Stalinwolf

“The essential Saltes of Animals may be so prepared and preserved, that an ingenious Man may have the whole Ark of Noah in his own Studie, and raise the fine Shape of an Animal out of its Ashes at his Pleasure; and by the lyke Method from the essential Saltes of humane Dust, a Philosopher may, without any criminal Necromancy, call up the Shape of any dead Ancestour from the Dust whereinto his Bodie has been incinerated.”
BORELLUS

My man.. The Colbert Report was sattire.. He was making fun of you. Holy shit.

I thought it was shrink.

Very well said. Skyrim is incredibly immersive. Vanilla would be difficult for me to feel the same way about it I went back to it now, but with flora mods like Nature of the Wild Lands, grass mods, and environmental audio overhauls like Sounds of Skyrim, the game continues to draw me in like never before. I play the game much more slowly now, and spend more time walking and taking in the sights and sounds. I hope Bethesda can match this on their next title.

I'd really like to play that one. I sucked at BG1 and was never able to get very far without getting my ass handed to me by enemies. Maybe I needed to be better at D&D in general in order to properly execute fights. Either way, I hear I don't actually need to play those two to pick up 3.

TES books are the best, dude. I'm playing a (heavily modded but largely vanilla+) playthrough of Skyrim right now and just came across a large trove of tomes. I grab whatever I come across that I haven't read while in dungeons or what have you, and at night when I return to my campsite (Campfire mod) I like to gather wood, roast a meal, and sit down to read through whatever literature I found that day. I have a stash sack full of some too for those nights where I'm feeling too wiped to really get into the game. I can just relax to the sound of crickets or morning birds and catch up on my lore.

I want the Morrowind levels of text, but let it be optional for those who want to delve into those branches of dialogue, and feel free to use splicing/AI to voice the extended options.

You speak to an NPC and it comes up with a few options like Skyrim, but included [More] at the bottom with far more topics.

I think the sweet spot is finding a way to make tradition mechanics a bit more casual friendly without removing them outright. I don't think Morrowind or Oblivion's attribute and skill system was difficult to grasp, but the leveling system was pretty bad. You either played the way you wanted to, using the skills you believed your character should be using, and received low modifiers as a result, or you meticulously selected and planned out major/minor skills that weren't reflective of your actual playstle, just so you wouldn't blow your chance at earning +5 modifiers.

You couldn't just comfortably advance to the next level. You had this paranoia that it would be a weak and wasted level-up because you didn't spend enough time jumping or something. It poisoned the gameplay with this annoying meta that was purely about exploiting the leveling mechanics so you wouldn't be at a huge disadvantage. They remedied this in Skyrim, but at the cost of making all characters feel generic. The heart was taken out of your character and who they were. You no longer had a class identity. Everything was just kind of same-ey.

If they could at least restore attribute points so I could give my character a deeper identity and allow more dialogue checks related to said attributes so these identities mattered, we'd be heading in the right direction. They don't have to be so impactful that casual players are put off by them, but c'mon, man.. I want to feel like there's a deeper system at work here. I want to measure my character in more ways than "Good with sword" and "Good with heavy armor".

Did I mention how much I miss skill checks too? Fallout 3 and New Vegas handled these superbly.

I love Bethesda, but putting TES6 on the back burner to make Starfield for eight years was an idiotic decision. They also took the wrong lesson from Skyrim, believing that streamlining the game through stripping of features was the reason for its success. They've done this same with each successive game since, and each has been more poorly received than the last. Go back to your roots and make a good, deep Elder Scrolls game. Continue to leave the shitty +5 modifier leveling system out, but at the very least restore attributes and birthsigns. Restore spellmaking. STOP FUCKING IT UP. You're on your last strike here and I don't have a lot of faith that you're going to make the right call.

Le reddit wins legain, m'fellows!

DEATH TO THE STORMCLOAKS!