The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim post-release thread

The Game Room
541

I don’t think that I’d go so far as to say that I’m disappointed with the game, but I’m certainly not in the “GOTY!” “10/10!” camp that seems to dominate on-line discussions of the game.

The biggest disappointment to me was that the game made no improvements over the broad/shallow gameplay of Oblivion. You can go anywhere and do anything!.. but nothing you do is of any actual importance. After the great improvement that was Fallout 3 (to say nothing of New Vegas), I was hoping that they’d introduce some choice/consequence into the TES franchise.

(…also, considering the game’s budget, you’d think they could have hired a few more voice actors… or at least had the male and female generic NPCs spout different canned one-liners)

542

Dwemer automatons go back at least to Morrowind and possibly to Daggerfall… can’t actually remember them being in Daggerfall, though. I’m not sure you have to spoiler stuff about stock TES features. :slight_smile:

543

Yeah. It’s almost as though Bethesda realized that they’d be biting off more than they could chew if they’d include more Morrowind elements like levitation and spellmaking. What is in game is very good; maybe after using this installment to get a better grasp on how to implement the fundamentals, they can work on reintroducing some lost complexity in later games.

The biggest thing I agree with Spectralist about is the perk system, that there are too many “toll” perks you need to take before being effective with that skill. I’m around level 77, and it looks like the hard level cap is 81. If you can earn a maximum of 80 perk points, there should be a total of 80 perks, so that maxing out all your skills allows you to get every rank of every perk; that would be more in keeping with a class-free character building system.

544

I’m definitely enjoying the game, including making out like a Bandit. (The Thieves’ Guild is rather easy, since this game has some of the stupidest guards in history and no security worth the name). However, I definitely have some problems with parts of it.

First, interaction is pretty marginal. NPC’s can say about four things, most of which are obvious and little of which matters. In fact, I’ve found only one real interaction, which was absolutely hilarious (Jarl Ravencrone throws a hilarious fit at a certain party), but which does leave me hungry for more. I keep thinking that while this games forms a great foundation and is fun to just enjoy, I can’t stop thinking about what kind of insane level of sheer awesome it would be if Obsidian then went in and polished it with more complexity, more dialogue, and character. Speaking of that party, the game makes it seem like you can stealth it, and then makes it almost impossible without invisibility. Obsidian would have made certain you could just hack your way though, sneak about and find out what you need by overhearing everything, free some captive monsters to kill guards and distract the rest, bribe your way into what you need, or just fast-talk yourself into the secret lair.

You can get married - but it’s meaningless. The NPC just follows you home, basically. You don’t really do anything and don’t really interact. Yes, it may sound corny, but where’s the romance? Even a blandly epic, Nordic romance? I’d be inclined to have marriage start an entire questline of its own.

I have not found Blackreach, and while I like the dungeon design overall, I definitely note it’s extremely linear. Dungeons are mostly just tubes, which annoy me. They’ve actually gone even more towards that irritation in Oblivion, although the dungeons are better in every other conceivable way, being much more believable and “organic” to the world.

I don’t mind the skill-based levelling, but some perks are “required” but really quite pointless, even an insult. Part of the problem is that some whole skills are really too specific. Yes, I like lockpicking, too. But it probably shouldn’t have a skill all its own. Same with pickpocket. Most skills in the game cover a wide array of actions, or at least a number of options and tricks. Some of the rest… not so much.

However, I will say that the level of storytelling is vastly improved, and kudos for that. Thus far, the Companions story is an epic tale of honor and courage overcoming all, the thieves are a tale of greed and treachery, and the main story, if a little short, is still darn good. I’m sure the others are no less worthy. I’m even tempted to start over just to begin playing a new character (question: can you absorb dragon souls and learn shouts if you don’t start the main quest?)

Other issues: to this day, they can’t get companion AI to walk right. OK, fine, but put in a teleport function so they just warp to you if you get lost. Is it perfect? No. But it’s a solution which lets the player get on with playing and not worrying about whether he’s lost his minion.

