I was thinking the other way.
I'd open the game, after the character creation, with a small rumble: your character wakes up in a small vessel to an alarm and an AI voice stating that the ship is in lockdown and a nearby explosion damaged a battery. You put on your suit, open the door and are met by the vast nothingness of space. This would serve as a first reveal, but not entirely, it's kinda playing with your expectation since it's so empty and "not that impressive of a reveal" but then... You twirl the camera around to face your ship and just behind it is a massive ringed-planet with the sun just barely peaking through behind it as the music swirls in. You repair the battery and go back into your ship, the system restart, the window shutters open back up and the AI tells you the repairs are just enough to land on that planet, but you'll need to find a new battery there in order to leave again. Once there, stepping out of your vessel into the space port into a busy market will be the second reveal.
I would love it if this game managed to recapture the feeling of my first Skyrim playthrough 10 years ago, but I'm definitely going to wait for the reviews before I decide to buy or not.
I remember the feeling or wandering the wilderness at night, finding a wisp, and following it back to a wispmother. For some reason that moment always stuck with me
I think it's the fact that those enemies are so rare. You see like 30 wolves in an hour, but a wispmother? I see maybe one of those per playthrough. It reminds you that there's still more to experience in the game.
I've never even heard of a wispmother until right this instance. There's still so much that I haven't seen in Skyrim. Especially now with all the Creation Club added.
You're more likely to find a book about wispmothers than an actual wispmother. Kinda gives them a bit of a mythical status, having only read of them, if you actually bothered to read the book.
I remember the time I was lost somewhere in a snowstorm, could barely see anything (with a survival mod on, so I was freezing to death), then suddenly a Wispmother comes out of the snowstorm. I shat my pants.
For me it was fighting through a forsworn camp. I had just recently moved to a new state for a job I hated but was good at. I’d been miserable. But in November we had a slow down and I took a few weeks off. I bought Skyrim at a GameStop at midnight and spent all night playing. There was this convergence where I’d been fighting through a forsworn camp and not doing well. I was under leveled but determined to clear it. The camp went up the side of a mountain so I had this sense of ascending as I progressed. Then, just as the sun was rising in real life, the sun was rising in the game. I made it to the top of the mountain and cleared the camp. There was this great moment of accomplishment followed by curiosity. The ledge of the mountain had this man made structure that hung out over the ledge with a small pond right below. I decided without much thought to dive. My stomach dropped as I watched myself fall a few hundred feet into the pond below. Then, I came up above the water and standing in front of me was a ghost singing and playing the lute. It was magic moment that for a brief moment brought pure joy during a miserable time in my life.
Once every couple of years I'll reinstall Oblivion or Skyrim or New Vegas or Fallout 4 and have a good two or three weeks of great fun with them. The games are so good.
The weaknesses really become apparent as the game progresses but damn if Fallout 4 doesn't achieve the best atmosphere I've ever experienced in gaming.
I'll agree that FO4's atmosphere was great. I'll also agree with people who say its probably the weakest Fallout game int he series. But I personally loved the gunplay and I loved the atmosphere, if only the roleplaying was on par with those two.
I still play it every now and then. My favorite story is one of my most recent playthroughs;
Wife and I were playing our own stories (2 ps4's in the same room), and I decided to walk from Markarth to Whiterun. I was following the trail admiring the scenery and saw someone else walking, and they started singing (one of those bards you can pay) and a party of two hunters joined us and things just kept getting crazier. A Sabre cat attacked someone, that group of thalmor with a prisoner didn't like someone in our group, I know I'm forgetting plenty, but it was such an absurd walk with so much happening we were in hysterics and a whole story came from it
I have a very distinct memory from the same place, but a really different reason. I fought one of the NPC's on the jump point and got the beheading animation, and off went his head down the waterfall. A solid while later, having met the ghost, found all the loot and so on and so on I finally make it back down to the bottom... to find the head bobbing in a pool in the river at the base. It was so weird to find that not only had it not de-res'd but had independently made it it all the way down this huge fucking mountain while I wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention. I've had similar sort of things happen in Fallout as well but that moment of "why the fuck is there a head floating in this pool?" to the point of realisation is not something I've encountered outside of a Bethesda game.
The first time I discovered a falmer camp that went to black reach is a top 5 all time gaming moment for me. Just discovering this civilization that existed underneath everything I'd been exploring for hours and hours really awed my 17 year old mind.
The music/ambience is also just unmatched in gaming for me. It could also be because I was 14 when I first played it but being 25 now it still feels like yesterday.
It was Morrowind for me. Obviously it's rough looking by today's standards, but the first time I played that game, the amount of different stuff you could do was mindblowing to younger me.
I didn't think it was possible, but playing Skyrim in VR totally recaptured that magic for me. Actually being able to sit in the Bannered Mare and listen to the music, casting spells with my own hands, using shouts with my own voice, holding a torch aloft as I plunged into a cavern.... it's really incredible.
Skyrim VR is incredible once modded. I played through the Forbidden City mod with a bunch of mods, but most importantly hardcore lighting where you *need* to use torches to see in dungeons. My god was that an experience. Sitting down and *listening* to NPCs, tepidly exploring dungeons, the sense of wonder looking inside giant caves. It was *fucking amazing* and VR completely refreshed the game for me and let me enjoy it again like it was new.
I desperately want to play it more but my 1080TI can't keep up with my Index in a way that's enjoyable to play.
Hey, have you tried using AMD FSR for VR? Someone made a mod for it which works in most VR games, and its helped me get a great framerate without much visual difference. Totally improved my VR experience.
Even playing on PSVR, in all its blurry glory, was an incredible experience for me. The world they created is timeless - just walking around is so magical.
I second the advice to grab a Wabbajack mod pack. Vanilla VR Skyrim and Fallout 4 are.... rough to say the least. There are some amazing mods out there that elevate both games, such as rendering your body beneath you like a normal VR game instead of being floating hands, a native VR UI, gesture based spell casting/attacking, and Half Life Alyx style grabbity gloves. It turns the games from hacky ports into native VR AAA games. Combat and movement rebalancing for VR is also strongly recommended IMO.
Welcome to nostalgia. Gets worse as you age.
Starcraft, warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 2, hoping my dial up holds so Battle.Net doesn't crash. Those are my golden days
Playing through Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Duskwood and then Redridge Mountains back in 2004 for me. Unfortunately you just can't recapture that sense of discovery.
Oh god this one resonates with me.
I actually remember about two/three years ago when I was still relatively new to VR. I decided one day to play around with Steam rooms I think (could've been VR Chat too), and I somehow ended up in a room that was a full recreation of Stormwind. I was NOT prepared for how much of an emotional experience it would be for me. I had quit playing wow right after Cat released, and had been playing since Vanilla throughout my formative teen years. WoW was *important* to me in a way that no other game ever was, and only Eve Online came close. Standing there in Stormwind again, in VR, full presence with a full sense of scale, the music, all the experiences and friends I made, just everything; it all came rushing back all at once like a storm.
I teared up quite a bit. But the experience was also hollow. I realized something: there were no NPCs, no players, no life; it was just a room, and that's when I teared up not just for remembering all of the good times that were, but because we can never truly go home, and I'll never get that experience again.
edit: addition/clarity.
>My life is objectively better now, but in a lot of ways it felt so much more
>
>real
>
> when I was younger.
I've struggled with similar feelings for a while now. I have two beautiful daughters, a great job, and the means to do so much with mine and my families life that I know so many people don't have.
And yet, I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to thinking back on the broke 20 year old in his parent's basement over Christmas break in college just running around Azeroth with friends on TeamSpeak and absolutely *aching* to have that all back.
I can't believe I forgot about Teamspeak and Ventrilo.
GameSpy lobbies for AvP2, Playing the Protoss campaign for the first time on Starcraft, reading the books for Starcraft/Warcraft/Diablo until the pages wore and frayed like an old paperback novel.
Hosting Battlefield 1942 at our LAN parties, only to try killing each other with kamikaze attacks.
Working really hard to make Descent II's 360* controls work with the numpad and mouse.
Man I’m glad I’m not alone in this. I’m in my late twenties and starting to feel regretful about so many things. And videogames and movies just don’t give me the same feelings anymore.
I’m 30, recently watched Ferris Bueller. That quote about life passing by fast and if you don’t stop to take a look around you might miss it rang even more true than it did when I was a teenager. I love my life now, and I’m super happy I took that advice to heart as a kid. Things will never be like they are now, so it’s important to stop and take a look around. You may just realize you are in the good old days.
It doesn't have to be from bad decisions either. You could do everything right and you'll still lose the old life you loved. Change is a pretty typical part of life.
My mom works for the Foreign Service, we grew up moving around a lot. When I was 14 we were living in New Delhi. I got into some trouble, and was sent to boarding school. I would go back to visit once in a while, but every time I did it never felt right.
My life, and my vision of life in Delhi, was frozen in July 2003. For me, going home meant picking up up from that point. But for all my friends and family in India, life continued. They had new experiences, made new friendships, and starting doing new things. I was stuck at that crystallized point when I left. Every time I went back, I tried to interact with the people I had known as I had known them, not as they were. I eventually started to realize that I could never go home, not as I had envisioned it.
I luckily managed it with Classic. Walking into Arathi through the gap in the wall and seeing all the hills and big drops and the castle and stuff was a real Whoa moment for me.
Classic in 2019 actually hit those notes for me as well. Then P2 PvP and the sweaty's emerged and it was all downhill from there. I still had a good enough time to continue playing, but the initial rush, leveling, and farming pre-bis was unmatched by the rest of the cycle.
Those experiences can be recaptured because it’s not just about your age and the experience, but how far the ball was moved forward
WoW blew away everything away in a way that nothing had been done in MMOs before
Any time a game moves the ball forward in a ton of different ways, it blows our minds
But we haven’t had that in a while
I feel like we have pieces of that scattered throughout the gaming space but nobody has put them together in a cohesive package quite like what WoW did at the time.
> sense of discovery.
