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It's got about 3/4ths of the content of a single playthrough of SI, maybe a little more. But like SI, it has the ability to go back and see the other side of the fence (Hysteria/Madness, Dawnguard/Vampire Lords) on a second playthrough. It's not bad, and some of the additions in the main game (crossbows!) are really neat. It still suffers from Bethesda storytelling, but I'd have stopped playing TES years ago if I had a problem with that.

I think the issue with Skyrim and being "just alright" is that you played it for so long because it's just a fun world to explore and do things in, and come across little scraps of story and nuance, but then things like Blackreach, or your first dragon fight and the short period of story after it, or the first time you get mauled by a bear from the bushes just stand out so much brighter than everything else that it seemed dull. It was fantastic at the time, but all you really remember now is the really awesome stuff. You didn't just fall into a solipsistic trance and play it for 130 hours after all.

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My playtime is split up between about 5 different characters because I'd get bored and restart a few weeks/months later. I'd always get to the same point and just lose interest.

One of my pet peeves with the Elder Scrolls games is that when you upgrade your armor/weapons, they always look different. I want to be able to dress in amazing armor that looks the same as the Iron Armor I wore from the beginning of the game instead of the godawful Ebony or Dragon armor. Same with the weapons. It's mitigated a little bit with the blacksmithing, but no iron armor set I make will ever be as good as the same amount of effort put into a dragon set.

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Just wear no armor? Or wear iron armor? Who give a shit. You are playing single player. The game isn't exactly die hard hardcore difficult to play anyway.

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I do obviously.

I have a problem when games (usually RPGs) have really good character art direction and their development of that is to just make everything xTreme!

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@Squid Division: I've definitely found myself compromising on a few DPS or armour ratings for aesthetic reasons. No fucking way am I going to switch the Dawnbreaker sword for a lame Glass one, even if the enchantment is more powerful in most situations.

I hit a hundred hours today and I'd agree with the general assessment that it's more consistently good (I'd go as far as great, actually) while Oblivion had more "holy shit" moments. Even though the dungeons in Skyrim (are they still randomised?) are more interesting on an individual basis and the world is probably more varied and interesting - though I'm still a sucker for straight up ye olde Oblivion stuff - this may have come at the expense of some truly unique locations. When you've seen one Dwarven ruin, you've seen them all. I do feel like it's more easy to specialise in something cool though, but maybe that's just because being a sneaky archer is what I wanted to do all through Oblivion and never found feasible. Re shouts, essentially the only one I use is Unrelenting Force on its max level, I purposely manoeuvre enemies into exposed high up positions just so I can blast them into a river valley or off the side of a mountain.

As for fast travelling, I felt I used it too often in Oblivion and have only done it a handful of times in Skyrim. Usually, conversely, when I'm close to where I'm headed but can't find an obvious route. Enough quests appear that I'm pretty much always able to pick a certain route through objectives/dungeons towards others, I've kind of just been frantically running around the map from place to place which means I've seen a lot more stuff. In Oblivion I was basically done by this point, but thanks to not having just zapped from one location to the next to finish quests I haven't finished the main quest or any of the guild equivalents, though I'm close on a couple. The disadvantage of not completing most quests in a linear fashion is that you can completely lose the thread and end up being baffled by what's going on, which could have been easily remedied by including a log of each quest's narrative in the journal.

Oh, and I made occasional use of the horse and cart dudes to travel between cities. I feel it's analogous to how Sean claimed to feel about Arkham's daft Riddler puzzles in a cast; I don't necessarily like the principle of the thing, but I'll accept an almost semi-diegetic solution, or at least something that's accounted for with the rest left to artistic license.

Edit: Christ, apologies for the mega brain dump of stuff I've been thinking for a few months but never said on the internet.

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I feel bad for the people who didn't play Morrowind because it was the best game in the series. Especially if you like "holy shit" moments I guess. I still have the Morrowind map on my wall http://gamechurch.co...orrowindmap.jpg . :) I've actually moved three times since I last played Morrowind and I still keep the map above my computer.

Skyrim is pretty awesome though, and a lot better than Oblivion in pretty much every way I can think of.

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Dungeons in TES haven't been randomized since Daggerfall. Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim are all tileset/lego construction.

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Having played TES games since Daggerfall, i think i feel pretty strongly that Skyrim is the best game in the series, or at least the most well made.

There are thing about Morrowind that i adore, but i spent so much time with that game that i also haven't forgotten how busted it could be, and how many dubious pieces of design it contained.

There's been a pretty linear progression where Bethesda has been getting better at making games in the workmanlike sense of it, they're more consistent and more assured in their quality, and perhaps a little less memorable for it.

Dungeons in TES haven't been randomized since Daggerfall. Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim are all tileset/lego construction.

