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So, I've been replaying through Skyrim/expansions, and a thought occurred to me....

Why should I be limited to: Take a side on the civil war, or negotiate a truce?? I'm the melon-farming Dragonborn!! I *should* be able to say feth the empire AND the stormcloaks, take it all over, and rule how I want to. (For game purposes, one could probably be a more just and "benevolent" ruler by placing Companions as Jarl's throughout the holds; or a totalitarian prick by placing Dark Brotherhood/Thieves Guild people instead)





Are there any other games where you could change/add to the story or various tasks within the game that you think would make it better?

I always thought the Civil War aspect of Skyrim was sorta lame, you don't really see any changes despite being forced to take a side in order to finish the main quest. I mean, you see different guards and stuff and more legionnaires/stormcloaks but there really isn't a reason for me to care. So, I agree, a third or different option would've been awesome.

Mass Effect 3 for me, I would've liked to have a bit more leeway with getting some of the missions done. Mordin's death was senseless (albeit makes me choke up every time) and could have been avoided. Several other story bits with Kai Leng didn't need to end the way they did, or rather should have been left up to my playstyle.

I guess overall I'm a RPG guy at heart, so when I play a game that claims to be 'open world, open story' I expect it to be. When I'm held to a decision I don't want to make because it's not how I would do it, or rather how I think my character would do it, I remember it. Most games with this sort of feature are awesome despite these little bits of annoyance, but I still remember them.

In Skyrim I'd overhaul the magic, just to give more variety (for example, high power stream spells and weak blasts in Destruction in addition to the current archetypes).

Every single game that I've ever described as good or great would apply here, really. No such thing as perfection.

 Melissia wrote:
Every single game that I've ever described as good or great would apply here, really. No such thing as perfection.

Lol, I guess I should have continued with: "what would you add in, or change about those games?"

Well, to just about every multiplayer FPS game out there: I'd add the option to play as a female soldier, with roughly the same model size and exactly the same hitbox as the male soldier.

And for those single player FPS games that have you as silent protagonists, might as well let those silent protagonists be customizable since they already have no personality aside from their actions. Thinking of games with forgettable protagonists like... well, most FPS games ever, really, but one that springs quickly to mind is Homefront.

 Melissia wrote:
Well, to just about every multiplayer FPS game out there: I'd add the option to play as a female soldier, with roughly the same model size and exactly the same hitbox as the male soldier.

And for those single player FPS games that have you as silent protagonists, might as well let those silent protagonists be customizable since they already have no personality aside from their actions. Thinking of games with forgettable protagonists like... well, most FPS games ever, really, but one that springs quickly to mind is Homefront.

But you can't see your own face in a fps, customization would be pointless. Well, I guess you could customize your wrists, get a nice watch.

Skyrim and Civ 5 spring to mind.

Thankfully both games have steam modding support (or, better yet, Nexus for Skyrim) that bring the game to a level I'm happy with. Vanilla Civ 5 was fairly disappointing, but Brave New World brought it up to a much better level of game play. Add in mods on top, that range from balance mods to cool scenarios, and I'm happy.

 Mr Nobody wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Well, to just about every multiplayer FPS game out there: I'd add the option to play as a female soldier, with roughly the same model size and exactly the same hitbox as the male soldier.

And for those single player FPS games that have you as silent protagonists, might as well let those silent protagonists be customizable since they already have no personality aside from their actions. Thinking of games with forgettable protagonists like... well, most FPS games ever, really, but one that springs quickly to mind is Homefront.

But you can't see your own face in a fps, customization would be pointless.

Arms and hands (hairy arms are usually hard to pretend they're female) and clothes and voice (even if it's just panting and grunts and gak, it's very noticeably male) would all be effected.

Think about, for example, Blacklight: Retribution, which DOES have female soldiers as a choice alongside male. It's definitely an improvement over not having them-- the game would be worse off without the option, even though it's a first person shooter.

The Mass Effect games.

