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[thebisonxrc]

Wow, that's a lot of dragon slaying. This news only makes me think that the series will continue to move further away from what made Morrowind a great game. The trend of dumbing a series down seems to be taking hold as it translates to higher sales, more often than not.

Oh well, Skyrim was still a fun game. I just wish that it was more difficult and deep.

 

[Valhelm]

quite boring and a tolkien tryhard. everything about it is so generic fantasy.

If you think anything about the Elder Scrolls is "generic fantasy" you don't know what you're talking about. Skyrim may not have been as unfamiliar as Morrowind, but its setting was brilliantly cohesive and incredibly original. Bethesda, Peter Jackson, and Tolkein drew from the same real-life settings and styles in the creation of their works, but to call Skyrim a "Tolikien tryhard" is ignorant. The aesthetic of the ancient Nord ruins is familiar, given its inspiration from Nordic and Celtic architecture, but is altogether original. The Dwemer cities are unlike anything before shown on any screen. Blackreach was beautiful, Markarth was wonderfully daunting, and the stark coldness of Windhelm were all very creative.

Given the political intrigue, slice-of-life gameplay, and number of characters, Skyrim is more reminiscent of GRRM than Tolkein.

 

[Neuro]

And people say single player games are dead.....Poooheee...

 

[TheD]

The salt. I can't.



Here's how to be critical and still make a goddamn fine point.

Excuse me?

It is not "salt" to point out that the game was a fucking mess with huge technical problems that made it flat out unplayable on one system and made it lack bare basic optimization on an other!

 

[Wiktor]

I believe Bethesda barely broke 100 people with Skyrim. They had ~35 for Morrowind, ~75 for Fallout 3, and ~100 for Skyrim. I don't know the Oblivion numbers, but it'll be somewhere between 35 and 75.

It's pretty amazing when you consider that Dragon's Dogma had over 150 people, Red Dead Redemption had over 500 (iirc), and Assassin's Creed games are +500 people.

With AC though the reason for such big team is that they can pump out such huge game in year. Bethesda had three years for Skyrim and some work was propably done on it since Oblivion.

 

[Daante]

Havent played Skyrim and dont think its a game for me, but glad they sold a lot of a FANTASY game.

 

[Wiktor]

I'll never understand why they didn't just take the single player elder scrolls experience and add multiplayer... It was so simple. No, instead, they are giving us an mmo nobody wanted.

So you would rather they would annualize the franchise? Have couple teams making new ES-es? Because otherwise your comment is pretty weird.

 

[Aaron]

They should have done two more expansions. Could have done it with relatively small teams, and made way more than what they cost.

 

[hemtae]

They should have done two more expansions. Could have done it with relatively small teams, and made way more than what they cost.

I do agree with this. It was disappointing Dragonborn was the last.

 

[XaeonBE]

Still didn't buy this game yet.

 

[Morokh]

Good for them, but on the other hand that doesn't bode well for the series ever coming back to something a little bit less superficial.

Guess we can count on modders at least.

 

[CoolZombie]

They should have done two more expansions. Could have done it with relatively small teams, and made way more than what they cost.

Surely it would be worth doing PS4 and XBone versions too including all the dlc? I know I'd certainly buy it, and it would certainly get the sales even higher.

 

[Alcoholikaust]

Still didn't buy this game yet.

give it a few months and the Super Turbo Hyper Definitive PS4 Edition may hit

 

[Trickster]

give it a few months and the Super Turbo Hyper Definitive PS4 Edition may hit

Or just buy the pc version and install 200 mods and get a version of skyrim that would melt the minds of people that have only tried the console version

 

[Alienous]

It's weird how Bethesda doesn't have the clout to prevent a game like ESO from releasing and potentially hurting the franchise.

I hope the dev's drop that ridiculous subscription fee soon.

 

[Xanadu]

i honestly have no idea how this sold so well

 

[JaseC]

It's weird how Bethesda doesn't have the clout to prevent a game like ESO from releasing and potentially hurting the franchise.

I hope the dev's drop that ridiculous subscription fee soon.

It's not weird at all -- ZeniMax owns Bethesda.