Well, I understand that Oblivion's dungeons were randomized in development, but then fine-tuned and inserted into the game with a final configuration, so it doesn't practically mean anything to the player. (Well, aside from being noticeably more terrible than Morrowind or Skyrim dungeons.)

Anyways, yeah, TES hasn't made significant use of randomized or procedural content since Daggerfall. (Containers are generally randomized, but frequently nothing else.)

I wonder if that's where TES needs to go again, with the series kind of coming dangerously close to settling into a predictable formula.

Oh, and Skryim has procedurally created quests, and it handles it really well, a lot of players probably don't even notice when it happens. Even a lot of the quests for major faction paths are generated in this system. The most noticeable element is that the dungeon you go to is often randomly selected from a list and then populated with items relevant to the quest. (There are also a lot of other things about skyrim quests that can be randomized, though.)

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The biggest problem with Skyrim's procedural quests was the Word of Power ones where a messenger would come up with a letter that said "You used your Voice in place X, there's this Word of Power in place Y! - A friend! *Wink wink*" Frequently, the only other person in what was frequently a dank cave in the ass end of nowhere is your companion. So Lydia, you can't just fucking tell me like a normal person? A letter? This passive-aggressive bullshit needs to stop.

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Sure, yeah, there's a lot of quests that are just completely spit out by the system, and those ones generally stand out pretty sorely. Then there's also the big scripted story quests where just little bits and pieces are being generated on the fly, and for those it can take some careful attention to realize when and how it's happening.

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Oh, I just remembered one thing I thought was pretty weird:

the whole 'you MUST kill the dragon that's been helping us, or we'll all be cross with you forever' thing the Blades pulled after, basically, the world was saved. It's so odd that they would cling to old dogmas and insist that the one dragon character that has been of interminably assistence to humans the whole time, suddenly has to be murdered out of principle. Obviously, I didn't do it because it was bullshit on every level, but that did mean I was never able to close the Blades storyline with satisfaction. It felt like at the last minute, they turned into the evil guys. Zealous idiots. That was weird.

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Man I love this game. I've been listening to a lot of Idle Thumbs lately, and I think it inspires me to experience my games more as a set of stories. To examine what's happening as a set of weird narrative moments. I try to justify everything that happened in terms of an emerging narrative, and it makes for much more enjoyable and funny gaming, even if it has a lot of cognitive dissonance.

Anyway, my story: I'm working my way through a twisty conspiracy in one of the major cities, and the man who leads it has me by his fireplace, and is explaining why he's done all these horrible things. I ask, "Why are you telling me this?"

He responds, "Oh, don't worry, you won't leave here alive."

His apartment explodes into battle, and suddenly his five or six servants and henchmen are all wailing on me at once, crazy spells flying this way and that. I'm good at stealthy kills, not so much at direct confrontation, especially not with more than one person. So I run out into the town and his men and women are hot on my heels. I'm running down stairs, up on ledges, getting vantage points and firing down at my pursuers, chugging potions and am totally scared. Or is that exhilirated?

But I can't keep this up. I dash into the tavern and run up to the sellsword. "500 gold and I'm yours," he says. I say "Done!", pay him, and suddenly the tide of battle turns and the tavern becomes a killing floor as he wades into them with his bastard sword, hacking away at them, shield bashing them into submission.

When it's over I stagger out of the inn, loot all the bodies I can find, and continue unraveling the conspiracy, a new buddy at my back.

Bad. Ass.

--

Also, here's a fun one. I am investigating a murder, following a blood trail up a snowy street, when my assassination target walks past me. I stand over the blood trail of the murdered woman the local justice has begged me to bring justice to, pull out my bow (while quickly checking no one is around), and let an arrow fly.

My target flies off the top of the stairs she's standing on and crumples in a heap. I put my bow away and continue following the blood trail. There's a murderer on the loose, and I need to bring them to justice.

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Yes!

Those are some excellent missions too. They should make a spinoff series where you play as a humble detective wandering around the cities of Tamriel solving crimes. World saving? How boring. How about finding out who spread the tavern wench's entrails all over town square? And why's that bard looking at you all suspicious-like? Time to bring out the roll of parchment that makes do for a notebook in this crummy age.

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It might not be such a bad idea, actually, to splinter the various gameplay elements of a typical Elder Scrolls, refine them and put them in their own games. If they worked out the Radiant AI to incorporate a more thorough concept of memory, sneaking, suspicion, etc, you could really make an awesome detective story. Or deepen the commerce and make a tale about a merchant trying to peddle his wares (Recettear?). In the full games these elements never really seem to work properly (Jack of all trades, master of none). By picking the thing apart, they might end up with some real gold.