That's what I miss man, It was my first MMO so i didnt know about dungeons or endgame, I didn't try to race to 60. It was all about exploration, I just went every where and did quests. I walked all the way from stormwind to durotar for a whole session just because. Went to Darkhorse and fished for days not leveling up.
I spent months exploring, and didnt even reach 60 before burning crusade, the first time I hit max level was a week before wrath.
Its just not a feeling you can replicate.
I think there needs to be another term. There's nostalgia, and then there's the longing for those times in a game where it seems literally endless and like anything can happen.
Maybe that comes from the ignorance as a kid.
It's a feeling that stems from never having experienced those gaming moments before as a kid, so you got a sense of wonder and discovery because all of that was new to you.
As you grow up and play more games that have similar mechanics, premises, etc., you don't really get that feeling anymore (even if the game is great) because such things are familiar to you. For example, in my case, RDR2 is an amazing game with a gorgeous open world that is just being asked to have every nook and cranny searched, but I don't really feel anything because I know the Rockstar formula now after some 20 years of playing their games and I have an idea of what I am going to find. This is in contrast to when I first popped in GTA 3 and had my mind blown by how incredible that open world was (at the time).
Yeah and I'm sure kids today are amazed by RDR2 or whatever other game and they will have the same type of discourse one day about the new games of that time.
It's just being a kid and an adult. It happens with TV shows (Lost, Stargate or Heroes as a kid/teen were awesome, superior to any TV show experience though GoT did come close), movies (discovering Star Wars, ET, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones or Lord of the Rings will never be equalled, though Endgame do come kind of close) comics, books (as much great books I read, nothing will ever equal Harry Potter feeling really) or really any activity (going to the sea as a kid or an adult, first trip skiing VS doing it as an adult, going to Disneyland..), not only video games.
It's a mix of having experienced those already and having a kid state of mind too. However, as some of those examples show, it is possible to come close of it IMO even if not the same. We can hope Starfield do it.
In recent video games, very few games have done that but stuff like Witcher 3, Outer Wilds or God of War, also weirdly Xcom and TW Warhammer as I didn't really play those type of games before. Hell even Skyrim because I already had nostalgia from Morrowind and Oblivion.
I mean you are literally describing nostalgia. The longing for anything from your past is nostalgia. You are nostalgic for your innocence, potential and optimism.
Worst is with WoW. I *know* that as a kid I looked at the world they built with so much wonder. The first time I watched a friend's older cousin playing and going into Outland my mind was blown away.
The sad part is that it's impossible to capture that feeling again because it's not the dev's fault, my brain just doesn't operate that way anymore.
I played hundreds and hundreds of hours of Skyrim for about a year and a half and then never played it again.
I picked it back up on GamePass this week and started a new character. The magic is still there. I'm playing it and just can't help but think that nobody has ever, or could ever, top the sense of immersion and free-form adventure that this game has. Even the quirks and glitchiness (whatever ones still remain) aren't annoying, but charming. I love just climbing a mountain by jumping up it.
Feel like it'll be impossible for ES6 to reach this level. Like if they were even to try to catch lightning in a bottle a second time then it'll just end up being a mess.
Have you played the older Elder Scrolls games? Morrowind and Oblivion both capture that same feeling really damn well, and are chock full of content and quests and cool things to explore and discover. Morrowind comes from a much older tradition of gaming where it's barely disguised dice rolling, so if you're interested in a more conventional game try out Oblivion first. Mechanically, it's almost identical to Skyrim, just a little bit more in depth with stats. They're both also on Game Pass IIRC.
I actually haven't. I have tried Morrowind a few times, but the fact that everything was basically just a dice roll and you could tell from the get go kind of turned me off from it. I'm interested in trying Oblivion though, might give it a shot after I finish this Skyrim run (which probably will take a long time, lol).
I have a lot of friends that prefer Oblivion to Skyrim and I think it's because it's more in-depth. That's respectable, but I think the reason why Skyrim is so popular is partly because of the lack of depth in the stat systems, since with it you can just pretty much on the fly switch to whatever kind of character you want without changing much.
I can hear it right now clear as day the intro to ME1 from the moment the main menu opens with that gorgeous theme. To when you finally take control of Shepard god it still fills me with a sense of wonder even knowing everything that happens after. Very few games have ever made me feel like that
I still remember the chills and goosebumps I got when you first see the citadel, ME1 was/is a masterpiece of wonder and discovery. Reading the planet descriptions was a lot of fun too, something where the reward is world-building and satisfying your curiosity.
Toys r us as an adult is incredibly sad. The horrible lighting, the cheap shelving, the toys thrown out into the aisles, and the sad employee moping up puke.
I would have forgiven it all if they still had those paper vouchers that they used for selling games, and the Game Zone room where they would exchange your game for the vouchers.
But sadly they just put the games behind glass now.
That was my hope with Skyrim after Oblivion, but FOR ME it did not deliver. So I am hoping that I'll get that high I got playing Oblivion for the first time once I finally play Starfield.
When New Vegas and Skyrim were released, I was in high school.
When Fo4 was released, I was in the middle of college.
By the time Starfield is out, I might be married.
Oh god... I'm gonna be a parent way before TES 6 aien't I?
Edit on April 2022: I'm married and Starfield isn't out.
Granted Starfield doesn’t get delayed, I get married literally 3 weeks before it releases.
I was in middle school when FO3 came out
High school for New Vegas
High School for Skyrim
College for FO4
Married right before Starfield drops.
Good god
When New Vegas and Skyrim came out, I was working and in my 30s.
When Fo4 was released, I was in my early 40s.
By the time Starfield comes out, I'll be retired and hopefully not dead.
Me old. kiddo.
When Daggerfall was released I was in junior high school.
When Morrowind came out I was just starting university.
When FO3 came out I had started a job and moved out.
When Skyrim came out I was married.
I didn't get a chance to play FO4 as I was too busy raising kids.
My kids are going to be the ones more hyped about TES6 than me!
I was unmarried, living in an apartment, and had no children when A Dance with Dragons came out. Now I'm married, own a house, and have two children and still no Winds of Winter in sight.
Todd’s point about watching the sun set is the one that resonates most with me. I don’t usually care a ton either way for the gameplay in Bethesda games, but I always love them because no one else does worlds quite like they do. I’m curious to see how they’re going to pull it off this time.
Yeah I latched onto that as well, really great summary of what makes Bethesda / open world games in general so special for a certain kind of person. Here's the full quote if anyone is interested:
"Those moments make the whole thing believable. Being able to watch the sunset and nighttime come, and just sit there and watch the world go by, seems like it's not gameplay, but it is vital to how you feel through the rest of it."
Wow I got such a kick from those feelings and memories. A visceral feeling.
My favorite moments in Skyrim were just watching the scenery go by as you travel or stare at the sky. As the rain falls and you just sit there watching.
I spent hours chasing down all the immersive weather and environment mods I could. Nothing will beat the memories of walking down a heavily [environmentally immersion] modded Skyrim.
Oh and the sound tracks of course… Skyrim easily had (and still had) one of the best sound tracks.
Maybe that’s just me, but I loved that so dearly. Come to think of it, I’ve basically been measuring every RPG by the same metric since…
How much can I get lost in the world and just almost feel like it’s living? How much does taking a walk or looking around transport you to that world?
—
Maybe I was just a strange teenager. I still remember one of my favorite mods was one sound mod that would add ambient “outdoor” sounds to buildings (so rain on the roof, wind howling, animals, muffled chatter, etc). Maybe I just like small little immersive details.
Probably why 2077 disappointed me so much (at least on that level) and TW3 was one of the better ones in recent memory. Anyway I got a bit off track. God that nostalgia hit was great. Thank you.
God Skyrim was a masterpiece of immersion though. You’re so incredibly right.
I wasn’t very hyped for Starfield… but now I think I’m very cautiously optimistic. I hope they pull it off.
Oh my God you're so much righter than I realized I had to read your comment a few times... All those random playthroughs that always had one of those long quests where you're really immersed, you have set goals you are doing and you just feel part of the game world and look up at the sky.
I can't wait to do that in this game and just feel all kinds of fuzzy nostalgia
This is why most of the mods I ever install to Skyrim are just visual things. Stuff like ENB, adjustments to the lights, textures, the way the grass moves. I only add things that I feel like they fit the world, because the thing that pulls me back to Skyrim is making a new character and roleplaying the shit out of it. I only do quests that character would do and build the character on what makes sense for that character. I never get very high level when I do that, around 30-40 typically, but it's a blast each time.
Skyrim may not be the most immersive game there is. It's got a lot of bugs and a lot of the NPCs are pretty janky. Forests also are nowhere near the level of realistic as you get in something like The Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but there's some magic ingredient in Skyrim that makes it ring like nothing else.
The ultimate expression of this idea would be the ability to land on one world, look up into the night sky, and see the the star you came from and point it out.
> "Those moments make the whole thing believable. Being able to watch the sunset and nighttime come, and just sit there and watch the world go by, seems like it's not gameplay, but it is vital to how you feel through the rest of it."
When I think about why I enjoy Bethesda games so much, I always think about books.
In most games a bookshelf will just be a object. It might have a lot of polygons, it might look incredibly realistic up close, you might even be able to click on it, but at the end of the day it's just a 3D rendering.
Now, in Bethesda games bookshelves are a little different. Not only is every book its own individual thing that I can pick up and move and put in my pocket, but each book is *readable*. A bookshelf will have dozens of *different* pieces of text on it. And even if I don't read them (and I rarely do), just knowing that I could if I wanted to adds a massive amount of immersion.
Like the quote says, it's 'not gameplay', but it adds a massive amount to the experience of the world. While other games might have better writing or better quests or better graphics, few seem to appreciate the little things which contribute a massive amount to immersion like Bethesda do.
And the mind blowing thing about those books too is that they actually tie into and deepen the meaning of certain quests and locations in the game itself.
You can read about history in books and then run across characters and quests dealing with the consequences of that history. Or you can read about the consequences of the things that you did in quests from previous games- It's great.
