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[Micro102]

That's odd, I remember that quest but it wasn't in a camp. I looked it up and it seems the helm can be in different places. But none of them are just laying in a camp. They are all dungeons that you have to clear. I think you got a bug.

[forsaken1111]

Must have been a bug then, because it was in a camp with a bosmer who had no dialogue options. If I tried to speak with him he would look at me and the conversation would end immediately.

[The Merchant Of Menace]

There's a few NPCs who do that actually, not even a ... in the chat, just instantly ending dialogue.

[Solifuge]

My final moment of disillusionment with Skyrim was on first entering Solitude: (minor spoilers follow)

I enter town, and I see a crowd gathering in front of a platform. I know something is going on, though I had no idea what. Was this scripted, or something organic? I reflect on how cool it would be if you could just walk in on events like this, and find myself a barrel to stand on to see over the crowd. Turns out it's a public execution of a Stormcloak sympathizer... oh boy! I decided I'd put a stop to it, since I'd more or less been supporting the Stormcloaks cause... though they offered no game mechanics that really let me do that, I'd just been role-playing my alchemist/archer character as an ally to them, after being stiffly dicked over by the Imperials during the opening.

Anyway, I see the headsman, 2 Imperial officers, and the Stormcloak member on the platform, and take stock of my inventory. I find a few bottles of home-brewed Paralysis Poison... though it's usually way more efficient to just stack damage effect after damage effect in the game (killing is pretty much the #1 method of plot advancement), I kept them around, just in case I could do something cool like this! I poison my arrows and the daggers with the stuff, and after they finish their execution spiel and the headsman readies his axe, I peg him with the poison, and he falls like a rock. Leaping from the barrel and to stage, I pull out the poisoned daggers and hit the first, and then the second officer too. They fall, the crowd panics, and the Stormcloak Rebel and me see an opening, and make a break for it! It feels great... I just reacted naturally to the circumstances, and finally got a chance to think outside the box to solve a conflict, which I'd really been missing in this game so far!

I follow the rebel until we are safe, hoping to talk to him once he calms down. He ascends a staircase and finally pauses, and I move closer to talk to him, figure out what he knows, and maybe make a plan to escape. Before I can start a conversation, he promptly says Generic NPC Greeting #12... and then falls over dead for no reason. Apparently, his death was a linearly scripted event, to start you off on yet another fetch-quest involving his grieving widow. They hadn't considered I would do anything but sit and watch him die like a good cutscene-viewer, and then start their fetch-quest by looting the beheaded corpse the Imperials inexplicably left on stage.

Needless to say, it completely shattered my roleplaying experience, frustrated the hell out of me as a gamer, and ruined the first hope I had for the redemption of the game. Unlike its predecessors, Skyrim is not a sandbox fantasy adventure; it's 100 different railroad tracks, each with different start and end points, which you can choose to ride.

If you need me, I'll be reinstalling Morrowind.

[Micro102]

Being able to do that wouldn't be sandbox. It would be another railroad track. To have a sandbox game, you would need layers of AI that respond to your actions. And you have a lot of choices for actions in Skyrim. Considering how big and graphically high the world is and how many different plots there already are, that just doesn't seem possible for Skyrim. I don't think it's even possible for that engine.

[Sordid]

They hadn't considered I would do anything but sit and watch him die like a good cutscene-viewer, and then start their fetch-quest by looting the beheaded corpse the Imperials inexplicably left on stage.

Actually they hadn't considered that either. It's reportedly patched now, but picking up the amulet before talking to the widow would break the quest and make it impossible to complete without the use of console commands. Not only is this bit completely unsuitable for roleplayers, who have a good chance of wanting to interrupt the execution, it wasn't tailored to munchkins either (whose first instinct is to loot the corpse before the headsman even leaves the platform).

[The Merchant Of Menace]

Yeah, the head hadn't even hit the ground by the time I looted the corpse.

[Tarran]

You are a horrible person.

[dogstile]

They hadn't considered I would do anything but sit and watch him die like a good cutscene-viewer, and then start their fetch-quest by looting the beheaded corpse the Imperials inexplicably left on stage.

Actually they hadn't considered that either. It's reportedly patched now, but picking up the amulet before talking to the widow would break the quest and make it impossible to complete without the use of console commands. Not only is this bit completely unsuitable for roleplayers, who have a good chance of wanting to interrupt the execution, it wasn't tailored to munchkins either (whose first instinct is to loot the corpse before the headsman even leaves the platform).

Munchkins? Isn't that the term used for young players who powergame? Surely anyone who grew up poor's "free shit" instinct would kick in too XD

[Solifuge]

Double Post, all the way across the thread~

What does it mean?

