Now, I preordered Skyrim for the P.C and got it the day after it came out. Before then, I had played both Morrowind and Oblivion and a tad bit of Arena. Morrowind is my favorite game hands down. I love it immensely and have played through it at least four times now, that is with pretty much all of the guilds, the main quest, and the expansion packs completed. Same with Oblivion although I am on my third time for that now. In both these games, with each play through I take time to do side quests, imagine my character, read books, decorate houses (do not underestimate the time it takes to decorate houses to coincide with my character) talk to other character, collect items for no reason, and fully engage in the story line. There is no skipping talking most of the time as it's really a single player roleplaying game for me (I understand that a lot of games are roleplaying, but I don't feel as though many let you flesh out a character as much). That being said I have a preferred means of play (I'm also going to ignore my little bit of time with Arena because I didn't really get into it so much).
I also didn't give Skyrim very much time, which brings me to say that I in no way think that my opinion is very valid, and am not saying it's a bad game as I am not qualified to judge that. Maybe one day Skyrim and I will settle our differences and we will become friends, but today is not that day. I got to I think like the second major town or something and am basing my opinions off that. So here are reasons I don't like Skyrim, as well as some things I liked, all based in comparison to Morrowind and Oblivion not as a game on its own.
First thing I noticed was that you can customize your character greater and the Khajiites don't look horrible so I finally decided to play as one since my first Morrowind play through ( I am now once again a Khajiit in Oblivion). I really liked the customization. Like gosh.
I figure I have to give my input on graphics and I guess I like them. It's more of I don't care what the graphics look like too much as Oblivion was just fine with me. (It took a while to get it to run okay on my computer as it said I can run it on high but obviously it was way wrong).
Next thing I noticed was there was not acrobatics skill and I could no longer scale mountains in a single bound. Now I understand that this is more realistic, but for me more realistic was not what I wanted and I severely miss jumping mountains. I was very angry at this, but I did get angrier.
Next thing I noticed was that the menus sucked and were hard to use. I think they were made for game consuls, but that does not excuse their horribleness. I wasn't too fond of the Oblivion menus and thought they could be done better, but the Skyrim menus simply do not work well for PC at all. I mean why. Why. It was really bad and made me mad.
Next thing is the skill trees. I liked skill trees in Diablo II, and Titan Quest, I was kinda bugged by them here. I think the reason for that was I hated the menu they were in and would prefer if it were in a more generic skill tree menu. I have no clue how they work in Skyrim, so it's probably the menu that upset me.
I really like that you can kill and harvest butterflies. That just made me really happy.
I then noticed how alchemy worked and got so upset that I had to run away and take a break. Oh my precious alchemy why did they plant you in the ground. WHY! You should be carried around. This is no way to treat you alchemy.
Okay before I go on, the reason this upset me so much is because I always play an alchemist of sorts. The extent of alchemy is different, but it is by far my favorite skill. There are two ends of my alchemy spectrum the right end is I only use it for money and healing potions, the other end is I depend on it with my life and die in no time if I do not drink all the potions. Using the second end actually can make the game somewhat hard. You see before every battle you have to enticipate what will happen. You have to know if they use fire, shock or whatnot to kill you so you can counter that. You need to make health potions and such to assist you, and you need to fortify your skills. I usually carry all of my stuff around so many times I cannot wear armour which makes it so that I have to use more potions. It also makes me die easier. I do all of this because my character is usually physically weak, and really a horrible mage, so they have to figure out potions to make it in life. You see, in the early days of their journey they have to avoid most troubles except the very easiest. They then find alchemy equipment and start to figure out how they can survive. I like to change the story up a bit here like if they are really poor and make camps everytime they have to sleep and carry around an assortment of bowls and spoons and shit because they value that, or sometimes they were rich kinda noble people and all of their friends used their money to go adventuring with expensive armour, but when my character went out to do this, it didn't work out so well, or sometimes they are just very in tune with nature from the get go and have to learn how to survive in the civilized world and the way they do that is to use alchemy to get the upper hand. Jumping is always very important as I like doing ridiculous things and this prohibits me from doing that which I could in the past. So you see, I have a problem with this game as it interferes with my personal roleplay. Now, I will carry on.
