Skyrim=meh

Hey, guys, even though Skyrim has been out for a long time, I wanted to talk about it.

I know I'm gonna' get some serious flak for this, but I flatout don't like Skyrim, I thought the game wasn't very good.

My problems with this game:

-The Combat is ABYSMAL. I feel like I'm whacking monsters with pool noodles.

-The Story is really bad.

-The Dungeons all feel and look quite similar.

-The color palette is very boring(I know people need the "immersion" of being in Skyrim, but a bit of color here and there couldn't hurt, could it?

-The world doesn't react to your incredible feats, you kill the master of all dragons and the people in the world still treat you like garbage.

-There's only like 10 voice actors in the entire game -_- really Bethesda? I bet your budget is massive. yet you hire so few voice actors.

-The world is cool, I'll give you that, but what else is there?

For what it's worth, I enjoyed playing as a stealth archer FAR more than I enjoyed playing as a battle-mage. Destructive magic in Skyrim is a joke. Archery solves most of the game's combat problems.

That... actually sounds fun...

I didn't enjoy skyrim as much as New Vegas, but in a way I can relate to how you feel.

Since I have played these Elder Scrolls games since Daggerfall, I'm getting a little tired of the formula. That being said, Skyrim is a brilliant game even if it's not for everyone(but what game is?)

I pretty much feel the same. The game just isn't as good as everyone says. None of the Elder Scrolls games are. It never feels like I'm making contact with enemies. I understand that most people on the planet LOVE these games. I just... don't.

The biggest problem with Skyrim is that it's like a shinny, delicious looking apple. Problem is, once you're done eating it you realize it was rotten. The gameplay and exploration are great. But the fact that the world is so bland and filled with zombie NPCs didn't help it much.

All flash no substance. So it's really weird for me. I did enjoy the game when I played it, but now the very thought of playing it again doesn't sit well with me.

Lets hope they don't fuck up the writing with Fallout 4...but who am I kidding, it's Bethesda.

I didn't like it either. Most overrated game of the generation.

If you ever play it on PC, MODS

Yeah, I hate *insert popular/critically acclaimed game* too.

But seriously, I get where you are coming from. I still loved it but I understand your gripe with the game.

If that is what you think of meh, you wouldn't want to touch the game that came before it. That game is like meh, except all your complaints are exponentially increased. And unlike meh's world, its world is kinda generic.

[Insert joke: "Oh so it's a Bethesda game then."]

I love Skyrim. But all of those problems are inherent in the way Bethesda -as a studio- develop games. Everything is the way it is because they are still building on their original Morrowind tools. An old house must be maintained but eventually, there isn't anything worth living in left and you just have to bulldoze it and build a better place to live. My sincerest hope for Fallout 4 whenever it comes out (hopefully not until at least 2015) is that they have scrapped all of their old code and built from scratch or licensed a new more advanced engine.

I love the TES tools, they are incredibly easy to pick up as an asset creator, but I'll be damned if that accessibility doesn't come at a price.

People seem to take joy in bashing popular games.

I mean yes, Skyrim has plenty of flaws, but seriously, name a few other games in that scope. Since well, theres not. Like any. (aside from previous TES games) Bethesda is really the only place for that huge open world RPG style game, no one else really does that.

I think skyrim is the game people enjoy taking the piss out of the most. Since its a huge massive game, so beloved by so many people, yet has so many obvious flaws that are clearly just limitations of budget / development time / resources / hard ware capability.

The closest contender i see to "best open world RPG' is Fallout New Vegas, and while its arguably a better RPG, and that varies on taste, the open world nature in New Vegas is boring as shit. Theres almost no random encounters. walking from one place to another is utterly pointless if you can fast travel because literally nothing will happen. If in Skyrim i ride my horse from Whiterun to Solitude i'll encounter something interesting even if ive seen it before, SOMETHING will at least happen. In New vegas if i run from Novac to Vegas NOTHING WILL HAPPEN. New Vegas seemed to forget it was an open world game.

Skyrim is simply put a pretty damn amazing game. To everyones specific taste? Obviously not. But it's damn impressive in its scope and the amount of content it provides. Theres literally hundred of hours of unique content in Skyrim with a base game. I can personally attest to that. Most games are usually 10 hours. So yeah bitching its combat is slightly subpar seems silly.

I didn't like it as much as other entries because there is hardly any variety at all in dungeons and items. Every place looks the same and every item is the same. Very few rare items and the rewards for exploring are nonexistent so it killed the game for me.

I should introduce you to this larp group I know.

