Finished the main quest last week and just finished the Civil war quest today and have completed, Bard,Thieves, Darkbrotherhood and companions quest lines.

And wow the quest lines are so freaking shallow and follow very clear formula's it is really disappointing.

Skyrim easily have the best gameworld and graphics, environments of any RPG ever relased but gees it is just filled with shallow emptyness as far as NPC's and quests go. After you have walked around a lot of places and realized the loot is bad so there is no incentive to walk around anymore quests just become shallow fast travels kill or deliver something and fast travel back to complete.

This has been a disturbing trend since Morrowind. Oblivions quests were kind of shallow compared to Morrowind and Skyrim just made them a whole lot worse.


If this trend continues to the next game It is going to be horribly disappointing.

Bethesda REALLY needs to get some better quest writers, make quest more unique, make it possible to finish in several different ways, make them branch off more into completely different quests. Make it so you can actually fail a quest, time limited related quests also need to be mixed in.

The formula is getting more transparent with every game.

Quests also need to have a REAL effect on the game world, they have made it so nothing you do through the whole game even matter on the game world. In oblivion the oblivion gates stop popping up, a town got totally nuked, there was actually a nice little side quest where you got to see a little town grow in population and strcutres as you helped them, the painter quest was pretty awesome to.

In skyrim the only quests that even remotely stand out to me was getting Mehrunes' Razor, Red Eagles sword -- mainly because I read all the books concerning the legend, and blood on the ice, mainly because there was a section where you actually had to follow a blood trail without the help of a pointer.

Other than that the quests have been a total bore.

Welcome to Skyrim

I am trying a lot of different things to try to keep the game interesting. Right now I am playing a dead is dead system where, if your toon dies he/she is done. It is challenging to see how long you can survive. But honestly I am just waiting for Kingdoms of Amalur, action RPG's are more style. This game is a bit dull overall.

If you want to have deeper side quests, I would recommend you get Mass Effect, Dragon Age, or any other Bioware game for that matter. TES has never been about deep quests or interesting stories and that's unlikely to change any time soon. While I don't agree that TES shouldn't have interesting quests, there is some sort of size to deepness ratio that has to be considered.

bethesda makes combat and exploration focused games, i think the quests are really good, not sure what the problem is, there are lots of quests which you can do in different ways, but bethesda games might not be for you, skyrim has sold 10 million copies so far, and its steams best selling game ever and thats no small task, so if you don't like it don't play it.

I'll admit the guild quests are pretty short, I didn't like how I became the leader of each guild when I was done. But I didn't find the NPC's shallow except the guards.

The side quests aren't immersive but thats because they're side quests. I found most of the main quests interesting. I here so much complaining on this forum. But I heard a lot of complaining when Oblivion first came out as well.

I think one of the problems is that there are all these dungeons/caves/forts, and some are very large. Yet, they all seem way under-populated to me.

When I can sneak around for long periods before running into one or two Falmer, it's kind of boring. Finally got into Blackreach (sp??), and didn't have any fights for over 30 minutes - no enemies.

I figured to add some more enemies to the game and increased the game difficulty to right below Master, but the number of enemies remained the same, instead enemy damage and health increased. There are quite a few caves and forts that are ok, and have a much better distribution of the number of opponents, but the dwemer dungeons, as great as they are, need more enemies.

Some of the dungeons that have draugers (sp??) have a good distribution, when you come into certain rooms you may have to fight 3-4 of them and that makes it exciting to play.

Here's hoping some modders will fix that.

deus ex rocks, but the quests in bethesda games are actually quite good....for some reason, the focus of a few people who keep bashing bethesda games keep saying, the stories are shallow..BULL. each faction has a backstory, lots of character npcs, people you can help or not help, factions you can join or not join, so this indictment against bethesda for making "shallow" quests, is boloney.

I have to disagree. I never found Mass Effect 1 very engaging, nor did I find the plot all that interesting. The morality issues presented are handled poorly and are basically see through which makes it easy to cheat the system. Dragon Age is full of fantasy cliches, I felt like I was playing a generic fantasy game for most of the time. Also those games are all pretty linear which makes it easier to create clearer, conciser story lines. They also have much less quest content, and world content to write, and code for.

I agree with you. All these people whining and complaining about the game think they have a sense of entitlement.

I've played all the TES games starting with Arena in 1994 and all the TES games have had better quests then Skyrim. Also ME2 had horribly forumal ridden quest lines, all you did was each charector back stroy quests to get them on baord and then bam final quest. ME2 is NOT a good example of interesting questlines.

I agree with OP, I played out the Main Quest, the Civil War quests (both sides), the College of Winterhold quests, the Thieves' Guild quests, the Companions' Quests, and the Dark Brotherhood quests... Not taking in account, that all these questlines were way too short, and lacking any real choice or consequences (I know it's a lot easier to complain, than to write the quests), these quests were fairly entertaining, but didn't hold a candle to the Morrowind Quests...

I'd prefer it, if they had made a lot fewer general or misc quests, and developed the story and creativity a bit more... Seems like a waste, to spend so much time perfecting such a beautiful and diverse virtual world, when the player only plays 200-250 hours, before getting bored with the quests... Although the backwards flying dragons did perk things up a bit for an hour or two

I'm a TES vet since 1994 so I'm mostly comparing skyrim to previous TES games. They all had at least twice as many memorable and interesting quests than Skyrim. Even Daggerfall's full randomized world was more interesting.

