Despite Interesting Characters and Premises, the Story Talks Down to the Player Way Too Much

GatheredMyst · December 20

And honestly, it's a little weird coming from an M Rated video game. We're all supposed to be adults, right? The storytelling really should reflect that.

Don't get me wrong. The storylines I'm playing through aren't necessarily *bad*. In many cases, the writing is a Solid B (and i'll exclude the Goblin Quest in Gold Road, here, because *yikes*).

So what do I mean by this, then?

Characters have a habit of overexplaining obvious situations. They'll exposit when there is no need to expoxit. They'll reiterate themselves in moments that we really don't need them to reiterate things.
Characters will point out things while we're in the middle of watching it happen right in front of us. "Hey look. It's character X. You should go talk to them.". Not only is this blatantly obvious, but it also removes any mystique and gravity in certain story moments, especially in Gold Road. Approaching a mysterious figure that we've never seen before? Better shout out who they are, just in case it isn't obvious by the giant name tag. Heck, how much more weight would certain reveals be if they *didn't* do this?
Characters will tell us to do certain things that, again, should be obvious. The quest objective is right in front of us? The NPC will explain, verbatim, what we should do to complete that objective.
Characters will open portals *everywhere* instead of letting us walk for five minutes to get to a location. They'll also explain, verbatim, that they're opening said portal, as though the giant glowing gateway weren't indication enough for that.
Characters will tell their entire backstories to a complete and total stranger instead of letting us figure that out on our own. They'll also tell us everything we need to know about anything and everything without letting us do some digging ourselves.
Characters will call out attacks verbally like a JRPG character when the effects they're putting down are blatantly obvious.
Quests will present situations that might be fun to actually "figure out", only to then remove any question as to what you should be doing in an area. Come to a maze? Don't let the player actually try to make it from point A to point B on their own. Have the entire map laid out for you. No thinking required.

Not only does all of this undermine the actual storytelling, at best it breaks the immersion of what you're doing (which is a key part of any Elder Scrolls game), it insults the player's ability to deduce some of these things on their own. Heck, some of the stuff i'm listing above is painfully obvious. Even if you skip all the dialogue and pay even the smallest bit of attention, you'll notice it.

As a returning player, i've been largely catching up on story content I haven't done, starting with Necrom and Gold Road. It's particularly egregious in these two places, though it's *particularly* bad in Gold Road. There was a really cool moment that was completely ruined by Laramil opening her mouth and telling me who someone was instead of letting me see it for myself. Any thought of "oh, wow, it's (spoilers!). What are they doing here!?" was taken away immediately by the storytellers or designers.

And honestly, that's a tragedy. The premise of Gold Road and Necrom are excellent. Moments like the one I just described would have landed super hard if the developers and writers just exercised a little restraint.

They didn't, and moments like that continue to be impacted as a result.

I'm posting this because I think the writers are *so close* to hitting the nail on the head. Right now, though, it's a swing and a miss.

licenturion · December 21

What? You don’t want to know the backstory of that random cave 36274, what the quest giver had for diner or his childhood sweetheart?

All joking aside I agree with most of it. A lot of the quests seem to have some urgency, but we have to start chatting right 2 meters before ‘the boss’. I wish the game employed more NPC’s running and talking with you while in the action like most games do.

They have the tech to do this because it happens in some missions, but a lot of the time things grind to a halt and you are more listening to an audiobook instead of playing. Especially in expansion side quests.

Taril · December 21

A lot of the writing mishaps stems from the fact that until recently (With the revamp and return to Soulshriven in Coldharbour as the tutorial) every "New" chapter always had to be written for a brand new player starting the game for the very first time and quite possibly being completely new to the Elder Scrolls series.

So quite literally every single chapter, was being written to be the most basic and hand-holdy as possible, so that complete newbs wouldn't get lost.

With the return to the Coldharbour start leading into the alliance start location (As well as statements in regards to curating content for new/returning players to take them to appropriate content and not shove literally every DLC in their face) there should be more opportunity to create better writing that actually treats people like they've been following along with the lore. Especially for their "Revisits to old zones and the guilds" whereby they might actually have the new stories have the old stories as a pre-requisite.

Of course, there's still the "MMO Tax" for a lot of writing, where things have to be obvious to Joe Schmo who's just skipping all dialogue because they're more interested in grinding for some loot than the actual story. Given that you do get the 2 types of MMO players, even in very story focused games (For example, FFXIV which the main strength of the game is its fantastic story... You still get a bunch of people trying to skip it and complaining that it's too long).

