I'm guessing it has to do with 11/11/11 release date and because they didn't use text only dialogue.

The thieves guild quests were well done, much better than the winterhold or companions quests, which were highly underwhelming. But i'm warning you guys (and gals?), the more "we" as a community ask for this type of "sweep me along and walk me through it" story telling, the less of a fully fleshed out, layered, and complex world-at-large we'll receive in return. I for one remember the sense of awe and wonder that Morrowind gave me as I discovered just who or what the lord Vivec is or was, as well as his influence on the Dunmer people and province, primarily through cryptic texts of the Tribunal and the ambiguous and troubling responses from the demigod himself.

If Morrowind had come out today, instead of all of these "personal" revelations experienced by the player as a result of his own level of research and interest on the matters, we'd have the generic city guards stopping and bluntly exclaiming that "You know, Vivec is the god-king of Vardenfell based in the High Fane of Vivec City, located near Ebonheart. Most people worship him zealously, but i've heard some say that he's just some guy that stole divine powers from the Heart of Lorkhan after betraying Nerevar in ages past. Who knows what to believe anymore?".

The writers of Portal 2 know who Chell is and what she has to do, that's the point. If Portal 2 didn't have better writing than Skyrim, it would indicate that their writers were significantly worse since they have so much more to go on. The writing in the Witcher is better because the developers know who the Witcher is. You don't have a lot of freedom to redefine him. Even Obsidian foisted a back-story on you to make it easier on themselves. The writing in F:NV is better. It better be, since they've predetermined a significant detail about your character. That's not to say that all writers are created equal. I'm not going to say that the writing in Skyrim is the best writing that I've ever seen, but it's hardly terrible considering the circumstances.

If BGS knew who your character was before they started working on the game the writing would have been a lot better, too. If you faxed them a copy of your character's back-story, they're obviously going to do a better job tailoring the game to your character. Most games avoid these issues by 'faxing' you your character's script at the start of the game so you know how you're supposed to behave. It's elementary from a writing perspective. It's easy to write dialogue and quests around a known character; any competent developer should be able to do it. Writing dialogue and quests around a completely unknown character is a different matter entirely. You have to be able to fool people into thinking it was written for them. That's not an easy trick to pull off. When it doesn't work, the writing seems bland and uninspired. That's what happens when you write in the void.

If the developers think that the writing is turning people off the game, then maybe they'll try to step it up a notch for the next game. The easiest way to do that is to start making decisions for you so that they have material to work with when writing the dialogue and quests: limit the number of choices you have when creating a character, make the quests more linear, that sort of thing.

[Edit: See the note above re F:NV] Writing poetry is not the same as writing a screenplay or writing directions for making a cake. I'm not sure why anyone would think that there's no difference between writing for a linear game and writing for a sandbox game. They are very different activities, similar to the way that writing in first person is different from writing in third person. Most novels are written in third person; it's much easier to do well. Most games have linear narratives for the same reason.

That doesn't mean that all writing for sandbox games is of the same quality. It's fair to compare the writing in Skyrim to the writing in Morrowind, for example, because they occupy the same stylistic genre. You can't compare it directly to the writing in a linear action game like Uncharted 3 without making allowances for the differences in the form of the narrative and the scope of the game. Seems to me like a lot of people talk about the writing as if it all existed on some level plane in which different design choices had no impact. That's wrong, frankly. You don't compare The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo to a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure game. They're different propositions. You can't write dialogue for thousands of characters that is going to stand up to dialogue written for dozens of characters. It's naive to think they're equivalent.

I'm not going to argue the points because for the most part I agree with them. I still think that people need to stop pretending that it's reasonable to assume that writing for Skyrim is no different than writing for any other game. It's much more difficult. People who have struggled with this understand. I designed a custom persuasion mechanic for Oblivion what was entirely dialogue-based. If I only had to write for one character, it would have been a piece of cake. Having to write for a million different characters is a lot harder. Your only choices are: write a hell of a lot more, or write a hell of a lot more generically. The fewer choices you give the player, the easier it is to write the game.

