Why is this game so badly written and paced?

[p0mpous]

Let me give an example.

College of winter hold, you take a test, cross the bridge, talk to Irvine who shows you the college, take a lesson, learn about a ward, go to saarthal, meet the psijic order, find the eye, read some books after getting back to the college, go retrieve a stolen book then return, you then see somehow the eye is back at the college, I guess magic got it there, no explanation at all, you speak to Tolfdir, speak to the member of the Psijic order, go down into the midden, speak with the Augur, then return and speak to Aren, speak to Irvine, head to mzulft, search the ruin, find the crystal, use it in the oculory, revealing the college and then speak to partur who tells you of labrynthian, at this point ancano is interacting with the eye, you then have to protect the town from the magic anomalies, report to Irvine who gives you the torc, you then go off to labrynthian, kill a dragon priest find the staff, come back use the staff on the eye and kill ancano, you are then made the arch mage.

It consists of 8 quests and can be summed up in one large paragraph in pretty good detail, you go from a novice mage to arch mage in about 2-3 days, within 2 quests youve found the eye of magnus, its too much too soon, the pacing is awful, its the same with the companions.

The companions consists of 6 quests and none of them are long, and its bulked up with radiant quests and within 6 quests and a few radiant ones you are leader of the companions, it all happens so fast it feels wrong.

Why are is it so poorly written and paced?

[lizrdfishr]

Originally posted by p0mpouS:

Originally posted by lizrdfishr:

Have over 1000 hours in, have never played any of that quest.

Skyrim is like a book full of empty pages. You write what you want to write.


I find Skyrim much too vast and entertaining to bother with Bethesda's stories.

My own are much too much fun.

"Skyrim is like a book full of empty pages. You write what you want to write."

This isnt true, quests are scripted and they have a certain ending, hardly any of the quests have branching stories or endings so no this is not true.

As for too vast its 14 square miles, thats not a lot, people own ranches larger than that and take care of every square inch of them.

The issue isnt size its depth, skyrim is a mile wide and 1 inch deep, Daggerfall was a million miles wide and 0.1 inch deep, morrowind and oblivion were about a mile wide but about a 6 inches deep in different ways.

I think you miss my point.

The way the math in the game works, quests have 0 meaning. You do not gain experience when you complete a quest. You gain experience by doing things.

Therefore, quests in Skyrim mean as much as Steam Achievements.... 0.

Once you realize this and mod the game (Alternate Start Live Another Life), you stop playing for arbitrary quests and stop bothering to take orders.

Skyrim lets you play your way. I adventure all over and have never joined sides in any war, gone after any thieves or assassins or tried to hunt down any dragons. To me the game is WAAAAAY too much fun to bother with any of that crap.

[p0mpous]

Originally posted by lizrdfishr:

Originally posted by p0mpouS:

"Skyrim is like a book full of empty pages. You write what you want to write."

This isnt true, quests are scripted and they have a certain ending, hardly any of the quests have branching stories or endings so no this is not true.

As for too vast its 14 square miles, thats not a lot, people own ranches larger than that and take care of every square inch of them.

The issue isnt size its depth, skyrim is a mile wide and 1 inch deep, Daggerfall was a million miles wide and 0.1 inch deep, morrowind and oblivion were about a mile wide but about a 6 inches deep in different ways.

I think you miss my point.

The way the math in the game works, quests have 0 meaning. You do not gain experience when you complete a quest. You gain experience by doing things.

Therefore, quests in Skyrim mean as much as Steam Achievements.... 0.

Once you realize this and mod the game (Alternate Start Live Another Life), you stop playing for arbitrary quests and stop bothering to take orders.

Skyrim lets you play your way. I adventure all over and have never joined sides in any war, gone after any thieves or assassins or tried to hunt down any dragons. To me the game is WAAAAAY too much fun to bother with any of that crap.

This makes the game even more empty as now all you do is wonder around killing things with no real story or character.

[Jon_Smith]

Did I say gone off pizza? No. I said American style vs Napoli style. Both made fresh. Its simple people have different tastes.

