Consensus on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Skyrim, released in 2011, is up there as one of the most popular and critically acclaimed games.

I didn't enjoy it as much as I expected to tho, actually I stopped playing after like 15 hours due to really clunky and barebones combat, not so engaging missions and also, the world didn't grab me, it was just so empty with not so much interactivity, but I understand why ppl enjoyed it so much, the emergent gameplay is enough to grab one's attention coupled with compelling atmosphere and soundtracks

What are your thoughts on it? are you gonna grab it on the Switch?

Skyrim is one of my most favorite games of all time.

That being said, I really wish Bethesda would stop milking and re-releasing the game a billion times and get to work on Elder Scrolls 6.

Not getting the game on Switch when I have it on PC. Good for people that haven't played the game before though.

It was a cool game that I played until about 80 hours over the course of two weeks and never touched again.

Shit covered by more shit

GOAT

I loved it, excellent game. I have it for the 360 plus the enhanced version on the Xbox One. I still need to play through the Xbox One version. I don't plan on getting it for the Switch though. Portability just isn't a strong enough motivator for me and there's other games I'd rather get for the system.

It's not a bad game by any stretch of the imagination, it's just really uninspired.

Oblivion, Skyrim, Fallout 3/4, all the same game really. Bethesda is like the Nickelback of developers.

I'm with this shit heel dickskins fan.

An excellent game made an all-timer by user-generated content

Racists

Basically a slicker, dumber Oblivion. I like the new class-less character system and perks trees, I like the removals of things like Arena and Spellcrafting decidedly less. Everything else had a nice spit and polish; the characters not looking like smashed-up Mr. Potato Heads was a big plus.

Overall, good but not great vanilla game, much, much better with mods.

It is shit, the core mechanics to the game were maybe its best attributes but the game lacked the most important part that made previous games substantive, that being quests and great quest design. The quests in Skyrim are shit, the game tried implementing an auto-generated quest system which also was shit. Also, the guild aspect felt pretty goddamn lacking as well. I don't know why people were so enamored with this piece of shit, all that false praise it doesn't deserve just lets them know they can get away with it next time. I'd much rather play Oblivion, the one TES game people love to shit on, but easily more enjoyable than Skyrim ever was IMO.

Best handheld game ever made.

EDIT: now I'm thinking about monster hunter, and BOTW. Well if it's not the best it will be up there.

It's one of my favorite games ever.

An absolutely awful game made incredible with mods.

Love it. Buying the Switch version when I can.

It's my least favorite TES game. I like the setting, and of course it's a newer engine so things looked better and some worked more fluidly. But other than that, it was a big disappointment

Not a bad game by any stretch, just a huge letdown after the two best Elder Scroll games were released before it. It took everything, watered it down, simplified things that didn't need simplifying, removed spell making, added super powers, made the experience far too simple, removed the everyman, and probably altered future installments of the game... unfortunately. The mods and all that are not base game. When looking at the base experience it is not the best ES game in my opinion. However, I love the random encounters. They really upped the ante in THAT aspect. As far as shouting dragons out of the sky and dual wielding magic and all that... give me a break. I hope the next game travels back to its roots a little. Skyrim had a place, and it will go down as a BETTER GAME if its left as an original idea in the franchise. (What I am saying about the last part is that if it didn't add new staples to the franchise, and the whole super powered dragon shouter doesn't persist, then the legacy of Skyrim will increase over time). However, if they push forward and keep the vast majority of that garbage and dont add the more in depth sections of the game back in.. well, it will stay one of the biggest disappointments in gaming history for me personally. Once again, that's not to say it's a bad game. Just that it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. People commending the removal of classes and things like that... well, I'm glad they are happy, but those are the same things that make me resent the game. It was like 2 steps forward and 3 steps back. Someday I hope that game devs will understand that they can evolve a game franchise WITHOUT dumbing it down and stripping longtime staples. I'm hoping the next game introduces new mechanics but ALSO brings back a lot of the things stripped from Skyrim. The two biggest things are making the towns and cites bustling, HUGE, and feeling more alive, and adding a lot of the stripped features.

