4841

That’s a good way to put it. It also reinforces the subtle action RPG style compulsion toward clearing all the dungeons.

There are generic environment sets and gameplay, but the mini-bosses and micro-stories are enough to keep me exploring. People forget what a big step in the right direction this is compared to Oblivion.

4842

Yep, so far I have yet to close an Oblivion gate. :)

4843

This also feels like an interesting step in the growth of computer games as a medium. Most big budget games copy the storytelling methods of other mediums, especially film. But experiencing a story by exploring a space feels like something computer games should be uniquely good at.

4844

No kidding. I think that’s Oblivion’s greatest failing. Bethesda’s strengths are in worldbuilding and exploration, and although there’s some okay questing in Oblivion, exploration rapidly lost its lustre when I realized I was not going to find anything interesting unless it was directly part of a quest. There’re only like three dungeons in Oblivion that have no direct application to a quest yet still have something unique in their design. And one of them is the first one you’ll run into. Everything else is just generic Ayleid/cave/fort/whatever, with a random bunch of levelling monsters in it that you can’t ever permanently clear, and maybe a little bit of bland randomized loot. Since you’ll have the same bland, unexciting, and unproductive dungeon experience wherever you go, there stops being any reason to actually explore them. I’ve cleared probably 10-15 random dungeon-type locations in Skyrim, very few quest-associated, and every one had striking, unique elements and often at least hints at story.

4845

I just got the “Clear 50 dungeons” achievement last night and I definitely don’t feel there is any problem with them feeling too “samey”. It seems like some people have been playing games from an alternate universe that have an unlimited budget and 150 completely unique dungeons. Here in reality we only get 5 or 6 dungeon “environments” but every dungeon I’ve seen so far has had a different layout and at least some unique detail. There have been a couple that seemed a little too long, but there was still enough of a payoff at the end to make them worthwhile. If you want to say that they all play the same then I won’t disagree, but that is a criticism that could be leveled at the combat in the game as a whole. Fortunately, I enjoy the combat and still find the dungeon crawling engaging after 60 hours.

4846

I love the dungeons - I havent been in any that seemed like they were the same, and most felt like they could be there in real life, if dwemer and cavedwellers had built them.

Ive seen Lighthouses that were simply brilliantly made, Castles that made sense, Underground rivers, Fantastic buried castles and so on…simply brilliant.

4847

So I thought I’d take a stab at addressing the differences between branching story games and open world games, as exemplified by Bioware and Bethesda: in Bioware games, you define the experience by what you do inside of quests. In Bethesda games you define the experience by what quests you DO.

Bioware is about intricate paths through and within large, defined story chunks. Bethesda is about choosing what stories you want to participate in.

4848

I’m going to change the subject here and talk about horses. How many of you are still using them? At first I liked them, moved faster, weren’t encumbered when you were overloaded and they fought monsters with you for a while. After a while it became a bother to always have to dismount for combat, then have the horse get in the way and then take off making you try and find it after combat. Yea I could fast travel and get them back, but what happens when you are out exploring and don’t want to fast travel? When my first horsey died I thought, shucks I need to buy another and then I realized that I would be better off without the stupid thing. I like Skyrim a lot, but I do think Bethesda needs to work on their horses. Out of all their Elder Scroll games I liked Daggerfalls cart the best. You got to ride and you had a place to store all your ill gotten booty while you explored.

4849

The carts in Daggerfall were great, yes. But you know what I really miss from that game? Flying. The fly spell was tremendous fun and extremely useful. While slogging through Skyrim’s mountains trying to reach a quest locale stuck on the far side of an impassable ridge, I find myself pining for the fly spell. I hope someone mods it in.

4850

Well, after eighty hours, I’ve finished Skyrim. I’m using the term “finished” very loosely, with dozens of quests unfinished, areas unexplored, many talents/shouts/spells entirely untested and my character “only” level 44. Quest-lines like the Mage’s College, the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves Guild aren’t close to being completed. But I think I’m putting my two-handed Nord warrior to rest. After all, he’s completed both the main quest line and freed his homeland.

When you think about it, that’s entirely absurd…but in a good way. It’s hard to imagine that there’s that much content unseen and undone in a game after 80 hours of playing. There’s really two main quests (dragons, war) and then there’s so many other quests that the content just keeps on coming.

That’s all content worth doing, because Skyrim is one of the best RPGs of all time. Considering that I’ve never liked any of the Elder Scrolls games until now and I tend to prefer Bioware’s story-driven RPGs more, I’m astonished how good this game really is. There’s a great mix of self-exploration and story driven content. The story-driven content isn’t as epic as you’d find in U7, ME2 or BG, but it’s better-than-average. Where the game really shines is combining that content into perhaps the best open world ever seen in a RPG along with the dynamic quest generator that helps make the world feel alive. When the occasion arises that these come together, the game surpasses all expectations.

For instance, I had to go steal something for a quest. Breaking into the house was going to be difficult with all the guards around. As I’m sneaking around trying to find a way in, a dragon attacked. Using the commotion to my advantage, I slipped around the dragon and the guards attacking it to complete my mission. It wasn’t scripted, but it was a very fulfilling RPG experience.

