T w e n t y S i d e d
So what’s the big difference between Skyrim and Oblivion? What draws the line of burning gasoline between what the series used to be and what it’s probably going to be forever?
Simply, they simplified. They made the game more straightforward and turned everything upside-down in the process.
Processes of simplification have occurred before in this franchise, but never quite under these circumstances. The first big features cull took place between Daggerfall and Morrowind when the latter title dropped half the former’s skills and subsystems, but this was a move born from the strictest pragmatism; most of the stuff dropped just plain didn’t work. Morrowind‘s developers were soberly aware of what they could actually make interesting and worthwhile and while they clearly wanted to preserve the same basic feeling Daggerfall contained, and wanted as much complexity in the game as possible, they were no longer willing to just throw something in there just for the hell of it, just in case somebody liked it. Which had been the prevailing design philosophy since the original epic of feature creep that spawned the series, but never mind. It was time to exercise discipline and restraint.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “The Altered Scrolls, Part 15: Thoreau’s Razor”
