Let's review Skyrim for real

With the release of the Special Edition for Skyrim, I think it is about time I did a real review of Skyrim and its DLC content. The Good, the Bad, the Subjective and so forth.

So, to repeat a question I asked in my Fallout 4 review, where does one even start with an entity like Skyrim? It’s individual merits as a game? It’s relation to the previous installments of the Elder Scrolls series? Or that it seems to have ushered in an age of Open World games?

Well, the last option I will probably skip, because I don’t really care that much about the impact it had on the games industry. The other two options are more interesting, for me anyway.

To note, I will try to keep this review spoiler free, but I may slip up a time or two.

The Opening

Now, I said I would try to avoid spoiling anything, but, in my defense, the opening of the game is not a spoiler. It’s the fucking opening of the game.

One of the problems discussing the opening has to do with the Dragon attacking Helgen, because there is a real argument to be had about whether or not it should have been included. The pro side could say that establishing the Dragons as a threat this early in the game helps set the stage for the Main Questline. The ones against it could argue that it spoils the surprise for the rest of the game. Me, I don’t mind that it is there.

But what happens during the intro sequence is not as interesting as what happens at the end of it. I, and a lot of others, had a problem with just how involved you got with the fight against the Lord of Destruction in the intro to Oblivion, because the whole “help me save the world” thing is dumped on your lap immediately. So does this happen in Skyrim?

To put it simply, no, it doesn’t. You can start that storyline if you follow Ralof or Hadvar to Riverwood, but the gameworld opens before you get there, and they will give you a line about how the two of you should probably split up. So you’re free to fuck off to Falkreath or something if you want to avoid the Main Questline.

The opening in Skyrim establishes more than Morrowind’s do, but whether this is good or bad is up to personal taste. There was something kinda funny about being a prisoner pardoned by Emperor Uriel Septim VII on the condition that you’d report to one of his Blade agents. Only for you then to go off the rails, forget the whole thing and probably sell the package you were to deliver to random merchant X, without the Blades and Imperial Legion coming after you. Makes you wonder what the Emperor was thinking. It is also implied, or outright stated, that he has done this before, so maybe he hopes to turn Vvardenfell into Australia.

But, at the end of the day, the player in Skyrim is in Helgen when it is attacked by a Dragon (yes, I know who the big, black and bad dragon is, but I’m not naming it) and may or may not get involved in the mess that follows.

The story

Yes, with a lower case s. Apparently. I think the main storyline of Skyrim has some good ideas, but it is not as fleshed out or paced as well as I would hope. Still, not too bad a timepasser.

It does, however, seem to reward those who already know some stuff about the Nordic religion over those who don’t.

Setting

This is where most of the effort seems to have been put, at least when it comes to writing. Between the books, NPC dialogue, visual storytelling and drawing on the lore established in the previous games, Skyrim does quite a nice job establishing the setting. If one has a keen eye and ear for details, there is a lot to learn. And many things are not so simple as they originally appear. Religion, for example, or the civil war. Whatever you do, always remember that people and books talking about the civil war are biased or even outright lying. It is a good idea to gather as much information as you can and compare.

I really don’t want to go into too much detail about this though, because I think it is best experienced.

Guilds

There are four major factions in Skyrim, apart from the civil war questline; the Companions, the College of Winterhold, the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood.

I am glad to see the guilds being shaken up a bit since Oblivion, and I hope they do more with that in the future. With the Mages Guild having fallen apart and the Fighters Guild apparently not having a presence in Skyrim at this time, it opened for other perspectives, which is nice. I also like that the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood start in a less-than-stellar place, to reflect how things have changed for them.

However, it is important to say that the guild questlines are like the Main Quest in one important aspect; they have good ideas, but aren’t paced that well. I still consider them enjoyable, but in the interest of fairness and objectivity I will grant that point.

Freedom

Something I’ve ranted on quite a bit with Fallout New Vegas is that almost everything is tied to the Main Quest. Well, this is not the case in Skyrim. The option to skip everything regarding the main questline is there.

Now, there are some quests that are affected by this, of course. If you don’t advance long enough into the main questline, Dragons and Shouts are not enabled, and there are a few quests that are triggered after certain Main Quests are done. You are also unable to complete the civil war questline without doing the first stages of the Main Quest. If you don’t mind being unable to do these things, however, it is entirely optional.

The Levelling stuff

Talking about the stuff related to your character is where most of the comparisons to older games tend to take place. I think it is the simplest thing to compare between the games too.

One of the things that made many fans scream betrayal was the removal of attributes and classes, and I sort of understand why. They are so common in RPGs that they are expected to make an appearance in one way or another, and, more importantly, they were part of previous games in the series, so they were expected to make an appearance here too.

I think the knee-jerk reaction to their removal did a lot to sour the system from the word “go” for a lot of players. That is not to imply that Skyrim’s character system is some masterpiece, because it isn’t, but I don’t think it gets a fair consideration by a lot of fans of the older games. Nor do I think the attribute and class system of the older games gets the scrutiny it deserves in a lot of cases.

I touched on this in the my post about classes between Morrowind and Skyrim specifically, but I think it bears repeating. The attributes in Morrowind and Oblivion have way to high starting values compared to their max values. Even if you start with the low value of an attribute, 30, that is a meagre 5-7 levels (4 with grinding) behind someone starting with 50, in a game that goes to about level 50 (Oblivion) or 70 (Morrowind), and you get those levels returned to you in other attributes. You also increase attributes too often, in that you must increase 3 every time you level up. It doesn’t take a genius to see that this leads to a lot of blandly stated characters after a few levels.

There is also the matter of class skills and non-class skills not being differentiated in any way that affect their usefulness and make them unique.

But this is a review about Skyrim, so how does Skyrim do levelling? With the removal of classes and attributes, surely a lot must’ve changed. Eh, not really. Well, it does change in some aspects, of course, but the basic idea of picking a skill and getting to work to level up remains the same. You just aren’t forced to make that decision on the fly with little to no knowledge of how those skills will actually play out, like the previous games.

