I'm willing to wait for expansions before I make the harsh judgment that the game is shallow or has no consequences. It's not easy to program hundreds of tangents to accommodate every possible combination of paths that a character may take. The devs would probably have to limit each character to one guild association to add some realism. Like you'd have to be shunned by The Companions for joining something ignoble like the DB and/or TG or as suspicious as the College of Winterhold. You can chalk up the ability to join every guild to the devs being lazy or to the fact that they want one character to be able to experience everything (or almost everything) instead of having to run through the game 4 or 5 times taking different paths every time.

That being said: I do think we could get a little more recognition from our actions/notoriety even if it's merely dialogue.

I only messed with them on one character...on the other I'm with them. Hail Sithis?

Be careful what you wish for.There are ways to make you regret this. Nazeem could stuff himself into your backside.

The assassination of Ferdinand was the catalayst. That's not worth debating over.

So how doesn't this apply to Skyrim with the Imperials on one side and the Stormcloaks on the other? I think it's safe to say the civilians have opinions on the matter as exemplified by the occasional NPC walking along the road telling you he's going to join the Stormcloaks; and the assassination of the Emperor would be a perfectly legitimate reason to touch off the Civil War weather you wanted it to happen or not. Suppression of rights by both sides in the cities they control, outbreaks of violence, riots, etc. That would change the tone and overall atmosphere of Skyrim considerably. But it doesn't. Things just go on as normal with the exception of a couple of NPCs mentioning it as you walk by. No new Emperor is ever crowned and no action is ever taken against anyone for anything over it.

There's a difference between legitimate criticism and whining. In this case, the utterly static nature of Skyrim is worth critiquing because it really hurts the immersion experience. Whining complaints consist of things like getting apoplexic over the existence of the Fast Travel feature. The reason that's whining is because one doesn't have to ever use it if they don't want. Similar complaints amount to nothing more than whining for the sake of it. But in this thread, the criticisms have some substance to them.

Let's not get hasty, here. I'm sure there's some middle ground to be found.

You can become Archmage of the College even if you arent a mage, so come on. The script treats you like you're a messianic figure. I could barely keep a ward up more than 3 seconds. It's a joke.

u can use dragon shouts which basically is the same end result as magic.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria would beg to differ.

Uhm ... maybe because there are BOUND to be spoilers posted in here? The OP is asking whether there is anything in the game which will have consequences, so of course others will answer with either "yes, this, this and that for example." or "no, not even this, this or even that!". Taking precautionary action, you know?

I only know one big decision which has an important impact: taking the dragon stone from Bleak Falls to Farengar, so you have to fight a dragon and the dragon spawning begins. Aside from that, nope. Nothing important to my character anyway. I'm already happy the mages at the College recognize me as the Archmage! Too bad the jarl doesn't, but well, other than saying he hates the nearby College, he doesn't really say anything at all concerning the College.

Too bad they don't recognize you as the Dragonborn. When I used a few shouts against the Eye of Magnus at the start, Tolfdir only wondered loudly "What was that?". Not even the residing thalmor recognizes you, which was quite annoying to be frank. I'd think he'd at least contact the embassy every now and then to get the latest news.

I will not discuss this with you. You should know that it is against the forum rules. Read above what I said about it, but there will be no discussion on it. Take it or leave it.

It is good that you mention it, because I too see it as whining. I also agree with you that there is no illegitimate whining. Good point.

i actually like the fact they dont reconize u as the dragonborn for on reason, it gives u the oppertunity to play the game and not be forced into the dragonborn unless u do only the MQ and eventually in the civil war, everything else u can play as u want if u dont wanna play as the dragonborn. But yes other than that i do find it pretty silly but then again ur charector isnt really going around spouting hes the dragonborn and even Ulfric can use the thuum so ur not uniguely special JUST because u can use the thuum because others can.

Is the game Shallow? Maybe yes, maybe no (although I think it's not quite as shallow as some seem to think, but, whatever ...)
I don't really care either way, I'm enjoying the game for what it is, nothing more, nothing less.

