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Skyrim: First impressions
14 years ago
My raffle closed at nearly the same time Skyrim came out? What a weird coincidence!
So, Oblivion was one of my favoritest games ever. I'm a big fan of assassin/thief type characters that can snipe people across a room, hidden in the dark, and there was a lot of stuff designed for that kind of character in Oblivion. Another thing I really liked (on the PC anyway) was that it was very extensible and had lots of really good mods for it (and some disturbing adult ones).
So yeah, Skyrim! I've played it now for a few hours, and it's mostly good, but it seems a little rough around the edges.
The first learning stage in the game is where you're a prisoner set to be executed, but there's a dragon attack and you manage to slip away in the confusion. You have the choice of following an Imperial soldier or a Nord rebel out of the base -- I chose the rebel. We escape, and I walk with him to the nearest town. As we walk through the gate, he says to me in his ridiculous Scandinavian accent "Güd! Lüks like we got here befüre the nüs of the dragün attåck." And AS he is saying this to me, in the SAME time span, one of the villagers is saying to another, "OMG did you hear about the dragon attack?!?!"
Oh boy. So this is how it's going to be, huh? Let's dive into it.
First gripe, the controls. These controls are obviously optimized for a gamepad. Keyboard/mouse support feels thrown in and untested. The dialog selector will sometimes just pick the line that's on the gamepad-style select arrow rather than the line you clicked on. "Quick" select weapons are another scroll-and-select menu, rather than bound to the number keys, which are totally unused. And the big one -- looting corpses. The button to open the loot screen is the same button to take an item. There is NO mention anywhere in any screen of the button used to close the loot corpse screen. The first corpse I looted, I accidentally took everything (all the heavy, useless weapons and armor) and spent a good few minutes looking for how to drop any of that shit or close the dialog (it's Tab, by the way). The inventory is, guess what, scroll and select. No shift-click to drop, no dragging items from here to there.
You see this over and over -- everything is scroll and select, scroll and select. It shouldn't be this way on the PC! We've got a keyboard with >more than six buttons<, and a mouse that we can use to >point and click< -- and a scroll wheel, mind you; if we must scroll and select, how about always letting us scroll with the scroll wheel?
Second gripe, graphics. Now maybe this one is my fault; I've got a video card that was pretty good when I bought it, a few years back (it's a GeForce GTS 250). Despite the card's age, the game runs surprisingly smooth on it, but some of the effects just don't seem to be there. There's fire pits with heat waves above them but no actual fire in them; I get tangled up in spider webs that are totally invisible; calm water and some spells are nearly invisible too.
Third gripe, bounding boxes. Somebody was lazy here. One of the first optional dungeons I explored, I found this group of poachers who were skinning a mammoth. So I sneak into the room, and try to snipe the leader, who's at a desk over at the far side of the room. I'm on a balcony overlooking the room, shooting above a deer head that's mounted on the wall below, and the arrow gets stuck in mid-air, in the empty space between the antlers. Sigh. So I find another vantage point where there's no deer heads and a gap in the railing.. and guess what, the arrow gets stuck in the air in the gap in the railing.
These are just little disappointments. Overall, I'm having a lot of fun with the game. I expect my interface woes will be addressed by some clever modder within a few weeks' time, and maybe there's some setting somewhere that will help me with my graphics problems.
So, Oblivion was one of my favoritest games ever. I'm a big fan of assassin/thief type characters that can snipe people across a room, hidden in the dark, and there was a lot of stuff designed for that kind of character in Oblivion. Another thing I really liked (on the PC anyway) was that it was very extensible and had lots of really good mods for it (and some disturbing adult ones).
So yeah, Skyrim! I've played it now for a few hours, and it's mostly good, but it seems a little rough around the edges.
The first learning stage in the game is where you're a prisoner set to be executed, but there's a dragon attack and you manage to slip away in the confusion. You have the choice of following an Imperial soldier or a Nord rebel out of the base -- I chose the rebel. We escape, and I walk with him to the nearest town. As we walk through the gate, he says to me in his ridiculous Scandinavian accent "Güd! Lüks like we got here befüre the nüs of the dragün attåck." And AS he is saying this to me, in the SAME time span, one of the villagers is saying to another, "OMG did you hear about the dragon attack?!?!"