'Poor' writing is just your opinion, which as I said only matters to you. For many many people they like the writing in Skyrim and find the quests fun, I think a vast majority of players do not mod the game to improve those quests. I have never updated any of the stories with mods and the game has a huge following on the consoles where you cannot add mods.

Plot holes are just that, plot holes. They don't make a story good or bad. I mentioned Game of Thrones, that goes out of its way to explain every little detail of the world and how its connected (covering plot holes) does that make it good? Depends, some people hate that and can't be bothered to keep up with it all.

Give it up. The game is good for many people, the stories are good for many people. You don't like it, great. Give us a list of all the movies you also don't like, and books, and music. Then realize how pointless it is to complain about it because many people find those things good and fun.

Originally posted by p0mpouS:

This makes the game even more empty as now all you do is wonder around killing things with no real story or character.

You mean like how Minecraft has no point as all you do is wander around killing things and collecting resources to build things. Ya know one of the most popular games of all time?

[p0mpous]

Originally posted by Jon_Smith:

Did I say gone off pizza? No. I said American style vs Napoli style. Both made fresh. Its simple people have different tastes.

'Poor' writing is just your opinion, which as I said only matters to you. For many many people they like the writing in Skyrim and find the quests fun, I think a vast majority of players do not mod the game to improve those quests. I have never updated any of the stories with mods and the game has a huge following on the consoles where you cannot add mods.

Plot holes are just that, plot holes. They don't make a story good or bad. I mentioned Game of Thrones, that goes out of its way to explain every little detail of the world and how its connected (covering plot holes) does that make it good? Depends, some people hate that and can't be bothered to keep up with it all.

Give it up. The game is good for many people, the stories are good for many people. You don't like it, great. Give us a list of all the movies you also don't like, and books, and music. Then realize how pointless it is to complain about it because many people find those things good and fun.

And I showed you how pizza can be objectively bad, how about pizza half its ingredients? How about the pizza being delivered to you and its not prepared or cooked?

No its not an opinion at all, its a fact let me show you.

You can join the Dark brotherhood, a faction the empire hates, attempt to kill the emperor, they catch you doing this and you kill a decoy they see you, they know who you are, you can then go and kill the real emperor and not 10 mins later you can walk right up to tulius and and swear an oath to protect the very emperor you just killed, that is objectively nonsense.

The quests are poorly written.

Companions, you come and learn nothing of the companion, the main enemy are some Silver hand group that you know nothing about, nothing interesting at all.

College of winterhold has amazing subject matter and yet none of it get covered in any real detail, you learn nothing.

Dark brotherhood is ok, nothing compared to the one in Oblivion, its very bland and basic, you dont learn anything of sithis or the night mother, its all very black and white, Astrid also a bit of ♥♥♥♥ character, nothing compared to the leader of the Oblivion Dark brotherhood.

These are three examples the writing is awful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dHnCTGD26Q&t=1378s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI_JPG3Z9KI&t=765s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPBZDT2f7_I

People like you then all go its all subjective and you end up with this, bad writing excused so it will never improve.

Remember the dark brotherhood thing? This is an issue as every quest now feels odd, I'm working for the group I just killed the leader of, they know I did, they caught me in the act, it makes every quest feel disconnected and fake, you then couple this with writing and it breaks the world, your are the arch mage, leader of companions, dragonborn and so on and none these seem to interact all that much.

Skyrim seems great...... Until you think, than it all falls apart, if you just play it with a blank mind it all seems fantastic but if you actually think at all it falls apart rapidly, I mean look at this, you kill the emperor, does it effect anything? No not really.

[Jon_Smith]

Ok, you really aren't understanding. If most people dislike something (like a rotten pizza or one missing ingredients) then thats one thing.

But this is a game that is hugely popular, thats why I made the comparison of Napoli pizza to American. Both are completed in the style intended, both have an audience.
Skyrim was written in a very deliberate way, another poster mentioned K.I.S.S (Keep it simple stupid), this has been a driving force behind Bethesda for a long time.

