I love Skyrim, I really do but the writing and npc development are terrible. Look at how Obsidion did New Vegas for a lesson in how to do it properly.

The only logical reason i can see (and its still a horrid one) is it takes time and money to translate text and speech into different languages, the more drawnout and complex the wrighting the harder/worse the translation, so they thought theyd skip on that side save a buck and hope to have more please foreign language customers because its not been translated in to gibberish.
This lack of dialougue displeases me.
Alittle off topic but why the hell not...
Why bother when poor quality air, food and water have already crippled our race, world wasnt made for man and its really started to take its tole. The people in controll dont need crazy brain inplants and retroviruses when simple ideas shackle your people to the beat of a drum under the guise of choice and freedom.
People in the developed world who care about the the future/world/environment have on average less children than those who just dont. It wont be long before some sterilising needs to be done or the human race will become too backward to remember how to save its self. lol

oops edit fail double post sorry.

I do not see where people keep coming up with TES was never about good written stories and questlines. Sorry to say, but Morrowind had some great writers and the quests were intriging in comparison to the Oblivion and Skyrim. What some do not realize Morrowind had a different lead dev if I remember correctly. He left and Todd stepped in later for the newest 2 games. It was a better dev team all around IMHO back then. Lets see if this math ads up. They used about 10 to 20 people to make Morrowind and 70 to 100 for the last 2, make sense!?!? Honestly I think Morrowind was and always will be a better product. Goes to show the old saying," Too many cooks in the kitchen, spoil the soup or in this case the GAME!!!".....lol

That's about as thought out and fallacious as your genes-environment mismatch theory. Consider all the idiosyncracies and differences of behavior and content in all the quests, locations, and characters. All of that variety which gives the game such richness would be lost under a more abstract design, unless the saved resources are reinvested into incorporating all the lost detail that is such a central feature of Skyrim's appeal. However, on top of that you would have an organically developing system which you either have to limit or the testing, thinking, and effort involved in making it a viable product would be on an unprecedented scale. In short, give it a rest.

yeap wasnt about story i dont no what its about almost all its main feature are lacklustre now. so lets see whats stands out in skyrim: thats its tes MUST be about environments as out side is nice. Shame they still havent got to grips with houses, i unterstand its a challenge to get ur head round the idea of having storage where you need it because in my house i keep my shampoo in the loft and my canned food in the shed because it seemed like to much hassel to put storage in the kitchen and bathroom....

Unfortunately Skyrim's main quest is filled with lots of old men who just ramble on and put you to sleep.

I think the only time I really woke up during a long dialogue spiel was with a woman in the thieves guild who was well-acted and actually interesting.

And how much less did Morrowind offer than the later games? Duh! Nostalgia is one thing, but use some more common sense when you're skewering Bethesda for supposedly lazy, decadent, sold-out, and degenerate mistakes. Or at least take a break.

Nothing to do with nostalgia and I think BGS is the one who needs a lesson in common sense. I personally think they have gutted a great series all in the name of streamlining. I am not going to sit here and make out some long winded details about why and waste my time typing 4 pages of crap. Just to satisfy other peoples needs to know why this is how I see the situation. I do not need to defend myself on a forum to people I do not even know in RL. Everyone has their own opinion, end of story!!!

Have to disagree. Oblivion was a lot of repetitive grinding. I liked the game, but Skyrim is better and the writing is a part of that. I would have liked to see more depth and consequence, though.

True, but Skyrim almost feels like more grindwork then previous games. At times it almost feels like a chore as some MMO. Maybe they are pushing us this way to make some secret MMO out of TES and haven't told us yet, JK JK....I hope the h**l not...LOL

OP is spot-on, it was a timing issue above all. Although that makes me wonder...


They could have postponed release to a later date, but that's not really Bethesda's style. I've been waiting for Diablo 3 for over 10 years and they just pushed back the release AGAIN, which makes me sad right now, but companys do it release a fully complete game.

This has never really been Bethesda's strong point, IMO.