Nothing in the terms of service prohibits me from talking about ancient history.
Nor am I in any way required not to reply to any post made on a public message board, or unable to politely suggest that it might be a good idea to brush up on your history before making laughably incorrect statements about the general trends of said history and then dismissing any further discussion in a supercilious manner.

Skyrim is an RPG, so the player has to meet the game half way and fill out the storylines with all the PC's own theories of why things turn out the way they do and what might be going on in the NPCs heads. If you don't bring anything to your 'role' then you may not feel like you get anything either, since the spaces are deliberately there for you to fill. For continuity with any future TES projects the end of the storylines has to remain consistent - but the player gets to fill in as much 'middle' as they want to, which is where RPGers get their enjoyment, yes?

I find linear games to be the most shallow, and feel like a puppet when I'm handed huge chunks of storyline involving relationships etc, not to mention all the cinematics that come with story heavy games like this that turn you into a spectator.

If you are a collaborator with the game you'll get more out of an open world game like Skyrim than you would from a story heavy game that prompts you to input choice A or choice B and then proceeds to deal out the appropriate next chunk of material. There's always a price for freedom. In Skyrim the price is probably a bit of player imagination.

It would have been way too much work to add about 5 lines for every important character, to comment on current affairs/your actions.
Yes, creating about almost a thousand locations is way easier, and a better use of Bethesda's time.

The worst offence is the followers you get from becoming thane. Lydia is not a human, she is a robot who does everything you say without question, and doesn't mind that you slaughter her entire town.

Discussing Wars and History is fine

Discussing past wars is OK, it is when we discuss the politics surrounding the war that things become an issue and that is because current politics always seems to get dragged into it. However, WW1 is off topic to Skyrim, so lets just discuss the game. If you want to discuss history, do so in Community Discussion.

Since CCNA allows it will I repeat what I have said before... The people wanted war. It could have been triggered by many things or one could have given it only a bit more time and it would have kicked off by itself. A failed cow trade between two farmers can then become the trigger.

If it was as simple as you believe it to be then we would have assassinations all over the world and we had war everywhere. Do you see this being the case?

Nor does your point of killing the Emporer make in anyway sense, because the war is already ongoing. People will in fact expect to see assassination attempts on the Emporer. You have them in almost every war.

This game might as well be linear, and I'm comparing it to previous TES games, none of them felt this formula ridden, this static and this pointless.

did anyone really like the ending? nothing freaking happened, you stared at some dragons flying around and that was it. Easily the worst ending in a TES game. Every Faction quest pretty much ended the same way, basically your wondering WTF and when something was going to happen.

Seriously could we have had something in Skyrim that deviated from this static formula?

Bethesda was to busy planting bushes around the world to deviate from there formula. It like they made one faction questline and copied that formula to the other factions questlines and just changed a couple of this around to TRY and disguise it.

Are writers at bethesda Robots or did they just fire them all and write a script to replace all the writers?

And this is solely compared to other TES games, even with the introduction in gps hand holding in Oblivion at least it had some memorable factions, questlines and charactors and at least it had a real ending that made you feel like you accomplished something when you beat the mainquest.

And I'm not going to wait to judge the game till DLC comes out. If it cannot be a real complete game without DLC then it still svcks and deserves criticism.

I never called anything simple.
I, in fact, have expressed no views whatsoever, save for one, and its amazing how you seem to do my part of the dialogue for me.

Well yes, I live in a world with a lot of assassinations and murders, dont you?
Im not saying these are related, you made that connection. I simply reacted to a silly blanket statement you made in your diatribe to convince us that this game somehow has depth.

I never mentioned any emperor, nor any politics for that matter.
Im also not the one detracting from the issue here with anything within reach.

I called you out on: "You have got the wrong picture. Just because one man kills another man does this not start a war. It is not realistic. People do not start killing each other over one death. Killing a lead figure will neither start or stop a war."
Which is absolutely silly and doesnt really show much historical, or psychological, insight.

