Why do people love Skyrim so much, Bethesda? Is it the mountains? The dwarven cities? The wolves catching fire and falling down hills? The relentless patching? The nudge-winking over DLC?
Game director Todd Howard has an inkling, but the game's commercial and critical success has surpassed his wildest dreams. "The short answer is 'I don't know'," he confessed in an interview with Game Informer.
Skyrim, of course, is the most streamlined Elder Scrolls title to date, boasting a reorganised inventory that suggests the influence of modern smartphone interfaces and console dashboards. It's also the first Elder Scrolls to discard character classes.
Howard insists these changes have nothing to do with capturing the mainstream. "There are things we changed to make the game better, but not to appeal to a wider audience. I think we always benefited in Elder Scrolls early on, the fact that it is first-person and kind of walks this action line sometimes. We've always benefited from that.
"Even our own lofty expectations for how the game would be received or sell, it's way, way beyond that. I don't have a way of explaining it."
With hundreds of hours of content on the disc, Skyrim is one of the industry's best value-for-money propositions: according to an OXM survey, it's the only game a majority of players would pay over £40 or $60 for.
Howard thinks the industry needs to offer more price points between budget releases and premium "epics", allowing developers to tailor their offerings to the needs of increasingly cash-conscious consumers.
"I mostly just make our stuff and say, "Okay, this will find an audience," and we've been very lucky when it comes to that. I do think about the industry as a whole a lot. I think it's a price point thing.
"I think it's starting to get better with the mobile platforms and Xbox Live, for example. Developers can make games and put them out for $10 and be successful there.
"Right now, if you go to a store, there's a stipulation that if it's on a DVD or Blu-ray it has to be $59.99. Everyone knows they all aren't created equal. I would like to see an avenue where more games can appear at multiple price points and be successful. There are sitcom shows and there are 14 hour epics."
Why do you like Skyrim? And what do you think of Howard's pricing argument? It's one of six ways we think publishers could kill off pre-owned without screwing consumers.
7 comments so far...
msbhvn on 21 Feb '12 said:
He's throwing stones from a greenhouse, IMO. I've heard it argued that Skyrim is a dumbed down Oblivion which in turn was a dumbed down Morrowind. I'm not the kind of RPG gamer who needs pages of arcane numbers to feel hardcore, but Skyrim has been simplified a bit to attract the Fallout crowd. That they've managed to do it without p***ing off most of their fans is remarkable and BioWare should be taking notes.
Clanger67 on 21 Feb '12 said:
I don't think they are just lucky,what they do they do dam fine in my book.I have bought every single bethesda game and most of the dlc.And despite the moans i have heard about skyrim being same old same old,in my book they have a brilliant mythology and loads of stories within stories.All the lore and the books you can read.It is like reading a good tolkien book in my eyes.I WORSHIP at the altar of bethesda.
kronk10 on 21 Feb '12 said:
I think the reason why skyrim is so popular is because of how big and easy it is to get into! You just play how you want and get stuck in also bethesda have managed to make a huge open gaming world and not make it feel to overbearing. I go on huge walks now to find new and exciting things and i still get surprised when i come across a dragon lair or a dungeon. I looked in a random tree trunk the other day and found a skill book and a nice orc helm
OggyWicks on 21 Feb '12 said:
Skyrim's success is down to it's versatility. It's a massive game with so many ways to play it, I've brought it on both the Xbox and the PS3! I'm only on my first play through and I think I've clocked just over 100 hours! It's breathtaking.
The pricing of games has always concerned me (and my wallet). I'm finding myself waiting for games that I've really wanted to fall in price before I even consider buying them, or prowling through eBay for a bargain. I don't believe that some of the games today warrant the vast amounts of money they're marked at, especially when after as little as 8 hours you're finished with them. I don't mind paying £35+ for a game that in five weeks time I'm still playing and discovering new things within, or that has a good supporting multiplayer. Or am I just being picky?
ATATCCU on 22 Feb '12 said:
In Skyrim I can do what the hell I like and when I like. If I'm fed up of trogging over the hills to the sound of my footsteps (AND my companion's footsteps....quiet back there, what are you, an elephant?) I can bring up the map and swap cave for village for town and fast travel. It's the facility to change whatever to suit whatever. Sometimes I just want to go picking flowers for a while (all the time knowing that the AI is going to land a dragon on my head sooner or later) and other times I want to mix it with the good/ bad guys. I would really like to engage with giants, I'd like to know what it is they get from their relationship with mammoths.
'Gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk, gunk'.......over the hills I hear the sound of people gunking.....
Recently I had two bandits run straight at me, waving swords and shouting 'you should never have come here' which took me by surprise only for them to continue to move straight through me and disappear over the horizon. Then I turn around to see a mammoth zoom straight up into the air and back down (must've been about 300 feet) from over the brow of a hill. It had a look on its face of 'again, boring'. I proceed in that direction to find a giant in his BIG mammoth enclosure walking through trees planted firmly three feet in the air, I could see under them. I wanted to talk to this guy, say 'mornin' you' and such but he was in a bad mood from those bandit fellers and I gave him a wide birth. So orft I trog and around the next bend I stumble on a shiny fifties American diner and pop in for a coffee and a burger, what, you've not found that yet...oh oh...spoilers!
CunningSmile on 22 Feb '12 said:
So long as the diner serves and damn fine cup of coffee and pie.
desdicado on 28 Feb '12 said:
I think the thing with Skyrim is its openness and its randomness, total freedom to go anywhere, with the possibility of so many different things happening.
Sure I don't like the fact that character stats like strength have been done away with, classes have gone and it's been streamlined (slightly dumbed down IMHO) but it is an epic game, I've completed it once as a melee type and am now on my second play thru (fully modded up) as a mage.
There we hit the other massive factor in its favor, the mods.
There are also so many hooks, the dialogue (EVERYTHING'S for sale!), how many games have started a whole new class of humor? ( arrow in the knee jokes) the characters, the different environments, it has it's flaws, like overpowered smithing, not many enemy types and the bugs but it is THE game of 2011/12. Kingdom of amalur? I laugh at you.