So, Skyrim has had some time, now (~2 months) to simmer in my mind as I got my impressions of it, played it, and seen other thoughts on the game and I'd just like to share a thorough examination of what I like and don't like in Skyrim:

<<>>

Skyrim's gameworld is a generally cold, bitterly rugged place imbued with a mixture of down-to-Earth environment types and cultural influences as well as fleshed-out representations of the mythical nature of that culture, metaphysical fantasy elements, and a connected sense of place. It is, in two words, well-done low fantasy and it manages to both be familiar to us (provided we have some knowledge of Northern biomes and Scandinavian culture/architecture) and yet strange and inviting, yet foreboding. Combined with the standard TES affair of differing regions to break up the monotony of any given one, the standard day and night progressive time system, and the weather system, it takes steps towards feeling real that many gameworlds, unfortunately, do not. It does its job as capturing the feeling of a very specific part of Tamriel well and is a joy to explore and marvel at.

Skyrim's art style fits into what I would call stylized realism. It never attempts to be truly realistic and instead vales everything in a light touch of stylization that gives it a unique feel of its own. Visually, it covers shortcomings in the given technology and provides a consistently fitting image. Atmospherically, it draqes a mystical cover across everything within the game which draws us in and not only maintains, but enhances the atmospherically specific feel Skyrim generally presents.

Skyrim's soundtrack is, as with many of my favorite games, great. It also provides to and fits within the atmosphere of the game, immerses the auditory senses in a cocoon of bliss, fits to the moment, and inherently improves most moments within the game entirely on its own. In fact, I like the soundtrack so much and feel it enhances everything so well that I just listen to its music all by itself when not even playing the game. My favorite themes are those that play within settlements. They're just particularly awesome, for whatever reason, and I almost don't want to leave towns sometimes, but I am greeted with great music outside the towns, just ones never as fittingly comforting. Town music is comforting, exploration music is adventures while instilling curiosity and artistic appreciation of the beauty of the gameworld, the combat music, particularly dragon/boss battle music, provides tension, and the dungeon music often brings with it a sense of eerie, still somber and omen. I expected no less of Jeremy Soule.

Skyrim's dungeons are well-designed and often have a little back-story or quest to go with them. It's not uncommon to find creative geometry, craftily placed traps, or a cool little surprise within them and the dungeon designers should be proud of what they accomplished in their design and architecture.

Skyrim's quests are also generally pretty decent. They often have a unique premise to them (aside from miscellaneous quests) and serve to further flesh out the gameworld and inhabitants. I'd post and explain a few favorites, but I don't want to include spoilers for those who have not yet stumbled upon them.

<<>>

Skyrim, unlike its post-Arena predecessors, lacks a reputation system. From slaying dragons, to rising to Harbinger of The Companions, to warding off local threats, to mercilessly murdering people in the street, to successfully contacting gods, to playing a decisive role in the civil war... nothing nor anyone outside of a few directly pertaining to the related accomplishments ever acknowledge what you've done or who you've been and you never attain any standing, rank, or recognition with the gameworld. There simply isn't a mechanic in place to regulate any of this and when I first finally realized this, I was a bit crushed as I never felt I was making my way in the world anymore thereby I never felt I was defining my character anymore. Why bother role-playing if the role you're trying to play is never recognized? It's just disheartening. I cannot fathom why Bethesda would have neglected to include this core TES mechanic that's always assisted in fleshing out both the gameworld and the PC since 1996 and I deeply hope they consider bringing it back in future TES games.

Skyrim also, contrary to its post Arena predecessors, really dropped the ball on joinable factions. They lack content, purely and simply. Their quest amounts are pitiful, the sense of progression so abrupt it's nonsensical and unrewarding, and the depth of their very being and direct goals relatively vague. If there are going to be so few factions, they could have at least gotten them right. The lack of factions and faction content both, in conjunction with a lack of a reputation system, further alienate the PC in that they cut off involvement within the gameworld and provide less options for defining a character in any meaningful sense. They seem rushed and I'm not very pleased.

