Elder Scrolls : The dumbing down
ShapiroKeatsDarkMage
Member Posts: 2,428
in Off-Topic
An interesting retrospective of the decrease in quality of the TES series.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweTAhyR4o0&sns=fb
You know that i, like any oldschool rpg fan, likes to bash Bethesda and Todd ''you can climb it'' Howard for completely missing the point of the Fallout series, but i really like the premise and races of the TES series and its pretty sad watching it becoming the rpg equivalent of COD.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JweTAhyR4o0&sns=fbYou know that i, like any oldschool rpg fan, likes to bash Bethesda and Todd ''you can climb it'' Howard for completely missing the point of the Fallout series, but i really like the premise and races of the TES series and its pretty sad watching it becoming the rpg equivalent of COD.
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I enjoyed playing Oblivion.
I enjoyed playing Skyrim.
All three games are different, I wouldn't say they are becoming worse from a game to a game. Each game offers something that makes it interesting in its own way.
For example, to me, Morrowind was great in those landscapes and difficult levelling. Oblivion was great in assassins' and thieves' quests. Skyrim was great in playing as a stealthy archer.
But it would be indeed nice if they'd return to their roots when TES:6 gets released in 2019. Like including SPEARS, which were dearly missed since Oblivion. Or a return of the MEDIUM ARMOR category. Or having permanent Birthsigns instead of switch-able Standing Stones. Or a return of major and minor skills of (custom) classes. Or the creation of your own spells ingame. Or, or, or.
Also, Daggerfall for life!
Weapons, skills, spells, even enemies, everything is trimmed down to the bare essentials. It has a lot more mods than Morrowind (though maybe not than Oblivion unless you count the 1 million waifus and retextures) but it also needs these mods to be halfway decent.
Unfortunately, with the advent of Bethesda.net it looks like the company is slowly trying to control modding. Remember Pete Hines saying the Nexus wasn't modding but "hacking"? Yeah, he backpedaled but this is a bad sign.
I'm not exactly optimistic for TESVI. Especially consdering that Fallout 4 was so awful I actually got a refund for it.
Both their programmers and the modders will have to learn a new engine, this can be either good or bad. "Mods will fix it" can't work in a new environment. The current game industry fads (cinematic experience lol) make me more worried than anything else, but you never know.
I think the two of them shed a lot of light on all the ways the games have changed over time.
Its usually 90% of the time A or B, more so with the nostalgic elitist and I've even seen this here. People ignore the fact that its usually a give or take when it comes to games. Newer games may lose something that the older ones had, but they tend to game or even fix things as well. Instead of coming to this conclusion and just living with it, it is always new game sucks and old games better."
In watching the second video, 'Counter points' were offered but most of them didn't ACTUALLY address the issue. They tried very hard to muddy the issue by either presenting binary "This or that" solutions or by spuriously pointing out OTHER issues and saying that Morrowwind wasn't a great game so how can you compare?
An example of the binary nature, he says that quest characters were made immortal so that they couldn't randomly be killed by accidentally getting caught in a dragon attack or walking off a cliff. So, make them immortal "TO RANDOM ISSUES" but still allow them to be killed by the player. But the binary nature of the argument suggests that ONLY two possibilities exist.
And to say "But.... but.... but... YOU CAN MOD IT OUT." is a HUGE cop-out. Just because there is a fix, doesn't mean that the problem wasn't a problem in the first place. The fact that people modded around it, proves that it is a problem (for some folks at least).
I'm not saying that the first guy got it 100% right. The second one seemed to just want to refute the first in what appeared to be a very fanboy manner. If you are going to refute something, address the issues.
Skyrim was, in terms of sales, the most successful Elder Scrolls game. Bethesda will take this a signal that the way forward is even further simplification of gameplay mechanics. It would not surprise me in the slightest, for instance, if Bethseda decided to eliminate skills altogether and have the player character be good at everything.
And the players for whom Skyrim was an introduction to TES, most will be unable (or unwilling) to understand why people preferred the mechanics of Morrowind or older TES games and simply dismiss their opinions as "just nostalgia" or some other reductive argument.
