I think I know why the writing in Skyrim isn't all that grea : V - Skyrim

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 12:53 am

I would argue, the biological war has already taken place, and the dumbed-down state of humanity isn’t the result of laziness and greed and stupid vanity alone, but rather the “zombification” of our physical brains with nanofiber networks that tell us how to feel, and only allow certain ideas or memories to surface...

I believe the thought police are already here. But don’t worry, I’m probably just crazy.

You are. The technology and our understanding of the brain isn't remotely close to that being a reality. To say nothing of the vast resources and personel such a conspiracy would require, which would inevtiably make it impossible to keep secret.

There's a much simpler explanation anyhow. We didn't evolve for the environment we are living in. We evolved to live in the wild in hunter-gatherer societies, eeking out little better than a subsistence-based existence. Naturally you'd expect all manner of problems when you dump us into an environment that our genetic resources are not adapted towards. We're doing ok since we do have large brains designed to adapt, but that doesn't help our instincts and desires necessarily. It doesn't help that we have a fairly good understanding on how to manipulate ourselves, which politics and corporations use relentlessly. Sadly, not being manipulated is a lot harder, since we evolved to make fairly rapid life-or-death decisions and occasionally jump to conclusions and make assumptions to err on the side of survival (such as thinking a coincidence is fate or some working of the universe or someone out to get us -- e.g. assigning agency to things with no agency). We certainly didn't evolve to make carefully considered decisions regarding what to buy, where to buy it, who to support in an election, what ads to believe, or to make statistical inferences from our experience.

Modern civilization is pretty much what you'd expect, given that. Occam's razor, friend, there's no conspiracy. There's no need for one.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 5:10 pm

Im just hoping with the Ck being released that some creative modders can either extend the guild quests and or create some more guilds with lengthy quests!

i lost faith in bethesdas story writing but i have a lot of faith in the modders!

The modding community is amazing, but have never been all too big on storytelling (with a few outstanding exceptions). For the same reasons I outlined above, I would say. If it is difficult to become inspired in this modern impoverished world when you HAVE to, because your livelihood depends on it, imagine how difficult it is when you aren't even getting paid!

I’m all about spreading wisdom to help elevate the world and solve the problems we face to paint a better future, but even my incentive has hit an all-time low, as I realize I am a slave, forced into labor, and essentially giving away my intellectual property e-ticket to escape that fascist nightmare.

I still do it, but a lot less than I used to even ten years ago. When will these economists learn you can’t govern a healthy society (or economy) with pressure and extortion alone, and that this only destroys future market potential?

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 8:14 pm

The technology and our understanding of the brain isn't remotely close to that being a reality.

I sincerely hope you are correct, but I am not inclined to agree. We build nano-scale guitars that actually PLAY, and design molecular machines that can move matter across a surface. We design virus and life forms that never existed naturally on Earth, and that technology could easily be made airborne and infectious, even by one cult group acting alone.

The nano-fibers are small enough they won’t show on an X-Ray or MRI or anything save maybe an electron resonance scan of brain tissue taken post-mortem, and even then it would likely be non-persistent.

But still, I sincerely HOPE you are right. That’s one of those irrational hunter-gatherer sentiments though, right? :wink:

*EDIT: Sorry for the double-post; silly revised edit feature.

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 12:47 am

Dagoth Ur was very respectable. Sure you wanted to kill him, but the man would talk to you and tell you WHY he did what he did. He even had an air of "sorry it has to be this way and I wish you luck in our battle."

Remember Dagoth Ur is/was/perhaps your firend, it is/was/perhaps the Tribunal that had you killed. This is of course if you actually are the Nerevar and not some smuck with luck on your side, remember the Cavern of the Incarnate and the remains of all the Nerevar that came before you?

