How did Bethesda manage to make such a lifeless, repetitive and empty RPG, and have it still sell millions?

How did Bethesda manage to make such a lifeless, repetitive and empty RPG, and have it still sell millions?

mods

memes

they hit the market at the perfect time. for so many people it is their first and only elderscrolls game. there is a very very clear line between people who started gaming around this time, and its basically the reason games are getting worse and worse

Its because millions of gamers are lifeless and empty.

accessible = $$$

same for every medium

Repetitive, lifeless, and empty pvp military shooters were some of the biggest sellers on consoles, so they made their fantasy RPG appeal to that group as best as they could.

But it's full of life and things to discover, also has a great score.

One idea is that people love games that are full of filler. Some are genuinely excited that 80 hours of their time will be taken up by it, or some retarded let's-play, but they're really just happy to have a distraction to hide in (modding the game endlessly is just as low-level). This is relief-based gaming, which might also explain why people rack up thousands of hours in it.

People also can't take an honest view of a game a lot of the time, which lets them constantly enjoy a dishonest and excessive interpretation in their head. Skyrim coaxes out exactly this kind of thinking by having "so much to do", but as soon as you stop being hypnotized by that hopefulness, you might just see how low-level every single instance of the game really is.

Because it feels like a fantasy RpG at face value. The combat and leveling is simple and accessible. The voice acting makes all the info easy to digest and it is no where as complicated as Morrowind but still has enough political tension to seem deep unlike oblivion. It knew its market. It had a grim atmosphere that was popular at the time. It makes modding easy so any of the bullshit that people dont like can be "fixed". Its the same bullshit VALVE pulls letting the community of their games do their job for them with modding.

RPGs bore me to death, but Skyrim was just fun. The stupid lore about elves, kings and cursed lances comes second to exploration and fun.
What I loved about this game were the small discoveries: a bear cave, bandits who assault you at their bridge, some witch at a cottage. Things that are not part of the main story. Because main stories suck for me: they all end up being quests of grandeur where the Big Hero kills the Ultimate Villain and Saves-The-Earth. Skyrim could be played as a simple, empty game with no purpose and thats what I loved about it.
I remember having visited a shit ton of dungeons and towns and realize I still didn't visit Falkreach. I remember how beautiful I thought it was when I got there.

Youre a hooker.

I guess they are really similar because skyrim is also about leftclicking everything to death without thinking

sick burn senpai

Still better that Morrowind

It really doesn't though. The NPCs and quests could not be more boring. The world looks pretty, but it doesn't really have a whole lot going on.

(You)

>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games with graphics worse than games from 2007
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games with gamebreaking bugs on launch
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games with no campaign and multiplayer with only a few good maps and no forge mode for sixty dollars or more
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games with with the protag constantly telling you what you're supposed to feel at that moment
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games with long stretches of "gameplay" that is your character forcefully being slowed so that they can have in-game exposition instead of a cutscene
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games with a focus on "narrative" that boils down to a cliche'd b-movie mess with pretensions of artistry instead of focusing on the gameplay
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games with an in-game earned currency system that restricts equipment and functions within the game AND comes with the option to purchase that currency with real money
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games after having advertised a level of technical and graphical finesse during trailers and "demos" with the final product being a tremendous technological and visual downgrade without facing fraud and false advertising charges
>it is completely acceptable to release AAA games in a franchise that remove core gameplay features from previous iterations

this.
also this.

There werent a lot of options regarding open world RPG games and they were able to market it well and ride the hype wave.

This. Skyrim was my first Elder Scrolls game. First non JRPG I really got into. It came out in 2011 when the mass of teens who got into console gaming through Halo and Call of Duty started to move on to non-shooters.

At this time YouTube Let's Plays started to become really big and Skyrim was perfect for that format and every Let's Player was playing it furthering the game's appeal and marketing.

Sure do love running around empty island and getting the same wall of text every time I try to talk to different NPCs

An user on Sup Forums with a good opinion? Holy shit

hm.. so if most people here have wrong opinions maybe you would feel more comfortable on a different site?

>rpg codex shitter thread right after their failed CRPG engine thread

literally first of it's kinda user, in terms of a realized dynamic open map that wasn't just a flat piece of land.

