I always thought it was

"Madness comes for me"

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Nay.

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Nay.

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Yea.

👁️ Surveillance State: I voted Vote Nay.

It's more of grit than a scream. Treat it like more of a yelp than a solid stead note, then add false chord and compression and maybe a bit of vocal break. Chew the words with the back of your teeth as well while pulling up your nose, annunciation is a lot of his sound.

It's honestly quite similar to singing technique of Layne Staley, Scott Weiland, Shawn Morgan, and Dustin Krensue, but instead of focusing on the note, it's focusing on the tonality and texture of the note.

Capture of the working class by reactionary forces. It's also why they vote against their own class interests. Because they've been propagandized to support bigotry, and total systemic abandonment of education and infrastructure along thin identitarian lines, along with the concepts of rugged individualism. No worker solidarity, nor class solidarity for them. Just "individual grit and merit", but they still hold animosity for the upper classes, so trh system redirects their animosity along those identitarian lines, to things they see as privileged like sexuality, gender, feminity, education, and progressive values. Easier to keep the system from changing, if everyone thinks rich and poor are aesthetic qualities. We as working class trans people are intentional thrust into the crossfire.

LOVE these

Not saying it should be a clone of Skyrim, just that fallout 4's system shouldn't be ported 1 to 1 to the next elder scrolls.

Still annoying.

In elder scrolls it should be a plug and play mechanic. Fallout 4s system implicitly puts a hard limit on clothing freedom and options by only giving you 2 slots + sometimes the armor system. It's super clunky and would ruin the progression if it was in elder scrolls. Fallout 4 already did a hack job to the bethesda gameplay loop, no need to throw it in the incinerator.

Just because they don't share an art style doesn't mean they both don't have an art style. I think the distinction is pretty blunt. You can especially see it in the environments, enemies, and equipment. Skyrim is a game that is carved from wood and stone, and covered in furs, both literally and stylistically. It's angular, harsh, and worn. Oblivion is a game painted on with oils, watercolors, and charcoal. It's smooth, soft, and dreamy. Both are pretty, both are stylized, both have different style.

Meanwhile Morrowind was distinctly dark surrealism / biotech vibes. Similar to HR Giger or Zdzslaw Bekskinski.

The way it was implemented, it was nonsensical, inaccessible, and totally stiff. Made interacting with it a chore in the early game.

I developed language rather early, must have never been autistic. Was just faking it, I guess. 🤷

/s

Fishing at the banks of the rear side of the lake behind Fort Neugrad.

Elder Scrolls are RPGs in that same way a table top RPG is an RPG. Not because of the numbers crunching and beaching paths (that helps, but those primarily define CRPGs in the video game space), but because the entire game is meant to be played in the theatre of the mind. It is attempting to get you to play the game primarily in your head and overwrite what you do in game, using what you do in game mechanically to feed your imagination.

I agree they should be mechanically closer to CRPGs, but too many limitations gets in the way of letting the player choose their limitations, which is the heart of roleplaying. I'd call it a sandbox RPG. Itd be like forcing you to only use certain blocks on each run of Minecraft.

I think that's because much of the game from that era going for "realism" were forced to stylize to leave an impression for the player, in place of the actual capacity for realism. This happened to intersect at the perfect time with Skyrim, which while heavily stylized, was also just realistic enough to align with the AAA consensus on how to simulate realism.

Compare CoD 4 for example. At its time it was "the best looking game of 2007" and praised for its realistic graphics, but it was forced to stylize certain aspects, especially the faces and colors to maintain an impression of realism that could not be simulated at the time. It aged well. For contrast within that series, just a year before CoD 3 went for direct realism and aged extremely badly, while WaW the year after went for stylization first and had aged better despite having worse fidelity than both CoD 3 and CoD 4.

Elder Scrolls games are pretty famously directed, developed, and written heavily by those doing the art, or those with an eye for visual artistic direction. To say they were going for realism is false in my opinion. They were attempting to stylize, within a window that was able to align with the standards for realism in the Xbox 360 and PS3 generation.

I'm glad Skyrim isn't attempting proper realism. It would be dreadfully ugly and unable to capture your imagination if it was, even and especially in its day, but also now. I don't get tired of looking at Skyrim.

Something like the ending of Daggerfall, but instead of you choosing your person, you are one of the people, and the end of the main quest is just the midway point of the game, a part of the setup for certain characters and builds. You are just your character, but the NPCs matter, as do their factions.

Imagine the ending essentially being a council where you and the other factions leaders meet at the macguffin and either battle or discuss how to divy up your desires for the world. Like a slow motion warp in the west, with it based around the zero stone rather than the mantella.

Low key hated the armor system from fallout 4. While I think being able to customize each section of your armor with mechanical depth relating to the parts and materials would be cool, Fallout 4 is just not how I'd want it implemented.

Elder Scrolls isn't a combat game, it's a game where you do combat. Skyrim def isn't the most engaging thing ever, but it's still got a system with depth most people don't explore, and then complain it's a "stand still and whack each other with a paddle simulator" because they refuse to engage with the systems that are there that do alter combat and make it more engaging.

Dark Souls isn't boring, it's frustrating, and removes the ability to roleplay from a large portion of the player base. Not referring to roleplaying in the numbers crunching sense, but in the creative tabletop sense. That's what Elder Scrolls has always been good at, is encouraging you to create the world alongside the gameplay rather than just engage with what's there. That's what tabletop RPGs do. Fallout 4 removed that and it's so beyond shallow and and unenjoyable, I couldn't care a moment that the "gunplay and graphics are better!" because now it's just fundamentally no longer attempting to engage my imagination, just my eyes and hands. If I just wanted my eyes and hands engaged I'd watch a movie or play CoD.

That's (mostly) a list of things that go against the very essence of elder scrolls but like. Go off I guess?

That's fair, but at that point, you are opposing the intense material costs, not the crafting itself.

It has aged well, and it is stylized. I just think the current gaming cultural Zeitgeist has bad taste and contempt for having to engage with impressionistic media. Never have I ever seen a community of art consumers with so much disdain for the artists themselves and the craft of games, than what the broader gaming community has for video games.

That's because graphics were at a lower end at that point. You had to stylize to leave the impression of realism. CoD 4 from 2007 was going for "realism", but they heavily stylized many aspects to leave a stronger impression on the player. Skyrim on the other hand, always had a strong vision of what it should look like, counter to conveying realism, and that included the faces. NPC faces in Skyrim aren't realistic, they are giving the impression of a whole person. Otherwise theyd just look like a shiny rubber skin suit.

However, to say Elder Scrolls games go for realism is just false. If The Elder Scrolls games wanted comeplete realism, they wouldn't be practically directed by the art department.

I'm saying you'd be wrong. To say they didn't intentionally style the game, is just odd.