[Mr Mustache]

This game is losing me in record time. The Cider skin I'm using is a bit crap, but I think my issues with the game run a bit deeper. Tim actually hits on some of them.
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The people are like wool to me

[Jaihson]

Speaking of invisible walls, I was surprised to find a random plateau in the middle of the continent that I wasn't able to ride my mountain climbing horse onto. Having scaled a sheer cliff, I was greeted by what looked like a fairly level path along with a 'you cannot go that way' message. Felt vaguely betrayed.

Casually sitting on top of that bookshelf, the npc in the dark brotherhood's starter quest looked shockingly natural. Maybe it was the low light? I kind of regret not taking a swing at her to see if she was just a part of the set, or if her model would have somehow awkwardly slid down to engage me.

[GrimmSweeper]

Best introduction to the Dark Brotherhood. No blatant rumours about the Dark Brotherhood, no random murdering to get their attention, no outright telling you where they reside (a la Morrowind's Morag Tong). An innocent quest, possibly an introduction to Cicero earlier on when he's carting his 'mother' around and then BAM. Kidnapped and forced to show your worth.

[TXTSWORD]

The kidnapped by DB quest is the best DB quest. It started out so strong and then... the rest happened.

[Mr. Mechanical]

So apparently the latest patch (1.2) breaks all resistances. Which means your flame atronach is now damaged by fire and disease resistant werewolves can now catch all diseases and such. Wonder how long it'll take to fix that.
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[Mr. Apol]

[gooktime]

[Clumo]

It broke the shield slot.





The most dangerous textureless dragon.
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[parker]

Tim really hit the nail on the head about the gibberish fantasy names the game throws at you without explanation. After so much of that I just start smashing the button to skip through every dialogue and there's never any coming back from that. A lot of games are bad about that sort of thing now, especially bioware ones. It drives me crazy. I had to end up going to a wiki just get a clear explanation of what all this forsworn, thalmor and white/gold whatnot shit is. Nobody ever just came out and said "since the last game nazi elves took over in the elf lands and went to war with the empire" They just said here, pick a side in this big civil war thing going on without anyone explaining why you should pick their side or what their opinions on the situation are or what the hell is even going on in the world.

I can't believe how much better New Vegas is compared to this, like nobody at bethesda even bothered play the thing. You actually feel like you're affecting the world and that you're making choices during even the smallest quests in that game. Here there are no choices except between two vague as hell assholes in a civil war that takes a whole hour to start and finish once you get involved. You can assassinate the emperor, then fight for the empire. You can become the archmage of the college of magic having no magic skills at all. I can't imagine how they could have made your actions feel anymore meaningless here.
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[Tulpa]

the worst part is that the fascist elf dominion and the big fight with the empire is a much more interesting setting/giant event to play a game in than 'bunch of white people want independence from white people for poorly established reasons.'
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[remote]

hahaha

yeahhhh
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Mr. Apol]

[DJ]

Eh, to be fair they've been building that shit up in the lore for a long time. That's kinda like saying "Oh, so the space marines are really space nazi romans yay how original". It's like...The fuck are they supposed to do? They can't just retcon that shit out because it hasn't aged particularly well.

Well, I guess they can, but meh.

Although the 200 year gap was really just a way to address the fact that previously none of the stuff ever seemed to come to a head in the previous games, so they time-lapsed it into canon so they could address it which is...Well, Bethesda's great with the worldbuilding but plot has never been their strong suit. Oh well.

This is the first game where the High Elves just openly act like racist dicks, though. They always talked about that in the previous games but any time you actually talked to one they were just like everyone else.

Also, wee bit confused about people kvetching about the weird place/people/lore names thrown out there with no explanation; wasn't this something people liked about Morrowind, which did it far more frequently with far longer words and even less explanation? That was the first time they started calling the dark elves "Dunmer" (in fact, started with the whole "mer" thing at all) with no explanation. It took a lot of people a while to figure out what the fuck Skooma was supposed to be and why no vendors would buy it from you. Almost none of the Daedra names have been pronounced out loud until Skyrim, and quite a few have weird pronunciations (Boethia is "Bo-EE-thi-uh", not "Boh-THYE-uh"), the horrible manglings of Solsthiem ("SOULS-tyme" not...god too many to count) and Elsweyr ("ELLS-where" not "ELSE-why-err") have been going on for quite some time, etc.

