When I first bought Skyrim, I was cautiously optimistic. The first week of Skyrim was pretty good. Exploring the new world and content was quite exhilarating. But then, after that first week, I noticed something. The game was starting to feel like a let down. The AI was incredibly poor, and often confined to a room. If you left that room, the AI would not follow you, even if it had line of sight. After level 30, I could successfully two-hit any enemy except a troll or dragon, and even those proved very little challenge. So after a while, I just lost interest, as there was no sense of reward nor challenge, even on the hardest difficulty. But I'm not here to talk about the reasons Skyrim let me down. I'm here because recently, I was bored, and decided to start another character, to see what the other side of the civil war quest line was.

The civil war sides are the exact same. Not even changing just a little bit. For example: the quest where you get the crown from the barrow; both sides claim to have the 'element of surprise'. So the whole dungeon is literally the same with the exception of swapped out enemies. Blue cloaks to red armor.

Both factions have the 'intercept messenger, and deliver fake orders' quests, and then the rest of both quest lines is to take a bunch of castles, with a similar ending in two similar cities.

What is this? This is lazy. There are no copy and pasted quests in Morrowind, nor Oblivion. There was a lot of potential with these two quest lines. They could both have drastically altered the environment around them. Instead you don't feel like anything has been done. And that's how I feel the Elder Scrolls: Skryim can be defined. Missed potential.

Does any one else feel this way?

Nope. I adore Skyrim, and don't feel it's 'missed potential'.

It isn't just "copy and paste." Do you understand the amount of time it takes to write scripts and code for a game of this size? Even if it is the same concept it is far from just pasting a script into another factions AI.

Yeah, it sure is a lot of work when you have a huge budget and a huge team and 4 years to do it. Why not spend that time making duplicate quests into something more rewarding?

Its called they didn't have enough time somewhere along the lines, and simply ignore anyone who says
"its fine" because it really isn't, the point of your post as -YOU STATED- if people would read isn't to complain about Skyrim just bringing up a downside -totally harmless- but still watch the flames arrive.. Imperial questline mirrors both sides and yet we have marriage go figure. it wll get better (hopefully) but on release there was alot to facepalm about.

I'm on the fence with this one. But it would be wrong to say no. Because a lot of things are the same or repetitive. But on the other hand Skyrim is such a big game that they had to cut corners. As excited as I was for it to come out, I wish they would've pushed the date a 2-3 months just so they could've changed the quests or some or make the cities bigger or give better NPC personalities.

I guess it's just my opinion, regardless though I still love Skyrim and all of The Elder Scrolls series!n

he obviously has no idea what goes into making a game of this size, I say just ignore him

I don't understand where you are coming from. The copy-paste is much more relevant in Oblivion, just look at the dungeons. I assume you are referring to radiant quests, but these add more to the game. Its simple fetch quests, but it gives more things to do in the game, and allows unlimited possibilities. There are some things that are a let down, such as the lack of depth in some of the factions, but overall its much better than oblivion.

Seriously, when Oblivion came out people did the same thing, now that Skyrim is out, the same people that said Oblivion svcked are now saying Oblivion is a legendary game compared to Skyrim. Makes no sense, Skyrim improved on almost everything.

Edit: I see, you're referring to the Civil War questline. Like I said, some things are lacking, but I hope you aren't implying that Skyrim is worse than oblivion, I don't understand when people say that.

How do they run out of time? Morrowind nor Oblivion ever had this issue. And considering they used the same engine Oblivion is on they saved a lot of time there. And I'm not talking about release. I'm talking about months after release. I just did this yesterday.

except they spent close to two years completely re-doing the engine so they didn't save any time

The elder scrolls is a "run through dungeons and kill things" game. Basically, quests are designed to give you more reason to go through dungeons but the exploring and doing dungeons is the biggest part of the game and the main scene where they worked on IMO

Dungeons I can understand being copy pasted, or bland and repetitive. But the actual quests, almost down to the same lines of dialogue written for the voice actors on either side to say, is quite lazy.

There was a hell of alot more meat to the Civil war Queslines, something EVERYONE would agree would have added so much to Skyrim it isn't even funny, from Camp raids, sieges, territory wars etc etc it would have been something glorious. maybe you guys will get a sixy DLC that continues the Civil war.

Radiant Quests. Look them up, the main questlines of the game don't really use this, but its used for small, misc. things. Adds much more things to do around the world.

Skyrim had a lot of potential, I will say that. Compared to other Elder Scrolls I think it's a bad game but stand alone the game is great.
P.S. I think the game is good.

I have. Though I don't think the first few of the civil war are radiant. Only the castles and such are, and even then they don't really change. My point is, I can't think of any other RPG that does this. And as far as Skryim being a 'dungeon crawler', I suppose if that is the truth, then Bethesda has come rather far from what the Elder Scrolls used to be. Morrowind wasn't a dungeon hack and slash. And it didn't have repeated quests.

Well I understand that it is repetitive in many ways but the team put a lot of work into the game. Millions of lines of scripting for the Radiant AI and encounters alone. Then add in the unique dungeons, factions, quest lines and all while completely redesigning the game engine. The Radiant scripts have to be one the greatest achievements in gaming that I've seen

I can understand where your coming from... One thing that let me down was, jumping now does not drain your stamina... Oh, and your weapons and armor do not degrade, ECT... But a ton of new stuff came along.. So I'm over it.. I hope they bring it back in future games...

Skyrim is shiny.

Oblivion, also shiny.

Morrowind was the much needed truth.

actually early in development Radiant Quests where used as the Bulk of the game, but they found it didn't work ala it was repetitive and boring so they wrote the questlines in what I would assume a not ideal length of time. who's bright idea to make Radiant Quests the Bulk of everything is beyond me, I do see wasted potential, along with Perks as well. the directions taken with Skyrim would have had Profound synergy with the aspects that were not included or omitted for inane reasons.

I agree with the Civil War quests. For as long as they had to work on this game it's a shame that they couldn't have each side different. It makes playing both sides useless. I played one side, have no need to play the other. No replay value for the Civil War quests.

The whole game really has no replay value. Everything can be done with one character and with no requirements for anything there is no reason to start over with a new character.

They held back alot of content just so they could sell you it in the future~

The ending to the main quest reaked of it.

atleast they were blatant about it like Bioware LOL

but think of it like this, THEY CAN'T POSSIBLY GO LOWER THAN THIS....though I'm cautious since I thought oblivion was the last time they'd streamline so much, boy was I wrong. But I'm more optimistic this time.

I recall in morrowind that they literally put the same quests with the only difference being location. Examples being help the pilgrim aid the naked nord and some others. These were not guild quests like the civil war( I'm considering it a guild) but even the guild quests in morrowind seemed very bland to me with a few exceptions. Now in oblivion I don't recall a lot of copy and paste feeling quests and over all it had the most diverse feeling quests but they were much shorter in number. What you can see from this is that it is a quantity vs quality situation, with oblivion in quality and skyrim leaning more towards quantity.

This is also kind of what I'm talking about as far as the direction of the Elder Scrolls games. Skyrim feels like it's "The Elder Scrolls Online Offline Skyrim." Go here kill this, end of quest, the world doesn't change.