The Elder Scrolls Megathread XV: A Song of Ice and Draugr - Games

Yeah but he's talking about turning that into gameplay. It's fine to have a story like the Battle of Red Mountain as part of your mythos but it's really just that unless you turn it into something. For that matter, Skyrim does a pretty shallow job of integrating the lore with general gameplay because all NPCs do is shit one-liners. And all the lore it introduces is quest-flavored. Eg Red Eagle. The load screens teach me as much about Skyrim's world as the gameplay itself. I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[QUOTE=Excalibuurr;41805767]I know there's illusion and alternation for the stuff I'm talking about, but with the conjuration right now, they're practically just any other companion. I don't understand what you mean in the bold stuff though.[/QUOTE] you said you found the conjuration tree 'bland' in skyrim all the magic trees in all the TES games are 'bland' magic in Skyrim and Oblivion suffered from this [editline]12th August 2013[/editline] [QUOTE=Medevilae;41805863]As far as game magic goes it's pretty neat tbh, can't be expecting Harry Potter crap out of a game with broad mechanics[/QUOTE] it's alright but I still believe they can go far more in depth

[IMG]http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/katietiedrich/comic314_zpsdb9e2d09.png[/IMG] I've always wondered how this shit would work if the NPCs actually had half a brain.

[QUOTE=Sgt-NiallR;41805933]I know you gotta maintain your hateboner, but that's just flat out incorrect. I'm personally not bothered about the Witcher. I know it does a lot of shit better than TES (arguably everything); but I'm not sure it has the legendary amount of lore that TES does, and that's what draws me in about it. The day the Witcher universe has something comparable to The Battle of Red Mountain, is the day I change my tune.[/QUOTE] But the Witcher is just overall a better game, some people don't put what they wont even experience in gameplay to the forefront. TES has all these little nice stories in books and all this background history, but the plots you play through are still shitty and the characters you meet are shallow.

[QUOTE=Falchion;41807452]But the Witcher is just overall a better game, some people don't put what they wont even experience in gameplay to the forefront. TES has all these little nice stories in books and all this background history, but the plots you play through are still shitty and the characters you meet are shallow.[/QUOTE] At least as far as TES player stories being shallow, its just a byproduct of not having a fleshed out protagonist because they let players assume a generic role in the first place. Witcher has established lore around the main character, and that throws some players off because they can't roleplay like they can in TES. It appeals to different people. There is no question that in pure RPG terms, Witcher's complexity trumps TES for making it engaging, but they can add that complexity because their design priorities are different.

[QUOTE=G3rman;41807757]At least as far as TES player stories being shallow, its just a byproduct of not having a fleshed out protagonist because they let players assume a generic role in the first place. Witcher has established lore around the main character, and that throws some players off because they can't roleplay like they can in TES. It appeals to different people. There is no question that in pure RPG terms, Witcher's complexity trumps TES for making it engaging, but they can add that complexity because their design priorities are different.[/QUOTE] This, exactly. That is the beauty of the elder scrolls in that you can be anything and sure it requires you to immerse yourself in it much like you have to immerse yourself in a horror movie to enjoy it. I think the quests and storyline are terrible and its pretty sad we have to use mods, but man once you do get a good combo of mods working the game is beautiful. For example I am using the shitty storyline in an interesting way for my current character. I started out in solstheim in the Skaal village and donned some skaal light armor. I roleplayed as a skaal hunter who saw his people falling to the mysterious power and decides to travel to Skyrim to find help. During this journey I have to roleplay him going from a simple warrior to the dragonborn needed to save his people. So far it has been pretty intense especially with combat mods/perk improvements/environment mods that just make it play fantastic. It is really what you make of it. edit- It is shitty that your accomplishments mean nothing though, kill alduin then do the companions guild, get called a whelp every other sentence.

