I don’t think it’s just because it’s weird. It’s because it’s weird and immersive. Part of what makes it so immersive is that there’s no modern fast travel. There are in game fast travel options but they can only get you to major settlements, or fortresses that you’ve found and cleared, or whatever point you’ve marked that you can use the recall spell to. Beyond that your on your own two feet. You want to get to the Urshilaku camp? Better start walking because you can’t fast travel there. And at the start of the game you’re slow as fuck. I still remember it being quite an adventure to get from Seyda Neen to Balmora on foot.
And that’s to not even mention the quests. I don’t wish the for the Morrowind style journal, but the quests didn’t have a huge waypoint telling you exactly where to go. If you wanted to know where you had to go you had to listen to the directions you were given and then actually try to follow them. One of my more memorable side quests from Morrowind was where I misunderstood the directions, took the wrong left turn and kept searching for a farm almost all the way to Caldera. The actual farm was pretty much just around the corner had I taken the right turn. I don’t even remember what the quest itself was about. I only remember getting lost.
Dojan@pawb.social 17 hours ago
I wouldn’t say that Oblivion or Skyrim has much better gameplay, honestly. Yeah the weird dice-roll mechanic is gone, not that dice rolls necessarily make for a bad game (see the entire Baldur’s Gate franchise, including the latest installment) but the combat in Oblivion and Skyrim isn’t exactly good. It’s floaty and feels really weird.
Oblivion retains more of Morrowinds roleplay mechanics, too. Skyrim is just a flat, empty game. They leant really far into this garbage faux viking aesthetic, complete with rubbish accents (as a Swede, we don’t sound like that here in the Nordics) and there’s nothing really memorable about it. It plays and feels about as drab as it looks.
Like to-date, there are still aspects of Oblivion and Morrowind I recall fondly. One of my favourite wow-moments in Oblivion was the quest with the woman who tasked you with finding her painter husband. That’s a fun quest. Skyrim has nothing like that.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 17 hours ago
If you want a better viking game with much better Nordic sounding accents, Banner Saga is out there. Though there is only like 10 minutes of voice acting per game - but what is there is good! They used an Icelandic VA studio to make sure it’s authentic.
The best swedish accent I ever heard was that one blonde knight in Witcher 3 - Blood & Wine. Which is funny as I don’t think it makes sense for the setting at all, but accent voice direction in that whole expansion is a complete clusterfuck with zero consistency.
Dojan@pawb.social 17 hours ago
The best Swedish accent I’ve heard was the Russian gangster father of Alfie Allen in the first John Wick film. Makes sense given that the actor, Michael Nyqvist was Swedish.
Skyrim’s NPCs sound and act like they’ve been lobotomised.
Coelacanth@feddit.nu 17 hours ago
I meant in video games, of course. In films there are a ton of examples. I usually go for Ingrid Bergman’s accent in the Murder on the Orient Express movie, although that one - while accurate - is slightly exaggerated for effect, I think.