I know this isn’t the kind of content people sub to my channel for, but I have a lot of fun making these while GuP stuff is cooking in the background. Hope you enjoyed it regardless!

Skyrim is like a RPG Gateway drug. You get a taste for RPG mechanics, but once you try the real deal elsewhere, you can never go back or look at it from the same perspective.

And the ouroboros of suck continues with Starfield. They learned nothing.

One slight thing you messed up: The lines in Skyrim weren't recorded Alphabetically, that was Oblivion. The Voice Acting is so stiff in Skyrim because they didn't hire too many VAs, so a number of actors were recycled for MANY characters. I imagine its so stiff due to fatigue more than anything.

My ONLY critique is that you attribute Todd Howard to Bethesda's problem when the devil is most assuredly Pete Hines. A high ranking Zenimax man and also a writer for Bethesda. Frequently he ignores criticism of the games writing by saying that fans think too much and that it should be accessible to everyone, including women (Women cant enjoy deep writing or gameplay? Now THERE'S a problematic statement) I directly attribute the fall of Bethesda's quality to Hines. And the devil's greatest trick was convincing the world it was Todd instead. Todd's facial expressions in presentations seem.. hesitant. Like he doesn't want to say what he's about to say.

Skyrim's award winning writing: Where you can parade around as an Officer of the Imperial Legion, join the Dark Brotherhood, kill the Emperor still as an Imperial Officer, not be recognised by the Penatus Oculatus or whatever it is despite single handedly ending Skyrim's civil war, and then after becoming the leader of the Dark Brotherhood and what should be one of the most famous Imperial Officers to ever live, go to Riften and have Maven Black Briar threaten you with the Dark brotherhood. YOUR Dark Brotherhood.

I'd be happy to forgive the flaws, except this game might be the most often released game in the modern era. PC, 3 generations of console, VR, and in a few years, inevitably mobile, countless special editions, DLC, and premium mods. The game has been beaten to a bloody pulp. If they want to keep cashing in on it, then it is naturally going to be a target for deep review and criticism by contemporary standards. Make a new damn game already.

For a personal tangent: If a game requires mods to be enjoyable then it's a bad game. A mod should change or enhance the experience, not be the sole defining aspect of if it's even worthwhile. "You can mod the hell out of it" is not an excuse for a game being bad.

I personally love Skyrim, it's "comfort food" for me, so to speak - but I still find it baffling that the many bugs and exploits never got fixed in any of the many, *many* re-release versions.

In Neverwinter Nights the guards kind of ignored you, until you became the knight captain. Then they saluted you and their behaviour towards you changed. In Skyrim my character became on officer in the imperial army and the guards told him no to lollygag. Its little things like that, that take me out of the world.

I've always been annoyed at Skyrims lack of actual role playing. They've got a bunch of really cool races that you can play as, but it makes no real difference in how the world itself treats you. Same thing with joining the different groups and factions, except for who you side with in the Civil War. I want stuff like cities not letting you in right away if you play as a Khajitt, or the Companions refusing to let you join if you are part of the thieves guild. I know they had stuff like that in Daggerfall. It's too bad because I don't think that Bethesda is willing to put in that kind of work ever again. It seems like all they care about is how to simplify everything and how to charge money for user made mods.

"To Todd, it was more important to have stuff rather than let the stuff be any good or fun to find. Quantity over quality." And now we have Starfield. "Over a thousand planets to explore." Translation: Over a thousand barren wastelands with copy-paste assets and unengaging, unimportant, meaningless "points of interest."

"Free unpaid labor shouldn't be required to unfuck a AAA game with millions of dollars behind it." That's it. That's the perfect description of why Bethesda titles always wrankled my ass. They rely on post-launch beta teams of developers to fix things for them.

Ahh another hour long video on why the game I keep playing sucks, and I'm going to watch all of it and proceed to spend the next 72 hours perfectly crafting an intricate and well balanced modded Skyrim experience only to stop playing an hour into my playthrough.

