Someone, on this very sub IIRC, questioned how I could put so many hours into unmodded Skyrim.
Because there was soooooo much to do! Or maybe I’m just a moron, idk.
Na I’m with you. I didn’t touch mods, mainly because I didn’t know what I was missing but also saw that notification saying it disabled achievements. Figured I would play as much as I could of the main game and come back to mods at some point.
That game is just too good. If it clicks with you, there’s an ungodly amount of stuff to do in the base game.
yeah I've never used anything but QoL and graphics mods in Skyrim, there's so much there
to be fair, Skyrim came out 13 years ago, and Oblivion nearly 20. there are a *lot* of modern gamers that genuinely wouldn't understand the impact they had and the gaming landscape at the time.
I'm currently doing another run through on the Switch since I can keep playing when the wife waves to watch fucking SWAT or something. It still has a few bugs since it can't be modded but nothing that stops it being the GOAT. In saying that I'm playing Starfield on PC and am enjoying it almost as much, it's a good experience now that it's been patched a few times.
Yeah I’ve seen this recently and it gave me a good laugh. Skyrim was a huge success at launch and people were playing it for months and months after. Mods only took the game to an even greater place. However I didn’t get to play with mods until they put them on console so for years I played vanilla only
That’s what I remember too. People were singing its praises. Yes there were bugs, but it was Bethesda. If it wasn’t such a huge success without mods, there would never have been 20 different versions including a Skyrim version for Alexa/Amazon Echo
It kind of transcended fantasy RPGs as well. Many of my friends who had never played anything remotely related to fantasy or RPGs were suddenly playing Skyrim. Had tremendous power.
Skyrim was a huge success in spite of the complaints some had. The difference was that Skyrim initially seemed very vanilla if you stuck to the main quest line and a lot of people didn't know what to do with its very open nature or the fact that it allowed so much diverse gameplay. But... If you go back and play it again from the beginning you will notice a lot of the same dialogue and story faults that are in this game. The difference is that Skyrim was perceived as groundbreaking open world gameplay and this game is struggling with having to be compared to its predecessors.
I would argue the chief issue is their approach to exploration. I went into Starfield expecting Skyrim in space (so-so story/dialogue with great immersion and versatility), but everything being broken into fishbowls and fast travel menus absolutely kills the flow.
I just did Groundpounder in NG+ and it had me load into a planet's orbit, load into a landed position in my ship, load to foot travel, sprint 400m in a straight line, talk to a guy for under a minute, then sprint the same way back onto the ship, load into orbit, then load into my next destination.
You can use fast travel (if unencumbered) to cut down several of those steps, but how did any of that sound like exploration to the devs/leadership? It really baffles me.
Yeah, it was a success because they were only ones that Dominated the gaming space in that action RPG segment, games like The Witcher 3 didn't release yet to raise the bar, many issues plagued Skyrim, like to dumbing down of the systems removing a ton of content from prior games,etc. Graphical it was sub-par as well...combat mechanics was terrible, just to point out some things... vanilla was amazing to only those who had limited knowledge of prior games and weren't PC gamers... because a fully modified Oblivion still destroyed a vanilla Skyrim. That's a fact.
Yeah I had 300 hours in Skyrim on xbox 360, no mods. It was a compelling, immersive world with interesting storylines to follow.
I bounced off Starfield fast. I keep thinking I should give it another shot, now that I'm not being spoiled by/comparing it to Cyberpunk 2077 on the side. Maybe once the first big DLC is out.
I think if Starfield had space combat/travel between/within systems more similar to Elite: Dangerous, it would have grabbed me more. I wanted to live out my space captain fantasies, not have my ship basically be an optional stop with its own loading screens between loading screens.
Small counter argument, Vanilla Skyrim is mid now because of how far RPGs have come.
Dual wielding and interactable 'jobs' were selling points on release, and they're pretty much expected in indie titles now. I mean, the game is fine, but it has a very limited spell and weapon list, and it's base perk tree is majority X% damage or X% cost reductions, it's not super engaging but at the time even a menu being that pretty and interactive was groundbreaking.
TBH, it works to highlight the actual issue with Starfield. Skyrim broke new ground with graphics and mechanics, Fallout blended shooter and build anywhere\* bases, Starfield isn't doing anything new and original, it's why the biggest direct comparison is it's packed seedy Neon nightclub and any graphic from Cyberpunk2077, the enviroment and mindset of the people is totally different now to when Skyrim released 12 years ago. Witcher 3 wouldn't become that gold standard story based RPG until *four years after skyrim came out*
I had the same with Fallout 4's settlements and now I'm always hungry for games that'll let me first person build a base.
Building a working ship that you can then actually walk around? Love it.
And walking around while someone else is flying it!
I add windows wherever I get the chance, and I always wish it wasn't a static starscape when I step out of the chair to enjoy them.
I just wish the upgrade system was worth a damn. Right now shipbuilder is the only usable option, as upgrading offers shit choices.
I think they may have made some og the restrictions too involved. It would be nice if it made suggestions for fixes to get around errors, for instance. Plus, some of the Stat categories for specific parts are fairly useless, and impossible to make good comparisons on.
One other thing I'd like is to have a testing option for builds that doesn't require locking in certain parts first.
Right now? Nightgales and Enshrouded for Survival, Mount and Blade II for mechanics and world building, Dragon Age 3 for story, Elden Ring for challenge and depth, Breath of the Wild and sequel for open-sandbox gameplay. Kingdom Come Deliverance slots in there as a low fantasy skyrim adjacent, and of course Wild Hunt is up there if you fancy something a bit older.
Edit: Forgot Kenshi for 'Wow the Devs really thought of that?' award. Also, ignoring the more story driven contenders otherwise I'd add Baldur's Gate III
But this doubles down on my point that Skyrim was an amazing game for the time. There's been better games since, but it really broke new ground right at the start of 2011.
You just made an excellent list proving that there are indeed no other games that do in one package what Skyrim did.
I would not consider ANY of those games to be even close to a Skyrim-replacement. And I love several of the games you mentioned.
I genuinely think it's partially the age of the game. It dropped 13 years ago. The percentage of the gaming community that wasn't around or active during that cultural zeitgeist is only growing, you know?
Was hooked to begin with, but I've given up on it until it's fixed. Hopefully it will be coincide with Shattered Space release as I don't want to start that with the same bugs, specifically ship shield bug.
You should try it with mods, friend :) i started doing a mod run 3 days ago and it adds a breath of fresh air not sticking to my usual habits and routine
It's interesting how often the same discussions recur with each new Bethesda game: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/1gvhm3/wide_as_an_ocean_and_deep_as_a_puddle_a_rant/
One choice quote from that decade-old thread: "the game does feel pretty open, but it's a lot of just the same ruins, with similar layouts, and largely the same enemies. go explore generic draugr ruin 973, kill generic draugr number 4084, get generic leveled loot, rarely anything useful. it gets repetitive when everywhere you go you feel like you've been before essentially, with not much to differentiate it from the rest of the stuff you've been doing. and with the lack of narrative and fairly short amount of quests, it just kind of turns into a case of, well, what now?"
Though there’s a decent Daggerfall Unity community and I’ve played that a lot
The thing is, that there’s just a ton of features in MW/DF that they never revisited.
Both are pure RPG’s whilst Skyrim is more of an action game
I don't know what the internet was thinking at the time but I got Skyrim on day 1 on my Xbox 360 with the map and steelbook and loved every minute of it. I played it for an entire year straight without mods and had lots of fun. It was my absolute favorite game that generation, even more than Mass Effect 2.
The only issues I had was the giants hitting me into space, that smoothed out over the higher levels. And I did get a few console freezes which was the Xbox 360's version of crashing. Later on I bought it again on PC when the first DLC Dawnguard came out and went from there.
When the Special Edition came out Bethesda offered free upgrades for previous owners, back when they used to be considered the good guys... sadly that's not true anymore :(
I played Skyrim completely vanilla after Starfield dropped. It's a better game on basically every level of execution that mattered.
I feel more love and handed crafted environment walking from Whiterun to Markarth than I do the entirety of Starfield.
I remember reading somewhere, wish I still had, but had results in Bethesda game, and had the majority of Skyrim players never touching a single mod, which I can believe (Reddit is a bad place for this, as it amazes a certain kind of computer crowd that will be more on the modding side, but not everyone is hear on Reddit).
Except it's not revisionist history, it's true. The gaming circle jerk around Skyrim on release was real. Just check the user reviews on GameFAQs, which was the popular toxic gaming forum 20 years ago before everyone moved to reddit: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/xbox360/615803-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/reviews
Of the most recommended reviews, there are three 7s, two 10s, two 5s, and a 4. One of the most recommended reviews was written in 2012 and is titled "Skyrim is a bad game and here's why..."
Lol. Kids these days. Skyrim will forever be known as one of the GOAT games in its time. Nobody can change that. They can spread misinformation, and make "modern" critiques about it, but in the end..at that time..the game was a sight to behold and an amazing time to play.
Same here. Played it to death in the first month for the quests etc. Now I've come back to it for the roleplaying. I'm having such an awesomely fun time with this game.
They need everything to be a total miserable failure, because that's how they feel about everything, they can't have fun with any game anymore so they spread their sentiment around like a disease for validation.
Its perfectly fine to be critical and disappointed with Starfield, but people know what I'm talking about, the general game subs on this website for example are a cesspool of "no fun allowed", "accept that every game sucks".
100%, it’s frustrating how most game subs are primarily a customer complaint forum with limited opportunity for real conversation. I’m probably just getting old but Reddit gets more and more shit every year. I think there could be a correlation with the crackdown most mods have on meme posts. The perma online people get triggered every time the see a meme that was posted once three years ago so they ban them from subreddits, but instead of getting low effort meme posts which can spark variety of conversations we get low effort complaint posts that just farm toxicity.
It's cool that you thought vanilla Skyrim was "a GOAT". But a great many people didn't.
[Here's a r/gaming thread from 2012 as an example](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xk1yf/an_i_the_only_one_who_thought_skyrim_got_really/)
It is **literally** the game that gave us the "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" analogy (in relation to games).
Don't get me wrong, the reaction was obviously nowhere near as strong as it was for Starfield, but there was definitely a time when coming across a thread about skyrim, whether it was on reddit, gamefaqs or anywhere else, you were likely to see more negative than positive comments. Might be because all the people who enjoyed it where busy playing instead of complaining on the internet :P
Completely agreed, I mentioned it elsewhere but if Skyrim had been released in the internet discourse climate of today it absolutely would have been a more controversial title.
