Hey, missed you guys. Hope you all had a good break. Let's get back into it.
Well, you don't need me to tell you that Skyrim is pretty great.
We've lost more hours to it than we probably should have.
Probably going to lose a few more later.
And we have many a tale about slaying dragons and shouting back monsters,
but still it's not without flaws.
And hey that's alright!
Now, it can be a great game and a good learning opportunity!
So, let's look at Skyrim. Specifically the first five or ten minutes.
We've talked about the importance of the first five minutes of an experience, before.
How those earliest minutes are both the hook that draws the player in
and the context that sets the player in the correct emotional state
to get the most out of the experience they're about to have.
So let's look at how we're introduced to skyrim, then.
Alright, so we've got an opening screen.
It's minimalist but we've got the skyrim theme slowly building up.
Then, we hit a loading screen, but it's got some lore on it
and a picture of a dragon, so that's cool.
And then...
Then we're going for a cart ride, I guess...
Now, if I were to ask you what the core engagement of Skyrim was, what would you say?
What, at its heart, is the most appealing about this game?
What human desire are they fundamentally tapping into?
You might argue that it's about growing and becoming strong,
but really even that's in service to something more basic:
Our desire to explore.
You'll find that most games have at their root one or two very fundamental ways that they're trying to engage the player.
And that in the best games, all their design decisions help to reinforce this core engagement.
Now Skyrim does this very well throughout most of the experience.
But let's return to the introduction
that moment that should really get us excited about the core engagement of the game
So, sitting in a cart.
Getting wheeled down a hill.
Because this is an elder scrolls game we're also a prisoner
which means that our hands are bound.
So as a player, mechanically all we're left with is the ability to manipulate the camera or look around.
"Finally awake"
Now, this decision may seem to play directly against the core engagement of the game:
Exploration.
And I'm not sure it was the best route to go, but
okay, there are certainly arguments for it.
A lack of freedom can be used to cause us to desire freedom even more.
Unfortunately, I don't know if that's really what they delivered here.
I find it's always useful to look at games in relation to each other.
So here's a question for you:
Can you think of another game where you're put into a vehicle to be taken to your execution,
and all you can do is move the camera
while voice actors give you an exposition dump to fill you in on the plot?
Yep
The intro to Skyrim is straight lifted from Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare
both mechanically and thematically.
Even more painful: Modern Warfare does it much much better.
In Modern Warfare this intro works
because it plays much more into the core engagement that they're trying to deliver.
In both of these games the designers are trying to introduce the player to the world they'll be engaged in.
After all this is the only function of constraining the player to looking around
while you wheel them through the world.
But Skyrim and Modern Warfare deliver very different kinds of core engagement.
Modern Warfare is attempting to set up a world on the brink.
A setting, where hard men need to do what needs to be done.
It's all about heroic empowerment
making you feel like a badass hero while you run and gun.
It's a gaming experience full of intense firefights and big set pieces
which this scripted introduction establishes perfectly.
Skyrim on the other hand should be using this time
to sell you on this incredible world full of mysteries and wonders for you to explore.
Here, let's just side by side these two introductions and look how they sell the world they take place in
First let's look at the most obvious.
What's the players seeing around them while they're riding?
In Modern Warfare the player's riding through an unspecified Islamic city
rife with elements that are supposed to feel exotic and foreign to the player.
But beyond that the city itself is in chaos.
The player passes tanks and cheering crowds
and the impromptu execution of resistance fighters.
This is clearly a dangerous and unstable place.
Historic things are happening here, and you are caught right in the middle of it.
Now, let's swap over to Skyrim.
Let's see... we got some snow, some pine trees.
There are some rocks
More snow.
Uhh...
More Snow.
Now, I happen to know that Skyrim's full of spectacular vistas and beautiful mountainous landscapes.
Where are those?
Where are the crumbling castles and Standing Stones?
Come, on! How did you manage to find the least impressive chunk of land in all of Skyrim?
That's not how to make a first impression.
Of course, part of the problem is the way Skyrim has set up the scene.
They've made it unduly hard to provide the player with any such visuals.
See, you'll notice that in Call of Duty all the dialogue comes in the form of a voiceover
blanketing the player from the Minaret speakers.