You need a giant fortress/home/playground. I don’t know why this is so hard for Bethsoft. They started the trend long ago, and still can’t figure out how to do it right. I’d be quite happy if you could hear about some old fortress ruin or whatever, go clear it out, and move in. Sure, renovating the place would cost a lot - and that’s part of the point. Give the player something to do. By the end they should have a large custom home, filled with their own servants, services, and even new quests to discover. Ideally, the decor should be customizable, with basements filled out like dungeons, dwemer ruins, or daedric temples, and towers built like ice caves or solid stone. Would also be nice to buy your own carriage (which would be like every other carriage, but cost nothing to ride and would look really fancy). And you could have a place for all your housecarls and so forth to live. Eventually, you could even have a trader who will buy anything and everything from you (at a huge discount, though).

545

So a new set of Nvidia drivers are out (they improve performance and add ambient occlusion to the game), and a new patch is due Wednesday on PC.

Also, I realized that my character’s perks are spread too thin. I should of focused on 2-3 trees only to start with.

I’m… actually considering restarting with a new character.

I’ve sunk 45 hours into this game and I’m thinking about restarting with a new character (I only beat 5 mission of the main quest, BTW, most of the time has been spent doing side quests and exploring).

I’m f’ing crazy, right? I’m certifiable.

Someone stop me!

546

I still hold out hope that the mod community will be putting out some amazing mods for this game that will add in the complexity missing from vanilla Skyrim. It’s still early days and most of the mods are to add better faces and boobies, but in six months there will be mods that make the game an entirely different and more complex experience.

547

Just think about the rewards you will receive when you finish it.

You could have wasted all those hours painting your house or working a part-time job to pay off some bills or taking some continuing education classes at the local college or reading a few great books or reading to blind people or volunteering to deliver meals on wheels to elderly shut-ins.

Hope that helped. :wink:

548

Speaking of which, I’m considering it would be fun to add in time-based quests. You could use doorways to travel back in time to help Tiber Septim. Only, whereas in your time he’s the mighty hero, founder (well, re-founder) of the most powerful Empire in Tamrielic history, and ascended divine… well, let’s just say everyone starts somewhere. So, you have to help the Greybeards find him, and keep him safe while he’s still a brash young warrior eager to make his fame and fortune.

Of course, it can’t be that easy. Alduin’s followers have gotten ahold of Akatosh’s Hourglass, which is why timewarps are appearing. I’m inserting some bits about them forming an alliance with the Witchmen of High Rock, so as to bring Dragon priests to power and reprevent Alduin’s death retroactively (prospectively?). If they can kill Talos in the past, they win. And then you could have bits where you and Talos keep switching places in time, so you’ll be fighting some mighty dragon in the present, then move back to the past to end the fight against a powerful Daedra summoned to fight Talos, who ends the first battle for you…

One other thing I’d like is larger cities. They’ve gotten awfully tiny now. Not every place needs to be a metropolis, but most seem barely worthy of the same.

549

Drat! I didn’t read the spoilers as I have not been to Blackreach yet. I did, however, find a spookey dungeon north of Falkreath(sp?). I think I stealthed through the entire time as I wasn’t sure what was going to be ahead. I play at night with headphones and volume up so I’m a bit jumpy at times. :stuck_out_tongue: Spoiler about it below:

It was a big, multi-leveled dungeon that ended up having 1 vampire, 1 vampire thrall, 1 restless draugr, and maybe 10 skeletons in between. It was obviously meant for a lower-level character. I was disappointed and relieved at the same time, because I was expecting a lot more due to the creepiness of the environment. If you want to know the place, I’ll have to look it up when I get home.