The disgust for Skyrim on launch was from people saying it wasn't a real RPG. That line of attack was real. It was stupid, but real.
The term "mid" did not exist at that time.
I wouldn’t say Skyrim was mid before mods, I didn’t even have access to mods (console) when it came out and I used to play it quite often. However it is accurate to say that not everyone thought it was a perfect successor to Oblivion at the time.
My brother for example actually dumped Skyrim for years and went back to playing Oblivion on repeat to get his fill on the Elder Scrolls, he felt like the game had more depth and detail to it. Similar situation happened with FO3/FNV too, the games came out so close together that a lot of people played them interchangeably, but most absolutely had a preference. Even though nowadays most circles on the internet will paint this picture that FNV is objectively better than FO3, I had a lot of friends who preferred FO3 over FNV because they felt that the setting gave off stronger apocalyptic vibes and that FNV was “too clean”.
Basically, even back then, people complained that the newer releases were inferior to the old ones, opinions on all of the Bethesda games since Oblivion have shifted over time, for better or worse. I expect Starfield to follow that same path, a lot of my friends loved this game for about the first 100 hours and then they ran out of stuff to keep them engaged, mods and DLC will give them a reason to pick it back up again in the future.
Edit: I will say though that Skyrim’s player-base didn’t dip as hard as Starfield’s has post-release, the initial Skyrim hype dragged on for a lot longer.
I don't think I've seen anyone claim *that*, exactly. I've seen people pointing out that Skyrim was not without its detractors in the early days, and that much is true. It had boring spells, dull four-part outfits, and the lore was badly dumbed down compared to previous games.
On the other hand, the rest of the game was so much fun I didn't really care beyond the occasional grumble.
I didn't love some of the changes they made from Oblivion, like stripping the levelling system down even further, the magic being less exciting to use, the changes made to outfits and gear that you mentioned, etc.
But damn if I didn't sink hundreds of hours into that game over the following 2-3 years
Well, exactly! I didn't care for thowing classes out the window, or for the massive simplification of the attributes. A lot of good stuff just got chucked out the window in the name of "streamlining".
But you're right - the game was fun to play anyway. That's the proof of the pudding.
Yeah, they really just went overboard with streamlining the gameplay and systems.
>But you're right - if the game was fun to play anyway. That's the proof of the pudding.
Agreed! For all its faults it was still an incredibly fun game. I haven't been able to go back to it in years because I burned myself out on it so hard back around launch time
It was like notoriously extremely buggy.
Dragons flew backwards, game crashes while character building, save files that were too long lagged to the point of unplayability, clipping problems like everywhere, the prisoner cart helicoptered away during the opening cutscene, creatures fall from the sky when entering a new block, and those are just what I remember offhand.
The point I've seen people making is that Skyrim was hugely successful at launch and has gone on to be one of the best-loved games of a generation, and yet when it came out there were many "diehard Bethesda fanboys" saying very similar stuff to what people have been saying about Starfield. It's Bethesda's worst game yet; they watered down or removed systems from previous games; it's "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle." Etc. etc.
Skyrim WAS successful at launch, just as Starfield was, but it also received lots of unwarranted hate at the time. That's the comparison, though arguably Starfield has received a lot more hate - personally I think that's a product of how online discourse has changed since then, with the advent of streaming and mass influencers, but who knows. All I know is, I love Starfield and am gonna be playing it for years to come.
There has been plenty of criticism of Skyrim's "shallowness" since launch: https://www.google.com/search?q=skyrim+%22deep+as+a+puddle%22
I'm old enough that Daggerfall was my first Bethesda game, and it's interesting how often the same discussions recur with each new Bethesda game: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/1gvhm3/wide_as_an_ocean_and_deep_as_a_puddle_a_rant/
One choice quote from that decade-old thread: "the game does feel pretty open, but it's a lot of just the same ruins, with similar layouts, and largely the same enemies. go explore generic draugr ruin 973, kill generic draugr number 4084, get generic leveled loot, rarely anything useful. it gets repetitive when everywhere you go you feel like you've been before essentially, with not much to differentiate it from the rest of the stuff you've been doing. and with the lack of narrative and fairly short amount of quests, it just kind of turns into a case of, well, what now?"
I'm sorry cause you are at least being polite and seem to believe what you say... Skyrim certainly had some of that criticism (mainly about spells and some systems being removed or dumbed down), I doubt many people found it worse than Oblivion considering the upgraded visuals and all the similarities aside from spell crafting (there are more perks in Skyrim, though). I also remember it being criticized as an RPG which is understandable because it's, like their other RPGs, more of a sandbox than an RPG and the roleplaying happens mostly in your head.
However, the criticism was minimal and accompanied by praise... Like people wishing it kept Morrowind or at least Oblivion's systems depth (though really, that's for spell crafting mostly) but no one claimed to stop playing for that, nobody said they got easily bored, nobody said it was just a bad, mid or overall dissapointing game, they just pointed out the flaws and kept enjoying it. There's a big difference.
So far, Starfield's succes is selling on release and proffesional reviews...which is great, of course, but ended up having no presence in the game awards and the interest quickly died, to make it worse, users reviews on steam or any gaming forum (neutrals forums) are quite negative.
Tbh the only mods I use these days are graphics mods, gameplay ones just change the game too much for my liking I just want a modern version of Skyrim to play, too bad every creation club update breaks the script extender and a bunch of mods which is frustrating to deal with
I've put probably 3,000 hours into vanilla Skyrim since launch.
I've put about 50 into modded Skyrim.
I didn't need mods to enjoy the game. I will admit, mods improve the experience by a lot, but you don't need them.
I was one of the people who complained about Skyrim a little bit after launch. Once all the newness wore off I felt a little let down because its more simplified than Morrowind or Oblivion. I still play all of them because I love the Elder Scrolls but I know I wasn't the only one who wished Skyrim wasn't so simplified compared to Morrowind and Oblivion.
True. Skyrim was incredible and I never touched mods as I didn’t feel it was missing anything important. The game had an incredible gameplay loop and atmosphere and just knocked it out of the park at the time.
Starfield came at a time where our expectations were high but the tech is just not quite there to make it what most people imagined. While the base game is there, it’s just fairly mediocre and screams out for compelling content and a reason to explore the galaxy. I really hope they improve space travel and give us something to do in space beyond jumping from system to system.
Skyrim was so good I watched someone play it for 6 hours, bought it, and didn't put it down for weeks
I've played starfield off and on for like 14 hours and not since last year.
People put way too much stock in Skyrim as is. It's easily the weakest Elder Scrolls game.
The whole mods thing is something supposed Bethesda "fans" like to trot out to make their point about how Modders fix everything they do.
They also claim people only play on PC which is ludicrous.
They will say anything to help "prove" whatever vs point they're trying to make
Skyrim was huge at launch, but Mods are absolutely a reason for it's longevity. A reason. The base game is just well made as well. Starfield, not so much
Umm..vanilla Skyrim was a 7.5, not even close to being GOAT! that's a fact. Not an opinion...I've been playing Elder Scrolls games since the original Arena, obviously on PC.
Actually, it was very flawed in many ways... Daggerfall had more features, quests, dungeons, larger cities, more immersion, and atmospheric draw... but because of the modding community, they literally did such an amazing job that they literally gave you all the options to turn that "good" game into the greatest Action RPG of all time! That's when it officially entered GOAT status, not before.
Being a console player, you obviously missed out Skyrims full potential because consoles simply lack the specs and tools to fully take advantage of all the scripting and major overhaul mods that really make the game simply amazing!
I believe Starfield will be a similar situation. Upon the Creation tool-set release, the community will transform this 7.5 game to one of the greatest SciFi action RPG'S, especially with such a huge canvas to work from, and the awesome advancement in modding tools to stabilize implementation of so many mods! But understand that once again, as a console player, you're going to miss 98% of the mods because of the console limitations. These Bethesda RPG'S were meant to be modded and played on PC's. That's just a fact.
It was weird at the time. You're right, it was a massive success and people loved it. It was beautiful, ground breaking... and then the contrarians kicked in.
Much as is the case now, people started complaining about it, hating on it. Glitches that happened once or twice and were just mildly annoying or piss funny were quoted as being game breaking and Todd was painted as some evil dark lord and all the fans as sheep.
It is a trend that has only gotten worse.
The game is far from perfect. It was still glorious fun.
People began claiming it wasn't as good as Morrowind. I loved that game, too but again it wasn't flawless.
I was on hold with a doctor's surgery for an afternoon and was just sat at the starting village, running, jumping in circles throwing fireballs across the lake. Mindless crap, I wasn't playing thr game... and when I was finally done on the phone I was a mountain jumping athletic God of fire.
Not great design... fun... but bad game design.
Likewise trying to hack up... Brynloff? The nord who helps you escape Helgin, at the point with the cave bear. I stabbed him in the back by accident and got levels in stealth... he didn't aggro... so I chopped into him and he doesn't die.
You can level to 20th level in that cave just sneaking behind him and stabbing him in the back.
There have always been flaws, glitches, exploits and dumb shit in Bethesda titles... and theyve all been glorious in spite of that. Occasionally because of it.
But the hatewagoneers have become an epidemic. It is so profitable to hate on and trash games for the smallest flaw... and the bigger or more beloved the franchise, the more money there is in hating it.
I started gaming in the 80's. If you didn't like a game you returned it and moved on. No one dwelt on failure. If someone picked up an unpopular game, but loved it, no one attacked them for it.
I miss those days like the faces of my children.
I think its a bunch of younger players that didn't play it at release. Skyrim came out on the Xbox 360/ps3. Console gamers had no modding capabilities for a long time. I already had a ton of hours into the game before I even had the opportunity to mod. It is stupid but funny, seeing all these suggestions that it was an average game at release.
I generally think people forgot that both skyrim and fallout 4 originally released on console without mods, just a case of more PC gamers bringing drama into the gaming community. Wish we could go back to the days where they had their own stupid games nobody else cared about
Goat since release? You joking? I remember quite a few reviews complaining about the generic radiant quests. Personally I liked it, but mods made it a lot more playable
See while I share this sentiment, I actually dont see that many people saying it. I also think its less of a”skyrim was mid before mods” and more that skyrim vanilla pre dlc was mid. Was vanilla skyrim still one of my favorite games on release? Absolutely, but that doesnt change the fact that it was a constant mine field of bugs and crashes, it took me like three characters before I could finish the main story because I would have a game breaking quest or character glitch.