 

[Serrenn]

"Skyrim has sold over 20 million copies" and now they are flushing all those monies down the drain by developing dead on arrival shitstain of an MMO called TES Online codename "We Want A Piece Of WoW Cake".
I wonder how many of it will be spend of expendable voice acting which no one would care about. TORtanic 2 is upon us if beta version is anything to go by.

Yes, I am mad. I'd rather play a new full fledged release than this.

 

[Moff]

I didnt realize skyrim was that popular on GAF
personally, I think it was ok, but it didnt give me a lot I need and expect from rpgs.

 

[Alcoholikaust]

Or just buy the pc version and install 200 mods and get a version of skyrim that would melt the minds of people that have only tried the console version

well, yeah that first- haha

 

[Trickster]

It's weird how Bethesda doesn't have the clout to prevent a game like ESO from releasing and potentially hurting the franchise.

I hope the dev's drop that ridiculous subscription fee soon.

I doubt that the actual developers that make the single player elder scrolls games think it's a good idea. Most likely, the people/person who made the decision to get a TES mmo started was some idiot businessman at zenimax. Who looked at the sales of skyrim, and knew about that game called world of warcraft that is making an enormous amount of money, and he just saw dollar signs everywhere.

At least that's how I imagine how most mmo's get started these days.

 

[metalslimer]

I doubt that the actual developers that make the single player elder scrolls games think it's a good idea. Most likely, the people/person who made the decision to get a TES mmo started was some idiot businessman at zenimax. Who looked at the sales of skyrim, and knew about that game called world of warcraft that is making an enormous amount of money, and he just saw dollar signs everywhere.

At least that's how I imagine how most mmo's get started these days.

The game was in development for a while before Skyrim's release since MMOs take forever to develop. A lot of the MMOs we're still seeing were probably greenlit during the era where they still thought they could get WoW money.

 

[cluderi]

58.6 hours on the PC version and I loved it, well deserved IMHO.

Won't be bothering with the mmo but I'm looking forward to the next Skyrim/Fallout on PC.

 

[Stimpack]

It had its flaws, beyond glitches, I mean. Overall it was a decent game, though. I hope they use some of that money to improve things. I hope the company itself doesn't get progressively worse, which is what tends to happen.

 

[Ratrat]

There are certainly worse games than Skyrim.

 

[cjp]

I don't want an MMO, I want 1-4 player. That'd be great. And if I can play single-player, and have a friend just somewhere in the world that can join or leave at will, that would be cool. Kinda like Starbound.

This. Just the ability for a friend to drop in a game and replace the NPC followers would be brilliant.

I think Skyrim was an idea who's time has come. Fantasy has been gradually invading the mainstream in years, starting with LOTR and Harry Potter and now with Game of Thrones.

Skyrim provides a rich, huge and most importantly free world where you can really lose hours like minutes. The game could be mechanically better but honestly the scope and presentation succeed in distracting from that.

Well deserved success, I look forward to the next one.

Perfectly summarised.

 

[adamsapple]

Fantastic game.
Fantastic sales.
Deserved each and every one of the GoTY awards and units sold, in my humble opinion.

 

[3bdelilah]

Wow, that's a lot of dragon slaying. This news only makes me think that the series will continue to move further away from what made Morrowind a great game. The trend of dumbing a series down seems to be taking hold as it translates to higher sales, more often than not.

Oh well, Skyrim was still a fun game. I just wish that it was more difficult and deep.

I believe there was a video on YouTube that proved (meaning to contradict the "dumbing down" cries) Skyrim more or less wasn't dumbed down a lot as people claimed it to. Don't know exactly what the link was. Apparently those critics just had their Morrowind goggles on, just like you do now.


Besides the bugs, glitches and some heavy frame rate problems after +/- 150 hours, by far my favourite game of this gen alongside Deus Ex HR and Dishonored.

 

[spekkeh]

Wow, that's a lot of dragon slaying. This news only makes me think that the series will continue to move further away from what made Morrowind a great game. The trend of dumbing a series down seems to be taking hold as it translates to higher sales, more often than not.

Oh well, Skyrim was still a fun game. I just wish that it was more difficult and deep.

Morrowind started the 'dumbing down'.

 

[3bdelilah]

Morrowind started the 'dumbing down'.

Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls, but that's indeed what I hear a lot from the hardcore TES fans since Arena, apparently it started with Morrowind. Skyrim just gets a lot of shit because it had some big technical errors on the PS3. Don't know about the X360. Or people just want to be hipster, that's possible too.

