I think that "The best game I hate" is exactly the best way to describe Skyrim. I will admit that it's a fantastic game that I genuinely enjoyed playing and will continue to enjoy playing, but I can't not see the downward trajectory from Daggerfall to Morrowind to Oblivion and finally to Skyrim. I can't unplay Morrowind or unsee the potential in what could have been "Daggerfall 2" or ignore all the wrong lessons they learned from Oblivion. Skyrim stands as a lesser son to greater sires.
It's interesting hearing other people talk about a decline in quality post-morrowind. I have only ever played TES5 and I don't play fallout, so this is the only Bethesda game I have to compare skyrim to.
@@CruzaComplex It wasn't just a downward trajectory post-Morrowind. It began after Daggerfall, but I don't think it's necessarily unwarranted there. Daggerfall is huge and ambitious. The things that they were doing in Daggerfall can't be recreated in anything modern. They would set fire to NASA computers. Morrowind was a real honest case of streamlining. Of paring down for the sake of brevity and getting the game out the door before the lights got shut off. It isn't until Oblivion where we start seeing Todd's cleaver getting overused. Being a mage used to be something. I play Altmer and that used to mean something. They used to get 2x the normal amount of magic but at the cost of near crippling magical weaknesses. That's not a thing anymore. They took my Mysticism school in Oblivion and haphazardly tossed it's effects into other schools. Absorb health in particular is much maligned. It used to be mysticism, then they tossed it into Restoration, then in Skyrim it was removed as a regular spell, but you could still get a terrible version as a vampire marked as a Destruction spell. Speaking of Mark and Recall, those were Mysticism and were axed. All of Illusion's spell variety got taken out because Skyrim's limited systems removed their function. No more Charm spells, no more chameleon, no more Paralysis. That's alteration now for some reason, same as Light. No more Blind, Silence, Sanctuary. Destruction was gutted, Alteration got some new spells stolen from Illusion but we still lost Fly and Water Walk and Breathing, and underwater combat too. I cannot stress to you enough how much only magic has suffered from the decline. It's easy to handwave it as "Oh, Todd plays Barbarians" but that's not even a good excuse or explanation. TL;DR is it's bad. It's very frustrating to see so much potential and good ideas rot on the vine especially when the reasoning is unclear.
@@PenumbranWolf Rather than just being a case of streamlining, I'd say that Morrowind doesn't feel like as bad of a change as the others because it's an intentional change in scope and focus. It is smaller, but in order to shift from procedural generation over to a fully handcrafted experience. It left Daggerfall as the most complete fantasy life sim, but Morrowind as the more immersive place that you could have a more personal relationship with.
While perhaps only Daggerfall ever had real agency, you might try Morrowind as it is the only elder scrolls where its vibrant lore is actually relevant and rewards you for engaging with it. Also I think Skyrim's removal of classes really cements the fact that you are going to feel the same playing each character.
Started modding Skyrim LE 2016, after i I got all the Achievements. It took me 2 years to customize a list of mods that fixed everything i wanted out of the game. i have over 15000 hours in Skyrim and most of that was time testing mod compatibility. Id play through 90% of everything before id find something broke. Id work at fixing it or end up scraping the mod and test a new one if it existed. There are a lot of broken mods or broken because they are outdated ie built around a previous version. I did finally get a perfect play-through that i liked. And then i went to play Ark Survival Evolved, after a few months i wanted to play Skyrim LE again, but the Skyrim Anniversary Edition broke my version with a update that didn't apply to it making it unable to launch. Ive been playing a lot of Fallout 4, and when they had the CC update in May 2024 it broke my mods so i played vanilla and it bugged out soft locking a few times a few ways. So i did the roll back. I don't want to play these games without mods.The vanilla game will break or soft lock ie become incomplete-able by giving missions for dead NPCs automatically. Alot of the problems around soft locking quest could be solved by designing a box pop up to accept or refuse missions. Did you know that in Skyrim, To get a quest ie have it start is the same as doing it. Once you get a Daedric quest you might as well have done it you get a hidden flag as Deadra worshiper. One huge bug in Skyrim is flagging Nord or Non Nord Stormcuck or Non Stormcuck. Male or Female at the flags break and default to guess what. And that breaks immersion it breaks the game and the same thing happens in Fallout 4.
Needless to say, the Skyblivion and Skywind projects are extremely exciting. Especially for people that grew up with Skyrim but never wanted to deal with older game jank to experience those titles.