I can completely understand where you're coming from, but there's still something so alluring and awesome to me about Skyrim. To put it simply, I love Skyrim in spite of it's glaring flaws. I can look past it's stiff characters and lackluster combat, because there's something magical to me about wandering a mountain peak into the early hours of a morning in the land of Skyrim and seeing the sun rise with soaring orchestral music in the background. I loved tracking deer through the forest's surrounding Riften and trudging through the thick snow around Windhelm only to spot a dragon off in the distance roaring, as if to challenge me to a duel to the death. My love for Skyrim and other bethesda games like it stem from the nonlinear player agency that make the otherwise technically flawed worlds come to life in a wonderfully unique way.

PS. After looking at the top of the thread again, I noticed this was the OP's first ever post. What an interesting way to introduce yourself to this community. Welcome! :D

@ponchopowerphd said:

Well, at least they're better than the 5 in Oblivion.

I enjoyed it.

Anyone who plays a Bethesda game on a console unmodded is not very smart

You mean "Skyrim is an awesome sandbox RPG?" I'll back you up on that. Skyrim is an awesome sandbox RPG.

Exactly.

Aside from the same dungeons over and over again, same voice actors over and over again and same "random" quests over and over again and the terrible combat mechanics Skyrim at least had..

Well it has a cool soundtrack!

But as stated before.
Skyrim is beautiful, like a ocean with little islands on it and it just looked good.

Had the depth of a tiny puddle of water though

I soured on Skyrim after around 150 hours. In comparison, I S-ranked Spec Ops: The Line (a game I was enamored with all the way through three playthroughs) in just 20 hours. So while Skyrim isn't a perfect game, there's enough smooshed in there that I was able to wring an impressive dollar:hours played ratio out of it.

NOPE. I'm not falling for that again, those guys lure you in with the styrofoam swords and the capes, and then you wake up alone in some field in Maryland with no pants and a My Little Pony tattoo. No thank you sir.

I have a weird relationship with Skyrim. It seemed like a magical experience of sorts because of all the different things to explore and discover. However, it all felt very quantity-over-quality, as though the world was packed with different locales and characters, impressively so, except that only a fraction of them came close to being honestly engaging. Virtually every dungeon looked and played the same (layout, design, draugr/falmer). I found myself starting to see quests as just going through the motions; it was by-and-large a somewhat lackluster affair.

And yet, there's something to be said for that model, oddly enough. Sure, when I step back and look at it, none of it seems all too appealing, but I would totally go back and play it a second time and probably enjoy myself all over again (though likely with a mod list longer than War and Peace).

Clonedzero had it right in one certain regard: There's just nothing else that delivers on quite the same front as a big Bethesda release. The combination of customization, freedom and enormity somehow ensures that, at least for me, the experience always ends up being much more than the sum of its often underwhelming parts. There are other big open-world games, but nothing hits quite the same notes as an Elder Scrolls or modern Fallout title. There's just some sweet spot of immersion and a sense of adventure that Bethesda (or Obsidian in the case of NV) manages to strike. It's why I'm still looking forward to Fallout 4.

When everything's said and done, I think I like Skyrim in spite of myself.

Skyrim is an emotional tour de force, as seen here. Beware the turning circle on those Buick horses.

-The Dungeons all feel and look quite similar.

-The color palette is very boring(I know people need the "immersion" of being in Skyrim, but a bit of color here and there couldn't hurt, could it?

These mostly sum up my issues with Skyrim, and Oblivion too. Morrowind had such a nice variety of settings to visit and made for a more exciting world to explore.

Hey this thread again! Woo!

I'm just gonna say, Skyrim is the best game of the last 3 to 4 years.

Yeah, this made buying LE for PC and moving my 150+ hour 360 save over totally worth it. Mods can completely change that game, and there are so fucking many. I've already put in another like 20 hours since buying it off the Steam sale, all because of mods.

Morrowind had much more variety in settings? There was the swamp, there was the mountainious wasteland that consisted of 70% of the map, there was some islands, and then there was some grasslands in the north eastern corner. that is litterally the extent of morrowinds map varierty.

Skyrim has Tundra, Frozen marshlands, Mountains, Ice fields, Hot springs, Autumn forests, Pine forests, Highlands, frozen forests. Just about every concievable type of area they could conceive from that climate they pulled off.

Even Oblivion had more variety in areas than morrowind. The whole "morrowind had better variety" argument is based on pure nostalgia nd that ONE SPOT where they put mushroom trees. Oblivion was like 70% generic forest. It really did have more variety. Don't get me wrong, i LOVED the shit out of Morrowind, still one of my favorite games ever. But dont be blinded by nostalgia. But don't lie, the edges of the map had neat stuff but a crazy amount of the land mass was wasteland mountains and ash fields. it was awful.

I dont really the whole skyrim's color pallete are boring thing. You ever go outside at night and do the clear weather shout. Instant northern lights.

