Why Skyrim Isn't Game Of The Year

Now before you start flying off the handle in comments, I understand why The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is fantastic. There is nothing out on the market like it. In 2011, you couldn’t put a hundred hours into anything, apart from Skyrim. I don’t want to take anything away from the guys at Bethesda but I have a problem with Skyrim receiving all the game of the year awards. There are fundamental problems with the game that it seems to get away with. Let me explain.While the content is plentiful, it also doesn’t work. Broken questlines, non player characters walk into walls, the player gets stuck in environments, backwards flying dragons and the game just dying on you.

[gillri]

because of the bugs, publication giving it GOTY are doing gaming a disservice. The amount of quest bugs I had in 240 playthrough was unacceptable

So thats Leaves Portal 2, Arkham City or Skyward Sword...ok ok I'll give to Skyward Sword, my GOTY but only just

[LOGICWINS]

"...publication giving it GOTY are doing gaming a disservice"

A disservice to who exactly? When publications give a game GOTY, all they're saying is that its THEY'RE opinion that the game in question is the best game they've played all year. Just because publications give their opinion on something doesn't mean that everyone has to take their word as the Bible.

[DragonKnight]

A disservice to us as gamers. Developers and publishers do take notice of what these publications say, and when they say a bug riddled game released in a nigh unplayable and broken state is worthy of being GOTY simply based on its length, developers and publishers will see that people will accept anything and release more broken and buggy games.

It is a responsibility of anyone claiming to be a journalist to present facts. If they want to call Skyrim GOTY, then they should acknowledge that they do so based SOLELY on how they view the content, and not the state of the actual game.

[LOGICWINS]

"It is a responsibility of anyone claiming to be a journalist to present facts.

Agreed...but what does fact have to do with awarding a game GOTY? GOTY is an O-PI-NI-ON, no more, no less. As a gamer(and human being), you should have the common sense to understand that not everyone has the same opinions. Therefore, you don't have to accept Skyrim as YOUR GOTY.

"If they want to call Skyrim GOTY, then they should acknowledge that they do so based SOLELY on how they view the content, and not the state of the actual game."

But thats common sense. People forge an opinion based on their VIEWS. The reason Skyrim got so many GOTY nods despite the fact that it was a buggy game is because of the scope. For a game THAT big, its understandable that there will be bugs.

[DragonKnight]

"Agreed...but what does fact have to do with awarding a game GOTY? GOTY is an O-PI-NI-ON, no more, no less. As a gamer(and human being), you should have the common sense to understand that not everyone has the same opinions. Therefore, you don't have to accept Skyrim as YOUR GOTY."

I agree, but that's not the problem. The problem is the precedent being set. That being that a game can coast by on scope and be praised with unending accolades, yet is riddled with problems that games of a lesser scale would never be able to get away with, nor be similarly lauded. In the case of journalistic "opinion" the larger the gaming news site is, the more weight it's "opinion" carries, and that can be a dangerous thing.

"The reason Skyrim got so many GOTY nods despite the fact that it was a buggy game is because of the scope. For a game THAT big, its understandable that there will be bugs."

And it shouldn't have been given any GOTY simply because it's a large game. The fact that it's large also works to its detriment. It is large through much repetition, as many quests are identical or the unending quests (such as the Dark Brotherhood missions after the main quest) are just mundane. MMO's have been doing what Skyrim does forever, creating pointless and mundane quests in a veiled attempt at showcasing scope. The true scope lies in the actual world, and this is impressive, but given that the game is immensely bug ridden and the quests (which are the bulk of the game) do have a repetitive nature, it's foolish to consider this game as a Game of the Year. Game of the Year is a term meaning the best game to release of the year. Opinions of course can state that as such, but they really shouldn't given what is known about Skyrim.

[nveenio]

Yeah...we're over a month into 2012 now. Time to move on, people.

[EVILDEAD360]

It IS Game of the Year..The end

Evil

[SilentNegotiator]

Stop trumpeting the word "opinion" whenever logic becomes a barrier, Mr. LogicWins.

