Okey so I've made a few threads (mainly ages ago) commenting on how Skyrim didnt measure up to some other RPG's in some aspects.
I mentioned how in the BG series for example they had a much more compelling story line with a bunch of other reasons as to why it is a better RPG.

What makes it so frustrating is how amazing and detailed the Skyrim world is, and how great the freedom Bethesda offers is.. if it was just a little bit more.. gripping. If there was something there that made you WANT to keep going, other than making your character better or whatever...

People replied saying that it is an open world so they cant do blah blah blah. My quesion is why not?
Why can the main story line not be compelling? I dont understand?
Why can the NPC's not have backgrounds and personalities?!?

I understand, dont agree with, but understand the simplification of some gameplay mechanics to attract a wider audience... but Bethesda really! Is making the story better going to hurt your sales? Is adding believable NPC's (Companians you take with you mainly) going to hurt anything? If someone isnt interested in those things they can just skip through dialogue or just tell them to shut up..

Story wise I dont really have any suggestions, thats up to you and your writers.. but for companians what I would suggest is do something like Baldurs Gate did.. Have a timer in the background (that the player cant see). After say 1 hour with the companian they decide they trust your character enough to say a few words.. maybe asking some questions, maybe saying what they're thinking.. whatever. This progresses more and more.. and you find out whether the character you're playing would like the companians personality and they find out if they like you. Obviously there is more to it than that, and it would have to be well implimented, but you guys are one of the leading gaming studios in the world. Figure it out.

While you're at it, another thing that BG2 does really well is having a reputation score.. Killing a bunch of people for no reason will make people hate you in the area, reguardless of whether you have paid your fine or not. It makes no sense to me that when I kill someones husband (not often, I dont go round murdering but whatever) the person attacks me untill I pay the guards then is like 'OH HEY NICE TO SEE YOU'

These are just some BASIC ideas that could be implimented.. which I stole from a 10+ year old game. How hard could it really be?


My thoughts as to answering my own questions about why not is that these things don't get easier with Technology. The graphics, the gameplay and the animation gets taken care of by newer computer systems. Story and Characters is going to take work. It's just lazyness stopping these things from being implemented.

They already have something of a reputation system. You just don't see it. But NPC's react differently based on whether or not they hate you. Sometimes it's to easy to change, but it makes sense that people stop attacking you after you paid your fine. They would just be cut down by guarsd if you didn't.

As for the better story: I agree with the quests, however companions? No, a large part of what makes companions great is random conversation, which works in game with 2 or more followers because they talk to eachother. In this game it would eithe mean constant dialogue options or getting questions and not getting an answer.

I don't understand these general rants. Probably best not to think about. I mean, exactly what are you going to do about it? Cause a developmental and corporate shakeup?

If you can apply your ideas in your own game, then I wish you the best though.

The Devs read these forums, if somebody has good idea's and other people agree with it then the Devs might just work on implementing that the next time. It's only when your post becomes a shouting match or a huge complaint with no useful critique in it that they become useless.

I personally don't see what's wrong with the story in the game. I love and it's big reason as to why I play it. Could you elaborate on what's wrong with it?

As for NPC's not having background and personalities... I can't argue with that one. You're completely right and Bethesda dropped the ball on that one. However I don't like the idea of my follower not talking. If you're out in the wild with someone, you agreed to accompany, you probably will have a conversation.

Reputation in towns could be a nice feature. As long it is contained in towns instead of some stranger in the wild who suddenly hates you for something you did a 1000 miles behind.

Well, possibly modifying your starting reputation based on race would be helpfull, and it having more of an effect.

Well, personally I would like to see more depth to companians... that was just an example of how it could be implimented. There could also be a 'shut up' dialogue option.. like 'can we bring this up later' which would stop them from talking to you until you feel like you want to. Or even have it similar to KOTOR where you bring it up with them..

@Korr, Where else could we bring up ideas? Maybe one of the Devs will be bored as hell and read this. Maybe they wont. Worth a shot anyway.



I personally dont find the story THAT great. It isn't horrible, but I don't really find it too epic.

I dont mean they dont talk to you.. I mean that after time spent together they decide to open up a bit more and share their background.. or whatever.

And yeah, I agree it should be contained. Unless you pretty much took out all of Solitude.. then someone in Riften could be like 'arent you the guy who.. no it cant be'.. Or just something to make you think 'hey people notice stuff'

I could agree with the companion thing, but I doubt it will ever be created. Kotor, Mass Effect, Dragon Age and other recent examples of having that are all games aimed at party based adventures. For Bethesda it would be a lot of work and a lot of money to invest in something that a lot of users aren't going to use (especially if every follower has a different voice and personality)...

Changing standing with people based on race, I think is at least slightly implemented. Some people refuse to talk to any non-Nord character.

and you are still going at it?
why not just stop playing the game if you don't like it? it's not that if you keep complaining the game you already own will get better, even if bethesda will release updates they not going to change the mechanics and the overall feeling until the next game

How is he saying that the entire game svcks? People can enjoy it and still find problems with it.

how am I saying he did?

The one thing I would have liked to have seen from followers, which we don't already have, would be incidental conversations.

Comparing something like Dragon Age to Skyrim would be a pointless endeavour. Such very different games. But one thing which Dragon Age does do, and could actually be fairly plausibly introduced into Skyrim, is the triggering of random conversations which your companions in Dragon Age spark up with while you're wandering around NOT fighting stuff. A fairly significant pool of topics of conversation (Some relating to the plot, some to themselves, some to other characters) which trigger as you pass certain points in the landscape while you are walking around.