Bethesda a big AAA, best-selling, multi-GOTY award winning company, now, so I'd appreciate if they could put some of their money towards proper development for platforms other than their lead (Do I really need to mention the performance problems with the PS3 version and the general lack of optimization for both it and the PC version? People receiving a port directly converted by Bethesda themselves have good reason to have panic attacks at the news with their track record.) and if they could use some of it to hire more Q & A testers.

<<>>

While dungeons are quite nice in design and atmosphere, they lack the type of template variety I would hope for and, more importantly, they lose some motivation to explore them due to a lack of any hand-placed, unique loot besides dragon priest masks. They got so much right with the dungeons that I just hope they take it one step further and perfect them.

Spellmaking and general customization of spells have been in every single core TES title, including Arena, until Skyrim. It is a tradition that allows the expected further understanding and malleability by spellcasters of the scholarly, arcane called magic. It is a rather simple mechanic to implement that allows the player, as though they were a dev, to simply mess with in-engine tools for molding and creating new spells out of the old and existing ones. Place limitations wherever absolutely necessary, as usual, work around them if possible, and retain as much customization as one can. TES had some thing unique going with that system for the 17 years before Skyrim and there's no need to randomly cut it out, now.

Perks should not replace the properties of a skill itself. Morrowind and Oblivion's system were perhaps more flawed, but there are far more meaningful ways to handle stat progression than to cut all attributes and gut all skills just to put nearly everything into "perks". I propose a return to Daggerfall's system of assigning a certain number of points (although without Daggerfall's random, minor fluctuation between 4-6) to the player per level-up to spend on attributes as they see fit and a return to Daggerfall's general creation system (whether they choose to cut out classes or not, so long as we are provided the backstory questionnaire and the advantages/disadvantages, I'm indifferent) with a more focused (because to be blunt, Daggerfall did have some useless skills that just cannot be fleshed-out in any reasonable way) skillset and perhaps true perks, Fallout-style, added to truly give bonus capability trinkets to further flesh out a character.

I could use a few more things to spend money on. I've held on to this complaint for every TES except Daggerfall, to a degree. Do what a lot of other RPGs do and just place really unique, cool things that cannot be obtained by any other means in stores for exorbitant amounts of money.





Little else is coming to mind quite at this moment, so I'm finally done typing. Please, post your thoughts pertaining to what you like and dislike and/or what you think of my own thoughts.

oh my god.. your post had more content than skyrim.. an incredible feat.. truly amazing.. congratz to you sir..

I agree with just about everything you've said here. I would also like the return of a greater variety of spells, and also the enchanting system that was used in Morrowind: it really was superb, how you could learn any spell and apply it as an enchantment to any item in a variety of ways. I also wish that, like in Morrowind, you could pay someone to enchant it for you rather than do it yourself - this alleviated the excess gold problem somewhat in MW, and it could work the same way in the next TES.

i agree with pretty much everything, but iv heard (never saw it myself) that there is some high level loot in the world somwhere (iv heard rumors of people finding glass armour/weapons right out of helgan). i would have disagreed about the art style untill i climbed a mountain and just happend to look back, it looked better than any other vista i can remember in any other game

Just to comment on a specific:


Considering how much they touted their improved bug-testing methods in the lead-up to Skyrim, they are going to burn pretty hard for letting the game slip so badly with the technical hiccups (or in the PS3's case, constantly coughing up blood). In fact, they already are, given how many major gaming sites have published articles critical of the PS3 issues in particular, Bethesda is going to be forced to REALLY respond with their next title. We were hopeful that what Peter Molyneux Todd Howard was saying about the "rigorous playtesting" would be true, and we were wrong. Next time, Bethesda is not going to have that benefit, because now everyone is going to go the opposite direction: assume Bethesda will release an unfinished game at launch and eventually patch it into something workable, and that audience is now pretty huge. The pressure could not be higher for them to make some real headway in their bugtesting, because sending the PS3 version out in the state it was in was unacceptable.

In short: Bethesda has gained +3 infamy for lying about their bug-testing.

To respond to your broad post, I am in agreement. Spellmaking in particular, which was cut for no reason and needlessly removed a playstyle option for magic-users. So what if it was unbalanced? We don't buy Bethesda's games because they are balanced, do we?

I hope you're right.

So do I.

