Bay 12 Games Forum

You can fail some quests in Skyrim.

I'm curious about some examples, because I just remember the first Thief quest, where the outcome doesn't matter, he'll still welcome you in the guild (though I've not tested them all to see which are failable or not).

NPC reactions and their attitudes towards you might not have a +15 to fire damage effect, but that doesn't mean they make no difference. They don't have to have material inventory benefit / penalty to affect the world. RP'ing is helped by the choice to be a complete arse to a person and make them glare at you for the rest of the game, or choosing a side in a war (so you can RP political allegiances, patriotism, etc). It might not move mountains, but hey, it helps you RP.

There's no relationships between NPCs. Helping someone won't make me friend with his friend. Helping his enemy won't make me his enemy. Being a stormcloak won't make me at least a little bit hostile with Empire supporters.
If I steal someone, get caught, there'll be no consequence with that person. He'll be as friendly as ever.
If I help people, I'll not be particularly known as a do-gooder,  no more that I'll be known as a bandit if I raid a hold and then go to another one. Imperial guards could despise me if I'm known as a thief, companions could think I'm a feeble mage if I'm part of the College (but maybe still accepting me if I prove myself). That's what helps RP way more.
I'm a fervent Empire supporter and I helped them a lot ? Others Empire supporters will be my friend, get me discount if I go shop to them, tell me their secrets, give me quests, and so on. When I defend Whiterun, people would like me after that, I protected their home. But when conquering Winterhelm, people would still be hostile, I defeated their leader, and attacked their town. On the other hand, Stormcloack supporters would hate me, refuse to trade with me, don't give me quest, etc.

You don't have to get in every guild at once, you can wipe at least one of them out. You don't have to do a quest just because some random NPC asks you to.

In Skyrim, I can be both an Imperial guard, and help the old woman to free his son from Imperials. The quest doesn't give me any other choice. I can't tell her that her son was rightfully imprisonned or that he was a traitor. I can't tell her that he died (lie).
There's so many times where your character can't say no. It's just "Not for now, but repeat me that everytime I asks you".
The worst part is that the main quest where I have to become part of the Thief guild. My character isn't a thief, but because I have to for the sake of saving the world, he'll get in the guild. I wish there was an option to tell "No thanks, I'm not a thief, however, how about you give me that information against x gold, or that I do something else ?" The game is litteraly forcing my character to try to be a thief and get in the guild.

You can specialize in magic/sneaking/beefiness if you so chose, or cross-train. That is, in fact, more choice than being a mage and thus unable to heft anything more than 5 pounds, no matter your actual physique.

There's a difference between being able to specialize in a few skills or being medium to lots of skill and just do perfectly everything in every category. For example, in Morrowind, I could be a mage with heavy armor, but in that case, maybe there's some magic skill I wouldn't know much about. Or maybe a warrior that knew how to lockpick, but barely to repair his armor.

And the weight system is nearly the same, but with stamina instead of force/endurance.

By the logic you've presented, sure you can chose a few lines of dialogue in other games, but all that does is play a different .bik file for the ending cutscene. Sure you can hire different RPC's, but all that does is alter the stats of your party. "Aesthetic" things, like everyone in town talking to you differently and the ruler being a different person with a different face and a different voice and a different attitude, seem like a big deal to me. All the guards wearing different uniforms is a lot more than you'd get from most games.

So be it. You prefer eye candy, while I prefer consequences for a RPG.

GandalfxElrond = Love

Sorry- his body isn't immortal. Him reincarnating in a different body I'd still count as him losing the round.

If someone could regrow his legs and arms, would he be amputated if he lost one ?

Gandalf isn't actually immortal hence him being wrecked by a Balrog.

Well, he's a Maiar, so he's pretty much immortal until the end of the Middle Earth world.

And somehow Skyrim has less choices than, say, a turn-based RPG with pregenerated characters and a railroad plot? In my opinion, it's not the mechanics, but the ability to immerse oneself in another world, to "play a role." In Skyrim, you can make characters love or hate you by how you interact with them, wipe out the Dark Brotherhood forever or help restore their old evil glory, and rearrange the jarls through the civil war (with noticeable effects within each hold.)

There's nearly no choices in Skyrim.
Stormcloack or Imperials ? Hell, it'll be the same line of quest, and in the end, guards will have a different outfit, and there'll be some jarls with different skins. You can't refuse a quest (Thief's Guild, grrrr). You can be a warrior thief wizard assasin. You can get in every guild at once. Relations with people are simplistic as hell and have nearly no influence. He'll just have a different text to read next time you talk to him. Most quests have only 1 outcome. You can't fail a quest. You can't bargain. You can't invent new ways to make a quest, or to solve a conflict. You can't make detrimental choices.

So, yeah, compared to some RPGs, Skyrim has next to no choice.

Now, you can indeed play RP (like most games), but the game won't help you. So, no, to me, it's not a RPG.

Personally I think the easiest way to have aliens be able to understand us is to dump wikipedia on them. With thousands upon thousands of lines of text and some images for context (which they'll hopefully be able to interpret) seems like the most reliable way to give them something they can decode.

What if they can't see ? Wikipedia is pretty visual.


And well, afawk, DNA is universal, but we don't know aliens, so ...

I remember a biology teacher I had that talked about using our DNA code to communicate with aliens or something like that. As it is presumably the only universal language. I'm not sure, but I think he talked about how we sent things with our DNA code. Now I imagine a Rosetta Stone of DNA.

... it's a bit of blurry memory said like that.