These quests are deliberately written in this way to appeal to a specific type of player. Thats the point. Its not aimed at you and its arrogant of you to declare that its bad because they didn't want to appeal to your tastes when a huge number of people really enjoy the quests shallow as they are. To a huge number of people the quests ARE good because they are shallow, or silly or that its contradictory that you can both murder the emperor and join the legion. Many people like the fact that you aren't locked out of doing quests because of the choices you make, they want to freedom to do whatever they feel like.

Other games and playerbases what different, I love Mass Effect for example and one of the things that annoyed me about it was how, in the end, the choices I made had pretty much zero effect on the outcome. Before that I loved that what I was doing had long lasting effects. When I play Skyrim perhaps I want something different, a shallow experience roaming around the wilds.

Oh and I've seen some of those videos before. I can also recommend some that show how and why Bethesda games can be better than you realize (specifically Fallout 4) because of this Keep It Simple Stupid approach, same logic can apply to Skyrim.

[p0mpous]

thing.

But this is a game that is hugely popular, thats why I made the comparison of Napoli pizza to American. Both are completed in the style intended, both have an audience.
Skyrim was written in a very deliberate way, another poster mentioned K.I.S.S (Keep it simple stupid), this has been a driving force behind Bethesda for a long time.

These quests are deliberately written in this way to appeal to a specific type of player. Thats the point. Its not aimed at you and its arrogant of you to declare that its bad because they didn't want to appeal to your tastes when a huge number of people really enjoy the quests shallow as they are. To a huge number of people the quests ARE good because they are shallow, or silly or that its contradictory that you can both murder the emperor and join the legion. Many people like the fact that you aren't locked out of doing quests because of the choices you make, they want to freedom to do whatever they feel like.

Other games and playerbases what different, I love Mass Effect for example and one of the things that annoyed me about it was how, in the end, the choices I made had pretty much zero effect on the outcome. Before that I loved that what I was doing had long lasting effects. When I play Skyrim perhaps I want something different, a shallow experience roaming around the wilds.

Oh and I've seen some of those videos before. I can also recommend some that show how and why Bethesda games can be better than you realize (specifically Fallout 4) because of this Keep It Simple Stupid approach, same logic can apply to Skyrim. [/quote]
No you arent understanding at all.


"Before that I loved that what I was doing had long lasting effects. When I play Skyrim perhaps I want something different, a shallow experience roaming around the wilds."

This is the dumbest thing Ive heard, why would you want a shallow experience from an RPG? Think about that, a shallow world is not interesting, its shallow.
"But this is a game that is hugely popular, thats why I made the comparison of Napoli pizza to American. Both are completed in the style intended, both have an audience.
Skyrim was written in a very deliberate way, another poster mentioned K.I.S.S (Keep it simple stupid), this has been a driving force behind Bethesda for a long time."

No it hasnt, what are talking about, this dumb idea behind writing isnt the driving force that bethesda have had for that long, if anything they got more complex in terms of writing between morrowind and Oblivion and also you arent actually thinking about what a game is, writing is one aspect of a game, a game can have poor writing and sell, look at games like doom, or CSGO a game with no writing that vastly has more players than any TES game, Skyrim offers an open world thats what most people stay for, the writing on the other hand is not, you remove the open world from Skyrim would people play? No.

Why is the writing so poor?

"Oh and I've seen some of those videos before. I can also recommend some that show how and why Bethesda games can be better than you realize (specifically Fallout 4) because of this Keep It Simple Stupid approach, same logic can apply to Skyrim."

Ive seen that video, its wholesale nonsense, Bethesda have never really understood fallout as the best fallout game since they acquired the IP isnt from them, and FO4 and 76 were shocking, especially 76.

"These quests are deliberately written in this way to appeal to a specific type of player. Thats the point. Its not aimed at you and its arrogant of you to declare that its bad because they didn't want to appeal to your tastes when a huge number of people really enjoy the quests shallow as they are."

Who is it aimed at? People who dont think or people who dont pay attention to a story? Its not arrogant to look at the quality of something and say this is awful, when things that people who are not payed and do it in their spare time is better than what you can make, you shouldnt be being paid, as the developer your content should be the best by far.