That's just like, your opinion man

it's okay though since it's the best fap game

I don't get why people like this game. What's good about it?

>combat sucks
>roleplaying sucks
>dungeons sucks

why do people like this game? I mean it looked good for the time but people still swear by it to this day.

Babbys first RPG for people that thought video games before it were just bing bing wahoo

same reason people watch capeshit
not just once, but every fucking one that comes out
or even better, they argue about how marvel is better/worse than DC because the other company is just so uncool, but my kind of capeshit is deep and profound

It was released right at the moment video games were becoming "cool", it was virally marketed and it was babby's first open world RPG and it had DRAGONS!!1!

That combo led to creating a fad where people just followed it

The game is shit but I love modding it.

It's like buying a shit painting because it's cheaper than a blank canvas for some reason and painting your own homosexual fingerpaintings over it.

as an actor capeshit pisses me off to no end, terrible acting, tight mechanical filming schedules, overshadowing all other productions, if I ever meet Chris Hemsworth I'm going to tell him he's lucky to not be waiting tables.

Because it is easy to get in to, available on pretty much any platform, and there is a huge userbase so easy to find help if you are stuck or want to know something. It was my first RPG so a total change from all the other shit I played and the vast world was fun to explore.

In hindsight it isn't very good, but it got me into the genre so I still play it occasionally for nostalgia.

>It was my first RPG
This website is 18+ kiddo

I'm 26, got into vidya late

>that opinion
>good
Really need to empty a magazine into your head desu

Most play without mods, I highly doubt your average skyrim player messes around with more than one mod in its lifetime
But fuck if I know why skyrim made so much money for bethesda, I don't really get what makes it so great for normalfags
Normally I'd say that AAA thrive because of their polish (like OW for example) but this certainly isn't the case.

>tfw first Elderscrolls game was Morrowind on the xbox

Looking back now it was a really shitty port

Like others said it hit the market at the right time. I remember tons of people who never played an RPG before got into it. Probably because Bethesda marketed the shit out of it. If only they put in as much effort into making games as they do marketing it.

Skyrim is genuinely pretty great. For the first 8-10 hours, before you relize that you've already experienced everything the game has to offer.

Because it wasn't lifeless, repetitive and empty

NPCs in the whole game literally have no facial animations for anything but indifference and a slight frown.

Imagine someone thinking this, but unironically

DC movies are mediocre compared to Marvel you cannot deny this.

Everything about DC is mediocre to be honest...except Batman and they can barely do that right

exploration, discovery, mindless wandering and sense of wonder, there's no other game that combines all these aspects and make them work
there I said it
say what you want about its flawed parts (I acknowledge that there are many that persists even in the two iterations after vanilla), but no other game does what Skyrim has accomplished in its scope
praise Todd

pretty much this. i've tried to replay it ~3 times and each time it's around this point I realize "oh so the next XX+ hours is just going to be exactly the same" then I quit

Basically a combo of the below things
>oblivion and Fallout 3, while flawed massivly snowballed the fanbases of the existing franchises that already had a hardcore following
>it was the first game using bethesda's new engine and seemed to upgrade the technical side of the game tenfold compared to bethesda's earlier titles
>it was released amidst the boom of the 7th gen consoles where AAA games were really beginning to consistently top the sales charts and was also just before people and people who play games for a hobby began to get REALLY fatigued by AAA games and thier bullshit
>obvious spin and hype machine stuff that promised a much deeper and richer game world than was actually delivered

it was essentially the same thing that happened with oblivion amplified x10.

I dont watch them m8

>new engine

Well, heavily modified engine. Thats all new engines ever really are.

>you now realise that call of duty infinite warfare runs on a heavily modified version of the quake 3 engine.

I think every place looks the same

Not sure how they managed when they are lazy fucks. I like the fucking game and it always angers me how they couldn't be bothered to do the easiest of things.

For example you cant get any of the NPCs as followers/spouse because they didn't record those particular lines for that particular voice type. You would think with all the fucking dosh they are still getting they could be bothered to add the voices.

Or how they only released 2 worthy DLCs when they could be releasing more and more and people would still buy them.

that's wrong simply because the game sold the most on cucksoles

Mods, and the fact that there really aren't any alternatives that do the same things Bethesda games do.