There's no reason to put up with things like quest breaking glitches and slowdown for saving your game too much. Journalists touted how you could play for over 100 hours, but all claimed to have no issue with slowdown, despite it being so well documented that it happens. It can't be coincidence 99 of 100 times that journalists had "no major issues".....they simply did NOT play for "100+ hours of epicness".

[Drake117]

You know a game is great when almost 4 months after release and haters are still hating on it every day in every 3rd article on this site.

[FriedGoat]

Dark Souls

[xPhearR3dx]

As much as I love Dark Souls, it has it's own game breaking problems. The frame-rate. The only real game breaking issues with Skyrim were on the PS3, the frame-rate in Dark Souls on 360 and PS3 is terrible at some points. A few areas of the game it seriously slows down to like 5FPS making it nearly unplayable in those areas. 5 months later and it's still not fixed.

[yeahokchief]

Dark Souls all day son.

The reason people keep making these articles is because they know it got robbed of awards.

I'm fine with it. The more popular something becomes, the more they try and twist it to capitalize off it. Let the worthless, phony bitches give their little numbers because at the end of the day, developers like From Software don't fuck with their games over some weak ass reviews.

[brodychet]

Hell yes. Dark Souls forever.

[dedicatedtogamers]

Skyrim is the Call of Duty of RPGs.

- Easy and simplistic combat
- ridiculously easy to one-shot pretty much everything after about only 15 hours
- simplified quest structure, reduced number of quests, smaller area, removal of a ton of features

Basically, Skyrim should have been marketed as "my first Elder Scroll", because - compared to the rest of the series - it's so dumbed down.

And that's not even taking into account all of the bugs and crashes.

[xPhearR3dx]

Stop playing on easy and you won't one-shot everything. Don't say a game is dumbed down because you simply choose to play on an easy difficulty.

EDIT: You was one-shotting everything with a sword? Didn't know Swords shot anything. You can use any excuse you feel like, but everyone knows damn well you're not OHK EVERYTHING at level 21 with an non-enchanted sword. The only person you're fooling is yourself.

[dedicatedtogamers]

@ PhearR3d

HAHAHAHHA! Oh, man. Are you serious? I started the game on the hardest difficulty (because Bethesda games have continued to get easier and easier over the years) and by level 21 I was one-shotting everything with a non-Enchanted 2-handed sword. I had to download a friggin' mod just to make it a challenge.

[EmperorDalek]

Everything the internet hates is like CoD... It only takes praise and/or hype to be hated.

Dragon Age II = CoD
Uncharted 3 = CoD
Resistance 3 = CoD
Mass Effect 2 = CoD
Welcome to the club, Skyrim.

[RickHiggity]

Let me guess. You only played the main quest. And even if you did, theres no way the game was that easy.

[jarrod1981]

dedicated your an idiot. ive played for 80 hours and dont 1 hit kill anything but the weakest characters. you obviously play on the easiest setting and your still lying. i play on ps3 and still havnt encountered any bugs that have made it unenjoyable

[RBLAZE1988]

Finally, somebody has put into writing the exact issues I have had with elders scrolls games and almost all western rpgs. Open world doesn't automatically mean 10/10. It's good when done correctly but it seems that every game is trying to be open world and this destroys the chances of a good story and good story telling. The blank canvas mute is also getting old fast. I play games to get away from reality not to create a arbitrary reality within a game and ruin a potentially good main character. Same reason I watch movies. I don't want to watch a deep and engaging movie where I make all the choices just like I don't want to read a deep book and make all the decisions. (Most of the time...a game here or there is fine but where the industry is right now is monotonous and stale) your decisions never really impact the story anyway.

[Drake117]

People really need to get over this. So you don't like skyrim? don't play it. Sorry your favorite game last year didn't win as many GOTY awards. Move on with your gaming life and stop complaining about it on the internet.

[honkyjesus]

You are doing gaming a disservice by calling Skyward Sword a game in 2011.

[h311rais3r]

And this is why you shouldn't be a game journalist :)

[maniacmayhem]

I agree, broken quests and a horrid combat design really killed the game for me.

