The World of Skyrim Means Nothing... Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 NEXT | |
Considering most of the intro sequence, and the path to whiterun, the very first part of the game , is mostly not in the mountains, and mostly snowless, you apparently quit in the first 5 minutes. | |
It's funny, I still had plenty of NPCs complaining about the war after it was over, in a sense that to them it was still actively being fought. | |
Gotta love those dialog system bugs. What's funny is that like half of the guards programmed quotes, several shouts that are useable by dragons, and a large chuck on other NPC dialog, is bugged due to an error in how the game picks what dialog options to use. What's even more funny is how broken the random encounter system is, ever wondered why there are no werewolves outside companions quests? there are, they are just bugged | |
I hate when the guards talk, because then they get angry when I steal their sword and enchant it for them! YOU ASKED ME TO ENCHANT YOUR SWORD YOU STUPID GUARD! | |
What's even funnier is the the game just flat doesn't recognize the things you've done. Finished the DB questline, which had me interacting with the Thieves Guild at times. Start Thieves Guild questline, they act as if they've never seen me and I'm not the head of the DB. What the hell? We've met, I'm not some random low thief you chose. | |
Is that an Eddie Murphy quote I see? OT: Eh... I don't really see what the point is that you're trying to get across, OP, but for whatever it's worth, I agree with Zhukov about seeing some games that realistically implements restrictions on what the player character can do in order to build a more natural feeling world. | |
That's odd because when I did The Thieves Guild quests first, and when I had to talk to Delvin for the Dark brotherhood quests, he said a special line it was something along the line of "here for business(maybe it was jobs) boss?", you say "no I'm here on dark brothehrood business" Malory then says "ohh alright then, I see your making friends all over" I wouldn't be surprised is some flag does get set right thus preventing the real dialog from occurring in the reverse situation. | |
Cicero, J'zargo, Maiq the Liar, Parthurnax, Odahviig. I just named 5, your move Jynthor But yeah I agree that the world is rather static, still I got about 250 hours of enjoyment out of it, so i dont regret my purchase in the slightest. | |
Belethor, at the general goods store. | |
[sigh] Really, this game isn't beautiful. The graphics look a little better than Oblivion on the highest settings. The colors are very dull. | |
LYDIAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
That's what makes it pretty. It's muted, bleak - and it accomplishes a real sense of place. OT: I like it as a setting (Bruma was my favourite city in Oblivion). I do take issue with the rather bewildering number of people who don't recognise at least one of my roles as the Arch-Mage/killer of Alduin/Black Hand of the Dark Brotherhood, but... eh. It's certainly something they need to work on, but the size of the world and the amount to explore lets me forgive it. Everything's a compromise (unfortunately). | |
Belethor! From the general goods store! Who DOESN'T remember Belethor? | |
Well | |
Think of things on the surface level with TES lore, and yeah, it's dull as fuck. But, look up Dragon Breaks, the lore about the gods, and for the love of the Nine, look up CHIM. | |
CHIM, only through loving all things, which means loving oneself since oneself is all things, can one attain it. Loading save-games? CHIM
| |
Well, it's implied the DB and Thieves Guild to business together and Astryd is good friends with the Thieves Guild. So, wouldn't they want to get to know the new head of the DB? Half their business is information, that's a pretty big hole in their network if they aren't aware of that. And yeah you did it the other way around. | |
Well its implied Astrid does business with Delvin, not the thieves guild as a whole. DB stuff is something Delvin probably doesn't talk about much. Also, it is made clear in the thieves guild questline that the DB and thieves guild leave each other alone for the most part. It's most likely something only Vex, Delvin, Brynolf, and Mercer know about, and I doubt they would tell everyone about it unless you wanted them too. | |
Maybe it's possible to come up with a plausible excuse for why there is so little consequence for your actions... but at the end of the day, does it really matter? The simple fact that there is little consequences for your actions is boring in and of itself, whether it was deliberate or not. Freedom to me doesn't mean "going wherever I want." If I wanted that, I'd play WoW. The lands there are just as (if not more) interesting to look at. Freedom means choosing how I influence the world around me. That's why Bethesda's games have never done it for me. I'd rather have a smaller world with genuine consequence, than a vast one where my decisions only impact the NPCs I happen to be talking to at the time. And they insist on going vaster and vaster every single time. | |
