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This review of Skyrim
http://www.actionbutton.net/?p=1295
"After the introduction, I wandered. Every character I met was irritating. They would all tell me their life stories after a single hello, and they would entrust me with their deepest secrets; yet I was a complete stranger"
I haven't really played Skyrim to any great extent, but pointing out that a WRPG sandbox game does that feels like cheating
Comments
This just in: the game that lets you set people on fire by yelling at them isn't entirely realistic.
I'm not a big fan of Skyrim but yeah that's stupid.
Here are some problems I have with the game no one else seems to have brought up:
1) Why do I want to kill dragons? A dragon kept my head from being cut off. As far as I'm concerned dragons are awesome.
2) Your two choices at the beginning are the Imperials who were just about the execute you and the rebels who -and this I think is kind of important- DID NOT WANT TO CUT YOUR HEAD OFF. Why would anybody choose the fucking Imperials?
3)No fucking context for what my main goal is. I think there's a dragon lord thing but like I said, dragons are the reason you're still breathing.
4)Why the fuck would I bother crafting potions or forging weapons when I can buy them and money is ridiculously plentiful. You can call it immersion. I call it ancillary bullshit.
Skyrim isn't a bad game by any stretch of the imagination but the poorly-worded fellatio the gaming community is giving it is a little frustrating.
I imagine that similar frustration created this review but it doesn't really have any true points to make.
That was an accident. He actually kills you if you take too long to do that segment of the tutorial.
Yeah, I know. That was 45% joke-y but still. In the eyes of Skyrim's Ronnie James who got the death penalty for introducing the corrupting magic known as Heavy Metal to the land he's cool with the winged lizards.
He just wanted to destroy the town. You do realize that his title is "world-eater," right? That's not metaphorical.
Again, he was just destroying the town, which coincidentally helped you. And now he's off to destroy that other town you don't want to get destroyed.
Because if you buy them, you get shitty weapons and potions.
Damn ninjas.
But why do I care if the town is destroyed? There's no real connect or urge to anything, especially since the game expects you to waste time with its bajillion sidequests.
I kind of doubt that. At the very least the weapons I got at shops got the job done with minimal difficulty.
Forging weapons gets you better weapons than you can reasonably loot. Same with potions.
Yeah, I understand that but I don't get why I should care when the weapons and potions I buy and loot get the job done just fine already.
Because lots of people would die? If you don't care about that, it's fine to do something else, just like with any sandbox.
Okay, comparatively shitty. Trust me, if you try better weapons and armor, you'll see the difference.
"Why the fuck would I bother buying weapons or potions when I can forge or craft them and money for the stuff to do so is ridiculously plentiful. You can call it convenience. I call it ancillary bullshit."
Fixed for my mindset.
But in a game where you're supposed to automatically put in your own character from scratch why should it be assumed I care about people dying? Sure, I can go dick around with other side quests but I was under the impression that the point of a main quest was actually giving me a reason to want to finish it. That's what I mean by not having context. The side quests have little to no connection to the main quest or even the feel of saving the world. It's unfocused.
Also, I'm pretty sure the armor sold in shops only blocks something like 1-2% of damage.
It's not assumed. You totally can just go off and screw around if you don't want to do the main quest.
By being the primary quest it's assumed.
No, it's not. They don't make you do the primary quest. You could play for hundreds of hours and never even do it.
If you were talking about, say, Zelda, or Final Fantasy or Mass Effect or something where yes, you actually do have to go do that eventually, I'd agree.
You can do the main quest under the assumption that your character has severe moral issues with dying. Selfishness and all that jazz.
^^Then why even have a primary quest. By having it as the primary quest you automatically put a mandate on it.
^But the dude seems to be taking his time. Like INUH said, no rush to do the main quest. There's no actually contextual feeling that the world's ending.
I'm not even going to bother complaining about this derail.
By which I mean GODDAMNIT WHY IS IT ALWAYS MY THREADS
>Links to a review about supposed flaws in skyrim
>Discussion is supposed flaws in skyrim
>Derail
But you didn't discuss the article I linked beyond calling it stupid.
What else do you want? Someone to agree with the article for an argument? If we all agree it's dumb there's not much to talk about.
I mean shit my less thread about Skyrim turned into a Star Wars debate because fuckin' Alex because of the way IJBM works.
And this is significantly less relevant to any criticisms of Skyrim specifically and more of a diatribe on games in general. I don't really like the 'world is ending card'. It seems to me that it's automatically assumed that I'm going to give a shit because hey I live on a planet, but it's such an out-there concept that it's hard to have emotional attachment.
Because some people do like having a primary thing to do.
That said, there are other motives: "that dragon tried to kill me! I'm not going to let that slide!" "Hey, I bet I'll get a sweet reward for saving one of the biggest towns in Skyrim!"
Or, if you're as single-minded and, I suppose, upstanding as my dad, you do the main quest just because...it's the main quest. And you side with the imperials because you didn't realize there was another option and you just thought you were following the only guy who could lead you safely from a dragon attack.
My dad is a terrible example of a typical gamer though.
Yeah there are logical motivations for why to do things you could follow, but there's no real contextual motivations. I also don't really think the first follows since from my end it looked far more like the imperials were killing me than the dragon.
The game doesn't push any reason to have you kill the dragon. It's what results in weak context. There's a dragon and he's totally gonna destroy the world and you need to beat him, but take your time getting that librarian back his book.
^I've heard the issue with following the Imperials out of sheer accident and quite frankly that sounds like issues on the game designer part.
I get that some people will do the main quest just because it's the main quest, but that doesn't automatically make it a good main quest.
The problem is, there really isn't a way to give a sandbox game a main quest with a sense of urgency without removing the sandboxiness.
Nah, from my experience, it tends to result from rushing through the tutorial without paying attention.
^It is possible to unobservant enough of a game environment that without even rushing, you can miss alternate options and all sorts of things. Most good gamers don't have this problem though. I doubt I would, but the chaos of the dragon might have critically distracted me.
^^True. It does seem awfully vague and dependent on your opinion on dragons.
At this point, I/we hate dragons just because you can't get near them in the wild without them trying to kill you. And in our case, we can't exactly kill them yet.
...It's possible to accidentally end up in the imperial path of the tutorial?
You just follow that one Imperial guy who didn't want you executed instead of following Ralof. Then the Imperials notice you're helping them and decide you're okay.
^^Pfft, hah, I wouldn't see it as an accident, but as the default, or a 50% chance thing. Obviously everyone sees the tutorial a bit differently.
I should side with the imperials on my next character. Right now I'm having too much fun with my Khajiit mage.
^^^^^^Red Dead Redemption managed it. Granted, it suffers from a lot of the problems that Skyrim does, but every cutscene you get 'My family's being held hostage. I need to capture this band I used to travel with.' While you don't have to follow the main quest, it does give you strong context for doing it. Another good one is Assassin's Creed, which is a great example of a sandbox with extreme focus even in the side missions.
Saving courtesans? They'll give you info on the templars? Getting rid of Da Vinci's war machines? It's to keep the templars from getting them. Training assassins? You're raising an army against the templars.
A game can give you a sandbox and focus.