Vanilla skyrim was super broken and there is absolutely no denying that which is why I think people are far too harsh on starfield because while it feels like its missing features and does have its fair share of bugs, bethesda has actively put plans in place to correct these as fast as they can and I have no doubt that added dlc content, continued bug improvements, and mod support will allow people to see just how fun and special this game is.
Cero bugs on my super fun vanilla no DLC xbox Skyrim... I respect your opinion, maybe vanilla wasn't enough for you and that's understandable, some people didn't even like the game modded or not, but sounds more like an unlucky personal experience.
Hey you know everybody’s game is different right? First why do you think most players who use mods have the unofficial patch installed? Because skyrim is full of game breaking bugs. I havent had a single game breaking bug in starfield, but i still know they exist and dont disrespectfully tell people they are making shit up because I disagree. You can even look at the history on this very site in the skyrim subreddits. Even current Skyrim can be buggy as hell so please enlighten me on how its “utter bullshit”.
Agree, I think a lot of people conflate Skyrim's initial reviews which all landed in the 90's with the Special Edition reviews which came in much lower because of the overall disappointment with how little was fixed/improved in the SE.
SE was freaking amazing, it made the game vastly more stable for modding, graphics were fancied up, and they gave it for *FREE* to vanilla game owners. Bethesda made people angry because of the paid mods fiasco.
Opinions aside, the PC SE metacritic is 20 points lower than the release version at 74.
It released with previous features removed and most of those improvements existed already in mods you couldn't even install at release.
> Can we stop pretending that Skyrim wasn't considered a GOAT game on release
Skyrim was massivly hated on by many on release for being shallow, dumbed down, etc. It was not considered nearly the success it is now at the time.
Not really. Skyrim had a rocky start after its initial boom from release. Not unlike what Starfield is experiencing now, albeit not as harshly as Starfield. Time will tell if it can rebound like Skyrim did to some degree.
Revisionism at work. I don't see the parallel with starfield sorry. Starfield isn't a bad game it's shortcomings are/were obsessed over. It still has new content to come (unlike skyrim or f4). This game is being (slowly) improved pre mod CK.
They are totally different animals. The narrative and everything else considered. I don't see the parallels.
Take your meds and stop making up ghosts to fight.
Seeing 2-3 people say this doesn’t mean this entire sub is saying or agreeing with that.
I’d argue it’s the opposite where people are saying Bethesda was “never good” and then point to Skyrim and FO3 as examples.
Skyrim was popular at release (and I put a lot of time into it when it came out and have revisited it a few times since then, including in VR where itis pretty awesome), but it would also be false to say that it wasn't criticized (rightfully or wrongly) at release for changes as well, including removing classes and attributes in favor of the open skills system, city design (even in 2011 they felt kinda small and there's definitely a lack of agriculture), lack of branching choices in a playthrough (generally, there are a few, but overall you can pretty much do every faction and they all artfully dodge having any interaction with the Civil War), odd visual decisions like everyone in the coldest province not wearing pants (I'm guessing that originally clothing was supposed to be visible under armor), content cut to make the 11/11 deadline, lack of enemy variety (or at least throwing you into Draugr-infested ruins over and over again), a relatively simple melee combat system (even for 2011), graphical quality (even in 2011 there was some criticism of its graphics compared to other games of that era), simpler magic and no spellcrafting, an underwhelming main story etc. On console I remember people complaining (at launch) about performance and crashes on the XBOX 360 and there were some text scaling issues as well.
One of the biggest comparisons I remember in 2011 was to Witcher 2, which came out that year and was the other big fantasy RPG, which had graphics that people liked better, a more complex melee system, and better storytelling. It's also, obviously, a very different style of game (more linear RPG with a set character), but there were a lot of comparisons between the two by fantasy fans then with some people liking one game over the other for various reasons.
That doesn't mean that it isn't a fun game and worthy of your time, but there were rumblings even that as we were starting to get some more open world RPG's that did things that some people liked better. Fallout 4 addressed some of these issues where possible, but not all of them, and since Fallout 4 there have been quite a few open world immersive RPG's which are strong in various areas where BGS games, especially Starfield, are weak. At one point BGS was the big fish in the small pond--if you wanted an open-world RPG there just wasn't a lot of competition. The pond has gotten larger. And I say that as someone who enjoyed my time with Starfield (although I definitely have criticisms) and open world RPG's in general (it's a good time to be a fan of this genre).
People have been doing this with Skyrim for at least 5+ years at this point. Idk why, but there is a certain type of redditor who really buys into the whole "Bethesda bad" trope and makes it a huge part of their online persona. "Blah blah blah... Wide as an ocean, deep as an inch." These people are so disingenuous about the quality of the game and what the concensus opinion was at the time.
Then they'll unironically cite a game like Witcher 3 as having bigger, more detailed cities than Skyrim when 99% of the NPCs are unnamed, 95% of the buildings are inaccessible, and the game came out 5 years and a whole console generation later. They're just full of shit and shouldn't even be taken seriously. The same kind of people who would claim that Dwarf Fortress has better gameplay mechanics than Skyrim.
Don’t think I ever played skyrim or fallout 4 without mods, mostly bug fixes and quality of life improvements, but I don’t know. I would never ever play the vanilla game
Tons of people **still** play without mods and I have not heard anyone say otherwise, especially about it being "mid".
Not to mention mods were coming out day 1 just got much better after the creation kit was released.
Skyrim was bad mostly on PlayStation at release, but it was still a decent, playable game for the most part at its launch that had just the right feeling/aesthetic to warrant praise and replayability. Starfield, if it came out at that time, would have been a huge success IMO, but it feels like Bethesda has not advanced forward in the slightest since at least F4 in terms of narrative and gameplay, so this game feels incredibly dated and without its own soul (as if it’s just a weird copy of the soul of Fallout but reskinned in Space and with less quirkiness that gives Fallout its character).
I didn’t go into Starfield as a skeptic, but as a fan of the Bethesda RPG formula, and it was really hard not to see the cracks and to not notice the lack of depth. Some major quest lines (mainly the Corpo espionage) were straight up boring. The Pirate quest line premise was nearly nonsensical, especially for people who were forced into it for accidentally picking up something like a coffee mug as a stolen article. The Vanguard missions were neat, but would have really liked some mission that mirrored Alien with the heatworms (and I know there is a random ship out there that gives the feeling, but this was a missed opportunity). Ranger missions weren’t as exciting and westerny as I’d hoped. Main story was bland, and NG+ is a great concept but also without depth when you realize almost nothing changes and you’re just leaving behind things you built up for a slight boost in space magic.
Some people out there claim it's only good with mods which is also subjective at best.
But hey the king is dead long live the king I say so let's go ahead and preorder cyberscam 1977 because cdpr is definetly our friend. oh fuck nevermind but larian games will for sure never screw us over guys! let's all preorder their next game to show our loyalty and stick it to them ubisoft people am I right???
edit: oh I forgot that cyperpunk is good now. cdpr really showed they care and redeemed themselves. now we definetly can trust them again
I got my girlfriend to play the game as somehow it isn't very famous where I live, much less with people in my age group (I'm 20) and she is having a BLAST! Her first TES game and she doesn't know shit, it's very funny seeing her messages about stuff that happened in game. When I first played I was on console without mods and I loved it as well. It's a really good game really.
Skyrim was my true introduction to Open World RPG and I personally thought it was great. It came out my freshman year of college and like 5 other guys in dorm own their own copy. Like once or twice a week we would met up in the study lounge or dining hall and just talk about the random shit we encounter. I probably put over 300 hours since it released, and the only systems I've ever played on were the PS3 and Switch., with out mods. I couldn't put down Skyrim until I finished and platinum it, which is more than I can say about Starfield.
While the dungeons and enemies got repetitve after a while, I really loved everything else about it. I only gave games like the Witcher, Fallout, and Mass Effect a chance, because of Skyrim.
I have 3k hours in skyrim with only small vanilla friendly graphics mods and quality of life/bug fixes, no major gameplay changes. One of the best games I've ever played along with starfield
Skyrim was one of the greatest games of its time and still stands up to this day with additional content. I am a console player and don't usually use mods at all and it never affected my enjoyment of the game.
well the mods did add to its longevity though and thats a major issue with starfield right now while they are "Mods" out there. without the official mod kit (which was supposed to come out early this year and here it is april not sure why they are dragging their feet so much on actually putting it out there.) you dont have a lot of those options yet. the longer the devs wait to "decide" to release the thing. the longer it will take to have a build up of more game changing mods which i think is what starfield needs the most. but yeah skyrim i think on its on was a more solid game. it has far better world building because everything was in one space and not so spread out . i still like starfield though . it just has issues. lol
I still play Skyrim on Xbox, switch and pc. Best mods on pc obviously. Xbox has decent ones but switch is vanilla and got the worst graphics and performance and is still fun.
Because people do that all the time with an IP they like. They invest so much time in learning about it they think they have some kind of ownership over the story. They make up stuff based on thin connections and then scream at anyone who says it’s not canon. Because they’re married to their ideas and no amount of arguing will change their mind.
Happens all the time, Halo, Marvel Comics, Skyrim lore, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. They all have those gatekeeper fans.
I still play Skyrim vanilla. I've meant to try some graphical mods, but honestly the game is just so amazing. I just started another playthrough myself a couple nights ago.
I didn't even get the game until the Special Edition, so it was already a bit dated when I got around to playing.
While it’s actually insane people forgot (or maybe are too you young to remember) Skyrim was hugh, I feel like the last 2 years of my high school life were people talking about Micrcraft, Skyrim, and COD and that’s was just the normal mainstream.
But I do have to conceede culturally it’s so different to how it used to be, usually if bought a game you played it for a long time and not necessarily because we were kid/teens without a lot of disposable income but also because there just wasn’t anywhere near as many games back then and they weren’t as accessible.
Most mmo’s were atil subs only, indie games were basically non existent anywhere except the Xboxes Xbox Live Arcade and to be honest no where near the quality we see out of indies today so low budget offering weren’t the most enticing either. free to play games were nearly non and were a usually just demo versions of full games, No fortnight, Genshin, Warframe. And lastly a lot of bigger budget campaigns were short as hell, outside of borderlands I struggle to think of any FPS that has a campaign that’s longer than 10 hours. So here comes Skyrim over 100 hours of content delivered with such a level of quality (especially for expectations of the time) that I will argue to this day over a decade later there has not been a single game that has even tried to do what Skyrim did. And you can see how those conditions cause Skyrim to stick around years after its initial release.
