Welcome again to everybody. Take a seat listen to rhythm of the street. In the time-honoured tradition of our group, here is the weekly discussion thread.
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Honestly looking at the elder scrolls games, I can’t feel like the designers went backwards. Or, what I mean is that the original designers of arena, daggerfall, and morrowind had massive ambitions for their games that couldn’t be met by either their budget, time or technology. Then when Todd Howard and Co took the reigns, especially after oblivion and fallout 3, they had the time, tech, and budget but lacked a lot of ambition or risk taking
I never played the earlier elder scrolls games, but my main criticism of Skyrim is that it’s an earlier attempt (in the live service gold rush) to be a “forever game” but it does this in a way that makes the game feel more hollow and empty. Mods help, but are mainly kicking the can down the road, not fundamentally giving the game more depth or meaning. There’s a lot to do in Skyrim and some of it is pretty detailed quest lines, but it’s hard to feel like any of it actually matters. You can do the main quest line all the way to completion or simply ignore it and it won’t really matter. You can do the civil war quest line or ignore it and… you get the idea. And the exploratory aspect of it, which could in theory compensate for how optional the main questing is, is too repetitive and meaningless; go to location, kill enemies there, get loot and XP.
AC Odyssey, a later game, has a similar design going on (but with no mod community to help it). Fairly open-ended in theory, but little of it matters. Though Odyssey at least has a decently told story, if you can get past how long the game will drag on doing all the side quests. Skyrim I think I played it to completion once and I barely remember what the plot was. Most of the fun of Skyrim for me is the power fantasy of it, but once you get to a certain power level, it tapers off and you can laugh at the most powerful enemies. This is a problem RPGs often have, but I notice it more in Skyrim because there isn’t really a set end to the game and because the story elements are so forgettable to me.
Bethesda has been a disaster for Fallout & Elder Scrolls.
Todd Howard is a coward and swindler; Emil Pagliarulo is a hack who couldn’t write a parking ticket.
The two of them + all their collaborators & enablers have been a disaster for CRPGs. I’m glad Microsoft took Fallout away from them. Hope it stays that way.
Where did you get the steeliness to say stuff like that :O I’d feel way too bad giving anyone the slightest insult
I used to be a similar way.
But there comes a point when you have to recognize people who are clearly selfish, egotistical, and who behave maliciously and call out both their behavior and them as people.
One of the things that vexes me is that Skyrim had a time jump of 200 years. Which is honestly just wierd. I get that it makes some sense since one of the most important characters for 4 games [Uriel Septim] died, but they haven’t made a new elder scrolls game in nearly two decades. The point of a time jump is to essentially reset back to the exposition portion to then make more stories. Even ESO is a prequel bringing back Manimarcho from II and IV.
Todd talked about Starfeild being his baby, and I get that and can definitely see that, but the elder scrolls is basically a Bethesda kid only. It’s not something like fallout that can be handed off [note: from what I’ve heard apparently they are making fallout 5 still, and doing new vegas and 3 remasters, just that obsidian is making a separate fallout project.]
And then there’s the continued dumbing down of mechanics. I get not having like, daggerfall level mechanics, or even hit chance [hit chance is its own thing i might make a post about, basically my opinion is that it falls into the same pitfalls deus ex HR did with removing the weapon skills the original deus ex did]. But removing spell crafting? And an entire school of magic? [Todd is a barbarian main, of course]
Role play is also something Bethesda struggles with, despite the fact they make rpgs. Morrowind and Daggerfall are probably my two favorite for role play because your first priority is basically to get a job, and beyond that you’re a blank slate. You also have to balance factions, and in morrowind you have to pick sides in fights between stuff like the mages guild and house telvani or the fighters guild and theives guild. In skyrim and oblivion you don’t get that. For some reason they dropped that entire concept in oblivion and only brought it back for dawnguard [and i guess technically shivering isles but that’s a massive technicality].
I think if anything, I’d really just like someone to remaster Morrowind and Daggerfall. Mods get close, but a proper remaster/remake that keeps 90% of the core things (INCLUDING HIT CHANCE), modernize them for both the lore and modern quest design, and it’d be pretty banger.
One last thing. Something i don’t understand is why Todd half asses radiant quests. Or at least doesn’t understand what made them okay in daggerfall. The thing about daggerfall is that it’s much more journey than destination, as cheesy as that is. Someone gives you a radiant quest, but that quest can be cities over which you have to manage travel time for, along with doing other quests. In skyrim its…go bonk a guy down the road. The closest this gets to innovative is the theives guilds quests for restoring the guild at the end. I actually really like those. I don’t understand why other quests didn’t do that