Skyrim Wishlist

Skyrim is due out soon, on 11/11/11 to be exact, it it definitely is posed to be the biggest RPG launch of 2011. Sure Dragon Age 2 came out earlier in the year, but everyone quickly learned after playing it that things have definitely gone downhill for that franchise. So what should we hope for Skyrim? Well the best approach to this question is to look back at where The Elder Scrolls have been and see where improvement could be made or what could be expanded on.

Sadly I have never played Morrowind. Back when it was released I knew it was out there, and I don’t quite remember why I never picked it up. I know that a brother of mine played and enjoyed it quite a bit. So, later on when Oblivion came out I decided to pick it up and give it a try and to be completely honest, I was not impressed. I’ve always had five major grievances against my play through oblivion and here they are and how Skyrim could improve:

1. Poor combat mechanics: Want to go rip someone up with your fancy, new sword? Well all you can really do is walk up next to them and repeatedly click the mouse and see your sword wave up and down in the same boring motion. Combat just felt very stagnant. For whatever reason, the mouse-button mashing hack’n’slash gameplay that works so well in Diablo just seems to fail miserably in Oblivion. Skyrim should remedy by this by making more dynamic combat options and animations. Maybe different mouse buttons could yield different types of swings. Something else which would add to combat, but unfortunately has already been denied, would be location based damage for certain types of attacks. Now I understand the purpose of all the formulas and stats and such that go into calculating hits and damage and I don’t want to play a game where I am incentive to constantly aim at opponents heads while I’m swinging, but there is room for some change especially in ranged combat. If you get a carefully aimed shot with bow and arrow, that should count for something.

2. Poor plot dynamics: So I think what oblivion was trying to do was play you as the ‘incidental hero’ type. You were just in average joe who was thrown into a huge challenge to save the world. It didn’t work. The whole game I just felt like my character was not important, didn’t matter, wasn’t really needed, and wasn’t appreciated, yet I pretty much single-handedly saved the world. Bethesda makes games where your character has no voice and a lot is left for to project on. This can work really well, except when your character’s interactions with the world are flat as well. I honestly felt like my character was a ghost and I was doing all this amazing stuff and no one noticed me. In Skyrim, your character should be bigger and grander all the NPC’s in the world should have much more, and grander interaction with you.

3. Poor skill dynamics: Anytime you play a game where you repeatedly do something that is not plausible has some mechanic that needs to change. Early in the game my character would only travel by repeatedly jumping. My skill would go up when I jumped so I only got around by jumping over and over . . . ridiculous. Then I would run around repeatedly summoning skeletons, just for fun . . . well actually to raise my skill level. One major problem is that this is simply ridiculous and no one would actually do that. It serves as a constant reminder that you are playing a game, which if you couldn’t tell by reading my reviews is a cardinal sin. The other major problem is it diminishes the coolness when you actually use those spells/skills in combat. Woopdeedoo you summoned a skeleton, you already summoned 40 other skeletons just while you were running to this location. Skyrim needs to change the skill system so that you are rewarded for doing what your character would actually do, while being able to retain the ‘coolness’ when you use the skills.

4. Poor graphics: Now I’m sure that his is partly due to #5 on the list, but not entirely. I’ve seen plenty of screenshots online from the PC version and things don’t look much better there. It’s obviously hard to build a game that excels in every area. Traditionally, expansive RPG’s have always lacked a bit in the graphics department, but Oblivion looked pretty poor. Will Skyrim be the best looking game ever? Of course not, but the screenshots so far look good and lets hope Bethesda put a little bit more time into this area.

5. Poor console optimization: Now as for this point, I take full responsibility. My computer wasn’t up to snuff at the time so I opted for a console version. Obviously a poor choice for this type of game and it showed during most of my play-through. Fortunately this problem is easily solvable for Skyrim as I will be playing the PC version. Now, if want to play Skyrim on a console you should be fine. All the current buzz is that this game should be a much better play on consoles – some say even too much console optimization has been at work but we shall see.

So Bethesda, there you go. Obviously the game has been completed but I’m hopeful we should see a lot of these optimizations in Skyrim. So, who’s ready to slay some dragons?