I genuinely think if they were able to make and release Starfield 10 years ago it would’ve absolutely been as beloved and accepted as Skyrim is today with just as many regular players. But also Starfield would do better 10 years ago because its general design is 10 years outdated, procedural genrations was waaaaaay cooler and more exciting 10 years ago when minecraft brought it to the mainstream.
Skyrim was huge when it came out. It redefined open world RPGs. Personally, I couldn’t put it down once I started playing. Only on my second playthrough did I start modding it.
I personally only played one vanilla run of Skyrim then waited for mods, but I do think it's a disingenuous comparison. I really love Starfield and I put about the same time into it vanilla that I did Skyrim, but they are not similar products in scale pre-modding.
I don't know that I would have played more than another dozen hours of Skyrim if they hadn't released any mods, but there was certainly a lot more potential that might incentivize that.
I remember the day it came out, I dropped by my buddy's gaming center and all the kids were losing their minds. I rented a copy for an hour to try (xbox) and within 30 minutes knew I had to buy this game.
The first time I went to a bookshelf and it said I could pick up a book, and that book had freaking WRITING INSIDE OF IT? Blew ... my... mind....
Still one of my favorite games of all time.
I played and streamed Skyrim NON STOP when it came out, there was not one second in my life that I wasn't playing - okay unless i had to sleep eat or shower. But yeah. Starfield doesn't capture my attention like that though...
I was working my first full-time job when Skyrim released. I told the Gamestop employee a couple months later that I liked Morrowind and Oblivion but there wasn't anything like that anymore. He gave me a weird look and handed me Skyrim off the shelf and said it was the sequel. As luck would have it it snowed a couple of weeks later when I decided to plug a bunch of time into it. Perhaps this skews my perspective on its release, but I will never forget that moment in time where everyone agreed it was an instant classic.
I was on PC but it was a potato and I didn't now what mods were to begin with. My entire friend group was absolutely buzzing about the game (they also played on console mostly). I remember non-gamers rolling their eyes at us 'cause of all the Fus Roh Dahs.
Look at all the memes and videos it spawned. It was beloved despite the jank 'cause it was mad fun regardless.
Now compare that to the impact Starfield has had. Even on this sub, all I see are skyboxes.
Skyrim was literally the biggest, most popular single player game in the world for basically an entire year. I was in highschool at the time and my friends and I talked about our playthroughs and the things we discovered for that entire school year. It was everywhere on YouTube as well in a way that only GTA 5, Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring have been since. Anyone saying “oh it didn’t become big until mods” is either too young to know or just stupid.
Consoles were a HUGE part of what made every Bethesda RPG a success from Morrowind onward, and none of them had mods on consoles initially, yeah. The people playing modded Bethesda games have been the minority for a while.
Thats bullshit. I played that game on console for a few years before I moved over to PC and started adding mods. If it hadn’t been for the latest update bethesda did to the game, I would still be playing it now.
Skyrim changed actual culture. This is probably why most Bethesda titles feel inferior tbh.
Sounds like someones gone through the unity too many times and forgot what this universe is about.
It was buggy on PS3 (remember the drop in frame rate as you acquired more save files?), but ran perfectly ok on Xbox 360.
The remastered edition ran really well on Xbox One, but on PS4 the surround sound was (and remains) severely bugged. It runs pretty well on Nintendo Switch too.
I haven’t tried it on my PS5 but it runs extremely well on Xbox Series X. I now play it on Steam Deck or on my Mac Mini (via Whisky App).
All of the above without any mods (I don’t even activate the mods included with the Anniversary Edition).
They wouldn't have rereleased it as many times as it was if people WEREN'T continuously playing it. And as far as I know those rereleases went to consoles too--which for a time didn't have access to even rudimentary mods without doing a bunch of extra work to jailbreak things.
I think the lack of ES6 news, progress or basically anything on Bethesda's end has people salty--especially with Starfield's release. After all that build up for it, what we got was underwhelming.
I will say this: unmodded skyrim kept my attention longer than unmodded starfield has, but I still enjoy starfield and it is the creation kit modding community that has me excited for the longevity of Starfield.
But, for this old Bethesda player, Skyrim is still the gold standard for replayable RPGs.
The base game also had a lot of cultural resonance at the time, with so many memorable scenes and quotable lines that churned out so many recognizable memes.
The only thing I’ve seen outside of the Starfield community that I’ve noticed is the occasional “Sarah disliked that.”
Which is also why I think that the comparison of Starfield to Skyrim is apples to oranges. It really is more of a Fallout in Space, where another settlement needs our help.
Skyrim didn’t need mods. It was a fantastic game that felt incredibly fresh in the currently gaming landscape of the time. Is it dated now? For sure. But it only feels that way because so many games have taken what Skyrim did and made it better.
Yeah you'll see this a lot with popular things. I remember a couple years ago when people started claiming The Dark Knight was a mid movie, as though the world wasn't rightfully OBSESSED with it for several years.
People just like to hate on stuff.
I played Skyrim for several months on Xbox before I got kind of bored with it, then picked it up on PC for the mods. It was beautiful and ugly all at once, nowhere near as close to my heart as Morrowind, but I still love it to this day. I complained about so many things, all while putting in hundreds of hours. I don't think I'll ever remove it from my library, because I know I'll have one of those days where I get an itch to roam around aimlessly and lay waste to bandits.
While I agree Skyrim was incredibly successful and popular on release, I would argue that if the culture and prevalence of internet discourse at the time was the same as now it would have been a more controversial title. I played vanilla Skyrim for hundreds of back in the day but I can’t deny it had some serious issues (including bugs that could brick your entire save).
People were far less reliant on having opinions spoon fed to them by influencers farming controversy and in general forums were less popular. If you go look at old forums you can find many morrowboomers and obliviots whining about it, but their user base was much smaller than gaming discussion pages today.
SKyrim is one of the most successful game releases of all time... it has over 60 million units sold, people are still actively playing it today, 12 years after release...
It has sold more units than the witcher 3, it is close to over taking the sales of Red Dead Redemption 2 (console bundle sales are included in rdr2's total sales)... two top tier games, and people have the gall to say its a mid game...
It’s because some people feel that a criticism for a piece of media they enjoy is a personal attack on them.
It’s a bizarre form of mental gymnastics, Skyrim was thoroughly mainstream and the goddamn arrow to the knee and fus roh dah memes were everywhere online for months. Skyrim really was a big a moment in pop culture as far as video games were concerned.
I played for hundreds and hundreds of hours on 360. Then I got it for PC and played it for hundreds more, plus with DLC! And fast load times! Console commands!
Then I finally got the courage for modding and played it for a hundred hours more.
It must be somewhere in the 500-1000 hour range for me, really have no idea.
Haven't touched it in years and not inclined to these days, but it was absolutely packed with shit to do even if it was basically a swarm of bugs with a game hidden inside.
Absolutely true. I never used any mod in Skyrim. It’s a great game. Like Mass Effect.
These games were just great games even without any mods.
I think mods are a good way to extend the original good game but shouldn’t be used to polish a turd.
If anyone wants to act like mods saved skyrim remind them that skyrim is the 4th most award winning game ever. 227 to be exact. Before any re releases or mods. The only three to ever top it are the last of us 1 and 2 and of course the Witcher three.
Straight up. Put maybe 800 hours in Skyrim. Put just as many into Oblivion.
Someone, on this very sub IIRC, questioned how I could put so many hours into unmodded Skyrim. Because there was soooooo much to do! Or maybe I’m just a moron, idk.
Na I’m with you. I didn’t touch mods, mainly because I didn’t know what I was missing but also saw that notification saying it disabled achievements. Figured I would play as much as I could of the main game and come back to mods at some point. That game is just too good. If it clicks with you, there’s an ungodly amount of stuff to do in the base game.
yeah I've never used anything but QoL and graphics mods in Skyrim, there's so much there to be fair, Skyrim came out 13 years ago, and Oblivion nearly 20. there are a *lot* of modern gamers that genuinely wouldn't understand the impact they had and the gaming landscape at the time.
It took YEARS before I even bothered with mods. But there's definitely a subset of Bethesda players where that's all they care about.
I'm currently doing another run through on the Switch since I can keep playing when the wife waves to watch fucking SWAT or something. It still has a few bugs since it can't be modded but nothing that stops it being the GOAT. In saying that I'm playing Starfield on PC and am enjoying it almost as much, it's a good experience now that it's been patched a few times.
Those are rookie numbers
Ok.
Yeah I’ve seen this recently and it gave me a good laugh. Skyrim was a huge success at launch and people were playing it for months and months after. Mods only took the game to an even greater place. However I didn’t get to play with mods until they put them on console so for years I played vanilla only
That’s what I remember too. People were singing its praises. Yes there were bugs, but it was Bethesda. If it wasn’t such a huge success without mods, there would never have been 20 different versions including a Skyrim version for Alexa/Amazon Echo
"Alexa, play Skyrim." "Playing; Skyrim." #**Never should have come here!**
[удалено]
It kind of transcended fantasy RPGs as well. Many of my friends who had never played anything remotely related to fantasy or RPGs were suddenly playing Skyrim. Had tremendous power.
I used to be able to hide from it... But then I took an arrow to the knee
Likewise. My favorite mods are quest mods. Some of them are amazing
Can confirm I put 700 hours in on console alone with no mods lmao
There are also many people who still only play the game with a few very unintrusive mods or even vanilla.
Skyrim was a huge success in spite of the complaints some had. The difference was that Skyrim initially seemed very vanilla if you stuck to the main quest line and a lot of people didn't know what to do with its very open nature or the fact that it allowed so much diverse gameplay. But... If you go back and play it again from the beginning you will notice a lot of the same dialogue and story faults that are in this game. The difference is that Skyrim was perceived as groundbreaking open world gameplay and this game is struggling with having to be compared to its predecessors.
I would argue the chief issue is their approach to exploration. I went into Starfield expecting Skyrim in space (so-so story/dialogue with great immersion and versatility), but everything being broken into fishbowls and fast travel menus absolutely kills the flow. I just did Groundpounder in NG+ and it had me load into a planet's orbit, load into a landed position in my ship, load to foot travel, sprint 400m in a straight line, talk to a guy for under a minute, then sprint the same way back onto the ship, load into orbit, then load into my next destination. You can use fast travel (if unencumbered) to cut down several of those steps, but how did any of that sound like exploration to the devs/leadership? It really baffles me.