Oh boy. So this is how it's going to be, huh? Let's dive into it.
First gripe, the controls. These controls are obviously optimized for a gamepad. Keyboard/mouse support feels thrown in and untested. The dialog selector will sometimes just pick the line that's on the gamepad-style select arrow rather than the line you clicked on. "Quick" select weapons are another scroll-and-select menu, rather than bound to the number keys, which are totally unused. And the big one -- looting corpses. The button to open the loot screen is the same button to take an item. There is NO mention anywhere in any screen of the button used to close the loot corpse screen. The first corpse I looted, I accidentally took everything (all the heavy, useless weapons and armor) and spent a good few minutes looking for how to drop any of that shit or close the dialog (it's Tab, by the way). The inventory is, guess what, scroll and select. No shift-click to drop, no dragging items from here to there.
You see this over and over -- everything is scroll and select, scroll and select. It shouldn't be this way on the PC! We've got a keyboard with >more than six buttons<, and a mouse that we can use to >point and click< -- and a scroll wheel, mind you; if we must scroll and select, how about always letting us scroll with the scroll wheel?
Second gripe, graphics. Now maybe this one is my fault; I've got a video card that was pretty good when I bought it, a few years back (it's a GeForce GTS 250). Despite the card's age, the game runs surprisingly smooth on it, but some of the effects just don't seem to be there. There's fire pits with heat waves above them but no actual fire in them; I get tangled up in spider webs that are totally invisible; calm water and some spells are nearly invisible too.
Third gripe, bounding boxes. Somebody was lazy here. One of the first optional dungeons I explored, I found this group of poachers who were skinning a mammoth. So I sneak into the room, and try to snipe the leader, who's at a desk over at the far side of the room. I'm on a balcony overlooking the room, shooting above a deer head that's mounted on the wall below, and the arrow gets stuck in mid-air, in the empty space between the antlers. Sigh. So I find another vantage point where there's no deer heads and a gap in the railing.. and guess what, the arrow gets stuck in the air in the gap in the railing.
These are just little disappointments. Overall, I'm having a lot of fun with the game. I expect my interface woes will be addressed by some clever modder within a few weeks' time, and maybe there's some setting somewhere that will help me with my graphics problems.
Just to bash out another dragon killing game: Malygos & Deathwing...Yup. 25 mortals kill/defeat the demigod-like dragons of Azeroth...Sounds so silly, it hurts. Not to mention, that after WoW players defeat Godlike Dragons, Millennium-old Elves and Demons...Pandas.
Game designing is going in the wrong way not just by Skyrim. But I will leave the critic to professionals, like The Escapist or alike...I'm really liking a good story in games, so to say something positive: I'm absolutely sure the game will be good for some people!
If the game developers made a game containing dragon, then they intended to smuggle the feeling in the game too, no? But how can I take it seriously, when it's so silly...Hey Dragonborn! Go kill dragons! - How many? - I don't know. All you can find! - Okay!
Oh yeah, and Bethesda...I was a Fallout fangirl...until F3...so boring, never finished since i was bored like hell...A shame really but I will replay Fallout 1-2 anyday then touch F3 ever again!
Bethesda ruined Fallout 3 for me, with a boring and slow gameplay...it's more a jumpoff point to not like the studio then Skyrim...I just don't except good thing from Bethesda...same from THQ. I was disappointed in a very low level.
But why am I trying to prove a point again? Skyrim may be a good game for others, but not for me. Period.
I mean, why wouldn't it make sense for one man to be capable to take down an army of dragons? Especially since the species is fictional, meaning that any weight in scale or power is completely up to those that do the writing, the designing, the creating.
In essence, a dragon is only as powerful as it's real life comparitive counterpart, and considering that's nothing (dinosaurs don't even begin to match to say, Western or Eastern dragons), I'd say that bar is to be set by the ones that interpret them.
