Well, I have to admit I love these games where you can wander around, pick up many side quests, discover many locations and the world has a "real" feel to it. I'm (re)playing fallout new vegas now, which is one of these types of games.
But yeah, there is some RP involved. For Fallout NV, their are companion interactions and faction interactions that effect how the story unfolds (both for individual "followers" and overall). I think Skyrim is somewhat similar.
@ZelgadisGW Most old (western) RPGs were more hack and slash and/or sandbox than storytelling games. And it wasn't a technical limitation that made it so. There were plenty of story-focused games back in the day. They were mostly in the adventure genre. The difference was that in an adventure game, you were experiencing a story as the writer intended, while in an RPG, you had greater agency. Decades of technical improvement hasn't changed that.
Compare Telltale's The Walking Dead to Skyrim. One is a masterful telling of a story, but very tightly defines your role, allowing only limited influence on the outcome. The other allows you to take on whatever role you want, but then limits the in-your-face story to a collection of points of interest. Story vs agency. New dress, same dance.
You are certainly welcome to your preferences. I happen to enjoy both styles of game for what they are. Others may bemoan the "rise" of story focused RPGs, calling them themeparks(though most commonly when referring to MMOs). Either way, they both have history, and they both have their place.
How would that affect the PS3 version? PS3 is flat out more powerful in every way then the 360, so anything that buckles a PS3 is even worse on a 360.
The PS3 version is buggy/laggy because of deliberately shoddy porting to encourage people to buy the 360 or PC version, and they've pretty much confirmed it officially to be so.
@ZanathKariashi, just looked it up and you're right, it isn't the save file on PS3. According to this http://kotaku.com/5885358/why-skyrim-didnt-play-nice-with-the-ps3 Bethesda didn't seem to know what caused the troubles with PS3 or how to fix it, other than it was something to do with memory not being able handle multiple quest being active simultaneously.
It is quite understandable that the box and PC would have similar architecture and thus would be easier to optimize. According to Wikipedia (and why shouldn't we trust Wiki on this?), PS3 is difficult to program to. Still I find it hard to believe that Bethesda could just ignore PS3 players, given the number of consoles sold, ~ 70 million.
I find Skyrim very one-dimensional.. I cannot handle RPGs where I can only control one character. The strategy of controlling a group is what I find appealing in BG, IWD, etc. Also I find that I cannot get as immersed in 3D RPGs as they leave no room for imagination. Thus for me, morrowind, skyrim, NWN, dragon age, etc all leave me very disappointed after a few hours of playing them.
@winsonsonho - I had the same issue going from the isometric bioware games to just about anything else. I really missed the party turn-based strategy. However, the trade off is "immersion" which to me has been the domain of the Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim games. I have to admit I find those worlds extremely compelling. NWN1/2 never really got close to that for me.
@ZanathKariashi: Just wanted to point out that a game with nice graphics doesn't necessarily has to be shallow. Your comment concerning 'graphic whores' or however you worded it grated me a bit. Game technology has been evolving. Deal with it. There are plenty of games with good graphics AND a good story, such as The Witcher. Just because Skyrim's story is lacking doesn't mean you gotta just throw it away as a whole. And for your information, I indeed didn't play the previous Elder Scrolls games. But do I need to? Do I bow before the glittering might of Morrowind? Why should I? I played it for a short while, it didn't interest me at all. And it wasn't because of the dated graphics. I am a hardcore Baldur's Gate fan, afterall, despite its dated graphics. Just wanted to throw it out there, as your views have been kind of one-dimensional thus far.
Oh I fully agree that a game can have good graphics, good gameplay, and a good story.....it's just a rare and blessed event when it happens. most only get 2 out of the 3, though a lot of big name AAA titles only nail one.
