Topic: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

@Octane People don't necessarily have to pick only 1 game. Sure, some people might prefer TW3, as it's much more modern and polished from a gameplay perspective and has a lot more memorable characters, but that doesn't mean Skyrim has nothing to offer. It's such a well-known game for a reason.

@Xyphon22 Personally I prefer Oblivion to Skyrim, but I can't say why. Something just felt...."empty" about Skyrim I guess. Not that BotW doesn't...but it was different in Skyrim, but I'm giving it another shot on Switch. I want to be proven wrong.

But yeah, really, no TES game is about the main quest. At all. That's kind of a tutorial/side story and represents maybe 8% of the game's real offering. Like Xenoblade X the collection of side quests is the main game and the "main story" is just kind of a shell to tie the world together.

I know, I know, I'm a broken record, but really, the main quest is easily the WORST part of any TES game. It's like playing BotW and ONLY playing shrines and not the overworld. They're cool, and there's a lot of them, but you're missing the actual game.

@NEStalgia So basically you are saying, no there is no real difference in gameplay between Oblivion and Skyrim. That's sad, because I want to like Elder Scrolls and have been looking forward to Skyrim on Switch but will have to think about it now. I haven't played BOTW (don't yet actually have a Switch but am waiting to play that version) or Xenoblade X (own it but haven't gotten around to it yet) to compare it to, but I compared it before to the original Xenoblade. I also planned on just going through the main quest because of how long I new the game to be, but I ended up doing a ton of side things because it was so much fun and I enjoyed the world. In Oblivion, I just find the world drab and dull and the few side quests I have attempted I did not really enjoy doing.

@Xyphon22 This is just me, but I found Oblivion way more difficult to get into than Skyrim. I personally found Skyrim to be way more polished and immersive.

Forget all those and pray they bring Fallout 4 over to the Switch! 😉

@Xyphon22 @KirbyTheVampire is right in that Skyrim is a little more polished, though I don't know about it being more immersive....I think that comes down to individual tastes. To me Oblivion felt "lived in" and Skyrim felt "sterile" but there are certainly plenty that feel the opposite is true.

I will also say that I played Oblivion on what was, in its day, a monster rig PC and I felt the PS3 version was really, really awful in contrast. The UI just didn't work for console as well and it hurt the pacing. I played Skyrim on X360....so that was a middle of the road outing and maybe I'll feel better about it on Switch (the UI was retooled to be console-centric on Skyrim instead of the mouse-centric Oblivion

BUT the core gameplay for Elder Scrolls has really been the same since forever. Daggerfall on DOS wasn't THAT different. It's an RPG built largely around free exploration and leveling up stats by simply using them, where the main quest is just a loose construct with which to contain the purpose of the world...it's not really a main campaign where side quests are just other things you can do. Exploring the world and solving quests is the main activity and the main campaign just frames the world's background. I spent probably 2 months playing Oblivion and exploring things and doing things before starting the main quest (didn't want to activate those ugly red skies!) I ran through the main quest in a few hours at best (I was pretty much a tank of a mage at that point who's fireball was like a mini-nuke.)

Edit: You might find Xenoblade X to be similarly disliked. It's very different from XC. XC is a traditional very linear on-rails JRPG, story-based, and the large open world is just an illusion of having VERY BIG closed rooms that are still closed rooms. XCX is a genuine open world, more like Elder Scrolls games. And XC and XCX sidequests are usually just "kill x of y monsters and bring back the parts" whereas TES quests usually have you doing more exploration of the world around your (or completing/exploring a specific dungeon/Ayelid ruin.) But yeah, it will never pretend to be a linear story-driven JRPG, it's a WRPG through and through.

Have you played the main line SMT games? That's another WRPG that happens to be made in Japan.

Skyrim is more immersive because forest ponds have low-lying fog, little unmarked ruins sit out in the world with puzzles to be solved, and because the cities are each storied and built of different materials depending on their history.

In comparison, The Witcher 3 has a lot of empty, unfinished forests and only 4 dungeons compared to Skyrim's 120+. Most of which have stories to be pieced together by reading the journals and looking at the items left in the environment.

@NEStalgia I played Oblivion on the PS3, which probably had an impact on my enjoyment of the game. Plus, the ugly as sin character models and the awkward way the camera zoomed right up to the person's face when you talked to them, as well as the cringy voice acting, all made it sort of difficult to take some of the less elaborate quests very seriously. The gameplay itself was pretty good though, if a little clunky.

It's not that I didn't have fun with Oblivion. I think it's just not as good of a choice for newcomers to the series as Skyrim is, largely due to its age. I think people who get a feel for ES games through Skyrim and can look past Oblivions age can definitely have a good time with it. I might give it another go soon, since I definitely stopped playing it prematurely.

@KirbyTheVampire Yeah, I try to forget my PS3 experience with that game. It was a PC game through and through that was ported DIRECTLY to console.....I presume that was a learning experience for Bethesda (though they utterly ticked off their core PC fanbase by making Skyrim designed as a console game through and through and it made mouse/keyboard awful )

But yeah my fond memories of Oblivion probably would not be so fond had I not played it on that platform. That was really the last of the "true" PC RPGs. "Press I for inventory" was one virtue of keyboard gaming!

But the cringey voice acting and disturbing camera angles were the same. Though IIRC it's not any different on Skyrim.

Oh Also, I always play Elder Scrolls games in first person. Just seems right, but probably works better with a mouse. It felt kind of wrong trying 3rd person.

