I was watching “…why Skyrim?” by Razbuten on sloptube this aft and it’s so weird that it finally took Starfield for people to realise. Like Fallout 76 wasn’t enough, only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness. It’s so wild, like wow they ruined the magic system? The game has worse writing than a PS1 era Mega Man X game??? Skyrim is just shitty Game of Thrones?? Welcome to thirteen years ago!!

Bethesda hasn’t made a really good game since 2002, but it’ll probably be years before that realisation sinks in.

    • FlakesBongler [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      It’s amazing how Morrowind was just a breath of fresh air in terms of fantasy settings and writing

      Then we get Oblivion, which tossed out everything interesting in lieu of casting Patrick Stewart (for five minutes) and Sean Bean, with even the high points being fairly cookie cutter nonsense that only seemed good because the rest of the game was so bland

      Now Skyrim on the other hand, immediately went to Epic Dragon Viking Town, but stripped the game of even more depth and even made the dragons some of the easier enemies in the game

      Like, what fucking game designer goes “Dragons should be far and away the most annoying enemy to fight”?

      • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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        Then we get Oblivion, which tossed out everything interesting in lieu of casting Patrick Stewart (for five minutes) and Sean Bean, with even the high points being fairly cookie cutter nonsense that only seemed good because the rest of the game was so bland

        Didn’t Skyrim get rid of the dynamic npc conversations? That was like a highlight of Oblivion which was a pretty bad game overall.

        “Hello!”

        “Oh it’s you.”

        “Have you heard of the high elves?”

        “I saw a mudcrab the other day, horrible creatures!”

        “Good bye!”

        “Bye.”

        • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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          i would say they fixed them. like yeah Oblivion’s are iconic in that janky way, but skyrim crossed the pale into fairly convincing which helps for immersion, but is less funny

            • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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              For real, just like going to someone’s house and they aren’t there, they’re at the alchemical shop or whatever slapped. It gave the faintest sense that the world continues to turn when you aren’t in frame.

              Also some random behaviours like Ma’iq the Liar shooting off in search of caliper tongs was very funny. They coulda built on this!!

  • rtstragedy [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    i’ve played hundreds of hours modded and unmodded. whiterun is a safe place for me. well, and windhelm a bit. i love the vibe of the world (maybe because i grew up in a very cold place) and i can turn my brain off when i’m exploring caves (since they’re all very similar, or i’ve already done them). i even like the easy-ass cave puzzles since i don’t play the game to think.

    to me, skyrim is like modded minecraft, it’s chill and familiar and i can just wander around and listen to the soundtrack (also i just learned about the 42 minute Skyrim Atmospheres track on the OST and now I measure my activites in “number of Skyrim Atmospheres”)

    but i have trouble with the combat. i think most recently i had fun with a 2h weapon. i hate the magic and while i used to be able to stealth archer everything when i was young nowadays its super frustrating because the stealth system gets more “realistic” and less fun if you do any kind of modding of the combat system, and actually clearing a room as a stealth archer even in vanilla can be an exercise in quicksave/reload (maybe i’m just bad idk)

    tbh, the most fun I had was on the switch when i bought it again (damnit todd), and i’m not sure modding was really worth it. i got starfield for free with a cpu i bought and didn’t make it past the elevator because the game ran so badly on my computer. i did watch a semi-playthrough of it and it didn’t seem like something i’d like. i kept trying to get into no man’s sky and i bounced on it for some reason, and i think it would be the same for starfield.

    idk, it just clicks for me every couple of years and i get obsessed with it. when i was young my dad surprised me with a copy of oblivion one day randomly and i played the crap out of it but hated the level scaling etc. skyrim improved on that in some ways - the level scaling feels less punishing in skyrim. i also couldn’t figure out how to level up in oblivion (i was 12 or something), so skyrim was an improvement there.

    oblivion was still better than ultima 9 though for me (though i still have a cloth map for that), ask me how i lost multiple days to the tutorial tower in that game…

    • Biggay [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      i also couldn’t figure out how to level up in oblivion (i was 12 or something), so skyrim was an improvement there.

      Same. I just ran around and did quests forever, then got a quest where i finally had to sleep to advance it and then i leveled up like 20 times and all the enemies were in daedric when i maybe had some mithril.