Skyrim is simply one of the games of all time. The writing was written, the visuals were designed, and the characters were speaking. Truly one of the games ever made

i like that you showed kingdom come deliverance a few time. especially when talking about exploration, i remember the first time i got lost in the game, it was also night so i was kinda just walking blind until i stumbled on a random inn i didn't know was there, it was a kind of relief i don't normally get from adventure games.

I actually kinda like hording in Skyrim, you see the dragon born has the soul of a dragon and dragons like their hoards of wealth.

"Skyrim is the Imagine Dragons of videogames" is the most accurate description I've ever heard. When you first play it you are blown away by the grandness and seeming complexity (ie listening Radioactive for the first time or playing Skyrim as a 14 year old), but as time goes on you slowly realize that is just a clunky, surface level one-trick-pony where everything is just the same bland experience repeated ad nauseam .

You're right about level scaling. It's terrible. Why should my enemies get stronger because I leveled up? It's so weird. Part of the point of leveling up is to go back to areas that used to be challenging and destroy them. Can't do that with level scaling.

Skyrim was excruciatingly dumbed down for newer players. A big reason why I also am not too big on it is the fact that they removed a lot of cool weapons and armor customization. Morrowind was amazing with armor customizations and the amount of weapons at your disposal was huge. Morrowind had a great immersion in story and your actions definitely had consequences. When Skywind releases, I think it'll be a good replacement for Skyrim if done correctly.

When it comes to the writing too, I always thought it was so stupid that most if not all of the things that seem like they would have the most consequences are deliberately left open so...I don't even know. "Good job you killed the emperor! But did you reeeeally kill the emperor? Congratulations! You killed Aulduin and prevented the apocalypse. What's that? He disappeared and you didn't absorb his soul? I don't know, did you reeeeeally kill Aulduin? Guess it is his destiny to devour the world so maybe it'll happen long after we're gone." 🤷‍♂️

I've actually replayed Skyrim a couple of times since 11.11.11, and I find this video mostly right. Skyrim could've been better, and a large mod base is not an excuse for vanilla to suck.

I really felt that bit about there being no real consequences. Being able to join pretty much every faction in the game doesn't really make sense, for example, and I was always bothered by this. Being a companion, arch-mage and guild master of the dark brotherhood sounds so ridiculous.

Sad thing is that Skyrim is miles ahead of Starfield as an RPG, yet Morrowind is miles ahead of Skyrim. BGS regresses further with every new game. 😑

There was nothing more entertaining than finding a mod that no only turned off the main quest but also allowed me to be a traveling merchant in a cart making my loop around Skyrim and selling wares at far more economical prices than those skooma loving cats.

The “cure all addictions” seat is genuinely one of the most insulting things I’ve seen from Bethesda

Loved skyrim when it first came out. Then i discovered fallout 3. Loved fallout 3. Skyrim seemed shallow. Then i discovered Oblivion. I loved Oblivion. Skyrim and Fallout 3 seemed lesser. Then i found New Vegas and it was fantastic. Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Skyrim paled in comparison. After New Vegas i started playing games like Dragons Dogma, Mass Effect, and now Baldurs Gate 3. Everytime i go back to Skyrim it just feels more hallow and hallow.

Skyrim, also known as "Baby's first RPG."

Something really disappointing about Skyrim is how little alive it feels. You mentioned how little the civil fucking war that is waging affects every day people. The game lets you free a terrorist leader from the dungeons of Markath and people in the city comment on it, but absolutely nothing changes. Apart from one specific group all random groups of fornsworn still attack the player on sight, even after freeing their King from prison. The people in Markath bitch and whine about the roads not being save for travel anymore, but apparently Markath has no shortages resulting from this. Nothing happens. The Jarl doesn't care. The world is static and dumb and boring. In the game Gothic 1 during an event in the story the mine that was supplying the old camp with magical ore which they needed to trade for food and other goods with the outside world collapsed. So the leader of the camp went crazy, murdered all of the mages in his camp and moved his warriors to raid the other mine to reestablish control over resources. SHIT. HAPPENED. And it had consequences. If you choose to help Madanach escape from the Markath Dungeon the Jarl should have his guards attack you on sight. Fornsworn should not attack you after rescuing their King from the prison and there should be more quests that allow you to retake Markath for the Bretons. The Jarl should take his forces and try to kill Madanach or at least put him back in prison. There should be world events where you travel around the area around Markath and trade convoys are attacked and looted by fornsworn. The city should be cut off from outside trade, unable to trade their silver for food they should be starving.