Uh no not entitlement, this is a place to talk about such things, this is not a forum to just praise bethesda and give them roses. This is an issues that is getting worse with every game. If this continues in 3 TES games from now we will just be watching a movie instead of playing a game.

There is a joke about RPGs and that you can always save the world tomorrow. There is a fake sense of urgency in almost every RPG and it's never truly realized. However what you mention here seems more like a complaint about RPGs than Skyrim itself. You're asking for a emulation of real world mechanics that will never happen, and have never happened. The time it would take to write, and code a root type quest system like you're proposing would be 10+ years at least. The amount of bugs due to the variability of each playthrough would be huge. You're literally asking for something that will never be done in the modern era of gaming and if this is indeed what you base RPGs off of then you'll be disappointed for a long time.




For the bold part I imagine you never played a Metal Gear Solid game? I don't praise Bethesda as the greatest developer ever. I understand the many flaws within the game, and feel like I actually state them rather than say "The story line svcks". However I'm also a realist and I understand to a degree what it must be like to make a game. A lot of the praise, and criticism I see is baseless. It's based upon generic words like "shallow" or "great" that don't actually convey why the story is shallow, or boring. For me it has gotten to the point where I'm fine with the game in front of me, because although I may not like things about it I understand that I know little to nothing about what happened during development. That awesome quest, or character that I felt may be lacking may at one point been part of the game but taken out due to complications.

Not true. Quests with different endings or choices have been done many times before by other game developers and Bethesda (i.e. Fallout 3), it's simply a question of where the developers put in their effort. Intelligent and creative quests doesn't drum up business half as well as giant, flying, fire-breathing lizards, massive explosions, or the ability to go on a murderous rampage dualwielding two weapons...

Why can't I literally type what I want to say to the NPC's and then have them respond accurately to what I typed? How come there are no toilets or outhouses in Skyrim?

The quests aren't real enough because when I complete one I dont hear everyone in Skyrim talking about it.

I enjoyed the Main quest very much, however the rest? Meh.

However Sanguine's Deadric quest was awesome.

... Well, in Fallout if you did not find the waterchip by the time they estimated; the game ended ~even if on the way back with the chip.
And if you did not take the Master seriously when he says 'Leave while you can', you blow up with the cathedral.... And if you wait too long, the mutant army overruns Necropolis, and when you eventually get there, the entire populace is dead ~(except for the priest IIRC).

*Still... You're right about RPGs in general... IIRC if you wait too long in Planescape the shadows come after you.

First of all, I have to admit that I'm new to Elder Scrolls with this game, and I'm liking it for many different reasons, but I think the author of this thread has some very good points. It's always nice to see people having a critical, yet respectful standpoint, because it always leads to more interesting conversations.

The lack of morality issue is something that threw me off at first. Whether you have a karma counter or not, as a player you have a tendency to play the hero or the villain. In the case of Skyrim, the game sort of sets you up to be one thing or another depending on who you follow during the Helgen attack. I followed Hadvar, which softened any bad impression the Imperials may have caused on me, and soon after I ended up in Whiterun, where you are welcomed by the Companions, which inevitably leads to a series of classic heroic quests where you help people more often than not.

Because of all that, by the time you meet the members of the Thieves Guild, you may feel like a naturally good-hearted character, and all of a sudden you fall into a sudden spiral of crime and murder that, as the game progresses, only gets worse. You may argue that this can be interpreted as an interesting narrative arc, even if it happens by accident, but it also creates an uncomfortable conflict for the player. If I feel like a hero, why can't I fight the Thieves Guild or the Dark Brotherhood, instead of working with them? The only choice left for you is to ignore them, which negates a good portion of the game none of us wants to miss. Skyrim can have many or only one road, depending on how you look at it.

The time issue is also interesting, since some quests could highly benefit from it. Here I'd use the last part of the Winterhold College questline as an example, since something happens that makes all characters rush you into the next and final objective, yet in reality you can just put all that on hold and go on with your life as if nothing was happening. Wouldn't it be more interesting to know that the college can actually get completely destroyed if you don't act fast?

You might want to see your physician, you have a serious case of really devoted fan.

Agreed.

Quests are OK. Not as good as some games, not as bad as some people make out.

There are always exceptions to the rule, and honestly unless a game is purely timed based you'll always have quests that are "do it are your own leisure".

Unfortunately, the way criticisms of Skyrim have gone thus far have been generalized hyperbole for the most part. You'll hear such things as :

There is NO equipment worth getting in Skyrim.
There is NO perk worth getting in Skyrim.
There is NO depth in any quest in Skyrim.
There is NO.... blah blah blah

There are legitimate criticisms to be made, but the flak this game gets is a case study in duality.

I'm really trying hard not to jump on the KOA train, that freaking game... just ugh.... but back OT :

We're a couple decades into the whole 'quest' thing in RPG's, I would think there is not much new under the sun.

Quests could definitely use more depth in Skyrim, some more than others, but it could easily be worse. Go play the KOA demo.