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Manchu wrote:Fetch quests can be good guyish (Mjoll's is a good example) but it's hardly a counterpoint to the Dark Brotherhood ... along with a large portion of the rest of the game. In this game, I see no moral distinction between killing an "evil" necromancer and killing a sabre cat. I'll give you preventing the Wolf Queen's return. That brings us up to about four of five good things.

Sure, there isn't a huge number of quests you do just because you're good. I'll grant that. I'd guess most quests you do leave the world a better place than when you entered it, but the way the quests are written it's mostly focussing on the reward you'll get, not solving problems for people.

To some extent I don't mind this. I found the way the companions were written in Skyrim to be just plainly more believable than other Warrior Guild types in other games, because they were swords for hire - their morals gave them boundaries, but they didn't prompt them to do dangerous things for no reward. And elsewhere, I didn't mind the general reliance on bounties and looting. I mean, good or not, it just doesn't make any sense for a person to make his fortune by wandering from town to town, bumping into people who need a travelling right at that very moment.

Instead, a guy who makes his money turning in bounties, and sometimes doing something heroic just because he's that kind of guy seems pretty plausible.

Because I don't want every one of my characters to be thuggishly amoral or maniacally evil? For a game of wide possibilities, this is a surprisingly distinct lacuna.

Yeah, I'll agree with that. I've never really enjoyed evil in games like this, for a host of reasons, and think that if a game is going to embrace 'you can do anything' there should be content written for characters who maintain good reputations. Perhaps a series of heroic style quests that'll trigger when a character has built a good enough reputation in a certain area?

SKyrim seems unfortunately buggy. I've been getting graphical bugs all of the sudden. Reinstalling it to see if that fixes them....

Melissia wrote:SKyrim seems unfortunately buggy. I've been getting graphical bugs all of the sudden. Reinstalling it to see if that fixes them....

Just be thankful you don't have the PS3 version.

Well, obviously. Then I couldn't even play it, what with not having a PS3 anymore.

Melissia wrote:Well, obviously. Then I couldn't even play it, what with not having a PS3 anymore.

Yes indeed. That'd be even worse than the constant stuttering you'd be experiencing if you could.

Melissia wrote:SKyrim seems unfortunately buggy. I've been getting graphical bugs all of the sudden. Reinstalling it to see if that fixes them....

Try setting it on the lowest graphics setting, it looks like ass but it seems to solve the really bad graphics bugs.

Melissia wrote:Well, obviously. Then I couldn't even play it, what with not having a PS3 anymore.

Are you playing it on the PC? If so this guys patch fixed all the graphical issues I was having

http://enbdev.com/download_en.htm

Now you see that evil will always triumph because good is dumb!

In Skyrim I enjoy the fetch quests, delivering a letter is nice and normal compared to killing a dragon or frost troll.

Also the dragons are coming back to enslave humanity so that makes killing them heroic. Anyone who took the time to read the little engravings on the climb up to the grey-beard's crib would know that dragons are dicks.

You can do good and bad with some of the daedric quests, for example there is one where you can become a cannibal or you could just kill the person who offers you the chance. There are plenty of neat options and opportunities to show yourself as a good or bad character. Now as a side note, if you take a bounty from a keep and fulfill that bounty by killing the bandit chieftain in the bounty then that's a morally positive thing.

More update news; PC and Steam users will be getting more regular updates due to the fact that Bethesda directly control their implementation, which is good news for those on the PC, but not so much the 360/PS3, but apparently you can blame third party certification proceedures for that: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/12/02/skyrim-update-next-week-patches-will-be-hitting-the-pc-and-steam-more-often/?ns_campaign=article-feed&ns_mchannel=ref&ns_source=steam&ns_linkname=0&ns_fee=0

There really aren't plenty of opportunities to be good. And there is a huge disparity between the good things you can do and the bad.

Being good in Skyrim:

Sure, I'll give you a minor healing potion that I just happen to have five bajillion of (and cannot sell because all the merchants are out of gold after buying reclaimed armor/weapons). What's that? It's to get clean from Skooma? Yeah, whatever. Ah gak, did you just give me potions for this?

Being evil in Skyrim:

So, let me get this straight, although I don't worship or in any way venerate you, you want me to go kill a bunch of savages who have imprisoned one of your rival's worshippers just so I can lead him back here and while you hold him I mercilessly beat him over and over until he begs you to be his master? And I get a sweet mace? I'm in. : open map :

Any word on the kinds of updates they're doing other than that last one? They said for PS3's they fixed the performance issues for playing for a long time.. But I still get lots of slowdowns and having to pause to let stuff load.. it's fine for the first hour or so, but then it starts chugging more and more, I guess memory is getting used up quick.

Manchu wrote:There really aren't plenty of opportunities to be good. And there is a huge disparity between the good things you can do and the bad.

Being good in Skyrim:

Sure, I'll give you a minor healing potion that I just happen to have five bajillion of (and cannot sell because all the merchants are out of gold after buying reclaimed armor/weapons). What's that? It's to get clean from Skooma? Yeah, whatever. Ah gak, did you just give me potions for this?

Being evil in Skyrim:

So, let me get this straight, although I don't worship or in any way venerate you, you want me to go kill a bunch of savages who have imprisoned one of your rival's worshippers just so I can lead him back here and while you hold him I mercilessly beat him over and over until he begs you to be his master? And I get a sweet mace? I'm in. : open map :

You are surprised that "good" quests are selfless and "evil" quests are self rewarding?

Okay you're looking at Molag there, the guy is the daedric god of Domination. Did you think that his quest would involve you petting puppies?

