Is he right?

Is he right?

This dude writes like a cunt trying to sell a used car.

Skyrim does some things right.

But none of them have anything to do with the world being beautiful or interesting.

So, no.

>Skyrim does some things right.
Name one.

Your lore powerlevel as a dragonborn and how powerful your character feels during combat are fairly even.

The large amount of lore books are pretty nice. I believe it added more new ones than any other Elder Scrolls game besides TESO.

It did away with Oblivions homogenization of appearances between races and gave each race a sensible and disparate base appearance without making each variety of elf look like a completely different species.

The final part of the main quest is fucking sweet and almost manages to make up for the rest of the game being dogshit.

Skyrim completely ruins its open world because you can DUDE FAST TRAVEL ANYTIME LMAO and objective markers.

Does Skyrim have a good world map? Maybe, but I sure as hell didn't notice, and that's the point. Sometimes you have to take reign as a developer and say "Actually, you're not going to be able to fast travel from anywhere, because it's going to be way more immersive if you need to travel a bit."

and the overworld is littered with fast travel spaces in BoTW

RIP Zelda

What Zelda can learn from Shadow of the Colossus

>Skyrim does a terrific job in presenting you with a location that feels vibrant, and one that can drastically change depending where on the map you head.

Fast travel is needed for such a massive game because nobody wants to ride a horse for 20 minutes to reach the city on the other side of the map for a quest.

At the same time Skyrim does basically nothing with its space since cities are tiny and they jammed in as much bullshit in as little a space as possible cramping the world and breaking immersion by having rebel camps 30 seconds from imperial strongholds or overrun forts next to undefended villages.

I wish Zelda learned from SoTC by removing almost all character dialogue and not having the game pause when you pick up an item you've already collected before.

The fact that they removed 90% of the character progression and RPG elements in Skyrim makes wandering around on foot pointless as fuck. Why do I care about some hidden cave or random beast when the loot will be shit, you aren't training skills and your level barely matters.

If you make fast travel consume a resource and limit where it can take you, even if it's minuscule it actually solves that problem entirely.

Imagine if you could only fast travel in Skyrim by hiring a carriage or requesting an escort from your guild once you ranked up in it. and even then ONLY to major cities

If your reward for completing the main campaign had been a dragon you could summon and ride, rather than just summon for fights, it would've been the Elder Scrolls campaign ever.

Dead waifu is a good motivator.

Tragic ending is best ending.

Why do people want games to be like other games? Shouldn't we want to be their own thing so we don't feel like we've played it already?

Or if fast travel rather than being instant merely gave you a sped up travel time on autopilot.

and wandering around on foot meant that by the time you got into the main questline you were oneshotting dragons which kinda took the air out of them tires

EVERY FUCKING ZELDA GAME LTTP AND BEYOND HAS FAST TRAVEL

Zelda 1 also has fast travel.

>implying twilight princess didn't have fast travel

skyrim is one of the worst games I've ever played, no

why the hell is skyrim so fucking popular? It's not the characters, quests, combat, writing

fucking nothing

yeah an open world zelda could learn some things from skyrim, but not what he just said. Skyrim feels like the same boring snowing north no matter where you go. Full tamriel TES when?

No kidding. Just give me a fucking option that goes "have you played a zelda game before". Selecting yes skips 100% of the tutorial text and all the story preamble.

>DUDE FAST TRAVEL ANYTIME LMAO
Fast travel isn't inherently bad. Unrestricted fast travel is symptomatic of a much larger problem. Jesus Christ. Remember Oblivion?

>Your lore powerlevel as a dragonborn
Morrowind MC shits all over the dragonborn's "power"

>lore books
You mean all the ones they used since fucking daggerfall?

>final part of the main quest is sweet

>why the hell is skyrim so fucking popular?
dragons

Zelda always had fast travels though

...

Most Zelda games have some kind of "fast travel" but they still have more substance to them than just bringing up the map and clicking on a point and instantly going to it. Having to go through a process of playing a song or whatever then going through some kind of animation keeps you from using it frivolously and makes you feel like your character traveled somewhere.

I really hope that BotW doesn't forget that. Being able to instantly teleport wherever you want without any consequence or process to it cheapens the sense of adventure even if it's the most convenient.

