this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2024
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so like now that the only people left talking about it are the nerds who were/became genre aficionados? normal people who didn't put 100s of hours into morrowind and oblivion were like 90% of skyrim's playerbase, and complaints about 'systems' and writing are no more salient with those casual players today than they were in 2012. they just aren't still talking about it
i know everybody 'gets' the idea of being able to watch/enjoy a movie with poor writing that has other virtues, idk why its so hard to imagine people connected with skyrim on the basis of the (at the time) sophisticated and lived-in feeling world
I think a lot of it is that we've been conditioned to filter our thoughts through the lens of explosive and quick hot takes. Something can't be middling or be flawed it has to be either an afront to god or a gift from god himself.
No I just actually think this. It legit surprised me that this thread blew up so much.
The language I used is spicy in retrospect, but I'm just a vulgar sweary person. I have nuanced flaw-acknowledging takes, on Oblivion and Fallout 3. I was hyped for Skyrim and it was bad, so bad. I'vebeen cooking my Skyrim thoughts ever since. I have also never posted on twitter.
I guess what i'm trying to say is that people should examine and disect things not through trying to create sound bites. Like skyrim's writing is bad but how? Is it just self evident or that it is worse then mega man x? Is it a worse game of thrones in that they're both fantasy and skyrim is worse in what game of thrones is attempting to do?
You don't need to ever post on twitter to be exposed to the attention economy.
Reading this as an outsider it feels pretty invalidating of what they're saying, only engagement with it I can see in this comment is the implied question of what they mean by bad writing, but I think in the future it would be better just to ask that
Yeah I didn't mean to come off as hostile or invalidating I guess the way people can sometimes talk about art regardless of medium on the internet can kind of annoy me.
I try not to just be stupid, like I could spend several days posting my GAMING HOT TAKES!! but this thread happened by accident. If I tried to purpose-build a hot take it probably wouldn't even work, I am too autismy. I'm more prone to writing 4000-10,000 words about why something is bad, or good, and often people don't wanna read that which sucks. It's kinda lame that this post got a ton of engagement just for "skyrim bad" tbh.
Yeah that's the consequence of so much content being shoved in our face all the time making it what does get the most attention is the most immediately understandable and eye-catching (think buzzfeed articles with inflammatory headlines) so when someone does sit down and write something that is carefully thought out it gets blown by the wayside.
Ideally the trick would be molding the title of your giant essay into a super hot take so people click, and I have seen good Youtube videos do that, but I'm really bad at it, lol. Hard to catch people's eyes...
It's been a while since I played it and I'd need a comb to go over it, but the scene where you absorb a dragon soul and everyone stands around gawping "wowee, the protagonist! you are the player in this power fantasy game! what a big guy!!!" is eyerolling. I hate it. I also do not like Game of Thrones fwiw, but the Stormcloak-Imperial scuffle is small scale and half baked imo.
I am in the business of writing ridiculous, lengthy examinations and dissections, but a lot of people missed that this post is not a review of analysis of Skyrim, it is about opinions shifting.
Morrowind elitists don’t understand morrowind was a pretty shit role playing game itself
this is literally like wrong, it appeals to a lot more niche RPG interests but it's not a shit RPG by any means
Compared to a lot of the isometric rpgs like planescape torment that came before or new Vegas and baldurs gate 3 that came after’? It’s dog shit. Wikipedia npcs are not immersive to me friend
People getting defensive about favorite treats
Those are a CRAZY high bar. I agree it has flaws but it isn't shit
there's shitty things about it and stuff that yes, even skyrim did better. but part of being an agonizing scold is also having to couch that in the context of its time, so a lot of it wasn't as bad as it looks now.
Yeah I know. Just people who worship morrowind generally don’t realize it’s mainly their nostalgia that makes the game legendary in their heads.
Just like oblivion was my first elder scrolls so that’s the one I gravitate towards
as someone who has played both Skyrim and morrowind long after both came out, I can say with certainty that there are certain aspects of their preference that are just true. Morrowind fundamentally caters to the "weird nerd tinkerer" kind of player way more, with seemingly purposely broken mechanics that are designed to be fully solved through exploring them. Kind of a toolkit of random toys to play with combined with an overarching story.
