Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[GhostofAnakin]

The thieves guild questline didn't bother me as much as it apparently bothered others. There was a lot of railroading going on that was a bit irritating, but I guess I'm just used to that from these types of games.

[HoonDing]

Romance in Skyrim is the same as in any BioWare game, just with all the excess fluff removed, i.e. fifty conversations agreeing with romancable NPC and/or solving daddy issues.

 

Bare-bones ego-stroking with everyone being interested because your character is so totally awesome as the mighty Dragonborn.

 

Of course, the NPCs I actually wanted to marry weren't available. Bethesdaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

[Humanoid]

Marriage in Skyrim is just a business arrangement, the word romance doesn't appear anywhere in the script. Though to be fair I think the priest pretty much says as such - something like "Skyrim is a harsh land so people just get married willy nilly" (I paraphrase slightly) - so they've conveniently covered their posteriors.

 

 

 

Good read on that Thieves' Guild thing anyway, I like complaining and I like reading complaints so I find that entertaining. Anyway the point is not that the questline is heavily railroaded, but that the destination of the train is so bizarrely improbable. I hadn't done the Dark Brotherhood when I stopped so not sure about any comparisons to it.

[HoonDing]

True to themselves, Bethesda of course found a way to break something as inconsequential and tacked on as the marriage feature.

 

There are two expert trainers and two master trainers in the Companions; if you marry one of them, you can get free training.

[Tale]

I love Shamus Young. I wish he were my DM.

 

But I also wish I had a DM at all.

[GhostofAnakin]

The companion AI is horrible. If left to their own devices, they either run right at enemies and get in the way of me shooting them with arrows (they literally have an uncanny ability to even move to continually block me, even if I change positions to get a clear shot), or get stuck on the landscape and I have to wait minutes for them to find a "path" to me.

[WDeranged]

Dawnguard is rumoured to be the name of the first DLC, might just be a new Zenimax property though.

 

*edit*

 

I don't know how I missed Bethesda's dedication to Adam Adamowicz, there's a mind bogglingly huge amount of his work to see, it's left me with the conclusion that he was the guy responsible for dragging their art direction out of the generic **** pile after Oblivion

Edited February 24, 2012 by WDeranged

[HoonDing]

In my experience, Lydia has the worst AI of them all. Never had any issues with other companions' pathfinding and lagging behind twenty miles like with her.

[GhostofAnakin]

In my experience, Lydia has the worst AI of them all. Never had any issues with other companions' pathfinding and lagging behind twenty miles like with her.

 

Strangely enough, it's been the opposite with me. Lydia at least used bows once in a while, so she didn't get in the way of my shot when I'm attacking from a distance. Iona (my current tag along pack mule) constantly runs charging at groups of enemies and I end up hitting her more often than not with my shots, and she has this weird fetish for standing on a trap, getting burned to a crisp, but not wanting to ... you know ... move away from the trap.

 

The one thing I'll agree about Lydia is she did tend to just inexplicably stop dead in her tracks and I'd have to wait for her to catch up after I'd realized she was no longer following me.

[WDeranged]

The follower AI was pretty good for me, some glitching and a few blocked doors but on the whole they were ok, I think mindlessly walking into traps is what made me grind my teeth the most

 

Compared to previous games I noticed quite a few improvements, they dodge incoming projectiles, can jump down from ledges, mostly use appropriate weapons etc.

[HoonDing]

Ranged/stealth characters are best off with a mage companion or Jenassa/Aela the Huntress.

 

Strangely enough, with my current melee character Lydia sticks to her bow the entire time.

[Walsingham]

I found that all the mercs keep a large distance. Although I just assumed it was my 'free running' approach to pathfinding. Never use a path when a sequence of precipitous rock faces will do.

[GhostofAnakin]

Iona bugs the hell out of me. Worst companion I have. I did the cheap thing and re-loaded a previous save because she ended up dying on me because she keeps insisting on running right at enemies when I'm trying to shoot them with arrows/magical attacks.

 

She's like an untrained dog. Even if I'm sneaking, as soon as her line of sight brings her into view of an enemy, she charges at them before I know what's happening.