Synopsis of Mw main quest for those wondering (mostly accurate):

http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1221460-morrowind-story-dumbed-down/page__hl__story

Spoiler

In the beginning, Lorkhan created the mortal plane, which was very unpopular and widely regarded as a bad move. So, the other gods, being nice fellows, ripped out his heart and chucked it into the ground. It landed in the northern part of what would become morrowind, creating a volcano called (imaginatively) Red Mountain. Morrowind the game takes place on the island of Vvardenfell, which is separated from mainland Morrowind by the water-filled crater remaining from the impact.

A jillion years before the game takes place, there was a war between the dark elves and the dwarves. A dwarf named Kagrenac discovered Lorkhan's heart under Red Mountain, and found a way to tap into it with some tools he created called Wraithguard, Sunder, and Keening. His goal was to make a sweet giant mecha for the dwarves to all worship. But there was a dark elf named Nerevar who wanted none of that, and united the rest of the dark elves under his banner. Included were Almalexia, his wife, Voryn Dagoth, his best bro, Vivec, whose slam poetry Nerevar totally dug, and Sotha Sil, who I guess was cool enough to hang with him as well. Anyways, there's a sweet battle scene and Nerevar makes his way to the chamber where Lorkhan's heart is. Kagrenac uses the tools on the heart to tap into the power, and the dwarves all go poof somehow. Nerevar tells Voryn Dagoth to chill with Keening, Sunder, and Wraithguard while he figures out what to do. He comes back with Vivec, Almalexia and Sotha Sil, and at that point both Voryn Dagoth and Nerevar end up dead. Acounts vary on exactly what happened, but they all seem to agree that the butler did it. So, with Nerevar gone, the two remaining dudes and the remaining dudette decide to tap into the heart's power using Kagrenac's tools, becoming the physical gods known as the Tribunal (Geddit, cause there's 3 of them). Oh, and when I say "dark elves" in the preceding paragraph I mean "Chimer", who were actually shiny golden dudes, but I didn't want to load up the confusing right at the front. But this is the point where they go from shiny golden dudes to grey ashy dudes who call people n'wahs because Azura (one of the gods) thought trying to ascend to godhood was kind of a scumbag move. So she cursed them all.

It also turns out that Voryn Dagoth played around with the Heart before he died, which gave him a 1 up. He did the whole Sauron/Voldemort routine where he just kind of sat there forever going "dang I wish I could do something". But he was alive nonetheless.

Fast forward a jillion years. The Neravarine prophecies state that Nerevar will be reborn as a dude who will drive the outlanders from Morrowind and make everyone's annoying greeting go from "Make it quick, outlander." to "N-n-n-nerevar!" They were actually more excited about the Jiubine prophecies, which foretold the eradication of the cliff racers, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. A few years before the reborn Nerevar comes to Morrowind as the player character, Voryn Dagoth (now Dagoth ur) wakes up and attacks the Tribunal when they come to Red Mountain for their annual "Let's screw around with the heart to maintain our powers" picnic. He manages to steal Sunder and Keening (and promptly hands them off to a couple less competent lackeys), but the Tribunal hangs on to Wraithguard. They figure out that Dagoth Ur wants to make that sweet giant mecha the dwarves never finished, which he plans to use to melt all the outlanders into Tang. Since this is a Bad Thing, they (and by "they" I mean "Vivec" because the others don't do crap) also figure out that if you used the tools wrong on purpose, you could destroy Lorkhan's heart. Since that's where Dagoth Ur gets his powers from (and what he plans on using to power his giant robot), Vivec decides to go ahead with the plan, and by go ahead with that plan, I mean make the reborn Nerevar do nine kinds of pointless crap just to get his magic glove, and then say gl hf dd and point him/her towards Red Mountain.

Nerevar, despite Vivec's "help", eventually destroys the heart, which causes the Oblivion crisis to happen somehow. Meanwhile, he wanders off to Akavir to stare at dragons or something.

The end.

