Monday, June 17, 2013

What's wrong with Skyrim

So here's what can be improved in Skyrim. I gotta say, at first this was just a list but as you can see it became sentences which became paragraphs which became whole papers!

What can be done better

-          I hate how sometimes the people I talk to say the same thing twice. It’s like if someone has to tell you the joke twice, it ruins the moment.

 

-          I hate that I have to watch my character mine ore. Why can’t I do it? When you pick a lock you get to control the picking with the control sticks. So why can’t I do the work with another mini game? I know Bethesda is going for realism but still I don’t want to sit for ten second watching my character swing a pick. Better still, let me cast a spell to make the pick work without me. I summon creatures from the pits of hell, why can’t I cast a spell that makes my life easier?

 

-          I hate the loading in this game. Why is there a loading time from exiting or entering a small house? The house has three bedrooms, it shouldn’t take this long to load a small house. And I know that the loading times aren’t that bad. But when you explore a lot you see that loading screen a lot more then you would ever want to, trust me.

 

-          I hate the long loading times. There are short loading times where just fog comes from the bottom of the screen and then there are longer ones which, while they do let you look at some cool in-game items with some helpful tips, it’s still ten seconds long. The worst part is that as you progress in the game the load times get longer. Ugh, it’s like the game is trying to remember all the quests I’ve done.

 

-          I hate the weapon types. There’s one handed and two handed type weapons and there are only a few of each type. For one handed we got maces, daggers, war axes and swords. For two handed we got warhammers, battleaxes and longswords. Now, can you imagine how boring it gets when all you see is your character swinging the same way all the time? Each category swings the same way! There needs to be a difference in swings so it doesn’t look the same. And for that matter, where’s the morning stars or spears. How could you not include spears? There must be hundreds of weapons they could add that could be used to fight differently. You think you swing a scimitar the same way you swing a double-edged sword? No you do not. It’s similar but there’s specific fighting styles that go with the weapons.

 

 

-          I hate the ranged weapons. I got a bow and three types of magic, fire, ice and lightning. That’s it! What about blow guns, or sling shots or throwing daggers? Or shuriken, how about some freakin’ shuriken. You know, throwing stars? They may not have had guns way back then, and yes I know this is a fictional history that takes place in a different world, but common, there needs to be more variety. What about launching wind spells that cut through enemies or earth spells that come up from the ground? You get sick of your spells pretty fast. Keep in mind that this game has 300 hours of gameplay.

 

-          I hate hearing people say the same things. You know how many times I’ve heard a guard say “I used to be an adventurer like you. ‘Till I took an arrow in the knee.” Apparently I’m not the only one. There’s remixes on YouTube about this phrase.  And two bucks says you’ll hear someone who sounds VERY familiar in the same town. That’s because there’s only about ten voice actors and about several thousand people in the game. And then there are specific species. The Orc and the Argonian people, lizard people, (I shouldn’t have to explain what an Orc is) all sound the same. The only difference is the male and female voices. Sometimes they might have a different voice but that’s only if you talk to a character important to a specific quest. I spend more time listening to random people talk than important characters.

 

-          I hate the stealth in this game. How on earth do people know that I killed their friend? If an arrow killed the person next to you, would you know instinctively where the killer was? No! You might be suspicious if a guy with a bow comes up to you but if I kill someone with a long ranged attack and I’m definitely hidden (the game has a stealth mode) there’s no way you would know it was me. And speaking of stupid AI…

 

-          I hate my partner. You get to choose a partner in the game to carry your stuff and fight with you. But their all as dumb as the next. Let me give you an example: I visited a dungeon today, inside are floor traps. If you set foot on a wire it’ll release a spring-loaded gate with spikes that swings at you. Now I easily jump over the wire easily right? But my partner trips the wire which sends the spiked door at me killing me instantly. Is it too hard to make a competent partner?!? And that’s not all; I’ll give you another example. There are lots of mountains that you can jump from ledge to ledge to get safely down. But my stupid partner has to run around half the mountain to get to me, making me wait for her. So what do I do? I hit the select button which brings up the wait time (you can choose to wait in the game to switch from night to day and wait for people). I select how long I want to wait, usually an hour. Then I have to wait for the stupid game to register that I’ve waited. And finally, hopefully, my partner is there. If not, I’ll have to wait even more.

 

-          For that matter, I hate the stealth options. In a good stealth game like Metal Gear you can do hundreds of things to get rid of enemies. Use sleep darts, use guns, mines, sleep gas, poison, chloroform, etc. You can even change your camouflage. In Skyrim you can shoot arrows, poison enemies, turn invisible and throw your voice. There needs to be A LOT more stealth options to keep it fresh.

 

-          And that what it really comes down to, variety of options and get rid of the bugs.

 

-          I hate that the game freezes. Today is 6/17/13. I’ve had my game freeze about six times. Now that might not seem like such a bad thing but when I’ve just finished a quest and the stupid game freezes before I can save I’ve gotta do the quest all over again! Why am I mentioning the date today? Because the stupid game froze twice today!! And it’s not just this game. All of the open world games I’ve played from Bethesda (the developer) do the same thing. I even had a game that caused my system to shutdown. And Bethesda has been quoted saying that they build their games from the ground up to start afresh. No they don’t. If they did then I wouldn’t have the same stupid problem for each game. Bethesda has released three open world games for this generation of consoles: Elderscrolls: Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Elderscrolls: Skyrim. (Fallout: New Vegas was done by a different company) How can three games have the exact same bugs in each entry? And I’m not the only one who’s complained about this. Every review I’ve seen about these games says the same thing!

 

-          I really, really hate the save feature. I’ve played Skyrim three times: once on the PS3 and twice on the Xbox 360. Why twice on the 360? Because the save feature ruined my game. Here’s what happened: I saved over my old game every time I saved. I get to a point in the game where I finish a quest, the next quest is supposed to start up right after I finished the old one. I get to where I’m supposed to go but the quest doesn’t start. I try reloading, I try talking to the guy who’s supposed to give me the quest and nothing happens. I called Bethesda and they said that the save memory is kind of like a napkin. They said it’s like what happens when you draw a circle on the napkin over and over, it wears out. So now I got to start the game all over to continue the game. I don’t remember that warning being in the manual! I don’t remember anyone telling me that I need to save to a new file every time!

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