THIS! Exactly this. So yeah Skyrim sucks for MANY MANY reasons, described by the OP. | |
Almost none of the things you do in Skyrim SHOULD have noticeable consequences, outside of a few dialog lines. One of my biggest pet peeves with New vegas is how unrealistic the consequences for your actions are. Obsidian over-inflate everything to an unrealistic degree and it kills most of the enjoyment I get out of the mange. I would rather have a game were consequences make sense then one were everyone gets all foaming at the mouth over every little action you do. | |
My point was that a "freedom RPG" that is designed such that the choices you're presented with should not, logically, have interesting consequences... is a poorly designed freedom RPG. If it doesn't make sense for your quests to affect the world in interesting ways, scrap those quests and make new ones. If it doesn't make sense for your NPCs to be terribly affected by the player, the conflict around them isn't being set up properly. | |
M'aiq says many things. Many things that make him an interesting character. If they're lies or not remains to be seen of course. OT: It might have been there for me, but I didn't let it pull me out of things. When I played, it never really got to me. | |
95% of quests shouldn't have large impacts on the world, and those that do affect the world should not be mentioned outside the immediate area that they occur in, if you design a contrary to that, then you have done so wrong. Making most of the quests have some noticeable impact on the world kills all believability, and turns most of the populous into drooling monkeys whose sole purpose in life is to spout praises to your character in some obvious and illogical ego-stroking event. that Mr. New Vegas commented on even 1/10 of the things he did shows how god-awful they set their consequences up. | |
Perhaps the problem here is that I haven't explained what I mean by "consequences." I don't want NPCs to do nothing but talk about my latest accomplishments. I want NPCs to live in the world they live in. A hypothetical scenario: You're playing a typical fantasy RPG. You arrive in an isolated human town, the folks are nice enough but something a little weird is going on. You do some digging around and find out that the town council is made up of Cthulhu-worshipping cultists. What do you do? A) Leave the town because this quest doesn't interest you, or your main quest is too urgent to stop in every single village and solve their shit. If you did A), you come back eventually and find the whole town deserted. After a while, noteable NPCs you've encountered in other cities begin disappearing one by one. The cultists got wise of your suspicions and moved their operation, but not before turning all the regular folk into ingredients. You can find Bob in some tavern halfway across the country, trying to drink away the horrors of what he saw before he got away. If you did B), because there's no longer any form of government, the town falls into disarray. The asshole blacksmith decides he should try his hand at playing king, turning the place into a fort. Half of the NPCs manage to escape and make an exodus to the nearest village, where they have to beg for food on the streets. Bob is the blacksmith's reluctant lieutenant, and can still be reasoned with to turn this whole thing around without getting everybody killed... if you so choose. If you did C), this town goes on to be perfectly fine, but hostilities increase in other nearby towns, because some people there think they can start a revolution by claiming their government is a bunch of sociopathic cultists, too. Bob, hero of ThatTown, goes to one of these villages to convince everyone to calm down. See what I mean by consequence? All perfectly reasonable, and the NPCs don't revolve around you in any way. edit: and if you did a smaller quest that ends with Bob leaving town, first, then he doesn't do any of those things he did above. Seems like a very small thing, except if you ended up doing C) and then tried your hand at calming things down, having Bob by your side would make it much more likely that you would succeed. I used big plotful things in my example simply because it's easier to imagine without me needing to invent a crapton of particular characters with particular backstories. Instead of towns and cultists and revolution, we could be talking about the relationships between a crapton of different NPCs, these relationships changing over time based both on your involvement in their lives, your involvement in the world around them, and themselves. Much less work for devs, much more work for me now if I wanted to make a scenario out of it. | |
Do you work for Bethesda or something ? | |
No I just prefer worlds with somewhat realistic consequences for your actions, then one whose entire world give you a reach around over everything you do. fallout 3 and New Vegas both did it to an ungodly annoying amount.