It's boring, clunky and straight up shitty + the menus suck. Had more fun with Oblivion, maybe it was the scenery that kept me going on that one.

@mjorh: I actually enjoy Skyrim at launch. I have over 120 Mods with that game and despite it's getting milk by the days, I like it better then Oblivion. I always love playing as a Wizard/Witch, casting lighting as if I was Darth Sidious style lol.

I know this may sound of a surprise but I'm rebuying Skyrim on Nintendo Switch cause I still wanna try something new within the game and I can take it on the go which is a bonus right there. (But I will miss the mods however)

It was a hilarious pile of shit when it launched.

They may have ironed out the endless bugs now (maybe?), but even at its best, Skyrim was simply average at everything it attempted.

skyrim is a landmark like halflife, unreal, halo, crysis. I spend over a 1000 hours in the game.

I can't wait for the VR version.

Skyrim was my introduction to The Elder Scrolls series and is one of my all time favorite games.

I'm OK with the re-releases, but if they are going to keep doing them, they need to finally release a patch to fix all the damn bugs!

Mediocre without mods, then it's okay for a while, until it becomes tedious even with the mods.

Hahaha, that's actually a great simile. Lol

I never thought you could compare a dev to Nickelback, but you really can!

I could never get into it... and believe me, I've given it many chances. Give me Witcher 3 any day.

An amazing game that will be purely magical when it is released for PSVR this November.

Oblivion was my first TES game, and it was one of the most immersive gaming experiences I've ever had. Jaw-dropping. Also one of the few games where I had such a strong urge to explore every corner of the world.

Skyrim had none of that. Was very underwhelmed and disappointed with the bland environments. I put in maybe 10-15 hours and lost interest.

Don't know. I'm still avoiding all games with sword, shield, magic, and a medieval setting.

Really popular so no doubt people think one of the best games in recent times is crap.

I still play it. Love it. Genius.

Fvck dragons

@mjorh: The game is only good if it has mods. Mods fixes most of Skyrim short comings. Like dull finishers, stupid AI companions, clunked inventory, hud, follower system, marriage, ambiance, atmosphere, night, day, and lot of things!

Even nude mods!

overrated

bethesda's games are among the blandest in existence

w/o mods its average at best

Brilliant. A million miles away from "perfect", it has many flaws. But they simply don't matter when it does so much right and is so much fun.

As an aside it's hilarious how the latest one in a series is always shit and the previous one always gets better in hindsight. I remember when Oblivion and Fallout 3 were utter shit. Now it's Skyrim and Fallout 4 that are shit, while Oblivion and Fallout 3 are (apparently) beloved classics. Lol. People try and call that the "Zelda Cycle" but it's the same for literally every series out there.

Well, in Bethesda's case it's what happens when you put THIS guy's name on it.

It's meh, the 3rd best TES game to me and I'm not really that much into WRPGs. I played maybe 15 hours before I got bored

Not for me. I still think Oblivion was worse than Skyrim. And Fallout 3 is still crap, along with Fallout 4. Skyrim is mediocre, and none of their games compare to how great Morrowind is. Only mods can make them any sort of fun for more than a few hours.

New Vegas is the only new Fallout that was any good, although it was flawed, it had fun characters and a story that actually gave a damn.

Still, nothing compares to Fallout 2 as far as the Fallout series goes.

Skyrim was great! But i still rank Morrowind as one of my all time favorites in this series because I still remember the first time when i was adventuring a man fell from the sky and that was hilarious.

What I want out of an Elder Scrolls game is a world that feels alive. With people that feel like they live there. And on top of that filled with fun little quest writing that Bethesda excels at.

I got that, as much as I got that in Oblivion. I was hoping they would have made steps in making the world feel even more real. Maybe I'm doing them a major disservice because I haven't played the games back to back, but I couldn't tell you how they tried making Skyrim feel more alive than Oblivion. And that disappointed me. For instance being a world savior it would be cool if you know, people responded to your reputation a little.

Something that was broken in Oblivion, straight up broken, was leveling up. Quite an important part of a TES game. You got experience and all it did was make everything harder. The easiest way to finish that game was to remain like lvl 3 as long as possible. And maybe that sounds like something you could ignore but it made leveling up feel like a bad thing. Like you were going backwards. They did somewhat fix that in Skyrim. I didn't feel like leveling up was bad in Skyrim and that's huge so I have to give them credit for that.

