Giant Bomb's Game of the Year Thread: Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skyrim? Skylanders!
- Thread starter The Dutch Slayer
- Start date
EmCeeGramr
Member
You know, I like Skyrim. Something about the setting and concept.
But the quest design, characters, writing, and melee combat range from mediocre to fucking terrible.
Twice I had to go through murder mystery quests where my sneaky thief character discovered the culprit before the quest proper started, and I was never allowed to use this information because Bethesda wanted me to play junior detective in dull "talk to this person" quests.
Nearly every time a character repulses me and I want to stab them in the face and/or neck, there's a 90% chance that they're part of a faction sidequest and Bethesda couldn't figure out how to make it work without making a third of Skyrim into immortal demigods who fall over and recharge their mutant healing factor once fatally wounded.
Coming off of New Vegas, the generic writing, dull characters, barebones conversations, and complete illusion of "freedom" (the much-touted freedom consists of choosing which map icon to go to next and little else) regarding quests and factions feel really disappointing.
I'll finish the game (i.e., the main storyline and the one faction I feel like doing), but when the game disappoints it disappoints hard.
But the quest design, characters, writing, and melee combat range from mediocre to fucking terrible.
Twice I had to go through murder mystery quests where my sneaky thief character discovered the culprit before the quest proper started, and I was never allowed to use this information because Bethesda wanted me to play junior detective in dull "talk to this person" quests.
Nearly every time a character repulses me and I want to stab them in the face and/or neck, there's a 90% chance that they're part of a faction sidequest and Bethesda couldn't figure out how to make it work without making a third of Skyrim into immortal demigods who fall over and recharge their mutant healing factor once fatally wounded.
Coming off of New Vegas, the generic writing, dull characters, barebones conversations, and complete illusion of "freedom" (the much-touted freedom consists of choosing which map icon to go to next and little else) regarding quests and factions feel really disappointing.
I'll finish the game (i.e., the main storyline and the one faction I feel like doing), but when the game disappoints it disappoints hard.
Slamtastic
Member
Patrick's Rayman love is annoying.
Looking at this list, there's a lot of shootin' and killin', so why don't we give this game a free spot for being different in tone!
Looking at this list, there's a lot of shootin' and killin', so why don't we give this game a free spot for being different in tone!
The thing I find the most ridiculous is when they say that the PS3 version isn't going to be in the GOTY lists. Oh this is just a major flaw with the game so we are going to ignore it. The games should be viewed as a whole. It's not a review of each version it's Game of the Year. And when the Game of the Year doesn't work on a platform it was released on it should be taken into consideration. I'd accept that from RPS or a 360 exclusive site but from Giant Bomb, a site aimed at all platforms, it just sucks.
Well its not like its unwarranted, Rayman is a fucking great game.
And I dont see why anyone would mind Patricks love for it when its being compared to Brad's outrageous dismissal of the game.
Comparing it to Bubsy, low blow man.
RomanticHeroX
Member
That was the most ridiculous moment of the podcast.
Saints Row should have won.
Brads arguments were bad, just like they were last year, and yet nobody ever seems to call him on it.
They call him on it, but no one has the energy to go 3 hrs. discussing the same thing with him because he will never back down, he will always ignore blatant flaws and make an argument for the dumbest shit. (The radiant AI? seriously?). He thinks he knows how a game works, but he has no clue, and many a QL and podcast show that about him.
I mean, I don't mind that Skyrim won at all, it's a fucking brilliant game, I mind that it basically won because they got tired of going in circles with him. Still entertaining nonetheless.
As someone that focused on Conjuration, Destruction, and Archery, I actually quite enjoyed Skyrim's combat. I ended up as a glass cannon with summons available to distract people, and I found legitimate uses for a surprising amount of spells (at least many more than I would use in, say, World of Warcraft).
That's not to say that I think the combat is great. I just wouldn't be quick to call "bleh" or "terrible."
Edit: Yeah, Brad's Bubsy/Rayman comparison (although surely intended as a joke) was bizarre and kind of uncalled for. That would be like invoking Blackwater when discussing Gears 3 or the other shooters on their list because the thing you do is shoot guys.
That's not to say that I think the combat is great. I just wouldn't be quick to call "bleh" or "terrible."
Edit: Yeah, Brad's Bubsy/Rayman comparison (although surely intended as a joke) was bizarre and kind of uncalled for. That would be like invoking Blackwater when discussing Gears 3 or the other shooters on their list because the thing you do is shoot guys.