You're not the only one. I hate level scaling. One of the things I like about RPGs, especially those with skill/attribute points is the feeling of getting stronger. Nothing destroys my immersion more than returning to a starting area, after beating the final boss of a game to find that the simple boars either have become as strong as the final boss or have magically been replaced by dragons.

Skyrim fan boys/girls rarely admit that this was the first game in history to turn dragon fights into just another tedious chore.

"You're not being sold an experience but rather the expectation of one" this is exactly my conclusion about what made me so intrigued with the game in the beginning and why it lost its shine so quickly. Once the player sees through this facade, playing the game becomes pointless. Skyrim could've been a great game, but it can't base itself only on the promise of being deep, it must build its depth.

i believe skyrim is truly the game ever. i mean, the writing was written, script was scripted and lines were said. skyrim is the of all time.

Well seeing how Starfield turned out I don't have high hopes for ES VI. Starfield literally feels like skyrim with a Space skin.

You're a bit harsh but mostly right. It's a very watered-down rpg but it isn't a total loss. To me it's biggest problem isn't the game itself but that it paved the way for subsequent games to be even more watered down, it let bethesda think that watering the game down was what made it good so if they do it some more it will be even better. Skyrim is almost the right level of watered down, enough so anyone can play it and I can't blame bethesda for doing that. The lore is good, I do like the books. Decent enemy variety, lots of locations and ultimately I like it because it is a lot of fun. Just sad that starfield has hit an incredible low, its probably their worst game now.

When I think about Elderscrolls I never really circle back to Skyrim in my mind it always go back to the older titles such as Morrowind and Oblivion. I think personally I think they should go back to how they made Morrowind but with a more modern combat. It's so alien when it comes to the art, the amount of good text based dialogue is great and still keep this very insane alien feeling it feels like a fever dream. Lost hours upon hours in Morrowind unlike Skyrim.

"The imagine dragons of video games" is so hilariously correct at describing bethesda, and especially skyrim

I did a roleplay playthrough as a scholar that drove himself mad finding all of the dragon priest masks because of a story he read about at the college. Was very disappointed that only a few of them are worth using. Maybe it was myself that fell into madness.

It's been ages since I last played Skyrim, but there was one part that always boiled my piss. Near the end of the Thieves Guild questline you get the Skeleton Key, a key that can open any doors (really it's just an unbreakable lockpick because being able to actually open any doors would break the game). But then you progress a little further in the questline and you're supposed to return the skeleton key to some Daedric god's shrine... No. I'm a thief. The skeleton key is the greatest tool a thief could ever wish for. And why would I return something? I'm a thief! I never finished that quest, so maybe you get to keep the key for some reason, but I feel my criticism still stands. Why would a thief ever even try to return the greatest thing a thief could ever steal?

I saw someone call this game a gateway drug to real RPGs and it was hilarious. Granted I like skyrim still but that's mainly because of the insane mods guys with a mind for real meaty rpg aspects like enaision or however you spell that. After ordinator on pc, trying to play in console feels like I pulled the meat off the bare bones and I'm just trying to survive on the marrow. One thing I'll combat you on, we definitely remember a lot of these characters lol. Not always for a good reason but I remember a lot of them

Whenever i play Skyrim it feels like they are still developing the game and just recently finished designing the map. A lot of interesting elements in the map are just wasted for what feel like placeholder quests without any relation to the player it’s just there to give a response to you wondering what may have lead to that one house burning down or why in the world you voluntarily should enter generic mine or tomb no.2000. They serve no story telling purpose neither do they offer a reward for doing them. Yeah i really want -200 Gold maybe i can afford that dagger literally everybody carries in this game then

