The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

I feel like there's a pattern to how people enjoy Elder Scrolls games.
Your first Elder Scrolls game is absolutely breathtaking and amazing. It's a vast world that you get absorbed into, and you remember it very fondly.
The games before it feel very archaic and borderline unplayable.
The games after it remove everything you loved about the game, and dumb down every possible thing "to appeal to a broader audience". Each game seems to sell better than the last, so maybe they're onto something.


My first Elder Scrolls game was Oblivion, so all of my comparisons will be against that game. Is Oblivion perfect? No, but I love it to death.


The most important thing in an RPG is the quests. You can set aside mediocre gameplay if you're engrossed into the world and what you're doing.
In Oblivion, you had to claw your way up every single guild and faction. You may have found the Emperor's son and stopped the Oblivion crisis, but what have you done for me lately?
Here is a direct comparison of each and every equivalent faction in the two games:

Fighters Guild/The Companions:
Oblivion: Your boss does not respect you in the slightest until you've proven yourself by completing many contracts and cleaning up after your guild buddies.
Skyrim: Clear out two draugr/bandit dungeons and you're let in on the Companions' deepest, most tightly-kept secrets.

Mages Guild/The College of Winterhold:
Oblivion: You have to work your way from below the bottom to even get into their headquarters. You have to do favours for all the important people before you get access to the good shit.
Skyrim: Cast one spell and you're in. Then from then on, you're the chosen one once again. Note: You do not actually have to cast the spell if you pass a speech check.

Thieves Guild:
Oblivion: You have to meet them at midnight in the "Garden of Dareloth", and you really have no way to know what that is. You're invited by a mysterious note after you're done serving time, or you have to bribe a beggar. You go through, steal a bunch of shit, on your own and for people, and the final mission is to steal a Goddamn Elder Scroll. This was a big deal before Skyrim handed them out like candy.
Skyrim: In broad daylight, some guy walks up to you, regardless of your reputation, and says "you like to steal stuff???? me too". There is one quest that requires you to steal something, one that requires you to plant something, and the rest are draugr dungeons. Wow.

Dark Brotherhood:
Oblivion: You kill a man, and you're approached in your sleep by a dark figure who invites you to join their brotherhood of assassins.
Skyrim: In Windhelm, you hear rumours of a boy trying to contact the Dark Brotherhood. You enter his house, kill the old lady he wants you to kill, and then you're kidnapped in your sleep by the Dark Brotherhood's 'leader', Astrid. This doesn't work for a variety of reasons.
1. Most characters who would get to this point would just kill Astrid and leave.
2. If you do kill Astrid, you're given the location of their Sanctuary via a note on her person. With this, you can choose to wipe out the entire Dark Brotherhood. However, the most likely character type to want to wipe out the Dark Brotherhood would never be able to, as a good character wouldn't have killed the old lady to begin with.
Also to note: You can wipe out the Dark Brotherhood, a shadowy organisation most people insist doesn't exist, but you cannot wipe out the Thieves Guild, who operate brazenly in broad daylight.


Outside of factions, Oblivion's sidequests still shine way brighter than Skyrim's.
In Oblivion, one quest takes you inside a painting to rescue its painter. One quest has you go to an island and run through a death gauntlet some guy is kidnapping people to run through for money. Another has you enter the nightmares of a guy and conquer all his fears.
Skyrim has draugr dungeons.



The dungeon enemies in Oblivion were pretty varied. Depending on the quest, you could fight goblins, skeletons, bandits, ghosts, trolls, daedra, you name it.
In Skyrim, every dungeon is a draugr dungeon. Sometimes you need to solve the same door puzzle using a claw over and over.


Both games have terribly ugly character models, but Oblivion's character models are unique and memorable in how terrible they are. Skyrim's are just bad.
Skyrim also removed attributes and spell creation, meaning you can't up your magic and speed to go fast like Sanic or walk on water* any more.
*Unless you buy the DLC and wear the proper boots.

It goes without saying that this is an undeniable force in the history of video games. The world building goes so deep that it makes you want to go back and play the others to experience some more of the history and lore. The characters are mostly unique. There are hundreds of NPC's all with unique things to say. The quests are very well written. I am so captivated by some of the side quests that I actually prefer them over the main quests.