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    Okay it’s over everyone, the R*dditors have found the thread here.

    Choice cuts:

    The “Bethesda hasn’t made a really good game since 2002” gives it away as yet another case of sour grapes from a Morrowind stan.

    People really do think I’m like, a Morrowind purist, but frankly it was too complex for me at the time, I played Oblivion and Fallout 3 way more. I like Morrowind the best other than NV but I do think F3 and Oblivion are decent games.

    We can’t just casually enjoy or dislike or criticize something anymore. We have to make sweeping statements that leave zero room for nuance.

    NUANCE! CONTEXT! CIVILITY!!! I guess “dogshit” was kinda spicy of me to use, but I really do not like Skyrim at all lol.

    Mom says it’s -my- turn to post the controversial take about one of the best selling games of all time in order to garner engagement and make money

    knifecat Tell me how to make money from hexbear posting right now! But anybody who thinks this is like a controversial take for clicks, 1) why “karmafarm” on fuckin hexbear, 2) no I actually do think this. I also think Sonic Adventure 2 and Symphony of the Night were catastrophic game design mistakes, fwiw.

    Update: oh man I am so not looking at r*ddit comments anymore. “Im not gonna stop enjoying it just cuz some youtuber said so” okay nice! Literally go for it!! R*dditors are fuckin built different.

    • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      Realest Skyrim Experience

      I spent like 400 hours across four save files desperately coping trying to find enjoyment in it, lol.

    • charly4994 [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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      I had basically the exact same experience. I got super hyped for 11/11/11, stopped going to school for a week and spent all day every day playing it to the point where I was solving puzzles in my dreams and then I beat it and never really touched it again. I kinda woke up from the dream back then and have been watching the rest of the world catch up. I did put a lot of hours into FO4 but that was solely for the base building aspect, never touched the main plot after the first time through.

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    Skyrim is a great entry-level RPG/open-world game for people who haven’t really explored the genre. Normies absolutely loved that game and I know many people who got into much better games after getting enamored with Skyrim. It’s honestly fine and does certain things really well.

    A hotter take (and one that more people need to accept) would be that Oblivion isn’t good and never was. I actually think Skyrim is better as an overall game lol

  • there’s basically no other first person, open world, fantasy RPG out there. the closest i can think of at the moment is like, kingdom come: deliverance, which aside from not really being fantasy (other than its idealized racially pure christian ethnostate version of europe) has garbage inaccessible combat you have to grind hours of being a racist czech peasant to even access the tutorial of. also it has no playable cat bois. skyrim is mediocre at best but it fills that niche of first person, open world, fantasy RPG with accessible and simple combat mechanics, and has the khajiit on top of that.

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      Perhaps even more importantly, who else is out here releasing the SDK tools for their game alongside it and letting players just go nuts with radically altering the bland base experience? Nobody, not even Bethesda anymore.

      I hope Avowed comes out someday and is cool because I like the Pillars of Eternity world but 100% chance that it’s not moddable and just fades out of relevance within a year.

      • ComradePlatypus [fae/faer]@hexbear.net
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        I’m baffled that Assassins Creed 4: Black Flag was made, and Ubisoft didn’t just pivot to make better and better pirate games. Or us all as a society generally.

        Like I should be sailing my customized privateer interceptor around the Caribbean with my crew of lesbian love interests, while maxing out a pistols build that lets me shoot 6 times at the start of combat from 6 pistols hanging off my character.

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    I am an oblivion supremacist and enjoy skyrim. By saying this I have probably earned the lifelong enmity of the screeching morrowind boomers

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    But I like Skyrim, the place, and want to go there, and other places in Tamriel, and it’s got better graphics than other elder scrolls games and probably isn’t the worst one I’ve played. It’s good enough in a lot of ways. Not my favorite Elder Scrolls game, but dogshit? No. phoenix-evidence

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    only now are negative things people were first saying about Skyrim in 2012 finally bleeding into mainstream consciousness

    so like now that the only people left talking about it are the nerds who were/became genre aficionados? normal people who didn’t put 100s of hours into morrowind and oblivion were like 90% of skyrim’s playerbase, and complaints about ‘systems’ and writing are no more salient with those casual players today than they were in 2012. they just aren’t still talking about it

    i know everybody ‘gets’ the idea of being able to watch/enjoy a movie with poor writing that has other virtues, idk why its so hard to imagine people connected with skyrim on the basis of the (at the time) sophisticated and lived-in feeling world

    • Mousy [they/them, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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      I think a lot of it is that we’ve been conditioned to filter our thoughts through the lens of explosive and quick hot takes. Something can’t be middling or be flawed it has to be either an afront to god or a gift from god himself.

      • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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        No I just actually think this. It legit surprised me that this thread blew up so much.

        The language I used is spicy in retrospect, but I’m just a vulgar sweary person. I have nuanced flaw-acknowledging takes, on Oblivion and Fallout 3. I was hyped for Skyrim and it was bad, so bad. I’vebeen cooking my Skyrim thoughts ever since. I have also never posted on twitter.

        • Mousy [they/them, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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          I guess what i’m trying to say is that people should examine and disect things not through trying to create sound bites. Like skyrim’s writing is bad but how? Is it just self evident or that it is worse then mega man x? Is it a worse game of thrones in that they’re both fantasy and skyrim is worse in what game of thrones is attempting to do?

          I have also never posted on twitter.

          You don’t need to ever post on twitter to be exposed to the attention economy.

          • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            Reading this as an outsider it feels pretty invalidating of what they’re saying, only engagement with it I can see in this comment is the implied question of what they mean by bad writing, but I think in the future it would be better just to ask that

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              Yeah I didn’t mean to come off as hostile or invalidating I guess the way people can sometimes talk about art regardless of medium on the internet can kind of annoy me.

              • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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                I try not to just be stupid, like I could spend several days posting my GAMING HOT TAKES!! but this thread happened by accident. If I tried to purpose-build a hot take it probably wouldn’t even work, I am too autismy. I’m more prone to writing 4000-10,000 words about why something is bad, or good, and often people don’t wanna read that which sucks. It’s kinda lame that this post got a ton of engagement just for “skyrim bad” tbh.

                • Mousy [they/them, love/loves]@hexbear.net
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                  I’m more prone to writing 4000-10,000 words about why something is bad, or good, and often people don’t wanna read that which sucks

                  Yeah that’s the consequence of so much content being shoved in our face all the time making it what does get the most attention is the most immediately understandable and eye-catching (think buzzfeed articles with inflammatory headlines) so when someone does sit down and write something that is carefully thought out it gets blown by the wayside.

          • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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            It’s been a while since I played it and I’d need a comb to go over it, but the scene where you absorb a dragon soul and everyone stands around gawping “wowee, the protagonist! you are the player in this power fantasy game! what a big guy!!!” is eyerolling. I hate it. I also do not like Game of Thrones fwiw, but the Stormcloak-Imperial scuffle is small scale and half baked imo.

            I am in the business of writing ridiculous, lengthy examinations and dissections, but a lot of people missed that this post is not a review of analysis of Skyrim, it is about opinions shifting.

      • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        there’s shitty things about it and stuff that yes, even skyrim did better. but part of being an agonizing scold is also having to couch that in the context of its time, so a lot of it wasn’t as bad as it looks now.

        • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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          Yeah I know. Just people who worship morrowind generally don’t realize it’s mainly their nostalgia that makes the game legendary in their heads.

          Just like oblivion was my first elder scrolls so that’s the one I gravitate towards

          • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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            as someone who has played both Skyrim and morrowind long after both came out, I can say with certainty that there are certain aspects of their preference that are just true. Morrowind fundamentally caters to the “weird nerd tinkerer” kind of player way more, with seemingly purposely broken mechanics that are designed to be fully solved through exploring them. Kind of a toolkit of random toys to play with combined with an overarching story.