The attributes being removed and perks being added, however, does have a lot more gameplay impact. Or so people like to say.

If I am being real, I have a hard time seeing what the system in Skyrim is lacking compared to the older ones, beyond the specific implementation. Everything the attributes did remains in the game, they have just been worked into different perks, base stats or mechanics.

Take for instance willpower. In Morrowind it gave stamina (or fatigue as it was called, but I will just say stamina for simplicity) and a chance to resist certain types of magic. In Oblivion it gave stamina and increased your magicka regeneration. In Skyrim, you have magic resistance worked into the Alteration perk-tree and magicka regeneration in the Restoration perk-tree. Stamina is increased as a base-stat, and also happens to give some carry-weight if you do. Meaning that the stamina base stat also covers the non-damage elements of the strength attribute from previous game.

And there are things like this for everything. Damage is covered by perks in said weapon type, less staggering is a heavy armor trait, more health, stamina and magic is covered by the base-stats. Movement speed, which many points to as being removed, was worked into the sprint mechanic. If you have a high stamina, you can sprint a lot and therefor you can move very fast across the land. Similar thing happened with Hand-to-Hand, though to a lesser extent. You can increase your Hand-to-Hand damage in the heavy armor perk-tree, though sadly there are no power attacks to unlock for it.

Of course, none of this means someone has to like the implementation of said system. That remains subjective. However, I do think it is unfair to claim that Skyrim removed the effects of the attributes when they simply worked them into a new system. And given that it has both magicka regen and magic resistance, it worked both versions of willpower in, rather than just one of them.

One thing I fail to see the objections to, however, is that Skyrim allows for more specialization than Morrowind and Oblivion. Like I pointed to before, class skills and non-class skills behave the same way, as long as they have the same skill level. This is not the case with Skyrim.

Well, okay, there are no “class skills” for Skyrim, but we do have perks and perk-trees to allow us to pick the skills we like and want to get better at. And the simple fact at the end of the day is that the perks do more to differentiate the skills your character is supposedly defined by than the classes ever did. It also allows for fundamentally similar characters to level very differently, which really wasn’t possible with the attributes in previous games without intentionally picking suboptimal stats. And, hey, I can pick suboptimal base stats and perks in Skyrim too, so the previous systems doesn’t get bonus points for that.

However, as I alluded to earlier, I don’t think the levelling system in Skyrim is a masterpiece. The baseline mechanics seem to mostly be fine, but a lot of the perks are very basic and uninspired (like the attributes were). I still think the result is leagues above how it used to be, but I do hope they continue to experiment with the model. Which I think they will do. Fallout 4 shows, if nothing else, that they aren’t afraid to try new things with the character systems.

Characterstyles – Combat, Stealth and Magic

Combat, as far as mechanics go, have improved nicely. In addition to the improvements made between Morrowind and Oblivion, where the Dice-Roll model was replaced and player interaction was increased to allow for “power attacks” and active blocking, Skyrim also adds the option to bash an opponent, have the Dual Hand system and sprint.

The general idea behind the system as it currently works is that the player decides what to do and the character decides how effective that action is. And I think this works nicely.

Now, I know that there are many who do not like this level of player interaction, and that’s fine. But that is a decision BGS made regarding the series with Oblivion, so I will judge it on that. I will not judge it for not being a Dice-Roll system, for the same reason I won’t judge Pillars of Eternity for having a Dice-Roll system. It is simply not the thing the game tries to be.

I’ve seen some argue that the Dice-Roll model is “more complex” or “deeper”, but I have no idea what they are on about. I really do think any such evaluation has to be made on a system by system basis, not in principle.

People have made the argument that Morrowind’s combat is deeper though, and I know those people are talking out of an orifice more appropriately used in hardcore pornography.

I really do not see how having the damage of a weapon mostly static, then determining the effectiveness by how often you’re able to hit is “deeper” than having the accuracy static and the effectiveness determined by how high the damage gets. I don’t see how a chance to have a block trigger is “more complex” than deciding whether or not you want to block and have the character determine how that turns out.

Someone would probably talk something about the chance to dodge attacks, but that is actually present in Skyrim. The 100 skill level perk in the Light Armor skill gives you a chance to dodge incoming physical attacks. It is not readily available from the get-go, but you can’t say it isn’t there.

Stealth is alright in Skyrim. The NPCs seem smarter about it than in Oblivion and the Sneak skill have been revamped to give the player a bigger chance of actually killing someone from stealth. One of the problems with previous games was that a lot of enemies simply had too much health to allow for a proper stealth kill. High sneak also unlocks the ability to do a silent roll and pressure plates won’t trigger if you walk on them.

Magic, on the other hands, is more of a mixed bag. Mechanically, it has improved from previous games, benefiting from the Dual Hand system and perk trees nicely. However, there is a limited selection of spells available, and many of the old spell effects like Weakness to [Element/Magic], Fortify [Skill/Stat] and Damage [Health/Magicka/Stamina] (elemental damage is still in magic, however) are now exclusively found in potions.

Looking back, I think they wanted to remove a lot of the redundancy in the system by doing this. That said, Skyrim’s spell list still seems a bit short. That’s not to say there haven’t been some improvements. Wards, the passive perks, different secondary effects for fire/frost/shock, necromancy spells, spells to take control over other people’s summons, rune and cloak spells does offer some variety unavailable in previous titles. But the selection of spells seems underwhelming.

Graphics

Don’t come to me for that, go look at some screenshots or gameplay videos. I’m sure there’ll be some out there by now.

DLC

There are 3 DLCs for Skyrim; Dawnguard, Hearthfire and Dragonborn. They all come with the Special Edition, so you have no reason to not pick them up. But I can say a few words on them anyway.