Yeah doing things like that really isn't a good idea. Putting a time limit, or a time restraint on things n this kinda of game is generally bad. things like "X numer of NPCs get killed off over Y time if you dont do something" is usually a no-go. | |
I thought Skyrim didn't have meaningful consequences for your choices/actions ? I'm not talking about some bs comment some nondescript npc makes either. | |
Really I was only too happy to kill him because he was so annoying. I love exploring in games and skyrim was much better than oblivion in that regards. Oblivion gates actually put me to sleep. I felt like each area was one big copy/paste. The assasins guild in oblivion was better than skyrim's... That would be skyrims biggest flaw was the guild quests. | |
Skyrim had results equivalent to the actions taken. Comparatively in Fallout 3, or New Vegas, you would have the radio announcer treating almost every time you take a piss like it was some big news story and people talking about shit that happened in X town on the far side of the map like it mattered to them in town Y. My problem with Fallout 3 and New Vegas is that in Bethesda/Obsidian's, respectively, attempts to create "consequence" they ruined all believability their worlds had by treating every little things like it was some major news story turning the entire world into one giant circle jerk. What makes me hate it the most is the radio news announcers, the radio stations in Fo3 and NV, only have loosely justified existences within the world itself, people make mention of listening to them but no one ever acts on or says anything about what they actually say. The radio stations could play heavy metal and you wouldn't know because they are so poorly integrated into the world outside of your pipboy, people only acknowledge there is something there, not that it does anything. The radio station news announcers ONLY purpose in the game is to basically be a invisible man who floats next to you and whispers ego-stroking BS into your ear at all times of the day. It creates what I like to call "false consequence" the illusion that your actions have more impact then they actually do. Most people hear three Dog and Mr New Vegas constantly talking about the stuff you did and think "well if he says it other people must know it also", when others don't. If you remove the radio, and remove the battle of hoover dam where your allies show up for all of 5 seconds, do you know what New Vegas's consequences would be? It would be exactly like Skyrim random generic, non-named NPCs taking the places of other random, generic non-named NPCs, with other generic NPC guards like the NCR rangers talking about shit you did, exactly like the guards from Skyrim. Ever since I played Fallout 3 I despised the radio for being such a poorly constructed an obvious attempt to create imitation consequence and impact from actions where there was none, I replaced both three dog's and Mr New Vega's voice files with silent blanks just to get some sense of believability back into the world. That is why I like Skyrim, you do something for people THEY and THEY alone thank you, shit that isn't big news isn't treated like big news. News stay were it belongs, and you dont have a yes man stroking your ego every 5 seconds. Could Skyrim do a better job in some cases? yes, absolutely, but when compared to Fallout 3 and New Vegas it is a fucking godsend in terms of realistic and believable consequences to your actions. the world doesn't become one giant circle jerk with you at the middle of it, people dont talk about shit they shouldn't talk about, news stays in the areas it is supposed to. And I hate it when people try to say that Fallout 3 and New Vegas had soo much bigger impacts on the world when the only difference in impact was the radio station creating some were there was none, and the trivial and almost nonexistent battle of hoover damn bs. | |
Except thats not why people play TES games. The freedom you want isnt possible right now. What IS possible, is creating a huge entirely handmade world, with a vast number of quests items and NPCs for us to as we wish within limits. If you want a heavily plot or character driven game, then this isnt the game for you. There are plenty of other games out there that do that, Mass Effect for one is heavily character and plot focused, Skyrim is not. Just because the game doesn't have what you want doesn't make it bad.
