Had no problem doing it in Oblivion, Morrowind or Daggerfall. And tbh Previous games Dungeons were not as linear as Skyrim. Although no one is being forced to use the quick exit. The choice is there to do either, and thats a good thing.

It's actually pretty funny at times, like meeting a guy who grew mad for not finding the entrance to a certain dungeon, then the secret backdoor leads to his living room.

:l

I don't know if I should agree. I did a dungeon just last night, which took me half an hour to get through. If I would have to backtrack all the way through it, I wouldn't even have bothered with the quest.

It bugs me a bit, but I don't mind. Actually, at first I thought it was a good idea. And I can see in dungeons/ruins or anything man made could have been designed this way. Just seems a bit weird that every natural cavern formed this way.

Not saying I like to walk all the way thru just to get out, but a few wouldn't be too problematic. It just reminds me that I'm playing a game instead of just enjoying the experience.

Too bad you didn't do like us common fast travelers do, and pick your way down the mountain.


(Seriously, though.... if you're careful, you can "walk" down nearly vertical slopes. It doesn't even occur to me to take my time bouncing down from the nice ledges that these dungeons exit to. The idea that someone might think a slope was impassable actually never even occurred to me, I've been going up and down these Beth-style mountains for so many years.)

I wasn't aware you could walk down vertical slopes..

-insert sarcasm-

Just kiddin, just kiddin. But no really.. I think I have a video clip I recorded of my horse climbing up a mountain on a 75 degree angle. It was intense, but not suprising.

Pfft... Physics Horse...

I don't understand why some people think that every "dungeon" is like this. I've found plenty of caves where you have to go back the way you came to get out.

People like to complain about the smallest thing just for the sake of complaining

Nothing forces you to use the quick exit , you can easily retrace your steps if you want , other complain is that you end up high on a mountain peak , sheesh , stop complaining save your game and climb down careful , i never but never got a character killed while getting down a mountain side
only complain about dungons i have is that in the vanilla version there is way too much light ( thank god for mods)

There was one Ayleid ruin in Oblivion, completely empty, no enemies at all. You make your way to the treasure chest at the end and suddenly the tomb is full of undead.

Who says the backtracking has to be boring?

Angarvunde, Ragnvald and Ansilvund are another good examples, the main parts of the dungeon are located in wings off the main chamber that you enter and exit trough, no need for Emergence Exit Tunnel^tm

Simple.

Multiple exits... Awesome!
Linear dungeons... Boring.

If dungeons were multileveled sprawling mazes, having multiple exits would be awesome and that clairvoyance spell would be actually useful.

Ultimately it's due to the lack of transportation methods. In Morrowind you had mark/recall spells, and spells to transport you to the nearest Imperial Cult or Temple. Plus you could buy or find those spells (minus mark/recall I think) in scroll form, so even non-magic adventurers could use them. If that kind of content was in the game we wouldn't need these 'connection chambers' in the first place. And it'd be an incentive to buy that kind of gear, otherwise you would know you'd be trekking back through the entire dungeon.

The only real problem of some of the dungeons is an excessive linearity (and puzzles too easy to resolve)

About the "emergency exit" well,no one forces you to use it - you can easily do the same "boring linear dungeon" backwards after all

Hi there Cicero The Great! Hope your day is going your way.

That is true. However, I think you may be missing the point. There are several ways to design the ending of a major dungeon, of which a shortcut way bcak is but one possible solution. The fact that the overwhelming majority of large scale dungeons use this design is the sure route to boredom. Not only are SKyrim's dungeons appallingly linear, they also end up in the same predictable manner. So the short-way-bcak-all-purpose-design just compounds the probem.

TBH - Oblivion did this as well and it's no "worse" or "better" than a mark/recall spell.
Some of the ways back and forth and rather nicely done actually.
- for reference, try the Ayleid Ruins in Oblivion sometime...

I think it was a whole heap less obvious in Oblivion though. You usually had to find the hidden passage to use the short cut, in Skyrim its just a given that there will be a short cut.

