Pointing to a couple games that offer multiple quest solutions and saying, "Hey, these games did it, but they had small environments," is disingenuous. The reason Skyrim's quests don't have many options is because providing the player with multiple solutions is not a priority for Bethesda. That's it, full stop. Nothing about multiple quest solutions should have any impact on world size. And if the company that's been making more and more money and having bigger and bigger success with each release can't find the time to address this then it's a problem in direction, not time or money.

I can see multiple solutions leading to less quests, but when half of your so called "hundreds" of quests are just paid exploration or fetch quests designed only to point players to the real quests, then I'm not too worried.

So wait, why can you complain about New Vegas' exploration linearity, but someone else can't complain about quest linearity?

Did you even read my post?

I -JUST- got done ranting about how stupid it is that people throw a [censored] fit over the first three hours of gameplay where New Vegas forces you to go south, but Skyrim forcing you to become a werewolf to continue one of the guild quest chains, forcing you to be Dragonborn to take part in the Civil war and all sorts of crap like that that's TOTALLY unneccesary gets a pass and people praise Skyrim for giving them freedom.

Freedom to do what? Run in every direction? That's great and all, but ALL games let you do that, New Vegas included. New Vegas literally only restricts that for the first three hours. As far as quest freedom goes, Skyrim is completely railroaded beyond belief.

To be fair, they could technically do that in Morrowind.

But here's another:
You can get questioned by guards if they see you standing over a dead body with your weapon drawn.
NPCs will react to you dropping items based on a number of things (some may take it for themselves, others may try to give it back, others may ask if they can keep it, others may tell you to stop littering, others may start a fight over it).
NPCs can give and take items from you without being explicitly scripted to.
They can have shop and training schedules, where they won't offer you services while they're eating or sleeping.
You can talk with them without having to stop time.
You can split up and take different routes to meet up somewhere later, or stick together and go with them (your choice).

yeah your'e right! at least in mass effect i could choose my last name...oh wait. nope. well at least i could choose not to be in the alliance military...oh wait nvm. well at least i didn't have to activate that dang crucible to win the game....oh wait wrong again.

point being you saying skyrim is a railroad is absoultely ridiculous and ignorant. You have the choice to not even do those factions. but yes, if you do that storyline then you get just that...a story with some decisions made for you. Skyrim gives more freedom than any other game on the market. Sorry if they don't have 20 different drop down dialouge options but the fact is that you have more choice than any other game. So you don't want to be a werewolf? ok don't do that quest...or once you find out they are werewolves why don't you use a nice calm spell and start hanging out with the silverhand.

what you're advocating are false sense of choice, well looks like GTAIV completely blows Skyrim out of the water in choice since I can pick the kind of Car I want to drive or my next victims on a rampage, totally.

I can't think of ... any... game that allows you to do whatever you want and still advance the quest. All games have triggers and requirements in order to advance the quest.

I mean.. even books are like that. You have to read page 6 to know what's going on on page 7. Right?

You're really gonna call me ignorant and then claim Skyrim has "more freedom than any other game on the market?"

Ok, let's get one thing straight: Doing and not doing is not choice. With that argument, every game on earth has an equal amount of choice because they ultimately all give me the choice to shut the damn thing off and not bother playing it.



But here, tell you what. Let's have a freedom competition! Fallout New Vegas vs. Skyrim, New Vegas simply because it's a game I know plenty about and because I do believe it to have more freedom.

Here's a list of things New Vegas allows you to do that Skyrim doesn't:

-Kill anyone you like; no essential characters
-Regularly finish quests in a multitude of ways
-Pick a side. ANY side. (equivalent to if Skyrim not only had Stormcloaks and Legion, but also Thalmor and Dragons)
-More dialog options with meaningful differences. (you could tell a person to screw off and he'll actually get offended instead of this "WHEN YOUR ATTITUDE HAS IMPROVED COME BACK TO ACCEPT MY QUEST TO SAVE MY DAUGHTER, GOOD CITIZEN" bullcrap. Another character may decide he wants to betray you or work alongside you based solely on your honest opinions you've fed him)

Freedoms Skyrim offers that New Vegas doesn't

-You can go north at the start of the game

So really now? REALLY?

Of course Skyrim has choice. Choice by your actions, not by dialogue trees. It's your CHOICE what questline you wish to follow, where as in other games there is but one path with a few branching off that you go down via a dialogue scene.