I would want to add more relevancy from the choices in the previous games to the end of ME3, as well as two additional endings; one 'failure' ending when you have done everything wrong and the Crucible fails entirely, meaning the Reapers win (Adding another way for the Reapers to win besides shooting the Catalyst), and one 'success' ending where if you perform really well and do everything right, pretty much everyone makes it, including both Shepard -and- the synthetics!

Just what jumps to the top of my head.

I would also replace the end boss of ME2 with something a bit more unconventional than a giant killer robot.

Also, a way to play a somewhat middle-of-the-road character without severe penalties due to the lack of charm/intimidate.

The giant killer robot was kind of bland and easy yeah.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

I'm the melon-farming Dragonborn!!

When I read this, I immediately imagined an actual scenario where the dragonborn, despite his awesome-badass powers, says feth it and to live the simple life of a melon farmer, choosing to spend his days tending his crops, and having a quiet horn of mead on his porch most evenings, instead of going to rolfstomp alduin and restore balance to the world

As for me, my main bugbear with changing games has always been the Harvest Moon games, I love them, but every new iteration seems to introduce something I wanted in the previous game, while removing the bit about the previous game I really liked. e.g. (completely made up example) ooh, Harvest Moon X has an in-depth fishing system (which I wanted in Harvest Moon W), but they took out the customisable furniture system I really liked in Harvest Moon W.

 Leigen_Zero wrote:

As for me, my main bugbear with changing games has always been the Harvest Moon games, I love them, but every new iteration seems to introduce something I wanted in the previous game, while removing the bit about the previous game I really liked. e.g. (completely made up example) ooh, Harvest Moon X has an in-depth fishing system (which I wanted in Harvest Moon W), but they took out the customisable furniture system I really liked in Harvest Moon W.

Yeah, I feel the same way about TES as well.... I never really got into Morrowind (I could never seem to set up my major/minor skills appropriately, so I almost never leveled) so Oblivion was my first "real" experience with TES. I liked some things like being able to create a spell, and that your armor/weapons degraded with use so you had to repair them, etc. Then in Skyrim they removed the ability to create your own spells (which, ehh OK... they do have quite a variety and number of spells, which they unfortunately seem to have completely nerfed magic) and they removed the armor/weapon repair feature. On the flip side of the armor repair, I can see why they did that, as with smithing being the way it is, it'd be even easier to max out your smithing score just by constantly repairing your gear.

I liked Brutal Legend, but damn the campaign was disappointing.
You have 1 good fight with the main villain faction of the game and that's it.
You don't even get to retake Bladehenge.

So...my change would be to allow the player to retake parts of the Human lands taken by the demons, and not just end the game after the Sea of Black Tears.
Seeing the effect of on the Tainted Coil would be nice.

HL1, remove Zen altogether.
Thankfully Black Mesa mod did just that.

I liked Xen though

Then again, I have an odd fondness for strange alien landscapes.

I also liked it, though I think it wasn't really necessary for the narrative.

It would have worked better as a platforming after-story or extra level, or something.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution - Revise or overhaul the boss fights.

Star Wars: The Old Republic - Use of expansions to expand the individual class storylines instead of shared ones between all players.

Knights of the Old Republic 2 - Complete the game (but we do have mods for that)

Knights of the Old Republic 1 - Make it so that there is more variety between light and dark side than "paragon of all things good and liberal" and "KICK ALL OF THE PUPPIES BUAHAHAHAHAHAHA".

Journey - More!

Actually, they changed the boss fights in the director's cut.
There is now supposed to be a stealthy option.

 Melissia wrote:
Well, to just about every multiplayer FPS game out there: I'd add the option to play as a female soldier, with roughly the same model size and exactly the same hitbox as the male soldier.

And for those single player FPS games that have you as silent protagonists, might as well let those silent protagonists be customizable since they already have no personality aside from their actions. Thinking of games with forgettable protagonists like... well, most FPS games ever, really, but one that springs quickly to mind is Homefront.

Not an FPS, but I felt the same way about Diablo II. I found it really annoying that they didn't have male and female versions of all classes, which was something I was very happy they changed for Diablo III.

