Go take a look at the gameplay videos on http://reckoning.amalur.com/ Go watch that, then go play Skyrim for an hour, and just look at the towns, the people, the forests. Look at how the weapons and armor look. I think some people have just about lost their perspective on how Skyrim compares to just about everything else out. KoA is a big game with some big names attached to the writing and art direction - and yet see what the result has been.

KoA is chock full of oversized armor with shoulder pauldrons that look like they were designed as a joke. Their characters look like cartoons. The landscape - well, what to say about the landscape? I remember after playing Skyrim for a week and then loading up Oblivion that I thought the colors in Oblivion were overly saturated. Well, Oblivion has nothing on KoA, which looks like it might as well be Marioworld or wherever the Zelda games are set. Cartoony people wearing over-sized, cartoony armor, wielding huge, cartoony-looking swords that look like they weigh three hundred pounds. They walk among cartoony-looking buildings set in a cartoony landscape with excessively saturated colors.

I've said it before - in terms of art direction alone Skyrim is a quantum leap past anything I've ever seen. Can you imagine if there were flight simulators with this sort of detail to them?

I'm not one to dismiss sensible critiques of the game; the marriage system is a waste of time, cooking's boring and pointless, the encumbrance system needs revamping, horses seem largely to be a waste, followers tend to act like they all ate paint chips as children, and of course even people who aren't getting hit hard with bugs still do run into the occasional CTD or graphical glitch. But too many people need to step back and look at the big picture - and the big picture is pretty damn impressive. Seriously, go watch those videos. It's like they stepped back in time, looked at the first Fable game, and said "You know what? This is pretty good, but I think it needs to be even more cartoony." Watch the KoA gameplay videos, then play Skyrim for an hour and take note of the difference.

Art style really has little to do with anything - it's all personal preference. A stylized game can look just as good as a game attempting realism.

That's like saying look at this five guys burger, it's so much better than this mcdonalds mcdouble, you should appreciate it more. But at the end of the day it's still not filet mignon wrapped in bacon. I want filet mignon wrapped in bacon. If you don't like my food anology that's fine, but in other words why should we excuse skyrim of it's flaws just because this game I have never heard of looks really lame? Why not hold skyrim to high standards? I'm not saying Skyrim is terrible, it was just a somewhat disappointing offering, and I felt like it was going to be a bigger step up from oblivion. Besides some people like/don't mind cartoon-esque games. Look at world of warcraft; it looks like [censored] to me, but 3 million Koreans can't be wrong can they? It's about game play not looks.

Yeah the art style on KoA made me not look into it too much further. It was a signal that this was not my game.

I wasn't a big fan of Fable and honestly I'm not a big fan of Kingdoms of Amalur. My excitement for Kingdoms of Amalur peaked when I heard Ken talk on a couple of podcasts I listen to. He's a pretty well spoken guy and really was clear about what he wanted Kingdoms of Amalur to be. But the demo kind of cooled off my excitement, I'll probably pick it up when it goes on sale but for now I'll pass.

I find it weird how they had R.A Salvatore work on the game yet I hear very few people talk about the story.

The demo was beautiful, but the gameplay was bland IMO; as was the premise ~or what I saw of it in the demo.

(1) I'm not saying Skyrim is flawless, I'm just saying people need to look at things in a relative sense, or all they'll notice is what they think is lacking. I think people are forgetting just what an achievement Skyrim represents. It's an extremely moddable game, and that's a big deal. Anybody else remember Starfleet Command, at least the first two games in the series? Very easily moddable game. Not that I ever modded it, but people could make new ship models quite easily, and they were a snap to install - just drop the model in the appropriate folder. There were applications distributed to easily edit the ship data files as well. All this made for a very enjoyable game with a loyal fan base.

(2) Art style is crucial in a game like this. While yes, stylized art can be very good - I love Arkham Asylum and Arkham City - KoA is a major game being released, with two very big names associated with its production, and yet it looks like a poor cartoon. Not impressive at all. I'd take a buggy Skyrim over a perfectly bug-free KoA in a heartbeat. Wouldn't have to even think about it.

I'll likely pick it up and have a go. I liked Dragon Age II (it was fun, so sue me ), so who knows? This could be another of those games that all the RPG elitists hate but is, in fact, a good bit of fun when you don't feel like getting serious.

