It's the truth. Nothing about Skyrim brings me to think about an RPG. The funny thing is, Bethesda doesn't care about anything we say up here. Thanks for your indifference, Bethesda Softworks. Hope EA puts you out of business.

Skyrim's problems are so numerous, and the only real pro I can find in it is the world itself. The gameworld is huge, amazing, and beautiful, but that's it. They packed A TON of nothing, into a pretty world. Useless.

The [censored] will blindly defend it, though, when most of them haven't even finished the game. Note: most.

You could turn it into one, why not? Obviously it wasn't intended that way, but if someone created a crafting mod and added swords and shields to CoD, I suppose you could turn it into an MMO.

Heh, well people seem to be generally more concerned that I used the word "nerd" on a gaming forum. I admit to nerdlike features, big deal. Perhaps I should have used "Nord" Few people commented on what my post actually had to say...


RPG is a genre fair enough. It's all the tiny little sub-genre variants that people all jump up & down about trying to slot Skyim into that makes me WTF. Like it makes any difference to anyone, ever, in the entire world.

Again, to push the point forward, if you can play a game in several different ways, and still progress, thats RPG right?

Yeah, I'm a nerd. I'm pretty sure you are to and the person who posted that is probably one as well.

Insecure maybe?

Fortunately not every nerd on here is obsessively trying to redefine a genre in order to exclude a game that failed to live up to their expectation and, presumably, trying to irk the people that like it by associating it with genres as far from RPGs as possible.

(Lol a lol at FPS comparisons - so few games of either genre they must have played).


Only if pretty accurate means "profoundly stupid" in whatever dialect of the English language you are using.

Whether or not you have valid points is debatable, but it really does make it hard to take you or others seriously with such rediculous comparisons (and makes one question whether you have played either Skyrim or Duke Nukem - which does even more damage to your view since it makes it seem based on nothing you have actual experience with),

Well, it's an RPG just as much as any JRPG ever was.
Now, when I think RPG I use the standards of a person raised on D&D, Daggerfall and Baldur's Gate. And I can tell you NO big publisher has made an RPG in a decade. Neverwinter Nights 2 was farce, the Witcher was a cool rpg system but lacking an interactive or open world at all.

Basically, stuff like Arcanum (which is probably the most role-playing role playing game I've seen on PC) is unpopular with game producers, possibly because they are risk averse and/or hare-brained and ignorant. Personally I think this has to do with distortions caused by our current shareholder laws (among other things), but whatever the cause it's certainly there and certainly frustrating for those of us who wish there was actually anything worth caring about or a world that didn't remain frozen no matter what you did.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/InsaneTrollLogic

The more you know.

That was sorta my point. Everyone on this forum has a little bit of nerd in them...



Ah, so pretty much troll logic = your thought pattern. Got it.

Indeed I am Didn't suspect I would cause outrage to the exclusion of my post's actual content however...

I wonder what you'd think of Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars

Apparantly it was quite good. Never tried it.

Uh oh, semantics again Duck for Cover!

its kids n cake syndrome,these sorts of threads are always going to flare.

give a kid a cake with cream and frosting
the next day give him the same cake without frosting....he`ll give a look of disdain and eat it
give the kid the same cake again without cream or frosting and watch the sparks fly.

especially as you promised the kid a cake that was better than the first.


wtf am i talking about ?


edit:
what i am trying to say is we used to get cakes in a nice box with ribbons and bows..

now they just drop kick a [censored]in donut through the window and run away

I'm not saying it's perfect, perhaps they can make some improvements with some dialogue (doesn't bother me that much, but fair enough). Things do seem to change in the world- not drastically so, but I wouldn't really want that either.

I hope that Bethesda only makes minor changes, and people that want massive changes can find them in mods... everyone's happy (yeah right lol).

Well, there's no longer a point in arguing with the TC I see, given that it's pretty clear from that response that the whole point of the thread was to stir everyone up. But, there have been some valid points made in the thread, and what I said about the evolution of RPGs still stands. I'll check in and discuss any proper discussion on the subject, but for now I'm gonna go play some Skyrim.

