The Elder Scrolls VI - Xbox Series, PC.

I've not played it since the Wastelander's update so I don't know. One of the things I think the game did well was avoiding the poorly written characters and quests of Fallout 4 by mostly not having them, instead building a large and interesting region around environmental set-dressed storytelling. It was about discovering what happened to the region in the past rather than being involved with the events concurrently. Presumably that's all still there but I imagine the NPCs are more likely to detract from that than add to it.

That set-dressing environmental storytelling is definitely Bethesda's strength. Every location is always packed with objects that tell a story about what happened there.

For me Skyrim is top big for its own good. It takes too long to get to places you need to go the first time. It's just massive for the sake of being massive.

Errkal wrote:For me Skyrim is top big for its own good. It takes too long to get to places you need to go the first time. It's just massive for the sake of being massive.

You can fast travel.

Photek wrote:

Errkal wrote:For me Skyrim is top big for its own good. It takes too long to get to places you need to go the first time. It's just massive for the sake of being massive.

You can fast travel.

Not until you have been to the location first though.

Personally I love to explore so Skyrim for me was brilliant

Rubix wrote:

Photek wrote:

Errkal wrote:For me Skyrim is top big for its own good. It takes too long to get to places you need to go the first time. It's just massive for the sake of being massive.

You can fast travel.

Not until you have been to the location first though.

Personally I love to explore so Skyrim for me was brilliant

I know but you can fast travel to a place and explore from there...

OrangeRKN wrote:I've not played it since the Wastelander's update so I don't know. One of the things I think the game did well was avoiding the poorly written characters and quests of Fallout 4 by mostly not having them, instead building a large and interesting region around environmental set-dressed storytelling. It was about discovering what happened to the region in the past rather than being involved with the events concurrently. Presumably that's all still there but I imagine the NPCs are more likely to detract from that than add to it.

That set-dressing environmental storytelling is definitely Bethesda's strength. Every location is always packed with objects that tell a story about what happened there.

I don't think I've ever though of Bethesda having a strength in environmental storytelling, I can't think of a single example of them doing this at all well. That's not me trying to be confrontational, I just genuinely don't think it's been something that has ever come across to me in their games.

I can think of plenty of games that tell compelling stories and hint at the deeper elements of the world they place you in just by set-dressing and the like, but Skyrim and other Bethesda developed games would not feature on that list!

Ironically FromSoftware, who you poo-pooed earlier, I would argue are incredibly good at this.

Photek wrote:

Errkal wrote:For me Skyrim is top big for its own good. It takes too long to get to places you need to go the first time. It's just massive for the sake of being massive.

You can fast travel.

Tis why I said need to go the first time

Once you’ve been there you can travel which is decent, but first time you have to spend ages tracking though a massive world of trees or whatever.

It isn’t a bad game, for me it feels like they made the world too big everything just a little too spaced out.

I find fast travel far too immersion breaking to ever use it in Skyrim - with the exception of the cart driver between cities (which also doesn't need you to have previously discovered the area). Even that I'd use sparingly though because you wonder why it isn't attacked by a million bandits and wolves while on the road.

I get the argument for the map being too big, but it's also too small for the area it's supposed to cover. I'd much rather they just had one or two cities but actually made them sensibly sized.

Morrowind will always be my favourite. It just seems like such a rich world, with fast travel being done via stilt striders, and tombs feeling like dangerous places. Being given directions to somewhere by a NPC and actually having to keep an eye out for landmarks to find it. God I miss the days of playing that, sitting at my pc desk with a cup of tea and the paper map next to me, picking a little X on it and walking off to see what might be there

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Photek wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I don't think I've felt any magic from a Bethesda developed game since Oblivion, and even that in hindsight was the beginning of a dilution of the formula from the Morrowind days. They've been outdone in basically every aspect by other RPG developers and I would find it unfathomable if they put out a new game and it was just the same old gooseberry fool again.

Although it was obviously a sales success, I feel, on this Forum I'm the only person who really liked Skyrim.

It's the cool game to hate on.

It's practically the only big game I've played for the last couple of years, besides FFVIIR. I'm playing at the moment and I do resent it in some ways because I have all these games at my disposal which I often boot up to start, but as I'm often distracted I just find it easy to jump into this! But this is more to do with my state of mind. I'm thinking I have to complete my PS4 playthrough and be done with it for a while.