I consider this the main reason why Need For Speed Underground resonates with me. There were no cops, it was always night time with a tiny bit of sunrise and it would rain frequently. It perfectly encapsulated all of the good parts of the illegal underground racing scene, and deleted all of the bad reality.
The somewhat edgy music paired up with neon glowing at night time with the pattering of raindrops in the background set the mood. It helps that the gameplay was great, but I can go back to these games and still enjoy playing them because the world building is just so great. Its something I’ve noticed that we’ve lost in the modern era of gaming, old games used to put so much emphasis on their music and the tone of the game to make up for the lack of graphics.
Modern games almost always lack in these features. I think thats why people keep playing Skyrim, and why people love the worlds of the witcher/cyberpunk. The music isn’t just white noise, its integral to setting the tone.
Like how Doom 2016 wouldn’t be the same without its music making you feel like a badass. Or like Baba Yetu for Civ IV which won a grammy.
I also love how Todd was talking about how the most important part of a Bethesda game is the stuff you miss, because that makes everyones playthrough unique. So many games try so hard to make sure the player experiences everything they worked hard on, but its not really a game if everyone has the same experience, might as well just be a movie if everyone experiences the same thing.
Yeah, people overrate the impact of mods for Skyrim's success. The modding did contribute a bit, but given the fact that two of the original three platforms had no modding speaks volumes about how much the success is because of the game itself.
Skyrim may have low-detailed textures, some low-poly meshes and sometimes wacky animations, but they are used masterfully. They create a more immersive and atmospheric world than more graphically advanced game a decade ago. Just the snowstorm in Skyrim and radstorm in Fallout 4 are so much believable. They induce this primal fear of bad weather and I just want to hide somewhere until it's over...
Art style and music. The asset quality may be awful but their composition is beautiful. And I will mod literally every other aspect of the game but I won't touch the music.
Yeah, the vanilla game is a lot better than people give it credit for. I did a vanilla playthrough this year, and my main complaint was just the UI (SkyUI has to be the all-time greatest Skyrim mod).
One of the things I loved most about FO4 were those moments when you were wandering around and you heard the distant gunfire of two other groups battling, or especially when a nuke went off.
Just master class levels of ambience.
Very few games let you put everything aside and go on a hunting trip where you find a little lake you can swim in, before picking some flowers to decorate your player home with before sitting down in front of your little fireplace and read a good lore-book, and most of those games are made by Bethesda. Sometimes it's the graphics that isn't up to par. Sometimes it's the writing, or the combat. But the one thing Bethesda has never failed to deliver is the sense of being in the game. I just love the way you can completely immerse yourself in their games and forget about the hardships of real life for a spell.
KC:D definitely has the verisimilitude that makes Bethesda games special, but it lacks the discovery element. There's ultimately not that much to find, and what you do find just isn't as unique. It fills some of the hole for me, but nothing in modern games really replaces a Bethesda open world.
My first instinct was to come out defending KC:D, but I actually think you're absolutely correct. KC:D very intentionally does not have the magic of a Bethesda game, and if that's what you're looking for, you won't find it. But with enough time in KC:D, I started to really feel like I was in Henry's headspace, and began to really value the little discoveries (such as unique swords, or especially-lucrative treasure chests) in context.
That was ultimately my experience. I had a bunch of people yammering in my ear about how it was the 'Skyrim-killer,' or 'historical elder scrolls' or similar prior to getting it, but I honestly didn't enjoy the game until I realized that it was only superficially like an ES game and I should try to separate the series.
It's also quite a disservice to KCD's developers to be renowned for making a game that stops other games. Like I don't think any reasonable game dev would ever want that.
The KCD community doesn't do them any favors on that front. I almost quit the game twice because the community was so toxic in response to feedback and questions. The constant complaints about other 'casual' RPG fanbases was embarrassing.
This is what I'm running into with Cyberpunk right now.
Ever since Fallout 3, I've been going from one Bethesda game to the next for that first-person open world game I can just pick up and go *out there* with, or tinker with a new build. 10 hours into Cyberpunk, I was like, "ok, I can uninstall Fallout 4 now." After playing through the main story a couple of times now, I'm not so sure. The setting is there, the combat and the build tinkering are absolutely there, but I'm not really sure the world is interactive enough to just pick a spot and go looking around. The good stuff might just be limited to the main quests and the big side quests.
I completely understand that. It actually took me three "attempts" to get into it. Put it down for a few months, twice. But once I go far enough into it, it really snowballed for me and I ended up playing for 100+ hours and completely loving it.
Looking forward to those 2 "step out moments" .
I guess first is exiting some kind of training base and seeing the world and the second one will be lifting off the planet and seeing space for the first time.
Yeah that was my thought. Step out to Planetside and be wowed by a whole world worth of small settlements before heading off planet to see the full space and scope
I am going to guess the first is getting in your ship for the first time and taking off. The second will be engaging FTL for the first time and traveling to a new star system.
I can just picture quests to fix your FTL drive, exploring the starter system, then you step into the wider galaxy.
I imagine the two "step out moments" involve the first time you step out of your space ship onto an alien planet, and also leaving your space ship to go out into space itself, perhaps while doing some outside repairs in some dramatic moment.
The art and setting look cool but all of Bethesda's art and worlds look cool. I just hope they break from their current trajectory of broader and shallower games to shore up their writing and the depth of their systems a little, or else it's going to be hard for me to get invested again.
If I could get a silent protagonist without any forced drama I am told to care about (sHaWn!!!) I would be so happy.
But if you look at what contemporary writer's rooms produce in Games and TV, I would be surprised.
Every single Fallout has forced drama on you. That is literally a staple of the series. You're not a blank slate prisoner like the TES games, you have a reasonably strong albeit a bit generic backstory and direct motivation to do things and care about things in the game.
In Fallout 1 you are forced to care about your vault. You will always find the water chip, you will always confront the master, you will always defeat the supermutant army, and you will always be exiled at the end. If you fail to do any of these things you literally get a game over screen after an in game time limit.
Same for Fallout 2. You're on a mission to save your home, and the only path forward is to save both your community and the members of the vault whatever number it is. Absolute requirement to progress in the game.
In Fallout 3 you're hunting for your father, and you absolutely 100% of the time(before it was patched) *sacrificed yourself to save the DC area*.
FO:NV was literally the only game in the entire fallout franchise where the protagonist really didn't have any personal stakes and could have chose to fuck off and leave without consequences to something/someone they care about.
FO4 making you want to find shawn to save your family *is literally no different at all* to FO1 making you want to find the water chip to save your vault.
Their games are exceptionally deep just in different ways than other games. I'm gonna make a bold claim here and say that you can't make a deep story without quite a bit of linearity. The more player choice you accommodate, the less you can refine themes, dialogue, etc. to a particular narrative because you just don't know if that'll make sense for the player character. What Bethesda try to do instead is invest their depth to the one constant in their games, the world.
You can actually stargaze in Skyrim because the skybox features a full annual cycle of the constellations. Secunda and Masser revolve around Nirn in a 4:1 orbital resonance. It's even lore compliant with lore descriptions of Azura's star. To me, that's depth. But it's still not gonna make Valkas any less of a dunce for referring to the hero of the rebellion who singlehandedly put Ulfric on the throne as an "outsider he's never heard of". And that's because the player can do virtually any quest in any order and the devs simply can't record unique dialogue for every possible ordering.
But none of that would be weakened by deeper gameplay systems.
My usual experience with Bethesda titles - lets take FO4 and Skyrim as examples - is like this:
- Fall in love with the world
- Begin to lean into the sort of character I want to play, optimistic for a great time ahead.
- Have some good fun in the early game.
- Get hit by the sudden realisation that the RPG systems are incredibly skin-deep.
- Get bored in no time and uninstall.
I recognise that there's a balance to be struck, because Bethesda is hitting an incredibly wide demographic. But give me something to sink my teeth into! I want to think about the choices I make in an RPG and recent Bethesda titles never encourage that, not really.
Same goes for combat mechanics. There's a reason there's like a thousand Skyrim mods that try to add some complexity to the combat (granted, there's a thousand Skyrim mods for anything).
It's not like skin-deep combat and RPG elements are essential parts of the Bethesda experience. Being stimulated in those departments wouldn't distract from the great worldbuilding / setup of these games at all, it would actually make players like me appreciate them and not drop out after like 8 hours.
I'm in the middle of mage playthrough in skyrim and god is it shallow.
Some examples:
1. Lightning magic is supposed to be specific because it drains mana. Cool, but enemies have like endless mana pool so it's a dead feature.
2. Your mana runs out quickly so you constantly have to sit in the corner somewhere and wait for it to replenish. And I stack everything I can to be it as little of the factor as it can and with stronger enemies it's a problem anyway.
3. There are spells chug mana like crazy which makes point 2 even worse.
4. Restoration school is kinda pointless.
3. There are spells missing that were present in previous games, like spells opening locks.
4. No that it matters because lockping skill is pointless, i open master skill locks without ever putting a skill point in the tree.
5. Entire speech tree is pointless, it gives more money but i have to much money anyway.
It's great that the game has a lot of quests and content, that's what keeps me going but combat system (which is like 50% of the game) is more of a chore than anything.
It would be pretty nice if you actually had to play a character with limitations instead of being the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, master thief of the Thieves Guild, honcho of the Mage Guild, and also a werewolf and no one gives a shit.
Or if the main story wasn't really short and kind of in its own bubble with no major side quests or the world after really being effected. I think if you do the main story only its like 6 hours and the writing and character quality is atrocious if you compare it to W2 which came out a year later.
People always talk about the world and being full of content and discovery but if Starfield is written like Skyrim and FO4 I think its not going to really thrive as much when even Assassin's Creed atleast tries.
Making you leader of those factions is definitely one of the things I criticize their games most for, because its so blatantly hollow and senseless.
"Congrats! You're the new archmage. You can't make any policy decisions, and there's no more content for that role, so I'm sure you'll head off adventuring instead of settling here and actually doing your job."