Dawnguard is a questline that adds a number of location to the Skyrim mainland, not unlike the Knights of the Nine for Oblivion. It introduces a new vampire form available to the player and rebalances werewolves.

Hearthfire is a small DLC that adds 3 locations where one can build homes, though it is important to remember that this is not settlement building in the Fallout 4 style. But they are nice little settlements regardless. It also adds the option of adopting homeless children if one has a home for them.

Dragonborn is the largest of the three and takes place on Solstheim, an island north-east of Skyrim’s mainland. This is the same location as Morrowind’s Bloodmoon DLC and people who played that will see how much the island has changed in the 200 years since we went there. It has, like many BGS DLCs, some of the best story and setting elements. Highly recommended to spend some time on the island.

Conclusion

I could write a lot more on Skyrim, but it’d mostly be in spoiler-territory. The TL;DR is that I do recommend Skyrim.

An attempt to review Skyrim

Where does one even begin with an entity like Skyrim? Do you go by the same lists of individual merits like you would a standalone game, or do one primarily see it in regards to the rest of the Elder Scrolls series? Or maybe start with the fact that the five years after its release has brought a seemingly never ending stream of (more or less) openworld sandboxes?

Skyrim was, in my opinion, the last truly great game Bethesda Game Studios made. And, I know, I am beginning to sound like the bitches who complain about how the Elder Scrolls have been “dumbed down” since Morrowind (which I have a hard time understanding the reasoning behind, because Morrowind is a stale, shallow game that is redeemed by its world-building). And I am sorry I do come across like one of those bitches, but Fallout 4 (FO4) simply do not engage me the same way.

Bethesda Game Studios has a bad habit of not learning the correct lessons from their previous installments. When the Radiant Story (RS) in Skyrim didn’t ignite people’s pubes in excitement, what they should have done is to tone that aspect down, not have more of it. It is really quite annoying to see the extent to which RS is used in the game.

I do like a lot of the things they did with FO4. I like the return to the more traditional outlook for the Brotherhood of Steel (BoS), while being a more engaged player in the development of an area. It strikes me as a good way to marry the ideas of the traditional and Lyons interpretations of their mythos. I like the Institute and their rather unambiguous moral character. I like that the Railroad, while having good intentions, appear entirely detached from the reality of the synth situation, both as it pertains to who they are and what threat they can pose. I like the Minutemen, in that it makes sense for me that people would organize themselves.

I like that there is not an obviously wrong side to the conflict of the main story, I like that it is not about the mustache twirling evil Enclave. I like that the BoS and Institute both engage in some messed up things. I like the Commonwealth Wasteland, with its creatures and people.

Gameplay wise, it is far stronger than FO3 was. Guns handle better, the customization of equipment is fucking awesome and they made a very meaningful distinction between regular armor and Power Armor, which I think was about frikkin’ time. The levelling is, well, it’s there. Kinda. I can’t say whether or not I like it, even now. It’s just a new way to do it. And, honestly, I’d rather they try this stuff than never evolve.

In short, I have a lot of good things to say about FO4. So why don’t I consider it alongside Skyrim, FO3, Morrowind and even Oblivion? It is entirely possible that I am just weary of the BGS style sandbox RPGs, but I don’t think that is it. I still have some fun in FO4, running around shooting people, after all.

There are a few prongs to the reasons why the game leaves my mind almost the instance I turn it off, unlike Skyrim which made me go over things and plan what I wanted to do next when I turned it off again. Or what sort of character I wanted to roll next, because I knew there would be a next character. In FO4, on the other hand, I have 1 character. Total. Never restarted the game.

Indeed, it is so hard for me to stay with FO4 that this review has been in the making ever since the release of Nuka-World. Comparing to my “The Orderless Paladin” article, which I wrote in a couple of hours after thinking it though a little bit beforehand, that is quite bad.

FO4 breaks tradition on one thing (not as jarring an article shift as it seems right now, trust me), compared to previous BGS titles: Expansions. As much as I dislike what they did to Cyrodiil in Oblivion, the Shivering Isles is a fucking awesome place with an awesome character driving the plot: Sheogorath. They have tried to recapture his awesomeness in both Skyrim and the Elder Scrolls Online without much success. As much as I love Skyrim, Dragonborn surpasses it in most regards. Bloodmoon and Tribunal for Morrowind are great.

Then there is Far Harbor, Automatrons and Nuka-World. Eh… Well, I liked Far Harbor until it kinda just stopped with no real ending. It was atmospheric and brought up some interesting questions about the player character. I like the ideas behind Nuka-World. Automatron is, in a word, lackluster.

I think Nuka-World is a micro-scale example of why I think FO4 do not engage me. On paper the thing is fucking brilliant, but the story elements and lack of interesting quests makes the game a lot shittier than the sum of its parts.

For the main game, one of the things that really drive me nuts is that you’re given too much investment in following the main quest. This is something I touched on a bit for my New Vegas rant, but it is important for a game to understand what it is trying to be. This is why it is such a nice detail that Hadvar/Ralof suggest to split ways after Helgen, just as the road forks off in two directions. Your character doesn’t have any personal investment, you just escaped from a Dragon attack. Getting the fuck out of dodge is a perfectly reasonable conclusion.

And, yes, FO3 suffers a bit from the same issue as FO4 here. Oblivion not as much, as your character do not necessarily have the motivation to oppose Dagon or help the Septims. But I think it is a major problem when the game gives me a sandbox with a great deal to explore, after it has established that my character’s child has been kidnapped.

Enjoy the sandbox nature of the game and be the worst fucking parent ever, or ignore most of the game running after the kid? I get that BGS wants to do better storytelling, I do. It is necessary as more and more developers branch out into the open world game niche. Like the Witcher 3, which pulled off the whole “looking for your daughter(well, sort-of adopted daughter, in that Geralt loves her like a daughter)” story in a sandbox game. Man, Witcher 3 is an awesome game. I think it is the first nominee for the “Best Game” award I have played. It has fun gameplay, great storytelling, likeable characters, an interesting world… you name it. I hope it will be topped, because that means more absolutely fucking awesome games. But back to FO4.

