I don't buy TES games for a story to be pushed on me, I buy them for a world to locate MY stories in. The fact that Skyrim has some stories is gravy, a side dish that is not entirely necessary.

If repetitive combat (I haven't played any game not having repetitive combat to be honest) and a mediocre storyline are the tradeoffs for a completely open world with NPCs living their own lives and tons of possibilities, I think it's a good bargain.

GOTY is a difficult thing to decide on especially in a year with a lot of great games that are all diff enough to repel some players and draw in others.

However I think skyrim has enough flaws "unintended ones" that it shouldnt get GoTY from a technical standpoint. I do NOT think that waiting for patches and modded content to "fix" these issues is a justifiable way to go about it. The games really fun, but if you play one char for any length of time, yes it becomes repetitive. its essentially a lot of free form eye candy with poor AI, a shoddy radiant AI system, some good/poor scaling, and plethora of other bugs and such.

every game has its flaws, but games that for me were better then skyrim.

dark souls-more precise combat, a more barren and intriguing story, sometimes bizarre but always unique art design, and some truly unique systems. it suffers as much as it gains from its hallmark "difficulty" as it repels as many players as it attracts. a amazing experience for those that can handle the difficulty and hard times. one of the best in years imo.

deus ex-ok, im partially biased here because i enjoyed that his homebase was in michigan , but storyline wise whie it utilized some cliches it was also VERY intriguing as a good bit of it felt very tangible and believable. I also felt you could better customize how you char worked then skyrim...but this is because of skyrims inconsinstancy brought on by how you level up and level scaling.

portal 2-portal and this game are probably one of my fav games ever, it puts voice acting in many games to shame, and the gameplay is simply addicting as all hell. i hope they make a fps game that uses portals eventually...or hell...tes game that has the portals as a spell. its just an amazing concept.

witcher 2-the first one may not have been everyones cup of tea cuz of combat system (i still loved it) but witcher 2 is MY GoTY hands down, even with a rushed ending and sometimse inconsistant difficulty. the story is awesome, the world is rich, the consequences of choice is possibly the best ive ever seen in a game, and ive played em all where choice has "consequence". people rave over skyrims graphics, yet skyrims doesnt hold a candle to witcher 2. im sorry, but if they wouldnt have rushed the endign of this game, i would strongly think its the best game ever. I cannot overstate how much i loved playing it and replaying it.

Skyrim does the hard stuff right, its the easy stuff that they got lazy on.
The lore is increibly deep but it is utilized poorly like said above, it wouldn't take much for Bethesda to hire a few good writers and give them the lore as a springboard to write more intricate quests and dialogue. Crafting easily fixed by making materials harder to come by and using diminishing returns as your level increases. If these two things had been done it would have been near perfect.

are you sure you read jrr tolkein? His writing and skyrim are absolutely nothing alike other then They are fantasy based. Tolkein is the godfather of the genre and a legend. Maybe you didn't understand lord of the rings the first time you read it, or maybe you watched the movies so that could explain your serious lack of knowledge on the subject. Tolkein used allegory to perfection to craft his stories something skyrim doesn't even try. Skyrim is basically what happens if you throw a bunch of 13 year olds who love fantasy role play into a room and tell them to write a story. I can't even begin to understand how someone could be so dumb as to make this comparison. They are nothing alike and no one on bethesda's staff has a fraction of the talent or vision tolkein had. It's enraging to see this comparison. Grow up and actually improve ur cognativr abilities cuz it's just so sad.
I love literature and lotr and tolkein are not my fav books ever but Its easily the best fantasy epic ever written. what u wrote is so atrocious humanity just died a little. Next time don't comment on tolkein just stick to the kardashians. Or if u want to help itself read:

the Greek classics
then Beowulf
the old and new testament

then lord of the rings

And mayb u will finally understand tolkein

if that doesn't work then buy a study guide just so u don't sound so dumb

and if u finally see why tolkein is vastly superioir maybe then, just maybe u could go to more advanced lit like the russians and David foster Wallace

Tell then stick to goosebumps and dungeon and dragons cuz u fail at reading

Why should there be a tradeoff? I wish we could have both

Lets see what we got in terms of game.

Annual football games fifa and such, with no real change from previous year
Annual other sport games, no real change from previous year
Annual Racing games, Added new cars as they have been released by carproducers
20 shooter games all claiming to bring something new, still same modes, same guns etc etc
20 come sing/ dance/ play instrument along games that seem like copies from each others


So why is Skyrim burned for repetive game play while those listed above have the same gameplay divided over multiple games?