Not quite the 'hero kills villain in volcano hideout' story that some would have you believe.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 4:02 pm

Sure they could manage a dozen good characters. Easiest way to do that is get rid of a couple of guilds. They could also improve the AI and give each NPC better routines. Best way to do that is get rid of a bunch of them. BGS games have always been quantity > quality. The more choices you give the player, the shallower every choice will be. There's no weird dichotomy at all: the quests are linear because it's a huge world with a million things in it. You can't make every one of them super. More time spent on one NPC means less time on another. Same for quests. I don't really know where people think all this extra development time is going to come from. They confuse real limitations with laziness and ineptness. Could the characters and stories be better? Sure. Just have fewer of them. Then you'll have more time to spend on each one. Of course, making decisions for the player beforehand can be really handy, too, because it prevents them from making other decisions that you'd have to incorporate.

I'm not asking for Bioware levels of depth with all the characters here. Doubling or tripling the lines of the main characters wouldn't remotely achieve that. Having better writers for the lines that do exist wouldn't achieve that. It would make the story a lot better though. It also wouldn't be that expensive compared to how much is spent on the game. Anyhow, it isn't about fewer people or cutting down the world. They don't manage the resources they have well. They keep whatever mediocre talent they have rather than getting better or demanding better. They just don't care much about the story being good, so they don't have their resources on it spend effectively. It isn't like what little we get is of good quality; by and large it isn't.

I think you are confusing AI with scripting. Skyrim has crappy, crappy, crappy, crappy AI. Most of it is heavily scripted, which is resource-intensive and means anything not scripted for cannot be reacted to. If they made a decent AI, then guards and others could react more to novel things and allow more types of interaction with the player. Say taking some guidelines from psychology and what can drive people and tossing some stats on everyone representing greed, altruism, concern for family, loyalty, etc, then have an AI interpret those stats to determine behavior (say, how they'd react to a bribe to look the other way while you kill a neighbor or betray a friend). That would give them rich dividends in the long run, since they'd save a lot of time writing specialized scripts for everything under the sun. They could toss some group-level AI fro bandits, city guards, and the like to determine how they move, grow, recruit, and so forth. Quests could then be generated automatically based on what is dynamically happening in the world based on how these groups behave. It's isn't like AI for group decisions or individuals hasn't been done before. Bethesda just doesn't even try to do it really, and so their world is pretty bland.

Heck, the little work they do make they don't carry on with in the future. The disposition system in Oblivion? That could have been further expanded into different types of feelings regarding your character or others and been given depth in any number of ways. Instead they scrapped it and replaced it with a like/neutral/dislike system that is just awful. The same is true of the random conversations in Oblivion, that also could have been improved and tied into other advances. They've made the game more shallow, not less. They scrap advances rather than build on them.

So I can't say I find any of your arguments particularly compelling. They could do more and they don't. They have the resources for it and it would pay off in the long run. Then again, it would be change and it would be work. The market buys what they do, so why bother to do more? So while I am frustrated by how they toss aside good ideas and don't build up systems and advances each game so each one is better than the last, I can't really blame them.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 11:01 pm

You're right. It must be greed and stupidity. I hate arguments based on emotion. Time for bed.

Eh, where did I say it was stupidity? I said they don't care because the customer doesn't care, so why bother? That's apathy at worst.

As for greed....well, yeah. Do you think they aren't a business for some reason? Do you think greed isn't a big factor in how businesses work? Are you unfamiliar with the profit-motive? Of course greed plays a big role in business decisions and game design is a business decision. Just how do you think greed would not be a factor?

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 2:52 pm

Heck, the little work they do make they don't carry on with in the future. The disposition system in Oblivion? That could have been further expanded into different types of feelings regarding your character or others and been given depth in any number of ways. Instead they scrapped it and replaced it with a like/neutral/dislike system that is just awful. The same is true of the random conversations in Oblivion, that also could have been improved and tied into other advances. They've made the game more shallow, not less. They scrap advances rather than build on them.

