Topic: Nintendo + Bethesda = YES!

@LuckyLand By beat I was referring to the fact that BotW came out about 8 months before Skyrim on Switch hence BotW being the first of that type on Switch, not Skyrim.

Yes but I told you, it's not the same type. As I already said, I think there are many games more similar to BOTW than Skyrim is and I wouldn't say they are of the same genre of Skyrim either. They are all open world but they are not comparable just like Castlevania was not the same genre as Super mario even if they were both side scrollers.

I have to agree, BOTW and Skyrim are different kinds of beast. They have similarities like bats and birds, but more differences than similarities in my opinion. Skyrim is an RPG through and through. BOTW is an adventure game.

I think Breath of the Wild has more polished and modern gameplay mechanics, but Skyrim beats BoTW by a mile in terms of worldbuilding, storytelling (at least in terms of the sidequests. The main story is about as good as BoTW's. In other words, not great, but not bad), and overall immersing you in another world.

Basically, Zelda is a solid adventure game with fun gameplay mechanics and shrines and stuff, whereas Skyrim is more of an experience than anything else. You're basically living the life of a guy/girl dropped into a foreign land in a medieval fantasy world, and you can live that life however you please.

For how much people hail BoTW as a game about choice and doing whatever you want, Skyrim does that much better. If you want to build a house and be a hermit in the woods somewhere, and make alchemical blends out of materials you find in the wild and sell them for a living, you can do that. If you want to be a serial killer, you can do that. If you want to be a thief, you can do that. If you want to be a mage, you can do that. If you want to be all of the above, plus countless other things, you can do that as well.

People can say all they want, Breath of the wild does not even try to give you real choice and let you do what you want. It gives you only one thing to do and leave it up to you to decide the best way to do so. Or your favourite way. Whatever, you still have only one thing that must be done and that matters. Being free to do a thing someone else want you to do the way you want is completely different than being free to do whatever you want and decide your own goals.

I just beat Oblivion, so now I can officially look forward to Skyrim. I thought it ended on a high note that improved my view of the game, although I still did more running and avoiding than actual fighting. Is Skyrim the same way, or does it switch up the gameplay formula somehow?

Well, you'll be doing some running away in Skyrim, particularly at the earlier levels. As long as you're not attempting to slay the biggest and baddest beasts in Skyrim right out of the gate though, you should be fine. Just back off and come back later if you can't handle something when you first stumble upon it.

If you want to get the most out of Skyrim's combat, play an archer, mage, or stealth character. It's a remarkably fun ranged and stealth game for how many options it gives you. The melee animations aren't great, but they can be fun if you experiment with different weapons. I think the game plays best as a stealth shooter though, as Skyrim is probably my favorite open world stealth game for how forgiving it is if someone sees you in the wide landscape compared to something like MGS V.

Could play all three of them if you wanted, technically, but it would take a long time to level up a character in that many combat skills. I think an assassin with archery is perfectly achievable, though. I would probably even recommend doing that, rather than just leveling up melee weapon skills and sneak and whatnot.

Magic is generally better done exclusively though, rather than trying to level it up along with melee or archery, at least if you plan on using several schools of magic. I use at least some magic on pretty much all of my characters though. Healing magic especially can be a big help for any character.

That's one of the cool things about this game, though. You can approach skills and leveling up your character in any way you choose. I've always hated when other games have a class-based approach to leveling up which forces you into one using one type of character with no opportunities to branch out into other playstyles. (Mage, assassin, warrior etc etc)

@KirbyTheVampire But of course. The Elder Scrolls but Skyrim especially have some of the best, most varied RPG progression. And it's not fake differences like in an MMO where assassins and mages use the same mechanics, the combat is all done in 3D hitboxes and dynamic in how those 3D attacks interact with different environments.

I liked the sleeping in a bed to level up thing in Oblivion like Fallout 4's survival mode which forced you to sleep in a bed to save. Just the RP of that was nice, like how Skyrim's skills menu sees the player looking skyward.

I think that leveling by doing is an incredibly smart scheme. Players are never locked out of a pursuit when they have the items necessary, they just become better and better at it with a bunch of unique perks. Healing stamina along with health especially is a huge deal done through just edited stat values.

Man, I can't wait for The Elder Scrolls VI.