"To a huge number of people the quests ARE good because they are shallow, or silly or that its contradictory that you can both murder the emperor and join the legion"

Based on this its only idiots and I really mean that, its aimed at people who dont think, dont pay attention, and arnet actually interested in what they are doing, they just do it for something to do, thats not what an RPG should aim at.


Can you not see how going for popularity will ruin what you make? You try so hard to appeal to so many people that in reality that you will end up with will so much of everything that its not anything anymore.

And again you continue to defend it and that means it will never improve, based on Fo4 and 76 I can only imagine how awful TES 6 will be.

[Jon_Smith]

Yeah, you are just really arrogant man.

You ask why someone would want a shallow experience from an RPG. You've been given a dozen answers already in this thread. Loads of people love playing this game to make up their own story and their own quests. I never understood the popularity of books like Twilight or other shallow romance novels until I realized that its the point that the characters are shallow and have no personality. Its so the reader can project themselves into that character, make them too well defined and a person cannot do that. Now thats not how I want to read books or a story but many people do.

People like this for different reasons to you and its arrogant to declare they are wrong and you and dumb cause you don't. If anything the fact that you are unable to create your own stories and make up your own fun with it when so many people have perhaps shows that you are the less creative intelligent person.

Hell even Minecraft can be fun cause of the stories people randomly make up, Pewdiepie had a hugely popular series last year just messing around creating a story about his dog, horse and a sheep.

If you need your hand holding through quests, cool, there are games for you. But don't play a game like Skyrim, which is designed to be open and shallow, and complain its open and shallow.

Oh and as for it not being long that Bethesda has been doing this. Skyrim came out in 2011, thats 10 years ago. All the games they've been doing since follow this formula and they do very well with it.

[SpeedFreak1972]

Well lets be honest here KISS is what the cash draws in this kind of games are tremendous expensive to make ... if they don't sell do you think a next ES will be made? Yes it is shallow that said the market has shifted for a while now. We've all seen the trend am I happy: No, however development costs gone up and up so you seek the largest potential customer group and we aren't that group anymore.

[Tiberius]

Yea skyrim writing is weak, but at least i dont have to deal with oblivion broken progression system.

[lizrdfishr]

Originally posted by 76561198080386369:

Originally posted by lizrdfishr:

I think you miss my point.

The way the math in the game works, quests have 0 meaning. You do not gain experience when you complete a quest. You gain experience by doing things.

Therefore, quests in Skyrim mean as much as Steam Achievements.... 0.

Once you realize this and mod the game (Alternate Start Live Another Life), you stop playing for arbitrary quests and stop bothering to take orders.

Skyrim lets you play your way. I adventure all over and have never joined sides in any war, gone after any thieves or assassins or tried to hunt down any dragons. To me the game is WAAAAAY too much fun to bother with any of that crap.

This makes the game even more empty as now all you do is wonder around killing things with no real story or character.

No. I make my own story.

I don't live my life following orders. Skyrim is FULL of opportunity. I do not need scripting to tell me where to go to find it. There are hundreds of places to explore. I have found a few over 200 and still have several to explore.

I also don't fast travel. I paid good money for Skyrim $9.95 and I intend to get my money out of it.

Skyrim makes it easy to go looking for opportunity and make my own story.

This makes my character MY OWN. I don't have to play as Dragonborn. I don't have to be anything anyone else wants me to be.

My current character is a Bosmer merchant who travels Skyrim on behalf of the Ilinata Merchant's Association. We keep the roads clear for commerce and trade with any and all peaceful people. We support the Riften Orphanage and homeless people in all holds.

I was never captured by any Imperials, nor have I ever met Ulfric Stormcloak.

My game started in Solstheim and I reached level 20 before I even made it over to Skyrim.

Seriously, if you want to enjoy life live it like it belongs to you. Same with Skyrim.

[alexander_dougherty]

Why is the writing weak?

Because they wrote so much relying on the civil war to take up a much bigger part of the game, only it wasn't going to be finished on time, so they scrapped the majority of the civil war and the related writing and what's left is a third rate last minute hatchet job.....

[Vlad 254]

Originally posted by lizrdfishr:

Skyrim is like a book full of empty pages. You write what you want to write.

[FauxFurry]

Originally posted by alexander_dougherty:

Why is the writing weak?

