Why is Skyrim rated highly?

[Paladin885]

Sandbox is why people love it. We have so few decent sandbox games that people will rate an average game like Skyrim super high. In its own league I guess Skyrim is a really really good game but compare it to games in general and you have a pretty bad one.

Graphics are decent, they only get good after installing hires pack and mods.
Animations are horrible
Super bugged on launch (multiple bugs would not let you complete the main story)
Several "cheats" to level super fast.

I was super hyped for skyrim but fact is that ES have barely changed at all since Morrowind/Oblivion. I hope the next one truly has something special (such as dynamic events from GW2)

graphics are decent? lol, on their own its beautiful when you're in the open world. Mods only help make the textures better. :P

Compared to Oblivion or even Fallout 3 (same engine) Skyrim is light years ahead in animation. The way the players body moves when they swing a sword, block with a shield, or get hit is life-like. In oblivion all you had to do was click the mouse 20 times and swing the sword repeatedly and you were a champion. Also spamming the space bar eventually allowed you to level up acrobatics enough to leap over the moon. Also Skyrim has more than 5 actors doing voices... (skyrim has 70 or more)

Yes, it was buggy, but hey its not a Bethesda game without funny bugs at launch. (I still remember rolling on the floor when a giant first falcon punched me to the moon)

[Badpaladin]

It doesn't excuse them from being buggy. It may be their trend but it doesn't mean it's something that should continue. Just because a company has a habit of doing such doesn't mean they don't take responsibility for their actions.
British accent <3

Skyrim is estimated to be over 8 million lines of code. Good software, according to the US department of defense, can mess up 10 times(no matter how large or small) for every 1000 lines of code. Code good enough for launching rockets into space has 1 error for every 10,000 lines of code.

If Skyrim is considered good software, it can mess up 80,000 possible ways. If it's as good enough for NASA, it can mess up 800 possible ways.

[Digglett]

graphics are decent? lol, on their own its beautiful when you're in the open world. Mods only help make the textures better. :P

I guess if your favorite colors are brown and grey.

[Barracks00]

Oblivion has the best soundtrack, other than Arena and Daggerfall.

[PenguinChan]

I guess if your favorite colors are brown and grey.

I don't think the colors or actual textures are completely horrid, it's just that everything was compressed and thrown into an auto-bump-map program that makes my eyes bleed when I actually care for the graphics. Clay world, go-go.

[Deleted]

graphics are decent? lol, on their own its beautiful when you're in the open world. Mods only help make the textures better. :P

Compared to Oblivion or even Fallout 3 (same engine) Skyrim is light years ahead in animation. The way the players body moves when they swing a sword, block with a shield, or get hit is life-like. In oblivion all you had to do was click the mouse 20 times and swing the sword repeatedly and you were a champion. Also spamming the space bar eventually allowed you to level up acrobatics enough to leap over the moon. Also Skyrim has more than 5 actors doing voices... (skyrim has 70 or more)

Yes, it was buggy, but hey its not a Bethesda game without funny bugs at launch. (I still remember rolling on the floor when a giant first falcon punched me to the moon)

Yes of course Skyrim is a head of the other Bethesda games but Skyrim is a 2011 game, not a 2006 game. The graphics are not impressive for todays standard. I expected major improvements but they only improved SLIGHTLY. You still slash at your target 20 times and win the game. Animations did get better but not good enough, the game was released in 2011 and not 2006.

---------- Post added 2012-08-14 at 06:25 PM ----------

Skyrim is estimated to be over 8 million lines of code. Good software, according to the US department of defense, can mess up 10 times(no matter how large or small) for every 1000 lines of code. Code good enough for launching rockets into space has 1 error for every 10,000 lines of code.

If Skyrim is considered good software, it can mess up 80,000 possible ways. If it's as good enough for NASA, it can mess up 800 possible ways.

Those numbers mean nothing, we have to compare it to other games. Bethesda does have a reputation of releasing some of the most bugged games out there and Skyrim was no different. It was fine for Oblivion and Morrowind because the standard back then wasnt as high but for a 2011 game people expect way less bugs.

[frogger237]

While I do find the game to be ok/good, the graphics are terrible(I have it for xbox), ive played ps2 games with better graphics.

