I've been watching streams for the past few days, and while they initially made the game look good as time went on I became more and more worried about the game's flaws.
This is the first time I've ever though that combat in a TES game looks satisfying.
The problem is that combat was never the reason that people played TES. The reason that Morrowind is still touted as a pinnacle of fantasy game design is the level of thought and depth that went into the world design, and certain things that I've seen in streams have me worried that Skyrim is going down the Oblivion route instead.
In Morrowind, every dungeon had a reason to exist. Dwemer ruins were functional structures with main halls, bedrooms, studies, workshops, and dynamos. The lore even supported why they had survived for 4000 years. Ancestral tombs were filled with monsters and treasure because raising the bones of one's ancestors to act as tomb guards is an ancient Dunmer religious practice. Smugglers also had a reason for their existence: Imperial bans on the sale of Dwemer artifacts and ebony and tariffs on liquor, along with the prevalence of slavery on the island gave them an economic motivation hide out in the waterfront caves.
In Oblivion, dungeons were linear corridors filled with monsters. I have no greater understanding of the Ayleids, apart from that they may have lost the slave revolt due to having giant, inexplicable spike pits in the middle of their living rooms. In watching the streams, I have yet to see a dungeon that isn't just a linear path from an entrance to an exit.
Furthermore, Vvardenfell was a setting where the characters were steeped in the cultural and political landscape of the island. It has possibly the most intelligent portrayal of necromancy in fantasy, showing how the Mage's Guild and Telvanni view necromancy as just another branch of magic whereas the Temple's ancestor worship causes them to practice a tradition of sacred necromancy while persecuting all other users.
On the other hand, Traven's idiotic jihad against necromancy in Oblivion could only be justified by turning all necromancers into evil black robe wearing goons who try to attack any passerby, no matter how heavily armed. I had hoped that with the Mage's Guild dissolved we could forget that Oblivion ever happened, but I've seen streamers attacked by random black robed necromancers that seem to have been copy-pasted from Oblivion.
I keep getting this horrible feeling that Todd Howard is trying to overturn the renaissance that the Pocket Guide brought and return TES to the dark ages of generic Euromedieval fantasy. I keep seeing little things, like how Dwemer and Ayleid artifacts are referred to in the menu as “Dwarven” and “Elven”.
Unfortunately, my experience with the game is limited to what I see in the streams. If what I've seen in the streams is not indicative of the setting, Skyrim could be a great TES game with just a small number of mods. Are the dungeons still “dungeons for the sake of dungeons”? Are necromancers still inexplicable always chaotic evil random encounters? Is there more conflict to the game beyond “Imperials vs. Stormcloaks”? While any conflict at all is a step up from Oblivion's bizarrely peaceful power vacuum, I'd really like to see something more on the scale of Vvardenfell, where the island was a web of political intrigue being played by four great houses, three foreign guilds, the Imperial Legion, the Blades, the Temple, the Cult, Daedra worshipers, the Ashlanders, the Cammona Tong, the Morag Tong, and slaveholders and abolitionists, especially given that any given great house had more internal conflict than the entire province of Cyrodiil.
Also, is there any perceptible reason that Jeff Baker wasn't contacted for voice work? Why would they assembled a team of over 70 VAs, including expensive celebrities but not include a VA who's worked for them in every recent game and whose previous work has been met with high approval?
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Topic: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Read 1622105 times)