don't know if I'm under the category of "younger generations", but ATARI was still around when I learned how to play Nintendo Entertainment System (with the infamous Contra in it, goddarn that game). SEGA rose and fall when I grew up, and my first PC game was Dangerous Dave

But people really need to stop for a bit and think: "Holy Crap, games these days? My mind is blown". Graphics? Check. Story that makes sense? Check. Gameplay? Check.

It's alright to expect new features with every year that pass, but game developers ain't Merlin is what I'm sayin'

Look anyone can make up a webpage about something, someone probably just put that together from a leaked early draft script.

Just like there are only 3 movies featuring the aliens from Alien, and the only thing with the title Aliens vs. Predator is the kickass game AvP 2 by Monolith from 10 years ago And only two Terminator movies, and only three Indiana Jones movies

I used to think Oblivion was the best game ever made.

...then i came here

Now I know you're joking ... Why didn't you like it though? I thought it was fantastic. But then again, I have a soft sport for the original, having watched it when it came out in a theater in New Jersey. But re: Clerks II... genius:

(nsfw)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AxAEo3CWeq8