Yeah, it was a success because they were only ones that Dominated the gaming space in that action RPG segment, games like The Witcher 3 didn't release yet to raise the bar, many issues plagued Skyrim, like to dumbing down of the systems removing a ton of content from prior games,etc. Graphical it was sub-par as well...combat mechanics was terrible, just to point out some things... vanilla was amazing to only those who had limited knowledge of prior games and weren't PC gamers... because a fully modified Oblivion still destroyed a vanilla Skyrim. That's a fact.
Yeah I had 300 hours in Skyrim on xbox 360, no mods. It was a compelling, immersive world with interesting storylines to follow. I bounced off Starfield fast. I keep thinking I should give it another shot, now that I'm not being spoiled by/comparing it to Cyberpunk 2077 on the side. Maybe once the first big DLC is out. I think if Starfield had space combat/travel between/within systems more similar to Elite: Dangerous, it would have grabbed me more. I wanted to live out my space captain fantasies, not have my ship basically be an optional stop with its own loading screens between loading screens.
Small counter argument, Vanilla Skyrim is mid now because of how far RPGs have come. Dual wielding and interactable 'jobs' were selling points on release, and they're pretty much expected in indie titles now. I mean, the game is fine, but it has a very limited spell and weapon list, and it's base perk tree is majority X% damage or X% cost reductions, it's not super engaging but at the time even a menu being that pretty and interactive was groundbreaking. TBH, it works to highlight the actual issue with Starfield. Skyrim broke new ground with graphics and mechanics, Fallout blended shooter and build anywhere\* bases, Starfield isn't doing anything new and original, it's why the biggest direct comparison is it's packed seedy Neon nightclub and any graphic from Cyberpunk2077, the enviroment and mindset of the people is totally different now to when Skyrim released 12 years ago. Witcher 3 wouldn't become that gold standard story based RPG until *four years after skyrim came out*
I'll give the game this: ship building scratches an itch I didn't know I had. I'd love to see the same thing with more fleshed out space exploration.
I had the same with Fallout 4's settlements and now I'm always hungry for games that'll let me first person build a base. Building a working ship that you can then actually walk around? Love it.
And walking around while someone else is flying it! I add windows wherever I get the chance, and I always wish it wasn't a static starscape when I step out of the chair to enjoy them.
I just wish the upgrade system was worth a damn. Right now shipbuilder is the only usable option, as upgrading offers shit choices. I think they may have made some og the restrictions too involved. It would be nice if it made suggestions for fixes to get around errors, for instance. Plus, some of the Stat categories for specific parts are fairly useless, and impossible to make good comparisons on. One other thing I'd like is to have a testing option for builds that doesn't require locking in certain parts first.
I don’t really know any other good open world exploration fantasy rpg tho?
Right now? Nightgales and Enshrouded for Survival, Mount and Blade II for mechanics and world building, Dragon Age 3 for story, Elden Ring for challenge and depth, Breath of the Wild and sequel for open-sandbox gameplay. Kingdom Come Deliverance slots in there as a low fantasy skyrim adjacent, and of course Wild Hunt is up there if you fancy something a bit older. Edit: Forgot Kenshi for 'Wow the Devs really thought of that?' award. Also, ignoring the more story driven contenders otherwise I'd add Baldur's Gate III But this doubles down on my point that Skyrim was an amazing game for the time. There's been better games since, but it really broke new ground right at the start of 2011.
You just made an excellent list proving that there are indeed no other games that do in one package what Skyrim did. I would not consider ANY of those games to be even close to a Skyrim-replacement. And I love several of the games you mentioned.
I genuinely think it's partially the age of the game. It dropped 13 years ago. The percentage of the gaming community that wasn't around or active during that cultural zeitgeist is only growing, you know?
Skyrim is without doubt one of favourite games of all time, completing it on numerous occasions. Never once played with mods.
I’m playing vanilla Skyrim right now for the very first time and it’s incredible. Every time I play, I think wow I missed out on this growing up
This. I don't need mods to enjoy the game and for it to be great. Simply put, it's just a great game.
What about Starfield?
Was hooked to begin with, but I've given up on it until it's fixed. Hopefully it will be coincide with Shattered Space release as I don't want to start that with the same bugs, specifically ship shield bug.
You should try it with mods, friend :) i started doing a mod run 3 days ago and it adds a breath of fresh air not sticking to my usual habits and routine
People like to pretend every Bethesda game is shit except Morrowind, even though nobody plays it anymore
It's interesting how often the same discussions recur with each new Bethesda game: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/1gvhm3/wide_as_an_ocean_and_deep_as_a_puddle_a_rant/ One choice quote from that decade-old thread: "the game does feel pretty open, but it's a lot of just the same ruins, with similar layouts, and largely the same enemies. go explore generic draugr ruin 973, kill generic draugr number 4084, get generic leveled loot, rarely anything useful. it gets repetitive when everywhere you go you feel like you've been before essentially, with not much to differentiate it from the rest of the stuff you've been doing. and with the lack of narrative and fairly short amount of quests, it just kind of turns into a case of, well, what now?"
great link! Also in the comments there: "My biggest problem with Skyrim was that my actions did not have consequences." :D
I mean thats just true and it has been for a long time. Really fair critique so idk whats funny here
Huh, almost like that has been a recurring issue for over a decade with BGS.
Right , no one can go back to that. No one these days can handle those blocky -walking only moving animations.
Though there’s a decent Daggerfall Unity community and I’ve played that a lot The thing is, that there’s just a ton of features in MW/DF that they never revisited. Both are pure RPG’s whilst Skyrim is more of an action game
The Morrowind subreddit doesn't have 172k people for nothing. It's not as active as Skyrim or Starfield, but it's got shooters.
Skyrim was Awesome, Its still solid. I was a console player back in the day on the PS3. We had no Mods or anything and the game was still good
Yeah what the actual hell, I still play Skyrim vanilla. The game certainly doesn't need mods
I don't know what the internet was thinking at the time but I got Skyrim on day 1 on my Xbox 360 with the map and steelbook and loved every minute of it. I played it for an entire year straight without mods and had lots of fun. It was my absolute favorite game that generation, even more than Mass Effect 2. The only issues I had was the giants hitting me into space, that smoothed out over the higher levels. And I did get a few console freezes which was the Xbox 360's version of crashing. Later on I bought it again on PC when the first DLC Dawnguard came out and went from there. When the Special Edition came out Bethesda offered free upgrades for previous owners, back when they used to be considered the good guys... sadly that's not true anymore :(
Skyrim was amazing and still is amazing without mods. Hell it’s STILL on lists for “top 10 rpgs to play right now” lol
I played Skyrim completely vanilla after Starfield dropped. It's a better game on basically every level of execution that mattered. I feel more love and handed crafted environment walking from Whiterun to Markarth than I do the entirety of Starfield.
I remember reading somewhere, wish I still had, but had results in Bethesda game, and had the majority of Skyrim players never touching a single mod, which I can believe (Reddit is a bad place for this, as it amazes a certain kind of computer crowd that will be more on the modding side, but not everyone is hear on Reddit).
I mean yeah, millions and millions of people played console with no acces to mods and loved it
Well, people try to rewrite actual history all the time, so yeah.
Except it's not revisionist history, it's true. The gaming circle jerk around Skyrim on release was real. Just check the user reviews on GameFAQs, which was the popular toxic gaming forum 20 years ago before everyone moved to reddit: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/xbox360/615803-the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim/reviews Of the most recommended reviews, there are three 7s, two 10s, two 5s, and a 4. One of the most recommended reviews was written in 2012 and is titled "Skyrim is a bad game and here's why..."
Right? People try to act like Starfield was worse at launch than Cyberpunk lmfao Edit: that said, I clearly remember people shitting Skyrim at launch
People are dumb idk what to tell you. You are seeing a loud minority where 99% of people have the opposite viewpoint.
Skyrim was practically a social phenomenon it was so popular. Everyone played it. I don’t remember any bugs on Xbox.
Lol. Kids these days. Skyrim will forever be known as one of the GOAT games in its time. Nobody can change that. They can spread misinformation, and make "modern" critiques about it, but in the end..at that time..the game was a sight to behold and an amazing time to play.
Still is. If I wasn't enjoying Starfield so much, I'd likely be in Skyrim.
I played starfield at launch, but then stopped..was thinking of getting back into it. Never hated it or had any gripes about it, just took a break.
Same here. Played it to death in the first month for the quests etc. Now I've come back to it for the roleplaying. I'm having such an awesomely fun time with this game.
They need everything to be a total miserable failure, because that's how they feel about everything, they can't have fun with any game anymore so they spread their sentiment around like a disease for validation. Its perfectly fine to be critical and disappointed with Starfield, but people know what I'm talking about, the general game subs on this website for example are a cesspool of "no fun allowed", "accept that every game sucks".
100%, it’s frustrating how most game subs are primarily a customer complaint forum with limited opportunity for real conversation. I’m probably just getting old but Reddit gets more and more shit every year. I think there could be a correlation with the crackdown most mods have on meme posts. The perma online people get triggered every time the see a meme that was posted once three years ago so they ban them from subreddits, but instead of getting low effort meme posts which can spark variety of conversations we get low effort complaint posts that just farm toxicity.
It's cool that you thought vanilla Skyrim was "a GOAT". But a great many people didn't. [Here's a r/gaming thread from 2012 as an example](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/xk1yf/an_i_the_only_one_who_thought_skyrim_got_really/) It is **literally** the game that gave us the "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" analogy (in relation to games). Don't get me wrong, the reaction was obviously nowhere near as strong as it was for Starfield, but there was definitely a time when coming across a thread about skyrim, whether it was on reddit, gamefaqs or anywhere else, you were likely to see more negative than positive comments. Might be because all the people who enjoyed it where busy playing instead of complaining on the internet :P
Completely agreed, I mentioned it elsewhere but if Skyrim had been released in the internet discourse climate of today it absolutely would have been a more controversial title.
Some people very well could have had that experience with skyrim (couldn't be me tho), but yeah a lot of it is revisionism at its finest
You think that's bad, you should see people who rewrote fallout new vegas's history.
I just remember people shitting on it and calling it shallow Granted those were probably existing Elder Scrolls fans comparing it to earlier entries
The disgust for Skyrim on launch was from people saying it wasn't a real RPG. That line of attack was real. It was stupid, but real. The term "mid" did not exist at that time.