When it comes to Nuka-World the story elements are tones down. You’re basically given an offer to become the boss of some Raider gangs and has to help them conquer the rest of the Nuka-World. There is a safari zone, bottling plant, wild west place, castle for children and a futuristic place. Nice spread, on paper this would be brilliant. Shame they didn’t put any content in these places to make them interesting. I don’t think I have ever played a BGS expansion with so little content in it. Even fucking Knights of the Nine, which is just a questline DLC added to Oblivion, felt more fleshed out than this.

At the end of the day, I’d describe Nuka-World like this: Pick it up if you want to kill mostly the same enemies to new scenerie.

This is what happens when I try to review Skyrim. I can talk about specific things in Skyrim, like how I think people are oversimplifying the change in religion that has occurred, or the civil war, but I can’t write an actual review for it without going off about something else.

I hate Fallout: New Vegas

I continue my trend of catching up to 2016 after covering one thing in Skyrim by going back a few years to Obsidian Entertainment’s take on a Bethesda Game Studios RPG. Or their take on a BioWare RPG. Whichever strikes your fancy, really, since it fucks up both.

Now, let me start of by saying that I tend to really enjoy Bethesda and BioWare RPGs. Even Oblivion, which I can’t fucking stop using as a prime example (because it fucking is) of missed potential, have given me hours upon hours of enjoyable gameplay because it had shit worth doing not attached to the main quest. Indeed, the main quest was maybe 10% of the total content amount in the game. Maybe. Probably more like 5%.

I enjoy linear and semi-linear stories too, like your typical BioWare RPGs, where everything major is in some way tied to your main quest, with a few side quests strewn in between. I can forgive stale repetitive gameplay if the world draws me in, like in Morrowind. So why do I hate, and I really do hate, New Vegas?

On paper the game looks absolutely brilliant. Post-apocalyptic New Vegas is the stage for a conflict between Caesar’s Legion from the East and the New California Republic from the West, with a pre-war genius trying to keep control of the New Vegas he built. It set’s BioWare characters and storytelling in a Bethesda sandbox, while improving on some of the niggles of Fallout 3’s gameplay. Another thing that makes perfect sense on paper is for Donald Trump to open Trump’s Mortgage shortly before the housing market collapsed. That is to say, it only makes sense until you actually think it through.

It is no secret that Bethesda Game Studios are not great at the whole “storytelling” aspect of developing a game. We saw them give a real good attempt with Fallout 4, and a token entry with Fallout 3, which were anticlimactic as hell. Much like New Vegas, come to think of it. But Fallout 3&4 have something NV do not: The option to fucking escape from the main story.

See, the thing that actually makes a BGS RPG is 1) the freedom, and 2) the world-building. These two ingredients are why Morrowind, Skyrim, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and to a lesser extent Fallout 4 are good games. BGS knows (or at least used to know. Cough, F4, cough) that their engine and approach to gameplay does not lend itself to lengthy conversations directly engaged in by the player. This is why all the best dialogue with, say, Ulfric Stormcloak is between him and Galmar Stone-Fist and not with the player. You can actually have the two of them react in some way to what the other person is saying.

What it does lend itself to is letting the player explore and to let you build a world. The former because it gives you a shit-ton of locations to explore and the latter because you can put books, journals, mini-quests, visual storytelling, interesting loot/rewards and more NPC to NPC dialogue in these places as the player murders their way through legions of whoever is unfortunate enough to be in their way.

If you want to play a game that lends itself to story-telling, I’d recommend most BioWare RPGs over any BGS RPG any day of the week. They use a very different engine, with more linear stories and more character focus. They also remove a lot of the freedom associated with BGS games, have more “cinematic” conversation systems and a very, very strong focus on the overarching story. Except in Dragon Age: Origins. That was an “unfortunate coincidence”-fest I might have to revisit in a post of its own someday.

The point I am ultimately making, since it obviously needs to be spelled out, is that the different game systems and designs lend itself to different things. When you remove the cinematic effect (which in older games, and some new ones, were given to you in textbox descriptions, which is fine), you remove a lot of the humanity of a character. You remove the option to showcase a lot of their quirks visually. Like Jack’s restlessness and unease and pain in Mass Effect 2, which are made more impactful and believable by the way she moves when interacting with Sheperd. Boone stopping you in the middle of nowhere to engage in a “who can go without blinking the longest” contest, while standing perfectly stiff, is not engaging, no matter how interesting and touching his story is. They do that shit in Oblivion and Fallout 3 too, but at least has the courtesy of being fucking brief about it.

This is, in my opinion, the worst of the flaws NV makes. The thing that cannot be fixed, because it is not a matter of the furniture (don’t worry, I have plenty of things to complain about there too), but of the foundation of the house. Even if it looked lovely inside, I am not buying a house that is collapsing in on itself. Or, since I did when I bought NV, I will complain about it.

The TL;DR of this first part about NV is this: Forcing me into endless amounts of Oblivion and Fallout 3 style conversations is a quick way to get me really fucking bored. Now to throw the furniture (and babies in bathwater) into a burning fire.

As I can’t stop ragging on about when giving my opinions on Morrowind and Oblivion (and later on when I get around to talking about Skyrim), world building is really fucking important to me. It can make or break a game by itself. And I really fucking hate the world building in New Vegas.