[img]http://s24.postimg.org/ck4s4x6j9/scared_for_life.png[/img] why

[QUOTE=1chains1;41807943]This, exactly. That is the beauty of the elder scrolls in that you can be anything and sure it requires you to immerse yourself in it much like you have to immerse yourself in a horror movie to enjoy it. I think the quests and storyline are terrible and its pretty sad we have to use mods, but man once you do get a good combo of mods working the game is beautiful. For example I am using the shitty storyline in an interesting way for my current character. I started out in solstheim in the Skaal village and donned some skaal light armor. I roleplayed as a skaal hunter who saw his people falling to the mysterious power and decides to travel to Skyrim to find help. During this journey I have to roleplay him going from a simple warrior to the dragonborn needed to save his people. So far it has been pretty intense especially with combat mods/perk improvements/environment mods that just make it play fantastic. It is really what you make of it. edit- It is shitty that your accomplishments mean nothing though, kill alduin then do the companions guild, get called a whelp every other sentence.[/QUOTE] We're all setting up a false dichotomy, though: a TES world doesn't have to overtly guide you; but that doesn't deny the opportunity to always have an injustice or a human arrangement festering underneath - as in real life. On that metric alone Skyrim's given up much for what's more immediately present. (You [i]can[/i] claim, though that having a world force you to be nothing but here-today-gone-tomorrow's a legitimate thing to have a world imply - and that apathy given a choice isn't the same as a general and overriding apathy - but I do like empathizing and having *some* narrative to deal with.)

[QUOTE=Falchion;41807452]But the Witcher is just overall a better game, some people don't put what they wont even experience in gameplay to the forefront. TES has all these little nice stories in books and all this background history, but the plots you play through are still shitty and the characters you meet are shallow.[/QUOTE] I hope you're all referring to Witcher 2 because I've played through the first one and it felt fairly shallow. Gameplay wasn't all too exciting, (in fact I hate it) and the way it was using certain tropes felt more like it was akin to Fable than anything serious.

[QUOTE=Tureis;41808952]I hope you're all referring to Witcher 2 because I've played through the first one and it felt fairly shallow. Gameplay wasn't all too exciting, (in fact I hate it) and the way it was using certain tropes felt more like it was akin to Fable than anything serious.[/QUOTE] Witcher 1 and 2 are equal in that regard, with characters and writing.

The witcher is third person and there's only one player character. Yes it looks a lot better... But i think the elder scrolls has more potential. They need to drop dumb ideas like having 70 different voice actors (waste of time and money and often actors feel out of place. Like delvin with his unique accent) , perks which do more than what skills do (Not elder scrolls) and unique animations/particle effects/models that are only used once. Not every place needs to be handcrafted. If they just improved how they procedurally generate places, items, characters and whatnot then so much [I]effort[/I] could be avoided. Like a poor man's house in a city could have 1-3 rooms, the walls are coloured and dust levels are also a generated factor, Each room has a number of furniture layouts. Each furniture point can create a number of furniture items. Each shelf has it's own layout for clutter. Each sword uses a simple model for each part and generated procedurally, Characters are generated procedurally, People use a few voice sets which are altered procedurally... Choreographed scenes happen anywhere Rather than a quest being made proceduraly, each part of a quest is procedural and special conditions are also procedural (Don't get caught, make a prolific mess, don't kill/steal but the target,don't do it this way... ) if they work out how to do that sort of stuff and then they can easily make a nation the size of a nation with a million well made quests. Then they'd simply need to spend a lot of time on magic/combat/acrobatics, alchemy should be fleshed out too. Smithing would be delightful if it had item customisation. Enchant only needs to revert back to it's morrowind/daggerfall levels. Perks should be like fallout's. [B]TLDR:[/B] they need a fuckton more coders and a fair few animators. about 20-30 different voices (not voice actors). An expert on weaponplay/armour would be good too. They need to playtest each aspect of the game so that each individual part is deep and fun.

[QUOTE=Tureis;41808952] Gameplay wasn't all too exciting, (in fact I hate it)[/QUOTE] (Implying that skyrim or oblivion either have fun gameplay)

[QUOTE=Falchion;41809558](Implying that skyrim or oblivion either have fun gameplay)[/QUOTE] Oblivion is kinda awkward, but I do find Skyrim's gameplay fun.

There are only two major issues I have with Skyrim; both dealing with mods. First of all it is is impossible to create entirely new animations, which is a definite downgrade when compared to Oblivion and Morrowind. Then there is issue of Skyrim have a hardcoded limit of 3.1 Gb RAM usage. This has caused me to give up on playing my ideal Skyrim eventhough I have plenty of RAM to spare.

Honestly, I still find Skyrim to be a lot of fun, even if it is simpler then its predecessors. The individual characters may be shallow and uninteresting, but I find the world as a whole to still be fun to explore and do things in. If there's one thing that Bethesda is still good at, it's making a good world space to run around in. But I do agree that they really should step up their game when it comes to story telling.