Skyrim is the only game i've spent upwards of 70 hours on without feeling particularly strongly about it. I don't really know what to feel.

Same. I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Leaning toward bad. The only thing that motivated me to explore was the hoarder in me and even then the randomly generated loot was very rarely worth the trouble.

I started off as a stealth archer and after hearing about how terrible and disconnected the melee combat feels, I can't help but feel I made the right choice. Stealth archer is fun, but boy do the copy-paste dungeons wear on you. You either get non-descript cave, draugr dungeon, or dwarven dungeon.

I would have also liked the world to acknowledge your character's feats more. It always pissed me off that Maven Blackbriar threatened to have my character assassinated by the theives guild and dark brother hood even though I'm the fucking Dragonborn, the fucking Archmage, a member of the thieves guild and the goddamn Dark Brotherhood assassins. There should have been a prompt that said "Bitch, do you know who I is?!" And then she would be forced to give up all her money and estate to me or else I'd fus ro dah her face off. Also when I became Archmage there was always that shady ass smug teacher that still gave me lip after I became Archmage of the college. I mean c'mon game.

Well, it's not really a game made for console.

On PC you would find it way more apealing combat and movement wise with the mous/keyboard ( imho ) and every other problem is fixed with mods, including the lack of vocie actors and recognition. You can add a total of up to 200 profesionally voice acted NPC's , changed guard and other common NPC dialogue, add a huge variety in monsters and a shit load of dungeon effects and soundtracks. I take about 1 or so hour to install all the mods but id defenetly give it a shot on PC with the steam sale and all. Just go to skyrim gems for a list of popular mods and install nexus mod manager and installing the mods should be pretty easy.

Since the reasons Skyrim is great have already been laid out by plenty of other people, I'll just make some suggestions for the people that think the locations are bland.

First off, play through the main quest. There are a lot of really cool places it takes you that you probably wouldn't find otherwise (Blackreach <3)

Secondly, buy the DLC. Specifically, pick up the Dragonborn DLC as it will probably get you the most bang for your buck (especially if you want interesting places to visit), but the other ones are pretty cool too.

Lastly, if you're playing it on PC, look around for some mods. There's bound to be at least a few that make the game more interesting for you. (I play on PS3 so I can't really recommend any, and yes, I know it's blasphemy).

I hope that helps some people get more out of the game. :)

You are not alone. I feel the same way.

It's technically solid, but kinda soulless. I do think the world they built is pretty incredible though - just wandering around exploring in the wild and taking screenshots was way more enjoyable than anything story related.

Bethesda and Obsidian really ought to hook up and make hot game babies already. They're each strong where the other is weak.

ENBs along with a lot of other mods make a HUGE difference to the graphical blandness you mentioned.

I could frankly post a thousand amazing pictures, and I will if you let me :P

But yes, game gets boring 10hrs in :(

@clonedzero: Each different region had it's own vibe or personality that made it feel like you were really traveling in an interesting place. I think that has been missing from the last two games. Sure Skyrim has some different climates and areas to go to but it's all kind of plain.

I have the exact same feelings of love... but only for Oblivion :(

I had a blast playing this game.

I thought it was really boring.

At least you unlike many others out there who have said they didn't like a game actually tried it. That's the great thing about the video game industry is that there's stuff out there for just about everyone, once you take the time to find what genres you enjoy. Good thing is that the PC version supports enough mods to keep it interesting & once you get past some of the weak combat mechanics (lot of variety but simple execution) & more then I found it fun.

Agreed. I got 40 hours out of it despite not really enjoying it though.

Don't ask me how.

I got a bunch of hours out of it, but the combat was murder on me. ESO's got better combat, for crying out loud.

FO:NV and the likes, freaking amazing, but that's guns. That's easy to make good.

Please figure out how to rip off something like Dark Souls for a first person view.

That Deadly Reflex mod for Oblivion was fantastic. Something like Chivalry would also be acceptable.

If you played Oblivion recently then Skyrim would be damn boring, just like any other Elder Scrolls game; they're fun once every 3 or 4 years but extremely boring once you're done with them. Same thing with Fallout but they don't take quite as long.

Yeah, I don't think I disliked Skyrim as much as you, but I didn't like that game nearly as much as other people. I'm not an enormous fan of fantasy games, but there was something to the world and it had this huge scale. The combat felt pretty bad though, and all the NPCs and your interactions with them seemed clunky and awkward.

Kind of what @spaceinsomniac said, but playing stealth archer feels like it is how game is meant to be played. I played it like that and enjoyed it a whole lot.

That said, the game has problems. For me it was how small the actual world is. Largest town is like 12 houses big.

I think Skyrim is a great game, but after 15 hours it felt like I was just going from quest marker to quest marker.

It lacks the sense of wonder that Morrowind provided, unfortunately.