* Past: RPG Gameplay mechanics have suffered. Now we have to imagine (some call this role play) much of what should have been mechanics that was stripped away to suit the common gamer rather than the role player.
* Present: Now story telling and story content have to be imagined too. Does also this qualify as role play, or would you rather have the game present it to you?
* Future: I'm guessing in the next game we will have to imagine combat and magic too. Everyone still happy?

It's strange I did not buy many 2011 games at all the only ones I did buy are Skyrim, Portal 2 and Heroes VI and TBH Heroes VI has been my 'favourite' (I haven't played any previously so can't say if it's the best of the series or not ) which technically makes it my GOTY

With all the disappointing titles being released this year I would say Skyrim is a light in the dark.

Wow hating on forbes for not being game centric and not picking skyrim goty. It's not like deus ex and portal 2 were less then phenomenal games. If you can't see what either of those two games does better than skyrim than I highly doubt you could call yoruself "a gaming expert". And that's not to say skyrim doesnt do things better than either of those two games. It's not like all the other gotys are chosen by a group of peers they are all chosen by people like u and me who have played most of the quality titles this year. The only one I havnt played is witcher 2 and i can't wait to sink my teeth into it. My top games are deus ex, portal 2, arkham city, skyrim, uncharted 3, and dark souls. If one of those wins i will always find it justifiable.

Troll article is troll and it's completely laughable. TES is not known for their stories, basing it on that is ludacrious, I guess I shouldn't take that site seriously anymore or at least the author of that troll article.

Where people have an unanswerable point is bugs, at least on PS3. I have not experienced any serious bugs on Xbox.

But personally, when I finished Deus Ex I had great buyer's remorse. One playthrough of 30 hrs or whatever and since then it is sitting idle. Skyrim has given a long emotional ride. Like GTA, it will be a game I often load up just to have some fun for an hour. But everyone has a different opinion.


I think I had such a good time with Skyrim because I knew exactly what the game would be like and designed my play experience to fit that.

so it's not known for it's story even though there's hours and hours of dialog and books are littered everywhere in the game. Yes that makes perfect sense.

That's the problem with Deus Ex, no replay value what so ever, Uncharted 3 has that same problem both are the exact same if you play through them again. Skyrim, it's going to be different every time unless you intentionally do the same thing every time.

Unsurprisingly, different people have different tastes.

Sandbox games are always going to suffer when it comes to narrative. Try writing a non-linear story, you'll see why. The best narratives are always unrelentingly linear. Companies making linear games had better have good narratives, otherwise there's little reason to play them.

Of course Skyrim's narratives could be better, but I think that's more a content-development + cost issue than it is a quality issue. If they only had to write a single storyline, it would be much better. People expect them to write a dozen stories each as good as the stories produced by companies making one-story games. That's just silly. I spend so much time RP that I barely notice the story anyways. Take the Mages Guild example: he never cast a single spell? He does realize it's a RP game, right? The fact that the game allows you to complete a quest in a non-immersive way doesn't mean the game is broken, it means you're not really digging into it. If it's not your cup of tea, that's fine, but you can't fault the game for not forcing you to try.

All the writer has demonstrated is that Skyrim doesn't match his preferences and play-style as well as other games do. I don't find combat to be boring or repetitive and I've got over 200 hours invested in it. Then again, I'm always trying new things and using my imagination. Something that most games won't allow me to do. His opinion isn't wrong, it's just that it's only an opinion. I don't find his criticisms to be terribly deep. I rarely ever play linear games because I find them to be restrictive and boring but I'm aware of the fact that that isn't a design issue, it's just my personal preference.

Still not sure why people care so much about this. End of the year = dozens of "best of" lists. Each from different people with different opinions.

And, shockingly, not everyone has the same opinions. Some critic not being as big a fan of your favorite (movie, game, musician, concert, TV show, etc) doesn't harm you. People acting like Skyrim not getting GotY (or getting it) is some great event/tragedy/personal insult..... just confuses the heck out of me.

Someone else didn't like (insert thing here) as much as you did. So what?


(of course, this also ties back to me not really understanding why people have to be fans of just one thing. It's completely possible to like Skyrim, Portal 2, DX:HR, and CoD. You don't have to choose just one of them, and then rabidly defend it against the others. Eh, whatever.)

I make up my own stories, a huge detailed gameworld is something that I need to do that in. Skyrim isn't just good at it, it doesn't have any real competition. Few other games are openworld, and none have a focus on details as well. This is why TES games will always take my personal GOTY, small linear games like Portal 2 are just boring to me compared to a openworld game.