I would disagree, quite strongly, that game mods offset Bethesda's shortcomings. Game mods cannot fix Skyrim's shallow, linear quests, forgettable NPCs, meaningless character creation, or bad writing. Go to the Skyrim Nexus and look at the Top 100 mods - the vast majority are purely cosmetic: high-res textures, graphical effects, new clothing and armour, and so on.
Second, installing mods is an enormous pain. First, most mods have prerequisites, and sometimes the prerequisites have prerequisites. For example, if I were to download a female-only armour, chances are that it will only work with the CHSHSUNPBBBCBBEWTFBBQ body (or whatever), even though there's no good reason not to use the default female body. Oh, but that one can't get naked, see!
And once you start installing mods, you have to ensure that you install them in the right order, so as not to overwrite critical files. Is there a mod conflict and no information available as to which should take precedence? Then you're on your own.
Then there's the fact that the every mod you install has the possibility of making Skyrim less stable. Is the game crashing to desktop, and have you got a mod list as long as your arm? That means YOU get the fun job of sussing out which mod is causing the crash, disabling them and enabling them in turn to find the culprit. And if the CTD is not easily reproducable, well, you're going to have even MORE fun, aren't you?
Even worse is when a mod author decides to package some irritating "feature" or change with his mod that he won't tell you about in the description. One of the body mods I was required to install, for example, made my character spin and twirl around like a bloody ballerina whenever she was standing still, and the only way to disable this feature was to delete the idle animation file.
(And the paedophiles in the modding scene...good lord...the paedophiles! I'm convinced that a not-insignificant portion of the Skyrim modding scene ought to be on some kind of government watch list, or at the very least be kept away from playgrounds. One cannot browse the major modding sites will running into a truly disturbing number of mods that reduce female characters to prepubescent, doe-eyed waifus. Look at what this mod did to Serana. Or this one. Or how about this? How about this? Why don't you take a seat over there? And this vile garbage isn't stored in some dark, hard-to-reach corner of sites like the Nexus, no, it's right front and centre, to the point where you can't avoid seeing it).
Having to deal with the mods is a HUGE pain, and a game should not require the player to install dozens of them just to make it halfway decent.
Like when you go to vivec and you have the Argonian informant. You have to actually ask the NPCs about her and they tell you she's in hiding due to an imperial agent. If you increase your disposition with an NPC they tell you she's in the sewers. You go down there and talk to her. She says she'll give you the information if you get rid of the agent.
I went above, raised my disposition with the agent and said she left town by boat. He leaves. I then tell the Argonian about this and she gives me the info I need.
As a person roleplaying as a Bard (with a fantastic Bard mod) I found this entire quest being solved with dialogue and raising disposition to be great. I got to play my silver-tongued bard.
And it's not just this one quest but I find myself using diplomacy and charm A LOT during many quests.
Meanwhile in Skyrim I found Personality to not do a lot. I agree that Morrowind's Charm, Intimidate, or Bribe system wasn't perfect but at least I could use my persuasiveness on any NPC I needed to. Personality in Skyrim seems to just be about better shop prices =/.
I've installed a Mod to reintroduce classes to Skyrim and I'm still looking for one to reintroduce attributes.
I know I'm probably a minority as far as my age demographic goes but as a person going back and playing older RPGs just recently (starting with Baldur's Gate in 2013) I can't help but groan at current design trends. I see the great ideas and potential of older RPGs and see that newer ones have just decided to scrap those ideas. Like, instead of fix what was wrong and improve they just remove the ideas entirely.
comes to your aid. Can't stand any more forced Beth Quests coming your way and you're appalled by the lack of dialogue options? Fear not, for The Choice is Yours. Is Skyrim's plot not to your liking? Well, how about visiting the Summerset Isle, Falskaar, or having a look at what lies Beyond Reach instead?
For those who don't know how to mod: there are guides. For those who are lazy: there are mod managers, plug-in sorters and programs which automatically show you any conflicts with but a single mouse click. It takes patience to get the hang of it, true. But in my humble opinion it's worth to mod games. Any games for that matter.