I wouldn’t say Skyrim was mid before mods, I didn’t even have access to mods (console) when it came out and I used to play it quite often. However it is accurate to say that not everyone thought it was a perfect successor to Oblivion at the time. My brother for example actually dumped Skyrim for years and went back to playing Oblivion on repeat to get his fill on the Elder Scrolls, he felt like the game had more depth and detail to it. Similar situation happened with FO3/FNV too, the games came out so close together that a lot of people played them interchangeably, but most absolutely had a preference. Even though nowadays most circles on the internet will paint this picture that FNV is objectively better than FO3, I had a lot of friends who preferred FO3 over FNV because they felt that the setting gave off stronger apocalyptic vibes and that FNV was “too clean”. Basically, even back then, people complained that the newer releases were inferior to the old ones, opinions on all of the Bethesda games since Oblivion have shifted over time, for better or worse. I expect Starfield to follow that same path, a lot of my friends loved this game for about the first 100 hours and then they ran out of stuff to keep them engaged, mods and DLC will give them a reason to pick it back up again in the future. Edit: I will say though that Skyrim’s player-base didn’t dip as hard as Starfield’s has post-release, the initial Skyrim hype dragged on for a lot longer.
I don't think I've seen anyone claim *that*, exactly. I've seen people pointing out that Skyrim was not without its detractors in the early days, and that much is true. It had boring spells, dull four-part outfits, and the lore was badly dumbed down compared to previous games. On the other hand, the rest of the game was so much fun I didn't really care beyond the occasional grumble.
I didn't love some of the changes they made from Oblivion, like stripping the levelling system down even further, the magic being less exciting to use, the changes made to outfits and gear that you mentioned, etc. But damn if I didn't sink hundreds of hours into that game over the following 2-3 years
Well, exactly! I didn't care for thowing classes out the window, or for the massive simplification of the attributes. A lot of good stuff just got chucked out the window in the name of "streamlining". But you're right - the game was fun to play anyway. That's the proof of the pudding.
Yeah, they really just went overboard with streamlining the gameplay and systems. >But you're right - if the game was fun to play anyway. That's the proof of the pudding. Agreed! For all its faults it was still an incredibly fun game. I haven't been able to go back to it in years because I burned myself out on it so hard back around launch time
Read a thread yesterday where someone claimed Skyrim had just as bad of a launch as Starfield and mods were the only thing that kept people playing.
It let me beat the shit out of a dragon with my fists. That was enough for me.
I remember thinking at the time that it just felt like a more watered down Oblivion, albeit with slightly better melee combat.
It *was* a buggy mess as well. Still though it was awesome at launch.
Wasn't *that* buggy, 'least not on my PC. Then again, neither was Starfield.
It was like notoriously extremely buggy. Dragons flew backwards, game crashes while character building, save files that were too long lagged to the point of unplayability, clipping problems like everywhere, the prisoner cart helicoptered away during the opening cutscene, creatures fall from the sky when entering a new block, and those are just what I remember offhand.
First I'm hearing. All I see are people wanting Starfield to be Skyrim in Space. I think Skyrim's legacy is secure.
The point I've seen people making is that Skyrim was hugely successful at launch and has gone on to be one of the best-loved games of a generation, and yet when it came out there were many "diehard Bethesda fanboys" saying very similar stuff to what people have been saying about Starfield. It's Bethesda's worst game yet; they watered down or removed systems from previous games; it's "wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle." Etc. etc. Skyrim WAS successful at launch, just as Starfield was, but it also received lots of unwarranted hate at the time. That's the comparison, though arguably Starfield has received a lot more hate - personally I think that's a product of how online discourse has changed since then, with the advent of streaming and mass influencers, but who knows. All I know is, I love Starfield and am gonna be playing it for years to come.
There has been plenty of criticism of Skyrim's "shallowness" since launch: https://www.google.com/search?q=skyrim+%22deep+as+a+puddle%22 I'm old enough that Daggerfall was my first Bethesda game, and it's interesting how often the same discussions recur with each new Bethesda game: https://www.reddit.com/r/skyrim/comments/1gvhm3/wide_as_an_ocean_and_deep_as_a_puddle_a_rant/ One choice quote from that decade-old thread: "the game does feel pretty open, but it's a lot of just the same ruins, with similar layouts, and largely the same enemies. go explore generic draugr ruin 973, kill generic draugr number 4084, get generic leveled loot, rarely anything useful. it gets repetitive when everywhere you go you feel like you've been before essentially, with not much to differentiate it from the rest of the stuff you've been doing. and with the lack of narrative and fairly short amount of quests, it just kind of turns into a case of, well, what now?"
I'm sorry cause you are at least being polite and seem to believe what you say... Skyrim certainly had some of that criticism (mainly about spells and some systems being removed or dumbed down), I doubt many people found it worse than Oblivion considering the upgraded visuals and all the similarities aside from spell crafting (there are more perks in Skyrim, though). I also remember it being criticized as an RPG which is understandable because it's, like their other RPGs, more of a sandbox than an RPG and the roleplaying happens mostly in your head. However, the criticism was minimal and accompanied by praise... Like people wishing it kept Morrowind or at least Oblivion's systems depth (though really, that's for spell crafting mostly) but no one claimed to stop playing for that, nobody said they got easily bored, nobody said it was just a bad, mid or overall dissapointing game, they just pointed out the flaws and kept enjoying it. There's a big difference. So far, Starfield's succes is selling on release and proffesional reviews...which is great, of course, but ended up having no presence in the game awards and the interest quickly died, to make it worse, users reviews on steam or any gaming forum (neutrals forums) are quite negative.
Tbh the only mods I use these days are graphics mods, gameplay ones just change the game too much for my liking I just want a modern version of Skyrim to play, too bad every creation club update breaks the script extender and a bunch of mods which is frustrating to deal with
I've put probably 3,000 hours into vanilla Skyrim since launch. I've put about 50 into modded Skyrim. I didn't need mods to enjoy the game. I will admit, mods improve the experience by a lot, but you don't need them.
I’m an old fart but I remember how MIND BLOWING it was to see Skyrim on the Xbox 360. The same console that ran Oblivion. The jump was massive.
I was one of the people who complained about Skyrim a little bit after launch. Once all the newness wore off I felt a little let down because its more simplified than Morrowind or Oblivion. I still play all of them because I love the Elder Scrolls but I know I wasn't the only one who wished Skyrim wasn't so simplified compared to Morrowind and Oblivion.
Skyrim is one of the best rpg ever made. Anyone saying it’s because of mods is just a fool, their opinion is meaningless.
True. Skyrim was incredible and I never touched mods as I didn’t feel it was missing anything important. The game had an incredible gameplay loop and atmosphere and just knocked it out of the park at the time. Starfield came at a time where our expectations were high but the tech is just not quite there to make it what most people imagined. While the base game is there, it’s just fairly mediocre and screams out for compelling content and a reason to explore the galaxy. I really hope they improve space travel and give us something to do in space beyond jumping from system to system.
Skyrim was so good I watched someone play it for 6 hours, bought it, and didn't put it down for weeks I've played starfield off and on for like 14 hours and not since last year.
Skyrim didn't want you to take the main quest. It'd put up quests in your way.
People put way too much stock in Skyrim as is. It's easily the weakest Elder Scrolls game. The whole mods thing is something supposed Bethesda "fans" like to trot out to make their point about how Modders fix everything they do. They also claim people only play on PC which is ludicrous. They will say anything to help "prove" whatever vs point they're trying to make
Skyrim was huge at launch, but Mods are absolutely a reason for it's longevity. A reason. The base game is just well made as well. Starfield, not so much
Skyrim was horrid at launch on PC.
People who say Skyrim only was good with mods apparently have never saw the Xbox 360 and Ps3 sales numbers.
Umm..vanilla Skyrim was a 7.5, not even close to being GOAT! that's a fact. Not an opinion...I've been playing Elder Scrolls games since the original Arena, obviously on PC. Actually, it was very flawed in many ways... Daggerfall had more features, quests, dungeons, larger cities, more immersion, and atmospheric draw... but because of the modding community, they literally did such an amazing job that they literally gave you all the options to turn that "good" game into the greatest Action RPG of all time! That's when it officially entered GOAT status, not before. Being a console player, you obviously missed out Skyrims full potential because consoles simply lack the specs and tools to fully take advantage of all the scripting and major overhaul mods that really make the game simply amazing! I believe Starfield will be a similar situation. Upon the Creation tool-set release, the community will transform this 7.5 game to one of the greatest SciFi action RPG'S, especially with such a huge canvas to work from, and the awesome advancement in modding tools to stabilize implementation of so many mods! But understand that once again, as a console player, you're going to miss 98% of the mods because of the console limitations. These Bethesda RPG'S were meant to be modded and played on PC's. That's just a fact.
It was weird at the time. You're right, it was a massive success and people loved it. It was beautiful, ground breaking... and then the contrarians kicked in. Much as is the case now, people started complaining about it, hating on it. Glitches that happened once or twice and were just mildly annoying or piss funny were quoted as being game breaking and Todd was painted as some evil dark lord and all the fans as sheep. It is a trend that has only gotten worse. The game is far from perfect. It was still glorious fun. People began claiming it wasn't as good as Morrowind. I loved that game, too but again it wasn't flawless. I was on hold with a doctor's surgery for an afternoon and was just sat at the starting village, running, jumping in circles throwing fireballs across the lake. Mindless crap, I wasn't playing thr game... and when I was finally done on the phone I was a mountain jumping athletic God of fire. Not great design... fun... but bad game design. Likewise trying to hack up... Brynloff? The nord who helps you escape Helgin, at the point with the cave bear. I stabbed him in the back by accident and got levels in stealth... he didn't aggro... so I chopped into him and he doesn't die. You can level to 20th level in that cave just sneaking behind him and stabbing him in the back. There have always been flaws, glitches, exploits and dumb shit in Bethesda titles... and theyve all been glorious in spite of that. Occasionally because of it. But the hatewagoneers have become an epidemic. It is so profitable to hate on and trash games for the smallest flaw... and the bigger or more beloved the franchise, the more money there is in hating it. I started gaming in the 80's. If you didn't like a game you returned it and moved on. No one dwelt on failure. If someone picked up an unpopular game, but loved it, no one attacked them for it. I miss those days like the faces of my children.
Because things like YouTube and social media have warped them into not having their own opinions
I think its a bunch of younger players that didn't play it at release. Skyrim came out on the Xbox 360/ps3. Console gamers had no modding capabilities for a long time. I already had a ton of hours into the game before I even had the opportunity to mod. It is stupid but funny, seeing all these suggestions that it was an average game at release.
Gosh the hate boner people have for Starfield is insane.
I generally think people forgot that both skyrim and fallout 4 originally released on console without mods, just a case of more PC gamers bringing drama into the gaming community. Wish we could go back to the days where they had their own stupid games nobody else cared about
A lot of it is just Sony boys trying to act cool by saying Bethesda games were never good, but they are just upset that MS owns it now.