I'm still waiting for Renoit to invite me upstairs like in the Oblivion promo! XD

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 8:03 pm

I sincerely hope you are correct, but I am not inclined to agree. We build nano-scale guitars that actually PLAY, and design molecular machines that can move matter across a surface. We design virus and life forms that never existed naturally on Earth, and that technology could easily be made airborne and infectious, even by one cult group acting alone. The nano-fibers are small enough they won’t show on an X-Ray or MRI or anything save maybe an electron resonance scan of brain tissue taken post-mortem, and even then it would likely be non-persistent. But still, I sincerely HOPE you are right. That’s one of those irrational hunter-gatherer sentiments though, right? :wink:

*EDIT: Sorry for the double-post; silly revised edit feature.

A few experiments in a CUTTING-EDGE lab hardly mean that the technology is remotely mass producable. All your examples are the latest and best stuff we can do, and they are mind-numblingly slow and tedious to make, because they all have to be done by hand. None of them can be mass-produced, because the technology doesn't exist. Further, there's a vast difference between making a life form from scratch, and designing it to do something in the highly complex system that is the human body. Right now we can't even get tailored viruses to implant genes the exact way we want them to, and that's just a cut-and-paste job.

And forget about manipulating the brain to the level you think we can. It's just not possible. We don't even understand how anti-depressents work or most any other psychiatric drug. We have some theories, but they all have multiple conflicting theories and we aren't sure what is right. We don't even know how the brian stores memories, let alone how to manipulate which ones you get access to. Your concerns are honestly a laundry list of impossibilities with our current level of technology and understanding. We couldn't even manipulate ONE person that way if we spent billions of dollars, let alone everyone. And honestly, it would be a waste of time and resources, since it is far from necessary.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 3:33 pm

I'm still waiting for Renoit to invite me upstairs like in the Oblivion promo! XD

Just to be clear, I can understand certain features not making it into the final game. It's more than a little annoying when cool advances that could be improved are then completely dropped in the next title.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 10:02 pm

A few experiments in a CUTTING-EDGE lab hardly mean that the technology is remotely mass producable. All your examples are the latest and best stuff we can do, and they are mind-numblingly slow and tedious to make, because they all have to be done by hand. None of them can be mass-produced, because the technology doesn't exist. Further, there's a vast difference between making a life form from scratch, and designing it to do something in the highly complex system that is the human body. Right now we can't even get tailored viruses to implant genes the exact way we want them to, and that's just a cut-and-paste job.

And forget about manipulating the brain to the level you think we can. It's just not possible. We don't even understand how anti-depressents work or most any other psychiatric drug. We have some theories, but they all have multiple conflicting theories and we aren't sure what is right. We don't even know how the brian stores memories, let alone how to manipulate which ones you get access to. Your concerns are honestly a laundry list of impossibilities with our current level of technology and understanding. We couldn't even manipulate ONE person that way if we spent billions of dollars, let alone everyone. And honestly, it would be a waste of time and resources, since it is far from necessary.

Why do I get the impression you understand these technologies more than you let on? :wink:

I agree for the most part it is far from necessary, as most people are of the level where they are completely sold on propaganda alone. However, I do see OTHER applications of this technology, specifically: Intelectual Property Theft. China has the money and the motive to pull it off…

Also, I’m sure you’ve heard the cliché, that by the time we hear about technology in the public domain, it has already been developed in private/government/military labs for decades? Many of these technologies I mention may be “cutting edge” in the mainstream, but they came out publicly a decade ago. I imagine some enterprising thieves could have revised their methods of production by now.

It all depends on application. Sure, if you are looking to do something complex, it might be difficult. Then again, in 1973 we were able to reconstruct images of what a cat was looking at by interpreting electrical signals transmitted to a computer via radio signals from an array of implants in its visual cortex. Never mind the experiments with rats where they used a shunt to bypass motor function, and remote-controlled the little begger through a maze.