 

The story telling is still rather mediocre. But it's an addicting game just due to the things you stumble across going through the various dungeons and caves.

[WDeranged]

The story telling is still rather mediocre. But it's an addicting game just due to the things you stumble across going through the various dungeons and caves.

 

Yeah, all that incidental stuff and exploration is why I get hooked on these games, I really missed that aspect with New Vegas, Obsidian managed to get some of it in there but there's no doubt that world building is Bethesda's forte.

 

I know it's been said before but Bethesda worlds + Obsidian writing = the game to finish me off

[WorstUsernameEver]

The story telling is still rather mediocre. But it's an addicting game just due to the things you stumble across going through the various dungeons and caves.

 

Yeah, all that incidental stuff and exploration is why I get hooked on these games, I really missed that aspect with New Vegas, Obsidian managed to get some of it in there but there's no doubt that world building is Bethesda's forte.

 

I know it's been said before but Bethesda worlds + Obsidian writing = the game to finish me off

 

To be fair, they got a lot of better with that in the DLC, Dead Money, Honest Hearts and Old World Blues all had exception visual/environmental storytelling, and in Lonesome Road.. well, half of the story was essentially the environment. I hope they bring back those lessons to their future titles, Obsidian has never really shone in that area so far.

[HoonDing]

I don't remember anything that stood out in NV DLCs, besides the Survivalist's journal entries. I liked them more for all being interconnected and enriching the main story of NV, while FO3's DLCs -apart from Broken Steel- all stood completely apart.

[WDeranged]

Yeah the DLC is still waiting for me, I've heard good things from people on here but I'm resisting the urge to install till I've seen how far Sawyer takes his mod

Edited February 25, 2012 by WDeranged

[GhostofAnakin]

My miscellaneous quests seem to be bugging out. I've completed two or three of them that still show up. In one situation, I'd JUST finished getting my reward from the guy who gave me the quest and received the "complete" notification on the screen, then checked my journal and saw it was an active quest.

 

Also, one sidequest (or maybe it's a main quest) seems broken. I'm supposed to investigate some murder in Windhelm, but the two things I'm tasked with doing now to advance the quest (examine murder scene and ask steward for advice) don't work. If I talk to the steward, there's no actual dialogue option to ask for advice, despite the fact he's got a friggin' quest icon right above his head. And at the murder scene, there's a quest icon directly over a burial stone, but there's no option to interact with it.

[WDeranged]

That Windhelm murder is notoriously buggy, I identified the killer before I'd even activated the quest, Bethesda shouldn't have put his diaries in a chest with a pickpocketable key

 

Have you followed the trail of blood or talked to the embalming lady yet?

 

*edit*

 

As for the other miscellaneous quests that are stuck in your journal, you can find console commands to remove them if you google around.

Edited February 26, 2012 by WDeranged

[GhostofAnakin]

I talked to the embalming lady. I'm pretty sure I followed the trail of blood, but still nothing ever triggered for me or gave me an option to activate something.

[WDeranged]

following the trail from the scene will lead you to a house, if you walk up to the front door you should trigger a quest update.

[GhostofAnakin]

What about the asking advice of the steward? That's still an "open" option in my quest journal, but when I talk to him there is no dialogue option about the quest. Is that broken, or does that change after the blood trail thing?

[WDeranged]

Yeah that's just a bit of bad quest coding, it's a shame because this quest would actually be one of the better ones if it was fixed, the UESP walkthrough should help you to finish it.

[HoonDing]

Quest had potential, but it's not much of a murder mystery if you can just follow quest markers.

 

Frostflow lighthouse is much better. I also liked finding murdered merchants on the road which led me to a Falmer cave.

[GhostofAnakin]

I'm starting to get to that point where I'm losing steam playing this game. I still have so much left to do, but the various quests are so ... disconnected to the main story that I got into at the beginning that it's getting to feel like I'm just playing a bunch of independent short games within the Skyrim world, rather than playing the story that began the game with.

 

To be fair to Skyrim, this tends to be how I feel about most sandbox games after a while.