[Solifuge]

Spoiler: Skyrim Rant Continued (click to show/hide)

Near every plot and quest forces you to make one specific "decision" to advance it. You join the Companions (Read: Fighters Guild), and they don't even consider that you wouldn't want to be a Werewolf; there is no option to say "Thanks, but no thanks guys," and continue down that questline, do more menial missions for the Guild, or even refuse and leave the Guild! They just sit in their damned secret cave over a bowl of wolf blood, waiting for the day you decide to come back and take a swig.

On top of that, the quests that don't force you into one choice (or rarely one of 2 choices) involve blitzing into some place and killing something... and even on the hardest setting this requires little more than hammering my mouse buttons. Other times you get a quest to go from where you are to someplace else, and either deliver/retrieving some item. There's no need for planning, finding creative ways to tackle problems, or anything like that... just walk, click a few times, walk more, click more, etc.

The environments are pretty, and can be really immersive... but after seeing 2 caves, 2 mountains, 2 plains, and 2 forests they start to blend together and get boring. The alternative is fast-travel teleporting around, which reduces the game to a series of dialogue options, clicks to stab things, rinse, dry, repeat. The whole game is like that... it's not about making choices, or exercising your brain and your character's body of skills to find your own way to tackle difficult scenarios. You're just expected to make this one "choice" and watch their game unfold. Rather than feeling like I'm discovering and telling my own story using the game as a medium, it's like I'm watching "Elder Scrolls: The Movie", where I have to push some buttons to advance a linear plot.

I don't know... as someone who grew up with the Elder Scrolls series, this has pretty much been another steady step away from everything I enjoyed about the series, and diminishes the gameplay in every way but NPC interaction and combat... and even that has arbitrary restrictions on things like blocking to play better on a console, and forces these immersion-breaking KILL-CAM cutscenes on me like I was playing Call Of Duty, or just beat a boss in Final Fantasy.

Rather than code a decent AI that can deal with players jumping to inaccessible locations and shooting them with spells or arrows (say, by pulling out or *gasp* seeking a bow of their own), they decide to remove any meaningful jumping ability. Where once we had a rich set of stats to customize our characters to be faster, stronger, more nimble, better spellcasters, or whatever... now we get points we can pump into either Hit Points and Mana (or if we hate ourselves and want to ruin our ability to beat any late-game enemies, Stamina).  The diverse series of magical effects like Levitation, Water-Walking or Breathing, Life Detection, Teleportation, and so on... once necessary to take on certain foes, solve certain puzzles, and reach certain areas, have been marginalized or completely scrapped in favor of More Ways To Make Bad Guys Die.

So yeah... the Senseless Scripted NPC Death bit was just the nail in the coffin for me. I hope their next effort gets a little closer to the exotic, open, adventurous feel of Morrowind. That's what made me love the series. At this point, I feel like I'm just playing their games out of a misguided sense of Brand Loyalty, and that will only carry me so far.

[monkeydancer]

Less Ways To Make Bad Guys Die.

FTFY.

I agree with most of your points, I sorely miss the stats, extra skills and all the coolest spells from morrowind (which is one of my favourite games ever), the multitude of factions (that actually required you to be good at their preferred skills!!!) that conflicted with each other. I don't understand why they took any of those out.

But the quests and dialogue weren't exactly groundbreaking in morrowind, and in spite of all its flaws I do really enjoy playing Skyrim. It just feels really fun to play for me, and that counts for a lot.

EDIT: Just read your earlier post and wow, I didn't realise that the scripted events like that execution are THAT scripted.

One thing that stands out to me playing Skyrim vs Morrowind is the quest log. Morrowind had a completely horrible-to-navigate journal (easily fixed with mods that make it pretty good), but it provided meaningful information and told you WHY you were going to kill those guys/fetch that item. Skyrim simply tells you what your next task in the quest is with no 'flavour' or context given. This is really jarring for me when I don't play for a few days because I'm busy, come back and check my quests, and I have no idea why I'm supposed to care.

Also, people in morrowind gave you directions and you had to listen and follow them! That was pretty great.

[Sensei]

A lot of the flavor dialogue also contained veiled hints on gameplay or as to where treasures lie, not to mention characterizing the plot further. You might get a lot of different viewpoints on the plot depending on who you ask- it usually worked like you started out going in one area and hearing one opinion (eg. the empire is unnecessary and oppressive in Morrowind) and then traveling and finding out that there's more to the story than you thought (eg. the empire is trying to stop the practice of slavery in Morrowind). Skyrim wasn't devoid of that but there wasn't as much, not with as much character.

[Zangi]

Using the search topic thing, I did not find 'malukah' anywhere... so I figure I should bring this up...

http://www.malukah.com/free/
Three songs of Skyrim relations sung by this bard.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FLQ4rACE-0&
This one is the above bard and another one doing a duo.

Listen and be in awe.

[Knight of Fools]

:O

/amazed