DevelopmentArrested
Banned
Saints row 3 has garbage gameplay mechanics; glad it didn't win
EmCeeGramr
Member
remember the game informer article
new realistic dialogue sequences nothing like the gamebryo games of the past
utterly brilliant radiant quest system
*viking hillbilly stands around in alley until 3 am, slowly turns around and begins conversation before asking you to go into Draugr Barrow #00189 to fetch his sweetroll... but does it contain a more dangerous secret?????*
firehawk12
Subete no aware
If that were true, then both Saints Row and Skyrim shouldn't be on this top 10 list.
Slamtastic
Member
Nothing wrong with the list, or Rayman, just a personal thing that I thought that was a stupid plus he gave to it.
But it came down to the negatives of MK more than positives of Rayman anyway.
I should go play some online MK and remind myself of the faults so I agree with the decision.
But it came down to the negatives of MK more than positives of Rayman anyway.
I should go play some online MK and remind myself of the faults so I agree with the decision.
That's weird, because it placed so high solely because of its gameplay.
CrunchinJelly
formerly cjelly
What games have Bethesda got coming out next year?
A lot of QLEX's incoming from them, I think.
A lot of QLEX's incoming from them, I think.
Broder Salsa
Banned
Not like the combat in skyrim that has barely evolved the last 10 years is any better.
I don't get this, I thought the shooting was good, especially for an open-world game. Same with driving.
Foliorum Viridum
Banned
Yeah the new engine stuff was bollocks. It's the same crap engine with a new lick of paint.
It might look a bit prettier but it feels so much like Oblivion/F3/NV... and I don't mean in a good way. It's a dated engine.
SR3s driving is pretty damn bad. GTA4 was hugely better I think. The aiming is just as bad as GTA4, but that's not saying much, but the actual impact of combat is much weaker. That soft body physics thing GTA4 had made for a much harder hitting gun fight.
Despite all the love, it's still B-tier by comparison.
Despite all the love, it's still B-tier by comparison.
Entertaining stuff all around. I still need to listen to the four hour deliberation podcast. The disregard for Portal 2's co-op seemed strange to me though. It was a lot more interesting and innovative than anything a typical shooter did with co-op this year. My only knock against it was the lack of matching based on progress leading to disconnects once people realized they didn't want to work on the same test chamber.
The thing I fucking hate the most is a very simple issue that there is no way it didn't come up in QA: when you are engaged in conversation in a busy part of town, every passerby lumps up and speaks to you on top of the person already speaking. In Oblivion this didn't happen because yo basically zoomed into one guys face and the world around you froze. I mean, is it impossible to program an AI instruction to have NPCs just go on their way when you are already talking to someone else? They just stand there and drop the same one liners over and over until your actual dialogue tree is fucking over.
Foliorum Viridum
Banned
Woah.
Woah.
WOAH.
SR3 can be considered in GOTY 2011 talks, but let's not go crazy and even consider comparing it to GTA 4 now!
Neuromancer
Member
Can't believe Saints Row didnt win. In the end Jeff and Vinny just gave up. Skyrims a great game of course but it's such an obvious choice, I expect something different from GB than every other site out there. Also Ryan's explanation was kind of BS.
LumpOfCole
Member
Once again Brad rides the Stubborn Express to GotY victory.
Woah.
Woah.
WOAH.
SR3 can be considered in GOTY 2011 talks, but let's not go crazy and even consider comparing it to GTA 4 now!
Yeah, SR3 is actually a good game.
I thought it was too. I love Rayman and Origins more than deserves a slot, but not just "because the other games on the list are too shooty". That's a stupid way to go about it. Likewise, the way they determined Skyrim over SR3 with the heel flip was moronic. Make the list based on your actually thinking. They shouldn't cave into Brad. :\
Spirit of Jazz
Banned
Yet clearly your haughty response added so much to the debate? My issue was how you criticised other people for acting in a certain way when there were simply responding to a post of equally high critical validity, yet left that person off the list for some reason? If he raised specific criticisms against Saints Row I'd defend it in the appropriate manner. However instead he simply said it was shit in two areas, implying that a game that was worst in those two areas was a better choice for game of the year.
In short you're calling people out for blanket criticism when their posts were simply there as responses to blanket criticism that you utterly ignored. Which is bullshit in my opinion.
To Elaborate on my issues with Skyrim:
I found the combat to be dull next to action games whilst also lacking the kind of depth you'd see in a tactical RPG. You could deal with every enemy in an identical way and thanks to the ability to gulp down as many health potions as you liked (which felt like cheating to me), there was never any risk to any situation. To an extent it felt like the system was there to support exploits (hiding behind corners to summon repeatedly or potion gulping) as opposed to making the player work out the systems of the game because the depth wasn't there (not expanding my abilities in meelee combat, just buffing my stats).
