Skyrim, or, How I Ruined My LifeFollow

I find the game huge as well, and I try to focus on the major quest lines and oooh butterfly.

I got a little tired of it myself, but I find that it's due to the tremendous amount of consecutive hours that I had been playing it. I'm taking a break, and it'll be all fresh and exciting again when I return from flying crashing helicopters in BF3.

I have a friend who was the exact same way at first. I tended toward this side too (I completely one town in Oblivion, then the main quest, and never touched it again), but you'd be surprised how it can suck you in. Both of us have put over 70 hours in, and are debating/have already made new characters to try them out.

But sandbox-style RPGs aren't for everyone. I definitely found myself missing a lot of things from Dragon Age while playing.

^ awesome!

I broke down and used console commands to supply myself with materials to cap alchemy today. After doing smithing and enchanting -> 100 the legit way, half an hour of pouring through my substantial supply of alchemy mats for a measily 22 points to the skill made it awfully clear that if I wanted capped alchemy before Christmas, console commands were my best bet.

Now I've got a Daedric Bow (Legendary) with base damage (including archery perks) of 198 >:D A giant slumped over after a single arrow to the kidney. I won't get the raw destructive power of a fully augmented 1h backstab, but I expect most quests will go rather quickly nonetheless. This is my second character and I still haven't cleared the main quest beyond the events at the Greybeard place, so it'll be nice to set aside the grinding and push through the more interesting stuff.

If anyone's in the mood for some reading, Tom Bissell put up a great article on Grantland.com (I didn't know he was writing for them!) about the dialogue in Skyrim.

I highly recommend giving it a look.

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/7290527/one-night-skyrim-makes-strong-man-crumble

That may change when you hit character #7 or #8.

I have real problems with that. I reach a point in the game where there is something that I want to do but I can't "justify" my current character doing it but I still want to experience it so I end up creating another character to go that path.
It's things like my main character, who is a sneaky archer mostly, can't do the full mage's college quest line because he's not a mage. He can't do the companion stuff because they are all about running into places and smashing faces so no sneaking. He's a "good guy" so he can't do thieves guild or dark brotherhood. Next I created a caster so she could do the college but the companions don't like magic and I didn't want her to be "bad" so I can't use her for either of the other two so that means making another character. Companions are all about Truth, Justice, and the American Skyrimian Way so the character I'm doing the companion quest line can't do Thieves Guild of Dark Brotherhood either. Finally I made a character that is a thief so I can do the thieves guild and said "F' it!" and made him my assassin too.

That doesn't even touch on the main quest line so I ended up having to create a Nord to be a storm cloak and an Imperial to be part of the legion.

Too many options for someone like me to handle so now I am stuck doing many quests over and over again between the assorted characters I've created.

Edited, Dec 1st 2011 12:25pm by MrTalos

Methinks you're too rigid in your character archetypes. My character is a face-smashing brute, but I can justify working through the Mage College quests because magic is powerful, and my character seeks to obtain power through any means. Also, I just want to experience all the content the game has to offer without climbing up to High Hrothgar over and over.

Have you ever been tested for OCD?

Edited, Dec 1st 2011 1:04pm by Demea

Good reading, but I actually don't think the conversations go far enough. Again, one of the things I liked most about Dragon Age was the great character interaction, relationship-building, and background you get, at least with your closest companions. If Lydia had 1/20th of the lines that Morrigan did, I'd be ecstatic. Instead I just get her sarcastic "I am sworn to carry your burdens" comment, and the occasional "I have a bad feeling about this" warning before a boss fight. I'd love if Companions had a story you could dive into; needing to go back to their hometown, track down some bandits who killed their family, retake a shop that a thieving rival stole.

My main complaint with Skyrim would be that the companion and marriage aspects aren't as good as I had hoped they would be. It might seem odd, thinking of all the other issues people have (bugs, lag, etc), but I feel that those two aspects needed a lot more fleshing out. Allow me to make-an-ES for a second...

Companions:
1. First, allow collision with a companion to move them out of the way. It gets annoying having to try and leap into the upper corner of a doorframe to get out of a room when someone's in the way.
2. Introduce a "friendship" system similar to DA:O. You can have a companion carry an item... or give it to them as a gift. If it's something they'd equip, they'll do so and get a favor bonus. At certain levels of friendship, they offer personalized quests.
3. You can also converse with your companion about events and their history. Gives them a chance to talk some more, and maybe they mention a lost heirloom or something you can go find.

Marriage:
1. Can your spouse please do something more than just cook and/or pay some profits? Anything!? Heck, I have several ideas:
A. Throw parties. You host a party in your house to rub elbows with people in the town. Gives a good chance to pickpocket the guests, learn gossip, or accept quests.
B. If your spouse has a shop, be able to invest (with the proper Speech perks), and start a chain to buyout any competition. Would blend wonderfully with the Thieves Guild.
C. Offer more than just food. Sure, it gives a skill learning buff, but I think it would be awesome to let your spouse be something like a portable crafter. Give them all your +crafting skill gear, and ask them to make potions/equipment/enchants. Depending on the value of the ingredients, let it take more time (ie, a week to make a Daedric Sword, but only half a day to make an iron dagger). Base their skill and perks off what your character knows. Basically set them up as an autonomous crafting bot. I would LOVE to come back from a dungeon dive to have my wife waiting with 10 new healing potions.
2. Similar to a companion, make a love meter. This could increase the rate of crafting, allow more items to be crafted, or unlock new quests.
3. Let your spouse travel with you as well (can this happen already? I don't think it can). Allows you to have one more companion on your travels.

Maybe it's just me, but I feel like the NPCs lack much personality and the companions are really underutilized. Maybe some DLC or something will fix it later?

Edited, Dec 1st 2011 2:52pm by LockeColeMA

So I finally finished off the Dark Brotherhood quests the other night.

I actually felt bad after talking with the Emperor that I had to kill him. So I opted to kill the dude who ordered the contract. I gave Babette and Nazir a nice new home full of fancy things and then looted all the **** I wanted and left it alone.

I've been lucky so far that even after 80 plus hours of playing I haven't gotten sick of it. I've been taking a day or two off in between intense gaming sessions and its been wonderful. I'm thinking tonight I'll work on the main quest line, I'm at the part where I go look for the elder scroll. I think after that it's going to be on to starting a new character that is either s&b or pure berserker style with dual wielding and hide armor! I'm assuming the second time around I won't be so hasty with my perk points either.

I just gave Lydia 70 ore. When I went to retrieve them, she didn't have them.

FFFFFUUUUUU-

I gave it to her because I ran out of inventory space in the middle of a dungeon (that I meandered into when I shouldn't have, since my bags were really, really full). Went straight to my house afterwards and it was gone.