Tanning seems like a cool concept, but I kind of gave up.
Shadowmere is a girl! ADHfkdsaj;f You don't know how many of my friends corrected me when talking about this. I would be like "oh Shadowmere is back I loved her!" and they would respond "Shadowmere is a boy!" and I would say " No, I distinctly remember that SHE was a MARE becasue ShadowMERE sounds like MARE." and then we would look it up and figure out that they changed the gender. That's not much of a big deal but it made me sad.
Please don't tell me about other plot points that have changed. Is Lucien Lachance back? I didn't get there. I really liked him so I don't know if that's so bad that he's referenced.
Is Solstheim back? I kinda want that again.
I like dragons, but I thought the Elder Scrolls was different because it didn't have them. I'm probably wrong here, but I don't remember them being referenced in past literature. M'aiq the Liar said they were invisible or something so I thought they were supposed to be fake. If dragons are real there better be weresharks and something to do with nudity. I usually want really generic dragons, but in this case I thought they could go a bit different. Like, maybe something akin to nordic cliff racers or something? I don't know, I just thought it a bit uncreative. Like the Elder Scrolls have a ton of creative settings and such, but as games go on it seems to be really bland. Like, in Morrowind the Dunmer were the main race and some of the landscapes were pretty wonderful especially the region around Telvanni. Oblivion had a lot to do with Imperials which was kinda lame as they were just plain humans, which is the same with Skyrim. I wish they explored more races and such as they had some set up. Like the Highelves have a seriously cool island. Or the Black Marsh could be really cool with it's flora. Or the relationship between Red Guards and Orcs would be fun to flesh out. I could've sworn they had some tension in the past. I just kind of felt like since Morrowind the unique elements have been toned down. As I said, I haven't played the game much, but the setting doesn't seem to allow and in depth look at magic, which I would love. Like, with Oblivion's obsession with Necromancers, and Morrowind's folklore with Gods and such, I kinda wish they made the whole thing seem more magical. I guess there is dragon magic, but I feel like that could be more creative. Is it just me or do the dragons look mostly the same? Like, couldn't one have fur?
I also think all of the people talking about it in my school kinda got me down. Like, I don't want to be hipster, but it seemed really uhmm topical? I really cared about the Elder Scrolls and I was happy people were enthusiastic, but I suppose the enthusiasm I saw wasn't the same kind as I wanted. I wanted more people to be talking about the story. I guess I especially remember before it came out I was talking with some guys in my Latin class about Morrowind and Oblivion and all they would talk about is abusing the game to make mega spells that make everything easy, and I really wanted to talk more about it.
As a side note, I think overall I really always wanted to like Barenziah, but I felt odd about some of the aspects of her story line. I feel as though a lot of it was like fanservice fanfiction, when I feel that she could have been much cooler? I don't know how I feel about the sexual aspects of her story. I suppose I feel as though she would be more in control of the outcomes, but it felt like from beginning to end she was just screwed over by men because she was promiscuous. It would be cooler if she could find a way to use it to her advantage and I would think she would become wiser as time went on, but it didn't seem that way. I suppose I wanted her to learn how to make things work out better, and I get that she can have her faults, but I felt really weird about it. Was she even queen for that long? Do they mention her in Skyrim? She grew up there, so I would think it would have some story time things.
I'm not looking into Online right now. If it were multiplayer with a select group I think I may be into it, but I don't really want to share playing with everyone. Like if I could Roleplay with Evan and other people who would respect stories that would be fun. After wikipedia real quick it looks to be massively multiplayer, and I really don't want that at all.
Once again, I think I don't like Skyrim for extremely personal reasons, aside from maybe the menu. So, I really get if these reasons don't apply to you. My information could also be off in many places, especially about lore as I quite frankly adjust it to fit my personal stories. I just had to say them.