Good stuff. I'm very glad that there have been quite a number of videos like these in the past few years that have taken off the nostalgia goggles and are very detailed with their critiques, yours especially. It's a breath of fresh air. I had hundreds of hours with Skyrim. I thought I loved it for many years. At some point I realized I was spending more time modding the game to be more stable, to look better, to have more depth in its combat (thank you, TK Dodge and TK Hitstop), and better rewards systems and quests, than I did actually just playing and enjoying the game as it was. I'm late to the party when it comes to FromSoftware's games, but I'm on this hype train now and I don't plan on getting off, because I've since had way more hours in Sekiro, Dark Souls Remastered, and Elden Ring. Platinumed the first two, got one achievement left for ER that I'm working toward. And I wish the hundreds of hours I spent on Skyrim all went to the games that I've since enjoyed way more instead, like NieR Automata or the Yakuza games. I wanna challenge folks who are immediately angry at this video in the comments, some without even bothering to watch it. Especially the ones who still love Skyrim but haven't played it in a while. Play it again. *Without mods.* Zero. Not even the one that makes the UI better. Let it try to stand on its own merit. See if the magic still captures you. See how it holds up to other games you've since played and thought highly of. And before saying it's unfair to compare this game to newer ones, remember that this same game gets rereleased over and over again, with much of the same problems it's always had left intact. If Todd (used in the same context as this video being the horrific amalgamation of Zenimax higher-ups) thinks this game holds up to newer ones, then it's not unfair to compare it to Witcher 3, KDC, or Elden Ring. Does. It. Hold. Up? If it does, great! I'm glad folks can still love it despite having a long break. I'm sure for others, it won't. It never recaptured that for me. Especially not after I've played better games, even ones that came out the same year as Skyrim.

That addiction quest you said sounded so good I thought I was gonna hop back on fallout 4 to play it because I didn’t recognize it. But then 3 seconds later was hit with sadness… I get it now :(

The thing that made me swear the game off for good was The Forsworn Conspiracy questline which can be rendered uncompletable if you don't follow the plotted line every step of the way. Anyone who's played the game will know that in order to advance and complete the questline, at a very specific point you have to let yourself get arrested by a group of guards and be sent to prison; if you fight back, the quest will become static. There's no alternate way into the prison and the game will provide you with no hints or clues to even let you know that your unwillingness caused the quest to stall -- you HAVE to get arrested! I've always known Bethesda to be a laughably incompetent game developer, but it takes a special kind of incompetence to design a game where quests can become uncompletable -- not failable but blatly impossible to progress and finish -- if you deviate ever-so-slightly off the beaten path. Again, they couldn't even be bothered to implement fail states in case you actually do something to render quests FUBAR, which is game design 101 for most developers. For comparison: Fallout New Vegas came out 1 year before Skyrim and in that game you can virtually kill every faction leader and critical NPC in the game and STILL be able to complete the story via the Yes Man route, which was implemented on the assumption that maybe you just don't feel like supporting any faction. In Skyrim you HAVE to pick a side in the civil war, even though you have no reason to support anyone, and often times the game is very picky about which non-critical NPC is killable, as though Bethesda feared you'd lock yourself out of content if you killed a quest-giver -- despite the fact that THAT is exactly the point: you killed a quest-giver and now you can't do the quest anymore. Bloody Bethesda...

I just replayed Yakuza 0. The two maps are tiny but they are packed with things to do. Every mini game, sub storyand activity in it is well designed and crafted to be fun. Also, the main story is one of the best in games. It really puts everything made by Ubisoft these past ten years to shame.

Funniest line came right at the end: I hope you consider how damn awful this game is the next time you do a 100 hour playthrough."

It's literally slop. This is just way too good a description of it. Like when people describe their "achievement" in this game, sounds like just ticking boxes, instead of a meaningful or challenging or game-altering thing. "Yeah I've been a guild master of this something something guild". Sometimes I feel immersive sims like original Deus Ex or the modern Prey have more of the tangible role-playing feel, like there's a sense of control in how to approach things, in different ways, with branching paths on both narrative and gameplay aspects.

For me Skyrim is very casual and console oriented. On hardest difficulty game is easy, everything is open for you, you are overpowered from the start. You go and slain dragons without even trying to become powerful in this world. No reputation, no trying, it's like a walking looter simulator.

