Topic: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Which is why I deliberately used the phrase "legitimate AND just." The Empire isn't putting any kind of undue on the people. They aren't taxing people to the brink of starvation; burning and pillaging towns; barging into folks' houses, tearing things apart, punching their grandma's, farting in their soup, and kicking their dogs on the way out; and how many Imperial officers are actually enforcing the Talos ban? And speaking of, set the Talos ban aside and what grievances are left for the Stormcloaks to take up arms over? The rebellion simply has no leg to stand on.

The Thalmor's Dossier on Ulfric Stormcloak states that an Imperial victory harms their overall position in Skyrim. (http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Thalmor_Dossier:_Ulfric_Stormcloak) The Empire is the only thing keeping the Aldmeri Dominion at bay, which several NPCs repeatedly say. Now it does also say "A Stormcloak victory is also to be avoided, however..." so is this meant to imply that there's something wrong with the Dominion as a whole, or simply that the Thalmor just don't have as strong a foothold in Skyrim as they'd prefer? I don't know. But what I do know is that one is hard-pressed to explain how an independent Skyrim could possibly fare any better against the Dominion than Hammerfell did.
(http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/White-Gold_Concordat)

@SilverEdge92 just giving out complaints I’ve heard and my assessment of the possible emotional motivation for seeing the empire as a grey choice. TES games dont really leverage a clear good vs evil system.

@CroRock I play it 50/50 on 4K TV and handheld and the text is perfectly visible in both modes.

Anybody else noticing anything weird going on with lockpicking? I keep being able to open locks without having to even move the lock pick. My skill is only 20 right now and I’m opening master locks without moving the lock pick at all.

Does anyone else experience sound glitches when playing in handheld mode?
There's one annoying short screechy sound and a bit of music hicup. :/

Man, these games always bring up the worst in me. One moment I'm a noble warrior, one moment later I'm a werewolf that tears bandits apart even when they surrender O_O One moment I adopt an orphan then one moment later I see myself fully investing in the pickpocket skill. I'm so morally messed up.

@Sir_Anthony Haha, so true.

I kinda had a rough start with this game. They throw a lot at you, and most of the things they say to me or ask of me I find hard to identify with or even worse, care about. In a way there is so much in here that the game has the tendency to feel unfocused.
Now I’m having more fun by just wandering off, creating my own story and slowly but gradually doing some quests.

Also, I found out that you can favorite your weapons/magic for quicker access way too late xD

@SKTTR I’ve been experiencing a short crackling sound occasionally. That sort of thing?

Just had my first crash on the Switch too. Good old Bethesda! 😜

No one surrenders in Skyrim.

And I think without a doubt the worst thing about Skyrim's generally enjoyable combat is the favorites menu. I wish the Special Edition had added Fallout 4's quick select menu along with its quick save. Four directions are so much better than two, it changes switching weapons or spells from scrolling down a menu to muscle memory clicking twice to the left, right, or up. Y'know, that video game thing of pressing buttons.

The main things that save the game's combat for me are the stealth and magic systems. If it were only melee weapons, it would be a bit dull.

I wouldn't say combat has ever been the focus for Elder Scrolls games, though, similar to other games like The Witcher 3. It generally takes a backseat to everything else.

The melee combat is awful, and the magic/shooting are serviceable at best.

Skyrim has a lot to offer, but the moment to moment of it isn't that good.

@Snaplocket The controls make even the exploration questionable (although, I will admit, gyro aiming for the bow and arrow sounds like a MASSIVE QOL upgrade).

Skyrim excels at world-building, quest diversity, and role playing more broadly.

Everything else is... meh.

It's not for everyone. If you play games only for the gameplay and don't care about world-building, lore, side quests, exploration etc, you probably won't have as much fun with Skyrim as you would with something like Breath of the Wild.

While I already consider Skyrim a masterpiece despite its flaws, I think Bethesda could become even more of a juggernaut in the gaming industry than they already are if they just fine-tuned the combat, improved the character animations, and made traversing mountains and such easier. Those are really the only aspects of The Elder Scrolls that are significantly lacking IMO, although I think some better voice actors would help as well.

It is sad even to think that such people play video games. I always thought that a game should be a compilation of all the things you named, not just good gameplay and that is it. Like a mindless game with perfect graphics and shooting.

@Zuljaras I've absolutely met such people, although I think a more common thing is people who like a good story and lore and whatnot, but just consider it the icing on the cake.

While there's nothing wrong with that, that's not really how I approach games at all. I can forgive some pretty atrocious gameplay if the story and characters and lore and such are all good. I don't think games absolutely need to have top-notch gameplay to be extremely enjoyable experiences. To be honest, I would probably take better story-telling and lore at the expense of gameplay in certain games like Breath of the Wild. Maybe I'm just weird that way, lol.

I think there's merit to both, but certainly not in equal measure.

Some of the best games I've ever played have been straight up gameplay focused. Splatoon 2. DOOM. Mario Odyssey. Even Zelda Breath of the Wild. No gripping narrative or lore or any of that stuff to draw you in, yet these are some of my favorite games.

At the same time, there are a few games I've played have been not too hot in the game play department but very good in everything else (like Skyrim) which are probably equally as good in my eyes. However, games in this category are far fewer in number. When you lack intriguing gameplay, it's so incredibly hard to make up for it. While if you have impeccable, addicting gameplay, the rest is nothing more than icing on the cake because the game is going to be fun no matter what.

Basically, gameplay first and foremost. If you have incredibly exciting and addicting gameplay, you won't need anything else. Not to say a gripping story wouldn't make it even better because it absolutely would but the game will stand on its own if the gameplay is great. Whereas a game that doesn't have very good game play has an extremely hard, uphill battle to fight to win me over. In the case of Skyrim, it absolutely achieves doing so, but it's definitely one of the exceptions rather than the rule.

@Snaplocket I don't think that's necessarily true. While gaming is largely about having fun gameplay, I don't think they all need to be that way. If a game wants to focus on the story and not really the gameplay, such as Until Dawn or The Witcher 3, I don't think there's anything wrong with that.

I think we're so used to games being only about gameplay due to the early console generations where the stories were basically non-existent, but I don't think they should be trapped in that box anymore.

@Snaplocket I'm not saying gameplay isn't important, I'm just saying it doesn't need to be the focus of every single game. Ultimately, games are just interactive forms of entertainment, so whether they focus on almost purely gameplay like Mario Odyssey or almost purely story like Until Dawn doesn't really matter to me as long as the games succeed at what they're trying to do. As long as they entertain a decent number of people in some way, they did their job.

Like I said, there's nothing wrong with having a bias towards gameplay. I just don't think it's necessary to have super fun gameplay for the game to be enjoyable.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong at all with valuing narrative elements over interactive elements or visa versa. I guess, to me, the best examples of a medium are the ones that exploit the unique features of said medium, which is why games that are, for all intent and purposes, just interactive movies confuse me. Why not just make a movie if you don't care about the element of interactivity and player choice? Or at least design the game so it focuses on its strengths instead of constantly reminding me of its weaknesses. I'd much rather play a VN that doesn't even pretend to be "gamey" than something like The Last of Us where the player is either engaging in busywork like dragging planks or boxes around or being railroaded into performing one specific action because the game is worried about maintaining the pacing of its narrative elements.

At the end of the day, it comes down to what expectations you come to a game with in the first place. I've always been a bit disappointed with Skyrim, but I fully understand that this is because, in part, the game is emphasizing elements I just don't care about and de-emphasizing things I do care about. Same with @KirbyTheVampire and BotW, I imagine.