100+ reasons why Dan Vavra hates TES V: Skyrim

this is about internal logic, not “reality”. i can believe a man can be purple and fly around if there is an internally logical explanation for it. i cannot believe that a stone ceiling does not behave like a stone ceiling. if you want to include real life references, they must behave as those real life reference behaved, otherwise a sound explanation must be provided.

any kind of overlooked detail due to laziness cannot be explained by “magic”, because that explanation is obviously made up to defend against overlooked details.

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He doesn’t like the UI because it’s bad design. It’s really not that hard to understand. If you have three similar elements of the same kind and you make two different than the third it’s just weird and doesn’t make sense.

I think in a RPG you need reality, other while it is difficult to play a role.
Daggerfall was trying to be a bit realistic, it was my first RPG game, it was not perfect, but I was hopping the realism of the game design will be better and better with the computer tech improvement. In fact the opposite happened, so now, i m not looking anymore for further TES.

There is always some kind of balance in a game because health, damage and armor ratings aren’t random numbers, that would make it unplayable. Skyrim took a certain approach to the challenge of Balance, this approach obviously includes improving gear, stats and skills of both you and your enemies steadily over time. You can argue whether it’s the right way balance a game at all but if you’re doing a steady progression and make it less focused on player skill then sticking with the same weapon for that long doesn’t fit into the concept.

Personally I don’t like how skyrim is balanced at all, I constantly have to change the difficult level rethink what weapons I use. ( also due to modded weapons and multiple followers can’t blame Bethesda for that part) The way Dragons are balanced/scaled just seems weird in vanilla.

@LordCrash
To be perfectly honest, I just think the balance arguments are not great for an entirely different reason: At any given moment, you wear ~10 pieces of equipment on you, and you exchange parts of it regularly. Sure, if you look at an individual piece, like a weapon or an amulet, chances are you found something that works very well with yout playstyle and so you don’t really want to exchange it for anything else.

Now keep in mind that the game needs to keep options for all playstyles open - that’s light armor, heavy armor, robes, about 8 different classes of weapons, spells, jewelery of different focus etc. etc. Personally, I found myself exchanging a piece of gear roughly every hour of playtime, (more frequently at the beginning and less towards the end, obviously), so all this time there has been a steady feeling of progression. That’s mostly on par with my experience with games revolving around loot, like Diablo II, so I don’t think the issue of balance is quite as bad as the article is trying to put it. So yeah, obviously, when you look at an individual piece of gear, you might have to stick with it for longer. Or not. Depends. However, if you look at all your gear as a whole, you’ll find you’re actually switching it around quite often, and to be perfectly honest I would not want to play an RPG which would force me into changing my gear around every 10 minutes so I can stay competitive.

From the general standpoint of balance, however, TES games have never been great. Oblivion probably got closest to an actually balanced game, but it sacrificed too much to make that happen. Morrowind was definitely the worst. Skyrim always felt like a nice compromise.

Just to elaborate on the last sentence: In Morrowind, you could find a sword you’d have for the rest of the game during your first couple of hours. So Oblivion did away with that, and even rewards for high profile quests could end up being extremely wimpy, for balance purposes. People hated it, so Skyrim put back the possibility of getting relatively powerful gear as reward for some quests, but it’s not nearly as bad as what Morrowind did.

lol loved the trailer. Yes Bethseda games have their flaws, no it’s not right but I do still really really enjoy the games despite the bugs…unless it’s a glithc where I fall through a rock/floor and cant get the feck back out’ that’s the one that pees me off; the rest I can cope with.

Console -> tcl is your friend :smiley: Thankfully they seem to have fixed most of those.

Great article, i’ve decided to pledge after reading what mr.vavra thought of skyrim. oh and thanks for the vid laughed so hard :smile:

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Well, Skyrim is like tiddlywinks in comparison with LCD.

I hate the comparison with that game. People need to realise which is the superior game and buy it. LCD is superior in every way!

Skyrim is a good game, but nothing more. It can become boring and has a lot weak design.
What I call a true masterpiece is the Gothic series. And even Risen or Elex are brillant examples how immersive open-world design is done right.

Gothic? That game is from 2001. You serious man? :joy:

The link is not working for me. But here is the same in Czech https://games.tiscali.cz/tema/100-duvodu-proc-dan-vavra-nesnasi-tes-v-skyrim-57711 . You can paste the link into Google translator to get…
32. The inhabitants of Skyri have a great popularity in the corridors, so they build their castles from several tens of feet of thick walls, where they then drill the corridors. The more bend the better. The bigger the maze from the bedroom to the toilet, the better.
33. Oops, there are no toilets in Skyrim.

@Kirksty Yes I am serious man. Why is it important how old a game is? It is even more interesting that there is no other game since 2001 made with that qualities.

King’s Quest (PC/PCjr; ‘83) achieved more than KCD and Gothic. Arguably true but not informative for making KCD design improvements

Mate that game looks terrible. If you were born before it came out then you probably thought the graphics were amazing. It’s 2018 and it’s not immersive to see characters made of three polygons LOL!

@frelmedieval
There is no better RPG than Gothic and of course this is an indicator of design improvement for all games. Gothic is the game that every developer should have played and studied before making a game to understand how to create an immersive world.

@Kirksty
Gothic looks terrible?:joy: You are funny. It had the best graphics when it came out and even today the world design is one of the best af the whole video gaming history. I like old graphics even more because of the unique atmosphere. There is no modern game that can beat it. And notice that Gothic defined the word “immersion”. There is no ugly HUD or compass that shows you the way. No quest markers on a map, no info messages and tutorials!!! No skill menu or such a generic crap! So please, don’t talk about this game when you have no knowledge. It doesn’t matter what year we have. It could be 2328 and Gothic would still be one of the best games ever made. The same with Silent Hill 1 the original PlayStation classic with less than three polygons.

@Chessqueen Have you played King’s Quest?

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@frelmedieval no.

I doubt the game is that good as I’ve only heard of Gothic the American series or whatever. Is it connected? Great games are well heard of. Maybe they should remaster it for Xbox One and I might try it.

Gothic is a german RPG series and it’s not connected to anything nor there will be a XBOX remaster. And you can believe what you want, this doesn’t change how things are.