The first obvious problem is Caesar’s Legion. Not only are they a rip off of something I am really fucking sick of, the Romans, but they are also so mind bogglingly evil that it is hard to comprehend that they were introduced as one of the two major parts of a conflict that could be really interesting. They enslave people, force women into bearing children, force men to fight, destroy any semblance of self-identity and engages in torture, terrorism and genocide. And this is only by their own description of what they do. At least Skyrim’s Civil War keeps the obviously evil group as a looming threat, not a side to pick. Heck, the Thalmor being mind bogglingly evil isn’t even fully established in the canon of the series yet, just interpretations based on a former developer’s writings that are not part of the games.

I also hates the casino families. Nero (really going for the subtle approach, Obsidian) and his Gamorra are your stereotypical Italian gangsters, Benny and the Chairmen are stereotypical American gangsters and the white masked freaks are high society perverts and cannibals. Nice spread, shame only the least fleshed out one is the most interesting. Hint, it is the ones eating people. You’d think I didn’t have to specify that, but a lot of people seem to like this game, so I am apparently living on a planet of morons. Once upon time I started cooking food for a living and prayed to the Eight and One that the waiters and waitresses I worked with were not representative of humanity’s overall spread in intelligence, but the Eight and One apparently hate me.

In a short summation, because there isn’t a lot to say about them, I find the Boomers to be very silly, the NRC to be boring, the BoS to be poorly executed and the Followers of the Apocalypse to be numbingly dull. The slums outside of New Vegas and the Enclave veterans are alright-ish, but there are like 3 things to do there, so that’s nowhere near close enough to make up for the boredom the rest of the game leaves me with.

Most of the major sidequests are, in some way, tied to the main quest. And I absolutely hate this too. This is where the mixing of BGS and BioWare game styles really begin to run into one another. I do not play an openworld sandbox RPG (that is not the Witcher 3) to be forced to play the main questline and quest in a particular order. I play is for freedom. The linearity of FO:NV is further emphasized by the jerkish enemy placement that steer you in 1 path around the world that just happens to be the one with the most NPCs explaining what is going on in the world. You can sneak through these high level areas, but you’re not rewarded for it. You just end up in areas before you have the gear and level to deal with them. Whop-de-fucking-do.

On the topic of quests, most of them seem to be designed to give the middle finger to anyone who do not care to have a high speechcraft skill. And don’t get me wrong, I think that having a viable path through the game based around the ability to be persuasive is fine. What I am not fine with is making it so that you fuck up a quest in some way or another if you don’t have that skill on your character. Making something viable is not the same thing as making it the only fucking solution that doesn’t resemble a “thank you for trying” award. Name me 1 quest in the game that does not net you a benefit with speechcraft that is unobtainable otherwise.

The character could be interesting, I don’t know. I don’t know because I am taken out of the immersion with a bucket of cold water by the dialogue system past the 2 minute mark, so the game wouldn’t even get points for that if they were the best written characters I had ever encountered. Which they are not. Which I know because I can still hear what they are saying after the immersion has taken the first train to Sweden. Stereotypes and flat-faced popculture-references, a reliance on “silly mutants” and a Companion quest system that, should you actually want to get to know them, will miss no chance to mess with you as you need a bloody spreadsheet to not miss the triggers. And don’t get me started on the DLCs. Too late, I suppose, so let’s give each of them a quick look.

Dead Money: Oh, great, a claustrophobic heist mission in an open world game. Exactly what I want. No, New Vegas, I do not want more linear shit from you and I definitely don’t want more casinos.

Big MT: Running around an experimental facility while a bunch of mad scientist robots shouts nonsense at you in really annoying tones of voice. Hint: It worked for Portal because 1) it was short, 2) it had a strong central game mechanic that was incredibly (blatant brown-nosing) well implemented, and 3) it was clever and funny. It does not work in Old World Blues because I want to tear of my ears 5 minutes into the first conversation and things are only going downhill from there when they introduce the most annoying enemies from New Vegas again. Oh, and don’t try to pass it off as “original”. Running around an experimental science lab gone wrong is not original.

Honest Hearts: It was alright. I think. I remember engaging in a little tribal warfare and that was pretty much it. Honestly, I remember next to nothing about it, so I know for a fact that it did neither engage nor infuriate me. So it was probably alright. If I’m charitable.

Lonesome Road: Oh, great, retroactively unmaking every roleplaying decision the player has made by attaching a past to them in the last expansion of the game. Great way to end things guys. At least FO 3&4 give you your backstory at the start and don’t invite you to make up your own on a supposedly near-blank canvass. Oh, and then there is the dull-voices antagonist that is inexplicitly obsessed with the player because you changed the course of history for an area you just heard about for the first time like 2 hours ago. And this place too is very linear and I have ragged on about how well that goes with the engine four or five time by now.

DLC TL;DR: It does not fix any of the game’s faults, nor give you the option of a more interesting place to spend your game time. Like the Shivering Isles for Oblivion did, by adding an open chunk of land with bright colors, weird people and its own wildlife to hunt to your heart’s content roughly one fourth the size of the original landmass. Which is pretty damn good in terms of value.

I suppose a couple of positives towards the end are mandatory, if only in interest of being fair minded: There are a couple of improvements on FO3’s gameplay, with the added armor typing, adding of a threshold for weapons and armor condition before they start affecting performance and food crafting. The added weapon and armor variety is nice.

Naturally, with that, we also have to mention that for the first few months, the game had technical issues the same way a child rapist has a few personality flaws. Most of which was fixed in post, but fucking hell that launch resembled the Skyrim launch for PS3. It just happened across all platforms.

The Elder Scrolls: On Classes

 “Don’t fix what is not broken.” – A common claim. A claim I don’t disagree with, in principle. But I do have to disagree with it being applied to the classes and levelling in Morrowind and Oblivion. Because “broken” is the only way I have of describing it.

All I really have to say about the change in character levelling system when it comes to Skyrim from the previous games is: “What change?”