Whereas Skyrim does have those toys, they were significantly shifted towards being a supporting aspect of the game with the plot and quests taking center stage. This isn't a bad thing, but it stopped catering to people who play with systems as much and started catering towards people who enjoy (multiple concurrent) linear stories more. If you're the kind of person who either roleplays a character that doesn't make sense with the stricter plot, or if you just want to generally fuck around, Morrowind is genuinely a better game (if you can stomach the absurdly out of date graphics). I would describe Morrowind as more of a full on RPG and Skyrim as more of a single-player MMORPG with less predatory monetization (well, when it was originally released at least). One is about giving a player the tools to basically make a story from whole cloth (which does kind of make the existing main story in Morrowind kind of a detractor sometimes), and another is about giving the player far more fleshed out linear narratives to take them on. Both are fun but for very different moods or preferences.
Linear stories that are awful, to boot. Describing Skyrim as a "single player mmo" is so enlightening to me, it's like Borderlands and I hate both, lol
If I want to play a full rpg. I’m not going to be playing a post daggerfall Bethesda game.
It’s just not that good of a role playing experience
Better than Skyrim or Oblivion? Sure. But it’s not some masterpiece of rpg gaming Bethesda games have since morrowind and todd Howard been far more about the exploration than the role playing
If you’re trying to gatekeep rpgs with Morrowind. I’m sorry but that’s laughable to me
Keep in mind these are video game treats people. Please don’t go insane because I’m not a morrowind fanboy
NO I wouldn't gatekeep anyone. I fucking loved Skyrim for ages and think anyone who likes it more than Morrowind (or even a lot more) or any game more than Morrowind is completely valid and reasonable. Art (even silly escapist art like video games) gets way worse when it's a "whose better" wankfest
I didn’t think you were trying to gate keep my friend
I just meant some Morrowind fanboys do and it’s irritating whenever I bring up enjoying Oblivion. Morrowind fanboys pop and tell me how my tastes are shit or how in supposedly a casual (whatever that means)
oh yeah I can get how that's frustrating asf
If it means anything I do think Skyrim is a genuinely fun game. Like it is super broken but that is kind of fun for me and also I can't criticize when I think it's fun in most other games
absolutely, i just want to be fair on both sides [filthy centrism] since i think there's cool experiences in all three
Can you tell me any experiences you’ve had with the orange order?
none but Orangists in Belfast is hilarious as a concept holy shit. can Sinn Feinn just finish the job already?
These old fools are self hating gaelics. They don’t realize even lowland Scots have substantial Gaelic ancestry lmao
I don't think so Idk, like RPG Codex nerds never make videos for instance. Most of these people who make the "eh skrim bad" videos are themselves the normals who never played Oblivion or Morrowind. Also how dare anyone put hundreds of hours into a game and not like the sequel, how abnormal!
Personally it's because the world is worse, again, after Oblivion's was already generic high fantasy. World simulation elements like scheduled NPCs have just vanished, any attempt at a real dialogue system or prcedural chatter (however clownish Oblivion's was) has disappeared. It is a buncha generic brown grey fields and some snow. Its NPCs spout even fewer poorly voiced dialogue lines than in Oblivion and the writing of those lines, as well as everything, has gone down across the board.
i'm going to take umbridge with this and echo somebody else in the thread: juniper, aspen, pine, high plains, and snowfields are all distinct, but i suppose continental biomes. as opposed to Oblivion 'marylanders impression of sherwood forest' i found it much more convincing, but maybe that's cause i've actually seen those things but not the english countryside
god i hate marshes. first thing to do in morrowind is get the fuck away from that malarial coastline
People can still enjoy a game with flaws, like you said, but this goes both ways. Just because someone enjoys a game doesn't make it immune to criticism.
i wasn't trying to say they're immune, just explain the narrative at large. systems critique for games or say, costume critique for movies, are not invalid directions to look at things, but if they don't matter to a large portion of the audience we gotta acknowledge that
Lol tell the gamers, quick! This thread should have been ten replies and done, who cares if some dork hates popular game? And yet!