I think the main factors it is a highly rated game are:

Sandbox
Elder Scrolls
Bethesda
Mods
Shouts
kids making memes about it

[hellosaltygoodness]

Because console gamers have no standards and no concept of taste? They'll lap up whatever a developer shits out, call it amazing, and buy all the day 1 DLC. They don't seem to bat an eyelash over paying to unlock content already on their discs.

An easier answer is that console gamers are idiots.

harsh D:

i am a console gamer, i didnt think skyrim was amazing, i didn't even play it long enough to hit the ps3 bug where the save file got inflated to the point of unplayability, which was usually around the 30-60 hour range. skyrim is a good game, but its the exact same game as oblivion, and i'd already played oblivion for 300 hours of my life and was bored of it before i even picked up skyrim.

also i have never paid to unlock downloadable content for console games ever in my life

[Keile]

Because console gamers have no standards and no concept of taste? They'll lap up whatever a developer shits out, call it amazing, and buy all the day 1 DLC. They don't seem to bat an eyelash over paying to unlock content already on their discs.

An easier answer is that console gamers are idiots.

Skyrim didnt have Day 1 DLC nor did it have content you had to pay for that was already on the disc. Bethesda is fairly good with not doing that kind of shady business.

That and Skyrim is also on the PC (and is..so much better on the PC. Especially if you mod the UI so it no longer uses one designed for a console. The reason to buy any bethesda game on a PC is modding. Every one of their games since Morrowind has had awesome mods that allow you to custom tailor the game to what YOU want it to be, and Bethesda fully supports it)

Bioware and Capcom on the other hand........

I've lost a ton of respect for those two companies..

[Deleted]

I just want to know why is that Skyrim got such high praise when I see is:

Bad animation
Graphics average

They're fine. Occasionally a dragon will ragdoll in a strange way or a bit of grass will look a bit dodgy, but overall I can't say I even care.

Very buggy

I was late to the party, so a lot of the initial bugs were gone by the time I started playing. From what I've seen and heard from the early days though, it wasn't that game breaking most of the time. From the hundreds of hours I've played now, I can't even remember any bugs that actually bothered me.

Awful Combat which hardly improved since ES3

I don't see the big deal about the combat in Skyrim. The archery functions as well as can be expected and the magic is varied enough in function and performance that I can't complain. I'll give you that the melee (Especially slow 2h weapons) isn't a particularly strong point, but it's functional. I don't really get what people expected.

Ofc there are many good points for the game but if this was any other the game people would have dug the grave for those games for having the above flaws.

Nope. I played Oblivion for a few hours before I decided it was garbage and stopped (And my opinion hasn't changed). When Skyrim came out I didn't get it until it went on offer significantly later - and only then at the request of a friend. I went into it thinking it was going to be garbage and the idea of my future self defending it on a forum would probably have disgusted me. That said, I do think a lot of people who have barely even played it have rated it highly without reasonable justification just because it's a TES game.

That said, it's still overrated. Skyrim may provide you with hundreds of hours of entertainment - but it's not all quality entertainment. I'm not constantly joygasming while trudging through all those caves, but if I have something that I want to concentrate on like a debate then Skyrim is probably what I'll boot up to keep my hands and eyes busy.

[Shyguyy]

Frankly, I was super hyped about this game because ever since Oblivion I have been dreaming of the next one.

It was a huge letdown in retrospect. I went to my local midnight release, got all excited, gamed all night, etc etc and loved the shit out of it for a while. But the more I play it the more I realize that it really was an Oblivion rehash... even though I remember someone saying it at the time and getting mad, I cannot deny it now.

The animations are still bad, 3rd person mode is still clunky, the AI seems like it was barely changed, and the combat (apart from caster changes!) is EXACTLY the same. Even dual wielding feels weird, it reminded me of a mod I downloaded in Oblivion. The menu system sucked, the favorites menu was buggy as hell and never fixed, I could go on and on.

All of this being said, I still respect and love the game, I just don't think it is all it was cracked up to be. You cannot deny as a gamer the amount of effort that went into making a game of this size. In all honesty, the sheer amount of detail, lore, geography, monster design, etc of the Elder Scrolls universe makes any game of the same title an automatic win in my books. I have never felt so immersed in something as much as with TES.

Roll a joint, make an RP character and go around reading books, exploring, talking to NPC's; it is amazing. THAT is why the game is highly rated IMO.