38:54 Surprised to hear Shamus Young mentioned here. Always loved hearing his opinion on video games and regularly visited his site. Enjoyed reading his take on the whole Thieves Guild questline and how moronic it is. Gone too soon. RIP Shamus Young.

When you showed that brief little clip of Outer Wilds, my heart sank a little bit remembering that I can never experience it for the first time again. What an amazing game.

Elder Scrolls fans aren’t fans of the games as much as the lore

May we also address the special items that "vary" upon character level when found? Why is that? You have to be the highest level possible, so the magic item you found is at it's BEST option. Why can't the magic items just be great, or as they are, without adjusting to your level? I gotta make sure I level to 90 before I pick something up, or it will be at it's lowest variant...

One easy example of how the story could be changed to be more immersive is the dark brotherhood. You have to get rid of the emperor in it. What if after doing that it effects the war efforts? Make there be references to how much the imperial side now wants revenge. Or maybe some of the imperial armies become scattered more. Maybe you can't join the imperial faction now because they know your face. You could do it for a lot of other quests. Make things matter even if it means you'd have to scale back the world.

I'm 24 and I already understood that everything is personal opinion. No matter how much data you have at hand, saying everything bad about the games, that will never beat the night hours that one gives to a game that, no matter how bad it is, transports you to a great world. and cool moments like being immersed in the game and pam crashes or bugs... awesome. in the case of the video it is very well done and really hopefully one day they will give us a game that is really worth the price and respect us as players and consumers.

“Starfield has great potential” aged so poorly

No, level scaling is OBJECTIVELY bad. It cancels out the progression system, it literally cancels it out.

Skyrim is one of those games that I absolutely love it in almost every way but the story revolving around the Protagonist. I often try to convince people the whole Dragonborn aspect of the game feels like it hijacked the game from the more important aspects like the Thalmor, and the Skyrim Civil War, which felt like the real MEAT and POTOATOES of the game. Basically the game is so much more fun when you're "NOT" the Dragonborn, and there are no "DRAGONS" flying around. I have a similar issue with say the Minutemen in Fallout 4 as well. They feel like they were shoe horned into the game, and actually get in the way of the game's real meat/potatoes, the Institute, Railroad and BOS.

Apparently hot take according to this video: I like Skyrim as it is without mods. Sure, I play now with a small selection of mods just to see what small tweaks I can make, but even those I've already thought about removing anyway because it feels more like it's hurting my playing experience than helping it. I acknowledge that Skyrim could certainly be better or have more depth to it, but at the same time I really don't understand the hate it gets. It's a fundamentally different Elder Scrolls compared to previous entries in the series, but really only to a certain degree. When I hear about people's great experiences with games like morrowind or oblivion, it usually involves something along the lines of cheesing the leveling system like jumping everywhere you to quickly level athletics or something like that. I never hear good things about the story, secrets, or interesting encounters. I'm not saying they aren't there, but if Skyrim is so bad for doing so poorly on those kinds of things, then why do I seldom hear about why Oblivion or Morrowind were better in any way other than their leveling system? These are just my personal experiences and opinions and I'm not saying I'm necessarily right or wrong, just that I enjoy Skyrim and don't understand what the huge fuss is about.

Skyrim just isn't an RPG. What's the point of getting into a role, if the rest of the game completely ignores it? It's just a collection of linear disconnected short stories, which require nothing except "press the button".

I can’t believe I once put hundreds of hours into this game. When I look back at it now it’s just so shallow. Playing an rpg never made me feel this empty, and no amount of mods, levels gained and enemies killed fixed that. And yet I still put hundreds of hours into it for some reason.

1:07:36 I always use Yakuza as a example of a small map not being a bad thing if you can make the map feel real and lived in.