If we just wanted to steal ideas, we wouldn’t even need to go that far. Just a camera in the eye, and some wired fillings or other implants using 1950’s technology, and you could literally see and hear everything they were. So, if you wanted to steal a writer’s ideas, just take snapshots of their notebook as they wrote them down.

No need to access memories whatsoever! Though I’m not so sure we can’t. fMRI and other resonance scanners can “read thoughts.” It is just a matter of making that tech mobile…

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 12:37 pm

Why do I get the impression you understand these technologies more than you let on? :wink:

I think I understand the limits of our technology a lot better than you do. You seem pretty invested in your little conspiracy theory...so whatever. I had my fill of trying to talk to people so invested on the JREF forums. Honestly, it's like talking to someone about religion; facts don't matter.

Edit: Anyhow, this isn't the place for such a talk as it is decidedly off-topic.

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 2:19 am

Thieves' Guild story was so terribad...

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 12:36 am

Background is the same for every npc of one type.
Locations are all the same in a city.
Specific persons are always the same in a city.
Rumors and secrets are the same...

It's still a lot better then nothing

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 3:57 am

But they at least had length. Guild questlines are laughably short in Skyrim. I remember when I made my Altmer mage, I decided to do 3 or 4 quests in the College to get me started, and then explore the world at my leisure with a little more experience under my belt. Little did I know that 3 or 4 quests comprises the entirety of the College questline, aside from meaningless randomly generated fetch quests.

Well if all you're looking for is length, then I don't even see how you can say that about Skyrims quests. 50% of the quests (if not more) in Morrowind were meaningless fetch quests (I'm constantly reminded of the Imperial Legion quests in fort Moonmoth, probably the most mindless quests I've ever done in a video game, with little to no dialogue about anything), but that doesn't necessarily mean that it made the game bad. It just gives the character more to do when they're not doing quests with a depthful story. I think Skyrim accomplishes this same thing with radiant stories, the only difference is they're not static with the names and places and such, making each character a little bit more unique.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 9:35 pm

I think Beth is working on a great upcoming dlc. I'm looking forward to the first dlc because I think the writing will be better because they have plenty of time to work on the story.

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 1:16 am

Well if all you're looking for is length, then I don't even see how you can say that about Skyrims quests. 50% of the quests (if not more) in Morrowind were meaningless fetch quests (I'm constantly reminded of the Imperial Legion quests in fort Moonmoth, probably the most mindless quests I've ever done in a video game, with little to no dialogue about anything), but that doesn't necessarily mean that it made the game bad. It just gives the character more to do when they're not doing quests with a depthful story. I think Skyrim accomplishes this same thing with radiant stories, the only difference is they're not static with the names and places and such, making each character a little bit more unique.

Still there's a difference.

Morrowind was "person A at this location needs help. It seems her property is on a Dunmer burial ground and the family is pissed, so they've kidnapped her. I need you to go settle things down" and then when you go there, you can kill them, kill the woman or talk things out, and both sides of that conflict have DIALOG where they state their opinions or problems or whatever.
Skyrim is "show them some muscle" followed by "you know what you did" and then "alright I'll take care of it." It's an absolute joke.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 2:29 pm

The writing isn't great because instead of embracing their obscure lore they've shunted it into a corner.

That and the fact that the game stand on it's own two feet without it.

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 12:51 am

Well if all you're looking for is length, then I don't even see how you can say that about Skyrims quests. 50% of the quests (if not more) in Morrowind were meaningless fetch quests (I'm constantly reminded of the Imperial Legion quests in fort Moonmoth, probably the most mindless quests I've ever done in a video game, with little to no dialogue about anything), but that doesn't necessarily mean that it made the game bad. It just gives the character more to do when they're not doing quests with a depthful story. I think Skyrim accomplishes this same thing with radiant stories, the only difference is they're not static with the names and places and such, making each character a little bit more unique.