I wouldn’t call you crazy. I’m around 40 hours and and still have to do the first Greybeard quest. That’s the only problem I have with Skyrim now - it seems that the 2nd objective to a multi-part quest is always to send you to the opposite side of the world map, not even near a capital. I don’t mind exploring and prefer to walk, but give me more stuff that’s right nearby at least. I’m getting a quest log full of quests that I’m putting off finishing unless I’m nearby. All except one quest where I was engaged so much that I had to finish it through:

I had just reached Falkreath, at night, and wandered near the graveyard. I came across a priest and a young couple giving burial rights to a recently deceased villager. Turns out it was their young daughter who was viciously murdered and torn apart. I had to find out what happened and slay the monster! The quest was Ill Met by Moonlight.

550

I have a question about dragon drops. I killed the dragon at Shearpoint (sp?) and looted from it some gold and a nice magic heavy armor bit for Lydia, but I ended up accidentally waking the slumbering Kronis and dying before I could save. The next time I killed the dragon at Shearpoint…no nice magical armor drop. Is it random or do I get better stuff if we kill it with a better given/taken damage ratio or something?

551

I have something like 4 or 5 characters. I tend to do that with games that allow for lots of alternate builds, I throw out a bunch of different alts and see which is the most fun.

552

Random.

553

Thoughts on a few weeks of playing:

I’m still going spoiler-free. Really, there’s nothing been too troubling thus far. My character has adequate crafted armor and anti-magic protection, and most things seem pretty easy to kill. Some of the early puzzles were time-consuming to beat, but I haven’t run into one of them lately. At level 24 I seem to be reaching a zone where I don’t have to think a lot. Doesn’t mean I’m not enjoying it, but it doesn’t seem as much of a challenge. I suppose I could change the level difficulty, but I really wanted to beat the game once before I did that.

I’m kind of glad that the game has some clear-cut avenues for replayability. My heavy-armor, bad-at-sneaking character might not be cut out for a lot of quests (although I’m sure I could bash my way through them at very high levels), so my next character should probably be a light-armor rogue type. The perks have made characters different from one another in that way. Oblivion didn’t have that; every character was eventually the same.

The side quests are a lot better even than Oblivion. The daedric quests are really fun in their randomness. So far I’ve seen a haunted house (Moleg Bal), a Skyrim version of The Hangover (Sanguine), and a talking dog (Barbas) In Oblivion the daedric quests revealed themselves as such right away; Skyrim’s approach seems more natural.

The horses are screwed up, let’s just agree to that. I’ve had a horse die to a fall my human (on foot) survived without a scratch. Riding a horse under an overhang makes it disappear. Dismounting a horse to attack an enemy makes it wander off or start attacking someone else. They’re barely faster than running on foot. They’ve almost reached the point of uselessness, especially because it takes so long to dismount that an enemy can hit you a few times before you can start attacking.

Most of all what I’ve loved about the game so far is how it sometimes breaks the fourth wall. Twice when I went into a difficult dungeon Lydia mused “I’ve got a bad feeling about this…” When I went back towards the starting area and cleared out a mine she said the same thing, so I was expecting trouble. Nope, easiest dungeon in the whole game. She tricked me! The Greybeards send you out to find a treasured artifact, and you go tramping through a dungeon only to find that at the end of everything there’s a note telling you that somebody already got it…and that someone is a barmaid from the first town you encountered in the game. Brilliant storytelling all around.