Not to mention I was level 40 and beat the last boss with no problem, not one health potion or spell. Very anti-climatic.

[MariaHelFutura]

Skyrim was definitely a heavy contender for GOTY 2011. If you think otherwise, you're ignorant. I don't care how much you love Dark Souls....

Its just unfortunate the PS3 had the problems w/ it that it did. Hopefully this is fix w/ 1.4

[Ser]

Meh, Skyrim was a contender, no doubt. But it didn't deserve most of its awards in my opinion. Especially after the fact that Todd Howard blatantly lied about the PS3 version being on par with the PC and 360 versions. This isn't the first time he's lied about it either.

Dark Souls GOTY 2011.

Sure, Dark Souls had an area with some really bad framerate issues, but aside from that one zone the game was nearly perfect. Skyrim has framerate problems no matter where you are in the world.

[Gamer-Z]

I love Skyrim but its not GOTY, there are just to many bugs. Also the quests get a little repetitive and it doesn't feel like my actions have any impact on the world.

[Detoxx]

Hm? So i guess you havent conquered any places yet with The Stormcloaks/Imperials

[ThichQuangDuck]

I did the Stormcloaks it was an awesome quest line but still little to no impact on the world. You take over all the land with them and the guards still treat you like shit. Overall why I did not think it deserved game of the year was due to combat, bland repetitive quest after quest and no impact on the world. There is many great quest in the game do not get me wrong, but most are just repetitive go to this arrow kill this go back for your reward.

[EmperorDalek]

It deserves it... but I wouldn't even put it in my top 5. Dark Souls deserved a lot more awards than it got, and Infamous 2 should have won a few best PS3/GOTY awards. Instead it won nothing, and UC3 took EVERY best PS3 GOTY, which was also great. But Infamous 2 was equal, if not better IMO.

[TopDudeMan]

I tie it with dark souls.

[Knight_Cid]

i agree it isnt

[VonAlbrecht]

Of course it's not - it's 2012 now.

[_Aarix_]

"In 2011, you couldn’t put a hundred hours into anything, apart from Skyrim"

Gears of war 3 says hi. I put 500 in the multiplayer and like 300 in the campaign with the 2nd and this one has over triple the content/replayability.

[EmperorDalek]

What were you doing for 300 hours... Dark Souls is my GOTY, and i'm bored after 184 hours (which is my most played game).

[_Aarix_]

Played it on about each difficulty, helped friends throught it, collected cog tags and ect I beat the same over a dozen times its ridiculous.

[MariaHelFutura]

Wow. You really love Gears Of War 3.....

[TheDivine]

I understand the argument (especially with the ps3 version i own) but overall it was an amazing game. Yes i experienced a few issues like wierd artifacts, slowdown, and quest bugs but it happened a few times over my 60ish hours so far. The slowdown was the only real isssue and even before the patches a restart fixed it for hours. It shouldnt be overlooked but at the same time it didnt stop my enjoyment of the game so for me it was one of the best games of the year along with gears 3 and dark souls. The more ambitious the game the more forgiving i am. A game like uncharted/gears 3 i expect to be flawless because its linear and doesnt alot of depth, on a massive open world game like this the scope and ambition outwieghs all the minor niggles. I know we shouldnt accept it because its bethesda or a massive game but the only way to sort out all this stuff is to have a few million people play it so i think they did fine with the hardware they had and manpower they had. The game pushes our console to the limit, its beautiful and packed to the brim with content. Def goty worthy.

I would much rather have skyrim than a game they scaled down with less areas, less quests, less loot, worse graphics that played at a steady fps with zero bugs. Il take the more ambitious but flawed game anytime in a rpg. Its why i loved the dragon knight saga, it had hella bugs and issues but for the team and budget they had its an outstanding game and the only rival ive played to the elder scrolls.

[VirtualSamadhi]

Dark Souls was my GOTY also. I love, love, love Elder Scrolls, but they got the Norse mythology all wrong. Instead of characters with personality, we got arrow to the knee jokes. It was kinda lame, since there was all this Conan personality and lore you could've done with it, even Metalocalypse was a better spoof than Skyrim was on lore. Characters seemed cardboard, personalities cut-and-paste.