The point is if you find Skyrim deficient or as a move in the wrong direction that's fine but you shouldn't be simple-minded and just naively assume that there is some obvious, cynical, easily addressed reason for what's wrong. Usually there isn't. It's about trade-offs, not silly mistakes.

I would say, it's probably because of the size of things.

Different areas and quests were designed by different people with different writing skills. DLCs tend to be better because they can focus on one thing at once, instead of spreading out trough multiple tasks at the same time.

Well I'm holding out hope for a DLC that has a good story.

It doesn't feel that way to me, I think because the locations are unique and most of them have their own stories.

Skyrim doesn't have very good writing at all compared to Fallout 3 and especially New Vegas

I love the locations, Great backstories in some of the unique dungeons. Honestly I love the fact that they aren't copy and paste anymore. The problem for me is having to take 2 to 4 hours in some of the larger places and by the time I am done, I am burnt out from it. Example: the first time I finally got into Blackreach I was burnt out from killing and looting the dungeon above. So I really couldn't enjoy the place as much as I wanted to. There should be a secret entrance into the place really. IMO I think BGS went overboard with making the largest dungeons possible to compensate for other things they streamlined in the game. Others have said it themselves. They worked more on the unique dungeons and enviornment more then alot of the other content in Skyrim.

Another example: Spellcrafting Vs. Smithing now. With the spellmaking you could experiment for along time with spells. With the smithing. Once you have max armor and weapons, that is it. No use for it after that. Same goes for max enchanting. Once you make your best armor, weapons, and enchant them. The fun of that crafting is over. Again with spellmaking you could make endless spell combos.

Yes, they should have filled up a dual-layer DVD.... not being sarcastic here, we all want more of the best.

For me what is really cool in this game and what makes it so epic is the events that unfold, without a story to support them. The events are the story.
It's got more of a primal , mythological feel to it, a myth in which you play the center role, rather than a scripted movie, hollywood style.

It's got humour and that's enough for me... Some of the characters are pretty funny to interact with. We're still a long way from anything resembling Artificial Intelligence, so I just don't expect much in that direction from a video game. But there are some subtleties in Skyrim that make it worthwhile talking to random people you meet.

I wrote a long reply and then realized I just didn't care enough. I'm not disagreeing with you about what good writing is. I'm only disagreeing about these two points, and they relate to everyone's posts, not yours specifically:

1. Writing for a sandbox game is exactly the same as writing for a linear narrative. It's not. It's harder because it's on a much larger scale and you don't know much about the protagonist (the player). The result is that, on average, the quality of the writing is going to be lower. That needs to be kept in mind when comparing the writing in different kinds of games. I've written in both styles so I have a pretty good idea how those conditions affect the quality of the writing.

2. That the writing is bad because the developers svck/are lazy/are greedy/are stupid/etc. Arguments that depend on speculative qualities applied to imaginary caricatures of real people are not arguments. They're emoticons. I tend not to take posts that contain irrelevant flaming seriously. Which is a shame, because there are a lot of people on these forums making good observations and then burying them under a mountain of turds.

I am well aware of the differences between AI and scripted narrative and the limitations of Beth's AI. Here's an Oblivion http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1062969-wipzbalzu/ I started years ago specifically to address those issues. I trust you have a similar foundation on which you base your observations.

Interesting. I have nothing to add, but thanks for the food.

I agree completely.

The thing is that character background would be needed only when you had choice inside the quests. Without choices quest narratives don't turn into enormous trees of possibilities where you have to predict and write content for every single outcome. When the quests lack choice and you're just along for the ride then it better be a good ride. I think we can agree on the fact that Skyrim quests are basically linear, where any choice given to you lies outside of them (join Stormcloacks or Legion?). That's why writing for Skyrim is actually easier than writing for say DA:O even if Skyrim is a sandbox open world game and DA:O isn't. Skyrim demands more traditional static book/movie script kind of writing than not. Yet the story isn't very good.