 CthuluIsSpy wrote:
Actually, they changed the boss fights in the director's cut.
There is now supposed to be a stealthy option.

The boss fights are still all lethal though, and well the "stealth" option tends to be "sneak up a vent into a hidden area where there's a computer linked to some machine guns". Still nice that there's another option, but the devs really shouldn't have outsourced that element as those fights are some of the weakest parts of the game.

I enjoy Skyrim - but find it - especially the towns very empty and not enough happening that I am not directly responsible for.

 Mr Morden wrote:
I enjoy Skyrim - but find it - especially the towns very empty and not enough happening that I am not directly responsible for.

This is true, especially when you go in to talk to the Imperial General, and he's talking about Legions (plural) but when you're out and about, there's probably, maybe a century's worth of Imperial troops.

 Ensis Ferrae wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:
I enjoy Skyrim - but find it - especially the towns very empty and not enough happening that I am not directly responsible for.

This is true, especially when you go in to talk to the Imperial General, and he's talking about Legions (plural) but when you're out and about, there's probably, maybe a century's worth of Imperial troops.

In my current playthrough I am using the Immersive Patrols and Civil War Overhaul mods.

The Civil War Overhaul turns the civil war into an absolute slugfest. To take a hold, you have to take a fort, assassinate the opposing military leader (inside the city), and then attack the city itself. And it changes the mechanics of the game so if you are in the Legion - Stormcloaks attack you. So no more hanging around in Windhelm in full Imperial regalia. Plus the battles are about 50x harder. I took the Pale back, dying about 30 times in between the fort assault and storming the city (Stormcloak Giants? Seriously?). It took me like twenty minutes to take Morthal.

And the Immersive Patrols add patrols from every major faction wandering the roads and cities. And they will attack you if they should. Silver Hand will go after Weres, Dawnguard after Vampires, Imperials after Stormcloaks, and so on. Plus, opposing factions fight each other. In my current game when I was a mere little level one pansy running north out of Whiterun, I stumbled on 10-12 Stormcloaks butchering about eight Imperials. The loot was quite the windfall for me.

Has the Civil War Overhaul mod been getting updates? Last I played it it was still a buggy mess of a mod. The idea behind it is sound, but so much of it was glitchy or just plain didn't work unless you were lucky.

Sounds good - iwll check out those mods thnx

Dante's Inferno (yes, I really liked it): give it another month or two in development for level design. The last 1/3rd of that game was the worst grindfest I have ever seen. Surprisingly, the final boss was actually pretty cool.

I feel like that with a lot of games actually. The final boss fight always feels forced and rushed.

I really wish XCOM was more modding-friendly. There's a ton of things I'd add to the game if it was on the level of Bethesda or Egosoft's games.

For example, I'd blur the edges between mission types. If a UFO crashed in a city, you might run across a handful of civilians huddled in one of the buildings. Or if the aliens conducted a Terror Attack on a country where EXALT has set up operations, there'd be a chance that they got caught in the crossfire and have to make a fighting withdrawal.

 Melissia wrote:
And for those single player FPS games that have you as silent protagonists, might as well let those silent protagonists be customizable since they already have no personality aside from their actions. Thinking of games with forgettable protagonists like... well, most FPS games ever, really, but one that springs quickly to mind is Homefront.

Even if it's Samus Aran or Gordon Freeman?

 Hordini wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
Well, to just about every multiplayer FPS game out there: I'd add the option to play as a female soldier, with roughly the same model size and exactly the same hitbox as the male soldier.

And for those single player FPS games that have you as silent protagonists, might as well let those silent protagonists be customizable since they already have no personality aside from their actions. Thinking of games with forgettable protagonists like... well, most FPS games ever, really, but one that springs quickly to mind is Homefront.

Not an FPS, but I felt the same way about Diablo II. I found it really annoying that they didn't have male and female versions of all classes, which was something I was very happy they changed for Diablo III.

Yeah, that was annoying. I had some people that really wish they could play a male sorcerer, and I know I wished there was a female necromancer.