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this post was submitted on 08 Jan 2025
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You mean more memorable than nearly getting executed and having to escape a dragon attack?
Yeah, not really. And I've played both.
Even this should tell you enough:
I think people just give Skyrim a lot more hate because it's been the last in the series for so, so long.
Oblivion was probably the #2 most memorable intro/tutorial of its' rough time period to me. #1 is stealing a bike in an alleyway.
Ah shit, here we go again.
All we had to do, was follow the damn train, CJ!
Yeah I think you're pretty much right about the hate. Plus, if Bethesda used to be better then that gives us excuse now to keep bringing up how mad we are about their current state.
I never finished Oblivion but it was because I was not playing many games then. Skyrim, I did finish and played many hours, because it literally pulled me out of being bored with games for years. The game was infuckingcredible regardless of the hate directed at it.
I also loved Morrowind. I can't remember if many people hate that one or not, but it's Bethesda, so probably.
I played Skyrim a few months ago and felt like my soul was getting sucked out. I just kept asking myself "what am I doing? Why am I playing this?", and stopped after a few hours.
I think the straw that broke the camel's back was when I encountered a group of bandits that tried to attack me. I went into the cave they seemed to be operating out of and was greeted by a named NPC called "ulfric the blind" or something. He said something like "[name] is that you?", and I thought "oh I wonder if I'll be able to fool this guy into thinking I'm someone he knows. I wonder what could have driven this old man to banditry, or if he and his family have been in the game so long he's now elderly. Or maybe instead of information about his life he'll inadvertently reveal some secret that can help me. Regardless I'll probably have to carefully choose what I say if I want to get the most out of this".
Then the only dialogue choices were "yeah I'm him [end conversation]" and "he's dead, you're next [end conversation]".
... So you were super disappointed that the very old game which was incredibly complex for its time (and still is in many ways) didn't get more complicated since, what was it, 2012?
I sometimes play Quake 1, released 1996, from the lens of 1996. I mean I can see the graphics are bad by today's standards. And it was simple in most ways by today's standards. But the game was still a huge game changer in every way and looks great if you remember the games that came before it.
Skyrim released in 2011.
New Vegas released in 2010.
Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines released in 2004
Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magic Obscura released in 2000
Plainscape: Torment released in 1999
Fallout 1 and 2 released in 97 and 98 respectively.
The concept of a good RPG wasn't invented in the last few years.
The concept of good gameplay and encounter design wasn't invented in the last few years either.
If the idea is that Skyrim isn't good because it's not your idea of a specific kind of rpg game, I got nothing for ya. It was a great game for so many of us.
What's good about it then? I don't mean that as an insult to you or your taste, I am genuinely asking because I'm the sort of person that likes to think about games. I've spent hours listening to GDC talks on game design, hours looking at map viewers for some of my favorite games. When I play a new game I take screenshots and make notes about my thoughts while playing it.
From what I saw playing Skyrim there's basically nothing there in terms of NPC dialogue, very little in terms of environmental storytelling, world design, and worldbuilding, and usually not very much atmosphere or sound design. And that's on top of the completely vacuous gameplay. If the game did even a single one of these things well I would have considered it to be good, but for me there's just nothing there.
I am aware that the Elder Scrolls series in general has interesting lore and metaphysics based on Hindu mythology. But it's my understanding that the person who came up with most of that no longer works at Bethesda. And while I was playing Skyrim even googling some of the things I encountered (such as "why do the draugr attack you") failed to elicit feelings of intrigue.
I did like the amount of verticality you experience ascending the main mountain though. That was cool map design IMO.
EDIT:
Most of the games that I listed are pretty vastly different from each other, but they all do at least one thing that's interesting. Skyrim not being "a specific kind" of RPG has nothing to do with it.