And I agree with you: mods aren't there to fix mistakes the developers make. They're made to make games more enjoyable for modders and players alike. If people don't like some of the solutions provided by the modding communities, then that's ok as well of course. Nothing forces anyone to do anything after all. This is not something limited to the TES modding communities either. As we can see in our very own modding scene as well. The majority of people probably didn't buy NwN for its rather flawed OC, but its toolset, fan created content and PW's.
I also think that the comment about the 'players for whom Skyrim was introduced to TES' is a bit disingenuous, not to mention a bit one sided. Some of the more casual players may not enjoy the older TES games. And the second video above is exactly that type of person, they type that would dismiss Morrowwind as "Just nostalgia". But he wasn't wrong in that Morrowwind did have issues. Just as the first video admitted that there were definite improvements made in Skyrim.
It is a two way street. You are being dismissive to newer gamers in the same manner as you claim that newer gamers would be dismissive of you.
For me personally, I've played Arena and Daggerfall and Morrowwind and Oblivion and Skyrim. I agree with the first guy that Oblivion is by far the weakest outing of the franchise thus far. I fully admit that role play elements in particular, but also game play mechanics are getting 'dumbed down' in the current generation of games (not just TES games by the way). And I admit that 'Some' of that is due to making the game more approachable to casual gamers. I don't see an evil conspiracy 'Destroy RPG games' in general. And I think that the people at Bethesda are WATCHING the forums.
Take Dragon Age for example. DA1 was great and I loved it (on PC, the console version SUCKED). DA2 was a complete departure. DA:I brought the game back to some degree. It wasn't DA1 by any degree, but it was a lot closer to the original than DA2.
Same with Skyrim. It wasn't Morrowwind, but it was a good deal better than Oblivion. who knows what the next generation will bring.
And, of course, most mods are designed be standalone, and to avoid conflicts with other mods. So Mod A tries to add depth to the character system, Mod B tries to add more interesting NPCs, and Mod C tries to make quests more interesting...but none of them these mods ever work toegether in any meaningful fashion. They'll be made by people with different level of skills, different tastes, and differing ideas of how the game should be, so the end result is that a heavily-modded Skyrim is less like a sturdy, well-built wall, and more like a crumbling, decepit facade with its holes papered over by a two dozen or so individuals, none of whom ever talked to one another.
Add to this the fact that every NPC in Skyrim has voice-acting, so new NPCs are either jarringly silent compared to the others, or feature "amature" voice-acting which is usually cringe-inducing in its quality.
Trying to mod depth back into a game like a game like Skyrim is like trying to "mod performance" into a Honda Civic by adding spoilers, loud exhaust, and low-profile tyres to the vehicle. Sure, these things might improve performance somewhat, but they won't change the fact that, under the hood, the car is still a Honda Civic.
Later on, I would appreciate the game for its unique character. It eschewed the standard fantasy tropes and created something truly new. Even the food and the economy were novel: floating jellyfish leather instead of cow leather, dinosaur-like guars instead of oxen, giant termite eggs instead of chicken eggs, chitin and bone instead of wood and iron... the list goes on. There was a whole vibrant mythology that really drew me in. The only weakness was the slow walking speed.
When I heard about Oblivion, I was amazed by the beauty of the graphics. Oblivion used some really ingenious methods to improve realism, including light-contextual textures to simulate higher polygon counts. That was a huge innovation at the time, like the moving and translucent textures that made Ocarina of Time so groundbreaking. The gameplay was also much more streamlined, without Morrowind's weird luck-based combat and magic system.
Later on, I would appreciate the game for its well-balanced gameplay and fun combat. I remember gathering flax seeds on the way to Skingrad on my first playthrough, and it was truly glorious building up the Alchemy skill and discovering so many special recipes. Doing my first maximum-difficulty run was also great fun, as was inventing the Fatigue-boosting trick I used to coast through Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul. The only weakness was the immersion-breaking dialogue.
When I heard about Skyrim, I wasn't sure what to think. All I knew was that it was based in the Nord homeland.
Later on, when I was playing Skyrim, I appreciated its gorgeous atmosphere and beautiful environments. I've never played a game that felt so real. Going through the massive Bleak Falls Barrow was a brilliant introduction to the most immersive game I've ever played. The only weakness was the addictive crafting system, and the time I spent on inventory management.
