OT: Skyrim (No Spoilers)

I've been playing a good deal of skyrim recently.  It's fun at first, but then when you level up it starts to get too easy.  You very quickly have more gold than you can use, for instance.  And most of the long quest-chains have rather anticlimactic endings (the main story, for instance, gets really dull at the end.)

So what I end up doing is creating a new character, focusing on a different type of gameplay or different quest chain and then starting fresh when I reach the boredom point for that character.

Biggest problem with this strategy is that I haven't figured out a way to skip past the really long intro (and I don't mean the tutorial scenario of escaping Helgen, but the essentially massively long cut scene before you even get to create your character.)

The new Fallout game is what I'm pumped for. That will be the reason to buy a next gen console.

I've played a number of different playthroughs on skyrim and found the game to be mostly a very enjoyable experience.  Especially once my wife decide that skyrim was cool and wanted to start her own character.  I've found it to be a mostly enjoyable experience that I can lose a couple hours to each week. 

The game isn't without it's flaws though.  Primarily, the games fundemental flaw comes down to character leveling.  At about level 35 there are no challenging things to be done in skyrim.  The highest level dungeon dwellers are put down effeciently with a few hacks with a weapon or a couple spells. Fighting dragons turns into hitting it with weapons and spells  and then sucking down a couple healing potions every time the damn thing flies away because in the brief time it's on the ground it can't damage you enough to matter.   Also you'll never run out of healing potions because there is essentially very little else you'll really want to spend your massive piles of gold on. 

Overall the game gives you too much in the way of resources and does not have sinks that take away those resources at a pace that makes for any reasonable challenge.  You get way too much gold, jewels, and loot every time you enter a dungeon area.  There's then nothing of value exepct for the rare home or healing potions to buy and hell you'll find in a mid size dungeon probably a 5-7 healing potions of various strength any way.  The same game decisions apply to crafting materials, and enchanting materials.  You'll find so many of these items that it essentially makes leveling either of those skills a grind to see how fast you can smith 30 daggers at which point you can turn around sell those daggers and have more gold.  They also took away degredation of armor and weapons which was a mechanic that constantly allowed players to improve important skills but also siphoned away at least a bit of the vast amounts of wealth you could accumulate.

I found that exploration of skyrim, it's hidden areas and quests to be the most satisfying aspect of the game because it ignores these broken mechanics and does provide some great hours of gameplay.  If Bethesda makes another Elder Scrolls game I hope they take a hard look at the mechanics of levling.  All that said I'll still pre order the game and probably enjoy myself immensly.

 

Love everything about it, aside from the bugs, of course.

Apply Brian's critical-by-nature correction factor and you probably are closer to the truth. Skyrim is a great game, but ultimately not as deep and engrossing as other RPGs, even their own Oblivion, IMO. The world is fantastic and huge, and there surely isn't a lack of things to do, but the variety becomes lacking. The do anything and everything, anytime game play is liberating at first, but also makes your decisions seem completely irrelevant and robs the experience of any emotional weight. Decide to kill someone or befriend them, ultimately it makes zero difference. There isn't anything remotely approaching a poignant moment through the entire story and you never have much of a relationship with really anyone enough to like or hate them. There's a sweet spot in the game where your character is between a totally broke ass weakling and an all powerful god like figure with near limitless wealth that is pretty interesting and fulfulling, but before and after is rather tediouls.The game is well worth the money and I would definitely recommend it, but Brian isn't totally off in that it's somewhat hollow.

For all the hardos bitching about Skyrim's difficulty, have y'all tried the game on Legendary? It's absolutely brutal, especially as a melee character.

I've spent thousands of hours playing Morrowind as it would crash often and eventually REALLY crashed leaving all my saved files not accessible.  I then played Oblivion for around another thousand hours.  The game play and overall experience in Oblivion was much better than Morrowind.  

I've probably put in close to 300 hours into Skyrim.  At this point, my character is pretty juiced and is at level 58.  However, I'm not really playing to "beat" the game or even advance the story at all.  I know what I have to do and could easily do it, but instead just roam the countryside looking at the beautiful scenery and enjoying the peaceful music.  I play the game to escape from my own life for a few hours here and there.  I really enjoy it.  I will finish the main quest soon enough but there is no hurry.  The beauty of this series is that you can enjoy your journey and not just the accomplishment of "winning".  There are so many things you can do to improve your character and thousands of random tasks and quests to go on.   It will take more than a few days to really get into it.  I wasn't a fan of Morrowind at first but was too bored at the time not to play it.  As time went on, it became one of my favorite games of all time.

For anyone complaining about Skyrim, know that this series is the industry standard and won Game of the Year.  While some people may like other games more, most people interested in this genre do not.  Give it time and realize that you haven't even scratched the surface yet.

I was at about level 20 and I thought I had a really good handle of the game.  I went home for Thanksgiving and found that my brother was on level 72 and I really didn't know what I was doing.  There is a lot in the details.

My guy is up to level 72. I could play for another 5 years and not finish. It's very addicting.

Skyrim is amazing. The story certainly won't melt your face like The Last of Us, but it's all about getting dropped into a vast fantasy playground and finding new things around every corner. 

Sorry, double shot.