A surprising statement, perhaps, until you consider how these systems worked and how little that actually changed with Skyrim. In Morrowind and Oblivion (and Daggerfall, but fuck Daggerfall and its shit interface, RNGenerated world and quests), you pick a selection of skills at the start of your journey that will decide what levels you up. Not that actually defines your character, since there is no difference between a class skill and non-class skill of the same level. They just decide what levels you up and get a bonus to experience gain to match this. In Skyrim you just go out in the world and level by using whatever skill you want. Well, okay, there was one major change: Attribute bonuses when levelling became perk points when levelling.

Attributes start out semi-unique and, through a combination of high starting values compared to max value and how frequent you increase them, very quickly become just the same as everyone else with a remotely similar character. A warrior in Morrowind or Oblivion, regardless of whether they focus on offense or defense or a mix, will have roughly the same numbers in Strength, Endurance, Agility and Speed at all levels. Hybrid characters that spread themselves thin eventually end up more powerful (usually anyway), because the low caps on attributes really do not reward specialization.

Perks, on the other hand, very directly forces you to choose between what you want to do that level and characters that outwardly focus on the same skills (say, a warrior in heavy armor with 1-handed) can vary quite a bit. One might focus on defense and use a shield, with high investment in armor and blocking skills, while the other might be dual wielding and focus much more on the efficiency of his weapons. One might have very high health while the other have a mix of stamina and health. Hybrid characters spread themselves thin in this system too, perhaps even more so, given the limited number of perk points compared to perks.

Putting it like this: Your attributes can have pretty high numbers across the board on a “high level” character in Oblivion and Morrowind, even without grinding. You can also easily max every single attribute by level 50 if you do grind. In Skyrim, you need to be level 250-something to get all the perks. Something that is possible with the Legendary thing added, but still takes a great deal more time and grinding than reaching level 50 (regular max level in Oblivion, and some 20 levels below regular max level in Morrowind). No matter how you twist and turn it, there is simply more specialization of your character going on in Skyrim, because of the more limited perkpoints.

Now that I have poked that hornet’s nest, let’s move on to the topic I want to cover more thoughtfully and that is the classes in Morrowind and Oblivion. And why I don’t think they are worth defending. And we’re not just talking implementation, but in principle.

On implementation, I will say this; it’s shit. The lack of differentiating things between class and non-class skills and the related attribute problem makes it a laughably bad and shallow system. The attributes also don’t really do anything interesting.

For example, if I want to create an agility based, rather than strength based, warrior, I am punished for that. It is not that I am just doing less damage per hit, but I am not receiving anything useful in return for this. Agility gives a minor boost in accuracy and dodge ability in Morrowind and reduced stagger in Oblivion. And both games give a little stamina bonus. In Oblivion, it also gives some bow damage, but that is irrelevant to a warrior character.

In Morrowind, the dodge is nice, I guess, if very inconsistent. But the accuracy is rather quite inconsequential compared. Your primary accuracy comes from the skill in use itself and is already generally reliable by skill-level 50 (70+ for high level enemies like Umbra). Given that starting values for Major Skills in Morrowind range from 30(no bonuses) to 50(Redguard, combat specialization, Long Blade as a Major Skill), this is generally not a problem.

In Oblivion, staggering is nice to avoid, but this too is not very much in return for the sacrifice of the only attribute that increases melee damage. And carry weight. On top of that, Strength also gives stamina. And then there is the biggest problem of them all: I don’t need to make a choice between them, in either of the games. An Agility based warrior is going to be weaker than a Strength, Endurance and Agility based warrior. Which in turn is weaker than a Strength, Endurance, Agility and Speed based warrior. Etc. All of which is easily achieved in the system with little grinding. Hell, unless you intentionally go for suboptimal stats, it is the inevitable result of levelling a warrior character.

But this is not about implementation. Not really, anyway. Most would agree, in my experience, that the levelling system is hardly something to boast about even if they do prefer it over the (mostly the same) system in Skyrim. Which is not so much a different room in the house as just shuffling some furniture around.

The thing I dislike most with the class system in Morrowind and Oblivion, which says a lot given how much I hate the implementation whose only saving grace is “not being that much of a hassle”, is the core ideas underlying it. The fact that it is essentially a class-less system with unnecessary restrictions and faffing attached.

“Unnecessary restrictions?” you ask, thinking about how most class systems do impose restrictions that are, ultimately, arbitrary. “Just look at how many games, like Dragon Age, has decided for the player that Rogues use one of these 2 types of weapons and only this sort of armor. A lot of RPGs does shit like that and I don’t hear you complaining about them.”

Which is true, a lot of RPGs do impose such restrictions, but they are not “unnecessary” in the same sense. Most games I know of that have a class-system for your character, regardless of how free or limited the player is in outfitting them with arms and armor, tend to use the classes to differentiate and specialize.

If we continue with the Dragon Age examples (a system I think has had the wrong evolution regarding equipment freedom since the first one), let’s focus a moment on Origins. Between Warriors and Rogues, there is a bit of overlap, specifically in the archery and dual wielding skills. Does that mean that a Warrior who pick up sword and dagger will be the same as a Rogue who picks up sword and dagger? Nope. Even assuming the two characters are equipped the same, there is still going to be some fundamental differences between them. And all of these changes come from the underlying differences the classes work with.

Warriors have higher health and higher base stats like damage , with talents like Taunt, Disengage and Death Blow. They have the Reaver, Champion, Templar and Berserker specializations to choose from. Rogues have a higher number of secondary skills like Stealth and Poison Making, the ability to Backstab when flanking an enemy and talents like Dirty Fighting, Coup de Grace and Lethality. They have access to the Ranger, Bard, Assassin and Duelist specializations. These are quite significant differences even when assuming the same equipment, let alone what sort of differences in equipment these differences encourages.