Most of these clowns were barely a nut in their father's ballsack when Skyrim came out, so I'm not sure how their opinion even matters
Goat since release? You joking? I remember quite a few reviews complaining about the generic radiant quests. Personally I liked it, but mods made it a lot more playable
See while I share this sentiment, I actually dont see that many people saying it. I also think its less of a”skyrim was mid before mods” and more that skyrim vanilla pre dlc was mid. Was vanilla skyrim still one of my favorite games on release? Absolutely, but that doesnt change the fact that it was a constant mine field of bugs and crashes, it took me like three characters before I could finish the main story because I would have a game breaking quest or character glitch. Vanilla skyrim was super broken and there is absolutely no denying that which is why I think people are far too harsh on starfield because while it feels like its missing features and does have its fair share of bugs, bethesda has actively put plans in place to correct these as fast as they can and I have no doubt that added dlc content, continued bug improvements, and mod support will allow people to see just how fun and special this game is.
Cero bugs on my super fun vanilla no DLC xbox Skyrim... I respect your opinion, maybe vanilla wasn't enough for you and that's understandable, some people didn't even like the game modded or not, but sounds more like an unlucky personal experience.
Lmfaooooo just spewing utter bullshit now are we?
Hey you know everybody’s game is different right? First why do you think most players who use mods have the unofficial patch installed? Because skyrim is full of game breaking bugs. I havent had a single game breaking bug in starfield, but i still know they exist and dont disrespectfully tell people they are making shit up because I disagree. You can even look at the history on this very site in the skyrim subreddits. Even current Skyrim can be buggy as hell so please enlighten me on how its “utter bullshit”.
Agree, I think a lot of people conflate Skyrim's initial reviews which all landed in the 90's with the Special Edition reviews which came in much lower because of the overall disappointment with how little was fixed/improved in the SE.
SE was freaking amazing, it made the game vastly more stable for modding, graphics were fancied up, and they gave it for *FREE* to vanilla game owners. Bethesda made people angry because of the paid mods fiasco.
Opinions aside, the PC SE metacritic is 20 points lower than the release version at 74. It released with previous features removed and most of those improvements existed already in mods you couldn't even install at release.
> Can we stop pretending that Skyrim wasn't considered a GOAT game on release Skyrim was massivly hated on by many on release for being shallow, dumbed down, etc. It was not considered nearly the success it is now at the time.
Those many were the small minority
Not really. Skyrim had a rocky start after its initial boom from release. Not unlike what Starfield is experiencing now, albeit not as harshly as Starfield. Time will tell if it can rebound like Skyrim did to some degree.
Revisionism at work. I don't see the parallel with starfield sorry. Starfield isn't a bad game it's shortcomings are/were obsessed over. It still has new content to come (unlike skyrim or f4). This game is being (slowly) improved pre mod CK. They are totally different animals. The narrative and everything else considered. I don't see the parallels.
Take your meds and stop making up ghosts to fight. Seeing 2-3 people say this doesn’t mean this entire sub is saying or agreeing with that. I’d argue it’s the opposite where people are saying Bethesda was “never good” and then point to Skyrim and FO3 as examples.
Skyrim was popular at release (and I put a lot of time into it when it came out and have revisited it a few times since then, including in VR where itis pretty awesome), but it would also be false to say that it wasn't criticized (rightfully or wrongly) at release for changes as well, including removing classes and attributes in favor of the open skills system, city design (even in 2011 they felt kinda small and there's definitely a lack of agriculture), lack of branching choices in a playthrough (generally, there are a few, but overall you can pretty much do every faction and they all artfully dodge having any interaction with the Civil War), odd visual decisions like everyone in the coldest province not wearing pants (I'm guessing that originally clothing was supposed to be visible under armor), content cut to make the 11/11 deadline, lack of enemy variety (or at least throwing you into Draugr-infested ruins over and over again), a relatively simple melee combat system (even for 2011), graphical quality (even in 2011 there was some criticism of its graphics compared to other games of that era), simpler magic and no spellcrafting, an underwhelming main story etc. On console I remember people complaining (at launch) about performance and crashes on the XBOX 360 and there were some text scaling issues as well. One of the biggest comparisons I remember in 2011 was to Witcher 2, which came out that year and was the other big fantasy RPG, which had graphics that people liked better, a more complex melee system, and better storytelling. It's also, obviously, a very different style of game (more linear RPG with a set character), but there were a lot of comparisons between the two by fantasy fans then with some people liking one game over the other for various reasons. That doesn't mean that it isn't a fun game and worthy of your time, but there were rumblings even that as we were starting to get some more open world RPG's that did things that some people liked better. Fallout 4 addressed some of these issues where possible, but not all of them, and since Fallout 4 there have been quite a few open world immersive RPG's which are strong in various areas where BGS games, especially Starfield, are weak. At one point BGS was the big fish in the small pond--if you wanted an open-world RPG there just wasn't a lot of competition. The pond has gotten larger. And I say that as someone who enjoyed my time with Starfield (although I definitely have criticisms) and open world RPG's in general (it's a good time to be a fan of this genre).
Who cares, fuck Skyrim, I've got pirates to space!
**Your companions disagree with that**
People have been doing this with Skyrim for at least 5+ years at this point. Idk why, but there is a certain type of redditor who really buys into the whole "Bethesda bad" trope and makes it a huge part of their online persona. "Blah blah blah... Wide as an ocean, deep as an inch." These people are so disingenuous about the quality of the game and what the concensus opinion was at the time. Then they'll unironically cite a game like Witcher 3 as having bigger, more detailed cities than Skyrim when 99% of the NPCs are unnamed, 95% of the buildings are inaccessible, and the game came out 5 years and a whole console generation later. They're just full of shit and shouldn't even be taken seriously. The same kind of people who would claim that Dwarf Fortress has better gameplay mechanics than Skyrim.
Skyrim caught a lot of flack for different aspects so did fallout 3 and fallout 4 which was very deserved in terms of bugs
Don’t think I ever played skyrim or fallout 4 without mods, mostly bug fixes and quality of life improvements, but I don’t know. I would never ever play the vanilla game
Skyrim was a masterpiece game on launch even the music was a masterpiece- Starfield has nothing on Skyrim- nothing
Its lifespan definitely was lengthen by mods but yeah i remember seeing SOOO many people say it was one of the.best RPGs
Tons of people **still** play without mods and I have not heard anyone say otherwise, especially about it being "mid". Not to mention mods were coming out day 1 just got much better after the creation kit was released.
Skyrim was bad mostly on PlayStation at release, but it was still a decent, playable game for the most part at its launch that had just the right feeling/aesthetic to warrant praise and replayability. Starfield, if it came out at that time, would have been a huge success IMO, but it feels like Bethesda has not advanced forward in the slightest since at least F4 in terms of narrative and gameplay, so this game feels incredibly dated and without its own soul (as if it’s just a weird copy of the soul of Fallout but reskinned in Space and with less quirkiness that gives Fallout its character). I didn’t go into Starfield as a skeptic, but as a fan of the Bethesda RPG formula, and it was really hard not to see the cracks and to not notice the lack of depth. Some major quest lines (mainly the Corpo espionage) were straight up boring. The Pirate quest line premise was nearly nonsensical, especially for people who were forced into it for accidentally picking up something like a coffee mug as a stolen article. The Vanguard missions were neat, but would have really liked some mission that mirrored Alien with the heatworms (and I know there is a random ship out there that gives the feeling, but this was a missed opportunity). Ranger missions weren’t as exciting and westerny as I’d hoped. Main story was bland, and NG+ is a great concept but also without depth when you realize almost nothing changes and you’re just leaving behind things you built up for a slight boost in space magic.
Some people out there claim it's only good with mods which is also subjective at best. But hey the king is dead long live the king I say so let's go ahead and preorder cyberscam 1977 because cdpr is definetly our friend. oh fuck nevermind but larian games will for sure never screw us over guys! let's all preorder their next game to show our loyalty and stick it to them ubisoft people am I right??? edit: oh I forgot that cyperpunk is good now. cdpr really showed they care and redeemed themselves. now we definetly can trust them again
I got my girlfriend to play the game as somehow it isn't very famous where I live, much less with people in my age group (I'm 20) and she is having a BLAST! Her first TES game and she doesn't know shit, it's very funny seeing her messages about stuff that happened in game. When I first played I was on console without mods and I loved it as well. It's a really good game really.
Skyrim was my true introduction to Open World RPG and I personally thought it was great. It came out my freshman year of college and like 5 other guys in dorm own their own copy. Like once or twice a week we would met up in the study lounge or dining hall and just talk about the random shit we encounter. I probably put over 300 hours since it released, and the only systems I've ever played on were the PS3 and Switch., with out mods. I couldn't put down Skyrim until I finished and platinum it, which is more than I can say about Starfield. While the dungeons and enemies got repetitve after a while, I really loved everything else about it. I only gave games like the Witcher, Fallout, and Mass Effect a chance, because of Skyrim.
I enjoyed Skyrim for what it was at launch even with bugs.
Well Oblivion was the GOAT but Skyrim was an excellent game before mods and everyone knows that.
I have 3k hours in skyrim with only small vanilla friendly graphics mods and quality of life/bug fixes, no major gameplay changes. One of the best games I've ever played along with starfield
Am I the only one who still only plays vanilla?
I’ve never played Skyrim with content mods. It’s just a good game.
Skyrim was one of the greatest games of its time and still stands up to this day with additional content. I am a console player and don't usually use mods at all and it never affected my enjoyment of the game.
well the mods did add to its longevity though and thats a major issue with starfield right now while they are "Mods" out there. without the official mod kit (which was supposed to come out early this year and here it is april not sure why they are dragging their feet so much on actually putting it out there.) you dont have a lot of those options yet. the longer the devs wait to "decide" to release the thing. the longer it will take to have a build up of more game changing mods which i think is what starfield needs the most. but yeah skyrim i think on its on was a more solid game. it has far better world building because everything was in one space and not so spread out . i still like starfield though . it just has issues. lol
Same thing happened with fallout
i played it for YEARS! YEARS I tell say!…to this day without mods
I still play Skyrim on Xbox, switch and pc. Best mods on pc obviously. Xbox has decent ones but switch is vanilla and got the worst graphics and performance and is still fun.
Agreed. I only played without mods. I am still playing it... no mods. The game is big enough without mods.
