The yakubian devil's whitest creation, and I live in the midwest.
I don't have negative feelings towards Skyrim, but that's mostly because its larger impact was overshadowed by more cunning, despicable RPGs. Skyrim is the Avatar of its time, a blockbuster success that's impact on the medium has been wholly insular. It makes sense! The worldbuilding in TES games has always come off as weak, relying on supplementary in-game essays that cover events that are much more interesting than anything you'd come across in the actual game. Skyrim's writing and worldbuilding is the nadir of an already lackluster series.
You can call me an insufferable asshole for this (and I wouldn't blame you), but whenever discussions about this game come up, I like to ask people to name three NPCs and describe them without talking about their role in the story or occupation. Even among the people who spend 700+ hours modding this game into something that's "playable", I have yet to get a full response. It's not because these people are stupid, I played through the entire game on launch and I couldn't answer that question.
For how long this game is, and for how much content's shoved into here, that becomes a problem that tanks the game. At the time, I enjoyed the process of morphing into the same stealth archer build everyone at end game winds up at without radically redesigning the game with a modloader, but I didn't give a shit as to why I was doing it. There aren't any setpieces that resonated with me. The closest I ever got to thinking the game was kinda neat was the opening, and replaying it is such an ordeal that most people just mod it out. The role playing element of this game might as well not exist, and the game lacks the sandbox elements of Morrowind. It's a game with severe restraints, and playing within those restraints isn't that fun.
At the time, and for years after its launch, Skyrim was the game that people who didn't play video games could pick up and grow attached to, at least from personal interactions IRL. I don't think that's a bad thing, anything that makes the onboarding process to my hobbies easier is rad in its own right. I just feel kinda bad because of how vapid of an experience it is compared to almost every other RPG I've played. It isn't creatively bankrupt. The account was never opened in the first place.
I don't have negative feelings towards Skyrim, but that's mostly because its larger impact was overshadowed by more cunning, despicable RPGs. Skyrim is the Avatar of its time, a blockbuster success that's impact on the medium has been wholly insular. It makes sense! The worldbuilding in TES games has always come off as weak, relying on supplementary in-game essays that cover events that are much more interesting than anything you'd come across in the actual game. Skyrim's writing and worldbuilding is the nadir of an already lackluster series.
You can call me an insufferable asshole for this (and I wouldn't blame you), but whenever discussions about this game come up, I like to ask people to name three NPCs and describe them without talking about their role in the story or occupation. Even among the people who spend 700+ hours modding this game into something that's "playable", I have yet to get a full response. It's not because these people are stupid, I played through the entire game on launch and I couldn't answer that question.
For how long this game is, and for how much content's shoved into here, that becomes a problem that tanks the game. At the time, I enjoyed the process of morphing into the same stealth archer build everyone at end game winds up at without radically redesigning the game with a modloader, but I didn't give a shit as to why I was doing it. There aren't any setpieces that resonated with me. The closest I ever got to thinking the game was kinda neat was the opening, and replaying it is such an ordeal that most people just mod it out. The role playing element of this game might as well not exist, and the game lacks the sandbox elements of Morrowind. It's a game with severe restraints, and playing within those restraints isn't that fun.
At the time, and for years after its launch, Skyrim was the game that people who didn't play video games could pick up and grow attached to, at least from personal interactions IRL. I don't think that's a bad thing, anything that makes the onboarding process to my hobbies easier is rad in its own right. I just feel kinda bad because of how vapid of an experience it is compared to almost every other RPG I've played. It isn't creatively bankrupt. The account was never opened in the first place.