I mean shit here is a random batch of locations in Morrowind. Try to pronounce these:

Aharasaplit Camp
Bensiberib Camp
Foyada Esannudan
Bthungthumz
Nchuleftingth
Arkngthunch-Sturdumz (my favorite)
Ibishammus
Ashalmimilkala
Addadshashanammu (my other favorite)
Almurbalarammi

and so on.

For fun, try to figure out which of those are the names of Dwemer ruins, which are Daedric shrines, which are Ashlander hideouts, and which was just me mashing keys on the keyboard.

NPC: "I seem to have misplaced my Wand of Fandshdragnzafgiq summoning in the Feyadurn of Addadshashanammu, will you get it for me?"

You: "Gesundheit!"

tl;dr: This isn't exactly a new thing. These games love to throw unfamiliar shit at you and then let you puzzle out what they are. Skyrim is tame by comparison.

I mean, it's a valid enough point to be like "This is difficult to follow and I don't like it", but...

I dunno I guess as an Elder Scrolls nut it's kind of hard to look at it with virgin eyes. The lack of this kind of thing in Oblivion was actually kind of jarring, so I'm glad it's back with Skyrim.
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[TXTSWORD]

It mostly didn't bother me. I just figure that in time I'll pick up on it from context clues and further information and in the meantime it mostly doesn't matter because it's probably not interesting anyways.

[8128]

skyrim
it mostly doesn't matter because it's probably not interesting anyways.
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[parker]

There is no context though, it wants you to puzzle out what's common sense for everybody else without giving you any puzzle pieces. Characters go on about aldemeri dominions and white gold accordions but they never explain what any of it means. It'd be like you if played Ultima 7 and nobody bothered to ever bring up the Fellowship. Lord British just wants you to kill dragons and absorb their quickening until their can be only one.
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[scratchmonkey]

[CubaLibre]

[scratchmonkey]

That's probably giving Oblivion a little too much credit.

Also apparently the meme descriptor for Skyrim is not 'epic'; it's 'majestic'.

[Tulpa]

That is exactly the problem with the relationship between the lore/worldbuilding and the narrative of the game itself.

Morrowind presents this ridiculously complex setting and forces you to go slowly and let it seep in over time. Skyrim has you become the chosen one of the Psijic order in the middle of your first goddamn quest for Hogwarts and it doesn't mean shit because all of these things are just introduced to you as soon as you start, knowing nothing about the world. There's no laying on of mystery and things that are neat on paper become flat and lifeless immediately.
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[DJ]

[scratchmonkey]

It's at least 2 and probably 4-5 hours later into the game compared to the first mention of 'Dragonborn'*, not to mention that Morrowind's first quest giver is a shirtless skooma addict who lives in a hovel.

Again, it's not the content, it's the treatment.

* - Although to be fair, this is still better than Oblivion, which has Patrick Stewart tell you you're special before you've even created your character.

[Teflon]

[parker]

I put off doing the main quest and civil war as long as possible and still never felt like the game wanted my choice of side in the civil war to be informed by anything other than whether I liked the color blue or red better. You'd think any of the reguard or catpersons I've talked to who have no problem randomly declaring their dreams and aspirations to me as soon as I walk within thirty feet of them would mention that their homelands have been conquered by elf nazis at some point. I don't remember in the other games having to read books just to get the basic idea of what is going on in the world at the moment. The empire fighting a losing war against these guys seems like a pretty big deal and hardly ancient history.
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[TXTSWORD]

[remote]

argh, why do i play shit games just because they're pretty
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[diplo]

You know, in spite of all the boring declarations of Epic it has and will continue to inspire, Skyrim has an extremely good soundtrack. Maybe the best I've heard of a current-generation Big Release. I think it proves that Soule is probably the only interesting Western composer working in an orchestral/cinematic mode right now.