And that's what I need: You need to fear monsters! That's why they are monsters. You need to feel a bit connected to the game this way. I'm not just seeing a piece of meat to defeat, but a part of that worlds inhabitants. Most players just hack monsters automatically, but loosing respect toward your opponent is a sure way for boredom...
...Minecraft's Creeper...Sure you can kill it...but head on? Hehehe! Now that's a nice monster, who smuggles respect in the heart of the players! Or what about the Witch from L4D? You are going to respect that powerful b!tch for sure...And what about dragons? Piece of meat to chop down? Heh.
It's too much, that I ask for believable atmosphere for the sake, so I can enjoy all fights with every monster?
Oh, yeah: I heard that the dragonborn is having dragon blood in his veins...lol. But if He's pushed in that chasm in the intro He will be flatter then a pancake for sure. A dragon is sure powerful enough to push him over a measly cliff... Dragon blood in his veins sounds so silly as the race Dampir (I say sorry for all Blade-fans)
Anyway, to discriminate a game entirely- even refusing to objectively judge it (see my first post, the controls are balls and immersion-breaking) in favour of just cracking it down on a single aspect with an argument that could be considered flimsy at best, I would have to say that is pretty childish.
I can ONLY cracking it down on a single aspect because i didn't have any playing experience of that game...that also evaluates my opinion to shallow at best. I know that. Still the plot s*cks balls.
I tire of this talk, since I've already said my view on this game. I wish you all, who play it a wonderful experience! I have some things to do, which are more interesting, then what I did in the last hour. Please excuse me!
Please scroll down to see
...I just don't want sink down to your level. Good night, Sir/Madam!
1 man alone vs dragon = Unfair and unbalanced fight and if i want to treat the situation with just a bit respect, then the dragon wins always...thus Dragonborn wins sounds just plain silly to me. Okay He defeats a dragon or two...but 10 or more??? Excuse me, i have to go to laugh of this plot...a lot.
SPOILER ALERTS
So the Dragonborn is not fireproof. Not in the slightest. In fact, the first death I had in game was missing the hole in the burning roof of the inn during the escape and slowly cooking myself to death when I couldn't jump out off the burning roof because I was stuck in timbers.
What the Dragonborn does get is the innate ability to suck dragon souls out of the dragons, (highlander style), which allows them to shout words of power; basically long cooldown spell words effectively that are something akin to draconic breath weapons (Fire, cold, shockwave, electric, etc).
The dragon is big, but not THAT big. We're not talking "I can get stuck between his teeth" like Deathwing here. More like a dragon can deep throat a quarter of your body at once at best. Not necessarily smart either. More like an animal. While my cat does seem to approve of testing gravity on a constant basis by knocking stuff off counters and shelves, the dragon seems to take more pleasure in trying to cook things, rake them with claws, and bite them than knock them off cliffs or drop rocks on their heads. And honestly, dropping a single rock on somebody from elevation is not exactly an easy thing to aim anyway. While tail spikes may seem like a cool idea, swinging the massive bulk of your entire body around tends to have physics against you, so is not likely the best bet.
The first dragon fight where killing the dragon occurs was the PC along with about five guards and a good number of them died, while I ran around like a ninny hiding behind stone walls a lot. It was mostly "Wave at him to distract him while I chip away. Hey! Stop dying!".
Getting hit with a dragon's swipe will send you flying. If it happens to knock you of a cliff, STBY. :) And if your timing and luck are bad, the dragon will have no problem at all biting the top half of your body, giving you a proper prey-killing shake of doom, and tossing you up like a rag doll, dead as a doornail. Heck, a finishing move example on a dragon is grabbing the horn, swinging onto their head, and stabbing directly into their brain. That seems pretty effective.*
So I guess the main thing to consider is that they did not take your concept of dragons (huge, intelligent, godlike...). Dragons are a damn tough battle, but spells and a crapton of whacking with a sharp, pointy stick tend to help. Often not as much as you'd like. Not to mention there is a shout that calls your own friendly dragon down to help kick tail (I have no idea where it hides when you're not shouting... "Is that a dragon in your pants or are you just happy to see me?" "Why yes... Yes it is...").