Morrowind is a slow starter, and much like BG1 does not hold your hand. It points you in the right direction to get the plot started (Friendly arm inn, find Casus Cosade) and tells you you're on your own after that (Prior to the advent of the online guides, the only way to find secret stuff in BG1 was to talk to people, buy drinks, and donate at temples, and they only mentioned rumors to keep an eye out for, you still generally had to stumble across them. Just like Morrowind. It's up to you to find your own adventures. And when you get there, it's your choice to follow the script that's been set before you, or just say $%#^ all and do whatever you want, your way. That is one area Morrowind is actually superior to even BG. Early in BG, there's a lot of freedom, but once the plot kicks off then you get on rails eventually...and BG2 it happens even faster. And ToB is just on rails from the start. Morrowind, you are NEVER on rails unless you just want to be, and can literally tell the game's script to go $#^# itself, break their story completely and literally do things your way (and STILL complete the game, I might add). BG just kills you if you deviate from the plot, Skyrim and Oblivion use plot flags to tell you that your opinions don't mean $#%# and you WILL do things their way or the game won't progress.
Does Morrowind have flaws? Of course, combat could've been done better, companion ai needed vast improvements, and the level-up system was very unintuitive (though not nearly as broken as Oblivions was, since there was no scaling for NPCs, just random items tables).
But as far as the freedom to truly make each playthrough your own, very little can compete. The most common complaint I hear for why people won't even touch Morrowind is due to the graphics, hence my comment.
To me the engine improved from Morrowind to Oblivion and then from Oblivion to Skyrim, but the game mechanics are still far behind the Bioware games. The artistry and attention to detail are what made these games seem great to me. Skyrim actually did a pretty good job of making the game mechanics balanced. I just don't like training ("I'm gonna get me a bag of hammers, let crabs beat me silly and repair my armor over and over again...")
One more thing that I noticed about Skyrim (and I suppose about Oblivion as well) is the lack of fantasy. Skyrim especially has gone the way of "gritty realism", which means no colors, and if there's something nice looking, like a large cave, it's too dark to see. Where are the fantastical locations? Solitude and Blackreach, that's it. It's a bit like the developers tried to make the game as inoffensive as possible.
Here's hoping the next Elder's Scroll game addressses this. (Not going to touch Online, because MMO)
And for some godawful reason they added a clairvoyance spell...that is COMPLETELY USELESS (Infravision level of useless), because of the built-in way-point system that automatically shows you exactly where everything is and the spell only works for your currently active quest...which already shows you exactly where you needed to go. It serves no purpose but as an incredibly inefficient means of skilling illusion, and is no where near as good as just spamming muffle. (Literally, 1 muffle gives more skill then burning an entire mana bar).
And it makes more sense that you do absolutely nothing related to an activity in question and yet miraculously become better at it?....for some reason....
I preferred Morrowind's approach, since it didn't cap trainers. If you had the cash and could spare the time (took several in-game hours per point), you could go all the way to 100 fairly quickly, which was a happy medium between anti-grinding and yet not completely immersion breaking. Assuming you had access to all the necessary trainers for a skill (the masters were usually deep in a faction quest-line before they'd talk to you). Oblivion and Skyrim capped you at 5 total points per level for trainers forcing you to grind.
@ZanathKariashi: So basically just buy your way through all the training levels? Where's the fun in that? For example, I liked the smithing skill in Skyrim. I liked how you could improve your own armour. As for training at trainers, well, isn't it more 'realistic' that even trainers' knowledge has boundaries? Of course a common thug in the street's knowledge in lockpicking isn't any near as good as a master thief's...
@FredSRichardson: Skyrim might be immersive for others, but for me a few oddities really take away from the experience, such as: - Dragons are too easy to kill always. - My henchman is so retarded and can still somehow live through a dragon encounter with me. - Every enemy I encounter seems to know what level I am and adjust his abilities accordingly!?! - All my henchman hate other henchman. - I can't 'discuss' useful tactics with my henchman. - I can take over the world, all alone, all to easily...
