Who's Excited For Skyrim?

[ZombyWoof]

The little bit of Daggerfall I played I didn't enjoy, but I very consciously didn't enjoy that because of hardware limitations. It's kind of the reason I have yet to play through the Fallout games and why I didn't like Chronotrigger... and why I could never go back and play Silent Hill. They just look so ugly and clunky.

If someone remade Daggerfall with an updated engine I would almost certainly love it for all the reasons I really loved Morrowind and enjoyed Oblibbions.

I also will constantly say about Oblibbions what I say about Lord of the Rings:

See, LotR were probably good movies. But compared to the books they were utter rubbish to me. I can't judge LotR: The Movies separate from LotR: The Books, and it really, really hurt my enjoyment of the movies. That being said every single time I think of a complaint about LotR: The Movies I end up with "But this is how it happened in the books!" "But this scene missed the entire POINT of the similar scene in the books!"

Oblibbions was almost certainly a very good game. I enjoyed it a lot. But for reference I have easily logged over a thousand hours of gameplay in Morrowind and have purchased it on three separate occasions. I have taken the time to acquire 90% of the books in that game and read almost all of them. I can still fire up my XBox version, my old save in which I'm filthy stinking rich, and have a blast just roaming around looking at things... and usually do until the game crashes like a freight train.

So when I say that Oblibbions drove me straight bonkers, I mean it. Honestly the worst part of Oblibbions for me was the main quest. It seemed to stray so far from what Elder Scrolls was: a non-linear romp through a highly imaginative worlds of grey morals. Who was the clear "good guy" in Morrowind's quest? The Emperor who was using you to quell what he thought was a religious civil war in the province of Morrowind so he could exert further control? The "god-king" Vivec who was persecuting anyone who mentioned the fact that he betrayed and murdered his best friend Nerevar hundreds of years ago? Or is it the "redeemer" Dagoth-Ur, who's goal is to free the Dunmer people of their yoke and rid them of Imperial oppression... by spreading plague after plague across the land, corrupting their very bodies, and seizing their consciousness? Or is it Azura, who is using you as an instrument of her revenge, killing the last remaining members of the Chimmer who laughed in her face two thousand+ years before?

But then there was the leveling system. In Morrowind, if you tried exploring a Daedric ruin at level 1, you'd promptly meet a Daedric Lord and then meet the business end of his Daedric Weapon and finally you would be reacquainted with the "Which save would you like to load?" screen. Of course when you went back to that ruin at level 10, that Daedric Lord who so promptly handed you your entrails is just a challenging fight. When you go back at level 20 the Daedric Lord is just a speed bump, and you find yourself picking up the cursed gems so you can get the daedric weapon the guy is spawning with as well as his heart for {insert potion here}.

In Oblibbions when you go into the Kvatch gate at level 1, you're met with a hoard of "scamp runts," the cripples of the Daedric army. These are challenging fights because you're so low level and they're perfectly suited to fighting you. When you go in at level 10, you run into Clanfear. Either you've got good defenses and this is just a really long and boring fight, or they hit you in the face for MASSIVE DAMAGE and you die very quickly... but either way it's just as challenging as it was before. When you go in at level 20, there are XIVIALI there who are just a really, really, really long and boring fight and pose absolutely no risk to you because while it has damage and HP increased on par with yours, you acquired 110% reflect damage as a constant effect on yourself.

The first really gave you the feeling of advancing through the world. This world is static and you're in it, and you're dynamic. You are growing. The second gives you the feeling that, well, you're never growing. Heck, I used to specifically not level my character because going into dungeons and one-shotting dudes was FUN. Sneaking around, critical with my bow, watching the guy flop over a railing... that was a lot of fun.

Compare to level 20 when it was "sneak around, critical with my bow, plant 10 more arrows in his chest, draw out the short sword, mash "attack" for thirty seconds."

Yeah. I seem to have gotten a lot more powerful, eh? </sarcasm>

That being said roaming around the countryside and finding places was still awesome... though I never did experience any of the cool radiant AI stuff people said was going on. Also properly modded (Oscuro's and a few choice others) Oblivion can beat the pants off of vanilla Morrowind... but that's like saying I can soup up a VDub Beetle to outpreform your off-the-shelf corvette.

You don't have to choose, though. Even Bethesda themselves made a game (Fallout 3) where they manage a proper introduction that gets the storyline going in an interesting way and lets you meet intriguing and somewhat lively people that matter in one way or another. Gothic dumps you in a large open world with almost nothing, but still leads you along well enough and gives you a motivation and path to follow. You still have plenty to explore in both worlds, they're very open and you can try to go any place you like at your leisure, and a misstep will kill you brutally (especially in Gothic 1 and 2). If Skyrim manages this, too (as I said, Fallout 3 got my hopes up somewhat as it was really well done in this respect), it should make for an interesting game for me. Not up to par with Risen 2, of course, but worth a try.

But Morrowind wasn't difficult to understand what to do. The guy gives you clear orders: "You need to go establish a cover. Join a guild. Or maybe do freelance work. Come back when you've gained some experience." I.E. go do a sidequest or two, gain a level or two, then come back and I'll have a job for you to do.

Then he gives you a series of jobs gathering information which usually involves hunting down items for people.

Then he gives you a series of jobs that are more important, and more important, and more important, until suddenly an ancient god is speaking to you in your dreams and you're busting people out of a political prison called the "Ministry of Truth."

Warty, did you try Fallout: New Vegas? It's a much more entertaining game.

F:NV reminds me of why I love Obsidian so much. Their writing staff is superb. The dialogues, the quest lines... I mean there are some minor quibbles (Caesar's Legion is way too "evil") but until you've heard No-Bark on the radio saying, " "As a local crackpot told a toy bear near one of our microphones," "They're ghouls. Religious ghouls in rockets looking for a land to call their own! Don't you laugh at me! I know a spell that'll show your true form! Cave-rat taught it to me."" you haven't really experienced life.

Or Fantastic. Just... Fantastic.

"*Bleep* man, I do everything!"

ZombyWoof: actually, the dragon shouting seems pretty clearly derived from Thu'um, "The Voice". Which was mentioned at least as far back as Morrowind as the power of the Greybeards at the Throat of the World. Which seem to make an appearance in this game, from what the developers said.
Thu'um was also a power of canonical (as opposed to heretical) Tiber Septim. He was, after all, a Nord. His Voice was apparently strong enough to shatter fortress walls. He later lost it when his voice was cut, but he even established an Imperial Voice School.

So, there's precedent. I see Dragonshouts more as a fluff expansion than anything new.

I really do not think that the Greybeards acquired this power by killing dragons without anyone else mentioning dragons at all. And the fluff of the Greybeards is a lot closer to them just being spellcasters who like to yell a lot than people with hitherto unexplained magical powers.