So, I could go back and look at screenshots to jog my memory and write up my thoughts/experience, link you to reviews/articles/videos/etc, but I'm a little confused how you can be the type of person who is this into games (about 3 times more into them even when I was most into them in the early aughts), but somehow miss that there was anything good about one of the most popular games ever made. You would've needed to stubbornly avoid or dismiss hundreds of data points to have missed all of the good points of this game. It was a cultural phenomenon. I know people who still play it...on Switch for Christ's sake.
Because I know you could not have missed everything good about the game, but seem to claim to have, I'm gonna have to bow out. You might wanna work on your approach if you want people to feel comfortable sharing their opinion. Besides the overall "what exactly is good about the Beatles?" vibes here, the first sentence and a skim of this comment comes off pretty shitty tbh.
Also, I laughed at this:
You make it sound like torture but you kept going for hours lol
Is this supposed to mean that I secretly liked it or else I wouldn't have played it as long as I did? Would you rather I stopped after 10 minutes so you can say I didn't give it a fair chance?
I mean you're clearly exaggerating the fuck out of how unenjoyable you found it
Morrowind is certainly a product of its time, so with the weird weapon hit chance mechanic and without voice acting, I can definitely understand why some people might not be able to get into it. But Morrowind has the best world design by a long shot and offers a lot more player freedom, too.
I loved Morrowind, but I was like 15 when I was playing it. I have a bad memory, so I don't remember everything about it very well, but I just remember thinking that Skyrim was that plus dragons and better graphics. Please don't hate me for that opinion because I don't really stand behind it lol
Nah, I can definitely see that you wouldn't know the difference, if you don't remember the details. World design is kind of all about the details. And I also wasn't really able to appreciate how cool the Morrowind game world is, when I played it at a similarly young age. I thought, all video games would have similarly interesting worlds, which I was unfortunately very wrong about.
Morrowind just had lots of cool ideas, for example some communities live in mushroom tree houses and you've got oversized, mind-controlled fleas to travel around the island. In terms of biomes, you've got for example swamps, isles, deserts, a volcano with ash storms, as well as a region with lava lakes.
That's just so much more variation than they had in Oblivion and Skyrim. Well, Oblivion's Shivering Isles DLC deserves a separate mention. That did have an interesting game world, too.
Maybe I'll play Morrowind again some day! I don't think I actually finished it but I did play it quite a bit. Those various environments you mentioned sound awesome and definitely only partially familiar.
This is super interesting to me. I cut my teeth on NES games so most games I played impressed me on some level. I didn't like most games out there honestly but when games provided the right mix of things I was so in. I remember being very impressed with Morrowind and thinking it was more advanced and deep than any game I'd seen at that point!
If you do play it again, there's a cool community rewrite of the engine: https://openmw.org/
It makes it more easily playable on modern operating systems and has various quality-of-life improvements, like greater rendering distance and practically no loading times.
And well, Morrowind was kind of my first 'proper' game. Beforehand, the best thing I played was a Diablo clone, which came in a box set with 9 other games. So, Morrowind definitely blew me away, but it did also set me up for some unrealistic expectations... 🫠
Neat! I assume you still need to have the original game files for that engine rewrite to run?
Haha yeah that is a crazy game to get started with.
Yes, you do need the original game files. Personally, I ripped my CD from way-back-when and have it pointed to that, but I'm pretty sure, you can also point it at the game files for Steam and other launchers.
Nice. Thanks for your responses!
I think most people tend to regard Morrowind as peak Bethesda/Elder Scrolls. At least I do.
Maybe the Oblivion intro feels more memorable because the rest of the games was such a step down from Morrowind in a lot of ways. Skyrim, for all its continued dumbing down of Elder Scrolls, was a well made fun game. And you got to be the main character again!
Idk, Skyrim seemed like a fun house opening. With big things coming at us we know won't kill us. In Oblivion, we are greeted by the fucken emperor, and he wants to talk to US, a prisoner, and then he hero's journeyed us into importance. It just seemed a lot more impactful than Skyrim's.
That didn't load for me so I'm going to pretend it was the macho man Randy Savage dragon mod.