Snamyap wrote: »

Not saying it's worth an oscar but I found it better than previous attempts. While dialogues that make the player look stupid or suffering from amnesia are annoying it is simply very hard to make a quest line with a lot of meaningful choices in an MMO. In the end all the players need to have more or less the same outcome. You can't for instance have one half of the player base make the decision to burn down an important town or kill a king and the other half decide to play the hero. For stuff like that you need a single player (or very limited multiplayer) game.

"While dialogues that make the player look stupid or suffering from amnesia are annoying it is simply very hard to make a quest line with a lot of meaningful choices"

I dont think the issue is having a LOT of meaningful choices. Its about having any choices at all to express our character's personality through dialogue.

If they cant handle this stuff, then they're clearly in over their heads and shouldve gone with a silent protagonist. Anything would be better than being FORCED to act like a stupid barbarian, even if you're a member of the freaking psijiic order. There's literally no justification for this.

As for the narrative, I feel as though the bar is set incredibly low, perhaps by those who dont play a lot of fantasy games? Granted, I'm very spoiled by other RPGs, and MMOs definitely have a HARDER TIME telling a good story. But, I've even played other MMOs with better constructed narratives than ESO.

They have no excuse.

We all like what we like, and art is very subjective, but there are still basic, objective standards that make for a good story. This has been the case since stories were invented.

You can still like something thats not well written. Hell, I'm a Dragonball fan. But, I can still admit its hokey schlock.

But I guess I just expect more from the Elder Scrolls than I do from a silly shojin anime. But every time I try to dip my toes back into this game the awful storytelling and pushes me away.

The writing team just seems so...complacent and unambitious. Not to mention, I find the setting itself to get more generic by the year. As a life-long ES fan, it's honestly a little upsetting :[

Number_51 wrote: »

adriant1978 wrote: »

Sounds like more of the same, considering that you largely summed up the last few Chapters as well, especially the dialogue options.

Please stop treating our characters like amnesiac morons who can't keep straight what they are doing from one quest to the next.

While I sorta understand where you, and others I've seen make this statement, are coming from it seems to me these dialog options are simply not meant for people just sequentially cruising through a quest line. They're there for the people who started the quest line, then took a 3 month break to grind out sets in AA or whatever. You don't have to select the option just because it's there. I think they've actually done a pretty good job of phrasing those options so you know exactly what you're going to get, as well as not adding new or additional info beyond those options that you would miss out on by not choosing them.

On topic, I actually have enjoyed this chapter far more then High Isle or Blackwood.

So, why cant they make these dialogue choices OPTIONAL? Thats the part I dont understand. It just reeks of bad writing and bad quest design.

LannStone wrote: »

I pretty much enjoyed Necrom
The only thing I recall consistently getting on my nerves was that adolescent whining voice of Scruut, always complaining about something and calling me "mortal" all the time

Thank you!!! I thought I was the only one who disliked this character.

PrayingSeraph wrote: »

spartaxoxo wrote: »

PrayingSeraph wrote: »

kah wrote: »

I wouldn't say Necrom is revolutionary, but I felt it was solid storytelling. Def hits a lot of the same beats as previous chapters as many others have noted, but I don't feel it was the worse. Blackwood, by far, is my least favorite chapter in terms of story and character; I regret buying that at release so much.

So I am seeing lots of Blackwood criticism. Can someone explain to me why it's seen as so bad?

Breaks one of the core lore rules of the franchise if you did a certain dlc

dialogue is very repetitive

no proper build up to what happens with the villain in the conclusion

most predictable of the bunch

main sidekick loses all character growth if you had previously encountered her, and is annoying

Thank you for your response. Just out of curiosity, what core lore rule is broken if you completed what DLC?

Shagreth wrote: »

The game sits on such an amazing legacy and all we sometimes get is inoffensive nothing-in-particular.

While I didn't enjoy the main Blackwood storyline, Fargrave was significantly better and different to what we had seen before. Unfortunately, the epilogue detracts from even that. The Year of the Vampire story also gave us one of the best villains in ESO. And it did so by getting the player to sympathize with the plight of someone who wanted to slaughter hundreds of citizens and treated humans like cattle.

Edit
I don't think the issue is that the writing tries to inoffensive or lacks creativity. There's some great ideas but in some of the chapters, they are pretty half baked. A good example of that is High Isle. A paradise next to a horrible prison? A villain who opposes all three of the alliance leaders and tries to end the war themself? A look into the druids and knights? All of those things had a lot of potential and were interesting ideas. But, High Isle feels rushed and dull.