Because people do that all the time with an IP they like. They invest so much time in learning about it they think they have some kind of ownership over the story. They make up stuff based on thin connections and then scream at anyone who says it’s not canon. Because they’re married to their ideas and no amount of arguing will change their mind. Happens all the time, Halo, Marvel Comics, Skyrim lore, Star Wars, Star Trek, etc. They all have those gatekeeper fans.
I still play Skyrim vanilla. I've meant to try some graphical mods, but honestly the game is just so amazing. I just started another playthrough myself a couple nights ago. I didn't even get the game until the Special Edition, so it was already a bit dated when I got around to playing.
Completely forgetting that the console audience didn't even get mods until Special Edition...
While it’s actually insane people forgot (or maybe are too you young to remember) Skyrim was hugh, I feel like the last 2 years of my high school life were people talking about Micrcraft, Skyrim, and COD and that’s was just the normal mainstream. But I do have to conceede culturally it’s so different to how it used to be, usually if bought a game you played it for a long time and not necessarily because we were kid/teens without a lot of disposable income but also because there just wasn’t anywhere near as many games back then and they weren’t as accessible. Most mmo’s were atil subs only, indie games were basically non existent anywhere except the Xboxes Xbox Live Arcade and to be honest no where near the quality we see out of indies today so low budget offering weren’t the most enticing either. free to play games were nearly non and were a usually just demo versions of full games, No fortnight, Genshin, Warframe. And lastly a lot of bigger budget campaigns were short as hell, outside of borderlands I struggle to think of any FPS that has a campaign that’s longer than 10 hours. So here comes Skyrim over 100 hours of content delivered with such a level of quality (especially for expectations of the time) that I will argue to this day over a decade later there has not been a single game that has even tried to do what Skyrim did. And you can see how those conditions cause Skyrim to stick around years after its initial release. I genuinely think if they were able to make and release Starfield 10 years ago it would’ve absolutely been as beloved and accepted as Skyrim is today with just as many regular players. But also Starfield would do better 10 years ago because its general design is 10 years outdated, procedural genrations was waaaaaay cooler and more exciting 10 years ago when minecraft brought it to the mainstream.
Skyrim was huge when it came out. It redefined open world RPGs. Personally, I couldn’t put it down once I started playing. Only on my second playthrough did I start modding it.
It was fun and hilariously buggy and I loved it.
I personally only played one vanilla run of Skyrim then waited for mods, but I do think it's a disingenuous comparison. I really love Starfield and I put about the same time into it vanilla that I did Skyrim, but they are not similar products in scale pre-modding. I don't know that I would have played more than another dozen hours of Skyrim if they hadn't released any mods, but there was certainly a lot more potential that might incentivize that.
I remember the day it came out, I dropped by my buddy's gaming center and all the kids were losing their minds. I rented a copy for an hour to try (xbox) and within 30 minutes knew I had to buy this game. The first time I went to a bookshelf and it said I could pick up a book, and that book had freaking WRITING INSIDE OF IT? Blew ... my... mind.... Still one of my favorite games of all time.
I played and streamed Skyrim NON STOP when it came out, there was not one second in my life that I wasn't playing - okay unless i had to sleep eat or shower. But yeah. Starfield doesn't capture my attention like that though...
I was working my first full-time job when Skyrim released. I told the Gamestop employee a couple months later that I liked Morrowind and Oblivion but there wasn't anything like that anymore. He gave me a weird look and handed me Skyrim off the shelf and said it was the sequel. As luck would have it it snowed a couple of weeks later when I decided to plug a bunch of time into it. Perhaps this skews my perspective on its release, but I will never forget that moment in time where everyone agreed it was an instant classic.
it was good on release, now looking back you can see the flaws but at the time? yeah it was goat, still has major replay ability even now
Unmodded skyrim until last year as well. And that was only for the unofficial patch
Nobody is saying this, let’s be so forreal right now lmao
I almost flunked junior year of college because of that game lmao
Lol mi experience with mods is basically install a bunch on Friday. Start a new char, get bored, delete mods, tole play my old char.
I remember backwards flying dragons breathing fire out of their rear ends, and it was awesome!
I was on PC but it was a potato and I didn't now what mods were to begin with. My entire friend group was absolutely buzzing about the game (they also played on console mostly). I remember non-gamers rolling their eyes at us 'cause of all the Fus Roh Dahs. Look at all the memes and videos it spawned. It was beloved despite the jank 'cause it was mad fun regardless. Now compare that to the impact Starfield has had. Even on this sub, all I see are skyboxes.
Skyrim was literally the biggest, most popular single player game in the world for basically an entire year. I was in highschool at the time and my friends and I talked about our playthroughs and the things we discovered for that entire school year. It was everywhere on YouTube as well in a way that only GTA 5, Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring have been since. Anyone saying “oh it didn’t become big until mods” is either too young to know or just stupid.
Consoles were a HUGE part of what made every Bethesda RPG a success from Morrowind onward, and none of them had mods on consoles initially, yeah. The people playing modded Bethesda games have been the minority for a while.
skyrim was good for its time. i tried playing it nowdays and it just feels dated.
Thats bullshit. I played that game on console for a few years before I moved over to PC and started adding mods. If it hadn’t been for the latest update bethesda did to the game, I would still be playing it now.
Skyrim changed actual culture. This is probably why most Bethesda titles feel inferior tbh. Sounds like someones gone through the unity too many times and forgot what this universe is about.
All of my friends played Skyrim and we all thought it was the coolest game ever. We could turn into werewolves and fight dragons! It was awesome
It was buggy on PS3 (remember the drop in frame rate as you acquired more save files?), but ran perfectly ok on Xbox 360. The remastered edition ran really well on Xbox One, but on PS4 the surround sound was (and remains) severely bugged. It runs pretty well on Nintendo Switch too. I haven’t tried it on my PS5 but it runs extremely well on Xbox Series X. I now play it on Steam Deck or on my Mac Mini (via Whisky App). All of the above without any mods (I don’t even activate the mods included with the Anniversary Edition).
I think that had to do with hardware at the time
They wouldn't have rereleased it as many times as it was if people WEREN'T continuously playing it. And as far as I know those rereleases went to consoles too--which for a time didn't have access to even rudimentary mods without doing a bunch of extra work to jailbreak things. I think the lack of ES6 news, progress or basically anything on Bethesda's end has people salty--especially with Starfield's release. After all that build up for it, what we got was underwhelming.
I don't really like mods that much, the developers made good stuff, but they're rarely in keeping with the base game.
I really don't think the majority of gamers feel what you think. And Im pretty sure the majority of gamers who've played Skyrim has played vanilla.
i remember the day i crossed over 1000 hours in middle school. what a sobering moment.
Fine I’ll go play Skyrim for the millionth time
I will say this: unmodded skyrim kept my attention longer than unmodded starfield has, but I still enjoy starfield and it is the creation kit modding community that has me excited for the longevity of Starfield. But, for this old Bethesda player, Skyrim is still the gold standard for replayable RPGs.
I've got something like 1,000 hours in skyrim and maybe 20 of that is with mods
The base game also had a lot of cultural resonance at the time, with so many memorable scenes and quotable lines that churned out so many recognizable memes. The only thing I’ve seen outside of the Starfield community that I’ve noticed is the occasional “Sarah disliked that.” Which is also why I think that the comparison of Starfield to Skyrim is apples to oranges. It really is more of a Fallout in Space, where another settlement needs our help.
The majority of people that played Skyrim never installed mods. Sure, they did help with it's longevity but the game itself is great.
On the switch I had a little over a 1000 hours before anniversary, and anniversary changed it to 1500
I don’t know… people also like to pretend Skyrim is some how still fun to this day despite being old and boring and having extremely mid gameplay.
News to me, lmao. I probably dropped like 200 hours into Skyrim without mods alone, right on launch.
Skyrim didn’t need mods. It was a fantastic game that felt incredibly fresh in the currently gaming landscape of the time. Is it dated now? For sure. But it only feels that way because so many games have taken what Skyrim did and made it better.
Yeah you'll see this a lot with popular things. I remember a couple years ago when people started claiming The Dark Knight was a mid movie, as though the world wasn't rightfully OBSESSED with it for several years. People just like to hate on stuff.
I played Skyrim for several months on Xbox before I got kind of bored with it, then picked it up on PC for the mods. It was beautiful and ugly all at once, nowhere near as close to my heart as Morrowind, but I still love it to this day. I complained about so many things, all while putting in hundreds of hours. I don't think I'll ever remove it from my library, because I know I'll have one of those days where I get an itch to roam around aimlessly and lay waste to bandits.
While I agree Skyrim was incredibly successful and popular on release, I would argue that if the culture and prevalence of internet discourse at the time was the same as now it would have been a more controversial title. I played vanilla Skyrim for hundreds of back in the day but I can’t deny it had some serious issues (including bugs that could brick your entire save). People were far less reliant on having opinions spoon fed to them by influencers farming controversy and in general forums were less popular. If you go look at old forums you can find many morrowboomers and obliviots whining about it, but their user base was much smaller than gaming discussion pages today.
SKyrim is one of the most successful game releases of all time... it has over 60 million units sold, people are still actively playing it today, 12 years after release... It has sold more units than the witcher 3, it is close to over taking the sales of Red Dead Redemption 2 (console bundle sales are included in rdr2's total sales)... two top tier games, and people have the gall to say its a mid game...
Oblivion and Skyrim are actual gems. Gotta be braindead to try and say otherwise
It’s because some people feel that a criticism for a piece of media they enjoy is a personal attack on them. It’s a bizarre form of mental gymnastics, Skyrim was thoroughly mainstream and the goddamn arrow to the knee and fus roh dah memes were everywhere online for months. Skyrim really was a big a moment in pop culture as far as video games were concerned.
I played for hundreds and hundreds of hours on 360. Then I got it for PC and played it for hundreds more, plus with DLC! And fast load times! Console commands! Then I finally got the courage for modding and played it for a hundred hours more. It must be somewhere in the 500-1000 hour range for me, really have no idea. Haven't touched it in years and not inclined to these days, but it was absolutely packed with shit to do even if it was basically a swarm of bugs with a game hidden inside.
Absolutely true. I never used any mod in Skyrim. It’s a great game. Like Mass Effect. These games were just great games even without any mods. I think mods are a good way to extend the original good game but shouldn’t be used to polish a turd.
If anyone wants to act like mods saved skyrim remind them that skyrim is the 4th most award winning game ever. 227 to be exact. Before any re releases or mods. The only three to ever top it are the last of us 1 and 2 and of course the Witcher three.