Because it was pretty good

Glitches and dumb shit. Although there were no console mods, there were modded saves that could be used on the 360 where the character was Level 255 and was named Odin.
I spent hours killing NPC's and breezing through quests.

Who here /unironicallylikesSkyrim/?
I presently have played over 200 hours and it's pretty good, though I wish there was more character choice.

its an ok game, but pretty much everyone who liked the older games felt fucked over by it. i loved morrowind. i couldnt get into it. my friend who still loves skyrim (huge es fanboy) still recognizes why i hate it. id honestly like it more if it wasnt attached to the series. fallout 4 falls into a similar area but with story that isnt good even outside the series

Put in about 60-70 hours on console and had a blast. It's more fun when your friends are playing it too and talking about it.

>200 hours
>thinks he likes it

261 hours here. I just enjoy it for what it is. I didn't have any expectations and I like the world and lore, so it's a relaxing exploration game.

only the new dceu
old dc movies are classic

I though people here liked skyrim? Good to know im not the only one who thinks it's boring.

Hello new friend

they like the mods. ive never seen them like the game. just look at this thread, everyone mentioning mods forgetting this game sold on consoles which made it actually popular

That is completely untrue

Skyrim is not an RPG

>there are people who think Witcher 3 is an RPG but Skyrim isn't

I played hundreds of hours of Morrowind in 2003 and beyond
I played hundreds (maybe even a thousand) of hours of Oblivion in 2006 and beyond
I played hundreds of hours of Skyrim in 2011 and I still occasionally go back to it

I thoroughly enjoyed all of them, each for different reasons but all of them for the same one: exploration and sense of discover, nobody (yet) has made what Bethesda does in such a captivating fashion
it's simple as that

Empowerment and illusion of choice. Also one hell of a marketing campaign.

They're both action games at core.

>remember how hype Sup Forums was when it was announced
>how hype Sup Forums was when it was released
>how quickly it all crumbled down

I dont know user.
Maybe you are the one with shit taste, ever thought of that possibility?

>Mods

never bought a Bethesda product that didn't allow mods. It's the ONLY thing that interests me about the Elder Scrolls/Nu-Fallout franchise.

>6 YEARS LATER retards still wont accept Skyrim as the de facto game of all years

I wish I could just put you faggots in a gas room so these threads could stop.

>Enjoyed and loved vanilla skyrim
How long before Sup Forums crucifies me?

It really was the turning point for Sup Forums. I remember threads upon threads of "Imperial or Stormcloak" and people enjoying the game.

Then the hype died and the flaws became glaringly obvious. It's still in my top 10 though, but that's because ES is my favorite series.

Sup Forums should crucify themselves first if that was reason enough.
I still remember how literally everyone on Sup Forums was having fun with the game, posting green stories and everything.
Then Skyrim got way too popular and like every other popular game Sup Forums started to hate on it.

>game is fun at first
>turns out to be shit
>Sup Forums is just being contrarian!!!!

No. There's plenty of popular games that Sup Forums love because they're actually good. Skyrim isn't good. There's a reason why the mods literally replace most of the game.

I see, so the trick is to become an unwelcome and unwanted tumorous contrarian to survive in Sup Forums.

the newness of the game can make you overlook a lot of bad shit. Of course we all had fun exploring and discovering new content, I brought my PC over to a friend's place on release day and we launched the game at the same time and had a blast. It was a new elder scrolls with greatly improved graphics ffs. That doesn't mean that the game holds up under long-term inspection or that the reason it attracts mostly hate now is "hurr it got popular"

Massive marketing campaign and very safe marketing influenced gameplay for idiots.
Though it's kind of funny that even with how shitty puzzles the were some people still had trouble.

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fun doesn't always equal good.
People realized right away that it was shit, but played it anyway because it was fun and dumb glitches and shit kept happening (also modding). The hate that it got was completely justified.

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They make games with a great formula and zero competition

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what's going on here?

jesus christ this entire post
post youre favourite 3 games of all time please i need to laugh

lowest
common
denominator

>The stupid lore about elves, kings and cursed lances comes second to exploration and fun.
lorelets need to be hanged

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this was the game that I was hoping Skyrim would be based on how everyone was hyping it up to be honest

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Is this what it's like to be triggered

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