I agree that the lack of reaction to your choices is a letdown. However, I feel like I can roleplay characters by following paths I set out for myself. My Mage character didn't pursue the Thieves Guild or the Companions, steal or do a bunch of hunting bandits quests. I wish the game recognized your choices more but I still feel there is a good amount of freedom for roleplaying provided.

Pretty good article and I'd have to agree for the most part because while there is this:


It's impossible to deny this:


And that right there is something I've noticed over the past decade which Todd and Bethesda just don't see to get. Throwing in a bunch of seemingly cool junk into a snowglobe, shaking it around and going "Ta-da!" doesn't make up for great stories, character development and a world which really changes and reacts to the players actions and decisions. I must say though, that this game seems much closer to getting there than their last couple. I feel like if they teamed up with Obsidian (who are unarguably far better writers) they could really hit a grand slam instead of a home run. But hey, nothing wrong with a home run.

This is not something we can agree to disagree to. It is not an opinion-based thing. To call a game an RPG means actually putting in RPG mechanics, of which Skyrim has few. By your definition, every game is role-playing game. If I'm playing Assassin's Creed and I decide that instead of being an Assassin, I want to be a thief even though the world and story never recognize me as such, am I then technically role-playing? Is Assassin's Creed then an RPG? What if I'm playing Grand Theft Auto and decide that, instead of killing people and stealing cars, I'm going to be a normal, law-abiding citizen that drives my own car at a normal, realistic speed and goes to the gym on weekends. By your definition, that would be role-playing and Grand Theft Auto technically would be an RPG.

Yes, you need "stats" to recognize some semblance of what your character is because that's what makes an RPG an RPG and not an action game where you're just pretending a bunch of unsupported nonsense. I don't know how you think the world not reacting to anything you do or ally yourself with is a good thing, I don't know how you can think a complete lack of factions (they're not factions, they're tiny, lackluster quest clusters with absolutely no reputation attached to them or your being a part of any of them... they're even forced on the player as though Bethesda wants you to do them all via the main questline and don't give a crap what kind of character you are or who else you want to attach yourself to) is a good thing either, or how a complete lack of any spell creating options, plot choices (I miss Daggerfall), choice/consequences of any kind (the only thing Skyrim has is questioning whether that perk should go here or there and that's it... not much of an RPG), and limited character customization are good either.

Are you implying it's not possible to make a profitable game with a team I can count on two hands?

So your definition of RPG is a game with stats. To be honest, that sounds about as dull as any other description, and duller than most. I can play this game in several different styles and still progress - RPG game.

Yeah, sure... pretend "stats" is a dirty word and indirectly, vaguely generalize everything I've said as useless "stats" without actually addressing what I'm saying. Because of a fear of "stats", we cannot have any actual choices or consequence for anything we do.

You make some good points and I agree that RPG's need some form of stats which Skyrim has, otherwise they'll just be the Mass Effect 2's of the world pretending to be an RPG when they really are a 3rd person shooter with choices or in more recent terms, blue happy red angry but both lead to the same conclusion. Skyrim has 18 attributes (The skills) and 3 main core attributes that fit the RPG quota if there is such a term and the stats of the game. Regardless of that I still believe that Skyrim is GOTY and an improvement in 75-90% of the areas of gameplay from Oblivion and the previous games. Forbes article is laughable in saying that Skyrim doesn't deserve to be GOTY because the world is boring when it's quite the opposite, it shouldn't be taken seriously.

I prefer my RPG's to require more thought than watching Looney Toons. They don't need stats for that, but they sure as hell don't have any room to remove them either.

This profitable? And of this scope?

You're free to go ahead and try, though.

You can't compare apples to oranges, but you can compare fruit to fruit. You can only compare shared characteristics. You need to define what Skyrim shared with Deus Ex and compare only those. Skyrim wasn't trying to be a more compact focused story (it can't be, for the concept), so they shouldn't be judged better or worse on that point.

You can't beat me in a race that I'm not racing. The developers of the 2 games had different goals for their games in mind.