 

[stn]

You know what I would LOVE? Give me an Elder Scrolls that's single-player only but with the exception that I can roam the world with one friend. Anyway, looking forward to the next-gen ES entry that isn't ESO.

EDIT: How the hell did Morrowind start "dumbing" everything down? The game is as hardcore as it gets. You have barely any assistance, the game is quite difficult, and you have almost no restrictions on what you can do and where you can go. Not to mention having a low skill actually meant it was less effective.

 

[Dusk Soldier]

All I ever hear about this game is that it's a buggy mess. I can't believe it sold that well.

 

[Durante]

Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls, but that's indeed what I hear a lot from the hardcore TES fans since Arena, apparently it started with Morrowind. Skyrim just gets a lot of shit because it had some big technical errors on the PS3. Don't know about the X360. Or people just want to be hipster, that's possible too.

Morrowind streamlined a lot of aspects, but the only major omission compared to Daggerfall I can think of is climbing. Oblivion started the trend of really cutting lots of mechanics out completely, and Skyrim continued it.

I don't think they'll make the next one much simpler than Skyrim, I don't believe there are many mechanics left to cut.

 

[spekkeh]

Morrowind streamlined a lot of aspects, but the only major omission compared to Daggerfall I can think of is climbing. Oblivion started the trend of really cutting lots of mechanics out completely, and Skyrim continued it.

I don't think they'll make the next one much simpler than Skyrim, I don't believe there are many mechanics left to cut.

It's also a lot smaller, walking from one side of Daggerfall to the other takes two weeks. There's stuff like buying houses and boats, a horse, flying on your horse, etc.
Not that I care much about dumbing down, (well 'cept the horse), I thought Skyrim was a better game than Daggerfall (which I prefer over Morrowind) because it did other stuff better. Dumbing down always sounds like schoolyard discussions to me. This ones better cos it got more features innit.

 

[U-R]

Well damn deserved.

And thank god for giving publishers something to copy that isn't a joyless linear gray shooter, for once.

 

[Blinck]

Congrats to Bethesda!

Great game. A game that sometimes I still feel the urge to get back to just to have a walk while listening to the great soundtrack.

Hopefully now they have the money to invest in new props and enemy models to make dungeons distinguishable from each other

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

With AC though the reason for such big team is that they can pump out such huge game in year. Bethesda had three years for Skyrim and some work was propably done on it since Oblivion.

There's probably less in the way of "feature creep" as well. I imagine they set out to make an ES game, and nobody turns around a year from release and says "we need a 64-player arena mode in this, plus some co-op dungeons"

 

[KojiKnight]

Well deserved.... as a sandbox tool for mod developers. Less so as a stand alone game.

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

All I ever hear about this game is that it's a buggy mess. I can't believe it sold that well.

Going to play Devil's Advocate here, but I can't name another game on Skyrim's scale that has as many "moving parts" which can go wrong. I'm talking about NPCs who are connected to each other and individual quests, the fact that you can leave items more or less anywhere and come back to them... if another game was as ambitious as the ES series in this regard, I think we'd have a much fairer judgement of how buggy the games are.

This doesn't excuse the state the PS3 version was in at release, especially the silence from Bethesda when they probably knew full well that there were issues.

 

[Brazil]

Its not "salt" to complain about the publisher fraudulently misleading customers of one version and denying fault after they were caught out.

If you don't like a game, you're salty.

If you don't like a game but say something nice, you're smart and critical.

 

[E92 M3]

i honestly have no idea how this sold so well

Beautiful environment that is fun to explore. Why wouldn't it sell? Skyrim is one of the most atmospheric games I know and the only game that tempts me to build a PC for.

 

[Patriot Infinity]

I'm gonna pick up the Legendary bundle when it goes on sale on Steam.

 

[KojiKnight]

All I ever hear about this game is that it's a buggy mess. I can't believe it sold that well.

Remember: Amount of people complaining scales...

While Skyrim may have an equal percentage of detractors of something else, say "Halo" for example... we'll apply an arbitrary number... say 1%.

Halo 4 sold approximately 4 million copies, at 5% that means you have 200k people who will have a negative view of it. If 1% of those is vocal enough to complain about it, that's 2,000 people.