I’ve been keeping up with this post simply because it amazes me how many people are not exactly on board with Skyrim’s writing and most of those are veteran players. Those who just happened to stumble into Skyrim, I think it’s all about “Oh look! I can fight a dragon in that game! Mom! Dad! I want it!” No offense.

You know my first game was Pong and if anyone here remembers, there was no story to that, just a ball and some lines. Now decades later we come to games like these. I take the story of any game first and foremost before any damn graphics. The story is what keeps me wanting to know what is going to happen next. Sure, I like fun games with no point, but those are rare and far between. I got involved with Elder of the Scrolls; because the lore drew me in and since I played Oblivion I have never been so impressed with so much detail in a game’s story. Granted Oblivion by far is not perfect, it had its bumps in the story, but the fact is the story was so good, that those faults can easily be forgotten.

The nice thing too about Oblivion is if you had no idea what the hell this series was about; the game explained it to you along the way. That is what Skyrim is missing; it tosses you into the lion’s pen with a spoon and you no choice other than to fight.
Skyrim’s main story is nothing more than an attempt at a good story, but it falls flat. Why? For one thing the Civil War was a bad idea; it creates too much going on at once, thus taking away the spotlight from the main story. If you sat down and watched a movie and one guy wanted to destroy the world but then the scene split to some other guy trying to pass a bill to Congress, it would not mesh up.

The main story tries to merge the two issues into one problem, but it does not work if you pay attention to the dialogue in the game. Then if you’re a Elder of the Scrolls lore junkie, you’ll start to find more holes then Swiss Cheese, someone made a great post about this a few weeks back.

But it’s just not the main story, the guilds and the side quests suffer from this too. If you played through Oblivion’s guild stories then played through Skyrim’s, it’s pretty sad. I don’t see why the developer’s did not just save the extra time in creating these piss poor stories and just hand the title over, since that’s how I feel it happens any ways.
Then you go beyond the quests and into the dialogue of NPCs, they don’t care if you saved the world or saved their sweet roll from burning, there all wooden pixels. The only people who seem to care are the guards, but even there small praise is nothing to cheer about.

I personally do not mind standing there and speaking to an NPC for five minutes, so long as it’s interesting and tells me more about a particular story or event.

Just imagine if Skyrim was made into a book, the people would feel so robotic.

NPC “Go get my shield. It is very important to my family. It was last located ”

You: “OK”

NPC: “Thank you for returning my shield.


You: “I just saved the world!”

NPC : “I work for Belathor at the General Goods store!”

You: “Uh, OK, that’s nice. I just save the world. Are you not at least happy?”

NPC: “I work for Belathor at the General Goods Store!”


If this dialogue was in a book, you would be wondering, why the characters have no dialogue? Why do they feel less human and more like a wall? There would be no reason to feel a sense of attachment or the need to save someone or the world if no one cared other than to spew out repeat dialogue.

While Oblivion had this issue, at least people were aware of your accomplishments and really did appreciate it.
I have typed enough it seems, but one thing before I finish. It’s amazing of how much time and effort was applied to the main score, but not the same towards NPCS, quests etc. I think if the same amount of care and time was taken with all I mentioned, Skyrim would have been another game to remember, but sadly for me it’s not.

But he's not jumping genres, he's comparing New Vegas to Skyrim. Both are supposedly RPGs; this isn't like he's comparing the writing of Uncharted to the writing of Oblivion or something.

And the Courier being a predetermined character is debatable. What do we know about him? He's a Courier and he accidently caused the events of the Divide: that's it. The game does have an overtone of implying he's durable, a charmer and lucky and a couple other characteristics, but those are easily made optional or ignored.

I'd hardly call that pre-determined. I mean in FO3 we knew the Lone Wanderer was born in a Vault and loved his daddy and you're basically FORCED to support the Brotherhood of Steel, so we know his politics as well. The writing STILL svcked.


As I've said, the concern is simply....well one, I don't think many people would refer to Skyrim as being fantastically written, and that's a growing problem. On a side note, we have a game produced with Bethesda's tools and engine albeit by a different company, and it's the best written title they've published since Morrowind. Why? Why can't Bethesda seem to write anymore?