Heck, let’s even take a quick look at a class system that does not impose any more equipment restrictions than the Elder Scrolls: Pillars of Eternity. Each class can equip whatever they want and this may or may not be encouraged by how their skills work. The Paladin, if designed to deal damage, is not overly hindered by a 2-handed weapon and medium/heavy armor, since they focus on high damage auto attacks, high base defenses and the occasional Flames of Devotion nuke to take down priority targets. A Barbarian, on the other hand, has skills that rely on duration (like Frenzy) and this supports quicker attacks for maximum effect. Quicker attacks are easiest to achieve with little to no armor and fast weapons like Hatchets and Daggers. You can switch the equipment of the two and it probably won’t be that bad, but you’re going to have to change the playstyle a bit on both of them. And even in the same equipment, they will play differently due to the fundamentals of their classes.

Those bright bastards among you might realize where I am then going to go with the criticism of the Elder Scrolls class system as seen in Morrowind and Oblivion. It imposes restrictions regarding what allows you to level up, without rewarding those restrictions with anything unique to that class. And this is one of the things that makes me say that the system in Skyrim is leagues above Morrowind and Oblivion, even as poorly implemented as it is. Investing in a skill in Skyrim actually differentiates it from other fundamentally similar skills.

If I, for whatever reason, have the same skill level in Blade and Blunt in Oblivion, it does not matter which is my class skill. They will perform equally well. If we just put the Blade and Blunt skills into Skyrim’s system (ignoring for a moment that they made a better separation with 1-handed and 2-handed), the one I have invested perk points in (Skyrim’s equivalence of a “class skill”), will have significantly more to offer me in terms of efficiency. Even if the skill level is the same. Hell, even if the skill level of the one I haven’t invested perks in is higher the one with the investment will perform better.

In short, I think that if you are to have classes in a game, I want there to be tangible differences in the mechanics to differentiate them from one another. Oblivion and Morrowind does not do this, therefor I think having a class system at all is entirely superfluous and counterproductive. The Elder Scrolls had to either remove classes to keep the general approach in gameplay or give unique skills/talents/mechanics to each class to keep a class system if they wanted to move away from that awful mess. Me, I am glad they saw that it was a mess and made a choice.

I have to admit, I would also have liked to see a Skyrim with more traditionally restrictive classes. Though I doubt there would have been any less outcry about that than it has been about the removal of the old system. Well, in name anyway. In practice Skyrim lets you level your character the same exact way as previous titles: Pick a skill and get to work. It just does it with less shit attached to it.

Let's Review: The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

After a short post about safe spaces, what could possibly be more relevant than a review of a video game? And not just any video game, but one which the 15^th anniversary is next year! Well, okay, with the upcoming release of the Special Edition for Skyrim, I am sure those of us interested in the game will end up discussing the merits of it compared to Morrowind. It happened with Oblivion and it happened the first time Skyrim was released, and will likely happen with every Elder Scroll release until the end of times. So let’s look at this mysterious game from the early 2000s.

As with any Elder Scrolls game, I am at a loss where to even begin pulling strings when attempting to untangle the morbidly obese ball of yarn. Do I start with the story and see where it goes or do I look at the good and bad? I think I just answered my own question there, as the story and world-building is the good. And I rather end it on a low-note. So let’s begin with the story.

Story

Now, if you are one of those people who will be furious about getting a soon-to-be 15 year old game spoiled for you, you should probably skip this part of the review. Don’t worry, I will make a new heading when I begin to talk about the world-building. Consider yourself spoiler-warned.

The basic outline of the main story line in Morrowind is really quite simple. The Emperor has an obsession with a prophecy involving the “Nerevarine”, an ancient Dunmer hero reborn, and has scoured his prisons for someone sort-of matching the role. You are one of these people, so you are sent to Vvardenfell, an island in Morrowind, and you’re sort-of-but-not-really expected to try to fulfil this prophecy. I say “not really” because, despite having his Imperial Legion and a host of spies in most settlements, the Emperor never uses any of that to try to force you, should you (as I usually do) simply ignore this request from the most powerful man on the continent. Thinking back on it, I get this feeling that he never actually expected you to be the Nerevarine and that he might have been in a charitable mood and felt like pardoning someone.

In either case, you have to learn you are the Nerevarine, then are not, then are again before it is all over, all the while a mysterious man from the past of the Tribunal Gods spreads his Divine Disease and the Sixth House Cult to the corners of Vvardenfell. It is a long sightseeing tour of the island, where you will meet a lot of Dunmer with opinions on you and what degree of fraud they are dealing with. And it’s good.

The story is on a pretty slow boil where most of the stuff goes to gathering information for the Emperor’s local, elderly Spymaster and to pass the tests of the Nerevarine for the three Great Houses and the four Ashlander tribes. As a side-note here, they added a neat little detail for this (admittedly tedious on the 3^rd or 4^th play through) part of the main questline. If you are over level 20 and has 50 or higher Reputation, you get to skip the tests. Because being a celebrity apparently means I get to just declare myself the reincarnated Nerevar, no proof necessary.

After you are the Nerevarine (for realsies this time, no takebacks or anything), you have to gather some magical stuff so that you can sever the Main Baddie’s connection to some other magical stuff. You talk to a god who is kinda responsible for why the Main Baddie is so bad and go on to kill the guardians of the magical stuff you need.

Those of you following this will probably have had at least one voice in your head shouting “This is a traditional Hero’s Journey in a pretentious haircut! What can possibly be so good about that overused trope?” and the answer is pretty damn simple.

The Pretentious Haircut

As you will learn later in this review, I can’t stop myself from hating on most of the stuff that is in this game, so why do I hundreds of hours on this game in the last 5 years alone, not to even try to figure out how many hours between 2002 and now?

What Morrowind does best is creating a world with scale and identity and nuance and probably some other buzzwords that probably don’t mean what you think they mean. Most quests, be they in the main story line or otherwise, tell you something about how things are in Vvardenfell. You’ll learn who are friends and enemies, how modern Imperial culture is mixing with the orthodox Dunmer culture, what role the Temple and Great Houses play in the politics and any other thing you could want to know.

