I just dont understand how you develop a game for x amount of years, hype it so even your grandma wants to play and then release what we got..

Uh we only have 3 attributes not 8 so yeah Health is going to be selected by default more often.

Which you were more or less were led into taking. Not only that, but you were given 3 choices. 1/3 - Skyrim, 3/8 - Oblivion... Not much different in the grand scheme.

I don't think Skyrim is an empty shell at all.
I told a non-gamer friend to start listing random activities from life, and it took him about ten tries before he listed something you can't do in skyrim (smoke weed; but there is skooma)

When I think 'empty shell', I think sparkling graphics with a super simplistic plot and limited character options/development. Not only is Skyrim's plot interesting, but gamers are divided on which side to take, which side is just. Many people still haven't decided. I've seen 40 page threads devoted to the Imperial/Stormcloak/Thalmore discussion. Oh yeah, and the developers threw in a set of well-written, informative books- ya know, in case you find the time to read them (I will).

I'm probably coming off as a fan*** here, and that's accurate, because I am.
but let's take a look at what Skyrim has to offer. What components make up this "empty shell" of a game:

-stunning landscapes/scenery (with few limitations on where you can venture)
-ability to interact with everything in environment
-interesting, ambiguous plot (w/ literature)
-a level-up/perk system that feels natural
-the ability to travel solo, or have a multi-species entourage
-fun, intuitive combat (sometimes clunky, but usually enjoyable)
-ability to be whoever you want. Sure, you can fulfill you destiny to become the heroic Dragonborn- but if you crumble under pressure, you can become a drunk at the Winking Skeever, or a farmer in the rural countryside (ok, so you can't technically own farmland, but you sure as heck can spend every waking hour wherever you choose, and if it's with the chickens then so be it.)
-varied characters -likeable characters, bland characters, eccentric characters, evil characters, back-stabbing characters (I'm talking to you Al-Jazeem lighthouse mothaf******) The voice acting is far too limited and half the men sound the same, but the NPC appearance and dialogue is quite varied: some characters I want to befriend, some characters I want to kill, and some characters I want to bone. The truth is here my friends.

Frankly, I consider Skyrim the greatest video game ever made. Looking beyond nostalgia and technological developments, Skyrim is simply the most complete video game package; the magnum opus of the gaming world.
Maybe I'm overreacting, but that's what Skyrim does to me. It makes life feel bigger and better than it was before. Skyrim is a hell of a place to visit.
I recommend taking a trip back in time and playing some of these "better" games you speak of. I think you'll find yourself back in Whiterun sooner than you think.

Oh, hey. This thread again, where the egomaniacs converge and say everyone's a silly sausage for not hating the game.

I just dont understand how you develop a game for x amount of years, hype it so even your grandma wants to play and then release what we got..

The RPG mechanics, or rather lack thereof, are very disappointing. Skyrim doesn't even have a reputation system... A REPUTATION SYSTEM. I felt my heart sink to my stomach when I noticed it, but there's none whatsoever in this game. Daggerfall's was amazing, Morrowind's less good but still pretty good, Oblivion's was decent, and Fallout 3's was at least sort of, kind of there, but Skyrim has literally no reputation system. It's just... why? People don't react according to my actions at all... they don't even recognize me as the dragonborn who slays dragons and is destined to stop Alduin. They don't ever come up to me anymore and say "you used to be my hero, now you're just a murderer" if I was once a hero and proceeded to murder someone as observed in Oblivion.

People don't recognize positions within factions... and on that note, the factions are horrible, as well. It's so disappointing, but if they kept the small number of joinable factions Oblivion had, I would have thought they would have at least remained Oblivion's quality (arguably the best faction plotlines of the series), but they became nothing more than a short, underwhelming, handful of unique quests with barely any satisfaction, depth, or true rank-rising. This doesn't mesh well with the lack of reputation. These are primary factors (although there are others such as a lack of spellmaking, even further reduced equipment slots, lesser character creation options, etc.) that leave Skyrim lacking. It feels hollow, the replay value has plummeted, the RPG mechanics barely existent... if there is no longer any reward, recognition, or unique content for playing in any sort of playing style as any sort of character and barely any tools for building the character I want in the first place, anymore (the exception being the basic leveling system), it's just shallow as an RPG.