Well,i've missed so many points in my life that i've lost the count

What can be "boredom" for you ( or even me for that matter 'cause i've already complained about those aspects of the dungeons ) probably would be a great benefit for the majority of the players that search for fun in a game and don't want to lose precious time in a gigantic dungeon finding a way to escape

In my opinion this is a strict choice of Bethesda to "simplify" and make the game more accessible to a wider audience.

However i agree with you that perhaps they've simplified too much things in Skyrim. In all senses .

personally, it's the combination of that and the fact that the entire dungeons are linear.

yes, there should be a secret back door, or, gasp! multiple back doors and secret chambers.

multiple pathways and being able to get lost, imo, should be a normal part of a lot of underground locales and even those above ground. i loved fallout3's d.c. train tunnels, lol.

That's like saying don't use weapons if you want H2H to be improved. If the game is built around there being an exit you sort of have to use it to have fun.

Not to mention that in some caves its possible to just randomly stumble upon a ledge only to find you're back at the start again.

Mine was an "ironic post" if isn't clear enough. But other than put two emoticons i don't know what to do more frankly..

But again... no one forces you to use this exit or to improve H2H simply using them when you want and on your needs.

Everyone has his view of "fun",and yours don't necessary have to correspond to that of the rest of the world,bear that in mind.

The "casual players" and the "masses" wants this linearity and simplicity according to Bethesda choice.

And the sales tell us that they're right again. You've to deal with that unfortunately (and even me of course )

This doesn't mean that dungeons are "perfect" of course -far from that in my opinion- but at least we finally have a very good artistic design in that regard and some challenging quest/story in them.

I find this debatable, Oblivion sold way better than Morrowind on mainly what was the positive press for Morrowind and a bigger advertising campaign. Skyrim (and Oblivion) would have been massive either way and could have made the trademark TES fun mainstream.

Hi again.

We'll see. Skyrim's sales figures certainly prove the PR department right. Let's see how DLC performs. I'm not entrely convinced linearity, predictability and shallowness really appeal to the masses. In fact, what got me into SKyrim, and TES for that matter, was the whole idea of a vast, fresh and intriguing world ready to be explored. I'm persuaded the same happened to a lot of folks.

Or how about this lore friendly way. Not all in skyrim are mages, not all have spells and know how to use them. But if you look at these exits as something else then a easy path out for the player there could be a more logical explanation why the people who uses the dungeoun has made an exit like that.

1) It could because the owner of the loot hidden there wanted to have a escape route in case people should enter the dungeon on the hunt for him
2) It could be because he wanted to have a "hidden" way in and out that few would stumble upon. A lot of these exits ends on location people don't simply stumble upon
3) It could be a natural path in the mountain that they have blocked off as exit only to prevent people from entering the room with the loot without going through all the traps, thus making this path a exit only. I have seen dungeons that feels like this, where there is no way for me through the bars so obviously I have found the exit and not the main entrance.

For my part it feels more natural that there is one of these reasons behind these quick exits rather then to give me a spell to throw that teleports me to X location, specially since I so far haven't played a character who uses spells. They could easy have included the spells Mark and Recall as they had them in Morrowind, and it would have been nice if they had done it as it would have given spell casters a way to get out of caves the way they want too without having to use the "backdoor". No matter how you look at it both your and my explanation on how it could be are perfectly lore friendly, the exits are very handy, but they could be handy for a reason like the one I posted above and not only meant to be a easy way out for the player. No bandit that makes their hideout in a mountain would risk having only one entrance and exit to the place unless there is no other way to get out and in.

Skyrim sold because they spent a fortune on marketing.

No one knew how the game played before it was released, Oblivion wasn't as basic and Morrowind less so again. So if each game rides of the success of the last, Bethesda are going entirely the wrong way about it.

There is nothing stopping Bethesda making Morrowind 2 (hypothetically) it would sell every bit as well as Skyrim has.

The only reason Oblivion sold way better was because:


1. It was a new game, and hardly anyone got the chance to review it on day of release.

2. Worldwide gaming forums were already submitting reviews. (i.e Gamespot, Gamefly, IGN)

3. Gaming forums falsely advertised the rating of the game, just so they could get more money from Bethesda.

4. It had improved features.



In my opinion, I didn't like Morrowind OR Oblivion, but If I had to choose, I would say Morrowind.