Edit: This is based on what I remember from when I played the game and are some of the reasons I stopped bothering..
@winsonsonho: If you want to 'discuss' strategies with henchmen, maybe the Skyrim MMO is better suited for you. I don't see how you can have 'real' discussions with a computer-controlled AI anyway?
Trainers DO have limits. They're broken up into 4 catagories and won't even speak to someone who hasn't at least mastered the previous one. And anyone above the the 2nd level, usually requires you to receive a recommendation from a friend or something along those lines before they'll teach. The Master security trainer won't even talk to you unless you're 75 security and have gone through 3/4 of the thieves guild missions to get the one where they introduce you to him cause they need his expertise for other stuff (And unlike Skyrim and Oblivion, you need certain minimums of a variety of skills related to a guild's focus to receive promotions and get deeper into their questlines).
There is nothing fun about grinding the same friggin spell/action for 2-3 hours, because there is literally no better way to raise said skill. And some like destruction, even that isn't enough. You can LITERALLY beat the game, using only destruction spells to attack, and still not break 60 by the time you've cleared all the content. It's so inefficient, every guide recommends using your 5 trainer points per level on destruction because that is ultimately the best way of skilling it, if you actually want to get access to the decent spells.
And I'll never forgive them removing the Spell-making system and complete freedom for enchanting. Spell-making was the most iconic and unique feature of the series, even though Oblivion did take a $%#^ on it as far as usefulness was concerned. And I absolutely hate how they handled enchanting, you get literally no say in the matter how you want an item to be enchanted, and need to be a master-level enchanter (And spent several points) to add a mere 2 properties.
In Morrowind you got to choose your activation method and could put any property on any item, and if you had enough room could squeeze 5-10 properties. On-use was the same on both weapons and armor, on-hit activated on striking a enemy for weapons, while it was when you were hit for armor. Passive was rare because only extremely powerful souls had enough energy to qualify, but it was do-able, and higher level characters could actually get access to an limitless supply of said souls (though it was also very inefficient and unless you jacked your enchanting to ridiculous levels via alchemy you were actually better off-going for on-use in most cases, which allowed even very weak souls to have powerful effects, at the cost of low charge count.)
@Imperator, use infravision and the world will be seen by you with another eyes, the game art is beautiful and infravision really make a difference in oblivion and skyrim (more in oblivion) than it does in baldur's gate.
@kitteh_On_A_Cloud, I agree that Skyrim has plenty of beautiful locations, but I would still say that they are not fantastical, as in "cannot exist in reality, because laws of physics" and such.
@kamuizin, never have actually used that spell, I've mostly focused on combat. Tried a mage char once, but I just got my ass handed to me by roaming vampires. Yay Dawnguard! Right now I'm looking at a mod that would balance magic, increase magicka regen from the third during combat to 2/3, scale damage according to level while increasing base cost and such. Now I just use magic to level up. Which, by the way, for a level 72 char is bloody annoying. It cost me at least 40 skill increases to level up.
Right now I'm trying to level up Alchemy so I can make some bottles to increase Smithing and Enchanting so I can make better equipment for that lvl 72 char. Making skills Legendary does give you your perk points back and the ability the level up some more, but it also makes you suck at whatever you just made Legendary.
@Imperator - Well, if you really want fantastical with bright colors, try the Oblivion "Shivering Isles" DLC. Be warned though, you might want to play it if you have mycophobia (a fear of fungi or mushrooms).
That was quite fantastic, which is why I liked it. Think I'm going to give Morrowind another change, though. See what the Overhaul project has to offer.
I do like grit and darkness, like Witchers for example, but for some reason I want Elder Scrolls to be more colourful. Not whimsical, mind you, no never. Could barely stand Kingdoms of Amalur.
