The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
I finally completed this for the first time just now. I had played this before, once on the PS3 and once on the PC, but during both attempts got bored approximately halfway through. This time, I played the original version (not Special Edition) on PC, because I prefer to complete the original version of a game before I play/complete its remaster (also, I prefer the muted color pallete of the original version of Skyrim). I used two mods: SkyUI (simply crucial imo if playing with mouse and keyboard) and some mod that shows roads on the in-game map.

I liked it enough to complete the main quest, but not enough to do much else. It has a massive world, a million quests, multiple factions, crafting... the content seems to never end. Unfortunately, I found it all to be as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle. The extremely linear dungeons, boring townspeople with just a couple lines of dialog, simple quests, and level-scaled equipment nearly killed the game for me. I felt no drive to do much of the optional content (just a few of the imperial faction quests) or even the DLCs, and ended up completing the game in just 18 hours.

Having said that, something about Skyrim just works. It's got amazing atmosphere and a very fitting soundtrack; I love the snowstorms in this game. As for playing it, in some ways, its simplicity works in its favor. There is not anything deep about Skyrim's many systems, but they all work, and they fit together well. It was perfect for sitting back, relaxing with some brandy, and enjoying some stress-free questing over several winter nights.

---

I may revisit the game next year with the same character, and do the DLC content. For now, I am thinking of completing Oblivion next. I played that game a lot on the XBOX 360 back in the day, but never completed it. It will be interesting to play the PC version and see how it is. I know the game has a LOT of issues, but I recall the quests and dungeons being a bit more interesting than what I experienced in Skyrim.

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-12-19, 13:02:

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Unfortunately, I found it all to be as wide as an ocean but as deep as a puddle. The extremely linear dungeons, boring townspeople with just a couple lines of dialog, simple quests, and level-scaled equipment nearly killed the game for me. I felt no drive to do much of the optional content (just a few of the imperial faction quests) or even the DLCs, and ended up completing the game in just 18 hours.

Having said that, something about Skyrim just works. It's got amazing atmosphere and a very fitting soundtrack; I love the snowstorms in this game. As for playing it, in some ways, its simplicity works in its favor. There is not anything deep about Skyrim's many systems, but they all work, and they fit together well. It was perfect for sitting back, relaxing with some brandy, and enjoying some stress-free questing over several winter nights.

I think you hit the nail on the head on both counts.

As for Oblivion I think you might not have a good time if level scaled items bothered you in Skyrim as level scaling is the biggest issue Oblivion always had. Start the game fighting half naked bandits with rusty butter knives, later run into nothing but armies of super bandits armed to the teeth with high level gear and ridiculous amounts of health. I did not enjoy unmodded Oblivion at all once I got over the initial "what a pretty world!" feeling.

But heavily modded Oblivion was a different thing altogether. There's a mod called Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul that set the level range for enemies in some way, bandits didn't turn into super rich sword sponges as you leveled and wolves didn't magically disappear from the world. It also made the game have inverted difficulty curve, beginning of the game was VERY hard but got slowly and gradually easier with levels and better gear. Honestly that was one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever had with a game, slowly turning from a weakling who had to run away from nearly everything into Conan the Barbarian who could take on anything. Payback time!

I still remember how I had started to feel like I had finally reached the point when I could go against everything only to run into some minotaur thing on the road that smashed my shield in one or two hits and then me 🤣 A lesson in humility was learned that day. The mod did have some issues, it did add some dungeons with unbelievably OP enemies that weren't fun at all. And this was like 12 years ago, no idea how the mod has changed in the meantime if it sounds like something you'd be interested to try.

Yeah, Skyrim is just about mediocre game with an awesome lore. Bethesda was kind of a one step forward two steps back kind of studio. I also hated how they handled weapons and armor. Each tier is basically the same. You get a little more damage (or damage resistance), but proportionately more weight and base value. On top of all, aside of the lowest tier, you can max out armor rating with low level armor so the only reason to go above above tempered iron/elven is aesthetics (a perk makes them weightless anyway).

When it comes to Oblivion, as I said, Bethesda is a one step forward, two steps back kind of studio, so it is better in many ways.

