Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[HoonDing]

Some locations always have high level enemies as well, regardless of character level.

[GhostofAnakin]

Stupid bard Mikael. He sings that same song "down with Ulfric, the killer of kings ..." every time I enter the tavern, and now the tune is stuck in my head.

[Brayko]

I just watched the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and it's astonishing how much Skyrim landscape looks dangerously similar, especially the whole Edoras and Whiterun similarities.

[WDeranged]

If you look at the concept art for Whiterun it's absolutely and entirely Edoras, I'm glad they moved away from that design.

[Rosbjerg]

Well it's very northern Scandinavia - I almost feel at home (at least around the flat hills).

[Morgoth]

For those still playing Skyrim with Nvidia GFX card: New WHQL driver released; increases performance significantly

[Meshugger]

Well it's very northern Scandinavia - I almost feel at home (at least around the flat hills).

 

Yeah, it looks like a weird blend of the scottish highlands and the scando north.

[GhostofAnakin]

I don't know whether anyone else is experiencing it, but I'm getting massive slowdowns in certain areas on the 360 version. One huge example is during the thieves guild quest, when you go into the Falmer ruins after the dude who I won't spoil. I don't know if it's because you're given two companions to bring along with you, instead of the usual one, but certain areas simply slow down to a crawl (and in some cases, it's like the screen freezes for a second or two). Very annoying.

[BobSmith101]

I don't know whether anyone else is experiencing it, but I'm getting massive slowdowns in certain areas on the 360 version. One huge example is during the thieves guild quest, when you go into the Falmer ruins after the dude who I won't spoil. I don't know if it's because you're given two companions to bring along with you, instead of the usual one, but certain areas simply slow down to a crawl (and in some cases, it's like the screen freezes for a second or two). Very annoying.

 

Does the 360 have a cache file ? It's been about 6 months since I last booted mine up but I seem to recall a similiar problem in Oblivion and deleting something or reseting it got it fixed.

[Gorgon]

AFAIR it's a known bug. A fix is unlikely.

[GhostofAnakin]

That's disappointing if it doesn't get fixed. It's actually a pretty good quest that is semi-ruined by insufferable slowdowns during travel through the ruins and combat.

[WDeranged]

I didn't think the 360 was seriously affected by the savegame bloat bug, could be wrong though, especially if you're the sort that absolutely has to arrange every single corpse in the gameworld.

[Humanoid]

Heard that the PS3 was the most problematic platform in terms of freezing but nothing specific. On PC I get the occasional slowdown, feel like it occurs when zoning to an outdoor area, after I've been playing a while - minor memory leak maybe. Only had a couple of CTDs so far in about 50 hours play with no readily identifiable cause but I'm a compulsive quicksaver ("Did the game detect that last buttonpress? Better hit F5 again to be sure"). I also have an issue where the eye graphics of my character get screwed up after a while, not sure if that's a vanilla bug or a mod (the blocky faces one?), or maybe even just running out of VRAM (1GB card starting to show its age at 25x14 resolution)

 

Tangential whine:

 

Having that ending to the Thieves' Guild line was so disappointing. The only path the game offers is to go against the, y'know, thief - and side with the nut who thinks the guild should be a religious order instead. I couldn't conscionably take that path so I had to leave it dangling - which in turn caused the NPCs involved to bug (teleport back to HQ but still use the quest dialogue).

 

A shame since the starting guild quests were some of the rare ones where they at least tried to do something different. Compare to the utterly terrible way the Bard quests were implemented. Get an artifact from a dungeon to become a Bard. Once you're a Bard, you get to do three more quests ....all of which involve retrieving artifacts from dungeons. But wait! The artifacts are musical instruments - not that it makes any difference whatsoever. You don't do a single bard-like thing in the entire thing except one trivial conversation to which your responses make no tangible difference anyway. All told the quality of those quests were no different to the randomly generated one.

 

The companions questline is another I couldn't go on with in good faith.

 

 

 

Anyway, I'm on an indefinite break from the game now though not halfway through the main quest yet (I'm aware I could knock it off in a few hours more). I probably haven't played any of the previous TES games as long as this one so it may be a familiar complaint, but it's a game that one can easily and unintentionally ruin for oneself simply by playing a certain way. If I had the patience to restart, I would and cheat a moderate sum of gold at the start of the game, then loot nothing except quest items and direct gear upgrades; would not touch any of the crafting skills; would not take any companions, and would not do any randomly generated quests. With those restrictions I probably wouldn't have dug myself into the hole of tedium which it turned into for me.