I'm officially done with this thread. You've managed to bring it down to "No I don't smell, coz you Smell". At this point I take my leave.

Well, that is kinda good. Because at the point where Role said this I decided [censored] it I'm going to stir up [censored], he obviously hadn't bothered to read what I had written, and continued to take one liners out of context or throw insults. Hence, me being like meh its over anyway.

HERE'S ANOTHER COMPLAINT, gamesas. Why can I not be a religious fanatic and extremist, and go around burning cities, ululating Talos' name while I do so? I find that lacking.

But, no, seriously, it's called depth and growth, Bethesda.

Hadn't bothered to read what was written, and taken one single line out for particular attention. Yes I know the feeling.

The RPG element it has is in the freedom it gives you. You can't develop your character in many different ways as I was suggesting so it would be much harder to role play in it than it is in Skyrim (I tried). The point is that this is not an either or discussion. If it is, then the only true RPG is the one played with pen and paper with your friends, where the world is made up as you go. From the moment the developer starts introducing an overall narrative, it stops being a pure RPG but by those standards, there's no pure RPG video game. So the question is quantitative, not qualitative, and you have to draw the line somewhere. For me, as I was saying in the post you replied to, a game that makes it easy for me to role play so many different characters that can be developed in different directions and still make it make sense in the overall narrative, is an RPG. As it's obvious though, few games are strictly one genre only games, they have aspects of different genres.

Full reply to your post then...

If you can play the game in different ways and progress, it would be whatever type of game it was with some RPG elements.. As I kinda explained in my first post (badly possibly due to second language)

All of them.

So, may I ask then, what RPG features are in those games that's lacking in Skyrim?

Certainly not the dialog options, as the most choice you would get apart from outright interrogation is limited to "yes" and "no".
Certainly not the effect you can do on the world, because apart from the NPCs disposition they just don't care about anything. Even if you are the Leader of all factions in Morrowind, the great Neveraine you are still just called as an "outlander". You might be having nearly all great artifacts of Thamriel, but nobody says a word, apart from saying "your clothes look expensive".

Don't worry, I got the point you were making and agree completely.


Which is subjective - since we can have people say the same about Morrowind or BG2 or whatever else.

It is also kind of silly as you aren't arguing whether it is or isn't an RPG, you are arguing whether it is a good RPG. It is like saying a poorly done horror film that doesn't scare you isn't a horror but rather a romance because hey - I wasn't scared but the male and female character kissed at the end.

Genre doesn't work like that. Something can be a poorly done example of a genre and still be of the genre. Your feeling is an RPG needs to be engaging and this one doesn't engage you. Then it is a bad RPG, not an example from another genre all together. Seriously, it is like saying "people who do bad things aren't really members of the human race" - "this game of X genre doesn't work for me, ergo it is not a game of X genre".

And again - opinion opinion is opinion.

Well, its not that its not an excellent game, because it is.

I really had hoped for it to be more fleshed out, character and world wise.
This is also one of the things Oblivion did poorly, and it received some critique over that, so especially after Fallout: New Vegas showed how it could be done, I had high hopes.
But in many ways the reactions of the world to the player are as poor or even poorer than Oblivions.

What I find particularly dissapointing is how little the world actually changes because of, or reacts to, your actions.
Why dont the people talk about the change in power?
Why are Stormcloak generals still immortal after the civil war ends? I got told there are many Stormcloak camps still out that that had to be dealt with so I went: No problem sir.
Only to find out that if I try I get an angry unkillable person after me. Shoddy.

The writing for the quests and the quest log are, and I didnt think it to be possible, even more shallow and non-existant than in Oblivion.
There was a quest involving Potema. Im a lore junkie, I was so giddy for it.
But does anything remotely interesting happen? Can I side with Potema? Hear her out? No.

In Morrowind and Oblivion at least the bad guy had an interesting speech just before the big show-down.
Alduin? A complete let-down.

Nobody even bothers to tell you anything, you cant ask for clues anywhere, you just have to rely on your magic marker.
All the guild quests are dissapointing. They are short, change nothing in the world and are really just there for the adventurer alone.
Can I help get the reputation of the College back up? Is there some conflict between the fighters guild and thieves guild?