Because they wrote so much relying on the civil war to take up a much bigger part of the game, only it wasn't going to be finished on time, so they scrapped the majority of the civil war and the related writing and what's left is a third rate last minute hatchet job.....

This is one of the reasons why using mods which more or less finish some of the dummied out content make for such a different experience than the base game.

That is not to say that cut content mods are the main reason for its popularity or why the game is permitted to be so 'badly written' (as the original post states)because there is no one reason why people are playing this game.

Some want an easy to follow series of plots with interesting ideas that run their course so quickly that there is not enough time for any story element to wear out its welcome.

Some just want a framework to experiment with emergent gameplay by goofing around with the various systems in the game in ways that are not required to 'win' but are possible nonetheless.

Others still use the entire game as a framework for creative play via the Creation Kit, possibly turning it into another game altogether. Were it too complex from a narrative perspective, they might end up flummoxed when attempting to add their own content (see the Witcher series' relatively flaccid modding scene for what can happen if it is too difficult to organically add content for the average person considering mod creation).

First and foremost, this thing is a game, not a novel or a movie so the most likely answers come down to it being designed to allow many opportunities for entertaining interactivity in a way accessible to a large number of disparate groups for their own reasons.

Yes, the fast food analogy would be apt here. It has to hit on all of the things that people like while remaining cost effective as well as actively avoiding adding in too many elements which do not universally test well with customers, leaving customers to add their own condiments and seasoning to personal taste.
Perhaps Skyrim could be seem as the digital equivalent of a Fuddruckers build-a-burger?

[Vlaun]

I can't say for sure why the game is paced as it is. Only BGS really knows. Even outside of the faction quests there are some pacing issues like the leveling and the scaling. I've got a suite of mods in my current playthrough that are all handy to deal with the pacing in general: from quests starting too soon to faction quests having you become the leader too fast.

For example, for the companions I have mine set in a way that I need to do quite a bit of radiant quests before the next faction quest begins. I believe I set mine to be at around 4 to 9 or so radiant quests before the Companion questline continues to the next quest. At least now I have some time to get to know the Companions before I'm suddenly their leader.

Similarly, I've set the thieves guild to not even begin - no Brynjolf sashaying over to me - until after I've actually stolen a decent amount of stuff to garner his attention (in my game I have to steal 100 items to get his attention). In vanilla it's so stupid: he goes to you as soon as you enter Riften and states he can tell you've made your money from stolen goods while in your stats it might say you've done no crime whatsoever and stolen absolutely nothing ever. Yet, Brynjolf is so determined to speak to this "thief" to welcome into his guild. It's senseless.

As for the College of Winterhold I couldn't really find anything that didn't also tweak the interior too much or add too much so I've opted to just ignore that questline until I've got a decent amount of spells learned and a good hand in Enchanting/Alchemy. It doesn't start until you talk to Faralda anyway. That way at least I'm not some two-handed berzerker waltzing their way to arch-mage.

Then there are some quests and encounters that simply start way too soon for it to make sense. Like the Hearthfire stuff: you'll get a note from the jarl in falkreath about purchasing a parcel of land there at the very start when you've never even set foot anywhere near Falkreath or have done anything to garner his attention. Or the Cultist that start stalking and hunting you for daring to challenge Miraak after getting the Horn, when you've not even done much to prove yourself as the Dragonborn let alone challenge Miraak. Finishing the main questline would have been the better reason to have the Dragonborn hunted: you showed Tamriel that you not only kill dragons, but the big-bad dragon himself. Of course, there's a mod to fix most of this, but in Vanilla this sort of thing just breaks immersion.

I guess you can say I'm grateful to modders and modding in general. Band-aids probably, but it does make a difference. At least things seem more believable with these minor tweaks.

Thieves Guild: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/33256
Companions: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/24144
Overall Quest Timing/Pacing: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/mods/25464

[november0910]

The way I see it, Bethesda sells a Framework called CreationKit and it doesn't matter what it says on the packaging, Fallout, Skyrim, whatever. They sell a workshop and you can tinker around thousands of hours. Hence their writing is on a minimum. Just my opinion.