My beef is with the actual QUALITY of the writing itself. It feels like a teenager wrote out the lines at times and your options are all funnelled into the same answer. Even your dialogue options are so bland and uninspired, or just blunt. Then there's other dumb stuff like getting different voice actors to use the same lines in a battle scene.

my very first playthrough of FNV i went straight east, cut through hidden valley and found myself in novac within the first hour. the game suggests you go south, it doesn't 'force' you to go south. in fact with creativity and some risk taking, you can go straight north. if i want to finish the companions, i must become a werewolf. i can only help the companions. those are forced choices; there is no other way to do it. do it this way or not at all. that's freedom?

the dialogue itself in skyrim is acceptable. i didn't find it terrible nor did i find it good. the choices in dialogue are a joke. my favorite is the only one option response. why even include it? and when the player is presented with multiple options, they more times than not all lead to the same end. it doesn't matter. beth could have saved more time by just opening every conversation with : this person has a quest...accept?

beth must do better in terms of writing, be it dialogue or story.

There really is no point in trying to elaborate every down point cited for other games is actually some kind of bonus or intended feature for Skyrim.

Ok no. Just no.

Let me give you an example...

New Vegas has about....three or four quests (might be a lot more actually) that are considered quests for the NCR. As in, you walk up to an NCR soldier and offer help, he asks you to do something for him.

Right now, you would be giving a speech and saying "SEE? CHOICE!! I don't have to do it!"
No no, that's not choice.

Choice is that, as a Legion supporter, I can accept that quest anyways and complete it in a way that supports the Legion. For example, if the NCR asks me to plant a bug on the Legion radio, I can offer to do it, BUT THEN complete the quest by opting to report to the Legion commander and telling him about the bug while handing it over to him. He then thanks me and the quest branches off in a completely different direction, with him now giving me fake intel that he'd like me to present to that NCR soldier, to trick him into thinking he just found out enemy plans when really he's being led into a trap.

Skyrim lacks this. I never do any deceitful thinking like this in Skyrim because I know they'll never program for it. I could come up with this great plan to double-cross someone, but Skyrim won't give me the tools to complete that plan. Skyrim would literally cut off at "hey do you wanna help," where Legion supporters say no and NCR says yes. That to me is not choice, and even if you DO consider it choice, I don't know how you can all sit here and praise Skyrim for it's "AMAZING AMOUNT OF CHOICE" when it literally offers the bare minimum: Do and don't do.

Did you rescue Saadia or have her kidnapped?

WEAK > : D

its already cited in this thread 4 quests that offer the bare minimum of what Longknifed showed

Knife I don't think they're taking your points seriously...I mean look at Huleeds example lol

I sided with the dragons. There's one I can call directly for aid, there's one I can talk to to improve my thu'um, and there's a bunch flying around the wilderness that I can help kill stuff with (and who won't attack me).

Beth could've done a lot better job with their writing. Quests, dialogue, the whole thing. Was it god awful? No. Was it a little disappointing for an Elder Scrolls game? Yeah, to me it was. I just didn't know that Beth's priorities were going to be graphics and combat (even tho combat hasn't changed much from Oblivion, just some mechanics). Now that I do know that, nothing that will come from them now will surprise me one bit. When i want to play Elder Scrolls with some quality quests, i'll pop in Oblivion. The future of Elder Scrolls is going to be action adventure.

Does it [censored] matter?
No it doesn't. There's no consequence at all no matter who you side with. They both say "thanks" and you never find out which one of them was lying. The game doesn't even tell me if she's guilty or not.
See? Even when choice IS offered, it's completely pointless.

Furthermore, while that is a good example (any others?) where a quest has a bit more depth in Skyrim (but completely lacks a genuine story (genuine in the sense that it has a right and wrong answer) and consequence), my point was more about how New Vegas gives me that option to think for myself. New Vegas is a game where I can think "maybe I should go back and warn him first" simply because it feels natural to do so, and viola, there's actually a dialog option there for it. The quest you cited is really more....By the time you find the assassins, they speak with you. I've never had them flat-out attack you. As in, YOU are not exactly opting to hear them out. No no, when you approach them they start dialog with you and say their side of the story.
Again, while you named a quest with more depth, the difference is that in the New Vegas one, I come up with the idea all on my own and the game actually builds a path for that circumstance. In yours however, the game seems to shove people into hearing out the assassins first, then you make a choice. You're really not double-crossing her (what reason would you have to do so? You don't know her...), but rather you're hearing out the other side. And you're not really hearing them out by choice, but rather the game is forcing you to.