It's all a moot point, of course. Some people will play the game and love most of it and hate parts of it. Some people will play it and hate most of it and love parts of it. Some people will pine as they don't play it. Some people will hate the (pick one: Plot; Premise; Violence; Concept; Studio; Box; Sex; Size; Booze; Undead; Dragons; Snow; "Bunnies Slaughtered" Counter; <Write in vote>) and hate it without playing it at all. Some people just won't care. Nothing will change their minds for the most part either.
You'll not play it and be happy. We'll play it and be happy. Or not. It's all good. :)
Anyway, it doesn't matter, since the best part will be when they have nude patches for the game. ^.^
*Apparently brain-stabbing is not always a fully effective thing, mind you. The number of people trying to kill me when they have an arrow sticking straight through their face and out the back of their head is pretty amazing. By comparison, the number of people I've killed with a critical sneak shot to their HAND is just as high.
True I maybe fond of AD&D dragons, where they are intelligent (on different levels, but at least on a human level or usually above that.) and handilng their body as weapon with ease: A tails slap or a wing slap induced gust of wind is as easy to carry out as attacking with every four limb, bite, horn charge, swallow whole, body slam, etc...and these are just their physical attacks! (Autamatic Dragon Fear makes anybody run by the mere sight of it even your main character, and quick spellcasting ability just makes the fight harder.) AD&D dragons are monsters who any party fears, and always making sure if they are willing to try their luck with the beast.
Okay Mr. Dragonborn is a dragon-killing-machine! He can kill a dragon or two but 10 or more is just pushing his luck. Maybe He is Lady Luck's favorite f*cktoy, that He can conquer every dragon battle (according to the game's story) He is having. I know, these dragons aren't like AD&D dragons, but going to fight more then 10 (not at once) is just pushing his luck IMO.
Nice jokes on your reply. Highlander, happy pants, nude patches...Oh yeah, Nude Patch makes any game good! I'm sure the dudes won't be naked though. Some of us, girls would want that too!
But consider that in reality, in a fight with older weapons, each battle head-on battle is a coin flip modified only by superior numbers. So really, the fact that in any video game, story, movie, or whatever, the good guy can go and slaughter fifty bad guys and recover to full health is honestly about as unrealistic as fighting one dragon. One arrow in the gut would put you out for months, not minutes, if not dead.
In other good news, I have seen more dragon tactics now, including "Pick up, fly up, drop... Splat!"
In other, other good news, so far in both TES III and IV, people have made anatomically correct male nudity. Heck, there's even sex mods with animations and such as well.
I said it before, and I'll say it again: Either you'll like it, or you won't. You'll play it, or you won't. Any combination of those two binary items as well. It's your personal preference as to whether you want to do either from either of those.
I can tell you that no, it's not realistic in any manner of the word. Bucket-on-head theft, idiot NPC logic, insufficient granularity on object bounding boxes, lack of decent FoF identification from a distance... Even that cool finishing move where you stick a dagger into somebody's gut and pick them up by it while you slice their throat (which we won't even discuss the physics of lifting somebody's full weight on one extended arm effectively doubled over your fist), but the dagger never actually goes into their body. But it's fun.
So I guess it all comes down to over-analysis of fictional plots and situations. If you find yourself having more fun dissecting plots and fictional worlds, then do so and enjoy doing so. :) I could find dozens, if not hundreds of plot holes, world-building holes, and plenty of other problems. But I have lots of fun just enjoying the game other than where the problems get in the way (like the damned console-style menus and console-based shadows). :)
The "best controls" title goeas to Metal Gear Solid PSX or PC all the same...Once you set things up i never - repeating - never pushed a wrong button. That game had some really user friendly controls! Cool.
Female nude patch became available within 24 hours of release.
(Proper male nude patch requires more than just removing some obsolete clothing and re-skinning the model)
And to make it even WORSE...
"Only affects non-beast races, because nobody wants to see pussy pussy or lizard nipples anyway"
Now, I can understand a lack of lizard nipples, but damnit, give me my kitty kitty!