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-12-19, 16:22:

When it comes to Oblivion, as I said, Bethesda is a one step forward, two steps back kind of studio, so it is better in many ways.

As far as game worlds go in the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion is easily my favorite. What blew me away with Oblivion is that my 7800 GTX SLI gaming rig couldn't get a completely smooth FPS with all details up. It was a very impressive game world for the time.

liqmat wrote on 2022-12-19, 16:54:

RandomStranger wrote on 2022-12-19, 16:22:

When it comes to Oblivion, as I said, Bethesda is a one step forward, two steps back kind of studio, so it is better in many ways.

As far as game worlds go in the Elder Scrolls series, Oblivion is easily my favorite. What blew me away with Oblivion is that my 7800 GTX SLI gaming rig couldn't get a completely smooth FPS with all details up. It was a very impressive game world for the time.

And it has very vibrant colors coming from an age dominated by all brown and grey games covered with a piss colored filter.

Sombrero wrote on 2022-12-19, 14:58:

But heavily modded Oblivion was a different thing altogether. There's a mod called Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul that set the level range for enemies in some way, bandits didn't turn into super rich sword sponges as you leveled and wolves didn't magically disappear from the world. It also made the game have inverted difficulty curve, beginning of the game was VERY hard but got slowly and gradually easier with levels and better gear. Honestly that was one of the most satisfying experiences I've ever had with a game, slowly turning from a weakling who had to run away from nearly everything into Conan the Barbarian who could take on anything. Payback time!

Thanks for the info! I am still going to try playing it (mostly) unmodded first, and see how it goes. I read up on some ways to make the enemy scaling not so bad, and was able to clear a few of the story missions (including the first oblivion gate) with little trouble. If I suddenly hit a difficulty (or tedium) wall due to enemy scaling, I will definitely give OOO a shot!

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-12-19, 17:49:

Thanks for the info! I am still going to try playing it (mostly) unmodded first, and see how it goes. I read up on some ways to make the enemy scaling not so bad, and was able to clear a few of the story missions (including the first oblivion gate) with little trouble. If I suddenly hit a difficulty (or tedium) wall due to enemy scaling, I will definitely give OOO a shot!

If I made it sound like the game gets difficult with level scaling that wasn't my intention and it's not true, sorry about that. Difficulty isn't going to be a problem, it's an easy game. That's why the level scaling is there, so the player can go anywhere at any time and do anything without much trouble. I just hate how it does horrible things to suspension of disbelief at least in my case, I have enough trouble enjoying Bethesdas games due to their writing but the level scaling in Oblivion also makes the gameplay boring and silly to me.

Also I wouldn't install OOO mid game, it's something that should be experienced from the start if it's anything like it was back when I used it.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

This is not a good game in the slightest -it's a really bad game because the world is way too big and ambitious. I am 45 hours in now and I'm starting to get "open world burnout". The only thing that keeps me going is the main story and my companions.

When I look at CDPR's Witcher3 I see a massive world that's done well, because it managed to keep me entertained for hundreds of hours, right until the end. Somehow, solving mystery crimes at the ass-end of the world never felt boring.

DAI cannot replicate this in the slightest. A lot of the things you need to do in this game are just tedious and boring. Collecting random shards to open a random door in a temple with some boring-ass loot isn't fun and it reminds me a lot of Assassin's Creed, which is equally bad in its mission design. Going into a cave and only finding a note of some dead adventurer without any comment from your or your companions on that is the bare minimum you can do in mission design and DAI is full of it.

I also feel like the combat is a big step back from its predecessor. Playing a mage in this game feels like shining a laserpointer on your enemies for 15 minutes until they finally fall down on the ground and it's just not fun at all. All of the enemies are extreme bullet sponges you need to sit through. I am good enough to never die, none of my companions ever die, but getting wave after wave of the same enemies (just more of them as you level up) is just sooo tiresome.

I also don't like that you look like ass when you play a female character without mods. The vanilla hairstyles are all atrocious and I don't know who decided to only put scruffy looking male eyebrows into the game.
It took me 3 hours in the character editor and two mods to finally look decent. Come one, Bioware! I know it's a Middle Age game, but why would all women have shitty eyebrows while they wear the most amazing dresses?