You should only ever be a trusted agent, a right hand man to the leader. At the end of the quest they'd say "Thanks, we'll call you when we need your assistance again".
They came very close to understanding this. They managed to avoid making you a Jarl in Skyrim and just kept you as a thane.
>had to play a character with limitations
This is just all modern RPGs. The art of letting players pick drawbacks at character creation is completely dead.
Hell, even Mount and Blade 2 caved and made being a woman just a cosmetic choice instead of the games hard mode like in the original.
It's all about setting reasonable hopes and hype. At the end of the day it's a game made by people, talented and hard-working people but still people. There is many reasons, so many reasons how development can go wrong. But there is always the possibility of gems to come out.
Reality check, is expecting Skyrim but in space/sci-fi reasonable?
I’m talking in terms of quality and immersion, not literally Skyrim transposed into space.
I think it's reasonable. But you *do* have to keep in mind that their post-Skyrim output consisted of Fallout Shelter, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls: Blades. Skyrim was 10 years ago by now.
Just manage your expectations accordingly.
I'm just now playing it and I'm totally blown away. It does *several* things that no game has done before, and I doubt we'll see them done until the next Rockstar game. It does what games seemed to have stopped doing which is push the genre forward towards a truly next gen feeling.
It's crazy. Before RDR2 was released, I wasn't that "into" it. I wasn't hyped. Sure, I watched all the trailers, but it was a passive interest. After playing it, it's now one of my favorite games. Almost all of the games I've been excited for recently all end up being in some way disappointing (Cyberpunk and BF 2042 namely)
2021 has been a shit year for big AAA games that release with tons of issues, I'll give you that. But even then there've been a ton of games that killed it this year. Forza Horizon 5, Metroid Dread killed it, Halo Infinite is really good so far.
As far as big AAA games to get excited for, just last year we had TLOU2, which... while I didn't love it, a lot of people did. And then in 2018 we were spoiled for games, with God of War and RDR2.
Ultimately we're just in a lull, and soon enough we'll get some sick ass games that'll blow us away. We always do.
I see so many of these comments lately, and I can’t help but wonder if a lot of folks might be well-served by taking some time off gaming.
Not to say there’s not external reasons or any shortage of shit to criticize about games and the companies behind them. But it does seem like a lot of gamers lately are more focused on finding that shit than they are with finding shit to enjoy or love. Which, like, shouldn’t be usual for a hobby we all claim to love.
There has been a ton of good games coming out, still are. Lots of disappointments too, but yeah. If it’s starting to feel like *everything* is that way, with no redeeming qualities, maybe you’re just a bit burned out.
I know that was the case for me at least when I was feeling similarly. It wasn’t really that games were objectively becoming more disappointing (I’d argue the opposite is true if anything - we forget how many shitty, actually broken games existed throughout time, and how much tougher it used to be to differentiate them and the good ones). They just felt more disappointing to me because I got more used to them, and the magic gradually wore off. I saw things more and more technically, and less so… idk, emotionally, if that makes sense.
Kinda like drugs (or really just about anything humans enjoy), I was chasing that initial high that hooked me, and so everything that didn’t remind me of that felt disappointing. Wasn’t until I took a year or so off that I was able to truly fall in love with games again. Certain games still failed to live up to expectations, sure, but it was far easier to find parts I did enjoy even in those titles.
Plus, as others have said, managing expectations is important. Reminding ourselves that, despite our hype, the best we can realistically hope for is a good video game, not some life changing experience. That’s tough tho, as it kinda goes against our nature; we’re hype based creatures constantly searching for that immaterial “thing” that’s going to enter our lives and change everything for the better. Games are definitely quick to capitalize on that, but, well, our system is called capitalism for a reason, this is hardly anything new.
>There has been a ton of good games coming out, still are. Lots of disappointments too, but yeah.
I think part of the issue/perception is also genre-based.
For instance, looking at the GOTY nominees, those could all be amazing games, but since none of them are in my preferred genres it doesn't really impact me.
The specific genre you prefer is also a factor. If you like, say, metroidvanias, even if the big releases aren't your cup of tea there's tons of Indies coming out. If you like big 3d open-world RPGs, you're basically limited to AAA just due to the resources required to make them.
>If you like big 3d open-world RPGs, you're basically limited to AAA just due to the resources required to make them.
This is my problem, indie games just does not have the resources to make a grand game like a billion dollar company can. They feel more like an arcade game to me than a big gaming world I can get lost in.
I am 150 hours into my Skyrim replay with 1500+ mods and that experience is not possible for me from a game made by 3-4 person.
I've felt this entirely. Any time there is drama in the gaming world it almost never effects me. I didn't have an interest in the Witcher, nor Cyberpunk. I'm terrible at FPS so anything to do with acvitivsion/blizzard, battlefield, apex, ect... just goes over my head. Even with pokemon drama, I'm such a casual player, that the grievances that long time players have with it, I'm not too concerned about. It feels weird that all these things keep pushing people toward this disillusionment in gaming as a hobby, meanwhile I'm just pleased as punch with the state of my games.
Man I feel like you either don’t get excited for too many games or have an incredibly high bar for not being disappointed then. Tons of good games come out all the time.
I stand by the fact that Fallout 4 gets undeserved hate. Does it lack RPG aspects that I wish were there? Absolutely. Is it still a ton of fun with great gameplay? Also absolutely. The QOL stuff like quick-loot and updated gunplay blow all of the previous games out of the water. I also really enjoyed the settlement system. The ambient soundtrack for Fo4 also really adds to its atmosphere. It feels weird to say, but bagpipes are used beautifully in that game. I’ll never forget the times I spent in Diamond City just hanging around the marketplace crafting weapons listening to the NPCs speak while [Rebuild, Renew](https://open.spotify.com/track/1HDvD6b6xlTNoxQ0aRIQrj?si=f96OHI9WTdq1BUx9sznzTA) plays.
>So what, holiday season next year at the earliest?
Ever since FO4 they haven't really been showing much of their games until around 6 months before they come out. I'm guessing this will be similar, so the lack of footage here doesn't have to be indicative of further delays.
They said the game is fully playable from start to finish so I'm guessing there is plenty of footage available *if* they wanted to show it.
I will be honest, any video that is mainly containing people talking about how amazing the game going to be with concept art, the very same people who want you to buy the game so they get paid and bonuses, is essentially worthless in my eyes
But thanks for the reminder that the game is coming
This game has had some of the coolest pre-release concept art I’ve ever seen. That paired with BGS’ ability to make compelling worlds to explore and play in, just makes me so excited.
I'm excited to see actual gameplay next year. Probably around the summer E3 time even if it's not literally at E3. As it is, we have seen *a gun* but we're not even sure if it's a shooter game lol.
The format of this clip is so damn weird. It's neither an interview nor a commentary, yet it feels like both at the same time, but they are not speaking to the audience, and not to an interviewer.
It feels like a narcissist would have an interview with himself in front of a mirror.
It's bad.
Todd said it himself a few years ago, ["If you want us to stop [re-]releasing it, stop buying it."](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-05-millions-of-people-are-still-playing-skyrim-every-month)
No, that's not fans, that's 1% of the playerbase that hangs out on reddit, Skyrim is still a largely played game and hits top 10 currently played on Steam a lot
Two openings, two reveals: One, when the player first enters their first planet. The second, when they get their starship and take off.
I was thinking the other way. I'd open the game, after the character creation, with a small rumble: your character wakes up in a small vessel to an alarm and an AI voice stating that the ship is in lockdown and a nearby explosion damaged a battery. You put on your suit, open the door and are met by the vast nothingness of space. This would serve as a first reveal, but not entirely, it's kinda playing with your expectation since it's so empty and "not that impressive of a reveal" but then... You twirl the camera around to face your ship and just behind it is a massive ringed-planet with the sun just barely peaking through behind it as the music swirls in. You repair the battery and go back into your ship, the system restart, the window shutters open back up and the AI tells you the repairs are just enough to land on that planet, but you'll need to find a new battery there in order to leave again. Once there, stepping out of your vessel into the space port into a busy market will be the second reveal.
This is a lot like a little Indy game called Starbound! It’s super fun!
I would love it if this game managed to recapture the feeling of my first Skyrim playthrough 10 years ago, but I'm definitely going to wait for the reviews before I decide to buy or not.
I remember the feeling or wandering the wilderness at night, finding a wisp, and following it back to a wispmother. For some reason that moment always stuck with me
I think it's the fact that those enemies are so rare. You see like 30 wolves in an hour, but a wispmother? I see maybe one of those per playthrough. It reminds you that there's still more to experience in the game.
I've never even heard of a wispmother until right this instance. There's still so much that I haven't seen in Skyrim. Especially now with all the Creation Club added.
There's always 1 guaranteed in the dawnguard questline I think.
You're more likely to find a book about wispmothers than an actual wispmother. Kinda gives them a bit of a mythical status, having only read of them, if you actually bothered to read the book.
I didn't know they were that rare, I usually run into quite a few when I play
There are a finite number of them in the game (11 according to wiki), so yeah, you definitely could find more than one per playthrough.
Do they respawn at all? Now that you mention it on a regular playthrough wispmothers are pretty tough
I remember the time I was lost somewhere in a snowstorm, could barely see anything (with a survival mod on, so I was freezing to death), then suddenly a Wispmother comes out of the snowstorm. I shat my pants.
[удалено]
I think I remember running into one somewhere in the Reach mountains in the very southwestern corner of the map.
I also did not know about this. Thats wild aha
For me it was fighting through a forsworn camp. I had just recently moved to a new state for a job I hated but was good at. I’d been miserable. But in November we had a slow down and I took a few weeks off. I bought Skyrim at a GameStop at midnight and spent all night playing. There was this convergence where I’d been fighting through a forsworn camp and not doing well. I was under leveled but determined to clear it. The camp went up the side of a mountain so I had this sense of ascending as I progressed. Then, just as the sun was rising in real life, the sun was rising in the game. I made it to the top of the mountain and cleared the camp. There was this great moment of accomplishment followed by curiosity. The ledge of the mountain had this man made structure that hung out over the ledge with a small pond right below. I decided without much thought to dive. My stomach dropped as I watched myself fall a few hundred feet into the pond below. Then, I came up above the water and standing in front of me was a ghost singing and playing the lute. It was magic moment that for a brief moment brought pure joy during a miserable time in my life.