Skyrim sold 20 million, so that's 1 million with a negative view and 10,000 people who're more vocal about it. So using these completely arbitrary made up numbers, we can say that the same % of fans of both games are whiners, but with it's much larger install base, you're going to see a lot more total whining.

 

[Mr. Wonderful]

Yeah, my only concern is this news might be used as evidence that they should simplify the gameplay further.

 

[Zarovitch]

I don't get what's atmospheric in this game, i like exploring every mine, castle, dwarf ruine.
But in the end everything look the same. Rare are the mission that bring something new to the table.

But it's a great games i can't stop grinding for now, but a feel that soon i'll think i've seen every gameplay element and stop playing it.

 

[Canis lupus]

Poor millions of people who got it on PS3 expecting a game that would work like the other platforms.

All I ever hear about this game is that it's a buggy mess. I can't believe it sold that well.

I got it at launch on PS3, I can confidently say that it was the Worst performing game I've seen on my console. Game is constantly freezing during combat or during just walking around in town, yes it drops to 0fps, 0fps!

"A fresh Skyrim game save state up against Rimlag in all its severity as it kicks in on a 65 hour game save. It's the first time our performance analysis tools have ever recorded a 0FPS reading."

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-ps3-skyrim-lag
Loading and saving times can take up more than a minute, playing this game was surreal.

Technicalities aside, I hated the combat, it was subpar compared to Dark Souls that came a month before Skyrim. It isn't real combat when I can't dodge roll and parry. Go forward to strike, go back to dodge a strike, if more than 1 enemy: constantly run away and pick one baddy at a time, there is no way to tackle more enemies at once because the game mechanics don't allow you. The strikes don't even feel like they have any impact and the shaking camera is nauseating. Skyrim was basically this to me.

Skyrim is big, but bland, the environments always looked the same, it felt lifeless no matter where I went.

 

[Shengar]

If you think anything about the Elder Scrolls is "generic fantasy" you don't know what you're talking about. Skyrim may not have been as unfamiliar as Morrowind, but its setting was brilliantly cohesive and incredibly original. Bethesda, Peter Jackson, and Tolkein drew from the same real-life settings and styles in the creation of their works, but to call Skyrim a "Tolikien tryhard" is ignorant. The aesthetic of the ancient Nord ruins is familiar, given its inspiration from Nordic and Celtic architecture, but is altogether original. The Dwemer cities are unlike anything before shown on any screen. Blackreach was beautiful, Markarth was wonderfully daunting, and the stark coldness of Windhelm were all very creative.

Given the political intrigue, slice-of-life gameplay, and number of characters, Skyrim is more reminiscent of GRRM than Tolkein.

I really like Elder Scrolls lore as a whole, with their Lovecraft-esque Daedra Princes. ES lore is much closer to Elric than Tolkien in anyway. But one thing is true that Skyrim feels like a generic fantasy. Mostly, it because the overused trope of Dragons and save the world quest. If only the game much more focused on the Daedra Princes, it'll be much interesting game, much like to Shivering Isles.

Yeah, my only concern is this news might be used as evidence that they should simplify the gameplay further.

As per Durante said, it would be very hard for them to stripped down the mechanics even further. But they could applied the same strategy with other IPs, which I fear they would.

 

[Deified Data]

Morrowind streamlined a lot of aspects, but the only major omission compared to Daggerfall I can think of is climbing. Oblivion started the trend of really cutting lots of mechanics out completely, and Skyrim continued it.

I don't think they'll make the next one much simpler than Skyrim, I don't believe there are many mechanics left to cut.

Some mechanics were better off cut, if I dare say so. Replacing attributes and the bass-ackwards leveling system that required you to major in your least favorite skills with a perk system that worked and, shockingly, made you stronger instead of weaker was the best thing to happen to the series (if we're not counting mods).

 

[BoomBap]

I have well over 300 hours on the PC version. There were many things I would have changed about the game but this is well deserved. Great game for sure.

 

[Crimsonsky]

Well deserved, an amazing main game, the lore, the music(whiterun and the main theme, damn Jeremy Soule is the man)well done expansions(albeit slightly overpriced for Dawnguard). Most of all, the Creation Kit. If Skyrim is your inspiration you are doing it correctly.