These games left so many vivid images burned into my memory.
The choice of race has become pretty much entirely cosmetic in Skyrim - no pun intended even if char facial models leave a lot to be desired! ;-)
My character of choice in Morrowind became Imperial precisely because it would have been socially so much harder for the beast races, typically seen as slave material, and Voice of the Emperor was a huge advantage!
Also, I lament that there is no thought given to major vs minor skills, and no more attribute points in Skyrim. Of course this meant I jumped down Seyda Neen silt rider rock almost killing myself repeatedly to raise my acrobatics, but I think that this ability to pimp up your abilities is part of TES legend, and no-one is obviously forced to do it.
The religious aspects, racial prejudges, societal power structures, corruption and influence of factions, reaction adjustments - it was subtle yet significant in Morrowind, but made the gameworld very immersive to me.
Skyrim is just so linear "either-or" IMO: choose Imprial (human race) or choose Nord (human race) - and yes, you'll be spammed by dragons. Oblivion was Imprerial "save the world story" - and yes, you'll be spammed by Oblivion gates.
I also dearly miss "luck" playing a role, as well as levitation, and "mark / recall" for those whom do not like horseriding.
Oh, and dynamically scalable difficulty slider in Morrowind... Miss that too!
Either way the role-playing aspects in Morrowind are wonderful.
Morrowind was my second ever RPG having been pulled in the genre by no other than BG II - so as inexperienced gamer I did find the gameplay somewhat hard then, which did not stop me from becoming totally enamoured.
I for example remember that it took me ages to learn the potential of levitate, and was at some stage using the Scroll of Irarian Flight when I got stuck in quest, even if +1000 acrobatics is pretty suicidial way to go on about it, lol! So I'm sorta stuck with "my imperial hero" even if I really like khajiits and argonians - my number one vote for TES VII is to set it in Elsweyr!
The one thing I perso lament a lot with Morrowind is that there is no chance to bring the Twin Lamps storyline to conclusion, and over-throw slavery and free every slave. In this case, I know I would roll a Khajiiti champion, as I now made finally a Nord character for my current Skyrim liberation play-version.
Unfortunately the Red Mountain erupts
Also, Twin Lamps Mod may be relevant to some. :-)
That looks rad. I may have to install that.
Anyway back on the main subject. I do appreciate the voice acting and some of the scripted sequences in the newer Elder Scrolls, though.
I hear bad things about Oblivion but when I play it I hope it will be a blend of what makes Morrowind good and what makes Skyrim good. I only played it for a short period when I was in middle school (about nine years ago).
Well, Skyrim did make me appreciate Oblivion better, because it still has skill system+attributes like Morrowind, and certainly a lot of quirky, enjoyable ideas like ... the Adoring fan.
In my opinion, Daedric quests were a definate highlight!
But when I first played it, it felt kind of "soulless" becasue the main quest is the typical "hero saves the world from supernatural threat" - not annoying, not at all - but just a little bit bland. And to me, it feels like an Imperial story all the way, even if I like to play one. To this date, I feel like Oblivion gates are just a grindy chore! (= I drop the difficulty to lowest, rush through, and do as few as possible.)
In Morrowind, I feel that each race could have a real sense of immersion. Imperials has the priviledged starting point, making almost everything a little smoother, as mentioned. As Khajiit/Argonian, I would identify with the slaves, and feel unashamedly smug about being the Nevarine incarnate in face of dominating cultures. As Dunmer, I'd want to promote promote autonomy and prominence of the Dunmer ways. Etc.
I loved the concept of prophecy in Morrowind, which made the no-nonesense main quest end fight feel so right: your trial was to fulfill the prophecy, more than the actual confrontation with Dagoth Ur. Even if I did reload, I loved I could also so weirdly fail my main-quest: I fight a few vampires in an ancertral tomb, and I get the text to effect that "sorry, you are not Nevarine, but just roam the world if you like."
I do meanwhile really like that Skyrim is not such a lonesome world: you can marry, adopt, build a house, and bring along a companion to fight with you and carry your loot - Marcurio with his endless comments is my fave. All the guilds save the Dark Brotherhood feel painfully quick to promote you to be their supreme leader though.