Beth also failed in Skyrim to create a story as moving as say the survivalist or a main character as determined and dangerous as the Courier. I fail to have any impact to see any impact in the game, for all it's glamour the gameworld in Skyrim is as static as Morrowind's. There are characters in the game that I want to talk with but they have almost no dialogue, there are almost no characters that stand out for having a good story to them.

Two great examples.

The Survivalist is a side-story; one you happen across and when you actually do find all the parts you go "BAAAAAWWW." I'm not the best explorer so maybe I've missed this story in Skyrim, but I've yet to hear someone say "dude the story of LOCATION NAME is amazing!"
And the Courier is this wonderful paradox of a protagnoist. He's a blank-slate, and yet he's not. He's what you make of him, and yet he's also the luckiest son of a [censored] in the wastes, he's the grim reaper, he's cheating death, he's a tough mofo etc etc.

I don't expect EVERY protagonist to be as well-written as the Courier, because I'm sure part of his good writing had to do with....luck. The scenario and setting at hand must allow for it. I am however going to question if Bethesda has unrealized potential, and in the face of the game that "set the bar" for Skyrim (which also just so happens to be radically different, stressing story but putting little focus on exploration), one has to ask "lol wait a minute" when the plot goes from absolutely astounding to "I work for Belethor at the General Goods Store Herp derp kill dragons." The issue is that while I CAN name examples in New Vegas where it's weak-point (exploration) was done correctly, I struggle to name points where Skyrim handled it's weakpoint (storyline) correctly, and thus I fear missed potential.

Irrelevent and a strawman argument. Beyond tossing insults at you constantly, no one is really complaining about how they treat your character or how the story doesn't deal with your character in a personal way -- not as the focus of the problems anyhow. No one minds the fact you are treated as a faceless entity with unknown motivations. That's fine. The bad writing is in the characterization of the NPCs who are NOT dependent on your character to have a coherent personality, goals, desires, and depth. You seem completely off the mark with why people are complaining about the story.

I think you don't get how a sandbox story works by how you are talking about here. Good writing in a game like that comes from fleshing out the world and then having a few hooks based on character actions, letting them decide some story elements about themselves. Skyrim is pretty awful at all of this, and worse the stories it does have are extremely linear and lacking in sandbox qualities and they don't even get good writing done by making it as linear as any action game.


Obviously they are probably not going to do much better. They have at best not gotten any better with their stories, perhaps gotten worse. It hasn't affected the bottom line, so nothing is likely to change much, especially since they change things rather slowly.

I don't know what you are on about here though. They can do much, much better stories even if they simply don't care about the main character's background. I don't see how caring would help, because they have backgrounds for everyone else and still can't manage to write a good story with them even when they place massive limits on how your character can interact with them. The quests are already extremely linear, and frankly more linear than non-sandbox games. Bioware makes quests that are far, far less linear than what we see in Bethesda games (and the vast majority of them don't really care a dang about the background of your character).

But seriously, why should Bethesda try doing better? The market is telling them to stay the course.

So, 'a nameless courier' implies a profound and world changing back story while 'Dovahkiin a Dragonborn foretold in legend' does not?

Yeah, my reply is a little off-base because I just kind of continued a train of thought right through his reply. My bad. Point is: bad writing is bad writing, but some good writing is much harder to create than other good writing, so it's not a level playing field.

And the dialogue and characters in F:NV are on the whole much better than they are in BGS games, but I never found the plot of NV to be particularly compelling. And the details about being a courier, scanty as they are, are still indelible imprints. I don't question why they created the back-story: it's a useful narrative tool, but it doesn't change the fact that the number of characters I can logically derive from that backstory is less than the number I can derive from being a prisoner in Skyrim. Fewer choices that led to a better narrative. Most people think that DA:O has better writing (I agree); you also have fewer choices. The Witcher is regarded by many as having even better writing; even fewer choices. There's a reason why that's the case, and it's not just because different teams have different writers with different abilities (though that's part of it). It's just easier to write a good story when you know who the protagonist is.