Well, to be honest, although R.A. Salvatore and Todd McFarlane are two big names, as soon as I heard they were associated with the game I knew it was going to be nothing I was interested in. I can nerd out with the best of them, but I mentioned in another thread how I think franchise-based novels are utter trash. I love Star Trek, but every Trek novel I've read has been pretty poor. I love Star Wars, but the SW novels I've read - and I read Timothy Zahn's stuff, which I have heard people describe as the best of the bunch - they were all trash. I cannot imagine how much torture it would take to get me to read a Halo or Mass Effect novel, and I love Halo and Mass Effect. You couldn't pay me to read an Elder Scrolls novel. So given that Salvatore's claim to fame is that he wrote some Star Wars novels and some [censored] Dungeons and Dragons novels, his name being attached to the project simply warned me to stay away from it.

And Todd McFarlane? No. Yeah, sometimes he can draw something cool, but "cool" is all he can do. It's like his inner artist never grew up past the age of fourteen. Again, his name being attached to the game warned me to avoid it.


Haven't played any of those, but nothing I've seen of Witcher 2's visuals has impressed me at all.

Well, honestly I've seen a number of people complain about the architecture and the looks of the armor, but you raise a fair point. Although I believe the gameplay to be excellent - compare the combat in Skyrim to the combat shown in the KoA gameplay video - I admit there are areas that need work.

My point overall is just to say that people need to step back and look at the whole game, the good and the bad, and understand that overall it's pretty impressive, and certainly strikes me as being better than the competition.

TES has lost its way. This series isn't what it used to be and it's on a bad decline. Competition is a good thing and maybe Bethesda will wake up.

Skyrim...is pretty good. But I can actually exchange KoA with Skyrim and put exchange Skyrim with Dark Souls in your argument, and for me personally it ends up as the same thing. Dark Souls imo has a better art direction (in GAME) than both of those games, and in terms of combat, Skyrim loses out to both KoA and Dark Souls, at least from what I see. Skyrim also is filled with cartoony large sized swords...the Steelsword and Elven sword for example are gigantic! But personally I think its a bad idea in general to compare two games like that. I've done it in the past, but its better to just look at games as what they are and accept them for what they are, and either like them or hate them.

I personally think Skyrim is "okay", but Skyrim doesn't do a lot of core gameplay mechanics that are the game's foundation (ie: combat, roleplaying, connection with your character, etc) all that well, which for me, is slightly more important than the art direction.

I play on console, I don't want to need mods to enjoy myself. I don't really play a lot of RPGS. I've played KOTOR 1 & 2, Dragon Age Origins and the Mass Effect series along with Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim, and Fallout 3 if I've played any other rpg I can't think of it so it must not been very good anyway. So when I compare Skyrim to other rpgs it's to Bioware games. These games are completely different and yet Bethesda could learn so much from Bioware. You have no idea how disappointed I was to find out the new Kotor was going to be some cartoony MMO. I'll give you a hint; I was really disappointed. But I digress slightly. You see of all things that Skyrim lacks I think the worst offense is it's story and the writing. The quests and the dialogue are all lame, hell dialogue practically doesn't even exist and I always manage to sound like some idiotic novice when I talk even though I'm a total badass. Their are practically no choices in dialogue or actions, there are fewer real consequences. Npcs reactions to you are hardly appropriate to your character and often do not change beside for the occasional new phrase for them to recycle 5 million times as I walk by. All though I suppose I should expect them to be inappropriate as there is no real way to shape your character besides "imagination". Also I can talk to every npc but they are all lame and hollow, and they are either way too or way too sassy. So relatively Skyrim to me is cool because there is so much to explore, yet Mass Effect is like playing in an epic movie where I am the main character. Skyrim and Mass Effect are both a little stripped down, yet Mass Effect makes up for it with awesome story whereas Skyrim gives you 150 versions of the same dungeon.

I would play KoA. I'm thinking of getting it. I know you are trying to get people to understand that Skyrim is a good game by all means. It is.

But people will always compare Skyrim to other games.

IMO Skyrim is a series that is its own. The people that complain about it and insult it should just play another game.

Skyrim is all about exploration and changing of ones character. The ES series isn't about dialogue to me. I
really hate it when people compare Skyrim to other RPGs because most other RPGs are there own game.

When people complain about no choices I chuckle. The game is all about choice, so full of choice that it can feel like one has no choice at all. People just want a game where they can choose over this or that, not all of the above.

Agreed jwebb. Bethesda "doesn't have it anymore". You're spot on.

I can play Skyrim with it's imperfections, but I downloaded th demo of KoA and within 10 minutes I decided I could never look at it long enough to absorb the gameplay.

The changing of ones character bit gets me because I feel like a feeling of my character changing and affecting the world is not present what so ever. A game doesn't have to be about dialogue for it to not have [censored] dialogue. Why can't a game have good writing and still have exploration? I don't understand why they must be mutually exclusive. Not every instance of conversation needs to be a masterpiece of writing, but I would like it is at least interactions with main characters and quest characters were better. When I feel like I could write better dialogue I think it's a problem.