If they can take a hint, they should at least make a few baby steps in the right direction with Fallout 4, though the bug-testing might still continue to suffer in favor of further attempts to streamline and a brand new prettied up, yet cataclysmically flawed menu scheme.

A post that expressed disappointments without resorting to terms like "dumbed down".

Sir, I salute you.



I haven't read the entirety of the OP yet, I skimmed through it, and what I saw, I'd probably be inclined to somewhat agree with you on. Thank you for an articulate review.

Do you know what the funniest thing about that is? People who are saying that spellmaking was broken and had to be be removed and at the same time are defending skyrims smithing/enchanting/alchemy system which is just as broken.

Exactly what my quip about the balancing was for.

We lose one unbalanced system in return for another? Why not just keep the other unbalanced system so now we can have BOTH? It's not like other people would suffer from your uber-spells and hyper-enchantments since this game has no multiplayer.

To the OP: I disagree with all of your dislikes, except the bugs. I think the horrible PC interface is a bigger concern.

After reading your post completely, I wouldn't necessarily disagree with you, although the negatives you listed don't have nearly the negative impact on me as they did you.

I did think that particular NPC reactions to my character were a bit wonky at times (for instance, Farengar never recognized that I joined the College of Winterhold), but I forgive that, because for me, I'm the opposite - I know that I'm a part of the College of Winterhold, I don't need the game to constantly tell me of that. The game recognizes it in the important way, by opening me up to the College of Winterhold content, perks, and benefits. But outside of some wonky reactions, for the most part, I felt the NPC recognition of my accomplishments was appropriate.

I would say I 100% disagree with you on the perk system. I feel that the perk system is the best leveling system Elder Scrolls has seen yet. It keeps the standard 1-100 leveling system of past games, and gives the player further specialization through perks. I am completely satisfied with the leveling system. As far as Attributes go, I am not inherently against them, but I don't miss them in the least bit. I understand what they were set out to accomplish, but I don't feel they are integral. Just another method of accomplishing the same goal.

I wouldn't mind seeing Spellmaking come back. I do feel that there would be some limitations within the game mechanics themselves with how compatible Spellmaking would be, and I venture to guess that's why Spellmaking was left out, but if they can figure out a good way to make it work, I'm all for seeing Spellmaking make a return as part of DLC. It's honestly probably my #1 desire to see in a DLC. Although I don't think it's a "must have".

I personally don't use the argument that Spellmaking was broken (in terms of being overpowered). I personally feel that there would be conflicts with Spellmaking and the current spell mechanics which allow for dual casting, 2 spells to be cast at once, and various types of casting styles that would all conflict with each other. I hazard to guess that Spellmaking was left out because they couldn't get it to work out quite right with the current mechanics, and (hopefully) will figure out how to implement it properly with some extra time, and give it back to us in a DLC.

I may be totally wrong - I'm no developer. But I just look at Spellmaking as we've known it in past games, and there's no way it would work with the current gameplay mechanics, without some pretty big time overhauls to the Spellmaking system, which takes time, and I venture to guess that they had bigger priorities to spend their time on than Spellmaking, which is totally the right conclusion in that circumstance.

Again, all theoretical.

well only time will tell but honestly I dont think that they will add spellmaking in a dlc. I think a clever modder will implement spellmaking once the CK is out. I mean look at midas magic and what for new spells he already created.

This I can understand. I guess I'm just a bit grated that they axed spellmaking, 22 spell effects, and one magic skill for what we got in return.

To the OP:

I agree pretty much with your post, except you have a few things wrong. Skyrim didn't gut the attributes altogether, they did leave Health, Magicka and Stamina (with Stamina tying into your strength). Points can be spent on each of those as you see fit, so they still count. Still not as deep as Oblivion though. Also, Daggerfall's system was pretty complex, but worked in a sense like Skyrim where you can put your earned point into one of a great many different skills. What made it different was that, when you focused on the few skills you'd most want to use for your character build (thief, mage, warrior, etc), building other skills would be made much more difficult. So spending points on those others made it a kind of a waste and it lent more to making the playing stick with their build. Skyrim, you can just level all skills pretty easy and that takes away from really being what the played intended.