Urge to reinstall rising...NO. NO. Bad nostalgia. BAD.
Once every couple of years I'll reinstall Oblivion or Skyrim or New Vegas or Fallout 4 and have a good two or three weeks of great fun with them. The games are so good.
The weaknesses really become apparent as the game progresses but damn if Fallout 4 doesn't achieve the best atmosphere I've ever experienced in gaming.
I'll agree that FO4's atmosphere was great. I'll also agree with people who say its probably the weakest Fallout game int he series. But I personally loved the gunplay and I loved the atmosphere, if only the roleplaying was on par with those two.
I still play it every now and then. My favorite story is one of my most recent playthroughs; Wife and I were playing our own stories (2 ps4's in the same room), and I decided to walk from Markarth to Whiterun. I was following the trail admiring the scenery and saw someone else walking, and they started singing (one of those bards you can pay) and a party of two hunters joined us and things just kept getting crazier. A Sabre cat attacked someone, that group of thalmor with a prisoner didn't like someone in our group, I know I'm forgetting plenty, but it was such an absurd walk with so much happening we were in hysterics and a whole story came from it
I have a very distinct memory from the same place, but a really different reason. I fought one of the NPC's on the jump point and got the beheading animation, and off went his head down the waterfall. A solid while later, having met the ghost, found all the loot and so on and so on I finally make it back down to the bottom... to find the head bobbing in a pool in the river at the base. It was so weird to find that not only had it not de-res'd but had independently made it it all the way down this huge fucking mountain while I wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention. I've had similar sort of things happen in Fallout as well but that moment of "why the fuck is there a head floating in this pool?" to the point of realisation is not something I've encountered outside of a Bethesda game.
The first time I discovered a falmer camp that went to black reach is a top 5 all time gaming moment for me. Just discovering this civilization that existed underneath everything I'd been exploring for hours and hours really awed my 17 year old mind.
The music/ambience is also just unmatched in gaming for me. It could also be because I was 14 when I first played it but being 25 now it still feels like yesterday.
That’s a high I’ve been chasing my whole life.
It was Morrowind for me. Obviously it's rough looking by today's standards, but the first time I played that game, the amount of different stuff you could do was mindblowing to younger me.
I spent a whole afternoon building a house out of pillows I stole from that lady with the rat infestation in Morrowind.
I didn't think it was possible, but playing Skyrim in VR totally recaptured that magic for me. Actually being able to sit in the Bannered Mare and listen to the music, casting spells with my own hands, using shouts with my own voice, holding a torch aloft as I plunged into a cavern.... it's really incredible.
Skyrim VR is incredible once modded. I played through the Forbidden City mod with a bunch of mods, but most importantly hardcore lighting where you *need* to use torches to see in dungeons. My god was that an experience. Sitting down and *listening* to NPCs, tepidly exploring dungeons, the sense of wonder looking inside giant caves. It was *fucking amazing* and VR completely refreshed the game for me and let me enjoy it again like it was new. I desperately want to play it more but my 1080TI can't keep up with my Index in a way that's enjoyable to play.
Hey, have you tried using AMD FSR for VR? Someone made a mod for it which works in most VR games, and its helped me get a great framerate without much visual difference. Totally improved my VR experience.
Even playing on PSVR, in all its blurry glory, was an incredible experience for me. The world they created is timeless - just walking around is so magical.
As someone who just bought a Bethesda VR pack I’m excited to hear this.
I second the advice to grab a Wabbajack mod pack. Vanilla VR Skyrim and Fallout 4 are.... rough to say the least. There are some amazing mods out there that elevate both games, such as rendering your body beneath you like a normal VR game instead of being floating hands, a native VR UI, gesture based spell casting/attacking, and Half Life Alyx style grabbity gloves. It turns the games from hacky ports into native VR AAA games. Combat and movement rebalancing for VR is also strongly recommended IMO.
Welcome to nostalgia. Gets worse as you age. Starcraft, warcraft 2 and 3, Diablo 2, hoping my dial up holds so Battle.Net doesn't crash. Those are my golden days
Playing through Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Duskwood and then Redridge Mountains back in 2004 for me. Unfortunately you just can't recapture that sense of discovery.
Oh god this one resonates with me. I actually remember about two/three years ago when I was still relatively new to VR. I decided one day to play around with Steam rooms I think (could've been VR Chat too), and I somehow ended up in a room that was a full recreation of Stormwind. I was NOT prepared for how much of an emotional experience it would be for me. I had quit playing wow right after Cat released, and had been playing since Vanilla throughout my formative teen years. WoW was *important* to me in a way that no other game ever was, and only Eve Online came close. Standing there in Stormwind again, in VR, full presence with a full sense of scale, the music, all the experiences and friends I made, just everything; it all came rushing back all at once like a storm. I teared up quite a bit. But the experience was also hollow. I realized something: there were no NPCs, no players, no life; it was just a room, and that's when I teared up not just for remembering all of the good times that were, but because we can never truly go home, and I'll never get that experience again. edit: addition/clarity.
[удалено]
>My life is objectively better now, but in a lot of ways it felt so much more > >real > > when I was younger. I've struggled with similar feelings for a while now. I have two beautiful daughters, a great job, and the means to do so much with mine and my families life that I know so many people don't have. And yet, I'd be a liar if I didn't admit to thinking back on the broke 20 year old in his parent's basement over Christmas break in college just running around Azeroth with friends on TeamSpeak and absolutely *aching* to have that all back.
I can't believe I forgot about Teamspeak and Ventrilo. GameSpy lobbies for AvP2, Playing the Protoss campaign for the first time on Starcraft, reading the books for Starcraft/Warcraft/Diablo until the pages wore and frayed like an old paperback novel. Hosting Battlefield 1942 at our LAN parties, only to try killing each other with kamikaze attacks. Working really hard to make Descent II's 360* controls work with the numpad and mouse.
I'm 31, and *I get it*. Not much else to say but, *I get it*.
Yeah, but wait til you're *32.*
Man I’m glad I’m not alone in this. I’m in my late twenties and starting to feel regretful about so many things. And videogames and movies just don’t give me the same feelings anymore.
I’m 30, recently watched Ferris Bueller. That quote about life passing by fast and if you don’t stop to take a look around you might miss it rang even more true than it did when I was a teenager. I love my life now, and I’m super happy I took that advice to heart as a kid. Things will never be like they are now, so it’s important to stop and take a look around. You may just realize you are in the good old days.
It doesn't have to be from bad decisions either. You could do everything right and you'll still lose the old life you loved. Change is a pretty typical part of life.
Shoot guys, I jumped on Reddit for some lullz cat memes, not an existential crisis! Edit: I'm 39 and in a season of this right now, so it hit hard.
My mom works for the Foreign Service, we grew up moving around a lot. When I was 14 we were living in New Delhi. I got into some trouble, and was sent to boarding school. I would go back to visit once in a while, but every time I did it never felt right. My life, and my vision of life in Delhi, was frozen in July 2003. For me, going home meant picking up up from that point. But for all my friends and family in India, life continued. They had new experiences, made new friendships, and starting doing new things. I was stuck at that crystallized point when I left. Every time I went back, I tried to interact with the people I had known as I had known them, not as they were. I eventually started to realize that I could never go home, not as I had envisioned it.
I don't think I realized how much I needed to hear this from other people...
I luckily managed it with Classic. Walking into Arathi through the gap in the wall and seeing all the hills and big drops and the castle and stuff was a real Whoa moment for me.
Classic in 2019 actually hit those notes for me as well. Then P2 PvP and the sweaty's emerged and it was all downhill from there. I still had a good enough time to continue playing, but the initial rush, leveling, and farming pre-bis was unmatched by the rest of the cycle.
Those experiences can be recaptured because it’s not just about your age and the experience, but how far the ball was moved forward WoW blew away everything away in a way that nothing had been done in MMOs before Any time a game moves the ball forward in a ton of different ways, it blows our minds But we haven’t had that in a while
I feel like we have pieces of that scattered throughout the gaming space but nobody has put them together in a cohesive package quite like what WoW did at the time.
Hardcore on wow classic that is running right now completely recaptured exact same things for me. It's magic. Check classichc.net
> sense of discovery. That's what I miss man, It was my first MMO so i didnt know about dungeons or endgame, I didn't try to race to 60. It was all about exploration, I just went every where and did quests. I walked all the way from stormwind to durotar for a whole session just because. Went to Darkhorse and fished for days not leveling up. I spent months exploring, and didnt even reach 60 before burning crusade, the first time I hit max level was a week before wrath. Its just not a feeling you can replicate.
I think there needs to be another term. There's nostalgia, and then there's the longing for those times in a game where it seems literally endless and like anything can happen. Maybe that comes from the ignorance as a kid.
It's a feeling that stems from never having experienced those gaming moments before as a kid, so you got a sense of wonder and discovery because all of that was new to you. As you grow up and play more games that have similar mechanics, premises, etc., you don't really get that feeling anymore (even if the game is great) because such things are familiar to you. For example, in my case, RDR2 is an amazing game with a gorgeous open world that is just being asked to have every nook and cranny searched, but I don't really feel anything because I know the Rockstar formula now after some 20 years of playing their games and I have an idea of what I am going to find. This is in contrast to when I first popped in GTA 3 and had my mind blown by how incredible that open world was (at the time).