If there were to be such a system in a future Elder Scrolls title it would really help to flesh out the characters you travel with. It would have to be a pretty significant pool of sound clips, but it would be one way to improve immersion from an NPC POV.

Yeah that sounds pretty good to me too.. I just think SOME sort of personality would help a little bit. Maybe they could spark up in conversations your having with quests trying to influence your opinion or whatever? I dunno. Just more would be cool.


Yeah true, I'm not really expecting something like a Bioware game, though it would be freeking AWESOME if there was a TES game that Bioware and Bethesda made together.. haha.

Yeah, I guess reputation is slightly different in some cases.. but more of a difference. They dont let Khajiit into town, but I can join the Stormcloaks as a Khajiit without any other achievements?


I think I exaggerated. It was one and it was more a 'why we compare this game to Morrowind' thread.
I dont quit because the world is amazing and I want to explore it. I dont play very much though.
I made this thread because I thought I had a good idea and wanted to see if other people agreed, or whether other people had similar ideas, which they seem to.

ok, that's fine, I probably over reacted to the 1000th "no good story" thread

I would love to have Skyrim with more racism in it, where the race you play actually makes a difference to how the game will play out for you, but something like that is a lot harder to make. Bethesda is limited in the amount of money they can spend on creating a game, so obviously it's a bit hard/expensive for them to do something like that. No matter how awesome it would be.

While there's a chance devs will read the forums occassionally, I have a little experience always finding them avoiding general forums. Sometimes I hang out on some developer forums and it turns out members there are high profile developers. Not just developers, but marketing and money men too (for example, one forum I end up running into the baseball player Kurt Schilling, of all people.. who went on to help out with that new game, Kingdoms of Amalur). They get more breathing room in places like this.. and they will talk to you gladly. Your best bet is checking stuff like that out.

Which doesnt hold a candle on the reputation system we used to have.
It has been gutted.
Now all disposition is behind the screens, you cannot directly manipulate it or see what it is, and limited to not like- indifferent - like.
This is not a good thing, it again means less game for my buck.

I do agree that the old system was better, but there is something like it in there.

Well yes, that is true and certainly something is better than nothing.
But what strikes me every time when playing Skyrim is that I just dont get it.
So much depth has been removed, and for what reason?
I liked the disposition system (the Morrowind one, Oblivion had a minigame and they have no place in an RPG)
I dont understand why all the options, all the depth, all the intricacy has been removed.
Your race means nothing, factions do not interact and dont even have ranks anymore and disposition has been gutted and placed behind the scenes.
Reading threads like these I find that people like deep RPG's that have lots of things to twiddle around with.
The more the better, it makes for a deeper game with more replayability.
So for the life of me I can not understand why the choice was made to make Skyrim as shallow as most of its waters.

But would it really cost so much? Thats what I dont understand. After spending so damn much money creating the world and the graphics etc, a few added companians with personalities couldnt hurt too much...

And reputation surely wouldnt be too hard to impliment.. if I ever get a PC capible of running more than space invaders I'll give modding one in a shot.

I dislike that, despite their claims at freedom, our freedom really only extends to exploring the world. We can't really make any choices aside from accept quest or don't do quest.

For example:

Can't join daedra hunters
Can't join town guard
Can't destroy theives guild
Can't join silver hand
Can't route out the corrupt Silverbloods
Can't route out the corrupt Black-Briars
Can't join dragons

Given a quest to sacrifice a loyal follower, can't decline quest
Given a quest to murder a priest after torturing him, can't decline quest
Given a quest to steal from/extort poor people, can't decline quest
Given a quest to do something bad, decline it, quest goes to journal anyways.

Those sort of things I find irritating. For all the so called non-linearity, we sure are railroaded.

I think the only practical way to do this would be to remove the voice acting and put the money into scripting. Otherwise not only does the extra scripting cost money on its own, you have to voice act it all, which costs a fortune. Personally I would be fine with removing voice acting, but it will never happen.

I agree. The amount of times I have wanted a quest to [censored] up the Black-Briars. Its still an awesome game, but it could be so so much better.. so easily.

That statment rings true on so many levels. The only one of my RL friends who even considered Skyrim doesnt like it because he says it isnt an RPG. The rest of my RL friends call me a geek when (if) I bring it up.. so yeah.. trying to sell it to the 'casual' gamers may be working sometimes, but you loose your main market.. Then when other games start getting good open worlds you'll loose the casual gamer also. Meh, I guess they make a lot of money in the short term this way and thats the objective..

Or increase the budget slightly? They knew they were going to make a killing off this game anyway... and its not like they have a poor company. Comparing the amount that would be needed to what would already have been spent.. wouldnt it be worth it to make your game truely epic?

Or you spend more time plotting the game as text only until you're 100% happy with the way the quest logic and options work before bringing any voice actors in. They should be brought into the project MUCH later on.

Thinking a bit about it, alot of what makes us (me included) complain is the decision about the GUI that was made. Instead of having lots of conversation, we ended up with a few lines instead. When the CK comes out, and if there will be UI mod that "solves" the issues, I'll try to get the spare time to rewrite a city or two with dialogue. If one got the necessary GUI for it, the rest is just patience. Besides, it'd make it easier for the general public to make mods, since you don't require all the voice acting, resulting in more mods and some gems that would never have seen daylight otherwise.

Unlike in other games where you can opt out of the main narrative.

Wait. Are there any?

The fact that we can explore and ignore the main quest entirely is really what defines the series. You may be railroaded with a small 'r' in some ways, but you aren't Railroaded with a capitol 'R' like you are...in every other game ever made.