As far as BGS 'losing' their ability to write, I don't think they've ever had particularly good writing for the reasons I explained. Morrowind's writing isn't all that much different from Skyrim's. In fact, Skyrim's dialogue is significantly better in a lot of ways; it's just that it's incredibly repetitive and poorly implemented and there isn't enough of it. A lot of the writing in Morrowind is amateurish, as much as I love that game. A lot of the writing in Oblivion is downright campy. I don't see any trend indicating that their writing is getting any worse. If anything, the writing is getting better; but their implementation is getting worse so it makes the writing seem worse than it is.

Part of the problem with this discussion is that 'writing' includes dialogue, quest design, characterization, voice acting, and mechanical delivery in one big blob and many people aren't trying to differentiate any of it.

Courier's backstory revealed in the Lonesome Road.

The thing is, even characters that were supposed to be important...feel incredibly shallow, unimportant, and cardboard. Alduin, the antagonist to the story, earned nothing but neuatrality from me. He doesn't make me sympathetic to him, and at the same time he does not do anything to personally wrong me.

In Fallout NV, we meet the antagonist to the majority of the plot paths literally moments before the game ends, however there is much gossip and talk from others about him, and our one conversation with him, tells us more about him than the entirety of Skyrim's main quest tells us of Alduin.

Exactly. Good story and good characters don't require a background for the main character. Especially since the easy contrivence in CRPGs is "do this quest if you decide you want to", hence they can assume you have some motivation to do it and give you options as to how to carry that out to represent your motivation. Most quests in games, even well-written ones, honestly don't care about your character background, yet there are some truly great quests out there like this. That's because the NPCs are well-written, have motivations, and the other story elements are strong. It's even better if you are allowed multiple paths to navigate through that story based on your choices. Well, Bethesda games don't give many choices and honestly are generally not so great at strong characters either. Skyrim might have worse writing than past games, but the writing has never been that good (and never been much of a sales problem).

It certainly isn't because it's oh so difficult writing story for this sort of game, not when they make their stories linear as all heck and still fail to make them great.

Dovakhiin isn't exactly blank slate as there is one quest in which you can talk about his/her past and family and the Theive's Guild entire story is about luck. It's just that Beth opted for this "infinite" quest thing except the catch is every quest is just like the other quest, what usually sets them apart is the story and if it's there in Skyrim it is paper thin or rushed. This rushing makes no sense for any of the guilds except maybe the Companions, the framework for these incredible stories are laid out but never followed, and half the time the setting makes it worse. Winterhold shouldn't even exist and the college should go too, there is nothing there and it's been years since the collapse, there aren't any ruins of houses and buildings that fell into the sea. Compare the Arcane University in OB to Skyrim, there are classes going on mages are practicing magic, in the College you have... J'zargo throwing spells at a wall everyone else is hiding out in their room. I'm also always running out the wrong damned door in the Ragged Flagon.

Setting helps make a story. A story doesn't have to move at an uncompromising rush.

I also think I had a bunch of different points to make but it's late and my computer is dead so I have to use this iPod which believes it has to automatically correct just about every word just because it may not understand it. Anyways I assure you I had a better argument but due to tiredness and system problems this didn't come out the way I wanted.

Nahhh elderscrolls beats N.V. in protagonist development ( it's up to you ) and world and lore.... ( it's a shame 99% of players dont actually read the books )

N.V. is hands down a better narritive in and of itself... with superior writing for the npc's/companions.... it's writing on a deeper level all around.

Each game has its strong points.... and both offer incredible experiances...

Which is why it saddens me to hear people sayin " thank god beth is gonna make FO4.... "

I truely appreaite the difference between the games.... and would look forward to a totaly diferent alternating experiances... instead of just going from elderscrolls to sci-fi elderscrolls.

N.V.

Well, compare the number of characters and the number of quests to your average game. Not very reasonable to expect developers creating hundreds of hours of content with thousands of characters to be writing at the same level as an 8 hour action game. Providing good characterizations for a dozen important characters; piece of cake. Now do it for a few hundred. Branching narratives for a few dozen quests; piece of cake. Now do it for a few hundred. It's obvious that most of the characters in Skyrim lack depth and that the quests are shallow. It's also obvious to me why that happens to be the case. Skyrim is about quantity, not depth. BGS games have always been like this.