Skyrim is what you get when you dumb down an RPG to the point that it requires no thought to play through. Think about Skyrim compared to a game like Fallout 2.

In Skyrim you can pick up any weapon and use it immediately with no requirements of skill or specialization.

In Fallout 2 you have a strength requirement firstly and secondly you have your skill in that weapon archetype. If your skill sucks then your use of that weapon will suck.

What makes Skyrim popular then, is the fact that it claims to be an RPG without being one. You can specialize in everything from the get-go, just like in Fallout 4.

you know those movies that are terrible but exceed your expectations at the same time and you end up likeing? like starship troopers?
yeah skyrim is basically that for people that dont usually play games.

>Your lore powerlevel as a dragonborn and how powerful your character feels during combat are fairly even.
Hell no. You'll find extra hardcore regular barbarian than can one hit you even if you have already killed several dragons due to stupid level scalling.

I love this explanation is probably why I've always been wondering why I don't see modern rpgs like Mass Effect, Fallout 3, or Skyrim as rpgs.

>its okay when zelda does it

I feel the same way my brother

I skimmed the four paragraphs and he doesn't actually say anything in any of them.

This is literally just clickbait. The author is an idiot, the OP is an idiot.

sage

I'd disagree with your first and last point but 2 out of 4 isn't bad when trying to find good things about Skyrim.

Hey Starship Troopers was great.

For instance, CRPG Addict kept saying how much he loves skyrim, and barely having played the old Fallouts despite playing multiple older crpgs. So how come a guy so informed on crpgs not realize that Skyrim is essentially not one at all?

Skyrim is an action adventure game to me. I don't think even its skill system prompts making it an rpg. Not only do stats level up automatically, but the skill system is no different from unlocking traits like in other action games, like DMC.

>its not okay when zelda does it

>wanting a skyrim clone
fuck off with this god damn game. It has been re-released several times over and it continues to be boring shit. HOW DO NORMIES FIND IT REMOTELY FUN?!

Have you guys even watched the demos? Thats literally what it's doing this time around. There are no tutorials or whatsoever and collectables only pause the game the first time you pick them.

How can you even compare when the full game isnt even out

>locations feel vibrant
You mean like those quiet gray snow-topped mountain to the 10 other gray snow topped mountain or the shithole that is Windhelm and Riverwood the two most plain fucking starting locations?

1. You are playing the game within 5 minutes. No bullshit hours long tutorial hand holding garbage.

I just want to snuggle up next to link and hug him tight

tl;dr, suck less feces OP

Gray snow-topped mountain village*

Is what i meant

>vibrant locations in skyrim
fucking kek the entire map was gray and bland

>collectables only pause the game the first time you pick them.
Two steps forward, one step back...

>Skyrim does a terrific job in presenting you with a location that feels vibrant, and one that can drastically change depending where on the map you head.
Yeah, terrific is the right word, but not in the way he intended.

its really not that unreasonable
getting a pack full of random items you have no idea what they do, hidden in menus you might not even look, leads players to be overwhelmed by too much shit they need to figure out
whereas the popup tells them "this rushroom makes you usain bolt nigga stew dat shit", now gives them at least an idea of what all the items are meant to do

Still has that lingering aroma of awkward Zelda design philosophy. BotW is going to be far far from perfect. I don't know why people are hailing it as the second coming.

How is that bad?

Skyrim and FO4 are ARPG.
ARPG where the player is in direct control of the actions of the PC and yet there are arbitrary numbers telling you what you can or can't do have always been terrible and unintuitive. Core RPG mechanics never flow well in that sort of context.

Mostly playing double's advocate here but there is a reason why they decided to streamline or remove such elements.

I really don't see any flaw with that system. How is that awkward? It is useful for informing players of shit. That's really two steps forward already. And masterpieces are always flawed, no matter how perfect they seem.

