[quote=@POOHEAD189] By exaggeration, you're over-blowing the inevitable flaws of the game to make them seem far more crippling than they are, when you could break down any game like that to suit your world view. That's not critical, that's just shit talking, not to mention a straw man fallacy.[/quote] It's not shit talking at all. Nor is it a straw man fallacy. You're the one using straw man on my examples here. Straw man occurs in arguments, not from simply voicing an opinion. [quote]You're complaining about things you don't need to do, or things most games are guilty of. You don't need to break the game and ignore everything else and go to the College of Winterhold. You can defeat enemies in a myriad of ways, find random encounters, do quests I enjoy instead of slaying quests, I can go on all day.[/quote] I'm complaining about things that are [i]literally core to the fundamental design of the game[/i]. Your whole counter point here is "Yeah but you don't HAVE to do that" where my point is that the entire game is built around activities that are not enjoyable to interact with. When the majority of the quests are the fetch quests or the kill X quests, that doesn't refute my claim, it reinforces it since that's what I have issue with in the first place. When the game is advertised as an open world do whatever game and then the do whatever part is shallow, it's an issue with the game. [QUOTE]Almost all games have but then again, no one is making you do those kinds of quests.[/quote] Almost all games don't have that but then again the crux here is "Yeah but you don't HAVE to". You should WANT to and Skyrim shines when you don't have it be a guided experience. Except then the shallowness of the game and its design and systems becomes obvious much sooner. The average quest in Skyrim is not memorable because they are shiny distractions that activate the carrot on a stick mentality that is core to Bethesda's design. [quote]If you're not into it, get into the story, explore the cities, there's so much more content and there's so many ways to play the game you don't need to do fetch quests, and honestly all of your points can be boiled down to the above. You don't need to do what you don't want to do, if you want to skip over the gameplay by fast traveling or skip the story part by saying 'lol all I gotta do is this' and you honestly don't care about the world or what is happening, you're going to think it's dull just like in [i]anything[/i].[/quote] At some point you have to do SOMETHING, that's the point of a game. What if you're not into the story? Because how could you be when it's badly written and uninteresting? The interesting bits of Skyrim are in its lore which is scattered in books. There isn't that much content that's worth doing. Skyrim deals in quantity but it doesn't have enough quantity to make it a balanced, enjoyable experience. If you're not into the quest, do the story quests which still contain a majority of the type of quest that turns one away from the side content. If you're not into THAT what's left? The combat? Hands down the worst part about the game? Skipping over the gameplay by fast traveling suggests that the gameplay is the exploration - which is [i]what I said in my first post.[/i] [quote=Me]The strong part of Skyrim, which is the strong part of any given Bethesda game, is the big dumb world. Bethesda knows how to make a world that rewards exploration[/quote] There is fun to be found in Skyrim, it's just not in the majority of the quests or the guilds which are microcosms of Skyrim's quest issues. [quote]And a lot of your word fluff is about 'the dialogue is static.' You could have just said that, but instead just created a blog on that being your point for much of your initial post. And while it's not tehcnically untrue somewhat, it's also not really a good point, as its such a large game (and dare I say province) that people seeing you as a blacksmith and giving a preprogrammed reaction to it is still immersive if you've traveled across 30 in game miles to another settlement you've visited once in the past, and them not knowing you're Dovahkiin isn't that bad of a thing.[/quote] But when you're the Thane of their region and all they do is "Don't cast any spells, magic user" or "Fuck off, elf" it's less immersive. And how immersive is it if you've [i]never[/i] been to a place and yet a guard is like "HANDS OFF, THIEF" because your pickpocket skill is high? So they know you're a thief but not the Dragonborn? The world feels incredibly hollow and part of that is how unresponsive it is to the player's actions. [quote] Also many game developers are like that, and it doesn't inherently make Skyrim poorer which is what you're speaking on. [/quote] Now who's strawmanning? I didn't say other developers aren't like that. But that doesn't make the claims against Bethesda here any less valid. Skyrim is a functioning dumpster fire of a video game but it's still a dumpster fire. It is a stripped down experience in order to make it more immediately rewarding and less obtuse. Which is fine, it's a good financial decision and makes for a game that is easy to review, but it's like building a house on solid foundation and then using cheap lumber. Or, in the meme sense of the word, it's wide as an ocean but deep as a puddle.