[Keile]

Frankly, I was super hyped about this game because ever since Oblivion I have been dreaming of the next one.

It was a huge letdown in retrospect. I went to my local midnight release, got all excited, gamed all night, etc etc and loved the shit out of it for a while. But the more I play it the more I realize that it really was an Oblivion rehash... even though I remember someone saying it at the time and getting mad, I cannot deny it now.

It's no more an Oblivion rehash than Oblivion was a Morrowind Rehash.

Morrowind was the one that really set the standard for the series for what it is nowadays.

[Drakain]

I love skyrim. One of my favorite games. TBH.

I don't know if I'd live it as much on a console, but I have it on the PC and extent to which you can mod the game is jaw dropping.

I enjoy the story, even if it's kind of goofy - I can't think of a good reason to side with Ulfric because the way the made him he's basically a cover boy to incompetent power grabbiness, but there you go.

And it's just fun to do a full blast of unrelenting force and watching an army of bandits just FLY away.

[raist474]

the graphics were great for a console port. the mods did a wonderful job at upping the game for pc gamers.

The only RPG that trumps Skyrim on graphics is The Witcher 2, and that is due to the witcher being designed from the ground up to a PC only game. the x-box version was an afterthoight, and the downgraded graphics show, the uber setting on PC is mind-blowing.

If you want to blame anyone for shoddy graphics, blame Microsoft for having an outdated console that encourages lazy work from the
graphics department

[Badpaladin]

If you want to blame anyone for shoddy graphics, blame Microsoft for having an outdated console that encourages lazy work from the
graphics department

Actually it's the opposite. To keep games looking modern, developers are trying to get the best engine programmers out there. Developing a modern console game is reserved for the best devs right now because of how dated the hardware is relative to what consumers want to see. Skyrim-like graphics at 30fps on console hardware is a programming feat.

And speaking of console games, TW2 for XBOX is astounding. It's about equivalent to the PC's medium settings; I have no idea how they were able to pull that off. TW2 even on low settings looks better than most everything else out there.

[Vargur]

It's highly rated for most people because you can waste/spend hundreds of hours doing side quests , exploring crafting you know? the stuff that doesn't really matter or require you to actually do in terms of progressing and beating the game

And that + open world makes it my favorite game, and not just of last year's. But ever.

For the record, I HATE mods, and I HATE consoles, so I'm referring strictly to the PC version.

Because console gamers have no standards and no concept of taste? They'll lap up whatever a developer shits out, call it amazing, and buy all the day 1 DLC. They don't seem to bat an eyelash over paying to unlock content already on their discs.

An easier answer is that console gamers are idiots.

I very much agree with this (except for the fact that Dawnguard, which isn't even cheapened by it being called a DLC, because it's an add-on, just launched last month, and it's the only one so far, a proper add-on).

[Scrysis]

The forums hate me. They won't let me post my response -- it keeps saying that I have images or links (which I don't).

One good reason out of a ton is that Skyrim combines an open beautiful, compelling world with complete freedom to do what you want, how you want, where you want, when you want.

[raist474]

Actually it's the opposite. To keep games looking modern, developers are trying to get the best engine programmers out there. Developing a modern console game is reserved for the best devs right now because of how dated the hardware is relative to what consumers want to see. Skyrim-like graphics at 30fps on console hardware is a programming feat.

And speaking of console games, TW2 for XBOX is astounding. It's about equivalent to the PC's medium settings; I have no idea how they were able to pull that off. TW2 even on low settings looks better than most everything else out there.

I disagree from the standpoint that milking an outdated system only gets you so far. I did such currently working for the government and it just leads to you having to cut content and mechanics in order to make quota. If you can, look up "The Art of Skyrim" and see how much content and models they had to cut out because they couldn't squeeze it on. Mass Effect 3 was a HUGE indicator of this. They had to cut the holster animations and use audio dialog on most non-plot conversations you have no input on because they were cutting to so close to overwhelming the X-Box disc capacity and processing power.

CDProjekt has some of the best developers in the PC would. There is a documentary floating around Youtube on how they squeezed it on. At the same time, TW2 on Uber settings literally gave Crysis 2 a run for its money. It was totally worth having to buy a second graphics card to run it in SLI mode. I've never seen such realistic forest before.