Its just dissapointing.
Maybe I expected too much, but they could pull it off with Daggerfall and Morrowind, so why not now?

Is it me or is everyone missing the point here?

People say its an RPG because you play a role within the game, you make your own morale choices based on how you perceive the character should act to certain situations. Sure that is most definitely Role Playing and as its in a game that means it must be an RPG. Easy. But you could do that in any game really..

I think the main gripe in Skyrim is there's no gauge for your characters progression with regards to your place and power in the world. Remember its not JUST about roleplaying a character in your head, because thats easy, its also about getting feedback off the game that you are progressing in the world and gaining power or success. It losses that character definition with regards to complimenting your chosen role.

So, I can Roleplay a Thief in Skyrim sure, I can decide not to take certain quests because they would not suit my role. I end up becoming the leader of a band of thieves who don't recognise me as such. This breaks the immersion and leaves you wondering what was the point. Sure, I can just forget about that and continue my escapades as a thief to regain that feeling of role/profession. But the game should compliment my choices to confirm to me that its reacting to the role I'm trying to portray. Thats one thing.

Now to the skills. The perks do a good job at defining my skill set, What's lacking is any representation of my characteristics that tie in with my chosen skills. How am I more agile/dexterous than that warrior or mage I created? Is it because I spent all my points into sneak? Or because my Sneak is at 100? Should there be an indicator that compliments my skill choice which in turn compliments my chosen role? The perk tree should have been a set of skills that are governed by my defining characteristics which shows me how well I can actually do it. Meaning the 0 - 100 is a measure of my roles learning curve with that activity and my governing attribute determines how good I am at performing the the skills within.

Yes I'm talking about Attributes. The very definition of the word defines roleplaying in more ways than just a number, where the number is just the gauge of how good you are at it. It defines and confirms your role and enables the game a way of showing you the time invested with this characteristic. It gives you a sense of character growth and effects how well you can dodge, sneak, jump, roll, etc. By having attributes in a game gives the developer a mechanic to add much more character depth. By taking them out, well we should have guessed how it might turn out.

Definition of Attribute - To consider as a quality or characteristic of the person, thing, group, etc., indicated: He attributed intelligence to his colleagues.

In my opinion attributes define your character further and allows the game to communicate your choices to you within a game world. Its not just a number, it's a measure of power and confirmation to your place in the world that compliments your skill choices and directly reflects how good you are at what you do. By not having this type of measure then in my eyes its not a deep roleplaying game because characteristics tie in to so many different gameplay mechanics. Skyrim of course has RPG elements but its more of a dungeon crawl Action Adventure more than a true RPG that has all those things but with proper character defining quality's. Having to mentally impose your role and not have the game recognise you seems pointless because as I said earlier, you can do that with any game really.


TL;DR?

Does being able to enact a role in your head and force it on a game that does not react to your choices mean its an RPG? I dont think so. True RPG's must have all of the following to be classed as a proper RPG. Sense of Adventure, Dungeon Crawling, Rewarding Exploration. Good Story, Strong Lore, Interactivity, Rich Open Gameworld and most important of all for a sense of purpose, Heavy Character Development Quality's. And just by having attributes in a game as a base to work off, offers mechanics to define all of the above.

Fair enough, I understand that logic and it makes sense. I guess what I am trying to say is that Skyrim isn't as good with the RPG elements as other RPG's in my opinion, and that is why I dont believe that it actually is. It is close to one, but it is definitely not as much of an RPG as some of the older games.

Honestly, in terms of environment depth they've gone downhill. Too much focus on graphics and physics. I would much prefer to have a far larger game with lesser graphics. Frankly, as long as I can tell a knife from a cow I don't care what the game looks like. I think the games are great but they could have been much better if they had stuck with the Daggerfall style of GIGANTIC open worlds where you can do just about anything you want; instead of pseudo-gigantic open worlds where nothing happens no matter what you do.

well someone has to tell him,may as well be me..

your answers as daft as a box of green ducks,you havent played skyrim that much is obvious.

the clue is in "some rpg elements"