Race? Parents? Childhood? Education? Gender? In RPG terms, what a depressing DLC it must be.

It's okay, no need to answer. I have it here and one day I may even play it.

@ TheMagician
But I want motivation for killing a bandit, because if I wanted to kill a bandit I could go out kill one no problem. This quantity over quality/depth kills motivation and story and a frigging point to it all, it just becomes grinding.

Skyrim ( and all the Elder Scrolls ) and N.V. focus on different things...

Skyrim focuses on you and the world... and not just for exploration but a world worth living in....

N.V. focuses on the narritive... and the characters ( and does so incredibly well )

I like the fact that neither game focuses on what the other does, and each is probably the best in it respected arena.

Yep. They sure do feel incredibly shallow. It would be a lot easier to give them depth if you could tie them to the player somehow. Villains in movies develop intimate relationships with their protagonists. That's what makes them interesting and memorable. They're responding to the character. You could do the same in Skyrim if you had some sort of back-story to give them a connection. That's why the Dragonborn narrative is there. It's the only thread guiding the narrative. How is Alduin going to react to my morally pure Nord hero? Now how is he going to react to my cold-blooded assassin? In exactly the same way? What about my priestess of Mara? What about my Orc bard? You can't tell me that Alduin is going to respond to each of these characters in exactly the same way because 'that's his nature'. It takes two people to have a conversation. All of the dialogue in BGS games are written with only one character. It doesn't surprise me if the writing feels shallow and generic.

You're right, good stories don't require a background. They're just a lot easier to write if there is one. Hence 99% of the games on the market provide you with a character that the developers can tailor any way they like. The best narratives have always been written around strong protagonists. Even in videogames.

To each their own. Fallout New Vegas is thought-provoking: it places all sorts of different philosophies, shows how they interact with each other in a realistic way and THAT to me is interesting and well-written because it provides a basis for philosophical discussions. I can say "do the ends justify the means" or "is it appropriate to view people as numbers and statistics when leading a nation" and use in-game scenarios to back up my argument. It's thought-provoking in the sense that beforehand I'd never though about how I feel about a leader who sees his citizens as statistics, and while the question is overwhelming, by the end of the day I appreciate that New Vegas threw those questions in my face and forced me to think on them when making my choices in the Mojave. I can understand how someone who's not interested in politics or easily frustrated by a feeling of hopelessness wouldn't like the game or it's story. However, at least do acknowledge a story WAS delivered, and it's an absolutely brilliant one for the target audience.



His backstory is TINY. No no, it has nothing to do with the fact that Obsidian chose to say "you ARE a Courier" or "you DID do this in the Divide." Every game does that in some way. Skyrim says "you DID try to cross the border," "you ARE a criminal" and often implies "you are NOT native to Skyrim." No no, the difference is how Obsidian approached the few characteristics they established. Skyrim acts allergic to the characteristics they establish, New Vegas embraces them. The result is Skyrim completely lacks consistency. They're afraid to call out your character on ANYTHING for roleplaying purposes, but look, the fact of the matter is, they HAVE. You're Dragonborn, you were a prisoner. EMBRACE those points. What Obsidian did right is they embraced that the Courier is the luckiest son of a [censored] in the world, so you have characters saying "OH CMON WHAT THE [censored]" when you survive yet another stacked-odds scenario. They embraced that your Courier has to be tough, and thus NPCs will comment on it. They embraced that the Courier has a theme of death following him (every community around him dies, one way or another, politically or literally or otherwise) and NPCs comment on it. They embraced the cliché of RPG protagonists where you don't know about their backround, to the point where NPCs ask about where the Courier's from and he says "....I don't know :U" or another NPC says "this is why you have no home" in a somewhat figurative manner and cites an event. Is this a problem? Is it an immersion breaker? Not at all, because people have opinions. It's not like....it's not like I'm incredibly outspoken and it NEVER happens in my life that someone calls me "shy." Mistaken conclusions about people are a reality.