The random dungeons were well crafted and almost always visually stimulating. Not every one told a story, but I was always pleased at the chance to go explore yet another cave of Skyrim. Heck, I stumbled on some great content just scaling mountains and coming face-to-face with a dragon or other epic creature.

I had a problem with the game crashing…about once an hour it’d just shut down. But given that when it did I was able to restart in a matter of seconds, the annoyance was minimal. I have a sneaky suspicion that the graphics aren’t super-awesome on a top PC, but I couldn’t have been more pleased with the overall performance and on my 4 year old rig. Given what I’m running, I was concerned the game wouldn’t run well at all. Instead, I was blown away by the spectacular visuals and was pleased with the sound as well.

It’s the mark of a great RPG that as soon as I’m done I want to replay it. I did that with Ultima 7. I instantly replayed PS:T. BG2, ME2, KOTOR…all were replayed. In this case, I’ll probably load a couple of mods (night sky, texture enhancements) and start again, this time with a dangerous assassin who stands to lose big-time if the Empire can’t keep control of Skyrim…

4851

I don’t use horses at all, didn’t in Oblivion either. It takes too long to dismount when I get attacked and the horse is a liability since I usually end up killing them in friendly fire. I also like to collect herbs and admire the scenery when I’m travelling, so for that I prefer to travel at a slower speed.
When I really want to get to a place fast I’ll use the carts outside the main cities. I fast travel only on the way back when my inventory is full.
Horses are nice to see in the game as NPC mounts and farm animals because they feel right in a fantasy setting but besides that they are completely wasted on me I’m afraid.

4852

I have an issue. In my PC, the CPU is an AMD Athlon II X2 255 dualcore at about 3.1 GHz and my graphics card is an nvidia GeForce 9800 GT.

Set to medium graphics settings the game runs perfectly smooth through any amount of combat, large vistas, whatever. However every 20-30 minutes the framerate drops to like, 1-2 fps for about 1-2 minutes. Saving, quitting to the main menu, and loading solves the problem and I can keep playing for another 20-30 minutes just fine.

Nothing ever regularly triggers the slowdown, one time it happened when I was talking to a shopkeeper in a tiny building with only 3 people in it for example. I also have the process in the process manager set to high priority, that didn’t help. Anyone have any idea why this is happening?

My only theory is that I am limited by my CPU. My laptop has a quad core running at about 2.3 GHz and it can run the game without any slowdown. The bad news about this is that then turning down the graphics won’t help me at all so I’m hoping it’s something else.

4853

Here’s my “latest cool thing to happen to me in Skyrim” story. Last night, I wrapped up a quest that I won’t go into details about. Got the “Completed” message and everything. My responsibilities were done. The quest giver says “Thanks, we’ll go take care of it right now. I’ll send a guard.” So normally, I’m on to the next one, but I was curious, so I stuck around. Sure enough, dude walks over to a guard, says “Come with me.” and they both walk off to take care of the business we just concluded.

I followed.

They actually do what they say they’re going to do. It’s not just video game dialogue. They make the walk, have an entire scripted dialogue session, and the guy performs the actions he told me he was going to do.

This sorta blows me away as this is all superfluous. Most folks I imagine would never see this and wouldn’t need to. Nothing was added. No new quest opened up because I watched this. It was all just neat gravy. They paid some voice actor to record lines that are probably not usually heard. Programmed the pathing of the NPCs to make that walk. Scripted the scene.

So cool.

4854

The only time I’ve found a horse useful is on my heavy armor character, before getting the perk to ignore armor for movement. The first time I bought a horse, I was hoping they had something like saddlebags because I was desperate for some safe storage. I found it didn’t, road it for a few minutes, found it was slow as hell, and reloaded a save prior to buying it.

4855

Gave up on horses around level 5 or so. Never regretted it.

4856

I jumped on a horse at a storm cloak camp, did some laps of the camp then jumped off and now the damn thing FOLLOWS ME EVERYWHERE!

I fast travel somewhere and as I arrive, there is the horse, nonchalantly walking away from me with a “oh, I was just passing through” look on its face. I AM BEING STALKED BY A HORSE!

4857

Since I realized that power attacks are bread and butter for my dual wielder, I have been pumping nothing but stamina. I recharge it faster than I burn it and I can outsprint a horse for a full minute. So horses are almost beside the point…

4858

Since a few people in this thread have made a point of saying how they never fast travel anywhere, let me absolve you all of your sins: i fast travel EVERYWHERE, whenever possible. If I can fast travel from one end of a city to another, I do. Because fuck yeah.

4859

90 hours in…I did a lot of sidequests, whole Mage College, and I am almost at the end of Thief questline (absolutely great, I enjoyed it more than mage one). I did not do much stuff in main quest and nothing in war stuff…
I am still having great fun though, so I assume another 100 hundred hours are probably going to be spent in Skyrim.

Regarding fast travel, I try to avoid it, using paid carriages when I can, but when I am too far from city with carriage and need to get somewhere far for a quest, I use fast travel.

Regarding crashes, I use lot of tweaks and mods to make game look better, but with Skyrim 4GB mod (LAA), it is rock stable.

4860

I know the quest you’re talking about. You got the bugged version, as did I my first time through. There’s more to it than what you saw, and it does lead somewhere.