GatheredMyst wrote: »

Characters will open portals *everywhere* instead of letting us walk for five minutes to get to a location. They'll also explain, verbatim, that they're opening said portal, as though the giant glowing gateway weren't indication enough for that.

You say that... But I missed literally every portal Zerith-var made in questline the first time through... (To be honest, this was mostly just me not expecting to get portals all willy nilly)

Though this overuse of portals always leads me down a particular thought path... If seemingly everyone and their Khajit can make a portal at any time to literally any location (Outside of somewhere like Sotha Sil or Eyevea that literally has anti-portal measures in place)... Why are we restricted to Wayshrines?

GatheredMyst · December 21

licenturion wrote: »

What? You don’t want to know the backstory of that random cave 36274, what the quest giver had for diner or his childhood sweetheart?

All joking aside I agree with most of it. A lot of the quests seem to have some urgency, but we have to start chatting right 2 meters before ‘the boss’. I wish the game employed more NPC’s running and talking with you while in the action like most games do.

They have the tech to do this because it happens in some missions, but a lot of the time things grind to a halt and you are more listening to an audiobook instead of playing. Especially in expansion side quests.

I knew I was forgetting something! All the "Come Speak to Me" that happened during Necrom. It's not that i'm looking for an excuse to blow through a story beat faster. More, it grinds the pacing of whatever you're doing to a screeching halt.

ArchMikem · December 21

In Blackwood, when you get to the first vault, it had a 3 puzzle box key to open the door. You have to spin the boxes to match the symbols in the correct order. You might think the game won't let you know until you have all 3 correct. Nope. You just hit select on the box until it glows and can no longer be selected. Then do that two more times. Yay you solved the puzzle, you're SO smart.

But wait, before you can now go thru the door you just opened, Eveli INSISTS you need to be reminded why you're going thru that door first. She won't let you open it without telling you why you're opening it. Gosh she's so helpful and we're so dumb and smart and dumb.

colossalvoids · December 21

This and puzzles are the most intrusive ones for sure, but the writing itself isn't really in a good spot overall. Personally it feels on a scale from an anecdote to a young adult novel, which cheapened a Tamriel experience to me in a sense. That wasn't the case in the base game and the first chapters, but is pretty consistent nowadays.

redlink1979 · December 21

In dialogues, most of the times, it seems we suffer from some kind of short therm memory loss. lol

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vsrs_au · December 21

I played Elden Ring recently, and now I'm in the middle of playing Dark Souls 1. The quest givers (if you can call them that) are cryptic at best, and DON'T make it easy for you. They're such a refreshing change from the ESO quests, where the Vestige is assumed to be a complete moron. Apparently, even regaining your soul after losing it suffers a bit in the transition, because the Vestige's intelligence clearly went permanently missing at some point!

spartaxoxo · December 21

I think it's good they explain they're opening portals because I find them easy to miss unless they say something as someone used to heading towards the closest wayshrine on auto pilot.

I find the back stories to generally be the most interesting part of the writing and I wouldn't want to be put into contrived situations to figure out rather than have the NPC simply open up to me.

I agree about the over explaining, repetition, and puzzles though.

magnusthorek · December 21

I don't fully understand the U.S. Rating System but, I'd hardly rate ESO an M-rated game at all.

metheglyn · December 21

colossalvoids wrote: »

This and puzzles are the most intrusive ones for sure, but the writing itself isn't really in a good spot overall. Personally it feels on a scale from an anecdote to a young adult novel, which cheapened a Tamriel experience to me in a sense. That wasn't the case in the base game and the first chapters, but is pretty consistent nowadays.

I find the Vestige has always been portrayed as not so quick on the uptake, even in base game. I've been playing through the base game content again, and there are plenty of times where your only conversation options make you look like you don't have the capacity to understand simple instructions.

Just last night in Greenshade I did the quest where the spinner sends you into the story of Aranias' past, tells you quite clearly where you're going, what your role is, and why you're doing this, and yet when you get into the story and talk to Aranias, all you can do is act confused and ask her basic questions about where you are, in addition to bringing up the one time you've met her in the present and being confounded she doesn't remember it. Then, when the spinner shows up to guide you further along in the story, you mention to him that Aranias doesn't remember Bramblebreach, and he says, "Of course not; it hasn't happened for her yet."

