Interesting note: Having spent a lot of time reading about Mass Effect and other RPGs, @DialMforMara assumes every action we take in Skyrim will have consequences, and effect the game later. Hard to convince her that WHAT SIDE WE CHOOSE TO WIN THE CIVIL WAR has no consequences, while still convincing her this is a GOOD GAME.
And yet, I also find this freeing. I don't have to worry the game is going to have things I do come back and haunt me like I do in The Witcher or Mass Effect or Wasteland 2. It is like playing Baldur's Gate again and be able to follow my whims and do what feels right, rather then sit there with a wiki making sure I'm not getting someone killed or tortured.
@DialMforMara It isn't that they aren't meaningful: It is that they have limited scope. So I know the only consequences I have to deal with are right in front of my face, and if I travel to another town, I don't have to worry about them coming back to haunt me 50 hours later.
Some do hurt the game: I wish you could see more changes when the civil war ends, for example. But all that changes is a few Jarls get replaced, as I recall.
@DialMforMara But I know if I save this person, then ALL I've done is save this person. If I protect this shipment of goods, I've protected a shipment of goods.
Unlike in The Witcher, where doing so leads to the goods going to a terrorist group, which then makes lives worse for all the non-humans in a city, etc etc.
@Canageek Skyrim also does small-scale choice badly.
It doesn't matter whether we help the Redguard political refugee or turn her in to the assassins hunting her; we get paid either way, and either way we come away with the feeling that we've helped the bad guy.
It doesn't matter whether we kill the werewolf or help him; we've either murdered a mentally ill person or set him free to lose control and kill others.
@DialMforMara I'd say neither of those are the strongest quests though, and it matters to the women and the werewolf. Plus if we find out he is still killing people, we can hunt him down and kill him later.
@Canageek Undoing our previous kindness. Nothing we do feels worthwhile, and that's not the world I want to immerse myself in.
@DialMforMara Lets put it another way:
Skyrim doesn't try to sell its story. It tried to sell its world. It has little stuff to help with that illusion most games don't. Like Nazeem sending thugs after me when he figures out I robbed his house, or if you help someone then they die, they leave you some money in their will.
Or recall that thing where if you are seen beating someone up, they have a small chance of hiring you to beat up someone they don't like?
@Canageek None of the little illusion-boosting tricks actually make up (at least for me) for the fact that everything you do feels empty, and that even the beautiful views are modded in.
@DialMforMara Should I start a new save game without any visual mods to show you that it look pretty damn good without doing that?
@Canageek Not worth your time or mine
@Canageek How does knowing your choices are meaningless make it *better*? When choices are meaningful, I can at least tell myself I'm making a difference in the direction of whichever cause I support. In Skyrim I don't even have that, though I pretend to