Morrowind was amazing
Oblivion was amazing
Skyrim was amazing

It's only revisiting them many years later that the flaws spoil really them. Oblivion looked incredible at the time, but the level scaling was immediately apparent as a step down from morrowind.

I loved every second with Skyrim.

Venom wrote:

Somebody Else's Problem wrote:

Photek wrote:

Jenuall wrote:I don't think I've felt any magic from a Bethesda developed game since Oblivion, and even that in hindsight was the beginning of a dilution of the formula from the Morrowind days. They've been outdone in basically every aspect by other RPG developers and I would find it unfathomable if they put out a new game and it was just the same old gooseberry fool again.

Although it was obviously a sales success, I feel, on this Forum I'm the only person who really liked Skyrim.

It's the cool game to hate on.

It's practically the only big game I've played for the last couple of years, besides FFVIIR. I'm playing at the moment and I do resent it in some ways because I have all these games at my disposal which I often boot up to start, but as I'm often distracted I just find it easy to jump into this! But this is more to do with my state of mind. I'm thinking I have to complete my PS4 playthrough and be done with it for a while.

I played it to death on 360 so on Xbox 1, I just keep it ticking over, delving in for a quest or 2 every now and then, im almost back to were I was on 360 already...

OrangeRKN wrote:I find fast travel far too immersion breaking to ever use it in Skyrim - with the exception of the cart driver between cities (which also doesn't need you to have previously discovered the area). Even that I'd use sparingly though because you wonder why it isn't attacked by a million bandits and wolves while on the road.

I get the argument for the map being too big, but it's also too small for the area it's supposed to cover. I'd much rather they just had one or two cities but actually made them sensibly sized.

The "cities" in modern TES games are one of the biggest disappointments as time has gone on. They're tiny and feel like facades rather than real places.

I'd love them to really nail the locations in a TES VI, make them feel like big, plausible, working spaces and build the stories out from there. Doing a cookie cutter quest for some faceless goon to save the great capital of Whiterun feels empty in many ways because it's basically a couple of houses and some farms in the middle of nothing.

There's a huge dichotomy at the heart of Bethesda games between the world the characters in the game and the "lore books" are trying to describe and the reality that the player is presented with.

Jenuall wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:I find fast travel far too immersion breaking to ever use it in Skyrim - with the exception of the cart driver between cities (which also doesn't need you to have previously discovered the area). Even that I'd use sparingly though because you wonder why it isn't attacked by a million bandits and wolves while on the road.

I get the argument for the map being too big, but it's also too small for the area it's supposed to cover. I'd much rather they just had one or two cities but actually made them sensibly sized.

The "cities" in modern TES games are one of the biggest disappointments as time has gone on. They're tiny and feel like facades rather than real places.

I'd love them to really nail the locations in a TES VI, make them feel like big, plausible, working spaces and build the stories out from there. Doing a cookie cutter quest for some faceless goon to save the great capital of Whiterun feels empty in many ways because it's basically a couple of houses and some farms in the middle of nothing.

There's a huge dichotomy at the heart of Bethesda games between the world the characters in the game and the "lore books" are trying to describe and the reality that the player is presented with.

Oh yeah, I'd love for the next ES game to have proper huge cities to visit and explore, full of people to meet and do things for.

Victor Mildew wrote:Morrowind will always be my favourite. It just seems like such a rich world, with fast travel being done via stilt striders, and tombs feeling like dangerous places. Being given directions to somewhere by a NPC and actually having to keep an eye out for landmarks to find it. God I miss the days of playing that, sitting at my pc desk with a cup of tea and the paper map next to me, picking a little X on it and walking off to see what might be there

If the combat wasn't so gooseberry fool in Morrowind I'd have gone back to it, but I've never played it since my initial run through. The atmosphere was amazing, and I have a vivid memory of walking through a forest in the rain with an NPC - who I'd asked to accompany me somewhere - actually following me and talking to me as we were travelling. I'd never seen that in a game before, I was amazed

I'm assuming there are mods out there now that sort the combat. If so I might be tempted to go back to it.