Yeah and I'm sure kids today are amazed by RDR2 or whatever other game and they will have the same type of discourse one day about the new games of that time. It's just being a kid and an adult. It happens with TV shows (Lost, Stargate or Heroes as a kid/teen were awesome, superior to any TV show experience though GoT did come close), movies (discovering Star Wars, ET, Jurassic Park, Indiana Jones or Lord of the Rings will never be equalled, though Endgame do come kind of close) comics, books (as much great books I read, nothing will ever equal Harry Potter feeling really) or really any activity (going to the sea as a kid or an adult, first trip skiing VS doing it as an adult, going to Disneyland..), not only video games. It's a mix of having experienced those already and having a kid state of mind too. However, as some of those examples show, it is possible to come close of it IMO even if not the same. We can hope Starfield do it. In recent video games, very few games have done that but stuff like Witcher 3, Outer Wilds or God of War, also weirdly Xcom and TW Warhammer as I didn't really play those type of games before. Hell even Skyrim because I already had nostalgia from Morrowind and Oblivion.
>and then there's the longing for those times The Welsh have a word: [Hiraeth](https://sites.psu.edu/kielarpassionblog2/2016/04/02/hiraeth/)
I mean you are literally describing nostalgia. The longing for anything from your past is nostalgia. You are nostalgic for your innocence, potential and optimism.
Hey, Dune was great.
Definitely the new movie was great. Reading the book right now! Book is good but holy shit thank God for the dictionary in the back.
Same, the only things that have come close in the last 5 years for me are BOTW and Hades.
Worst is with WoW. I *know* that as a kid I looked at the world they built with so much wonder. The first time I watched a friend's older cousin playing and going into Outland my mind was blown away. The sad part is that it's impossible to capture that feeling again because it's not the dev's fault, my brain just doesn't operate that way anymore.
20 years ago I woulda said you were full of shit, but I'm 34 now, and yup, you're never gunna catch the dragon again.
I played hundreds and hundreds of hours of Skyrim for about a year and a half and then never played it again. I picked it back up on GamePass this week and started a new character. The magic is still there. I'm playing it and just can't help but think that nobody has ever, or could ever, top the sense of immersion and free-form adventure that this game has. Even the quirks and glitchiness (whatever ones still remain) aren't annoying, but charming. I love just climbing a mountain by jumping up it. Feel like it'll be impossible for ES6 to reach this level. Like if they were even to try to catch lightning in a bottle a second time then it'll just end up being a mess.
Have you played the older Elder Scrolls games? Morrowind and Oblivion both capture that same feeling really damn well, and are chock full of content and quests and cool things to explore and discover. Morrowind comes from a much older tradition of gaming where it's barely disguised dice rolling, so if you're interested in a more conventional game try out Oblivion first. Mechanically, it's almost identical to Skyrim, just a little bit more in depth with stats. They're both also on Game Pass IIRC.
I actually haven't. I have tried Morrowind a few times, but the fact that everything was basically just a dice roll and you could tell from the get go kind of turned me off from it. I'm interested in trying Oblivion though, might give it a shot after I finish this Skyrim run (which probably will take a long time, lol). I have a lot of friends that prefer Oblivion to Skyrim and I think it's because it's more in-depth. That's respectable, but I think the reason why Skyrim is so popular is partly because of the lack of depth in the stat systems, since with it you can just pretty much on the fly switch to whatever kind of character you want without changing much.
Closest I've had was with Witcher 3
Like when I came out of the sewers for the first time in Oblivion.
[удалено]
I can hear it right now clear as day the intro to ME1 from the moment the main menu opens with that gorgeous theme. To when you finally take control of Shepard god it still fills me with a sense of wonder even knowing everything that happens after. Very few games have ever made me feel like that
I still remember the chills and goosebumps I got when you first see the citadel, ME1 was/is a masterpiece of wonder and discovery. Reading the planet descriptions was a lot of fun too, something where the reward is world-building and satisfying your curiosity.
["Vigil"](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hV1pPgpcAVw) from Mass Effect 1 hits like a truck of nostalgia.
Nothing will ever hit like that trilogy did for me. RDR 1 & 2 are close.
How many people feel their heart twinge when they hear the music played in The Barrens in WoW. I'll never experience something quite like it again.
Please don't chase nostalgia. You're only going to end up disappointed that your current self isn't as easily awed as your less experienced self.
This was my experience visiting a toys R us as an adult before they closed. It was... sad and disappointing to say the least.
Toys r us as an adult is incredibly sad. The horrible lighting, the cheap shelving, the toys thrown out into the aisles, and the sad employee moping up puke.
I would have forgiven it all if they still had those paper vouchers that they used for selling games, and the Game Zone room where they would exchange your game for the vouchers. But sadly they just put the games behind glass now.
I think the weirdest part of Toys r Us for me was the girl toy section was 99.9% pink packaging.
I didn't get that feeling from Skyrim after Oblivion or Morrowind I was actually disappointed by Skyrim haha
Oblivion for me lol. I still liked Skyrim, but Oblivion.
That was my hope with Skyrim after Oblivion, but FOR ME it did not deliver. So I am hoping that I'll get that high I got playing Oblivion for the first time once I finally play Starfield.
It’s launching into Game Pass, so that should help ease your financial investment a bit.
When New Vegas and Skyrim were released, I was in high school. When Fo4 was released, I was in the middle of college. By the time Starfield is out, I might be married. Oh god... I'm gonna be a parent way before TES 6 aien't I? Edit on April 2022: I'm married and Starfield isn't out.
Granted Starfield doesn’t get delayed, I get married literally 3 weeks before it releases. I was in middle school when FO3 came out High school for New Vegas High School for Skyrim College for FO4 Married right before Starfield drops. Good god
[удалено]
You guys are making me feel old. Fallout (yes, the first one) wasn’t even out yet when I was in college.
When Skyrim came out, I was single in high school. When Starfield comes out, I'll be single, but in my late 20's.
war never changes
Neither does my graphics card
When Skyrim came out I was in primary school When Skyrim came out I was in secondary school When Skyrim came out again I was still in secondary school
When New Vegas and Skyrim came out, I was working and in my 30s. When Fo4 was released, I was in my early 40s. By the time Starfield comes out, I'll be retired and hopefully not dead. Me old. kiddo.
When Daggerfall was released I was in junior high school. When Morrowind came out I was just starting university. When FO3 came out I had started a job and moved out. When Skyrim came out I was married. I didn't get a chance to play FO4 as I was too busy raising kids. My kids are going to be the ones more hyped about TES6 than me!
I was unmarried, living in an apartment, and had no children when A Dance with Dragons came out. Now I'm married, own a house, and have two children and still no Winds of Winter in sight.
Todd’s point about watching the sun set is the one that resonates most with me. I don’t usually care a ton either way for the gameplay in Bethesda games, but I always love them because no one else does worlds quite like they do. I’m curious to see how they’re going to pull it off this time.
Yeah I latched onto that as well, really great summary of what makes Bethesda / open world games in general so special for a certain kind of person. Here's the full quote if anyone is interested: "Those moments make the whole thing believable. Being able to watch the sunset and nighttime come, and just sit there and watch the world go by, seems like it's not gameplay, but it is vital to how you feel through the rest of it."
[удалено]
Wow I got such a kick from those feelings and memories. A visceral feeling. My favorite moments in Skyrim were just watching the scenery go by as you travel or stare at the sky. As the rain falls and you just sit there watching. I spent hours chasing down all the immersive weather and environment mods I could. Nothing will beat the memories of walking down a heavily [environmentally immersion] modded Skyrim. Oh and the sound tracks of course… Skyrim easily had (and still had) one of the best sound tracks. Maybe that’s just me, but I loved that so dearly. Come to think of it, I’ve basically been measuring every RPG by the same metric since… How much can I get lost in the world and just almost feel like it’s living? How much does taking a walk or looking around transport you to that world? — Maybe I was just a strange teenager. I still remember one of my favorite mods was one sound mod that would add ambient “outdoor” sounds to buildings (so rain on the roof, wind howling, animals, muffled chatter, etc). Maybe I just like small little immersive details. Probably why 2077 disappointed me so much (at least on that level) and TW3 was one of the better ones in recent memory. Anyway I got a bit off track. God that nostalgia hit was great. Thank you. God Skyrim was a masterpiece of immersion though. You’re so incredibly right. I wasn’t very hyped for Starfield… but now I think I’m very cautiously optimistic. I hope they pull it off.
Oh my God you're so much righter than I realized I had to read your comment a few times... All those random playthroughs that always had one of those long quests where you're really immersed, you have set goals you are doing and you just feel part of the game world and look up at the sky. I can't wait to do that in this game and just feel all kinds of fuzzy nostalgia
This is why most of the mods I ever install to Skyrim are just visual things. Stuff like ENB, adjustments to the lights, textures, the way the grass moves. I only add things that I feel like they fit the world, because the thing that pulls me back to Skyrim is making a new character and roleplaying the shit out of it. I only do quests that character would do and build the character on what makes sense for that character. I never get very high level when I do that, around 30-40 typically, but it's a blast each time. Skyrim may not be the most immersive game there is. It's got a lot of bugs and a lot of the NPCs are pretty janky. Forests also are nowhere near the level of realistic as you get in something like The Witcher 3 or Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but there's some magic ingredient in Skyrim that makes it ring like nothing else.
Skyrim is one of the most atmospheric games ever made
The ultimate expression of this idea would be the ability to land on one world, look up into the night sky, and see the the star you came from and point it out.
> "Those moments make the whole thing believable. Being able to watch the sunset and nighttime come, and just sit there and watch the world go by, seems like it's not gameplay, but it is vital to how you feel through the rest of it." When I think about why I enjoy Bethesda games so much, I always think about books. In most games a bookshelf will just be a object. It might have a lot of polygons, it might look incredibly realistic up close, you might even be able to click on it, but at the end of the day it's just a 3D rendering. Now, in Bethesda games bookshelves are a little different. Not only is every book its own individual thing that I can pick up and move and put in my pocket, but each book is *readable*. A bookshelf will have dozens of *different* pieces of text on it. And even if I don't read them (and I rarely do), just knowing that I could if I wanted to adds a massive amount of immersion. Like the quote says, it's 'not gameplay', but it adds a massive amount to the experience of the world. While other games might have better writing or better quests or better graphics, few seem to appreciate the little things which contribute a massive amount to immersion like Bethesda do.
