Skyrim places its players in a curious position by giving them the freedom to do anything and everything possible. This makes for a wonderfully immersive gaming experience at its best, but it’s also strangely hollow at times. Although the narrative hails you as the hero that fate has chosen to change the course of history, much of what you do in Skyrim has very little lasting effect on the world around you.
Questlines are often completed and villains defeated without much notice from most passers-by, except for an occasional comment from a guard or townsperson. Other questlines that may have seemed related are typically left untouched by your actions. This is a weird feeling.
Completing the game’s central storyline, which involves ridding the world of the urgent threat of the dragons, does not actually change the world or quests in a dramatic way. Dragons still fly around and attack you on sight. It can often seem a bit like you are an enormously powerful hero that no one is paying any attention to, despite your best efforts.
Replaying Skyrim after 13 years is a reminder of the progress made in western RPGs over the last decade, but also what's been lost.
RPGs are often huge, sprawling endeavours. With limited playtime, we have to choose wisely, so here's the best western RPGs available today.
"I started playing games yesterday" the List... Meh!
How about a few RPGs that deserve some love instead?
1 - Alpha Protocol - Now on GOG
2 - else Heart.Break()
3 - Shadowrun Trilogy
4 - Wasteland 2
5 - UnderRail
6 - Tyranny
7 - Torment: Tides of Numenera
And for a bonus game that flew under the radar:
8 - Banishers: Ghosts of New Eden
Not only glorious jank, but the idea that the story can completely change depending on what you do, or say, or side with, makes it one of the most forward thinking games ever. The amount of story permutation is the equivalent of a Hitman level but in Story Form. And it wasn't just that the story changed, no, it was that you met completely new characters, or missed them, depending on your choices. Made Mass Effect feel static in comparison.
Alpha Protocol was absolutely glorious, indeed. And it was, and still is, more Next Gen than most anything out there these days. In this regard at least.
Pity.
A new Partner Spotlight Sale is now live on the Switch eShop, including Skyrim, lowest price ever for Bomb Rush Cyberfunk, and more.
A solid well-thought out piece that takes a thoughtful approach to how we play and what motivates us when we play. What makes Skyrim great is that it is so open, however the main quest seems to short and weak and the whole game would have been improved if the main quest couldn't be achieved until you had significantly affected the world by succeeding in other quests. Good stuff.
Skyrim only obtained GOTY due to its scope and ambition but in terms of substance it leaves a lot to desire and in terms of programming it's one of the worst coded games of the generation.
On the Elder Scrolls series the consequences of a game are usually seen on the next title (usually a century or so later)
Take Oblivion as an example, in that one you close the oblivion gates and that seems to be all, world is saved and everyone keep with their lives. But in the next years the world of the Elder Scrolls changed drastically due to those events: the empire weakened, the high elves rose to power, the provinces start rebelling... And we see on Skyrim the consequences of that.
I think that's part of the appeal of the series, changes take time (decades or more).