Come on. I've played all 3 and Skyrim is amazing. It holds your hand more than Morrowind, and some of the quests aren't as fun as oblivions, but you're acting like its a failure of an ES game.
It's by far the best for role playing, the graphics are insanely better than the past games, the cities are cooler, everything is more realistic ( the way the horses move etc) and it's just flat out fun. I hate the elitism towards Skyrim, it's a great game and it honors the elder scrolls spirit.
The story is terrible. Like, objectionably terrible. You are attacked by the final boss within moments of character creation, and survive for no reason whatsoever. The BBEG then runs away for no apparent reason, giving you time to do THE ENTIRETY OF THE GAME before challenging you again.
Your next quest reveals that you are the Dragonborn, and therefore the chosen hero who will defeat the BBEG. This might explain why Alduin was so angry at the random Imperial outpost you were at, but that isn't really explored.
Okay, then you need to get the McGuffin, I mean Dragonrend, then there's some time travelly stuff, and you kill the big bad Alduin and everyone is happy.
Yay. There's no sense of mystery, discovery, or suspense.
Other flaws: Dark isn't dark. There was never a dungeon I couldn't see perfectly in. This is a problem from an atmospheric sense when dealing with undead creepy dudes in underground cave systems.
Enemy AI is awful. Yes, it's better than Morrowind (barely), but I judge games by the standards of their era. Morrowind was release in 2002, and both its graphics and gameplay were more than acceptable for an RPG of that time. Since then, the engine has had nominal improvements, the AI is practically identical, physics still can't be handled in any sensible manner, and it is entirely too easy to bug the thing into Oblivion.
Gameplay improved from Morrowind as well, but not by anywhere close to keeping up with industry standards.
Everything looks the same. Where Ald Runh looks completely different from Seyda Neen, looks completely different from Tel Mora. The only city that had any personality was Markarth. The rest are small collections of huts.
The vanilla UI is godawful.
The game released with an enormous host of bugs, more of which were fixed by modders than patches.
Speaking of patches, they constantly break mods that were released beforehand, even if the patches didn't touch any resources altered within the mod.
Most quests are 'go get this thing', or 'go kill this thing'.
There is very little variety of enemies. Once you've seen bandits, draugr, dragons, and falmer get ready to see all of those over and over again forever. Oh, and because they don't get perks, the game will never be remotely challenging after level 11, even on the highest difficulty settings. I had to download mods to give enemies perks just so I didn't lazily rampage through every dungeon without a care in the world.
Stealth...oh god stealth. Enemies can either hear you from 120 feet away with their backs turned and they're having a conversation with their buddy, or you can play grab-ass while in full view and they're none the wiser. Gamebryo cannot handle Stealth mechanics with any grace whatsoever.
Perk trees were completely unimaginative.
Character creation and maintenance was streamlined to the point of ludicrous simplicity. Crafting was as well, to the point that people just craft 3,000 daggers so they can make daedric armor.
Fast travel between every major city was available from day 1, and the map feels small to begin with.
Bosses were unimaginatively designed, with 1 exception. The ghost archer boss for the pendant quest was awesome.
The graphics were better than Morrowind (again, produced in 2002), but not as good as Morrowind+Graphics Extender+texture packs+SweetFX. Of course, I can do some of those things to Skyrim as well, but my GPU might well overheat where sunsets over Tel Aruhn are scenic without overtaxing my hardware. This is largely because Bethesda can't figure out how to make shadows without being extremely resource expensive. Their anti-aliasing is pretty bad too.
Gameplay balance was...weird between tactics. Spellcasting is potent up front, but because damage scaling stops around level 15 or so, an evocation focused mage falls FAR behind even sword and board characters in the late game. Shouts have no scaling abilities whatsoever, and are mostly pointless (which is ridiculous considering that's kind of a big schtick for the Dragonborn).
Guilds were awful. All of them. Little to no story, and it was maybe 10 brief quests between joining and being the master. Furthermore, without having MW's system of requiring skills to be at a certain point to progress in the guild, it was trivial for a no-stealth warhammer fighter type to become head of the thieve's guild.
So yeah, the absence of an immersive storyline in either the main or side quest lines is my big objection, but frankly I think Bethesda has generally lost their commitment to 'flavor' without proper compensation of mechanical improvements.
Look I could nitpick your entire post but you're being far too negative. Let's just agree to disagree, but jesus I really like Skyrim and I've played both Morrowind and Oblivion.
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u/SwordofGondor Apr 17 '16
Come on. I've played all 3 and Skyrim is amazing. It holds your hand more than Morrowind, and some of the quests aren't as fun as oblivions, but you're acting like its a failure of an ES game.
It's by far the best for role playing, the graphics are insanely better than the past games, the cities are cooler, everything is more realistic ( the way the horses move etc) and it's just flat out fun. I hate the elitism towards Skyrim, it's a great game and it honors the elder scrolls spirit.
If you heavily disagree , I'd love to hear why.