They reallly need to work on their fast travel system.
>lets put some carriages outside of major towns so you have to run to the edge of the city, load the overworld, and then take the carriage
>fuck putting carriages in the smaller towns though. They don't need it :^)
Meanwhile Morrowind has at least 4 different ways to teleport yourself to other towns and potions/spells that let you run, jump, and fly across the map.
The horses and 5 carriages aren't cutting it, faggots.

popups are awful in games that try and be "immersive" It will probably be ok in zelda but for games like skyrim it is just awful to have pop ups that freeze your game.

just because they did some things wrong doesn't mean they should throw the baby out with the bathwater and tear up the formula and avoid doing anything they've done previously

it just means they should refine the formula and stop doing the things people hate and continue doing the useful things that aren't too annoying. Its about striking a necessary balance

Upon getting some fire arrows for the first time.
Poor: Stops you dead in your tracks, informs you that FIRE ARROWS MAKE THINGS BURN and that FIRE ARROWS GOOD AGAINST ICE. Treats you like an idiot, momentarily destroys the flow, makes no sense.

Better: Shows the words "Fire Arrows". As Link picks (as in physically, not in the weird "pick-up" sense) them up, they momentarily ignite. Maybe a little unique chime or visual indicating you've never gotten them before. A little marker on the inventory screen showing they're new. No description.

The best possible would involve no text. Only visuals and audio queues. No redundant description. No menus. Pic related.

Everything the article is talking about Zelda already did in OoT. So wtf?

I agree. Preferably, next puzzle is something you can burn, like a spider net or wood or whatever. Anything, icon, little animation, that looks like fire, will let the player know that this weapon can set things on fire. It's a common symbol.

>The best possible would involve no text. Only visuals and audio queues. No redundant description. No menus. Pic related.
okay so how do you convey this item to the player using only visuals and audio queues

you picked up a dead lizard
you visually see yourself pick up a lizard
??????
cooking
????
you move fast

>FO4
>RPG at all
It's just a glorified shooter.

Gating the player with a puzzle sounds like overkill. There seems to be enough flammable material in the game that players can't not connect the dots. Unless you keep heaping bullshit onto their inventory to make them lose sight of what matters. Whooops! Art is subtraction, right?

It could be gathered from super fast lizards. Or roaming monsters could eat said lizards and start running super fast. There could be an option to eat the food raw, giving the player a full speed buff that only lasts a couple seconds (with a precedent that cooking = better buffs set somewhere else).

I get where you're coming from but zelda games have always done this and it only became a problem when it stopped you every goddam time you booted up the console in skyward sword and took forever for the menu to open and show you how it placed it on your bag of shit.

Whats the deal with this demand of absolute minimalisation all of sudden? Maybe fire arrows are more obvious, but this game is gonna be full of weird ass collectibles that you wont recognise in a million years at first sight and theres nothing wrong with stopping for a second if you actually find something new.

and now I'm looking in my pouch ready to craft food
but because game director likes minimalism I have no idea what the fuck any item in my inventory does because theres no text, I just have lizards and mushrooms and steaks and a coconut
what does any of them do?
how the fuck should I know

Because Nintendo is actually demonstrating that they want to change the formula and finally acknowledge what better games have done from inspiration taken from Zelda.
> but zelda games have always done this
Yeah great, then they can keep doing this until the end of time. Oh wait not everything should be Pokemon where they basically duplicate games and call them sequels.

You could write it down.

holy shit so instead of presenting necessary and vital information to your players in a game with many detailed parts, you're going to intentionally obfuscate how things work in the name of some aberrant devotion to minimalism and expect players to write it down on a pen and paper to keep their own notes

heres another idea: how about instead of writing it down, they make their own games, because you're already shunting some burden onto them, why not all of it

>why the hell is skyrim so fucking popular?
most of skyrim's flaws aren't noticeable the first and maybe second time around. that's how much casuals will play it despite their proclaimed love for it.

skyrim is literally "chasing the dragon" the video game and I don't mean that as a pun. You never actually have any fun in skyrim, but the game and the hype culture around it is great at making you think that the fun is just around the corner. no "boss battle" in the game is epic or difficult, nor do they even differ from regular fights. progressing through guilds is pointless and too quick. being a werewolf sucks. leveling your casting sucks because it doesn't scale like melee and there are very few spells and most of them are just variations on the same thing with different numbers. no quests are at all interesting because they're more MMO-like than any actual MMO i've ever played and are just very slightly disguised kill lists. so on and so forth.

this is stuff you won't really notice if you just play it once or twice, especially if you're optimistic about the game. with the whole fucking world telling you it's the most fun thing ever, your brain tries to rationalize it by telling you that the fun is always yet to come. but if you do play it through many times as I'm sure many people here did, the illusion falls apart.