The thing Obsidian did right is that when the people call the Courier tough or lucky or death incarnate, they CITE SITUATIONS. "You destroyed the Divide, you're death incarnate." "You survived two bullets to the brain and now you have the Mojave in your hands, you're lucky as hell." Those are the most logical statements in the world for those NPCs to make based on what they know about you. Your Courier could be incredibly peaceful or incredibly unlucky, but if people only know of those two events? Yeah, they'll call you otherwise. It doesn't make you think "OMG MY IMMERSION IS SHATTERED!" Wtf of course not, because the NPCs have made LOGICAL deductions, and you're free to say "lol if only you knew the truth..." whenever an NPC calls you lucky as hell.
Skyrim on the other hand, you punch dragons in the mother [censored] face and the game is afraid to have an NPC call you tough "becuz it'll break immersion if you're a weakling!!11" No, no it doesn't! As long as an NPCs accusation or conclusion has a logical reason behind it, it doesn't matter if they're right or not. That's a brilliant tool Obsidian used to make the Courier a paradox, where he IS a character (has implied characteristics) and yet he can be a blank slate (you're free to easily denounce things NPCs say about you).

Skyrim and EVERY Bethesda game could utilize this, but Bethesda is horribly allergic to breaking immersion, so much so that we got the mother [censored] Warp of the mother [censored] West. They need to stop, because without realizing it, they're actually KILLING the immersion. In their overly-defensive fit of immersion where they're afraid to make any statements, they ironically end up breaking it because NO ONE EVER REACTS TO YOU.



Yes and no. Morrowind's Main Quest, Oblivion Thieves' Guild and Shivering Isles: these were gems, I see no reason such quality can't return. And that's what frustrates me: they've shown they're capable, but it's not happening.

Theres just as much " motivation " for killing a bandit as there is for killing a feind...

I agree, I'm guilty of this with Olivion. I believe there's a saying with rose tinted glasses? Don't get me wrong, I loved it but man oh man do it's flaws shine after playing Skyrim for some time.

I have no real opinion on MW since I've only played a little of It and got bored since I couldn't hit a damn scrib (spelling) with my dagger.

OT: you're probably right OP. If that is the case they should've swallowed their pride and pushed the release date back a few months,

Yep.

I'm sure if BGS had the time and resources (ie. they could do it without making the investors nervous) they would spend twice as long on every game and the writing and quests would be a lot better. Reality svcks.

The only way you're going to get better narratives on time and within budget is to shrink the size of the game world and reduce the number of NPCs. Making choices for the player also helps. Then you can spend more time on each character and provide more branching to the quests. I have just explained the mystery that is New Vegas. You're welcome.

I think his point is that the overall spectrum of factions in New Vegas strengthens his reasoning to kill Fiends, Jackals or Vipers.
In New Vegas, the Khans for example seem like bad guys, but they'll handle you with respect. You learn that yes they're raiders, but they're not bat[censored] insane: they're raiders to get by, but they're people like you and me. The Powder Gangers are brutal, but they're also people. They'll trust and help out anyone who does the same for them.

Having people like the Powder Gangers and Khans makes it more believable when the devs say "nah, the Vipers are just jackasses." It becomes more believable because you've already seen bad guys with backstory. They reinforce each other's believability to the point where he can take "nah they're just jackasses" at face value and react with "wow seriously? They just shoot everyone? What JACKASSES!" It works in the same way that a completely shallow character who only says "hi" and "how are you" can reinforce the uniqueness of a deeper NPC; he makes the in-depth NPC feel just that much deeper because you have an example of a boring one to compare him to. Here it's he wants a neutral bandit group to compare to a downright evil one.
Skyrim you get Bandits where it's like....lol why are you a bandit. Like you can easily hunt and live out here, why kill everyone you come across? Where are the Bandit strongholds where they're apathetic to random nobodies?


I personally don't think that's super important, just trying to help out with understanding his statement. Wanna know if I'm interpreting it right.