The whole game to me was simply summoning my shit then running up to dudes and hitting them with my sword. I'd occasionally lockpick, cast soul trap so I could enchant or press a on yes options in dialogue to move a quest forward. However ultimately the majority of the game was my going through this uninteresting combat system.
It's hard to critique the voice-work beyond saying that it was of poor quality and there were far too few voice actors doing identical voices for different characters.
I felt a lot of the time the writing was too cliché fantasy and made a lot of the character interaction awkward. In fact most of what NPCs said took me out of the world, having a guard say "You should join the mage college in Winter-fold" for the 100th when I'm the mother fucking arch mage of the college was annoying as hell. That brings me to my main issues with the writing, which is it really felt uninspired and lazy. All the guild quests result in situations where the leader dies and you having to take there place (as opposed to veteran members which would make more sense), then they don't actually do anything with that. Either make the quests/writing in them interesting, have me being a guild leader make some impact in the world as a whole, or give me an awesome ability based on the guild I'm now leading. Hell, with the thieves guild they give you a semi-decent reward being the leader with the master key and then take it away from you.
It's a game where there's a dense amount of content and you can do anything. However everything you do is the exact same thing you did before it, and to the world itself it means nothing. It's like you're playing an MMORPG without the other people to interact with and the meaningful end-game content based on the combat system.
Edit: My apologies for this poorly worded, and formatted post of my criticisms but it's what you asked for.
Foliorum Viridum
Banned
Let me ask you a question: do you like science?Yeah, SR3 is actually a good game.
Yes? Good, because I'm about to science you away.
Saints Row 3 was Giantbomb.com's #2 game of the year.
Grand Theft Auto IV was Giantbomb.com's #1 game of the year.
Thus, GTA 4 is the better game, and of course one of the greatest games of all-time (scientific source: my brain).
Science.
Sidenote: look at how far they've come since 2008. Amazing.
That was a fucking heated debate, interesting to listen to. I'm glad Skyrim grabbed it in the end by a hair, but this is the first year where I've actually liked both games that they ended up debating between.
SR3 is fantastic, even if the over-the-topness gets tiresome after a while, still fun to play.
One thing I've noticed about these kinds of debates though, is that after a while, they really started to scrape the bottom of the barrel when looking for flaws in both games. Almost to the point where it seemed like they just started taking facts about the games and tried to spin them to make them sound bad, to the point where they completely break the experience somehow. "In Skyrim you, like, fight a lot of ice guys and I don't like that" "Yeah, well, in Saints Row 3 you shoot a lot of guys but not for very long, what a piece of shit."
I was starting to laugh at both side's arguments against the other side's game towards the end, you could definitely tell the debate was just starting to wear them all out. I think overall this was definitely their best GotY week yet, the FMV top 10 lists were awesome.
SR3 is fantastic, even if the over-the-topness gets tiresome after a while, still fun to play.
One thing I've noticed about these kinds of debates though, is that after a while, they really started to scrape the bottom of the barrel when looking for flaws in both games. Almost to the point where it seemed like they just started taking facts about the games and tried to spin them to make them sound bad, to the point where they completely break the experience somehow. "In Skyrim you, like, fight a lot of ice guys and I don't like that" "Yeah, well, in Saints Row 3 you shoot a lot of guys but not for very long, what a piece of shit."
I was starting to laugh at both side's arguments against the other side's game towards the end, you could definitely tell the debate was just starting to wear them all out. I think overall this was definitely their best GotY week yet, the FMV top 10 lists were awesome.
I think you're missing the point in that just because someone else made a terrible post doesn't mean you should do the same in response. Sorry I didn't specifically quote that other poster? It doesn't make your original post any less hyperbolic though, just because it was in response to another bad post. If you had made this kind of post earlier, didn't even have to be as detailed, but something more than a blanket statement, I wouldn't have picked out your quote.
I can get behind you on the melee combat in this game, it's not really anything special, average at best I'd say. First person melee combat in general though has never really been that satisfying, the best implementation of it is probably Dead Islands analog combat and even that could use some work still. I think where Skyrim's combat excels is in the sheer variety of combat options they give you. You can sneak and slit everyone's throat in one silent blow, sit atop a hill and snipe out every single enemy from miles away with a bow, summon demons to do your fighting for you, blow people 10 feet back with fireballs to the face, or even make them turn against each other, and the shouts add some great options for every playstyle; FUS RO DAH off a cliff never gets boring. Pure melee combat is probably the least interesting combat option in that game and it's a shame that they couldn't think of a way to make it more interesting but it's serviceable. I've played the game first with a pure mage character and second as an archer who uses a dagger to slit throats in tight spaces, and I think those combat options are done well, I would even call them good. It's only really the melee combat that I would call mediocre or average.