I wish they were less lenient and just kicked people like you off the forum for repeated troll posts like this one.

Exactly Ebony Bow.

Which you were more or less were led into taking. Not only that, but you were given 3 choices. 1/3 - Skyrim, 3/8 - Oblivion... Not much different in the grand scheme.

Dude you summed up my thoughts on this game to the letter. I can live with every other feature being removed EXCEPT for this one. I mean oblivion's reputation system was horrible. I didn't even know I had it until I was hundreds of hours in, and it only did a slight amount of things that really didn't affect the game too drastically, but at least it was there. At least if I killed a bunch of people the god's wouldn't grant me my blessing. At least if I explored cyrodil and raised my fame to a certain point new quests would become available to me, although they were extremely few in number. At least if I got my fame or infamy high enough NPC's disposition would change accordingly.


This game doesn't even have that small feature. I can kill everyone I meet and I can still go to the god's altars and get blessings. I can kill everyone in a town and no one outside of the hold is going to bat an eyelash. The only time I've ever seen anyone care about what i've done was when I was on a killing spree in white run and an NPC remarked "you want to talk to me after all you've done?", and they didn't even change how they reacted towards me once I actually started to talk to them. This game has absolutely no immersion at all. No one reacts to anything you do, or if they do it's just a remark they make when you walk past them. It's amazing how little this game improved from oblivion.

The biggest difference in my opinion on Morrowind/Oblivion and Skyrim is not about if it has 8 stats or just 3 stats. In both Morrowind and Oblivion your character started out as unique, at high level you were a jack of all trades and not unique in any way what so ever. In Skyrim you start out as a jack of all trades, but due to the perk system at high level you will be a lot more unique then in previous games. It is still possible to make a jack of all trades character, but if you want to you can also specialize deeper into specific builds. And even if you grind every skill to 100 you will still be less effective in the things you doesn't have perks in as perks really is the factor that makes your character stand out.

I've just completed the College of Winterhold questline and was extremely disappointed with it. It is basically four or five extended (read: three hours or so) dungeon crawls, with almost no story. The main baddie's motives are entirely unclear, aside from just being power-mad, and there is absolutely no compelling reason for the PC to get involved with the Psijic Order's crap. Further, there is little real reason for the College to entust you with the task of doing all these dungeon crawls alone, and as in Oblivion the actual guild basically sits back and lets you do all the work despite them only having known you all of two weeks. Except it's much worse. Where are the other College members in all this? It is way worse than Oblivion's MG, where many of the Arcane University's mages are involved in the plot directly, and the fight against the necromancers feels like a proper guild effort. Where in Skyrim are the group quests, apart from the one at Saarthal? Why is there only a paper-thin, barely plausible explanation of what is actually going on at the College while you travel the province doing one boring dungeon-fetch mission after another?

The comments about dumbing down are entirely accurate based on that. It seems like with Skyrim Bethesda have gone for spectacular dungeons at all costs. I will concede the dungeons are neat, but I would have settled for about 15-20 handcrafted ones and the rest generated, if it meant adequate time was spent on storywriting and thinking up creative quest ideas.

I am happy with the changes skyrim brought, so I do hope the series keeps getting "dumbed down"

Well there are elements in Skyrim that is far from good looking at it as a RPG.


No real consequence system - You can literally take items from a shop, or steal all the items the shop owner have and sell them back to him without him recognizing them. Some items are even marked "steal" which makes it easy to pick out the ones that you can take and sell back without any risk of getting caught.

Money talks, and Skyrim is selling very well. So complaining that the next game should go back to it's Daggerfall roots, isn't going to fly. Why should Bethesda fix what is working, because a few people on a message board just wants Morrowind 2?