But another important aspect of an RPG like TES was combat. It feels completely ethereal or trivial in Skyrim. Magic feels like it has very little impact. And after playing Magicka and you know, Oblivion, I was expecting them to make that even more physical or impactful, at least not less physical... We were slowly heading in the direction of very cool fantasy combat and what we got was anything but. I hope they look at Dragon's Dogma. Not because I expect that combat to be in the next TES game but it feels so much better and there have to be things they can learn from that.

And another thing I expected to improve but which was kinda stuck in time was the UI on PC. It really feels like a UI that should be controlled with a controller. I don't get how they keep doing that. That disappointed me.

So in ways I was a little disappointed by Skyrim but I did ultimately really enjoy exploring a new world, the dragon powers, and coming across silly characters, and above all the crazy (free) mods that people made. I do have high hopes for a next Elder Scrolls game but I hope they take a long time with it and find ways to improve upon the feel of combat, the UI, and making the world feel even more dynamic and alive. One step in the right direction in those area's would mean a lot to everybody I think.

And I think what they have with TES right now is a concept that can be meaningfully improved upon in many ways which really is a great position to be in. Unlike say Zelda which nobody really knew how Nintendo was going to make it refreshing but still as good, Bethesda is in a position where we can list a hundred things that we'd want and they would all be cool. If for instance they make the enemy AI more sophisticated in that they try and work together and seek cover, that could be a great selling point in itself. If they fix the faces of non-human races that would be a great selling point. If they publicly state they will not interfere with the mod scene, that would be a great selling point. A new skill system could be a great selling point. TES is full of opportunities to generate mass hype and create another Skyrim success in sales. It's a very promising IP, I'd say more so than ever before IF they manage to somehow improve on several design facets. And I think they are totally capable of doing that.

@mjorh: I had exactly the same. I tried replaying it a couple of weeks ago, but it didn't age that well. The combat is really crappy

Great game. The only thing I liked less than other Elder Scrolls games was its world. It's a bit boring.

To the haters: Which other game does, what Skyrim does, better? I'm 95% sure whatever answer I'll get will be shit.

The Witcher 3 isn't exactly the same, because you don't make your own character, but it sure as hell put everything else to shame in Skyrim.

But, in particular, if we are speaking of vanilla Skyrim only, I'll list Gothic 1 and 2, Risen, New Vegas if we're counting modern non medieval games, Divinity 2, Fallout 1 and 2 if we're counting older top down RPG games. Hell, we could also include Black Isle games such as Baldur's Gate 2. Oh, and Dragon Age: Origins.

@locopatho:

Actually, there are MANY things that make Morrowind and Oblivion better RPGs. I'm tired of the "was Skyrim great / better than TW3" conversation, though - it gets posted on here every 3 mos. I'm not going bother listing all the issues for the 100th time, and probably shouldn't have replied to the thread in the first place. It's a long tiresome list on how Skyrim stripped almost everything meaningful out of the series.

Skyrim IS more "playable" - I'll say that. Combat was a chore in Morrowind. Leveling was turd in Oblivion. But despite those issues, those were better experiences in their totality. And I still play them (well, I still play Morrowind), so no, this isn't rose colored glasses

boring shallow game

Doesn't apply to everyone obviously. Some folks are consistent. The general consensus seems to shift all the time though. I remember when COD4 was consolised garbage but even PC gamers seem to look back on it fondly these days.

Early Fallouts are indeed best Fallouts.

Morrowind is too copy pasted for me to love.

Indeed. Skyrim is an action/adventure game to me, not an RPG. Sure it has leveling and skills but so do most games these days. I think of it more like Zelda or Batman than Baldur's Gate or Dragon Age or The Witcher.

Saying X game is better ain't what I'm on about though. Just the people saying sequel X is garbage and prior game Y was epic. That's silly. All the TES games have their strengths and weaknesses. None of them are garbage, none of them are perfect.

Put 100 hours into it on the xbox 360. Great game. I want it for Switch.

It's great!