That's the Vestige: a silly, not too bright, basically empty vessel.

What they've added in recent chapters, and what I'm not too fond of, is the constant yammering by the npcs outside of dialogue, just narrating your every move as you go through the scene. Leramil is the worst at this. "Look, proxy, we're going through a door! We're through the door, proxy. Now we're in another room, proxy." Maybe she took lessons from Eveli in stating the obvious.

Finedaible · December 21

Oh boy, do I have a lot to say about writing.

Paraphrasing from the few tidbits that ZoS has given over many years, the explanation for this current direction in writing is supposedly to make the stories easier to follow and easier to remember if players come back after being away for a while... My personal take though? If the story was not engaging enough to warrant player attention that they have to constantly be reminded of what is going on, then it probably wasn't very memorable writing to begin with.

Players should want to be emotionally invested in the characters and outcomes instead of spamming through dialogue and getting to the next quest marker. For example I remember being extremely invested in the Thieves' Guild characters like reuniting Velsa with her long-lost love, working alongside Little Leaf, or Sir Hughes' fate... Those older stories had such great - and mature - writing and character development which the player as a character got to participate in. Many quests back then were well-paced and had natural, believable dialogue players could agree or disagree with. Characters could also tear your heart out too with betrayal or loss.

Gold Road's delve and public dungeon quests on the other hand were some of the most unpleasant writing to date in my opinion. I literally thought to myself while going through the quests "these are just tours of a generic location" because that is exactly what they felt like. The most notable was a quest about an arranged marriage and how the bride was running away from it all, and you are just playing fetch quest while she pops up at every point to monologue... like good grief, why am I even there? Another quest didn't even have NPCs or any voiced dialogue and was basically a fetch quest for some notes till the very end when you go to turn it in to some stranger who delivers a few lines. Everything just felt super rushed and incomplete. We never get to empathize with characters anymore because the pacing is either rushed or the dialogue isn't organic.

The overuse of portals has also been an issue since Northern Elsweyr in my opinion. After that chapter every NPC suddenly has the same level of power as the Skeleton Key and can portal anywhere they wish with very little rhyme or reason and it feels like a cop-out to cut to the chase. This also had the unfortunate side effect of making the world feel smaller than it is, and less immersive.

I've also noticed there have been increasing Harry Potter and Disney-esque tones (high fantasy) since High Isle instead of the gritty, grounded fantasy that Elder Scrolls used to be great at. There are some dark themes still present but they are never taken seriously or put to the forefront of the stories anymore, usually being relegated to the background. Not saying that everything needs to be doom and gloom, and it is great that there are bright moments, but a lot of recent chapters felt like fairy tales rather than lived-in worlds with people that face day-to-day struggles.

This is already longer than I intended it to be but to get to the point, I hope that this change to content cadence can improve on some of the writing of future content because Elder Scrolls just isn't much without immersive stories.

zaria · December 21

redlink1979 wrote: »

In dialogues, most of the times, it seems we suffer from some kind of short therm memory loss. lol

Now people sometimes pick up quests and don't do them until many months later. They you run into Raz in Summerset it could been years since you last talked to him so the over explaining has some reasons. Now it could be done as an text only refresh memory card who is not part of the dialogue?

WhiteCoatSyndrome · December 21

zaria wrote: »

redlink1979 wrote: »

In dialogues, most of the times, it seems we suffer from some kind of short therm memory loss. lol

Now people sometimes pick up quests and don't do them until many months later. They you run into Raz in Summerset it could been years since you last talked to him so the over explaining has some reasons. Now it could be done as an text only refresh memory card who is not part of the dialogue?

The problem is that in a non-zero number of cases the ‘refresh my memory’ dialog isn’t optional, it’s mandatory to continue.

fizzylu · December 21

Zenimax making the NPCs talk to our characters like they know nothing and can't piece together basic information is really on-brand for them though, no?

Tandor · December 21

Insofar as I agree with the OP's points, which I mostly don't, I'm afraid we can blame not the developers but the modern generation of gamers who expect everything to be handed to them on a plate with no exploration, investigation or working things out for themselves. I know that's a generalisation and isn't fair on all gamers of the modern generation, but it does reflect a change that has become increasingly evident ever since we veteran gamers moved on from the first generation MMORPGs when we literally had to discover everything for ourselves because it was all totally new. Like all developers these days, ZOS are simply providing what their customers want, and it's difficult to blame them for that. Perhaps the changes planned for next year will enable more of us to clarify what exactly we do want.