People need a reason to do things. This reason needs to be simple and graspable, because people's minds dont really operate beyond a village scale.
You dont get people into a war because of various economical and historical pressures, coupled with a certain pig-headedness on the side of the leaders and the need to procure valuable strategic assets.
Instead you create a martyr or a bad guy.
Always has been such, always will.
Wars are most certainly fought over one death, or one bad guy, because that is how people's minds work. It fits the entire issue neatly into a framework they can relate to.

Now that this issue has been done to death there is something more on topic that needs to be said.
Look.
It doesnt really matter how things work in real life and it doesnt really help to slide the bar on what is a choice or consequence.

People feel that the game does poorly into reflecting actions and choices made by the player, and this is a valid observation to make in my opinion, as there really isnt a lot.
This is a game. No matter how things work in the real world, when you kill the emperor of a game world, you would expect something other than a random guard line.
When you take sides in the civil war its not unrealistic to expect the enemy soldiers to attack you if you wear opposing faction armour, or anything apart from the one or two random guard lines.
When you delve deep into a ruin to return an item stolen from there for a guilt-ridden Argonian you expect her to maybe acknowledge this after you return triumphant, or anything apart from generic villager dialogue.

I could go on like that.

Both Oblivion and Skyrim have lost a feeling of story depth compared to Morrowind because of the huge burden that recording actor dialogue imposes on the amount of alternatives the game can provide. Text based dialogue options resulted in more threads of a story. I still thought the dragons flying around on my first play through was pretty epic, though. When I first saw dragons I didn't even attack them, since I thought they were going to end up being the good guys, so I liked that they were still in the world at the end of the MQ.

It's specific and small, but it's a powerful instance:


During the DB quest line where you get a contract on Alain Dufont, if you also choose to (optionally) kill the other shatter-shield daughter like Muiri instructs, then Tova shatter-shield (the mother) commits suicide because she recently also had to deal with the death of her other daughter at the hands of the butcher in Windhelm. If that happens, the father becomes a total wreck, having lost his wife and both daughters.


That was extremely powerful to me. On my second play through I basically told Muiri to go pound sand and left the other shatter-shield daughter alive and only killed Alain the bandit leader.

You agree with me. Thank you.

Not starting the main quest and triggering the Quest "Dragon Rising" is perhaps the biggest positive impact you can have on the game. =p

Good topic.

I knew it would be pretty shallow, based on my time playing Fallout 3. I played it through without the DLCs. No big deal, nothing unexpected, I suppose. Then they had the DLC that made the world open ended.

Oh boy. They barely tried to make anything different. I had hoped for new settlements rising up, new traders on the routes, a finality of some groups and the rise of others. You know, progress.

But I can't imagine how tough it must be to create the worlds in these games. It is a shallow game that is meant for entertainment and an escape from the real world. That can be ok, I suppose.

While it is probably not impossible to create and program intricate, detailed and complexly interwoven storylines with multiple outcomes, the resources required of time, money and creative talent would probably make it a very expensive form of entertainment. You can read a good book or a watch a good film, but you cannot run around and interact with those worlds and mess up those storylines. If you want to be able to run around inside your fantasy worlds some suspension of disbelief and some tolerance for the imposed limitations is the trade off. Those who find the game shallow could always add some stuff of their own with the Creation Kit?

That's not even the real problem. The issue is that a game like that would only run well on very high-end systems. Which would mean not enough of a player-base to keep the company afloat. Intricate, detailed and complexly interwoven storylines with multiple outcomes not only cost a lot to write and program, they're hard on sub-optimal machines....

Yes, mostly it's graphics that causes sub-optimal machine issues - but if you do a hugely complex, deeply scripted, unbelievably involved game with multiple branching storylines etc. - the graphics are going to proliferate as well.... And one thing that most game companies at least TRY to do today is provide a fair amount of backward-compatibility. I have a nice machine I play this game on - I have a couple of young friends who are making do with very sub-optimal machines because that's all they have right now. The game runs okay, but the graphics aren't great. And they do have problems with too much going on sometimes in towns - even though these are pretty "bare" for towns!