554

I disagree with your assessment of horses…I actually find them pretty useful, even if I’ve lost one to a dragon attack (and I didn’t feel like replaying from an earlier save since it had been a while since I’ve saved). They seem to be able to climb mountains much better than I can on foot, and they tend to fall less (though when they do fall they definitely die easy…much like real horses, if you consider that if they broke a leg in the past they were pretty much dragon chow at that point). They are a bit faster than I am on foot, and for exploring new areas they are pretty useful for the reasons above…plus, many times I’ve left a dungeon loaded down and been able to use my trusty horse to fast travel back to some town where I can sell off all my ill gotten gains. I haven’t had the problem with the horse disappearing, and as far as having to dismount when fighting, while it’s a bit of a bother it’s not enough of a negative (for me) to give them up. I really wish they allowed you to fight from horseback, and also put in some way to call your horse after a fight (they should have a horse back archery perk IMHO), since as you noted they tend to run off (which I prefer to them attacking a dragon or cave bear).
I have to say that my own character (I’m in the mid-30’s now) is pretty powerful on the path I’ve taken, though it was tough getting there. At this point though my combat skills are such that I am rarely seen, and from stealth I can generally one shot most of the low level stuff, and 2-3 shot the mid-range things as well…and if I get really lucky (say 2-3 crits in a row) I can even take out the bigger bosses sometimes before they can swing at me. The heavy duty stuff still manages to get to me (or to my two legged pack mule in heavy plate), but with the slow time feature, as well as shouts that let me throw mobs 20 feet away and knock the shit out of them, it’s not usually a major problem. I’d say that stealth archer has got to be one of the more powerful combat types in the game if you put the points into archery and stealth combat (you can do double damage with the bow if you put points into it, you can crit up to IIRC 30%, you can slow time on the draw and do triple damage from stealth…it’s pretty nasty). I haven’t put a lot of points into crafting though, so I can’t enchant or make armor or any of that stuff…but pure fighting wise (which is my favorite part of the game), my guy is definitely death from the shadows (with a fair bit of magic, especially restoration type magic). If the NPC were just a better tank (if she could last more than a couple of swings with the really big stuff, and if she didn’t tend to run right in my line of fire all the time) the combat part of the game would be cake. As it is, it’s definitely pie.

-XT

555

I like it! I’d also like to see an Oscuro’s Skyrim Overhaul, and someone to add horse combat to the game.

I’ve played like 75 hours and I’m level 24, but I feel like I’ve just scratched the surface. After my first play-through as a mage, I’ll come back as a rogue and do a lot of the quests I’m intentionally avoiding this placy through.

556

[QUOTE=ComeToTheDarkSideWeHaveCookies]
Is it random or do I get better stuff if we kill it with a better given/taken damage ratio or something?
[/QUOTE]

Totally random unfortunately. Even what the vendors have on them is random. I remember one time the guy at the Huntsman had a nice enchanted glass bow…best bow I’d seen to that point in the game. I was digging through my packs to sell stuff and the game crashed (I have a virus on my system that I haven’t been able to clean and it causes a random crash sometimes). I reloaded and the guy has some lame assed enchanted hunting bow instead. I reloaded like 6 times trying to get that glass bow back but never got the same bow again, sadly. :frowning:

-XT

557

Really well done cover of the Morrowind/Skyrim theme.

558

Yeah, that was way cool…those girls are incredible!

ETA: Even though I’ve heard this theme now hundreds of times it’s STILL pretty cool and brings a tear to the eye.

-XT

559

If you give them upgraded equipment, they become death on two legs. I’ve been handing out Epic Ebony to Jordis the Shield-Maiden. I suspect she could kill a dragon by herself now. They can also use enchanted gear, too. I intend to take Smithing on all my characters from now on - upgrades to my weapon alone added something by +40% to my damage! It’s a night-and-day difference. And if you have the money, you can use this from the word go.

Also, the Kill shout (weakens armor and saps life) is perfect against dragons. They wind up taking extra damage and getting stunned repeatedly, so once they land they’re your chewtoy.

560

Lydia has been an awesome tank for me. I have her wearing and wielding the best magical heavy armor and weaponry that I can buy or make. And as far as horses go, 99% of the time I’ve been riding Frost, (whom I acquired by triple-crossing the owner, the owner’s son who was trying to steal him from his mother, and the guy that the owner’s son was going to sell him to) who seems to be able to survive as much full frontal assault as a dragon can dish out, whether it be breath or bite so long as he is able to run away for brief rests. I don’t know if the generic horses have the same stats or not, but he’s being doing just fine for me. He’s particularly handy in drawing a dragon’s attention when there are no villagers about to do so, allowing my archer to plunk away from a safe distance.

I also just discovered the Poison of Slow via alchemy which is quite handy for dragons.