Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General What games are you playing while waiting for BG3?/No Politics version.

A complete 180 from talk of Skyrim- I played the Final Fantasy 16 demo, and holy hell, it is good. It’s nice to see Square Enix back on top of their game after almost 2 decades of not having their shit together (though many would argue that they already recovered with FF14, but I don’t like MMOs so that’s not relevant to me).

I also don’t like first person, so Avowed isn’t a game I am interested in. Too bad they couldn’t do both like Bethesda, but it is probably expensive to do so.

But I don’t think lore is the main strength of TES. I think it’s the absolute freedom to play how you want. Do you want to be a dread necromancer bringing terror to the land? Sure. Do you want to be a virtuous Paladin on a mission to complete the main quest? Go ahead. Do you want to be a thief who breaks into every dwelling and steals all of the spoons in the game world? Have at it..

I wouldn't say that Skyrim has "absolute freedom", merely a good illusion of it. There are no roleplaying choises since every quests bare the civil war and in a lesser extend dawnguard offer the same path for everybody. The gameplay is also very polarized, you are basically pushed by the game into two categories : sneaky rogue archer or two hands heavy armor tank. Spells are a joke so don't even count them as a play style.

I played the Final Fantasy 16 demo, and holy hell, it is good.

When I’m talking about absolute freedom to play how you want I’m referring to player agency to approach the game as a sandbox. Nothing to do with storytelling and role playing, which are very bare bones.

I played as neither a sneaky archer nor a heavy tank. I played most of the game as an enchanter / illusionist thief with no direct damage spells or weapons before eventually becoming a necromancer who sat back and watched my minions take care of everything for me. It was awesome and completely valid as a play style.

Approach the game as a sandbox? Even in 2011, previous TES games were miles ahead on that front. Dungeons are extremely linear so you can't use any of your tools for anything else that doing damage or controlling enemies. Access to said dungeons is always straightforward, and you always access those by the front door and leave it by the back door. Random encounters aren't interesting at all, 90% of the time it is just some wolves that you just have to one shot. Spells are interesting in the same way playing blindfolded is interesting. They are so clunky and sub optimal compared to W + left click since their scaling is terrible. Playing with invocations is only good because Skyrim IA is a broken mess and make you invincible as long as you have a friendly unit aside of you.
Modern Zelda games are what Skyrim could only dream to achieve, where every situation has dozens of varied answers.

I don’t disagree with anything you are saying there so I don’t know what point you are trying to make.

The original point about this discussion was "I think it’s the absolute freedom to play how you want". My opinion is that in the open world category, Skyrim has as much freedom as North Korea.

Well, no, the original point was that the main draw for TES (not specifically Skyrim, you brought that up) is not the lore. The lore is fine, and there is a lot of it, but that’s not the main thing people talk about for the series. It’s the sense of exploration and freedom. But if you think Skyrim is North Korea, what’s God of War, Call of Duty, Uncharted, Halo and the 9X% of games with less freedom choose how you want to play?

I'm playing Diablo 4, Conan Exiles and Neverwinter. I'm not sure I'll continue my experience with BG3 unless I can create a custom party for single player.

And Avowed will not be Elder Scrolls6:

I'm going to give Obsidian the benefit of the doubt, but so far nothing about Avowed has really stuck to me. If they made an effort to de-Skyrimize it, I'm not seeing it; and if they didn't tell me it was set in the Pillars world I wouldn't know.

There's mention of an emperor, I don't remember a lot about the world lore from Pillars, but there's an Byzantium stand in, Old Vellis or something right? Is this set far in the past from the games?

Based on this and the Outer Worlds, I'm worried Obsidian has given up on making interesting games in favor of trend chasing.