I saw someone once describe Skyrim as "lazy gaming for lazy gamers." And I couldnt agree more. I tried to get into it several times and just couldnt stay motivated after levelling my character to 37

Was thinking about how you would design the quest to capture a dragon if you wanted the player to have a novel experience based on the characters traits. Something like "Dragons reanimate if the dragonborn doesn't succ them. Must attract Dragon to trap place. Must humiliate a dragon by killing it, but the dragonborn can't strike the killing blow or be in the immediate vicinity when it dies, else it won't come back and be pissed." From there you could expand onto where you want to kill it first, where the other warriors have a good chance via the terrain. Then what they will be equipped with (hoarded loot has a purpose WOW), and the manner in which the dragon should be humiliated so it comes back pissed off and falls into the Whiterun castle trap due to raging. A mage might have the college of winter hold at their disposal, a brotherhood leader might have some mystical assistance from The Night Mother and surviving guild members. An imperial person might be able to muster the legion, etc etc etc.

The thing about characters is very true. I tried to think of a story without characters, and what immediately came to mind was “There will come soft rains” - but then I remembered that it doesn’t lack characters. One could argue that the house is a character, but what really drives the story home is the part with the dog. Before that it was gloomy, but the dog made it depressing. It’s amazing that they managed to take memorable characters like Sheogorath and make them utterly forgettable. I don’t really remember Sheogorath’s quest in Skyrim. I think there was a tea party and a dream sequence, which sounds cool, but I cannot remember the plot at all. Meanwhile I remember Big Head and his search for the Fork of Horripilation really well. The Shivering Isles overall was really memorable, so it’s jarring that we went from that to… well Skyrim. Also the reason Oblivion’s voice acting was all over the place is because the actors were given the script with the lines sorted alphabetically. As in, they weren’t really handed a script, rather just a list of lines.

Kingdom Come did so much well that I’d love to see in TES6, I loved things like wearing nice clothes made you more persuasive when talking to nobility, and wearing heavy armour and bloodstained gear made you more intimidating. The combat system was definitely a bit janky when facing more than one enemy, but a lot of time has passed and I reckon the devs at Bethesda have the skill to improve and completely overhaul a system like that into something that works in a fantasy setting.

i would honestly like to know what games people think have good combat? i don't love skyrim's combat but overall it's ok? yes it's button mashing but that's probably 90% of combat in games. the only combat i think i actually kind of enjoyed was in the witcher 3...

I hope you continue to make videos like this as this essay dosent really get to mired in the details but still explains the points

The best exploration game I've ever played was Darksouls. The feeling I got pushing into new areas, discovering new locations and finding the paths between locations was extremely rewarding due to how dangerous it felt to explore. Because I'm not great at the combat, getting to a new area was a trial and the idea of being sent back to the last bonefire was real, so every time I discovered someplace new, it meant something to me. Personally exploration is not about volume of content or non-linearity. It's a well executed risk/reward system.

When it comes to magic system, I highly suggest checking Dragons Dogma. More powerful spells require cast time, which leaves you vulnerable, but holly hell. Creating a hurricane or 6 huge pillars of ice stabbing into a cyclops always felt impactful for me.

Ngl i wish Bethesda would just release a real physical book with all the text from the ingame books printed in it

Every time you show KCD I feel like screaming at my screen cheering to Henry. Not a single Skyrim character feels like that..

You're not kidding about 6:52. I didn't have panic attacks until I did a full playthrough of Skyrim, almost a decade ago. All that delving through ancient tombs to find more and more crap for no reason, and the mind-numbing writing of almost every single quest in the game. This game is so sterile it makes the frivolity of life shockingly apparent. It's a cold slap in the face.

34:50 Remember how in Morrowind they managed to connect the Fighter's Guild, Thieves' Guild, Morag Tong, House Hlaalu, and the last third of the main quest in various ways? Or how if you were progressing through the main quest you were deemed a heretic and denied access to the Temple faction, or if you complete it the Ordinators (most anyways) in the Ministry of Truth wouldn't kill you on sight? Where was all that in future titles?

One thing I really want these gamescto go back to is primary stats that cant be changed so easily. Im sick of perk trees where you get to just do anything and usually EVERYTHING by max level because perks have ni limitations. Disco elysium and BG3 (by extension dnd) did this well. It adds so much more to the identity of your little goober when they have a consolidwted block of primary stats to tell you at a glance who they are and what they might excel at. It also opens the door for more mechanically exciting companions.

