Scimal wrote...
How's the actual story and immersiveness of the characters?
I don't really care about the graphics or the open world, but all of the reviews on Metacritic orgasm at the opportunity to pull of immature hijinks rendered at a high resolution instead of anything on the story itself.
Are there subtleties? Did it make you want to move forward? Simple? Complex? How's the voice acting?
It seems from everything I've seen that I'd get bored quickly since the combat system is so simple without a good story to drive me.
The story of the main quest and the various faction and civil war questlines are a lot more compelling than Morrowind and Oblivion IMO. The NPCs are generally more engaging as well. There is more of a life-like quality to the dialog, voice acting and animations.
Even the minor NPCs have at least some flavor to them. For example, playing as a dark elf I encountered some racist Nords who harrassed me and chased me across Falkreath Hold for a while.
IMO the voice acting is pretty solid across the board (70 different voice actors), except for one guy who sounds like Arnold Schwarzeneggar.
Pete Farrelly goes into some details about the improvement in the quality of the quests:
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is, in my humble opinion, a perfect game. It’s the first game in nearly 14 years as a videogame journalist I’ve ever given a perfect score to, and despite its flaws (of which there are a few), it delivers on so many varying and engaging levels, it really is unparalleled. Simple things like moving from one destination to another quickly become a day-long event in the real-world, because you’re constantly peaking over each knoll, tree-line or riverbed to make out whatever it is that’s invariably caught your periphery. Moreover, almost all of these points of interest become major moments in the game, from a player’s perspective, in that whether or not they have anything to do with the main quest-line is irrelevant. What matters is the exploratory experience, and this is something Skyrim has in absolute spades.
The best way to express any of this though, is to simply relay the event. One of the best non-spoiler examples I could muster came in the way of talking to a priest in the town of Falkreath who was conducting a burial in the town’s graveyard -- the biggest graveyard Skyrim has to offer, apparently.
Talking to him lead to me asking the others at the service what they were there for, and it turns out a little girl who’d not yet “seen her 11th winter” had been ferociously attacked and mutilated by a man who was now being held in the town’s jail, located in the barracks. That’s it. There was no quest-line given, no on-screen prompt to do anything save for a tantalising piece of information: said murderer was locked up. I decided to investigate further. Upon doing this, I learnt that the man suffered an infliction many of you know as werewolvism, and that there was a chance I could help cure him of his burden and maybe, just maybe, bring some relative justice to the young girl’s death. The rest of the tale, I actually cannot tell you for pure spoiler reasons. But I can tell you it’s not even remotely clear cut and dry; you’re forced to think for yourself and the characters around you and make decisions that will impact you. And this is was just one other, small example.