Jenuall wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:I've not played it since the Wastelander's update so I don't know. One of the things I think the game did well was avoiding the poorly written characters and quests of Fallout 4 by mostly not having them, instead building a large and interesting region around environmental set-dressed storytelling. It was about discovering what happened to the region in the past rather than being involved with the events concurrently. Presumably that's all still there but I imagine the NPCs are more likely to detract from that than add to it.

That set-dressing environmental storytelling is definitely Bethesda's strength. Every location is always packed with objects that tell a story about what happened there.

I don't think I've ever though of Bethesda having a strength in environmental storytelling, I can't think of a single example of them doing this at all well. That's not me trying to be confrontational, I just genuinely don't think it's been something that has ever come across to me in their games.

I can think of plenty of games that tell compelling stories and hint at the deeper elements of the world they place you in just by set-dressing and the like, but Skyrim and other Bethesda developed games would not feature on that list!

Ironically FromSoftware, who you poo-pooed earlier, I would argue are incredibly good at this.

One of the differences for me is in the presentation of text. Notes, books and audio logs all make sense as to why they exist in the world and how your character is reading (or listening to) them whereas item descriptions in a menu have no such justification - they lack any immersive quality.

One of the things I really like in Fallout 76 is the layering of the past stories you uncover in the environment, broadly split between pre and post apocalypse but in some places overlapping stories from three or four distinct time periods.

OrangeRKN wrote:

Jenuall wrote:

OrangeRKN wrote:I've not played it since the Wastelander's update so I don't know. One of the things I think the game did well was avoiding the poorly written characters and quests of Fallout 4 by mostly not having them, instead building a large and interesting region around environmental set-dressed storytelling. It was about discovering what happened to the region in the past rather than being involved with the events concurrently. Presumably that's all still there but I imagine the NPCs are more likely to detract from that than add to it.

That set-dressing environmental storytelling is definitely Bethesda's strength. Every location is always packed with objects that tell a story about what happened there.

I don't think I've ever though of Bethesda having a strength in environmental storytelling, I can't think of a single example of them doing this at all well. That's not me trying to be confrontational, I just genuinely don't think it's been something that has ever come across to me in their games.

I can think of plenty of games that tell compelling stories and hint at the deeper elements of the world they place you in just by set-dressing and the like, but Skyrim and other Bethesda developed games would not feature on that list!

Ironically FromSoftware, who you poo-pooed earlier, I would argue are incredibly good at this.

One of the differences for me is in the presentation of text. Notes, books and audio logs all make sense as to why they exist in the world and how your character is reading (or listening to) them whereas item descriptions in a menu have no such justification - they lack any immersive quality.

One of the things I really like in Fallout 76 is the layering of the past stories you uncover in the environment, broadly split between pre and post apocalypse but in some places overlapping stories from three or four distinct time periods.

Ah, okay - I don't really see lore books as "environmental storytelling".

They are a part of the general building up of a world undoubtedly. Although it is one that I still don't think Bethesda are good at, their writing is atrocious and I found it very hard to get through any of the books/notes I picked up in Skyrim!

For me environmental storytelling is more about the creators putting together a picture of a story based on the look, feel and configuration of a space. How a room looks, the state it is in, the objects that have been left there and in what setup, is it a tidy space, a messy space, have the lights been left on, what quality are the items that are there, is there are particular style to the location in terms of architecture or furniture or colour schemes. All the kinds of things that set designers or costume designers and similar roles fulfil within things like TV or movies to tell you a huge number of things about the characters and places you see without anyone needing to say a word. Many games in recent years have achieved some wonderful results with this kind of thing, but I don't recall seeing Bethesda getting involved in this area.

Yes I absolutely mean that stuff, the notes/logs example just struck me as an obvious difference to the Souls menu item descriptions.

My issue is I really don't think Bethesda are good at that stuff, even.

It might be better in 76 but all the logs in F4 were awful.

Tafdolphin wrote:Edited my post but I meant "Minus the fact it didn't have upgrade paths"

This isn't aimed at just you two specifically but I strawberry floating hate this place when people willingly miss the point of a post to get a few quick jabs in. It was more than strawberry floating obvious what I was talking about here, even if I didn't explain it quite as clearly as I'd hoped.

I honestly thought you'd gotten the two mixed up (yes, even despite the Wilds/Worlds clarification). Had I reread your post before replying I might have caught what you were actually saying.

And yes, a lot of games would benefit greatly from a similar approach to storytelling.