[QUOTE=Whatsinaname;41809657]Honestly, I still find Skyrim to be a lot of fun, even if it is simpler then its predecessors. The individual characters may be shallow and uninteresting, but I find the world as a whole to still be fun to explore and do things in. If there's one thing that Bethesda is still good at, it's making a good world space to run around in. But I do agree that they really should step up their game when it comes to story telling.[/QUOTE] They should step up their games with a fucking shitload of aspects.

[QUOTE=Blackshot;41809601]There are only two major issues I have with Skyrim; both dealing with mods. First of all it is is impossible to create entirely new animations, which is a definite downgrade when compared to Oblivion and Morrowind.[/QUOTE] 'cept modders already did that

[QUOTE=Ryo Ohki;41810063]'cept modders already did that[/QUOTE] What? Someone already created a new animation set for new kinds of weapons? I don't think so. If someone did, post a link to the mod and I'll inspect it BTW what Blackshot is saying is that people can't create entirely new animations that won't overwrite any of the older animations, and don't require a 3rd party script to use the new animations.

Don't know about animation sets for weapons but new animations have been done plenty of times, mostly idles That one dance mod for starters

You can replace weapon animations and create new animations for a new kind of weapon, only problem is that you can make a new kind of weapon in the CK. :v: And yes, adding new animations usually requires handling FNIS and possibly needing to install a skeleton mod like XPMS.

I use immersive animations. Most of it is optional and it's just focused around fixing vanilla animations and making them more sensible. It may not overhaul all the animations just yet, but at least it isn't animu.

Immersive animations is great, but the way the fingers on the right hand hang limp when moving with a weapon ruins it for me.

[QUOTE=proch;41810048]They should step up their games with a fucking shitload of aspects.[/QUOTE] You mean like adding more variety and not having to fight Draugr for most of the game? Yeah that would be nice. It really upsets me how Dragonborn costs $20 yet it still feels mostly the same.

I feel like I'm the only one who didn't fight draugr nearly as much as people say they do.. Then again, I usually stay away from crypts and I go for caves and forts mostly.

[QUOTE=The Jack;41809358] [B]TLDR:[/B] they need a fuckton more coders and a fair few animators. about 20-30 different voices (not voice actors). An expert on weaponplay/armour would be good too. They need to playtest each aspect of the game so that each individual part is deep and fun.[/QUOTE] Easier said than done. There are so many limitations and factors that go into the development of a game. A lot of the things Bethesda stripped or added in or experimented with was to test the waters to see how the audience liked it. They can't just ask people while they develop what features they want; the only stuff they have to work off of that is reliable is the reaction to mechanics in the previous game (Oblivion). For the next Elder Scrolls, you will most likely see progress in certain areas that were lacking while other areas start to suffer or stagnate. It happens all the time.

[QUOTE=The golden;41807433]The TES universe is so amazing and some of the previous TES games are gaming classics but Bethesda could be doing so much more to make it a legendary RPG series. Bethesda is a large studio with copious amounts of money behind them. They also have access to renowned studios like Id via Zenimax. Why their games are decreasing in complexity and cutting corners like not hiring writers is beyond me.[/QUOTE] I've been feeling this ever since I've started playing Morrowind. It's almost troubling to me how little it's developed as a game in 12 years. I'm with 'most everyone here, I've sunk almost 600 hours into Skyrim, and I've enjoyed it, but the lack of growth (sometimes arguably going backwards in the case of storytelling and magic departments) is a worrisome pattern for the franchise.

[QUOTE=The golden;41811185]Mystic Knight animations look alright but those fancy sword-sheathing animations would start to look weird when every bandit in Skyrim is doing them.[/QUOTE] Good thing I think its optional. I love the rest of the animations.

[QUOTE=The golden;41811185]Mystic Knight animations look alright but those fancy sword-sheathing animations would start to look weird when every bandit in Skyrim is doing them.[/QUOTE] "Dragonborn, my mortal enemy, you have come to my bandit encampment without my permission. Leave now, or I will proceed to make you victim to my abilities!"

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oWuw-mo_MQ[/media] [editline]12th August 2013[/editline] They show off parts of Morrowind.

80 mods in and I'm finally happy with my game.