Jokes on you, I've never finished the civil war questline so I've never seen how that particular questline ends up being inconsequential. Excellent job on the video, you put into words a lot of things that have been floating around in my mind but haven't quite been able to grasp One of my favorite stupid tidbits about the game is how you can finish the mages' college questline by only casting spells twice, the one to get into the college and the ward spell they force you to use in the lesson. Everything else can be worked around or is through the power of a magical item
I'm glad I could put that into words, I hope it gives you the same closure it gave me. I swear there's a video of some guy on youtube that clears the college questline without casting spells at all. I know you can pass the speech check to enter the college with like 70+ speech and...seems like there's some cheese with the ward segment that I forgor
@@CruzaComplex Oh right, I did forget about that speech check. I usually enter it fairly early, or just have the needed spell by the time I get there if I am playing a mage. I do find it very entertaining though to end up "leading" the college as a barbarian type character, even if we don't really have any sway or power over what happens there after the quest
first I had to drop Skyrim because I kept getting it mixed up with reality. Never really been into Minecraft bc I don't like the third-person view, which I technically prefer in rpg games
9:50 i cant understand why you think the beginning teaches you nothing? you taught to run, sneak, and attack, you are given multiple choice options and given context to the world you are entering all in a span of 30 minutes which is pretty quick compared to a RockStar game intro like RDR2.
Two diffrent types of beginnings. One has to throw in narrative into quests that introduce you to game mechanics exclusive to the game and lays for u the dynamic that is present in the gang, so you can notice with arthur how everything breaks apart overtime, other spends 30 mins to explain to you how crouch or shooting from bow works. After 30 mins u know that every mechanic works just like in every other game that has them included, and that some dragon is around and probably other dragons will be soon.
The player can be taught how to run, sneak, and attack in like 30 seconds. With the exception of switching held items, that's the entire combat system.
@kacperstrach9687 id rather have a 30 minute tutorial on how to move than a 2 hour tutorial explaining the same thing but spread over a narrative explanation of the game.
@CruzaComplex you mean like halo? Maybe RPG players like longer intros that pace the tutorial. Sure you can teach someone in 30 seconds worth of prompts but is it that memorable?
@@odisy64 thats why i said "mechanics exclusive to the game". Starting rdr 2 teaches u gor example how hunting works, and thats not smth u get in every game, you also learn what does and what doeesnt affect ur cores. Aside from mechanics u get to learn how whole gang worls with each other. It takes 2 hours to teach u smth new and set up narrative that will be important later. Skyrim in its prologue, i'll give you that its shorter, but still doesnt teach the player anything new unless its his first game ever. The only thing it introduces lorewise is that there is a dragon, and thats smth we lnew from trailers. U also meet hadvar and ralof, characters that have no meaning or impact later. Rdr 2 takes around 2 hours to start and uses it to its fullest. Skyrim takes around 30-45 min to give you nothing.
I think that "The best game I hate" is exactly the best way to describe Skyrim. I will admit that it's a fantastic game that I genuinely enjoyed playing and will continue to enjoy playing, but I can't not see the downward trajectory from Daggerfall to Morrowind to Oblivion and finally to Skyrim. I can't unplay Morrowind or unsee the potential in what could have been "Daggerfall 2" or ignore all the wrong lessons they learned from Oblivion. Skyrim stands as a lesser son to greater sires.
It's interesting hearing other people talk about a decline in quality post-morrowind. I have only ever played TES5 and I don't play fallout, so this is the only Bethesda game I have to compare skyrim to.
@@CruzaComplex It wasn't just a downward trajectory post-Morrowind. It began after Daggerfall, but I don't think it's necessarily unwarranted there. Daggerfall is huge and ambitious. The things that they were doing in Daggerfall can't be recreated in anything modern. They would set fire to NASA computers. Morrowind was a real honest case of streamlining. Of paring down for the sake of brevity and getting the game out the door before the lights got shut off. It isn't until Oblivion where we start seeing Todd's cleaver getting overused.
Being a mage used to be something. I play Altmer and that used to mean something. They used to get 2x the normal amount of magic but at the cost of near crippling magical weaknesses. That's not a thing anymore. They took my Mysticism school in Oblivion and haphazardly tossed it's effects into other schools. Absorb health in particular is much maligned. It used to be mysticism, then they tossed it into Restoration, then in Skyrim it was removed as a regular spell, but you could still get a terrible version as a vampire marked as a Destruction spell.
Speaking of Mark and Recall, those were Mysticism and were axed. All of Illusion's spell variety got taken out because Skyrim's limited systems removed their function. No more Charm spells, no more chameleon, no more Paralysis. That's alteration now for some reason, same as Light. No more Blind, Silence, Sanctuary. Destruction was gutted, Alteration got some new spells stolen from Illusion but we still lost Fly and Water Walk and Breathing, and underwater combat too. I cannot stress to you enough how much only magic has suffered from the decline. It's easy to handwave it as "Oh, Todd plays Barbarians" but that's not even a good excuse or explanation.
TL;DR is it's bad. It's very frustrating to see so much potential and good ideas rot on the vine especially when the reasoning is unclear.
@@PenumbranWolf Rather than just being a case of streamlining, I'd say that Morrowind doesn't feel like as bad of a change as the others because it's an intentional change in scope and focus. It is smaller, but in order to shift from procedural generation over to a fully handcrafted experience. It left Daggerfall as the most complete fantasy life sim, but Morrowind as the more immersive place that you could have a more personal relationship with.