(Also, a lot of your companions have this overly glossy look on their faces that makes it seem like they just did a massive workout, sweating their arse off. That really threw me off, thank god there are mods to reduce the glossyness.)

I really hope Dragon Age 4 will go back to its roots and give us a much smaller world with more meaningful things to do in it.
And hopefully they'll let me look this good without any mods.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
With Skyrim completed, I decided to travel back in time and play Oblivion, hopefully to completion this time. I decided to install a handful of mods that improve the experience but don't change the game itself:

• EngineBugFixes - Fixes several engine-related bugs, including some that cause CTDs
• Oblivion Display Tweaks - Fixes microstuttering, runs the game in borderless window mode (for stable alt-tabbing)
• DarNified UI - Crucial for playing with mouse/KB on PC as far as I'm concerned

To get around the ridiculous level scaling in the game, I am using a strategy called "playing the minors." Only "major" skills contribute toward leveling up, so you just set skills you can mostly avoid using as your majors, so that you can continue to build up the skills you actually want to use without fear of constantly leveling up. If you ever want to level up (to gain access to better equipment or different types of monsters), you simply go train your major skills until you get enough EXP to level up.

I've tried this now for a few hours, and it works great so far. The best thing is that, once you've made your character, you don't even have to think about it, and can pretty much play the game like you normally would otherwise. I made a melee-focused character, and set all the magic skills as my major skills. I'm still at level 1, but have made some decent progress so far. Enemies are getting easier and easier to defeat, so I will probably soon train some magic skills and level up a bit.

I must admit that I am liking this more than Skyrim so far. It isn't anywhere as atmospheric as Skyrim, but its bog-standard high fantasy setting is like comfort food to me. I am impressed so far with the larger dungeons (much more complex than those in Skyrim) and the variety of towns. I also like how you can talk to any NPC and use persuasion/bribery or ask about rumors, etc.; it's not anything complicated, but I prefer it to the many one-liner NPCs in Skyrim.

The problem with TES leveling in general is that combat traditionally sucks. Everything just charges straight at you and beats you until they die. A higher level enemy is just more of a damage sponge. That's why traditionally stealth-archery is the most popular way of playing these games to the point where it became a meme with Skyrim. It lets you avoid (direct) combat. Just knock the difficulty down so they are easier to kill. During my first playthrough of Oblivion I just abused the invisibility spell and ran trough the dungeons and oblivion gates undetected after about 20 hours.

i'm now playing Hexen..........64!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the console ports are interesting in some ways on how they jank it:

PSX: Ported by Probe. MUCH lower movement speed, textures are halved and less colors, 3d aspect is squished. No masked textures. Monsters have less colors and always face the front. There's some sound changes (i.e. monsters sounding like dogs when cloud'd) There is an intro cinematic. Renders in 256 width (!).

Saturn: Ported by Probe. (same PSX slowness and less map detail, etc), but textures have more color. The strangest changes are the sounds. Breaking glass sounds like a fork across a plate, jump landing grunts become pain sounds, no creakings, etc.. No sprite translucencies. Some textures are noticeably lower res and blocky like the switches.

N64: Ported by Software Creations. Japanese dub! Framerate good, filtering on sprites is optional. Map textures are halved but still colorful (and not all are halved - switches and stained glass are fine). Monster sprites have directions. Some sounds are shortened or changed to similar noises (but not drastic like saturn's glass or psx's dog). Precision on movement is noticeably less (probably allowed for the speed). Map still ahs detail. Sprites don't glow anymore though. Vertex fog implementation of lighting

schmatzler wrote on 2022-12-20, 02:07:

Dragon Age: Inquisition
When I look at CDPR's Witcher3 I see a massive world that's done well, because it managed to keep me entertained for hundreds of hours, right until the end. Somehow, solving mystery crimes at the ass-end of the world never felt boring.

DAI cannot replicate this in the slightest. A lot of the things you need to do in this game are just tedious and boring. Collecting random shards to open a random door in a temple with some boring-ass loot isn't fun and it reminds me a lot of Assassin's Creed, which is equally bad in its mission design. Going into a cave and only finding a note of some dead adventurer without any comment from your or your companions on that is the bare minimum you can do in mission design and DAI is full of it.