SeaGtGruff · December 21

magnusthorek wrote: »

I don't fully understand the U.S. Rating System but, I'd hardly rate ESO an M-rated game at all.

From something I read elsewhere a while back, the main reasons ESO is rated "M" are because (1) there is drinking and drug use shown or discussed, including a few quests where drinking is required in order to advance the quests; and (2) there are quests where the player's character are supposed to murder someone. It's been a while since I read about this, so there may be other reasons that I forgot about, but that's what I remember.

If I remember correctly, ZOS disagreed with the game's rating, and would prefer the game be rated such that a larger group of people can legally purchase and play the game, but they didn't want to compromise the integrity of the game by removing any of the content that had specifically been cited by the ratings organizations.

Sheridan · December 22

zaria wrote: »

Now people sometimes pick up quests and don't do them until many months later. They you run into Raz in Summerset it could been years since you last talked to him so the over explaining has some reasons. Now it could be done as an text only refresh memory card who is not part of the dialogue?

It should be handled through quest journal entries.

heaven13 · December 22

WhiteCoatSyndrome wrote: »

zaria wrote: »

redlink1979 wrote: »

In dialogues, most of the times, it seems we suffer from some kind of short therm memory loss. lol

Now people sometimes pick up quests and don't do them until many months later. They you run into Raz in Summerset it could been years since you last talked to him so the over explaining has some reasons. Now it could be done as an text only refresh memory card who is not part of the dialogue?

The problem is that in a non-zero number of cases the ‘refresh my memory’ dialog isn’t optional, it’s mandatory to continue.

Yes, absolutely this. You used to be able to skip those dialogues if you didn't need to be reminded who Lyris was or the objective of the quest is. That's no longer the case and it's infuriating.

I_killed_Vivec · December 22

I do wonder if the way NPCs talk to me isn't my fault.

Maybe if I changed my title from Master Angler to Saviour of Nirn, or the like, I might get a little more respect and wouldn't get called "mercenary" or "proxy".

Or maybe just give me a chance to explain myself... "Yes, I know I spend a lot of time fishing, but when I'm not fishing I've saved the world several times over, without thought for my safety or any reward I might receive. So please do not call me mercenary!"

Northwold · December 22

I think the worst example of this was the Anchorite in Deadlands. From the moment she appeared she was an exposition dump, delivering paragraph after paragraph of boring, made up fantasy gibberish to explain to the player like a baby why everything matters.

It was worse than all the others because the actress delivered it like she was reading a telephone directory (a telephone directory, to be fair, would likely have given her more to work with), and because even by the standards of ESO in those years it was exceptionally poorly written.

I wonder if part of the problem is ESO's engine. So you can't really do walks and talks where you *show* the player what is going on. It's either lock the player to a head and shoulders static dialogue dump, or read a letter ("It is *I*. *I* am the evil villain and Daedric prince enabler. And no one suspects a thing! My plan was so clever, no one will ever discover my secret and the world will be destroyed!!! Muwahahahaha! I shall leave this note here on top of this barrel with a shimmering halo of light. To make sure no one ever sees it.").

Northwold · December 22

colossalvoids wrote: »

That wasn't the case in the base game and the first chapters, but is pretty consistent nowadays.

I honestly think the writing in Thieves Guild was the best I've seen in any Elder Scrolls game, mainline series included, equalled, possibly, by the Dark Brotherhood in Oblivion. Nothing else has come remotely close but certainly the earlier years of ESO were stronger, and there were glimmers as late as Elsweyr (suddenly, Jakarn was presented in 3D, only to be reduced to a stripper and servant in High Isle).

Good writing is character, character, character. No one is going to be invested in a story if hanging around the people living it is like watching paint dry. What is Thieves Guild about? A character needing revenge. What is Murkmire about? Effectively, motherhood. What is Blackwood about? Magical woo woo with characters as mere cog wheels to make the "plot" move.

PS I don't know about other writers, but I've always found a good test to be whether you can imagine, from the information you already have, a character's life outside whatever story you're telling. Are they capable of independent existence. If you can't, they're not a believable character (without even getting into whether they're an interesting one), only a plot delivery device, and they need a rewrite.