@Imperator: I think you missed the real aim of Skyrim, namely that it was meant to be a fantasy-inspired game in a realistic setting. If you want 'so fantastical it cannot exist in reality' games like Alice: Madness Returns are more for you, maybe. Beware tho, A:MR is mostly and unfortunately a broken game, mainly on the PC. Really such a shame.
@Kitteh_On_A_Cloud: By 'discuss' I really meant; 'get my henchman to do what I really want him to do..' I loathe MMOs.. No rpg experience, in my mind, has come close to baldurs and co.
I think what it comes down to for me is strategy that I can control.. And I also like to control more than one character in games, so that I have many options to choose from at any given moment. I get bored with single character games very quickly.
Never been a vampire before, either. There seems to be quite a lot I haven't done. Unfortunately, I'm the sort of player who always goes for the safe and sound known route instead of the unknown. Which is why I have a sort of dual opinion about openworld games: Yay, I can do whatever I want/I have no idea what to do. But I definitely will take heed of your advises.
I got Skyrim as a birthday present from my brother-in-law and sister, but I didn't get 'sucked into it'. I created a character, went through the opening phase, followed the one who helped me in the beginning to his house, was told some background and then had a feeling of 'now what?'. There was a suggestion for joining up with the military, there was some talk of politics, but nothing that felt really urgent for my character to do.
Two RPG's I like a lot are BG1 and Fallout 3. Both have something happening in the beginning that makes you think 'what the heck is going on?'. Even though, once thrown out into the big world, the player character occupies her or himself with trivial quests in the beginning, there's the sense of a big story behind it all that is waiting to be uncovered. That feeling is missing in the beginning of Skyrim (and going on what's written her about the game, there is no big story).
So the impetus to go on with the game is largely missing, even though my brother-in-law asked "have you played the game, what do you think about is?" (mind, he's no CRPG-player but a lover of strategy and building games, so he just bought it as the shopkeeper told it was a good RPG).
The beautiful in skyrim is that you have an important mission, that only you can achieve, the world depends on you and you must follow the main quest... or no. Simple as that, and this slap in the face of all the linear RPGs is something amusing if not fun! NWN2 tried to do something similar, no, not a big open world, but a chance to do things worng and fuck with everything.
I have to say, both aren't really so nice but the idea behind these options are real cool. Imagine a chance of instead of stop Sarevok, you could take his role and make the war between Baldur's Gate and Amn!
Allying yourself with the shadow king and by embracing the soul eater state, what make you end the game fighting a bunch of gods inside the shadow plane
@Son_of_Imoen - I think this is true of the game series (Morrowind/Oblivion/Skyrim). You have the open world and there isn't any real sense of what you're supposed to do. In fact, you can probably play for 100's of hours just solving side missions without progressing much in the main story line. At least this is what I did, but I eventually get bored and stop playing. I'm not sure I ever finished Morrowind and I really had to push myself to finish Obivion (still haven't finished Skyrim).
I preferred Skyrim to Morrowind and Oblivion, but i don't rate any of them that highly. I am yet to be convinced of Bethesda being as great as people claim. It was the same with Fallout 3, to me it felt utterly soulless and devoid of any and all of the character that made the first two games so great.
Comments
Well, I was raised, convinced that good rpgs are connected with a good story, unless technical limitations are preventing this connection.
Or maybe I am just ignorant. One thing I know for sure is that I am practically incapable of rating myself objectively.
PS. I said I "sound like old geezer" even thought I'm pretty young (21).
But yeah, there is some RP involved. For Fallout NV, their are companion interactions and faction interactions that effect how the story unfolds (both for individual "followers" and overall). I think Skyrim is somewhat similar.
Most old (western) RPGs were more hack and slash and/or sandbox than storytelling games. And it wasn't a technical limitation that made it so. There were plenty of story-focused games back in the day. They were mostly in the adventure genre. The difference was that in an adventure game, you were experiencing a story as the writer intended, while in an RPG, you had greater agency. Decades of technical improvement hasn't changed that.