Yes yes, I bet you can kill the assassins before they talk or you can exit out of conversation, but you get my point. My point is they seem to railroad you along this path, whereas my New Vegas example, you're opting to walk the unbeaten path yourself and you're pleasantly surprised when the game provides you with tools to do so.

yeah...that unbeaten path that someone scripted into the game right?....so basically you don't like it that skyrim makes you think for yourself rather than presenting it to you all in a bow and gift wrapping.

Absolutely right there longknife. I couldn't have said it better myself. This is pretty much why I stopped playing skyrim, because without interesting stories and quests the world becomes a fairly boring hiking simulator with random combat grinding.



XD

You don't seem to understand, what he was referring too. Skyrim gives you binary choices that they spell out right there that are pretty limited. In NV they leave you open to think what if I "try it this way" and you are pleasantly discover that the writers covered that base. This isn't so in skyrim as your stuck on narrow rails on how to complete given quests. You either complete it the way they say or you have to ignore it.

Fallout in general is just much more through in the ways and options they give to do stuff.

I've never played New Vegas. Seems cool.


I think that's exactly backwards. He's saying Skyrim packages it all with a bow, New Vegas just lets you wander around and solve the problem on your own. If he's right, when you come up with a solution on your own, the game already has that option under the hood somewhere for you to take advantage of.

Exactly right Varus

Wait what?

How does Skyrim make you think for yourself? In the examples we JUST GAVE, New Vegas is the one that leaves little unbeaten paths for you to dig up yourself without the game having to tell you "do this." Skyrim on the other hand just directs you right to the other side, makes you hear their story and then a map marker tells you how to do the rest.

Another example: Caesar has a tumor. He has an idea how you could fix it. You could listen to his advice, or you could try performing the operation yourself. There, you can double-cross him and purposefully kill him during the operation, you could fail for being a dumb ass and offering to operate on a brain tumor when you have no clue what you're doing, you could hysterically succeed because you're lucky enough (luck stat), and depending on if he lived or not, you may have a fight or some persuading to do to save your own ass. If you take his advice, it's a simple fetch quest. Or if you really wanna think outside the box, you could find a doctor to sell to him as a slave.

My complaint is that 1) Skyrim would never offer this many choices on how to complete a quest.
And 2) If it did, these wouldn't be neat little things for you to find, but rather you would receive the quest and have:

"Find the Auto-doc for Caesar
OPTIONAL: Have 75 Medicine to operate on him yourself
OPTIONAL: Sabotage the operation
OPTIONAL: Have 9 Luck to operate on him yourself
OPTIONAL: Sell a doctor to Caesar as a slave"

Anyways, I think I've made my point...

skyrim is the one who isn't packaged prettily because you actually have to create roleplaying scenarios yourself. The game doesn't put in those little options so I...and yes, i'm saying I because this is how I play and you don't have to play the same even though i enjoy it....create all those little options and then some for myself. anyways, i liked new vegas even if I personally like skyrim better.

also it's important to note that the only game you're citing as an example is a game liscensed, envisioned and produced by bethesda...same people who make skyrim. So i think it's a fair point saying that other developers just don't do this kind of work.

well ultimately Longknife theres a problem.Obsidian did all the writing, Beth just published. what is apparent is the quality between the two...you've proven Obsidians array of choice/writing is superior...but people aren't concerned with quality..the mere fact that the bare minimum exists is enough to invalidate you it seems


again Supreme....NV is made by Obsidian...not Bethesda...and you're really missing the point if you keep bringing up "it allows you roleplaying opportunities" in being so bare. that the only place your options exists is in your head....WHY you're using something that you produce yourself not actually in game as a point is kind of well.....Que?

the fallout world, while originally created by black isle studios, was reinvisioned and recreated by bethesda. This is ultimately what took the series from dusty niche rpg to a popular well known series loved by a lot of people. Yes obsidian worked on new vegas, but it was still bethesda's world, vision and creation.

Nope. Obsidian Entertainment developed Fallout: New Vegas. Bethesda just published it.

Obsidian Entertainment = same people who made Fallout 2

Bethesda Game Studios = people who made Skyrim