Just finished watching, it was actually very good nice job
While perhaps only Daggerfall ever had real agency, you might try Morrowind as it is the only elder scrolls where its vibrant lore is actually relevant and rewards you for engaging with it. Also I think Skyrim's removal of classes really cements the fact that you are going to feel the same playing each character.
10/10 yap session unc
cool nostalgic video, the mid mic actually adds to it lol
Definitely need an upgrade
Started modding Skyrim LE 2016, after i I got all the Achievements. It took me 2 years to customize a list of mods that fixed everything i wanted out of the game. i have over 15000 hours in Skyrim and most of that was time testing mod compatibility. Id play through 90% of everything before id find something broke. Id work at fixing it or end up scraping the mod and test a new one if it existed. There are a lot of broken mods or broken because they are outdated ie built around a previous version. I did finally get a perfect play-through that i liked. And then i went to play Ark Survival Evolved, after a few months i wanted to play Skyrim LE again, but the Skyrim Anniversary Edition broke my version with a update that didn't apply to it making it unable to launch. Ive been playing a lot of Fallout 4, and when they had the CC update in May 2024 it broke my mods so i played vanilla and it bugged out soft locking a few times a few ways. So i did the roll back. I don't want to play these games without mods.The vanilla game will break or soft lock ie become incomplete-able by giving missions for dead NPCs automatically. Alot of the problems around soft locking quest could be solved by designing a box pop up to accept or refuse missions. Did you know that in Skyrim, To get a quest ie have it start is the same as doing it. Once you get a Daedric quest you might as well have done it you get a hidden flag as Deadra worshiper. One huge bug in Skyrim is flagging Nord or Non Nord Stormcuck or Non Stormcuck. Male or Female at the flags break and default to guess what. And that breaks immersion it breaks the game and the same thing happens in Fallout 4.
Needless to say, the Skyblivion and Skywind projects are extremely exciting. Especially for people that grew up with Skyrim but never wanted to deal with older game jank to experience those titles.
Jokes on you, I've never finished the civil war questline so I've never seen how that particular questline ends up being inconsequential.
Excellent job on the video, you put into words a lot of things that have been floating around in my mind but haven't quite been able to grasp
One of my favorite stupid tidbits about the game is how you can finish the mages' college questline by only casting spells twice, the one to get into the college and the ward spell they force you to use in the lesson. Everything else can be worked around or is through the power of a magical item
I'm glad I could put that into words, I hope it gives you the same closure it gave me.
I swear there's a video of some guy on youtube that clears the college questline without casting spells at all. I know you can pass the speech check to enter the college with like 70+ speech and...seems like there's some cheese with the ward segment that I forgor
@@CruzaComplex Oh right, I did forget about that speech check. I usually enter it fairly early, or just have the needed spell by the time I get there if I am playing a mage. I do find it very entertaining though to end up "leading" the college as a barbarian type character, even if we don't really have any sway or power over what happens there after the quest
Gimme a sec. Gonna follow with all my channels because i love this
Okay i’m back. With popcorn
5:36 That's every province in Tamriel that isn't Cyrodiil (except when it's also Cyrodiil).
TRUE
first
I had to drop Skyrim because I kept getting it mixed up with reality.
Never really been into Minecraft bc I don't like the third-person view, which I technically prefer in rpg games
Are you playing on console or something? Default minecraft POV is first person.
9:50 i cant understand why you think the beginning teaches you nothing? you taught to run, sneak, and attack, you are given multiple choice options and given context to the world you are entering all in a span of 30 minutes which is pretty quick compared to a RockStar game intro like RDR2.
Two diffrent types of beginnings. One has to throw in narrative into quests that introduce you to game mechanics exclusive to the game and lays for u the dynamic that is present in the gang, so you can notice with arthur how everything breaks apart overtime, other spends 30 mins to explain to you how crouch or shooting from bow works. After 30 mins u know that every mechanic works just like in every other game that has them included, and that some dragon is around and probably other dragons will be soon.
The player can be taught how to run, sneak, and attack in like 30 seconds. With the exception of switching held items, that's the entire combat system.
@kacperstrach9687 id rather have a 30 minute tutorial on how to move than a 2 hour tutorial explaining the same thing but spread over a narrative explanation of the game.
@CruzaComplex you mean like halo? Maybe RPG players like longer intros that pace the tutorial. Sure you can teach someone in 30 seconds worth of prompts but is it that memorable?
@@odisy64 thats why i said "mechanics exclusive to the game". Starting rdr 2 teaches u gor example how hunting works, and thats not smth u get in every game, you also learn what does and what doeesnt affect ur cores. Aside from mechanics u get to learn how whole gang worls with each other. It takes 2 hours to teach u smth new and set up narrative that will be important later. Skyrim in its prologue, i'll give you that its shorter, but still doesnt teach the player anything new unless its his first game ever. The only thing it introduces lorewise is that there is a dragon, and thats smth we lnew from trailers. U also meet hadvar and ralof, characters that have no meaning or impact later. Rdr 2 takes around 2 hours to start and uses it to its fullest. Skyrim takes around 30-45 min to give you nothing.