Also, Oblivion's system was really broken, it was just overly complex and most complaints were that some couldn't level their major skills up quick enough when they chose them as part of their build. The game didn't explain well enough that one had to choose the corresponding minor skills to make them level properly and the how the primary attributes tied into the derived attributes along with with corresponding skills . Most times, certain skills would level real fast, and other terribly slow, though they were part of the player's build, thye just simply made wrong choices. But, Oblivion's system forced the player to stick with their choice of what they wanted to play as far as the type of character, and that I liked. Once I chose being a mage and its corresponding major skills and minor skills, anything else would take forever to level up, which is how it should be. Skyrim just basically became a shooter type where it didn't matter what you chose, you can keep leveling them all (as I said already). I can be a mage, but use a sword and be a warrior too. UGH!



You may be wrong considering how near broken Daggerfall was and especially Oblivion (remember the corrupted saves?), those games were pretty bad for bugs as well. Interestingly, though Morrowind has some nasty bugs, it wasn't as bad as any of the other TES games I played from my experience. Skyrim is right upon 10m in sales across all platforms and has sold more on the PS3 than Fallout 3 did. Considering how loved it is, and the sales show it, I don't see them changing the style back much and I hope you are right. But, I do think they will be using these extra huge profits for QA testing. I also hope they don't gut Fallout 4 and make it level like Skyrim !

Good stuff Seti. Agree with most of what you said. Couple things to add...

LIKE: The setting. Skyrim is much more interesting place, with various political factions duking it. Imperials, Stormcloaks, Thalmor, Forsworn... lot of different sides.

DISLIKE: Total lack of memorable characters. Boring writing plus randomly generated quests makes for NPC's you really don't care much for.

Thomas:
Well Mysticism wasnt really lost. Most of it can now be found in Alteration and Conjuration.

You've already read my theory on Spellmaking.

As far as the missing spell effects go, I agree. Some I miss less than others (Water Walking, for example) but im not exactly sure why Command spells were taken out, or many of the summon spells like Skeletons, Ghosts, Wraiths, Liches, etc. I do miss my supernatural summons.

I like what we got in terms of new effects and new ways to cast spells. I do wish that could have been combined with the missing effects.

Overall, I like magic more than I miss what's missing. But I do wonder why so many spell effects were left out.

Where is the "Vote YES if you agree" poll for this topic... lol...

That is what this forum needs... a whole sub-forum dedicated to singular "issue" polls...

I fear that the biggest problem they had with development, was that they kept asking other employees... "What do you think about...____?" Fearing for their jobs, they just agreed, "Oh, it is fine, great idea boss!"

A simple pre-release, a smaller chunk of the world, a teaser, would have surfaced many of these issues. Even if the teaser-content never made it into the actual game. (For the same reasons as above... not given to fan-boys, who would simply just parrot what employees would say, so that they stayed fan-boys in the future. They would be less inclined to be impartial to truthful judgement.)

tldr

It was close to 3 weeks after being made archmage, when I returned to the mages college, talking to the NPCs that are still there looking for a quest item (deadra heart.)

One made an indirect reference to me being made archmage.

However, the second NPC (can't remember who it was) I talked to actually congratulated me on being made archmage, and offered to help me any way he could.

Surprised the heck out of me.

Well written, and i agree with pretty much every point.

It's a pretty dungeon crawler with half-decent character creation/deveploment system, is still my view of it. There's not much else to do than to kill people and creatures and loot their treasures by using different skillsets. Treasures which are level scaled so you never find anything but vendor trash Thieves guild was again pretty good questline, and DB not bad either, even though no one gave a [censored] about the outcome of the final mission But the others were just excuses to gain access to locked dungeons.

My advice to Bethesda would be to fire everyone that didn't work on the world, dungeon and item design Oh, and i suppose you can spare the people who wrote TG and DB questlines too, unless the replacements for the other quests are much better

Still, i got my money's worth, and the modding community hasn't even properly started yet

Seems like the major complaints about this game comes from hard core gamers who have been at it for years. Let's not forget about the new people coming in with little or no experience. I remember coming into some games with a 200 page manual WTF!
I never had to look at the Skyrim manual once, that has to count for something.

Pretty much, yeah, that's my view of it.

To the "tl;dr" reply - that's a shame because this was one of the few well thought out and articulated opinions on this forum.