Oh hey..lets work out the main characters entire personality based on the main question, one of the quests that a lot of people dont even do, and that isnt actually very important. In all seriousness, once again the things you are asking for are just silly. Because a lot of those thigns, youll just do once and then reload because the repercussions are so great, or itll just screw you in the end. That person that captured you? Necessary to the entire Dark Brotherhood. A lot of people in that town you want to murder? Probably necessary to tons and tons of quests that you can break. And at the end of the day, these are not serious things that you want, you'll do them once, then reload afterwards. ANd at the end of the day, mods. That request you just made, easily solved by a single mod. | |
Once you do all those things nothing really changes. All you get are some cool new skills. It doesn't show you what the world is like besides just a passing oh hey you did this so this happened. Everything is still the way it was in the game before doing all that | |
I said that I don't mean some bullshit comments which don't actually EFFECT THE GAME IN A MEANINGFUL WAY. And all you do is talk about how so and so mentions this, or mentions that. | |
The freedom I want isn't possible? How do you know? Who's tried? I would take a world 1/10 the size of Skyrim if it offered me genuine consequence for my actions. Still no plot, still no characters. Just on those two variables alone.
So if someone assassinated the president of the United States, people would say "that's too bad" and go on with their lives? Lol?
Are we talking about the same game here? The one that encourages you to kill the Emperor of your society? Kill dragons? That sort of thing? If the game doesn't want you to have crazy consequences for your actions, then your actions shouldn't be crazy to begin with. Have a game about a guy who works as a mercenary protecting caravans. Beat up some bad guys, talk to some NPCs, visit different lands. There you go, HF. The consequences there can be perfectly realistic and almost non-existent at the same time. Not killing fucking emperors. edit: I wouldn't mind a game like that, really. :)
Yeah doing things like that really isn't a good idea. Putting a time limit, or a time restraint on things n this kinda of game is generally bad. things like "X numer of NPCs get killed off over Y time if you dont do something" is usually a no-go.[/quote] I didn't say over Y time if you don't do something. You interpreted what I said for ONE option that way. It could easily have said "they all die instantly," or "they die one by one until their deaths form a quest, but you're not able to prevent any of them because you don't know where to look until a strong pattern emerges." Nice focusing on that one irrelevant, non-existent detail, though. (Never mind that ME2 and ME3 both had instances of this and there were zero complaints.) | |
If you remove the ending credits from New Vegas do you know what you get in terms of "consequence"? You get generic NPCs led by one named NPC replacing other generic NPCs led by one named NPC Killing NCR at Helios via death ray Killing Legion at Nelson Finding a cure for the supermtants All the world events that stem from actions you take in New Vegas are the same for everything you can do. Either the ONLY time your actions have real consequence, that actually changes things, is in the last 5-10 minutes of the game were your allies show up and help you at hoover dam, that and the epilogue. 95% of world altering consequences are only ever TOLD to you in the epilogue, it only exists in some voice overs, you dont get to physically see the world change, you are just told it is, which makes all said consequence pointless because you never get to experience it. I would stake my life that had skyrim had a radio with a newsreporter and a series of epilogue slides we wouldn't be here having this discussion. And at the end of the day the "conseuqence" Skyrim would have had would have been just as fake as NEw Vegas pretends it has. 95% of New Vegas's "consequences" is fake because you never get to see it or experience it, your are just sat down and told it happened in some ending slides. Its a really cheap, and exceedingly transparent gimmick that tricks people into believe their actions had more consequence then they did. that people still fall for it amuses me to no end. | |
| Pages PREV 1 2 3 4 5 NEXT | |
Don't get me wrong it is enjoyable to play as an evil bastard - my latest Skyrim build is a serial killer; but there will always have to be limitations,because quite simply being evil is the one of most imaginative things you can be. And there's no way developers could let you do whatever twisted thing you wanted, it would just be too much of an undertaking.
I guess the best thing we could hope for would be to give a few more ways of being evil.