Morrowind is really where the Elder Scrolls series as most people know it began. Between Daggerfall and Morrowind, the adventure game Redguard began to add changes to the lore to make Tamriel more of its own thing, but it was first in Morrowind we saw those changes expanded upon.

I know I am going through this aspect of the game really quickly, but I think the world-building is something one has to experience for oneself. Also, I have stuff I want to complain about. But the main thing to take from this review is that, for a lot of us, the world-building will forever excuse the faults Morrowind has as a game. Yes, that was a TL;DR in the middle of the review. Livin’ on the edge, yo! Do people even say “yo” anymore? Fuck…

Gameplay

Holy Blessings of the Triune God of Man! By Hjalti, Zurin and Wulfharth, say it isn’t so!

Ten points if you know who I am talking about above. But, seriously, the gameplay of Morrowind has not exactly aged like fine wine. More like milk. And I wouldn’t confidently say that it wasn’t past its expiration date when it came out on the store shelves in the first place. Your movements are clunky, you get stuck on seemingly everything and combat is a fucking chore. At the beginning of the game you will probably think this is a difficult game, but it is just tricking you. While starting off on a nice uphill struggle, you will soon wonder why it was replaced with slave boys feeding you grapes. Magic, while offering a great deal of spell variety, is clunky as fuck with its cast times and it will take most of your magical energy if you want to kill anything larger than a rat. Stealth is a joke and all three main playstyles has a point of no return, when any challenge to be had has to be sought out in the DLC areas of Bloodmoon and Tribunal, which constitute maybe 15% of the total game content.

Character stuff

So who is the player? Whoever you want them to be. Within certain limits anyway. With 10 races, 2 genders (something for you SJWs to get your panties in a twist about, I’m sure), 13 birthsigns, 21 predefined classes and the option to create your own, there is a lot to choose from. Well, in theory anyway. Most classes with a shared main focus will play largely the same and the classes do not offer anything unique to your character. They just decide which skills start with higher values and determine your level. You can still master any non-class skill.

Between having to upgrade three of your eight attributes every level, bonus points to them depending on skills raised and the low max value compared to their starting point, the “unique” stat distribution you start with will disappear pretty damn quickly. There is also no variety for builds, unless you intentionally pick suboptimal stats.

Strength and endurance, with speed, agility, willpower or intelligence as a side depending on your particular build, will always be the best for a warrior. Willpower, intelligence etc. for a mage. Speed and agility for a rogue.

You might argue “but what if I make a swordsman using speed and agility, eh?” Well, that will probably work, if for no other reason than the general lack of difficulty in the game, but ultimately you’re just playing an inferior version of a strength and endurance swordsman. Attack speed is static and the dice-roll way the combat works in isn’t good with melee based hit’n’run. So you’ll do less damage and can take less of a beating. Nor does it actually change the way you play the character. You either whack people… or whack people doing slightly less damage.

Various weapons have different damage stats depending on how you move when attacking, but they are just damage stats. They are like more tedious, less interesting versions of the “power attacks” that were added in Oblivion. A function you can ignore by turning on the “always use best attack” feature in the options menu. But even if you don’t, it’s easy to use the best attack anyway, if a bit immersion breaking. I have to move forward to thrust? I am pretty sure the human body is capable of performing a thrust standing still or moving sideways, thank you very much.

The birthsigns have some fun ideas, but are about as balanced as a hot pancake to the face is subtle. Ranging from completely fucking you over (see the Lord) to fucking everyone else over (see anything with an attribute bonus) to seemingly balanced (warrior, mage and thief), they will probably have a decent effect on your character. Unless you pick one of the balanced ones, since they fade into obscurity pretty quickly.

The races are about as balanced as the birthigns in this game, with Nord, Redguard and Breton with their useful resistances and racial powers on top and High Elves with their inclusive set of weaknesses on the bottom. Everything else is somewhere else in between.

Exploration

This is something Morrowind is, in my opinion, a mixed bag on. There are numerous treasures and unique items to be found when exploring, be it caves or the insides of wealthy people’s properties, but at the same time most of the caves and such in the game are not unique. You are going to be very familiar with the layout of caves, velothi towers, Dwemer ruins and Dunmer strongholds, even the ones you never visited, before you are done with this game. It is not quite as bad as Oblivion in this aspect, because there is quests and interesting loot to find (at least in some of them), and there are some additional caves with something unique about them, but mostly they are very similar in their layouts and aesthetic.

The landscapes you are exposed to outside of dungeoneering are much better (dated graphics aside), and offer a nice variety of grasslands, ashlands, various settlements with their own styles suited for their environments.

Guilds

Morrowind has lots of Guilds and factions to join. Not quite as many as Daggerfall, but far more than Oblivion and Skyrim. Does that automatically make the Guilds better? Not really.

Something that is important to keep in mind for anyone going back to Morrowind from Oblivion and/or Skyrim, is that the factions do not focus on an overarching story the same way as later games did. They are mostly unrelated quests hoarded into a faction and given a coat of paint to belong there. And there is nothing inherently wrong with this, as it is a nice way to flesh out the world a bit and contextualize random quests. But they aren’t stories.

There is one special mention though, the Fighters Guild. Probably my favorite faction storyline in any TES game. Not my favorite storyline, but faction storyline. It marries proper “guild work” (as opposed to the Mages Guild in Oblivion) with an overarching plot that rewards those who pay attention to detail, while giving the player agency in the story, as opposed to being a “yesman” at the whims of the writers. What is the story about? Go play the damned questline and you’ll see.

Honorable mentions

What else is there to say? Spellcrafting? It works, but the spellsystem is so damn clunky to use regardless. Infinite training per level? I don’t care either way about this, to be honest, though it makes branching out of your “class” ridiculously easy. Since, you know, money is not something you will run short on in Morrowind after the first few levels.

Rating

Your TL;DR is in another paragraph.