Here's what I don't get. Why not spend a some time making the radiant quests more complicated. Add 5 or 6 random factors to those quests that roll stuff up on a chart. Maybe there are hostages to be saved, maybe there's a dark ritual being done, etc, etc. They do that and it is going to be better than the vast majority of the non-radiant quests in Skyrim and they could just replace almost all questing with that and they'd be less repetitive. Honestly, the random quests are no better than the ones they script most of the time right now. It's rather ridiculous, imho, and means they waste a lot of effort.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 6:34 pm

Morrowind was "person A at this location needs help. It seems her property is on a Dunmer burial ground and the family is pissed, so they've kidnapped her. I need you to go settle things down" and then when you go there, you can kill them, kill the woman or talk things out, and both sides of that conflict have DIALOG where they state their opinions or problems or whatever.
Skyrim is "show them some muscle" followed by "you know what you did" and then "alright I'll take care of it." It's an absolute joke.

Agreed. Even Oblivion had that.

Skyrim is mostly just "go kill" and "go fetch". Followed by "Ok". And the linear "kill" or "fetch" job itself. After which you get "wel done" and a reward.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 5:04 pm

fallout 3 writing is about the best Ive ever seen in a game. Some of the game's narratives stick with me to this day. Skyrim writing is just good enough.

But really the problem is the genre. There may be nothing new under the sun, but fantasy is a hundred years run into the ground and inherently trite, and both its writers and readers tend to be on the low end of dim. There's only so much they could do with elves and dragons and magic swords.

So I take it you the only games you have played are Fallout 3 and Skyrim.

I'm not even joking when I say Fallout 3 contains some of the worst video game writing I have ever seen.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 2:59 pm

Just pick up a Bioware game, it will probably have a much better story than any TES game on the market but if you want more recent stuff you could try DE:HR or LA Noire.

Bioware? Mass Effect 2 was a total piece of crap regarding its writing. Even Skyrims Main Quests is actually better then that.

But Bethesda could always hire Obsidian for the writing.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 4:38 pm

Bioware? Mass Effect 2 was a total piece of crap regarding its writing. Even Skyrims Main Quests is actually better then that.

That's not remotely true. ME2 had better characters, deeper storylines, far more choices, better dialogue, etc. I don't see how you could seriously consider Skyrim's short main quest that has tons of unnatural dialogue and paper-thin characters to be better.

» Sat Jun 09, 2012 12:03 am

A bit of a late quote, but I've been gone for less than a day and I'd like to finish this conversation.

I'm also interested in what else they cut.

It's inevitable that the original design won't look exactly like the finished product, but I don't like that the industry generally frowns on delays. Hell, Valve delays stuff all the time, but I would say that it is definitely a good thing, as they have a standard of Quality that not a lot of publishers/developers can match.

I would love to just sit down and do an interview with Todd and Ashley about the changes made to Skyrim during development. I just find stuff like that interesting as hell. :smile:

I also find stuff like that very interesting! For example, last year I found out that Wolfenstein 3D involved a lot more realism and stealth at one point in that you could search bodies for useful items like TES as well as drag bodies around to hide them from guards. Ultimately John Romero had those elements ripped out in favor of expanding the run'n'gun portion of the gameplay, but it's neat to know that at one point Wolfenstein 3D actually resembled the original Castle Wolfenstein in more ways than one.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 12:53 pm

Don't look for a tripple hidden meaning where there is none. http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=FrriBr-46_I#t=300s the writing in Skyrim isn't all that great.

Must say... Something.. Smart.. But curly glasses melted my brain...

The theory presented in the original post would explain why the guilds of skyrim are such lame, hollow shells of their former selves.

» Fri Jun 08, 2012 1:46 pm

Part of it at least has to do with genre. I think it is getting harder to write epic fantasy stories that are truly unique, without borrowing so much from past epics that it ends up being over the top.

Then the solution is clear: stop overusing "epic fantasy" so much.