Compare Telltale's The Walking Dead to Skyrim. One is a masterful telling of a story, but very tightly defines your role, allowing only limited influence on the outcome. The other allows you to take on whatever role you want, but then limits the in-your-face story to a collection of points of interest. Story vs agency. New dress, same dance.
You are certainly welcome to your preferences. I happen to enjoy both styles of game for what they are. Others may bemoan the "rise" of story focused RPGs, calling them themeparks(though most commonly when referring to MMOs). Either way, they both have history, and they both have their place.
How would that affect the PS3 version? PS3 is flat out more powerful in every way then the 360, so anything that buckles a PS3 is even worse on a 360.
The PS3 version is buggy/laggy because of deliberately shoddy porting to encourage people to buy the 360 or PC version, and they've pretty much confirmed it officially to be so.
It is quite understandable that the box and PC would have similar architecture and thus would be easier to optimize. According to Wikipedia (and why shouldn't we trust Wiki on this?), PS3 is difficult to program to.
Still I find it hard to believe that Bethesda could just ignore PS3 players, given the number of consoles sold, ~ 70 million.
Morrowind is a slow starter, and much like BG1 does not hold your hand. It points you in the right direction to get the plot started (Friendly arm inn, find Casus Cosade) and tells you you're on your own after that (Prior to the advent of the online guides, the only way to find secret stuff in BG1 was to talk to people, buy drinks, and donate at temples, and they only mentioned rumors to keep an eye out for, you still generally had to stumble across them. Just like Morrowind. It's up to you to find your own adventures. And when you get there, it's your choice to follow the script that's been set before you, or just say $%#^ all and do whatever you want, your way. That is one area Morrowind is actually superior to even BG. Early in BG, there's a lot of freedom, but once the plot kicks off then you get on rails eventually...and BG2 it happens even faster. And ToB is just on rails from the start. Morrowind, you are NEVER on rails unless you just want to be, and can literally tell the game's script to go $#^# itself, break their story completely and literally do things your way (and STILL complete the game, I might add). BG just kills you if you deviate from the plot, Skyrim and Oblivion use plot flags to tell you that your opinions don't mean $#%# and you WILL do things their way or the game won't progress.
Does Morrowind have flaws? Of course, combat could've been done better, companion ai needed vast improvements, and the level-up system was very unintuitive (though not nearly as broken as Oblivions was, since there was no scaling for NPCs, just random items tables).
But as far as the freedom to truly make each playthrough your own, very little can compete. The most common complaint I hear for why people won't even touch Morrowind is due to the graphics, hence my comment.
Here's hoping the next Elder's Scroll game addressses this. (Not going to touch Online, because MMO)
@FredSRichardson
And it makes more sense that you do absolutely nothing related to an activity in question and yet miraculously become better at it?....for some reason....
I preferred Morrowind's approach, since it didn't cap trainers. If you had the cash and could spare the time (took several in-game hours per point), you could go all the way to 100 fairly quickly, which was a happy medium between anti-grinding and yet not completely immersion breaking. Assuming you had access to all the necessary trainers for a skill (the masters were usually deep in a faction quest-line before they'd talk to you). Oblivion and Skyrim capped you at 5 total points per level for trainers forcing you to grind.
- Dragons are too easy to kill always.
- My henchman is so retarded and can still somehow live through a dragon encounter with me.
- Every enemy I encounter seems to know what level I am and adjust his abilities accordingly!?!
- All my henchman hate other henchman.
- I can't 'discuss' useful tactics with my henchman.
- I can take over the world, all alone, all to easily...
Edit: This is based on what I remember from when I played the game and are some of the reasons I stopped bothering..