A good quest line story-wise would include complex layered characters (not pure villains/good guys) to excite the player's interest in them, take a good deal of time to complete so that the player will have enough time to connect with them and care for them, variety in objectives so that the player isn't bored, twists and a structure leading to a final unique crescendo, so that the player doesn't feel like he has seen it all before. Ideally the player must want to complete the quest out of pure interest for the story and not because of the promise of reward at the end. The reward is an added bonus. It seems like nowadays the reward is all there is too it.

Radiant Story is great for those generic exploration inducing filler quests but it should NOT be used inside quests that are supposed to tell a story. Bethesda tried to systemize story-telling and they should know better: No machine is better than a human on creative tasks, why even try?


Writing for a game doesn't depend on its type but on whether the story is linear or not. Skyrim quests are linear independent entities, much like mini static Portal storylines if you prefer. Skyrim is not sandbox in that regard.

I'm not enough hours into the game to judge the writing as whole, but based on the numerous quests I've completed and the near 100 books I've read maybe there's another way of looking at it. Quest lines are relatively short but there is a multitude of different quests and I find the stories engaging. If you're expecting rich, heavy vertical (i.e. under one quest line) writing you're bound to be disappointed. But from a lateral perspective, the goal not being immersion into one or a few stories, the writing isn't bad but different. You just need to change your expectations. Also, If many of the stories are interwoven to affect gameplay beyond leveling and items that would actually be tantamount to vertical writing and should make for great depth.

Compare say a ME2 Companion Quest verses the civil war in Skyrim. ME2's example is well-written and strong providing meaningful choices and interesting characters. The entire Civil War quest line doesn't have significantly more writing or dialogue in it (the vast, vast majority is going to a place and killing people, very little dialogue when you think about it) and it is linear as heck. And let's be honest, ME2 companion quests really don't give a DANG about the fact you are Commander Shepherd. You could replace all "Shepherd" references with just "Commander" and make it totally generic, and it doesn't hurt the quality of the story AT ALL.

There are some types of stories that require incorporating a lot of details about the protoganist into them, but a lot of RPG stories that are strong honestly don't require this at all and they aren't that hard to write. You just make the NPCs interesting and involved and allow the player to engage in that story if he finds it interesting (which is essentially a sandbox element).

Don't get me wrong, I understand how with the dropping of AI development from Oblivion and essentially dropping Radiant Story why the average quest isn't that good in Oblivion. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about the major LINEAR quest chains in the game. They aren't bad because the game is a sandbox. They aren't sandboxy stories at all, in fact. They're not good for other reasons.


Companies are about profit. They are about delivering a product or service that sells at minimum cost. I can't believe we're even having a disagreement over this. If people didn't buy Oblivion because they thought it had a shallow story, are you saying that Skyrim would still have a shallow story? If people didn't buy Skyrim due to the story, would the next game not fix it? Money talks, and with TES games the money says that people don't really care about good and interactive story. Or I guess you could assume they somehow aren't a business and aren't heavily influenced by the factors that influence all businesses. That seems a bit silly, imho.

The only other thing I've said on this is that I agreed with the person who pointed out the writers for Bethesda are probably rather important figures in the company. It started out a lot smaller back in the day and I believe the people who invented the lore are still around. If they have writing issues, well, corporations don't easily replace such people or their work unless there are problems selling a product. If they happen to have some mediocre writers, well, it doesn't hurt the bottom line and it would be a lot of trouble to replace them or their work, so they don't. Or do you think it is unreasonable to think Bethesda is a corporation in this manner too?

If I said they were stupid or lazy, then I take that back. I didn't mean to imply such. By the above I would only venture to say that they're PROBABLY effectively a bit apathetic about the sorts of story concerns addressed in this thread. It isn't like it would be impossible for them to do better and make a profit...but if they are still very successful, why risk anything with significant change. They're probably other factors involved in terms of company structure and the like that lend to this as well. I think it is a fairly obvious statement to say that Bethesda takes baby steps with innovations and is general very cautious in this regard. Do you disagree? I am not very surprised by this, I mean, not every company can be crazy like Nintendo.