I think that it needs to be pointed out that there are three names of note attached to this title.

R.A. Salvatore, creator of the most famous D&D character, Drizzt D'Urden (I don't care how you spell his name, I loathe the character and the thousands of emo Drow he inspired), wrote the main plot and created the world.
Todd MacFarlane, best known for his Spawn comics... errr... graphic novels, is responsible for the art direction (I wonder why it looks like a comic book... ).
Ken Rolston is Executive Desginer on KoA, but he is probably best known as the Lead Designer for a couple of games you might of heard of: Morrowind and Oblivion.

KoA comes with a hefty pedigree, but whether or not it lives up to that is another matter.

The thing is, ME and TES are very different games. Mass Effect isn't really a role playing game. Yeah, there are a few mechanics taken from RPGs - there are character skills and the like - but the ability to create your own character out of whole cloth just isn't there. Yeah, people can tinker with the face, and there are points in the game where you make character decisions, but frankly, the character is John Shepard. You get to choose some details about Shepard, but you don't create the character; Bioware does that for you.

And that's fine, because the story is one of the strengths of the game in Mass Effect. It's a very character-driven story, and it's classic science fiction. That's the sort of thing you can do as a game writer when you can specify the character, at least the bulk of him.

TES is on the other end of the spectrum: the game developers don't get to write your character at all - or almost at all. What they specify is very limited: they specify that you are a stranger, a prisoner, and that you're going to be fated to do this big thing, whether it's assist the defeat of Mehrunes Dagon or be the Dragonborn, fated to defeat Alduin. Otherwise, it's all decided by the player. That means that while the developer can still write a great story, it can't be dependent on the player in the same way, because they have to leave the player's options open. TES is all about an open world, while Mass Effect is about the Big Story. Both are great, but both had tradeoffs. Mass Effect is more linear than TES, while Elder Scrolls games are going to be less focused.

They both give a great sense of a world, however. I just don't get the people who say TES has "lost its way" or whatever. I'm damn impressed with Skyrim, and I'm not easily impressed.

Well, apart from the fact that you affect the world by stopping a dragon-god from taking the world over, in addition, you determine the outcome of the Civil War. You definitely affect the world.

I'm seeing mixed reviews of KOA:R. I'm suspecting it's because its trying to do a bunch of things which might turn people off or get them terribly excited.

I *personally* don't like the "MMO" influence (as I don't play them), nor does the art style particulairly appeal to me. I prefer my gaming world dark and gritty, and I enjoy Skyrim's art just fine.

But others who just want to go out and kill stuff might just find it fine.

Hell, I liked Fable, bu that was quite a few years ago. Not sure I'd be all that into it now. Never did play Fable 2 or 3. Thought about trying them out, but I'm not sure I want to bother.

I don't believe there is such a thing as "doesn't have it any more". At that size of a studio, amount of resources and own publisher, Bethesda could do everything they want with their series. They could do a Planescape Torment meets Daggerfall ft Morrowind ft New Vegas ft Skyrim night and day, it's just that they don't want to. It's about gaming vision, it's all about Todd Howard. He's the one who decides where the series is going, the others are executing. If there are still people who don't know what's Todd philosophy about RPG, go play Oblivion again , watch the Dice video, then go play Oblivion again, watch the video again. There will never be an RPG like Morrowind made by Todd Howard's Bethesda again, he's into other kind of gaming.

I understand Mass Effect is more linear in that story is basically the whole game whereas in skyrim you don't have to touch the story but when you look the story there is no way to influence to make decisions, there are no dialogue choices. In the game there is no way for me to develop myself as an evil character or really even a good character. ME allows you to create Shephard how you want him to be, really not that much is pinned down it almost as open as Skyrim's main quest is. You are a human, you're Shepherd you play the part of the savior of the galaxy whether it be as an anti hero or hero or renegade or whatever, you assemble a crew. The real difference I think is that ME directs you on path whereas Skyrim you don't have to follow the path. In skyrim however if you do choose a certain path it is very bland and there is no way to add your own influence there is no way to actually create your character through what you do. In Skyrim you just have to pretend you're villainous or whatever in Kotor I could conquer the galaxy, in ME I could let all the damn aliens die. Who cares if I'm Khajit thief with some elaborate self-crafted backstory if at the end of the day I play through the main quest and do the same things a nord warrior would do. Sure I can pretend I have certain motives or whatever OR I could actually realize those motives through story, dialogue and choice.

This person wants to be known and recognized by every NPC for every decision he has made. Like if he broadcasted it on Facebook.