For whatever reason, this made me think of Diablo 3 vs Borderlands 2. Diablo is fun enough to start off. It's even cool enough to to complete the campaign story. But there's nothing motivating you through the end-game grind of Greater Rifts except your own greed. However, GRs in co-op with your friends can be lots of fun. The problem is the entertainment comes mostly from the company, not the game.

Borderlands 2 can be just much a grind, but I find the characters, setting, and ridiculous story more than entertaining enough to even now replay it. As a big D&D nerd, the Tiny Tina's Assault on Dragonkeep DLC is worth more than the rest of the game. I give major props to the writers for that one. No corner of Nerdom was spared from their mockery. Then you get the suckerpunch at the end when it turns from Monty Python with Guns to a Return of the King tear-jerker.

schmatzler wrote on 2022-12-20, 02:07:

I also don't like that you look like ass when you play a female character without mods. The vanilla hairstyles are all atrocious and I don't know who decided to only put scruffy looking male eyebrows into the game.
It took me 3 hours in the character editor and two mods to finally look decent. Come one, Bioware! I know it's a Middle Age game, but why would all women have shitty eyebrows while they wear the most amazing dresses?

(Also, a lot of your companions have this overly glossy look on their faces that makes it seem like they just did a massive workout, sweating their arse off. That really threw me off, thank god there are mods to reduce the glossyness.)

This is just BioWare reusing the same assets since Mass Effect 1, maybe even back to KotOR. They developed the walking animation for a man wearing heavy armor then used it for every model in every game for the next 10 years, regardless of size and frame. So whether you're a hulking Qunari, an Asari exotic dancer, or a meek city Elf, your arms and elbows will always splay out to the sides and your waist/hips are nearly still.

And maybe I'm thinking of something else about the "gloss," but I think is a carry-over from the Mass Effect helmet visors. It's like they could never get the alpha and transparency layers in the right order, because character eye-lashes were always prominently visible under visors, even through glare and reflection effects.

Halfway through Wolfenstein. The game introduced a some Far Cry style mutant enemies... which die from about 3 MP43 bullets, this game's version of Supersoldat, heavily armored, armed with a particle cannon... and has 3 weak spots you can shoot in bullet time with about 6 bullets from your MP43, some sorcerer soldiers which attacks with plasma balls and shields generic soldiers OR themselves and surgically augmented assassins. The latter two are a little bit more challenging, but the game is still easy and it doesn't feel like it would get any harder. I also picked up some more firepower, the particle cannon, tesla gun and panzershreck and I barely use anything other than the MP43 and the Kar98. If I wouldn't know I'm playing on hard, I'd think I'm playing on easy.

Also, the game being semi-open world don't make much sense. It doesn't add anything to the game, but you have to backtrack some with respawning enemies.

Btw why is this game unobtainable digitally? It was delisted when Bethesda bought id and I heard two rumors. One of them is that the game is in some kind of legal limbo where publishing rights stayed at Activision, which would be weird, because Quake 4 and Doom 3 and its expansion and it's expansion were unaffected. The other is that the game is so bad Bethesda doesn't want it to taint the name of the franchise, which doesn't make sense. And this not a bad, only a bit unremarkable. They also released Wolfenstein Youngblood and that actually did leave a meaty skid mark on the franchise. And if I compare it to Doom 3, it's a lot less faithful to the Doom franchise than Wolfenstein is to the Wolfenstein.

Short answer: lawyers, contracts, and lawsuits spoil all the fun and IP law is incredibly complex. With how convoluted making a game can be, it's sometimes a wonder anything gets made at all.

Contracts are complex in who owns the resulting IP, who has rights to continue using said IP, who pays for marketing, and how distribution is handled. Distribution itself can be divided by physical and digital, geographic region vs region, even making multiple digital distribution channels within the same segment. With the many deals, buy-outs, and mergers that happen, it's not uncommon for a given IP to fall into a legal morass that wasn't explicitly covered by the latest contract. The GOG staff has many interviews describing the challenges they sometimes face with a given game and finding out who can authorize a deal to let them carry it. For old and forgotten games, sometimes the devs, publishers, and distributors aren't willing to straighten out the details for fear they'll be sued for stealing IP or breaching contract by one of the other players, so they'll just let it sit in limbo.

