Bethesda games are at their best when you're just wandering around, exploring the world and having fun time adventures in the worlds that have been so painstakingly crafted by the devs (Say what you will of the games and boy do I have a lot to say, but the devs always put in a lot of effort into littering their worlds with interesting locations and scenery. Which you then never see because the way Bethesda games handle fast travel means you will never see 90% of the gameworld more than once)
The games just fall apart whenever you have to actually interact with the worlds. Then you'll find them populated by poorly written characters, badly constructed plots and subplots and towns and instanced locations which feel like they are in no way shape or form connected to the greater world supposedly surrounding them. You know how everyone talks about the civil war and then you kinda have to search the world to actually find any evidence of it? Yeah. Like that. And you start the game right next to the bloody chief of the goddamn rebellion who has been captured and carted off to what looks like a remote outpost of the empire to be executed instead right on the main square of the capital of Skyrim to show everyone just how the Empire deals with traitors.
Oh and also the dragons come and then they're just sorta there, having no real impact on the world at large apart from every now and then popping up and killing a few people after which the NPCs don't really seem to care and the act of a goddamn dragon attacking a goddamn city is reduced to a trivial "Cor blimey remember the time when there was a dragon?" NPC line.
In fact that's kind of my big problem with pretty much all Bethesda game stories since and including Oblivion. The games have these bombastic big events that should change the way everyone in the world behaves and thinks about their world (fuck giving you quests, there's DRAGONS ATTACKING CITIES OUT THERE) right in the middle of the storyline. All of which are then just turned into a part of the background with no real consequence or effect. A creeping evil that doesn't really creep or advance in any tangible, game-altering way. (Fallout 4 kinda avoids this by having the big bombastic thing that should change everything actually change everything (talking about the nuke), but then shoots itself in the foot by
really building up the whole "get to the institute" thing, the quests around it are really globetrotting and send you across vast swathes of the map on an epic journey, like they're leading up to the climax. Only when you get to the Institute you see that this is basically the second third of the story, when all the major factions and their interests are revealed, with the final third being the actual endgame, when you have to decide who you'll support.
Also the Brotherhood of Steel reveal is kind of an example of this big thing happening that doesn't have a major effect apart from NPC chatter and occassionally spotting a Brotherhood patrol out in the wilds. The BoS don't seem to interact with any part of the wasteland in any way except gunfire. Oh and radiant quests where you bully farmers into supplying them with food. But radiant quests feel like they have no tangible effect on the world anyway with their endless repeatability and lack of any real visible effects on the gameworld apart from occassionally allowing you to set up outposts and settlements.
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Skyrim's world is meticulously crafted, with many points of interest, some great scenery and some truly terrific moments of worldbuilding (meeting patrols on the streets outside towns, some fun sidequests or parts of sidequests) but it all falls apart the moment you actually interact with the characters, the main story and a lot of the sidequests.
In general, Bethesda games are great to wander in but their stories and quests are for the most part pretty uninteresting and forgettable. Which isn't helped by the fact that both Skyrim and Fallout 4 seem to expect of you to rush the main story and do the side content later, which is pretty much anathema to the way their games are designed, a vast and open world you're free to explore and get lost in.
My preferred way of playing all of their games is by turning off the fast travel and just ignoring the main questline, merely wandering from town to town, only stopping there to resupply and maybe sell off some junk.
I do not think any Bethesda games are straight up bad (except maybe Fallout 3 and even that has an enjoyable world to wander around in so long as you don't think too hard about it), merely infuriating in that their writers don't really seem to know what works in them (the wandering and fun sidequests and interesting locales) and what really doesn't (big events happening for most of the plot instead of just towards the end, a main plot that feels entirely separate from the rest of the world, and a main questline that expects you to beeline it, ignoring the side content. Also the atrocious fast travel system. You COULD buy a horse in Skyrim but why bother, just walk to a place once and then teleport to it an infinite amount of times.)
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Topic: Worst Sequel(s) you have ever played? (Read 15264 times)