@Elsonso -

spartaxoxo wrote: »

If you have played the Dark Brotherhood DLC, you are forced to reveal your a member of the Dark Brotherhood so you can lead Eveli to a new sanctuary. It's one of the absolute biggest tenants of the DB not to do that. Your character should technically be killed for that.

Edit: The tenet in question is to never betray the DB. Turning them into someone like Eveli would certainly count, especially as it would have likely lead to the death or arrest of the DB members. So, you should have incurred the wrath of Sithis or at least been exiled.

PrimeSeptim wrote: »

It all went downhill after Orsinium. All very samey, reskinned, repetitive, uninspired... Same old loop de loop. Always a big bad, a cult... Oooh, time to save the world again. But not even the world really, just places that leave me wondering, 'why do I even care about this place?'... Galen, for example. The only DLC I just upped and left because it was so boring and the annoying pirate wanna be didn't help, 'mate'.

The whole Planemeld/MQ was fine and Orsinium tied into that a little with the

Prophet making a reappearance

but everything since then has just been random and disjointed belly button fluff.

Elsweyr and Skyrim were cool once you got so far into the plot but to be honest for a long time now I'm always just glad to be finished.

It just feels like every chapter/DLC is its own main story with no relevance to the actual MQ (not even referenced) - at least some of them had Sai Sahan/Lyris/Tharn which helped. But yeah it's always just saving the world again and filling in the blanks on the world map.

We're off to save the world again!:

Part of it is the One Tamriel change. While there are some discontinuities, overall the idea is that after the base game, the stories are self-contained because they can happen in any order depending on players choice. This has to do in part with limited time period of the Three Banner War, which means much that happens in the game is more or less taking place either at the same time or over-lapping somewhat. All of that can make the base game very confusing as well as hopping between DLCs. They tried to have continuity with the "Season of..." thing where the whole year fit together, but that had limited success.

It's an example of what I refer to as the "Let's Kill Razum Dar" scenario. The writers can badly maim then kill that character in a brutal roller coaster of a story, but, he has to be the same physically, mentally, and emotionally by the end because he shows up so much in different DLC plus the base game. Whatever happened in that scenario is just for that one chapter or season.

Hence character progression is frequently provisional and limited, for the player character and most NPCs. Plus, you will likely not see most NPCs again anyway, and those that you do are generally limited to an extra dialogue option along the lines of, "Hey, it's you. I remember you." Then no further reference. Same goes the red text choices. No consequences or call-backs.

One example of the latter I was hoping for was when we got to The Reach. There is a base game quest where you choose whether an NPC lives or dies, and there was a chance to explore that choice in visiting that zone. Didn't happen. Not that I expected it to, nor was it a big deal, but still, a lost opportunity.

On the other hand, having one-off story settings can have advantages where writers and other creatives can really lean heavily into a certain theme and feel. If that were a primary goal. It would be a case of just going all out, with a mix of subtle and over the top tales. For example, rather than just hearing a references about the time some NPC rode backward and naked on a pig through a temple of Dibella being chased by angry farmers throwing cheese wheels at them, let us go on that adventure and duck cheese wheels in the buff.

PrayingSeraph wrote: »

kah wrote: »

I wouldn't say Necrom is revolutionary, but I felt it was solid storytelling. Def hits a lot of the same beats as previous chapters as many others have noted, but I don't feel it was the worse. Blackwood, by far, is my least favorite chapter in terms of story and character; I regret buying that at release so much.

So I am seeing lots of Blackwood criticism. Can someone explain to me why it's seen as so bad?

I'm playing through it now, so I'll offer some insight as it's still fresh for me.

My biggest gripe in it is Eveli. She's the manic pixie trope and can be a bit a much after a while. The story actually has some good characters and I think that makes her standout even more. Everyone's serious and she's just going on about cake and whatever. Maybe she's meant for comic relief, but it didn't land well for me.

I also didn't care for the way Sombren was written. Like it's not awful, but the whole Xynaa thing felt super predictable to me.

There's also moments where your character, if they have the skill line, gets outed as a Dark Brotherhood member. I personally don't mind that moment, but I can see where it's anathema for some people. Elam Drals is one of my favorites, so I'm a little more forgiving on this point.

There were also some awkward moments in general. At the end of the chapter, Dagon shows up and just starts trashing stuff. It felt odd to me that he didn't just straight up destroy the player character then and there.

Overall, it's really not a bad chapter, at least for me. There's some cool assets, plenty of cool enemies, and you get to know the alien Daedra a little more. I liked the idea of the Longhouse Emperors and ambitions.