Neither of the characters in the car ever actually talked to you
which allows the player to freely look around without feeling like they're missing anything.
You'll also notice how the driver and the passenger are seated closely together.
So the player can easily see both of them at once
and quickly take notice if one of them moves or does something.
In Skyrim on the other hand
the other characters in the cart talked directly to the player,
forcing the player to watch them if they want to make sense of the conversation.
Not only that but the speaking characters are spaced widely apart
making it difficult for the player to watch both at once
"Shut up back there"
"What's wrong with him?"
"Watch your tongue! You're speaking to Ulfric Stormcloak!"
Meaning more of your time is spent trying to focus on the characters in the cart
and not the world around you.
Now, let's look at what the characters are saying.
In both of these cases it's a plot dump.
They're trying to fill a naive player in on what's going on in this world
and set up the overall quest.
You'll notice that in Modern Warfare this is done entirely with terminology we understand.
By which I mean, they never reference people by name or even call out specific places.
Whereas in Skyrim within three minutes of booting up the game
you will hear the terms:
Imperial
Stormcloak
Hammerfell
High King
Sovngarde
Ulfric Stormcloak
Nord
Rorikstaed
Dibella
Kynareth
Akatosh
Divines
General Tulius
Thalmor
Helgen
and Elod. (Sorry for all the misspelling...)
All of this jargon is, I believe, to make the world feel massive
but anybody who's taken a screenwriting 101 class
will tell you that people just filter jargon.
It all just becomes meaningless words,
unless you've gotten them invested enough to try and suss out their meaning
or make a concerted effort to explain it to them.
And the more jargon you throw at a person at once the more likely they are to tune it out.
Now, you might argue that this was all meant for veteran players of the Elder Scrolls series,
to make him feel right at home.
But both the marketing and the way bethesda simplified some of Skyrim systems, like stats and such,
implies to me that they were going for more mass-market appeal with Skyrim.
So, it seems like an odd choice for the introduction.
This exposition dump is made a little more ham-handed by the voice acting.
Now is the time for first impressions
and some of these deliveries sure aren't helping.
I don't know if you've ever seen someone really pray in a moment of fear
but I'm not buying that that thief is praying.
"Shor, Mara, Dibella, Kynareth, Akatosh!"
"Divines, please help me!"
Or running for his life in a panic.
"You're not gonna kill me!"
"Archers!"
No, it's not awful by any means,
games have definitely seen worse voice work,
but it could be a lot better.
Especially for a games first ten minutes.
This is the area where you want everything to shine, voicework included.
Now, I can understand why this happened.
You can't go throwing your entire voice-acting budget at minor characters,
and if your intro has a bunch of minor characters,
you're very likely to get some lackluster performances in those first 10 minutes.
But there are ways to get around that.
You can always try to make your opening only include major characters,
or you can do what Modern Warfare did
and put everything in a language that will be foreign to most of your consumer base.
So they can't tell if the voice acting was a little stilted.
Lastly, both of these games try to draw you in with a dramatic tension of an execution.
There's nothing like death to get us invested.
But in Skyrim, right before they send you to the chopping block,
they pull up a character creation menu and have you customize your player character.
Not only does this totally break the flow of the narrative,
but now we know they aren't going to execute the main character,
so all the tensions gone.
Although, well...
I guess they could have offed you right after that and then said: "Okay, create another character!"
Terrible design idea, but you've got to admit: That would have been kind of funny.
As for Call of Duty...
Well, I think most of you remember, how that ride ended...
Anyway, after that Skyrim throws the player into a constrained dungeon to learn the basics of play,
before finally letting the player see where the game shines.
Walking out of the cave and seeing that wide open world laid before you,
creates exactly the excitement the intro didn't.
But by then were like 20 minutes into the game.
That feeling should have kicked in a lot sooner.
So, Skyrim.
Great game, but there's a lot we can learn from that opening.
How could they have done it differently? Well, lots of ways.
They could have gone with the MMO standard
of starting the player in a secluded valley, or on a small island
to give them the sense of an open world
while still creating a carefully constructed tutorial area.
But since they decided to go with the sightseeing tour approach instead,
we can look to it for clues on how this should be used in the future.
And what we should expect in games that do this.
Anyway, I think I'm gonna go play more Skyrim now, so
see you next week!
you