[WDeranged]

I was pondering the quest design shortcomings last night, it's quite sad that Oblivion had better guilds, nevertheless I can't shake this urge to re-install Skyrim now that the CK is out.

[Guest Slinky]

Bethesda game with questionable quest quality??

 

[Humanoid]

The more pertinent question is whether it'd be reasonable to mod in options for those sort of quests or is that outside the scope of the creation kit?

[Lexx]

Based on my observations: Not resonable. Better make something new than trying to fix this mess.

[WDeranged]

I wouldn't say it's a mess, Skyrim is probably the most orderly Elder Scrolls game to date, it's just that some quests that should have felt ****ing epic ended up being less than inspired

[Gorgon]

They did what they usually do, only a bit better. Bethesda was never able to make me care about the story exept in small patches here and there.

[HoonDing]

Bethesda would be better off with scrapping guilds in TES, but the fanbase demands. Best content in Skyrim is made up by the unmarked quests, like Frostflow lighthouse and the Pale Lady. Little setpieces in certain dungeons. Bethesda is at their best when they let the world tell the story.

[Jackalmonkey]

[legitimate griping about the Thieves Guild questline]

For those so inclined, Shamus Young of the Escapist penned an absolutely massive critique of the terrible Thieves Guild questline here. Yeah, it's something like five parts, but it's fairly incisive in its criticism, and many of his complaints are immediately applicable to most of the game.

 

Young's experience is pretty much the same as mine. I gave Skyrim about 10 hours and then got wrecked by the usual problems facing stealth-based characters in worlds that level up alongside you, but that was far from the root of my problems with it: brainless fps gameplay with no tactical considerations, no significant choices (or consequences), and quests and enemies that are palpably and purposely generic for the sake of infinite 'radiant' questing.

 

I don't see the point in this game at all, unless it's a sort of avant-garde implicit critique of the Narrative Vacuum of the Sandbox that game designers are supposed to take to heart and never repeat (whether in error or intentionally) ever again.

[WDeranged]

Best content in Skyrim is made up by the unmarked quests, like Frostflow lighthouse and the Pale Lady. Little setpieces in certain dungeons. Bethesda is at their best when they let the world tell the story.

 

I thought Frostflow Lighthouse was a brilliant little set piece, I even made a squee noise when I found I could lay the remains to rest in the torch and get a blessing, not sure sure about dropping guilds though, I quite like them, I just wish they hadn't relied so much on the radiant fetch/kill quests as filler.

[BobSmith101]

[legitimate griping about the Thieves Guild questline]

For those so inclined, Shamus Young of the Escapist penned an absolutely massive critique of the terrible Thieves Guild questline here. Yeah, it's something like five parts, but it's fairly incisive in its criticism, and many of his complaints are immediately applicable to most of the game.

 

Young's experience is pretty much the same as mine. I gave Skyrim about 10 hours and then got wrecked by the usual problems facing stealth-based characters in worlds that level up alongside you, but that was far from the root of my problems with it: brainless fps gameplay with no tactical considerations, no significant choices (or consequences), and quests and enemies that are palpably and purposely generic for the sake of infinite 'radiant' questing.

 

I don't see the point in this game at all, unless it's a sort of avant-garde implicit critique of the Narrative Vacuum of the Sandbox that game designers are supposed to take to heart and never repeat (whether in error or intentionally) ever again.

 

You should try KOA really good fun being a rogue in that.

[GhostofAnakin]

The women in Skyrim are cheap and easy. As soon as I bought the Amulet of Mara, most women were throwing themselves at me wanting to get married. Even my housecarls, who are supposed to be my bodyguard types, have an option for me to marry them without even getting to know them.

[WDeranged]

I kind of prefer that to the Bioware method, also Bethesda are fine with me using my missus as pack mule and general slave

 

*edit*

 

I should add that I do find marriage in Skyrim ridiculous but god forbid Bethesda actually trying to write romance.

Edited February 23, 2012 by WDeranged