So is their reason vallid? Depends on what you're looking for in a game. Storydriven games like those from Bioware require a good story to even be considered a GOTY contender. If you want a storydriven experience then likely you weren't going to consider Skyrim a GOTY anyway, it just wouldnt be your kind of game.

What that article is missing is the fact that Skyrim has re-playability. In a linear game you'll get maybe 30 hours and that's it, when it's done it's done. In Skyrim and other TES games you can play them for years and years and never get bored.

This thread, along with that article, are

TRoLLiNg down the street smoking endo
Sipping on gin & juice
Laid back

I disagree with that, you can certainly tell a great story in an open world game/RPG. New Vegas's story is pretty good and Red Dead Redemption while not an RPG tells a pretty good story too. Some on this site would argue that Morrowind had a good story too so I do believe it's possible. I think blame for that mainly falls on Emil, he does a good job with some elements of story but in other areas he falls flat in, if he had someone the caliber of an Avellone helping him then Skyrim or any future beth game would have a better story.

I've already been surprised by how well 'Radiant Story' works ... Sure, it's the same quest, just with a different subject and object, but the brilliance behind coupling this with empty quests is that this allows each player to interpret events in their own way.

Would I have liked a bit less emptiness? Yes. Would I have liked better combat and strategy? Yes.

That said, Skyrim is one of the better of the games of the year.

Hey guys, I like Skyrim I've played it over 150 hours. I've played alot of games this year and I think its the best that came out this year. I had some issues with the game but installing mods are easy adn it fixes the issues that I've had with the game. I understand that for alot of people this isn't the game for them. I hope you enjoyed it enough that you got your $60.00 worth of fun out of the game.

Not surprising really. Skyrim with its ultra linear storylines off course couldn't beat the linear games in their own game. Instead of 400 quests, they should have 100 quests with multiple outcomes. The game already supports killing, sneaking and sneaking+killing right out of box, just add two(or more) diplomatic solutions and it would be enough. But the scripted nature of the game often violates even the sandbox solutions. And I am willing to give a pass to MQ, it can be as linear as they want. But the rest of the game must be more.

http://grindingdown.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/being-nice-in-skyrim-means-even-to-daedric-princes/

Roleplaying is not about cherry picking. It should have been this trait that would blow this guy's mind. It is not there and he is not satisfied with its linear nature because there are better linear storylines out there. What will happen, TES will adopt a more linear narrative or they will live up to their potential and give us quests which are subject to sandboxing?

It is nice that TES doesn't put artificial limitations on you but Morrowind had faction requirements and they weren't artificial. Those were good limitations that enhances freedom. You could cast any spell with a chance of success, now that is gone. Factions had a disposition matrix which was changing on your actions and world events. So one group could start to hate you or another group without a dialog gate or scripted event, just by the mechanics of the world. That's how consequences should manifest in game world. Like the destroying local windmill and affecting economy and that affecting the civil war. These mechanics are the way of evolution for TES. I think TES went to a more strictly handholding state while eliminating natural consequences. They should return natural limitations, this absolute freedom is hurting the game. Everything is staged, nothing is real. That's not a living breathing world.

More mechanics to affect the game world globally based on events and player actions is what I desire to see in TES. It should be more open and less scripted, with less handholding... If that is bringing chaos, so be it. I want to see RAI in its full potential, chaos sounds better than a lifeless, consequence free world. Imagine, the actions you do were changing the trust Imperials and rebels have for you. Now, imagine you were playing the rat. Imagine the moral dilemmas that would introduced without a narrative. That is where this is at, questing and mechanics are combined to deliver a narrative.

I think tactically, sneaking leaves a lot to be desired but it isn't that bad. Linear dungeon designs are again the problem. And in default difficulty and with level scaling, it is not that hard to require tactics. He is right about these aspects but these can be addressed with mods. The narrative can't be fixed by mods though and advanced mechanics to make the world open and believable is very hard to implement for modders. Bethesda should have been the leader in that.

I'm not saying it's not possible, and that some games don't have better stories than others, I'm saying that it's unrealistic to expect a game with dozens of stories to have even a single storyline as deep and rich as a linear game with a single narrative. That's just naive, so it's not really a valid criticism. (Directed at the reviewer, not you.) It's fair to compare sandbox games on the quality of their stories, and it would be easy to rank ES games, for example, but it's not fair to compare Skyrim to something like Portal 2 based on writing and narrative alone. Every linear narrative should be better than any one story in Skyrim or they're doing something very, very wrong. Saying that Skyrim's quests are not as good as quests in other sandbox games is a valid criticism. Saying that they are not as good as Portal 2, Uncharted 3, or dozens of other games wouldn't be worthy of note.