Elder Scrolls Week: 5 Skyrim Hopes
By Dustin Mendel | November 8, 2011 | Features | No comments | Share
Like many of you, I’m counting down the days until I can finally get my hands on Bethesda’s next RPG epic, but I’ll be arriving in Skyrim as a bit of an Elder Scrolls noob. For years I’ve heard about how great Morrowind was, but my experience with the franchise goes no further than Oblivion, the only Elder Scrolls game I’ve had the opportunity to play. As a result, my anticipation of Skyrim is based not only on the other games in the series, but Bethesda’s other recent work like Fallout 3, as well as what some may see as a comparable RPG experience, like Bioware’s Dragon Age: Origins. With those games in mind, and having seen how Bethesda has grown as a developer since the release of Oblivion, here is what I’m desperately hoping to find in The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim:
A More Engaging Main Story
When I originally played through Oblivion, I had a great time with the game, but it admittedly took me a while to really get into it, and I blame the game’s main quest as the sole reason for that. I’ve heard a ton about the overwhelming amount of lore associated with Morrowind, but in Oblivion, my understanding and appreciation of the story didn’t go much further than “there are Oblivion gates, please close them.”
It certainly seems like Bethesda has plans to change that, as was evident from the very first teaser trailer. The introduction of dragons and the Dragonborn alone offer a wealth of mythology that the game can tap in to, but I’m hoping that the main quest dares to stray from a linear path where Oblivion refused to. Fallout 3’s main quest wasn’t without its major flaws, but I’m hoping that Bethesda learned from the story of the Vault Dweller, and that there will be more to Skyrim’s story than meets the eye, offering twists and turns to the narrative, rather than relying on the side quests for that.
The Guilds are Even More Awesome
Speaking of side quests, in my experience with Oblivion, and I think it’s a safe bet to assume I’m not alone here, my favorite quests came from the game’s various guilds. I recently wrote about my experiences with the Dark Brotherhood, and my time as an assassin, as thoroughly entertaining as it was, was but one of several different guilds in Oblivion, each with a long progression tree allowing you to climb the ranks of whatever group you had joined. Bethesda was quick to confirm that the guilds would be back for Skyrim, including the Dark Brotherhood, but their existence alone isn’t enough to satisfy me; I want more.
As good as some of the guilds were, with the Thieves Guild being the other one that stands out, some of them were a bit lacking in presentation and variety. The Fighter’s Guild, for example, wasn’t nearly as fleshed out, and the missions lacked the creativity that the other guild’s showed off. After stealing Spring Heel Jack’s boots for the Thieves Guild, sucker punching rats for fifteen minutes didn’t have the same appeal for me. I’d love more of a history behind every single guild; give me a reason to join them, give me a written history I can delve into, and populate them with interesting characters.
Better Character Interactions
I mentioned Dragon Age: Origins, the only other console RPG that could be seen as real competition to the Elder Scrolls games, and while it’s difficult to compare the two games, Bioware has Bethesda decisively beat when it comes to NPCs, and how the player interacts with them. In Oblivion, as well as the two Fallout games that have been released since, non-playable characters exist for no real reason other than to move quests along or provide services for the player. I’m struggling to think of any one character in Oblivion or Fallout 3 that stood out for me, and if they died during the course of the game, it had absolutely zero emotional impact on me. In Dragon Age, you develop relationships with the characters, and as the story unfolds, those relationships are strengthened, tested or broken entirely. More importantly, when those things happen, it means something to the player.
When Fallout 3 was released, you could almost justify having no attachments to anyone you met in the Capital Wasteland, considering the circumstances, but Skyrim is a living, fully populated world. It’s only fair to assume that relationships are forged as you complete quests, and I hope that as I meet the inhabitants of the various cities, we don’t just go our separate ways once I’ve fulfilled my obligations to them. If a town or group of people becomes endangered over the course of the game, I would be thrilled if it meant something to me.
A Busier World
I loved exploring the world of Oblivion, but after spending half an hour running through largely empty forests and fields, it became a habit for me to fast travel everywhere I went. One of the coolest parts of Bethesda’s games, and it has become more prevalent with each game, is the random encounters the player stumbles across as they traverse the environment. Stumbling across an argument, an attack or someone begging for help, and wondering if you’re the only person in the world to stumble across the situation is an awesome feeling, and it does a tremendous job of making the game feel like a fully fleshed out world that is unfolding whether you’re looking or not.
Needs more stuff.
As I mentioned before, Skyrim is meant to be a fully populated world, and along with that I hope and expect that most of the environments I enter, save for perhaps the deepest caves and highest mountains, will show signs of life. There’s nothing like running across a blank, solitary landscape to remind you that you’re just playing a dumb video game.
Fewer Bugs
This may not be a fair one, and the news that Bethesda already has a day one patch ready to go isn’t the best news I’ve ever heard, but hear me out. Since 2006, when Oblivion was released, two Fallout games have been released, and while New Vegas was handled by a different studio, the same engine was used as Fallout 3. All three games were plagued with bugs and glitches, few of them game breaking, but all desperately needing patching. When people lament the fact that developers can release unfinished games, knowing that they can just patch them later, they’re talking about Bethesda.
Now, with the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series, a new game engine and five years later, gamers are crossing their fingers that some of the issues that have plagued previous Bethesda games have been fixed. I would love, more than anything else on this list, to have as seamless a playing experience as possible during my time with Skyrim. All the bells and whistles mean little if I can’t play a game without it freezing or having a dragon turn inside out while I’m fighting it.