Trainers DO have limits. They're broken up into 4 catagories and won't even speak to someone who hasn't at least mastered the previous one. And anyone above the the 2nd level, usually requires you to receive a recommendation from a friend or something along those lines before they'll teach. The Master security trainer won't even talk to you unless you're 75 security and have gone through 3/4 of the thieves guild missions to get the one where they introduce you to him cause they need his expertise for other stuff (And unlike Skyrim and Oblivion, you need certain minimums of a variety of skills related to a guild's focus to receive promotions and get deeper into their questlines).
There is nothing fun about grinding the same friggin spell/action for 2-3 hours, because there is literally no better way to raise said skill. And some like destruction, even that isn't enough. You can LITERALLY beat the game, using only destruction spells to attack, and still not break 60 by the time you've cleared all the content. It's so inefficient, every guide recommends using your 5 trainer points per level on destruction because that is ultimately the best way of skilling it, if you actually want to get access to the decent spells.
And I'll never forgive them removing the Spell-making system and complete freedom for enchanting. Spell-making was the most iconic and unique feature of the series, even though Oblivion did take a $%#^ on it as far as usefulness was concerned. And I absolutely hate how they handled enchanting, you get literally no say in the matter how you want an item to be enchanted, and need to be a master-level enchanter (And spent several points) to add a mere 2 properties.
In Morrowind you got to choose your activation method and could put any property on any item, and if you had enough room could squeeze 5-10 properties. On-use was the same on both weapons and armor, on-hit activated on striking a enemy for weapons, while it was when you were hit for armor. Passive was rare because only extremely powerful souls had enough energy to qualify, but it was do-able, and higher level characters could actually get access to an limitless supply of said souls (though it was also very inefficient and unless you jacked your enchanting to ridiculous levels via alchemy you were actually better off-going for on-use in most cases, which allowed even very weak souls to have powerful effects, at the cost of low charge count.)
@kamuizin, never have actually used that spell, I've mostly focused on combat. Tried a mage char once, but I just got my ass handed to me by roaming vampires. Yay Dawnguard! Right now I'm looking at a mod that would balance magic, increase magicka regen from the third during combat to 2/3, scale damage according to level while increasing base cost and such. Now I just use magic to level up. Which, by the way, for a level 72 char is bloody annoying. It cost me at least 40 skill increases to level up.
Right now I'm trying to level up Alchemy so I can make some bottles to increase Smithing and Enchanting so I can make better equipment for that lvl 72 char. Making skills Legendary does give you your perk points back and the ability the level up some more, but it also makes you suck at whatever you just made Legendary.
Be warned though, you might want to play it if you have mycophobia (a fear of fungi or mushrooms).
I do like grit and darkness, like Witchers for example, but for some reason I want Elder Scrolls to be more colourful. Not whimsical, mind you, no never. Could barely stand Kingdoms of Amalur.
I think what it comes down to for me is strategy that I can control.. And I also like to control more than one character in games, so that I have many options to choose from at any given moment. I get bored with single character games very quickly.
I got Skyrim as a birthday present from my brother-in-law and sister, but I didn't get 'sucked into it'. I created a character, went through the opening phase, followed the one who helped me in the beginning to his house, was told some background and then had a feeling of 'now what?'. There was a suggestion for joining up with the military, there was some talk of politics, but nothing that felt really urgent for my character to do.
Two RPG's I like a lot are BG1 and Fallout 3. Both have something happening in the beginning that makes you think 'what the heck is going on?'. Even though, once thrown out into the big world, the player character occupies her or himself with trivial quests in the beginning, there's the sense of a big story behind it all that is waiting to be uncovered. That feeling is missing in the beginning of Skyrim (and going on what's written her about the game, there is no big story).
So the impetus to go on with the game is largely missing, even though my brother-in-law asked "have you played the game, what do you think about is?" (mind, he's no CRPG-player but a lover of strategy and building games, so he just bought it as the shopkeeper told it was a good RPG).
I have to say, both aren't really so nice but the idea behind these options are real cool. Imagine a chance of instead of stop Sarevok, you could take his role and make the war between Baldur's Gate and Amn!