Submitted 17 hours ago by shiroininja@lemmy.world to games@lemmy.world
https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/97f5f812-ee91-4f29-b375-d0873f867aa6.jpeg
Can someone explain the appeal to these games to me?
I did play several hours of Skyrim with some mods last year but the combat felt clunky, the loot felt like a pain in the ass to manage, and there didn’t really seem to be a good story and the world felt a bit hollow.
I do realize their age, of course, and this is an unfair comparison but I had a much greater time with Elden ring and the Witcher 3. Both those games are so dense with vast beautiful worlds.
The appeal is that these games were made well before Elden Ring and Witcher 3; before ‘open world’ was mainstream. Every single NPCs had daily routines, quests were dynamically generated, and what you do in the game had consequences beyond pissing one character off. This made triggering specific quests or events difficult if you were just going ‘off the hip’, and made replayability a big feature. Because of these systems, there were several interesting “game breaking” issues, but these things were charming in their own right due to how new all these systems were put together with almost nothing like it.
In retrospect, not all the “game breaking” issues were truly understood at the time, and most are a consequence of several factors - the most common being that some quests activate behind the scenes and prevent other quests from starting, even if you haven’t picked them up and added them to your journal. So it is possible to do mostly everything in the game with careful planning. But at the time, it really did seem like each playthrough was unique.
It is/was also highly moddable for its time. While it took a long time to detail every aspect of the game, today there is nothing mods can’t do. Even Witcher 3 mods can’t do a bunch of things that Skyrim mods can. And it’s a good gateway into learning how to mod, and modding can be just as fun as playing. Some mod guides are so long it takes days or weeks to implement. It can get quite insane, with some people maintaining multiple ‘mod versions’: one to play (most playthroughs won’t let you add/remove mods mid-play), one to test new stuff, and one to keep up-to-date with whatever mod guide/group they are following (you know, for fun…and the next playthrough).
But mostly it’s nostalgia, like how some people like older Zelda or Final Fantasy games. Or how you might play that pointless cozy game you played a million times because it connects you to something deeper to what was going on at that time. We know TES games are pretty bad in a lot of regards, but graphics, gameplay, or story isn’t what we are after. Hell, there are now adults booting up Minecraft because it’s just the game they grew up with.
Nostalgia is a hard drug. I replayed Pokemon Red easily 10 times over the years. I tried Pokemon Gold (an objectively much better game) probably about the same amount of times, but I could never get through it, because I didn’t play as a kid and thus have no nostalgia for it.
I have more nostalgia for Keitai Denjū Telefang, which I played in bootlegged form mis-labelled as Pokemon Diamond (that was before the real Pokemon Diamond was released), and even though this bootleg is horrible in quality, it’s easier for me to play than Pokemon Gold.
It’s not for me either, but i guess not being strung along by the main story line and instead being able to just go anywhere and do whatever is appealing to people who just want to immerse themselves in the games world.
You sleep rather soundly for a slanderer.
It’s too bad Remaster lost all the mushy colours vibe OG Oblivion had…
Time to level acrobatics:
Why a pen?
A weed pen
Try a dmt vape instead. Makes the graphics look much nicer.
Taking notes on those weird little puzzles
Or, because it’ll hurt more, you twit.
What are you writing on-- oh different kind of pen lmao
LOL my brain
you can also stir it with a finger
Perfect Saturday morning!
Indeed
What game is this?
Oblivion
Thanks! It’s lovely!
Harvey656@lemmy.world 3 hours ago
Pen, pineapple, apple, coffee.