I can't disagree about age though. Skyrim itself is old already. Oblivion is very old. In my mind it's still shiny and new, having played it on release day (the original PC release day....that was what....a little over 11 years ago now? Yikes! It feels like yesterday! The GameCube was still current!)

@NEStalgia It would also be nice to have the PC version for the mods, as well. I actually plan on buying Skyrim on my PC for the mods, since I've already done practically everything there is to do in the vanilla game.

By the way, do you have any experience with Morrowind? I think I'll probably get it during a Steam summer sale or something regardless, since it's dirt cheap at this point, but some second opinions on the game would be nice.

@KirbyTheVampire Morrowind was where I started the series and got hooked from that point on. It really was a great experience and I highly recommend it!

@NEStalgia @KirbyTheVampire Okay, now you are actually making me feel better as I am playing Oblivion on the PS3 which apparently is not as good. It's not that I think it's bad, I was just expecting much better based on what I have heard about both it and the series as a whole for so many years, but I guess it would be better on a PC. So I guess Skyrim now goes back on my To Get list after a whole hour or so on my Maybe list.

@Xyphon22 I think you'll get a ton of enjoyment out of it, as long as you keep in mind that the game was made 6 years ago, and thus is a bit unpolished by today's standards. Also, keep in mind that the story isn't really the main draw of the game, and if that's all you do, you'll probably end up pretty disappointed. The real meat of the game comes from the side quests and exploration.

It also might take you a few hours to really get into. I went into it not really knowing anything about the game except that it was a medieval fantasy open world game, and I kinda just wandered around wondering what I was supposed to be doing until I found a rhythm. I do recommend going in totally blind, though. Exploring, doing quests, and finding out little pieces of information about the Elder Scrolls universe and its lore was definitely one of my most fun and most memorable gaming experiences to date. Keep in mind that was in 2011, so I might be a little nostalgia-blinded, but I still put over a thousand hours into the game and have no regrets about doing so, lol.

@Spoony_Tech Okay, thanks! (Apologies for the double post)

@KirbyTheVampire Morrowind is OOLD....But, I really loved that game. I technically liked Oblivion more, some of the stuff in Morrowind is archaic, and you HAVE to spend periods of time trekking across vast empty space....but the otherworldly atmosphere in that game is just wonderfully unique, and though it's in someways glitchier than the newer games (believe it or not) there is an element to questing that feels even more grand, if you can forgive the ancient engine and the fact that virtually everything is on one flat plane. If you love newer Elder Scrolls you should at minimum like Morrowind. It's the most unique environment of the 3. Skyrim going for "snowy mountain Nordic medieval culture" felt kind of like phoning it in after the exotic elf-land of Morrowind. And you'll recognize the amazingly awful voice acting too!

@Xyphon22 Haha, yeah, I often talk about Oblivion when I talk about Skyrim and I often forget that I played the PC version and how very different that experience was. I haven't been PC in a long time. That was probably the era at the height of my PC gaming tenure and was also the end of the era of "pure" PC games....after the XBox(Zero?) Came out PC gaming started an era of getting consolified. IMO, while Oblivion is a great game, the console versions probably don't do it justice. If you're playing on console after playing on PC it's a fun trip down memory lane....but I imagine it feels clunky playing through it the first time on that version. The interface was built for a mouse. In retrospect they probably shouldn't have made a console port, or should have released a remastered edition that uses Skyrims UI or something. I guess back then it was "cool" to take PC games and put them on consoles....but they forgot I think that PC game design used to be really different from console, and basked in the presence of a mouse and keyboard. Compared to the PS3 Oblivion, just due to the interface improvement (for console....PC gamers still hate it) Skyrim might be a lot more enjoyable

Other than that I second what @KirbyTheVampire said about going into it blind, exploring, but knowing it's a game that's about the side quests and exploration and not about telling the main story as much as living in the world and the goings on everywhere. There's a reason Skyrim is a good match for Switch after BotW...both have that same mindset of blind exploration, though both play very very differently.

@NEStalgia Okay, thanks. I don't have a ton of experience with really old RPGs, so it'll probably take some getting used to, but I imagine it'll be well worth the price.

@KirbyTheVampire
I cannot recommend Morrowind enough. I believe it's the high point of TES series

For anyone who didn't already know, Nintendo have been showing off a demo build of Skyrim at Comic-Con over the last few days - they didn't allow any direct capture footage to be taken, but there are a few off-screen video's kicking about...and the overall impressions seem to generally be really positive!

..oh man, am I really going to buy this game for a third time?! I don't know if I'm going to be able to stop myself!

@NEStalgia I feel the same as you about Skyrim/Oblivion, compared to Oblivion Skyrim feel rather empty and shallow, but for me Skyrim is still a lot more satisfying than Breath of the wild. At least it effectively allows you to do what you want with the game, not just to choose how you prefer to do the things the game itself requires that you do.
I really hope Bethesda will make an Oblivion remake at some point, that game really deserves it. I would be so immensely happy if they will release an Oblivion remake on Switch!

Those motion controls aren't 1 to 1 because of the delay, but they look pretty good. I would be pumped to try out my Bloodskal Blade or Longhammer characters with them, and I wonder how power attacking works with motion.

Also, remakes older than Skyrim would need complete graphical rebuilds. Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout 3 would need to be brought up to whatever Bethesda's current facial animation par is. Morrowind would need to be voice acted in all of the places where the original game wasn't, and the voices for the main characters would probably also need to be redone because that was a 2002 game.