Which games have featured really diverse gameplay sections that nevertheless worked? I would say Grand Theft Auto 4, Batman: Arkham City, World of Warcraft... I hesitate to add Assassin's Creed, since there really isn't that much else besides the parkours killing beyond simple mini-elements like buying shops.

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It might not be such a bad idea, actually, to splinter the various gameplay elements of a typical Elder Scrolls, refine them and put them in their own games. If they worked out the Radiant AI to incorporate a more thorough concept of memory, sneaking, suspicion, etc, you could really make an awesome detective story.

Would buy that so fast. SO FAST.

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It might not be such a bad idea, actually, to splinter the various gameplay elements of a typical Elder Scrolls, refine them and put them in their own games. If they worked out the Radiant AI to incorporate a more thorough concept of memory, sneaking, suspicion, etc, you could really make an awesome detective story. Or deepen the commerce and make a tale about a merchant trying to peddle his wares (Recettear?). In the full games these elements never really seem to work properly (Jack of all trades, master of none). By picking the thing apart, they might end up with some real gold.

Which games have featured really diverse gameplay sections that nevertheless worked? I would say Grand Theft Auto 4, Batman: Arkham City, World of Warcraft... I hesitate to add Assassin's Creed, since there really isn't that much else besides the parkours killing beyond simple mini-elements like buying shops.

Pretty sure a detective cant sneak attack a dragon, or sneak into the midst of a bandit camp and shitblast them with fireballs.

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I snuck up on one once. Well, dropped on his goddamn neck from 200 meters up, to be precise. That counts.

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I just decided to fire this up again for the first time since Christmas break. Got my lizard-wizard to level 10, and an trying to find someone to teach me conjuration. I'm currently rocking fire in my right hand and lightning in my left, occasionally stopping to heal up, but would love a crazy spectral sword or some similar nonsense. Is there anyone in particular I need to talk to to work on that?

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Yeah. Phinis Gestor, he walks around in the east hall in the mage college. Hall of Countenance I believe it is called. He sells you some spells. Conjure fire lady and ice elemental and maybe some others. He can give you training for gold too.

re:dragon sneaking: The dragons sleep sometimes, at which point you can sneak up on their lair and creep at them.

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I installed Dawnguard the other day. I started playing for the first time in months, assuming that, like with the Fallout DLC, I'd just wander around for a few minutes and then get a message telling me where I needed to go to start the DLC. That didn't happen, so I thought I'd go back to my house in Whiterun and drop off some stuff, then start asking around at the tavern or something. But as soon as I entered Whiterun, a bunch of vampires appeared and started murdering townspeople. I killed the vampires, but there had been several civilian casualties, including my buddy Adrianne the blacksmith. I was mortified that just by installing this DLC, I'd compromised the safety of the town I considered my home and been indirectly responsible for the death of this woman I'd spent 50 levels hanging out with, smithing and selling her the results. I decided I couldn't live with that, so I turned off the console without saving and didn't come back to it for a few days.

The next time I loaded it up, I tried again, hoping to kill the vampires before they could kill anyone else. But in the chaos, it was hard to tell who was a vampire and who was just a villager, and I ended up hitting some villagers by accident and getting a bounty, so I panicked and turned it off again. Eventually I had the bright idea that instead of fast-traveling directly into Whiterun, which was putting me there in the middle of the night, I should wait around outside the gates until daylight. So I tried that, and while the vampires were still there, they were weaker. So I used my "slow time" shout to help make sure I was attacking the right guys and managed to pick them off with the only casualty being an anonymous Whiterun guard, which, whatever, that's his job. I looted the corpses, dumped them under the bridge (because otherwise a kid kept coming up and looking at them), improved their stuff at Adrianne's shop, and sold it to her.

Now I'm at a point in the quest where I have to decide whether I want to become a vampire or permanently make myself their enemy. It's a tough decision because I'm interested in seeing the new skill tree and stuff, but on the other hand, this incident has left me somewhat prejudiced against vampires (although the vampire follower I just picked up seems all right -- I consider her one of the good ones). I've also been playing a basically "neutral to good" sort of character the entire game, so I don't know if I'm comfortable with suddenly becoming a monster at this point. So I saved and quit and am taking some time to think it over.

I know that abusing the save system like that is kind of a lame way to play, but I think it speaks to the strengths of the game that I'm emotionally invested enough to agonize over this stuff.

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Wow, been playing this over the weekend, it may not be as proceedural as Far Cry 2 but boy are the off-quest random encounters and writting amazing outside the main quest, not to mention how jaw-dropping this looks for a 3 year old game without any Nexus mods:
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How do I create meaningful characters for myself when playing Skyrim? Why don't I always take the most powerful weapons? Who are you and what are you doing in my house?

 

Beardo

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