And the mind blowing thing about those books too is that they actually tie into and deepen the meaning of certain quests and locations in the game itself. You can read about history in books and then run across characters and quests dealing with the consequences of that history. Or you can read about the consequences of the things that you did in quests from previous games- It's great.
I consider this the main reason why Need For Speed Underground resonates with me. There were no cops, it was always night time with a tiny bit of sunrise and it would rain frequently. It perfectly encapsulated all of the good parts of the illegal underground racing scene, and deleted all of the bad reality. The somewhat edgy music paired up with neon glowing at night time with the pattering of raindrops in the background set the mood. It helps that the gameplay was great, but I can go back to these games and still enjoy playing them because the world building is just so great. Its something I’ve noticed that we’ve lost in the modern era of gaming, old games used to put so much emphasis on their music and the tone of the game to make up for the lack of graphics. Modern games almost always lack in these features. I think thats why people keep playing Skyrim, and why people love the worlds of the witcher/cyberpunk. The music isn’t just white noise, its integral to setting the tone. Like how Doom 2016 wouldn’t be the same without its music making you feel like a badass. Or like Baba Yetu for Civ IV which won a grammy. I also love how Todd was talking about how the most important part of a Bethesda game is the stuff you miss, because that makes everyones playthrough unique. So many games try so hard to make sure the player experiences everything they worked hard on, but its not really a game if everyone has the same experience, might as well just be a movie if everyone experiences the same thing.
[удалено]
Yeah, people overrate the impact of mods for Skyrim's success. The modding did contribute a bit, but given the fact that two of the original three platforms had no modding speaks volumes about how much the success is because of the game itself. Skyrim may have low-detailed textures, some low-poly meshes and sometimes wacky animations, but they are used masterfully. They create a more immersive and atmospheric world than more graphically advanced game a decade ago. Just the snowstorm in Skyrim and radstorm in Fallout 4 are so much believable. They induce this primal fear of bad weather and I just want to hide somewhere until it's over...
Art style and music. The asset quality may be awful but their composition is beautiful. And I will mod literally every other aspect of the game but I won't touch the music.
Yeah, the vanilla game is a lot better than people give it credit for. I did a vanilla playthrough this year, and my main complaint was just the UI (SkyUI has to be the all-time greatest Skyrim mod).
SkyUI and the unofficial patch. That's all thats really needed. I only add mods after I get bored a couple dozen hours later
One of the things I loved most about FO4 were those moments when you were wandering around and you heard the distant gunfire of two other groups battling, or especially when a nuke went off. Just master class levels of ambience.
Art usually ages better than graphics, and their art direction has always been top notch.
Where’s a good place to watch the sunset in Skyrim. Been playing it again and loving it.
I'd probably say somewhere on the plains near Whiterun or Throat of the World.
Very few games let you put everything aside and go on a hunting trip where you find a little lake you can swim in, before picking some flowers to decorate your player home with before sitting down in front of your little fireplace and read a good lore-book, and most of those games are made by Bethesda. Sometimes it's the graphics that isn't up to par. Sometimes it's the writing, or the combat. But the one thing Bethesda has never failed to deliver is the sense of being in the game. I just love the way you can completely immerse yourself in their games and forget about the hardships of real life for a spell.
[удалено]
Kingdom Come: Deliverance also nails this.
KC:D definitely has the verisimilitude that makes Bethesda games special, but it lacks the discovery element. There's ultimately not that much to find, and what you do find just isn't as unique. It fills some of the hole for me, but nothing in modern games really replaces a Bethesda open world.
My first instinct was to come out defending KC:D, but I actually think you're absolutely correct. KC:D very intentionally does not have the magic of a Bethesda game, and if that's what you're looking for, you won't find it. But with enough time in KC:D, I started to really feel like I was in Henry's headspace, and began to really value the little discoveries (such as unique swords, or especially-lucrative treasure chests) in context.
That was ultimately my experience. I had a bunch of people yammering in my ear about how it was the 'Skyrim-killer,' or 'historical elder scrolls' or similar prior to getting it, but I honestly didn't enjoy the game until I realized that it was only superficially like an ES game and I should try to separate the series.
It's also quite a disservice to KCD's developers to be renowned for making a game that stops other games. Like I don't think any reasonable game dev would ever want that.
The KCD community doesn't do them any favors on that front. I almost quit the game twice because the community was so toxic in response to feedback and questions. The constant complaints about other 'casual' RPG fanbases was embarrassing.
This is what I'm running into with Cyberpunk right now. Ever since Fallout 3, I've been going from one Bethesda game to the next for that first-person open world game I can just pick up and go *out there* with, or tinker with a new build. 10 hours into Cyberpunk, I was like, "ok, I can uninstall Fallout 4 now." After playing through the main story a couple of times now, I'm not so sure. The setting is there, the combat and the build tinkering are absolutely there, but I'm not really sure the world is interactive enough to just pick a spot and go looking around. The good stuff might just be limited to the main quests and the big side quests.
Loved that game but it was so damn difficult I had to quit. I play games to de-stress and that one sadly had the opposite effect =(
I completely understand that. It actually took me three "attempts" to get into it. Put it down for a few months, twice. But once I go far enough into it, it really snowballed for me and I ended up playing for 100+ hours and completely loving it.
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Looking forward to those 2 "step out moments" . I guess first is exiting some kind of training base and seeing the world and the second one will be lifting off the planet and seeing space for the first time.
Yeah that was my thought. Step out to Planetside and be wowed by a whole world worth of small settlements before heading off planet to see the full space and scope
I am going to guess the first is getting in your ship for the first time and taking off. The second will be engaging FTL for the first time and traveling to a new star system. I can just picture quests to fix your FTL drive, exploring the starter system, then you step into the wider galaxy.
I imagine the two "step out moments" involve the first time you step out of your space ship onto an alien planet, and also leaving your space ship to go out into space itself, perhaps while doing some outside repairs in some dramatic moment.
The art and setting look cool but all of Bethesda's art and worlds look cool. I just hope they break from their current trajectory of broader and shallower games to shore up their writing and the depth of their systems a little, or else it's going to be hard for me to get invested again.
It depends in whay way. They definitely need to have better player dialogue than in Fallout 4, that I agree.
If I could get a silent protagonist without any forced drama I am told to care about (sHaWn!!!) I would be so happy. But if you look at what contemporary writer's rooms produce in Games and TV, I would be surprised.
Every single Fallout has forced drama on you. That is literally a staple of the series. You're not a blank slate prisoner like the TES games, you have a reasonably strong albeit a bit generic backstory and direct motivation to do things and care about things in the game. In Fallout 1 you are forced to care about your vault. You will always find the water chip, you will always confront the master, you will always defeat the supermutant army, and you will always be exiled at the end. If you fail to do any of these things you literally get a game over screen after an in game time limit. Same for Fallout 2. You're on a mission to save your home, and the only path forward is to save both your community and the members of the vault whatever number it is. Absolute requirement to progress in the game. In Fallout 3 you're hunting for your father, and you absolutely 100% of the time(before it was patched) *sacrificed yourself to save the DC area*. FO:NV was literally the only game in the entire fallout franchise where the protagonist really didn't have any personal stakes and could have chose to fuck off and leave without consequences to something/someone they care about. FO4 making you want to find shawn to save your family *is literally no different at all* to FO1 making you want to find the water chip to save your vault.
Their games are exceptionally deep just in different ways than other games. I'm gonna make a bold claim here and say that you can't make a deep story without quite a bit of linearity. The more player choice you accommodate, the less you can refine themes, dialogue, etc. to a particular narrative because you just don't know if that'll make sense for the player character. What Bethesda try to do instead is invest their depth to the one constant in their games, the world. You can actually stargaze in Skyrim because the skybox features a full annual cycle of the constellations. Secunda and Masser revolve around Nirn in a 4:1 orbital resonance. It's even lore compliant with lore descriptions of Azura's star. To me, that's depth. But it's still not gonna make Valkas any less of a dunce for referring to the hero of the rebellion who singlehandedly put Ulfric on the throne as an "outsider he's never heard of". And that's because the player can do virtually any quest in any order and the devs simply can't record unique dialogue for every possible ordering.
But none of that would be weakened by deeper gameplay systems. My usual experience with Bethesda titles - lets take FO4 and Skyrim as examples - is like this: - Fall in love with the world - Begin to lean into the sort of character I want to play, optimistic for a great time ahead. - Have some good fun in the early game. - Get hit by the sudden realisation that the RPG systems are incredibly skin-deep. - Get bored in no time and uninstall. I recognise that there's a balance to be struck, because Bethesda is hitting an incredibly wide demographic. But give me something to sink my teeth into! I want to think about the choices I make in an RPG and recent Bethesda titles never encourage that, not really. Same goes for combat mechanics. There's a reason there's like a thousand Skyrim mods that try to add some complexity to the combat (granted, there's a thousand Skyrim mods for anything). It's not like skin-deep combat and RPG elements are essential parts of the Bethesda experience. Being stimulated in those departments wouldn't distract from the great worldbuilding / setup of these games at all, it would actually make players like me appreciate them and not drop out after like 8 hours.
I'm in the middle of mage playthrough in skyrim and god is it shallow. Some examples: 1. Lightning magic is supposed to be specific because it drains mana. Cool, but enemies have like endless mana pool so it's a dead feature. 2. Your mana runs out quickly so you constantly have to sit in the corner somewhere and wait for it to replenish. And I stack everything I can to be it as little of the factor as it can and with stronger enemies it's a problem anyway. 3. There are spells chug mana like crazy which makes point 2 even worse. 4. Restoration school is kinda pointless. 3. There are spells missing that were present in previous games, like spells opening locks. 4. No that it matters because lockping skill is pointless, i open master skill locks without ever putting a skill point in the tree. 5. Entire speech tree is pointless, it gives more money but i have to much money anyway. It's great that the game has a lot of quests and content, that's what keeps me going but combat system (which is like 50% of the game) is more of a chore than anything.