On the voice acting I mean, there is only so much you can do. They had over 70 voice actors for this game, but when you have several hundred NPCs obviously you have to reuse some voices. It's noticeable but there are enough voices that it isn't immersion shattering like Oblivion, where every member of a certain race sounded the exact same. I'll give you that not all of the voice acting is astounding (the court wizard of Whiterun in particular jumped out to me as pretty bad) but there are some pretty well done characters. Astrid, Brynjolf, Cicero etc. All stick out to me.
The guild quests and how you pretty much always end up as the leader of that organization, and how that really results in nothing but a title most of the time is one of my big issues with the game. I'm with you 100% on that. The actual writing though I didn't really have many issues with. A lot of it is extremely well done, for example I absolutely loved; Dark Brotherhood spoilers
After Cicero tries to kill Astrid and leaves the sanctuary and you go to his room and find all his journals, if you read through them you get an excellent backstory of how the DBH fell from glory and the slow deterioration of Cicero's own mental state. It was fascinating and really gave me a great appreciation for his character
I think Skyrim is a game where a lot of the time you make your own fun. They put you into this world and say, "Hey just..go do whatever" and maybe not everyone can appreciate that style.
WrenchNinja
Member
Listening to the bombcast now.
I'm at the part where Brad calls Rayman shallower than Renegade Ops. lol
EDIT: Ha, several minutes of dead air huh?
I'm at the part where Brad calls Rayman shallower than Renegade Ops. lol
EDIT: Ha, several minutes of dead air huh?
StopMakingSense
Member
lol OGG files.
The Xtortionist
Member
Sucks about the Rayman hate. That's the only game I've played this year where I can honestly say I had zero complaints about anything, big or small. I think my GotY goes to Arkham City though.
cuevas. PhD.
Member
Wall of texts for what? Come on guys, video games and giant bomb are just for fun.
Yeah, Brad's defense of Skyrim was annoying, but at the end it did come down to a vote, and Ryan's vote pushed it to Skyrim. Brad refused to change his mind about #1 game, but so did everyone else but Ryan.
To be completely fair to Brad, he didn't get his favorite game last year, which was Red Dead. Although he did get Minerva's den.
Don't understand why Ryan didn't bother to argue and it was left to Jeff and Vinny to argue for SR3. SR3 deserves it over Skyrim. Although I was pleasantly surprised to see Witcher 2 get some respect and make it to #6.
Don't understand why Ryan didn't bother to argue and it was left to Jeff and Vinny to argue for SR3. SR3 deserves it over Skyrim. Although I was pleasantly surprised to see Witcher 2 get some respect and make it to #6.
oh? Does #1 get a new car or something?
WrenchNinja
Member
Brad: I say we cut Arkham City.
Jeff: C'mon son.
I was drinking some water and literally just did a spittake.
Jeff: C'mon son.
I was drinking some water and literally just did a spittake.
I hate to say it, but I had this feeling that Ryan and Patrick both had this weird sort of trepidation in saying anything in Saints' Row's favor because they felt it would be "silly" to argue for it. It's like "yeah, I really love it, but I mean... we CAN'T give that game of the year, right? That's not serious enough."
Whereas Jeff and Vinny clearly don't give a fuck about whether people think it's dumb to give it to Saints Row, because they honestly felt it was the best game. If you have a problem with that, well, then you have a problem with that, not them.
Again, really disappointing. Every argument sent by Brad SR's way could be said about Skyrim, double-fold.
Bad combat? Worse in Skyrim. First-person melee sucks.
Empty world? What, are you calling that a feature in Skyrim?
Glitchy? Did you really just say that?
Bad writing? I used to think Skyrim had good writing, until I took an arrow in the knee.
Dark Schala
Eloquent Princess
I don't think you fully appreciate the seriousness of video games, my good man.
I'm there right now...haha, so funny. I liked when Brad said SR3 just to get their reaction. lol
Which is what was so "troublesome" about it. It's his favorite game of the year, and he didn't argue in its favor for even a second. I think the first words out of his mouth during the final discussion with about 55 minutes left was "yeah, I agree with Brad." WHAT? And then he left the room later too.
Jeff made the best argument and it's a shame no one considered it. This is "Giant Bomb's GOTY," and if Giant Bomb were to be a video game, it would be Saints Row. I don't even like Saints Row that much, but it seemed pretty clear to me that that game should be the pick for the site. Not for Brad, or for Patrick, but the editors as a group.