It would be more fair to compare Fallout: New Vegas to Skyrim. Basically the same kind of game, but with different themes.

Admittedly, I don't really give a crap about the Forbes article or any quibbling over the title of GOTY. However, it's pretty much engraved by the definition of fact that Skyrim has less in the way of RPG mechanics than its predecessors, that it seems very much so even certain aspects such as factions have just been rushed by the 11/11/11 release date (standard Bethesda procedure). It's blatantly clear that there's a trend of choice/mechanics reduction over the years and games and it's something I feel we should be fighting against every step of the way no matter how much we like other things in their games.

No, don't get me wrong. Consequences are sorely missed. There really should be a whole load of game content that I simply cannot play, because I'm not good at magic. I believe in that, but currently as it stands I can more or less do all quests with any one build. No-one is to be excluded

No, I believe there should be consequences for decisions, but I'm certainly not going to hunch over stat charts to do this. The game content needs to be better, not the mechanics. I mean sure they can always be improved, anything can be improved, but when the game world allows for any build to perform any quest, no exceptions, well that's the game content design.

As far as the mechanics go, I've seen someone roleplay Skyrim as a pacifist for God's sake, didn't kill a thing. That tells me the mechanics work.

I agree with pretty much everything the article says, I really liked Human Revolution and thought it was polished and excelled in gameplay (apart from the boss fights), dialog, and story (apart from the ending.) Portal 2 was also pretty good, though I found myself getting a bit bored of it midway through, the puzzles started to feel like contrived filler, but that may just be because I was playing for too long at a stretch. Where I disagree is in prioritizing the strengths and weaknesses of the different games. For a game the size of Skyrim to have the polish and carefully crafted gameplay that Human Revolution had, they would have to spend ten years developing and charge hundreds of dollars per copy. It provides exactly what I'm looking for in a game of its type - a huge open world that I can get lost in, and to serve as a backbone for mods that extend the playability for years. I think Bethesda deserves a great deal of credit for having the &@!!s to release a game with more content than most modern titles can claim even after you've added in their DLC. For me, DXHR and Skyrim are both at the top of their respective categories, they are ultimately games that fill different niches even though both are considered open world RPGs.

It's a little funny that all this infighting is kicked off because ONE guy said this was his THIRD best game this year. Not the worst, nor even close to it, merely the third BEST. And somehow this is seen as proof of Bethesda's failure

Deus Ex wasn't boring...it was mind-numbingly stupid.

Regarding consequence... It's true It's a letdown compared to Fallout, but when comparing to previous TES games I think It's been improved (Aside from the bug that prevents guards from losing old greetings).

You know, your right it's a better ranking then IGN's exclusion of the PS3 version of Skyrim.

Deus Ex doesnt touch skyrim. Very little meaningful interaction and repetitive level design. Couldnt bring myself to finish it. Anywho, my GOTY vote goes like this: Dark Souls, Skyrim. Not in that order but as a collective. If those two games had an offspring it would be a stand alone GOTY.

I don't care what other people think, it is a console defining game for me. Computers are for MMO's and RTS.


360 - Skyrim, FIFA multiplayer
Xbox - Halo 2 Mulitplayer
64 - Ocarina of Time, Goldeneye
SNES - pick a Square game

Do you praise them for addressing only 50% of the console market?

IGN gave xbox 360's GOTY to Skyrim, as well as PC's one, not to mention the "best RPG of the year" prizes from the same magazine, being one that has been talking trash of skyrim since the E3 demo.

It's one man's opinion, one I don't share.

As far as I'm concerned, Skyrim isn't just GOTY, but a "Greatest Game of All Time" candidate.

I thought the article was about Skyrim's glitches. Yeah he's kind of right and the Companions' questline was disappointingly short.

Fix'd.

Forbes.

Yes, I need to get my opinions on what makes good entertainment from financial magazines, which are known for their flair, whimsy, and let's party attitude

Looks to me like Forbes is in trouble