That was a joke. Just have little icons appear next to the ingredients once you've ingested them. This simulates Link writing down the effects himself. I think TES does that? Hey, OP's article is good for something.

You don't have to explain everything to the player.

To quote Westworld "figuring it out is half the fun"

>But none of them have anything to do with the world being beautiful or interesting.
Don't worry, that's why they have the Xenoblade guys there. Mira is the most beautiful and interesting world I've ever explored.

>people hype skyrim
>play it a bit
>remember stealth killing some people in some cave
>stopped after a while

The game was just not fun.

Baby's first Open World RPG.

It was released just after gaming had really become mainstream and a lot of folks didn't play or cared about RPGs, they got caught up in the hype before the release of Skyrim and the result is what you see today.

If they mean learn from its mistakes, then sure.
>Legend Of Zelda was definitely a pioneer in terms of a game being set in an open world
>it's a brand new territory for Nintendo
Well which is it?

tell that to players who put down your shitty game and forget about it because they stopped caring

They were pioneers, but then they fell into linearity, so now it's a new territory for them once again.

What a stupid way to look at it. I haven't had to ride a bike for a decade, I guarantee I could still pick one up and do it. It's not suddenly new territory for me again.

It a damn fucking shame that Skyrim has to be our standard for a successful rpg. Just what we fucking need. Fuck this industry. And now it has ruined one of the most trusting IPs I still cared for. And Nintendo fucking took the mainstream pill. Fuck this shit.

You can ride the bike, sure, but going outside and riding across the countryside would feel like new territory to you again. Not the same.

theres nothing wrong with trying to copy skyrim if you want to sell a product to the casuals
its a very rational choice

i mean you could live life like kamiya where he makes video games because he loves it
but since when did passion put money on your pocket?
even sean murray's "passion project" didnt go so well

>Zelda is an open world franchise

I think Dragons Dogma has a decent fast travel system. I feel like there should be more stationary warp stone points to trading outposts and rest stops that are around the world, so you still have to go a little ways to get to a city or important place.

Going anywhere for the first time was a blast because oh shit a cyclops, oh shit level 50 bandits, oh shit a wind tunnel, oh shit a rock golem, oh shit a FUCKING wyvern, you get the idea.

>I've never played Zelda 1

Is he right?

Thank fucking God Japanese generally don't give a shit what English peeps be posting as news and shit. There is a reason why all of the good shit come from Japan and not in the US. As a person who dislike first person shooters there is literally nothing made in the US that I can say I like beside maybe Portal and a very very few indie games as most of the good ones are once again from Japan with a translation. With that in mind, how many fucking English games that ever existed were even good enough for a Japanese translation? There is a reason why it is mostly one way. Only one that really come to mind atm is Shovel Knight.

>doing the same until the end of time

They already changed what was significative. Your obsession for minimalism doesnt make the current way of managing and presenting items bad.

of course
hes a goddamn casual faggot and the standards need to be lowered to a moronic level so he could enjoy it

>hates LttP for the 12 dungeons
>loves 4 dungeon Majora's Mask
He's not right, he's a casual.

what the fuck is wrong with you, you gonna spend additional 1000 hours just for walk? dum. even oblivion and morrowind have fast travel .

>The final part of the main quest is fucking sweet
Really? That was the worst part of all. Going to Sovngard is sweet and the music is amazing, but then you one shot the same dragon for the 100th (or watch three invincible npcs kill it for you) and gg the end.

It could be worse. It could be better. Why not make it better?
>Your obsession for minimalism
I'm not sure what you mean by this. Please elaborate.

it gets repetitive though
the spawn points are just dreadful

at least skyrim's spawns are randomized
i knwo it got fixed in DA but vanilla needed that feature really badly

>one game is open
>zelda games are open! the 50 other ones don't count!

Is he serious?*

Gothic 2 does it the best. You have to manually travel for quite a while, but in later story chapters you start getting fast travel spells. At this point there's a lot of new stuff happening in the world, so you're still incentivized to explore but now have the ability to quickly travel to important landmarks.

>I just want to explore an overworld, do sidequest-type activities, talk to characters and delve into their lives.

oh hey, it's that guy