[TXTSWORD]

[Swarm]

"EPIC FTW garbage" Nice!

[Lucaz]

I'm playing this, but I'm not sure I like it at all though. There is a kind of pointlessnes and irrelevancy to everything, I think I'm running on momentum alone, and if the game gave a single second without something to dto I'd probably drop it. I guess there also some sense of obligation as this is my first time playing a TES game besides an hour or so of Daggerfall. So far the best this games has done is making me want to play other, better, games (Dark Messiah, Arx Fatalis, Morrowind)

I'm the only one that feels the world is too overloaded? Like, I can't turn a rock without finding a location, and it's kinda tedious.
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[lofighost]

playing this without any experience of what an elder scrolls game is like, or what this community thinks of this game or anything.

i feel like griefing everything, i guess. trying to steal a horse by jumping off a roof while i hit x to see if i'll just end up on the horse (i didn't, i landed on the ground then hit x, then took off on the horse, which i then killed by falling from too high of a cliff). i kinda have fun with all this but i know pretty well about things feeling a bit too open and excited for your attention. i mean i hadn't even gone through with the second quest when i stumbled upon a bandit mine and i felt like i was doing something wrong for pillaging this mine before i even went through with the game, but then i realized i guess it doesn't matter what i do?

i dunno, this is a good thing to play when you don't really care i guess?
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kirakira no yume no naka de / bokutachi wa yakusoku wo shita ne
sono hi ga itsuka kuru made / nakanai yo omoidasu yo
kimi wo / inotte / kimi to / waratte

[Talbain]

[radish]

I guess I'm kinda done with this for awhile. It was fun while it last, but I've moved on to Dark Souls for now.

The final nail in the coffin for me was power leveling enchanting. Once I maxed it out and made the best stuff I could get, I didn't really see the need to keep doing random dungeons. I started the main quest soon after that, but I lost interest not far into it.

I guess I agree with a lot of other people. It's a great game while you're still exploring and figuring everything out, but it's not deep enough to keep going at higher levels.

[TXTSWORD]

^Same - power leveling enchanting and making super gear ruins the game. No reason to get EpIc L00Tz so - no reason to play considering EpIc L00Tz is basically the only reward in the game.

[Youpi]

Too late to warn me. Last time I played my dude was the most powerful wizard in his school of magic, a secret agent for the empire, the best thief in his guild, a talented blacksmith and master enchanter who operates an alchemy business on the side, a member of a group of warriors called "the companions" or something, and his next goal in life is to go fetch a book for a guy sitting on his porch.
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Twitter: @youpi

[neva-01]

[Ronnoc]

I didn't realize that you could take wagons, so I ended up footslogging to every city. Pretty good way of playing the game, as it turns out.

[scratchmonkey]

Yeah, I footslog most of the time just because it is more interesting that way. Found more than a few things that aren't listed as locations on the map, which was surprising and nice.

I'm getting peeved at there being almost no middle ground for enemies -- it feels like 95% of enemies die in one shot and the other 5% will pretty much kill you instantaneously unless you cheese the fuck out of them. I like that there are things that will hand you your ass (I would have really liked them to be, say, dragons, rather than Bandit Chiefs or bears), I just would like there to be somewhat-challenging and pretty-challenging creatures along to go with the fodder enemies and the walking engines of pure destruction.

[Ronnoc]

[Teflon]

Old news by now but just in case you weren't paying attention either: the creation kit isn't coming out until January and the reason it's taking them forever to release what is literally the tool they used to make the game in the first place is they're putting Steam Workshop in there. So yeah get hyped for mod micropayments! At least the gigantic glistening cock mods will remain free as the licensing agreement frowns upon such things.

Oh and hey glorious PC gaming master race: HAW! HAW!

[Felix]

Somebody will crack it within a week. I don't know where modders' superiority begins and ends, but somehow I don't think it includes microtransactions.

Also, Ronnoc, I honestly don't think it took more than 20-30 minutes to travel to any new destination in the game. I thought the size/density of the world was one of the things they got absolutely right.