Skyrim Anniversary Edition is on sale now.
So I bought it. Wrestled my way through the Microsoft Store – And success. I am playing Skyrim. Welllllll… It’s not all it’s cracked up to be TBH. The main game and story are fine, but I have some gripes with the execution. I know. I know. There are lots of folks out there that are gonna beat up on me for having these opinions. But see. I’ve played some other game before this and I’ve gotten spoiled. Let me layout my gripes. I’ll be comparing Skyrim to a couple of other games in particular.
- Guild Wars ONE – released on 2005. Recall that Skyrim released in 2011.
- Elder Scrolls Online – Released in 2014.
- Final Fantasy XIV – A Realm Reborn Released in 2013.
So let’s talk about my gripes. And then compare what these other games did right for each of these issues.
Map and Navigation – This is needlessly difficult and primitive. Based on my experience with Elder Scrolls Online, it appears that Bethesda has a religious issue with Minimaps. But inside dungeons especially, the compass across the top of the screen is needlessly torture-some. The large map is foggy even if you have been somewhere. And saying I need to find some place out in the fog and then not pointing me to the right place and not displaying any roads on the map just makes things just silly. I used the “tmm 1” console command to light up all the places and allow fast travel to them. But the ESO map is way better – with roads and stuff. And there is a nice minimap plugin for ESO. I’ve not tried the minimap for Skyrim yet. Guild Wars has a nice map:
The fog disappears and roads appear. Quest markers are highlighted on the map. Of course they are too in Skyrim. But more on quest management later.
Navigating inside a dungeon is hell with no minimap is a mess. You just have to continually pop up the map to see what’s going on. Guild Wars calls the minimap the Mission Map.
Quest Management – Quest management is a mess. It is very confusing to find the quest menu with ESC. I have a feeling that the whole menu design was built for consoles and then just retro fitted to PCs with as little change as possible. It is very hard to have to dig down in a menu to see the quests and then figure out how to choose which one is the main quest. No other game I’ve played is such a mess.
Here’s what Guild Wars does:
Some of the current quests can be listed on the screen at all times. Here’s the quest log.
Companions – Get Lost and Can Die. So if you run away at the wrong time, you’ll lose your companion. And there is apparently such a thing as Friendly Fire that can take out your companion. No other game I’ve played does this.
Guild Wars has a “Party Menu” that contains either Other players, henchmen [ built in AI companions], Heroes [AI companions trained / Equipped by a player] or Mercenaries [ Copies of a player that is trained and Equipped]. But AI Party members can never be lost or wander off and are not subject to “Friendly Fire”. I get that Skyrim doesn’t want to get this complicated. But “Wandering off” and “Subject to Friendly Fire” should not be part of the behavior of a companion. Elder Scrolls Online has done this correctly.
Mounts – They can get lost and wander back to where you picked them up. I found a free horse and then poof. When you fast travel your horse will appear somewhere near you. Sometimes? Always? But it won’t follow you. All other games just allow you to chose which mount you are using and then mount up when you like – except inside towns and dungeons. Guild Wars has no mounts, but all the other games do this the same way. Mounts are callable when you can ride them and the one you get is the one you have chosen from all the mounts that you have collected. Not Skyrim.
Quests are Scattered All Over the Place – There is no progression through the list of quests. I get that. But the target of a quest might be across the map. And since NPCs, or notes or books on a table, or stuffed in a chest, don’t have quest markers saying they have a quest for you, you will leave that town and might never come back. Unless you read the wiki and find out that you need to come back to buy that house from that NPC that is impossible to find unless you visit his bed in the middle of the night. Yep that’s a thing. I had to find him by reloading a save point to buy my house and then visit his bed in the middle of the night to find him to buy the furnishings.
Quests are Broken – If you want some Dadric Armor or some Silver Armor, you can carefully watch some Youtube videos to see how to get these items, but the starting item for the quests just is not there – the note on the table in the kitchen of the inn. And if you skip ahead to find the body to loot, you are out of luck since it does not exist. The unmarked leaflet on the table in the kitchen was not there. So no Silver Armor for me.
Gearing and Fashion – It is needlessly complicated to gear up. Apparently Skyrim is about looting gear as much as Crafting gear. Well then it needs to be easier to find gear to loot. Where are my Vampire Gloves? and Vampire Hood? Where is my silver armor and my dadric armor? If there are so many Dadric baddies around, why is it so hard to find a Dadric boss to kill and get armor? What about those quests from a few years ago that allege quests that drop these armors in quests from the “Special Edition”? Now that I have the “Anniversary Edition”, why do those quests not work? Removed from the game? Or Bugged?
Aesthetically Ugly Characters – Have a look at Guild Wars characters – From 2005. And then have a look at Skyrim characters from 2011. There are very few choices and all of them are very ugly. I’m not looking for fashion models. But seriously? All of them look like road kill.
How to Play Skyrim
IMHO the way to play Skyrim is to use the console to turn on God Mode, and to Toggle Map Markers 1 at least. Probably use the some of the mods that keep magica and health topped up. Skyrim will not be of long term interest for me. I’ll play it on the side for a while. Too many issues that are fixed in other games.
:ww
Windy Weather 