The commercial life of Skyrim is over. So the Skyrim version of the Switch was probably funded by Nintendo. Maybe they thought it would make sense with the last Zelda. Since it seems it has been one of the inspiration for it. Maybe it's a hommage to the game.
I don't think Bethesda will release anything else on Switch though. The Nintendo fanbase is mostly japanese games oriented with some few exceptions like the N64 era with all the successful Rare and FPS games on it. I don't think Skyrim will sell very well. But we'll see.

@Haru17 I was definitely going to try to be a mage or something along those lines in Skyrim. I played as a Warrior in Oblivion with the only magic I ever used was to heal myself, and I think it would have been a lot better if I had some more ranged attacks (I never could get the hang of a bow and arrow). Although I read that the final boss whom I actually had to fight was pretty much immune to magic, so in that sense it was good that I had become a strong Warrior.

I'm not very good at aiming plus I always play in third person view and that does not help but there are magic attacks like the runes and "wall" attacks (like wall of fire) that don't require good aiming and are very effective and fun.

The commercial life of Skyrim isn't over at all, haha. They're releasing two ports this year where you can play the game totally differently to how it was played before, and an expansion the Elder Scrolls TCG titled 'Heroes of Skyrim' came out literally a week ago. That's not over at all!

And yeah don't... play these games in third-person. Ask yourself what Metroid Prime would be if they zoomed the camera out to hover behind Samus in the most basic way possible. It's that. These are immersive games absolutely designed around the first-person perspective. The only uses for third-person I can see are tricky jumps and admiring your character's armor.

The commercial life of Skyrim is over when there's no new devices to release it on. You'll probably see Skyrim for Hololens within the next few years, if there's a next gen Xbox and PS5 then Skyrim will be released for those. Way into the future there'll be Skyrim for devices like your fridge or coffee machine!

Elder Scrolls games are unique and this is the main reason why the commercial life of Skyrim will be over only when a new Elder Scrolls game will bereleased. Until then Skyrim will always have some appeal, even though obviously it will not be the same as it was in 2011.

About 3rd person view, the fact that in this game 3rd person view is way better than in previous ones is one of the main reasons why I still play Skyrim while I don't play Oblivion anymore so nobody and nothing will ever convince me to play a game in 1st person when I'm not forced to. Not to mention that it is extremely rare that I can like a game that forces me to play in 1st person.

I had many times where I was killed during a fight because I accidentally switched either to third-person or to crouching/sneaking by pushing one of the sticks. Both were equally annoying.

I have one more question about the gameplay, and since this is a Nintendo + Bethesda thread, I feel I can ask about BotW, too, since I have not played that yet. Is the weapon breaking and encumbrance system the same as in Oblivion. I thought that was the worst part of the game. I didn't even know about it until over halfway through the game because I did so little actual fighting up to that point, but then while in Oblivion I was suddenly punching people and didn't realize why. And even though I was a strong warrior, I was never able to carry more than a couple of spare weapons that were actually any good without being over-encumbered. It was very annoying. Is Skyrim the same? And from what I've read it sounds like BotW might be better because it is easier to get new weapons in that game and eventually you can get one that won't break (right?), but does it have a similar encumbrance system or not?

They took out durability in Skyrim.

Also, Hololens isn't a consumer product. Apparently Microsoft was straight up lying when they implied that you would be able to play games in first-person in it like normal, as the field of view is apparently very narrow because the tech limits peripheral vision severely. It's just a conferencing device.

@Xyphon22 Weapons break in BOTW, a lot. Like aome after 5 hits or even less depending on the enemy. Inventory is also very limited, especially early on (6 weapon slots). I just avoided combat in most cases since the rewards weren't worth losing another weapon.

Skyrim doesn't have breakable weapons, but there is an encumbrance system. I find it to be very reasonable, though. You can easily carry several weapons on you at a time, and there are ways to increase the amount of stuff you can carry even more if you want.

Zelda's weapons break much, much faster than they do in Oblivion, but you find weapons so often that it's really not a problem. I can't recall ever running around without one, and if I did, I easily found more. I actually like the weapon breaking system, because it requires some strategy in what weapon you're using, plus the combat never gets stale because you're always using something different. Also, there is no encumbrance system in Zelda, but there is a maximum amount of weapons you can carry. You can increase the number that you can carry though, and eventually you could get to a point where you have way more weapons than you could ever need.