Being Good: What's that you want me to be a cannibal and lure someone here so you can kill them and eat them in the name of Namira? How about I just stab all of you then for being evil cannibals.

Dragons want to take over the world? Screw that, get my sword and shield, its hero time.

There's an evil bandit in that cave/burrow/general area? I'll make sure that they meet their maker soon enough.

You want me to go into someone's subconscious and help them out with insecurities? Okay I guess I'll do that for you.

There are plenty of opportunities to be good in the game and there are plenty of opportunties to be evil or neutral. That quest that you mention is part of a rivalry between one daedric god and another so you can't really call it being evil seeing as though both of the gods are nasty characters to begin with.

Now if you want to be Thane of any region then you have to do good things for the people of the hold. There was one quest where you kill a vampire who wanted to control the entire hold and use them as cattle, if you can't call that doing good I don't know what you can.

The quest where you stop the vampire was in morthal, I've kind of adopted it as my home

I've adopted Whiterun.

Mainly for the Companions, Warmaiden's, the Skyforge, and best of all, Breezehome. The language! place in all of Skyrim!

Whiterun is a great homebase, there's almost all the merchants you need right there to sell all the junk you find. I felt the house was kinda small and cramped, but had a nice amt of chests and storage which is what I needed most.

I also got the house in Wilhelm, and I like it better. It's a lot bigger and I like the armory option for hanging up all the weapons I don't feel like selling. I have a weapon rack with nothing but magic staffs, and swords hanging on the walls. It has 3 manequins for hanging up armor, but for me only 1 of them displays the armor, and the other 2 are just a disembodied wooden face.

I didn't want to give too much away corpses, just in case people didn't want to know where it was.

I liked Whiterun, but the Companions upset me. Its not their fault, its the developers fault but I plan on killing them all one and the same eventually.

Riften is my favorite out of my current three houses. Solitude is huge and has a Stone of Berenziah in the master bedroom when you upgrade it so its kind of necessary to get it eventually. But Riften... I have my own personal little dock with fishing rods, and a garden, and a tanning rack, and its centrally located with a grindstone, forge, and workbench nearby. Its the prime location for anyone seeking on developing their smithing skills. Oh and the thieves guild is cool too, I think that the Nightengale armor looks damn sexy.

I like morthal mostly due to it being all cold and swampy, plus the irony of them loving me for killing all the vampires who were trying to rule the town and thus making me thane even though I was a vampire the whole time is too good to neglect.

I do have a problem with collecting the dragonstone from bleakfalls barrow though, I cleared the dungeon before going to whiterun to get the quest from the jarl's mage and so I can't collect it from the non-existant corpse of the draugr overlord.

Are you on PC?

Stupid fething game! Had to be up at 4am and wanted to finish Forelhost. That fething dungeon went on and on and on... Kept telling myself, just in the next room, just the next room. Finally got to Rahgot and kept running out of potions. Left and went back to Whiterun to resupply.

Why, oh, why does Arcadia hate me so? She has around 100 potions but none of them are health potions. So, ran around to different towns to get more and once I got back to Forelhost, it was 11:45. Stupid work getting in my way of killing Rahgot!

Make your own potions with alchemy!

Or if you're having a tough time but want to get something done before a certain time there is a difficulty adjuster in the options. I have to be in bed by 12:00am so if I'm having issues with the dungeon I'm on I turn down the difficulty and finish the dungeon and then go to bed. Of course I turn it back up the next time I play.

Okay, chaps. Let me deconstruct my example for you.

Here's what it was NOT about:

- a critique of incidental selfishness/getting rewards
- a complaint that Daedric Pinces are (mostly) evil
- a declaration that there are no good guy things to do in Skyrim

Now here's what it was about: contrasts!

Quest complexity:

- Bad guy quests usually have multiple stages and may even be part of a sequence of events defining an entire faction, which in turn makes up a significant chunk of the game's content.

- There are no good factions; if you want to be good, you will miss out on a significant portion of the game just by not doing the evil quests. What remains is extremely simplistic: good guy quests are usually (always?) one-off and involve few to no complications -- in fact, they don't even require you to leave town/end a dialog in some cases.

Intentionality:

- Because they are complex, or perhaps one of the facets of being complex is that bad guy quests require you to participate more deeply -- to carefully plan and deftly enact that assassination, theft, torture, etc.

- Good guy quests are just fighting, little thinking. "Oh that was an evil necromancer? Okay, fine." The best example of this is preventing the Wolf Queen's return: "fight, fight, fight, fight, oh look the world happened to get saved." Same with dragons.

This is what Mods are for.

Actually, there's an idea! Get the Dakka community in on creating a mod to add at least one 'Good Guy' faction into the game, along with more 'good guy' quests and such!

It is possible. All we need are people with mics for voice acting, folks that can do Bethesdian Scripting, writers for the quests and personalities, and folks who can do the graphical stuff (like myself).

Whaddaya say?

Will there be hookers?

Soladrin wrote:Will there be hookers?

yes, but they will cost 5,000 gold and carry incurable diseases. Effects might include slowing your movement(from the itching), and extreme vulnerability to all diseases. now even the lowely skeever will kill you in just a couple of swipes.

And drugs and rock n' roll?

Soladrin wrote:And drugs and rock n' roll?

yes, but the music leaves something to be desired. there are only so many notes you can get out of a Flute, hide drums, Lute, and a harp.

You mean Skooma'n'Lute?

That's the name of my band in Skyrim.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
Actually, Lute'n'Skooma sounds better. And instead of a band, it'll be the name of my rowboat.

Loot'n'skooma, that's better.