LogFAQs > #913687639

Zeus posted...

This is kinda my third time playing Skyrim, although the second time (starting on the ps3) really doesn't count because I quit relatively early.

My problem with Skyrim is that, while it has character customization, it's almost entirely shit, and you barely see your character face-on anyway. And then you're limited as hell when it comes to armor and clothing palettes. And then you start playing, and all of the quests are generic as fuck, and while you get to "choose" how you want to do lots of things, almost all of those choices wind up being relatively meaningless, because nothing really effects anything else and the writing is terminally bland.

It's the ultimate end-game of open world design - because they have no idea which quests you've done at any given point, or who you've spoken to, so every quest sort of has to be modular and disconnected from everything else. You can have quest threads (like the Mage College quests or the Thieves Guild quests), but for the most part almost nothing you do matters to anything else you do.

So it's sort of what I want, only in the most superficial and flavorless way possible.

I've actually done multiple runs through the game (to 100% it for achievements on both 360 and PS4), but I don't really have fond memories of any of my characters or their personalities, because none of it meant anything. Nor do I really give much of a shit about any of the NPCs or their issues, or otherwise fondly remember anything about the game. Unlike Mass Effect and Dragon Age, where my characters in different runs tend to have radically different personalities, and I find myself caring far more about them and their stories, and the people they meet, then I ever have in any game made by Bethesda.

The one exception to that rule sort of being New Vegas, but in that case it was barely Bethesda at all as much as it was Obsidian (aka what was left of Black Isle, aka the people who created Fallout in the first place and the only ones who apparently understand what made Fallout interesting in the first place). My Couriers encouraged me to come up with radically different and overly thought-out back stories, and each wound up doing things differently than the others not because I was in a "Well, I did this quest one way last time, this time I'll do it a different way to see how things turn out instead" mindset, but because I was literally in a "This is who this character is, and this is how they'd react in this situation, so this is how they're going to finish this mission because they couldn't possibly do anything different." That level of immersion has really succeeded when I hit the point where I'm willing to deliberately do sub-optimal or outright negative things because it's important to the characterization. I'm basically roleplaying, not rollplaying.

That's the same sort of problem I have with stuff like Conan Exiles or GTA Online, and why I'm kind of adverse to Red Dead Online (even though watching other people make characters and play the early missions in that is part of what prompted this mood in the first place). The customization looks relatively deep and interesting, but then there's little worthwhile or meaningful for your character to actually DO once you've made them (and then microtransaction grind makes the whole experience generally crap).


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"Wall of Text'D!" --- oldskoolplayr76
"POwned again." --- blight family