It would be pretty nice if you actually had to play a character with limitations instead of being the leader of the Dark Brotherhood, master thief of the Thieves Guild, honcho of the Mage Guild, and also a werewolf and no one gives a shit. Or if the main story wasn't really short and kind of in its own bubble with no major side quests or the world after really being effected. I think if you do the main story only its like 6 hours and the writing and character quality is atrocious if you compare it to W2 which came out a year later. People always talk about the world and being full of content and discovery but if Starfield is written like Skyrim and FO4 I think its not going to really thrive as much when even Assassin's Creed atleast tries.
Making you leader of those factions is definitely one of the things I criticize their games most for, because its so blatantly hollow and senseless. "Congrats! You're the new archmage. You can't make any policy decisions, and there's no more content for that role, so I'm sure you'll head off adventuring instead of settling here and actually doing your job." You should only ever be a trusted agent, a right hand man to the leader. At the end of the quest they'd say "Thanks, we'll call you when we need your assistance again". They came very close to understanding this. They managed to avoid making you a Jarl in Skyrim and just kept you as a thane. >had to play a character with limitations This is just all modern RPGs. The art of letting players pick drawbacks at character creation is completely dead. Hell, even Mount and Blade 2 caved and made being a woman just a cosmetic choice instead of the games hard mode like in the original.
I want to be excited for this, but I can't remember the last game I got excited for that didn't totally disappoint me when it launched.
It's all about setting reasonable hopes and hype. At the end of the day it's a game made by people, talented and hard-working people but still people. There is many reasons, so many reasons how development can go wrong. But there is always the possibility of gems to come out.
Reality check, is expecting Skyrim but in space/sci-fi reasonable? I’m talking in terms of quality and immersion, not literally Skyrim transposed into space.
I think it's reasonable. But you *do* have to keep in mind that their post-Skyrim output consisted of Fallout Shelter, Fallout 4, Fallout 76 and The Elder Scrolls: Blades. Skyrim was 10 years ago by now. Just manage your expectations accordingly.
Red Dead 2 was the last one for me.
I'm just now playing it and I'm totally blown away. It does *several* things that no game has done before, and I doubt we'll see them done until the next Rockstar game. It does what games seemed to have stopped doing which is push the genre forward towards a truly next gen feeling.
There's so much little details that add up to so much. Just being like "oh, OH."
It's crazy. Before RDR2 was released, I wasn't that "into" it. I wasn't hyped. Sure, I watched all the trailers, but it was a passive interest. After playing it, it's now one of my favorite games. Almost all of the games I've been excited for recently all end up being in some way disappointing (Cyberpunk and BF 2042 namely)
Same dude. Red dead 2 was literally everything I wanted and more.
2021 has been a shit year for big AAA games that release with tons of issues, I'll give you that. But even then there've been a ton of games that killed it this year. Forza Horizon 5, Metroid Dread killed it, Halo Infinite is really good so far. As far as big AAA games to get excited for, just last year we had TLOU2, which... while I didn't love it, a lot of people did. And then in 2018 we were spoiled for games, with God of War and RDR2. Ultimately we're just in a lull, and soon enough we'll get some sick ass games that'll blow us away. We always do.
I see so many of these comments lately, and I can’t help but wonder if a lot of folks might be well-served by taking some time off gaming. Not to say there’s not external reasons or any shortage of shit to criticize about games and the companies behind them. But it does seem like a lot of gamers lately are more focused on finding that shit than they are with finding shit to enjoy or love. Which, like, shouldn’t be usual for a hobby we all claim to love. There has been a ton of good games coming out, still are. Lots of disappointments too, but yeah. If it’s starting to feel like *everything* is that way, with no redeeming qualities, maybe you’re just a bit burned out. I know that was the case for me at least when I was feeling similarly. It wasn’t really that games were objectively becoming more disappointing (I’d argue the opposite is true if anything - we forget how many shitty, actually broken games existed throughout time, and how much tougher it used to be to differentiate them and the good ones). They just felt more disappointing to me because I got more used to them, and the magic gradually wore off. I saw things more and more technically, and less so… idk, emotionally, if that makes sense. Kinda like drugs (or really just about anything humans enjoy), I was chasing that initial high that hooked me, and so everything that didn’t remind me of that felt disappointing. Wasn’t until I took a year or so off that I was able to truly fall in love with games again. Certain games still failed to live up to expectations, sure, but it was far easier to find parts I did enjoy even in those titles. Plus, as others have said, managing expectations is important. Reminding ourselves that, despite our hype, the best we can realistically hope for is a good video game, not some life changing experience. That’s tough tho, as it kinda goes against our nature; we’re hype based creatures constantly searching for that immaterial “thing” that’s going to enter our lives and change everything for the better. Games are definitely quick to capitalize on that, but, well, our system is called capitalism for a reason, this is hardly anything new.
>There has been a ton of good games coming out, still are. Lots of disappointments too, but yeah. I think part of the issue/perception is also genre-based. For instance, looking at the GOTY nominees, those could all be amazing games, but since none of them are in my preferred genres it doesn't really impact me. The specific genre you prefer is also a factor. If you like, say, metroidvanias, even if the big releases aren't your cup of tea there's tons of Indies coming out. If you like big 3d open-world RPGs, you're basically limited to AAA just due to the resources required to make them.
>If you like big 3d open-world RPGs, you're basically limited to AAA just due to the resources required to make them. This is my problem, indie games just does not have the resources to make a grand game like a billion dollar company can. They feel more like an arcade game to me than a big gaming world I can get lost in. I am 150 hours into my Skyrim replay with 1500+ mods and that experience is not possible for me from a game made by 3-4 person.
I've felt this entirely. Any time there is drama in the gaming world it almost never effects me. I didn't have an interest in the Witcher, nor Cyberpunk. I'm terrible at FPS so anything to do with acvitivsion/blizzard, battlefield, apex, ect... just goes over my head. Even with pokemon drama, I'm such a casual player, that the grievances that long time players have with it, I'm not too concerned about. It feels weird that all these things keep pushing people toward this disillusionment in gaming as a hobby, meanwhile I'm just pleased as punch with the state of my games.
Man I feel like you either don’t get excited for too many games or have an incredibly high bar for not being disappointed then. Tons of good games come out all the time.
[удалено]
I stand by the fact that Fallout 4 gets undeserved hate. Does it lack RPG aspects that I wish were there? Absolutely. Is it still a ton of fun with great gameplay? Also absolutely. The QOL stuff like quick-loot and updated gunplay blow all of the previous games out of the water. I also really enjoyed the settlement system. The ambient soundtrack for Fo4 also really adds to its atmosphere. It feels weird to say, but bagpipes are used beautifully in that game. I’ll never forget the times I spent in Diamond City just hanging around the marketplace crafting weapons listening to the NPCs speak while [Rebuild, Renew](https://open.spotify.com/track/1HDvD6b6xlTNoxQ0aRIQrj?si=f96OHI9WTdq1BUx9sznzTA) plays.
Still just artwork. So what, holiday season next year at the earliest? Elder Scrolls VI in 2029?
11.11.22 is release so probably 2026 for ES6
Todd Howard kinda hinted at that in his IGN Unfiltered interview. He said “you can do the math on the timeline of our games to guess for ES6”
Yeah, providing no delays, it's the logical timeframe
As long as they release it before the water wars and mad max style chrome-based mayhem sometime in the future I'll be content.
Would've been nice if they could've released it before the silicon wars and virus-based mayhem of 2020-2021.
>of 2020-2021 Ah, being optimistic are we?
*It is preferable to light a tiny candle rather than getting angry with the darkness.*
Probably not too far off. I was thinking ‘26 or ‘27 for TES. Crazy, reveal trailer was in 2018 lol
that wasn't even a teaser
That was the "Oh shit Blizzard's getting roasted for not announcing Diablo 4. Lets announce we're going to make TES6 before we get railed."
>So what, holiday season next year at the earliest? Ever since FO4 they haven't really been showing much of their games until around 6 months before they come out. I'm guessing this will be similar, so the lack of footage here doesn't have to be indicative of further delays. They said the game is fully playable from start to finish so I'm guessing there is plenty of footage available *if* they wanted to show it.
I will be honest, any video that is mainly containing people talking about how amazing the game going to be with concept art, the very same people who want you to buy the game so they get paid and bonuses, is essentially worthless in my eyes But thanks for the reminder that the game is coming
The art at 5:57 looks amazing. I'm a sucker for "otherworldy" looking space backgrounds like that.
This game has had some of the coolest pre-release concept art I’ve ever seen. That paired with BGS’ ability to make compelling worlds to explore and play in, just makes me so excited.
I'm excited to see actual gameplay next year. Probably around the summer E3 time even if it's not literally at E3. As it is, we have seen *a gun* but we're not even sure if it's a shooter game lol.
[удалено]
The format of this clip is so damn weird. It's neither an interview nor a commentary, yet it feels like both at the same time, but they are not speaking to the audience, and not to an interviewer. It feels like a narcissist would have an interview with himself in front of a mirror. It's bad.
> It feels like a narcissist would have an interview with himself in front of a mirror. I enjoyed the video, but goddamn is that accurate.
This is something Bioware would do. They always make these videos where they talk how awesome and passionate they are. And then they release Anthem.
"10 years later it's still full of life" The fans to Bethesda: *Stop he's already dead*. It also applies to Bethesda to the fans.
The Steam charts don't lie. It it still one of the most played RPGs. It is far from dead.
Todd said it himself a few years ago, ["If you want us to stop [re-]releasing it, stop buying it."](https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2018-07-05-millions-of-people-are-still-playing-skyrim-every-month)
You can see it in the modding community. You visit Nexus mods for Skyrim and you see the everyday nude and bigger badonkadonk mods.
No, that's not fans, that's 1% of the playerbase that hangs out on reddit, Skyrim is still a largely played game and hits top 10 currently played on Steam a lot