3 Seconds to tell me what I already know? Great. An hour and a half to confirm my biases? Perfect.

Level scaling is a huge reason why I hate a lot of stat based rpgs Sometimes they can be fun but leveling every bozo to my tier makes it useless Just remove the stats entirely and replace it with invisible walls at that point

Elden Ring's a great game, but "exploded the standards" for the industry is an exaggeration. It somewhat exceeded already existing standards for action rpgs, and because it's the first game to do so in years it's greatly over-praised.

You referenced Thief: the Dark Project at 18:41 and I love you for that already.

Thanks for making this video, perfectly summarizes how I've felt about Skyrim for the longest time.

Great video! A small suggestion I would make for future vids is to amplify your audio more. I had to play the video at max volume and then got ear blasted by any ad that played.

It's one of those games that's more fun thinking about playing than it is actually playing it. Until you give in to the urges and reinstall it, mod it, then get bored of it after 10 hours. I notice Bethesda games start strong out the gate and they have it almost perfected. The rest after not so much.

The weirdest thing about Skyrim for me is how people hate on Fallout 4 for how it feels,but seem to allow Skyrim which imo feels worse than Fallout 4 to get away freely with poor choices. That and the fact Skyrim never fully fixed the bugs itself in the 10+ years after release so game and quest breaking bugs are still in it that nowadays would get you a never trust badge from the masses...But,it's okay cause it's Skyrim or a Bethesda game and they'll have modders to fix the issues...

I know I'm a little late but, any chance you could give a short list of your favorite/good RPG's that rank higher than Skyrim, and one or two that rank below? I'm not very deep into this genre yet, the only one I've really touched is Outward, but I have enjoyed it immensely so far!

With combat, I think it would be improved dramatically if there was a feature that well-timed blocks become parries and give an opening for a counter attack. Then you have the basis for a more timing based combat system that would feel better to play. I don't think it would be that difficult to implement and would also serve well to keep the combat simple.

my reasons why Skyrim is a disappointment but could have been so much better: 1. Nothing matters, from choices, to events, and even what your character becomes 2. There are no real choices 3. Physics engine is tied to frame rate 4. constant re-releases with nothing fixed, especially on the PC end 5. Todd over-promising 6. half baked dialogue and characters 7. Werewolf and Vampire felt like a complete after-thought despite having a whole DLC around vampires 8. unbalanced and broken combat, especially if you max out smithing and enchanting 9. AI in the game is rediculously inept on so many levels 10. The main story was left way too open ended. From the aldmeri occupation, to you being able to sit Shor's throne, slaying of Alduin and Miraak. its like everyone just shrugs their shoulders like nothing happened.

Nice vid! I enjoy every minutes of it, the audio is on the quiet side but other than that keep up the good work🤜🏼 Question, what do you think about player skill vs character stats in Bethesda RPGs? I feel like it’s a little bit too stat oriented like a traditional RPG in a action open world game Looking forward to a full KCD video next🫡

13:52 Banger ass comment. Had to come back and rewatch this because it's so well done.

"Skyrim fails as an Open World RPG" I have the freedom to explore anywhere I want in the world with whatever character archetype I want. Seems like it succeeds just fine to me.

I tried playing this RPing in mind, my imagination can only take me so far when it every npc is essentially the same voice actor with the same voice line.

man, they really weren't kidding when they said starfield will be "skyrim in space".

I hated it, and nobody can talk about it without speaking of the 1,000 mods they have with it, only proving that the base game sucks. Adding girly animations and realistic water doesn't magickly make the game fun. Oblivion while not perfect was better, because it had the good writing, quests and guilds, so there is motivation to do the objectives.

Skyrim and Breath of the Wild share very similar roles to me. I like both games well enough, and I'll play them if I wanna turn my brain off and kill some things in a cool environment, but if I want an actually good story and to get invested in a character, I'll play an older game in their respective series.

My beef with the anniversary edition is that it keeps forcing me to download EVERYTHING from the creation club each time I reinstall the game. Sure, free downloads are nice, but most of them are either useless or game-breaking.