Roblox though its a crappy game because it tries to be everything and nothing

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-12-20, 04:55:

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I've been playing a bit of Oblivion too lately, trying to fill the void after months of working my way through Gothic 1 and 2. I tried Gothic 3, which I used to love, but playing it so soon after G1 and G2 really highlights its flaws. Oblivion is another game that I used to really get in to but the world feels so contrived after the Gothics, which always feel so alive and believable.

Oblivion sure does look nice though with a few graphics mods applied. Ranged combat is OK and I quite like interacting with the NPCs and just listening to them chat to each other. They're much better at mentioning things in context than the NPCs in Skyrim I find. The quests are pretty damn dull though generally speaking. Maybe I should just focus on the main quest - I don't think I've ever actually finished Oblivion for all the hours I've spend on it.

badmojo wrote on 2022-12-22, 10:37:

I tried Gothic 3, which I used to love, but playing it so soon after G1 and G2 really highlights its flaws.

Same here. Nowadays, when I do a Gothic series replay, I go with Gothic 1 > Gothic 2 > Risen 1. That makes for a much smoother transition.

Gothic 3 is best experienced on its own, with a healthy distance from the first two games. It does have some nice elements like the exceptional music, but compared to the previous entries in the series, it's pretty underwhelming. Even with the latest community patch applied and all, Gothic 3 simply cannot measure up to its predecessors.

badmojo wrote on 2022-12-22, 10:37:

I've been playing a bit of Oblivion too lately, trying to fill the void after months of working my way through Gothic 1 and 2. I […]
Show full quote

newtmonkey wrote on 2022-12-20, 04:55:

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

I've been playing a bit of Oblivion too lately, trying to fill the void after months of working my way through Gothic 1 and 2. I tried Gothic 3, which I used to love, but playing it so soon after G1 and G2 really highlights its flaws. Oblivion is another game that I used to really get in to but the world feels so contrived after the Gothics, which always feel so alive and believable.

Oblivion sure does look nice though with a few graphics mods applied. Ranged combat is OK and I quite like interacting with the NPCs and just listening to them chat to each other. They're much better at mentioning things in context than the NPCs in Skyrim I find. The quests are pretty damn dull though generally speaking. Maybe I should just focus on the main quest - I don't think I've ever actually finished Oblivion for all the hours I've spend on it.

20221222125506_1.jpg 20221222205223_1.jpg 20221222153105_1.jpg

Which mods are you using?

badmojo wrote on 2022-12-22, 10:37:

I've been playing a bit of Oblivion too lately, trying to fill the void after months of working my way through Gothic 1 and 2. I tried Gothic 3, which I used to love, but playing it so soon after G1 and G2 really highlights its flaws. Oblivion is another game that I used to really get in to but the world feels so contrived after the Gothics, which always feel so alive and believable.

I refer to Oblivion as a 'really high end medieval fantasy walking simulator with bonus side quests'. Your screenshots look great. I would also like a list of the mods you are using when you get some time dear sir.

Jaron wrote on 2022-12-21, 21:43:

Short answer: lawyers, contracts, and lawsuits spoil all the fun and IP law is incredibly complex. With how convoluted making a game can be, it's sometimes a wonder anything gets made at all.

Contracts are complex in who owns the resulting IP, who has rights to continue using said IP, who pays for marketing, and how distribution is handled. Distribution itself can be divided by physical and digital, geographic region vs region, even making multiple digital distribution channels within the same segment. With the many deals, buy-outs, and mergers that happen, it's not uncommon for a given IP to fall into a legal morass that wasn't explicitly covered by the latest contract. The GOG staff has many interviews describing the challenges they sometimes face with a given game and finding out who can authorize a deal to let them carry it. For old and forgotten games, sometimes the devs, publishers, and distributors aren't willing to straighten out the details for fear they'll be sued for stealing IP or breaching contract by one of the other players, so they'll just let it sit in limbo.

Another factor is licensed music. Games with songs that weren't made specifically for the game are often removed from stores because their music rights expired.