So... third random dragon encounter at level 17. Slaughtered mightily by the dragon. Second try: Dead again. Fast forward past seventeen deaths to "Okay, screw this, I've gotta avoid this dragon. RUN LIKE A NINNY!"
Seeing that I would replay Fallout 1-2 and even Tactics, those games were better made IMO, then this. I give credit to F3's graphics. It's probably the only field it beats the old fallout games, but thats no surprise to me.
Oblivion was also one of my favourite games. In this game, i will stick to the side quests for a while before attempting the main one. They are more entertaining and allow me to explore more of the game and level up.
The game has its minor bugs, but i think that a game of this magnitude overshadows any mjnor glitches it has. im sure more patches will be launched soon to address the other bugs.
As for the bounding boxes issue, I haven't had that problem, though as of late I've been playing without using weapons that didn't involve magika. Seriously. At the midnight, the second I got control of the game and control of spells, I dual-equipped fire to both my hands and started to laugh maniacally.
That said: the vast majority of my gripes with Oblivion (like the leveling system) were fixed in this game and it's unbelievably awesome. Some of those glitches are expected simply because the game is so incredibly massive that there is no way the testers could have tried every single thing that the player might try. The bounding box thing is a gripe with many games because with today's tech it's still hard to get the box's exact without eating more processor/memory, so a lot of intricately shaped objects end up with square boxes around them :p
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/new.....-is-a-Headache In which they complain about stuff that have been with PC gaming since Bethesda has been working for it, so I don't really see the point in complaining about it now when you've clearly done well by it.
http://www.computerandvideogames.co.....orm-for-games/ In which Bethesda's current sister company id's most recognizable name says consoles are the main platform.
Thank you for pointing out, why I don't like their products!
Duuuuurrr i cant take a bucket off. XD XD
BTW your argument earlier.. I kinda agree.. Kill the dragon is a rather lame story plot idea.
I mean why not, Kill the elven litch demigod lord of water demons on his island fortress.
Or go after a mage who steals powers from the high entities like dragons and ya know.
protect or fight by their side. In these adventure games your always hunting a dragon.
Now i could see a dragon gone berserk as a reason to hunt one. but most are hunted for just..
Living. I mean i play monster hunter and i find hunt the dragon just for living to be odd.
at least the ones in monster hunter are a threat to all their lives cause they get aggressive
on humans.
Its way overdone.
I'm sure Skyrim is a good game to many people, just the plot sounds too silly for me. You can push your luck, and fight a dragon, but doing that 10 or 20 times...and being successful every time sounds too far-fetched to me. If I would be making Skyrim's planing, then I would drop un-killable dragons too, which are looking the same as the rest...that way players would respect the race and not just see another kill in it. Also Skyrim have a good amount of other beasts as well. Okay Mr. Dragonborn can survive 20 battle with dragons. But what about a giant spider...He cannot be that lucky to conquer all beasts of the land...or is he? lol.
for me, it's dramatically more important that i am able to design a mesh and texture it from scratch and get it into the game or release it for the community. NWN2 really made it a pain in the ass, but it had a very similar appeal (though art standards back then were admittedly way easier to reach). i've heard it said that Bethesda games just shouldn't be bought until a few patches later -- and i suppose i'm willing to wait that long to keep my high opinion of Bethesda's work (in general) from being tarnished.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sv1V.....ature=youtu.be
From what I've seen, the graphics in the game don't seem too much of an improvement over, say, 8 years ago when Neverwinter Nights came out, but I may be fudging memories on that one.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ves-2JrGi28
The game is so much fun though.
Quick keys totally are documented: look in the manual on page 7! It's under the header for Favorites.
Any way I look at it...Frost Trolls still suck painfully, dragons are a bitch to fight off, and if ya spend your time REALLY digging into the situation of the world, you find out a whooooole lot more than just "All dragons are bad, go kill em!" I think I'm in my 14th hour of play now and I've only been able to kill 3 dragons so far, the others have me running scared.
This is mentioned in the manual, which wasn't released on Steam right away. It's there now though, on the game's store page.
that's how i've been using it
But agreed on all points. Lots of non-polish, untested crap abounds. It's very poor. But evidently par for the course.