Now that you say it, the only things I still even remember about this game is how cool the giant underground caverns looked with all the glowing mushrooms. And the fact that it felt like the game was purposely trying to funnel me into the main story because the main story is extremely urgent. Not because the main story felt so compelling that I wanted to finish the main story first, but because it it just felt like if I wasn't doing the main quest to kill alduin. I was waiting time. Almost like the open world doesn't matter. That was the same reason I dropped fall out 4 like 2 hours in.

To be honest I played a LOT pf skyrim, and honestly? It's pretty cool on the surface, but when you try to go deeper you realize that there is no deeper parts, it's like the the Salt Factory video said, ultimately a shallow experience. And fuck i had to install mods so the map would be usefull

I actually really like the idea of radiant quests. They just need to be done better, be clearly signposted, and be 100% optional. I think the idea would actually be a strong addition to most open world RPG's. They would need more than just 1 or 2 generator frames per radiant quest giver. Have a tool that generates simple but unique plots. Have a pool of at least 100 different objective types. And have the location system for all of them be better at selecting places you haven't yet been. This would take an incredible amount of work and is likely outside the scope of most games, but the point is if done well it could add so much.

With Gothic 1, Piranha Bytes proved that they could squeeze an entire game into the sice of a house 😅 With tons and tons of amazing secrets and hidden gems and hours and hours of excitement 🤗

I've said this before in other Skyrim critiques, Bethesda never really evolved past dungeon crawlers, they just slapped an open world map onto their dungeon crawlers with some really fantastic art and environment direction. They're pretty good at environmental storytelling but pretty bad at quest and story writing. Their decisions for how you should *feel* in their world is really great, but their ability to deliver on that feeling is minimal at best. You crawl the same dungeons, fighting the same enemies and all just to get the same meaningless loot. Fallout is the same way. I'm glad we are seeing a shift away from open maps. I prefer a slightly more linear/zone focused story telling for most RPGs, personally.

Besides stealth archer, there is also the conjuration 100 build, where you just loot bodies while 2 dremora + follower kill everything for you

My dissappointment with Skyrim can be explained with three points: Point # 1: The Art-Style, or lack-there-of. Oblivion was styled after a Brother's Grimm Fairy-tale. It was like looking a Children Fantasy Story Ala Fable. Style never ages, Realism does. For a time I tried to convince myself that Skyrim was also styled after Graphic Novels. But, I've since accepted that was not the case and it was merely me trying to come up with a explanation for the shift in art-style. Point # 2: The Character's themselves felt very watered down. Many magical skills were completely gone and even several physical ones (Like Acrobatics and Athletics) I think a sequel should always add to the game, not remove. There also could, and likely should, have been more reactivity around the character. Again, Ala Fable. The magical skills being so much more watered down then in previous games could, and sort of is, explained away via "Magic is slowly leaving the world" The game indirectly touches on this but it's never directly brought up. The Mages Guild themselves never even question it. It's almost as if Morrowind and Oblivion just plain didn't exist in Skyrim's universe. The basic spell of being able to summon skeletons directly from cold harbor and being able to enchant entirely on your own, no workstation or materials beyond a soul gem needed, just to name a few, are things that simply were never possible in Skyrim's Timeline. That fact that Mages were on average significantly stronger just a few centuries earlier is never directly mentioned. Point # 3: The World it's self feels like a Video-Game. That may sound some contradictory, of course it does it is a game. But, compared to Oblivion it's far less "Living". Radiant AI, Bugthesda once ground breaking AI system, was toned down towards the end of Oblivion's development because it was too good at simulating a living world and they just didn't have the time to actually figure it out and work quests around it. In Skyrim, instead of taking their time and their knowledge of their AI system, they removed even more functionality from it which is a trend they still continue with Starfield being the latest example. With each new main-line game Bughtesda creates, more and more functionality behind Radiant is Removed. I think the reason for these removals and stripping down of Radiant may just be the Engine just plain can't handle it. All the above point's combined make for a fairly underwhelming game to me. Fun with mods? Sure. But, at that point it's hard to say if Im having fun because Skyrim is inherently fun or if Im having fun because the mods are fun.