You can be whatever you want in this game. I feel what most open world rpgs get wrong is that there are many limitations and very little to do other than fetch quests (looking at you Ubisoft). Skyrim doesn't have that problem. In addition to the base game, the developers make it so easy to add additional content in the form of mods which just further plays into my point that you can do whatever you want in this game.

The music is outstanding. The graphics were great for its time and become modernized with each new special edition re release. The DLC is a perfect example of devs actually trying on DLC, instead of tossing in some boring afterthought for money. The gameplay mechanics are really the only bad part of this game. It's very easy to just shout and hack and slash your way through, but the rest of the game makes up for that. This seriously is a game I will be replaying until I die or they somehow top this with Elder Scrolls 6. That should speak to it's quality.

roba ripetuta e buggata. combattere i draghi fa schifo

Because the fanbase are complete idiots sometimes and I had a bad experience with one of the fans I have to say I don't understand why people like this game, it's so drawn out and boring, not what I am looking for when it comes to adventure and fantasy games.

[Valve Index]

 Pretty much any game developer can tell you that making a title for virtual reality isn't as simple as "hitting the VR button." A lot of work goes into making a VR title—especially one worth actually playing. That makes it all the more annoying that it really does feel like Bethesda just hit the "make it VR" button when porting The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Special Edition to VR. Aside from half-baked hand tracking and a custom starting area, very little care was put into making Skyrim an interesting VR game. While it's neat to explore Tamriel in a more immersive way, the game lacks the physicality that VR promises. There's very little in the way of physics interactions—your hands barely interact with the environment, either phasing through people and items or sending them flying erratically. Without collision, melee combat feels like whiffing at the air. Congratulations, you're playing Skyrim again, but this time, you're doing it standing up. To add insult to injury, players are expected to purchase this rush-job separately from the desktop version of Special Edition—which I still don't even own. If they were going to put so little effort into it, it should have been a free update to Special Edition and not a full-price standalone purchase.

 As my score suggests, however, not all is lost. I had quite a good time playing Skyrim in virtual reality, but that's despite Bethesda—not thanks to them. If you're willing to spend half a day modding the game and learning how to correctly apply confusing shit like DynDOLOD, Skyrim VR is more than just a salvageable experience—it's one worth getting into. The Elder Scrolls fan community has done an amazing job of making this port worth playing. With a handy guide and a bit of patience on the player's part, it's possible to make the world of Tamriel a beautiful, jaw-dropping experience worth exploring for the visuals alone. The combat and gameplay... well, it's still Skyrim. That said, I feel like the notoriously same-y combat is made a bit more interesting when the swings of your sword, the drawing of your bow, and the casting of your spells are done with your own hands' movements. There's an additional layer of immersion there that makes the combat feel more worthwhile than the one-button-mashing of the desktop version. If you have a headset, an attachment to Skyrim, and some time to burn, I think it's worth trying out the game after modding it. Just... don't buy it. Bethesda could do without the encouragement.

Honestly dont get the praise this game gets. So much games that do the same and are so much more fun. Was bored out of my mind playing this game, was bearable with mods, but thats not something positive imo. And I cannot see anything that Skyrim was the first in, as a way to appreciate it more than emotionally, but no. The combat is awful, the quests are annoying and dungeons all look the same.

Everything people say this game did first is all subjective.
The thing people seem to point out and appreciate the most about this game is its freedom (though morrowind easily did it better). Though I cannot find that. Im still running from point a to b to c, following a big marker. Im still limited to annoying and limited game rules. Yea I have the freedom to skip quests and do sidequests at the time I want them to do, but that is nothing special. And Skyrim definitely did not do it first.

Before playing, Skyrim seems like a behemoth, an amazing epic where you are the main character. But, soon enough you will come to the conclusion you are just following a set path, you die absolutely goofy deaths, the type of fantasy this game is is probably the most generic western type of fantasy in existence. And the combat is probably one of the worst ever.

Now on to some pros (rant over). For some reason the most positive thing I can remember about this game is looting, the huge amount of books and pickpocketing. The levelling system felt like great progression, and the big dragon fights were spectacular (though very sluggish in gameplay and became boring rather fast). And though the quest was very annoying, being able to become a werewolf was cool and definitely a highlight.

The first few hours of this game will feel great, but after a while, youll feel like youre doing the same things over and over again and the limitations of the game will become very prevalent.