Eventually, I realized Dark Souls had more personality, symbolism, and I never got the slow-down everyone complained about. Despite the difficulty, I felt like it was a one-of-a-kind game I hadn't seen in years--a Dungeon Crawl. And I was excited to see it bring back a new game type! Complete with puzzles, hidden entrances, and areas that branched, rather than the linear Skyrim type dungeons, which seemed like an unwinding ball of string, just going from one end to the other, without much plot. Even the bosses were better designed!

LOVED Dark Souls! Sorry, Skyrim.

[Basjohn]

Agree on the DS bosses except for "Bed of Chaos" which was really really horrible. It wasn't even a boss fight really, it was trying to roll/fall onto a slippery trunk whilst being ping-ponged around the room. I probably died about 20 times before I got lucky enough to LAND on the trunk without instantly slipping off and I wouldn't be complaining if each death didn't mean a 5 minute walk in lava to get back to the boss.

But otherwise yeah, almost flawless and a game that makes you keep praying for every level and every check point.

[VirtualSamadhi]

Very true. Less bugs at launch than Skyrim, however. I enjoyed that it was less obvious with its puzzles and clues, also. In a day when people are spoonfed, Dark Souls gives you clues, then expects you to figure out every puzzle on your own.

In a way, Skyrim should have been GOTY *after* the GOTY edition is released. It felt incomplete before, and with patches and DLC is probably worthy of the investment. This will be the last time I preorder a Bethesda game at launch!

[Basjohn]

Skyrim isn't game of the year because it came out last year.

Herp derp.

[NeoTribe]

People need to quit sayin its so bugged its unplayable. I put 200 hours in the ps3 version. If it was unplayable and ran as bad as some people keep harpin on about I wouldn't have gave it the time of day. It ran sloppy after 5 to 9 hour play sessions. That's it. Get over it. Game kicked ass and it got wut it deserved. Don't get how people are still salty over its success.

[Hicken]

It's great that you didn't run into any issues, but a lot of people did. A LOT. Game was great for a lot of people, but there were FAR too many flaws to overlook. As has been said a million times, just because the game is open-world doesn't mean it should get a pass; if anything, it should suffer MORE scrutiny because of the scope of its attempted accomplishments.

The game is broken in many ways; giving it GOTY is, as DragonKnight said above, sending the message to developers that you can release a buggy game and still garner accolades so long as you've got lots of content. That's not a message that ever needs to be sent.

[NeoTribe]

I did have issies. Like everyone when u played long sessions it would become unplayable. All u had to do it restart the game and u were good to game for another 5-9 hours. Does it suck, yeah but it def wasnt a game buster. Thats the main prob everyone was experiencing and pullin there hair out about. simple restart fixed it right up.

[digitalkid]

Strange thing is that I've never seen people demand anything from other RPGs, which have linear 30 hours gameplay, and want all the simulation of fantasy world from TES. I guess it's another reason why Skyrim got more then 50 GOTY titles already.

And that reason "Skyrim isn't GOTY 'cause I don't know where to go and I can't fight on horsie".. )))

[blackhammer]

I don't know what game of 2011 was the "GOTY," but I do know Drive is a good movie.

[honkyjesus]

"We just got fifty hits on the Internet."

[yeahokchief]

This is so last year.

[Lord_Sloth]

Dead Space 2

[zero_cool]

Id still choose dark souls over tes skyrim anyday of the week!

P.S..I await the next soul's game!

Cheers Gamers & Happy Gaming!

[Venjense]

Ooo I know why!

Because the GOTY is entirely subjective.

Mine was Deus Ex HR, yours is probably something else - each are equally valid opinions.

[HacSawJimThugin]

GOTY is a game that is classic and timeless. Games that are still in rotation after the hype has died down...Gears 3 is that game to me. Out of all the great games that I have played last year. It's the only one that I play at least every day. If not Gears, then Dark Souls. Dark Souls ate Skyrim alive in terms of what RPG was better.