            Whereas Skyrim does have those toys, they were significantly shifted towards being a supporting aspect of the game with the plot and quests taking center stage. This isn’t a bad thing, but it stopped catering to people who play with systems as much and started catering towards people who enjoy (multiple concurrent) linear stories more. If you’re the kind of person who either roleplays a character that doesn’t make sense with the stricter plot, or if you just want to generally fuck around, Morrowind is genuinely a better game (if you can stomach the absurdly out of date graphics). I would describe Morrowind as more of a full on RPG and Skyrim as more of a single-player MMORPG with less predatory monetization (well, when it was originally released at least). One is about giving a player the tools to basically make a story from whole cloth (which does kind of make the existing main story in Morrowind kind of a detractor sometimes), and another is about giving the player far more fleshed out linear narratives to take them on. Both are fun but for very different moods or preferences.

            • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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              started catering towards people who enjoy (multiple concurrent) linear stories more.

              Linear stories that are awful, to boot. Describing Skyrim as a “single player mmo” is so enlightening to me, it’s like Borderlands and I hate both, lol

            • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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              If I want to play a full rpg. I’m not going to be playing a post daggerfall Bethesda game.

              It’s just not that good of a role playing experience

              Better than Skyrim or Oblivion? Sure. But it’s not some masterpiece of rpg gaming Bethesda games have since morrowind and todd Howard been far more about the exploration than the role playing

              If you’re trying to gatekeep rpgs with Morrowind. I’m sorry but that’s laughable to me

              Keep in mind these are video game treats people. Please don’t go insane because I’m not a morrowind fanboy

              • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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                NO I wouldn’t gatekeep anyone. I fucking loved Skyrim for ages and think anyone who likes it more than Morrowind (or even a lot more) or any game more than Morrowind is completely valid and reasonable. Art (even silly escapist art like video games) gets way worse when it’s a “whose better” wankfest

                • FearsomeJoeandmac [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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                  I didn’t think you were trying to gate keep my friend

                  I just meant some Morrowind fanboys do and it’s irritating whenever I bring up enjoying Oblivion. Morrowind fanboys pop and tell me how my tastes are shit or how in supposedly a casual (whatever that means)

    • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      soviet-pout

      I don’t think so Idk, like RPG Codex nerds never make videos for instance. Most of these people who make the “eh skrim bad” videos are themselves the normals who never played Oblivion or Morrowind. Also how dare anyone put hundreds of hours into a game and not like the sequel, how abnormal!

      Personally it’s because the world is worse, again, after Oblivion’s was already generic high fantasy. World simulation elements like scheduled NPCs have just vanished, any attempt at a real dialogue system or prcedural chatter (however clownish Oblivion’s was) has disappeared. It is a buncha generic brown grey fields and some snow. Its NPCs spout even fewer poorly voiced dialogue lines than in Oblivion and the writing of those lines, as well as everything, has gone down across the board.

      • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        buncha generic brown grey fields and some snow

        i’m going to take umbridge with this and echo somebody else in the thread: juniper, aspen, pine, high plains, and snowfields are all distinct, but i suppose continental biomes. as opposed to Oblivion ‘marylanders impression of sherwood forest’ i found it much more convincing, but maybe that’s cause i’ve actually seen those things but not the english countryside

    • EelBolshevikism [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      and complaints about ‘systems’ and writing are no more salient with those casual players today than they were in 2012. they just aren’t still talking about it

      People can still enjoy a game with flaws, like you said, but this goes both ways. Just because someone enjoys a game doesn’t make it immune to criticism.

      • Dolores [love/loves]@hexbear.net
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        i wasn’t trying to say they’re immune, just explain the narrative at large. systems critique for games or say, costume critique for movies, are not invalid directions to look at things, but if they don’t matter to a large portion of the audience we gotta acknowledge that

      • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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        Just because someone enjoys a game doesn’t make it immune to criticism.

        Lol tell the gamers, quick! This thread should have been ten replies and done, who cares if some dork hates popular game? And yet!

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    Why is there a 300+ comment thread on such an obvious and uncontroversial truth? It’s like having a 300+ comment thread on why Diablo 2 is better than Diablo 3 or why Doom is better than Wolfenstein 3d or why Sonic 1 is the weakest of the Genesis Sonics. Bethesda’s last good game was Morrowind just like how Blizzard’s last good game was W3:TFT.

    Hexbear is not ready for your “Fallout 1 is better than Fallout 2” take.

    • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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      The thing is, everything that everyone is mad at Starfield for can also be applied to every Bethesda developed game going back to at least Skyrim and probably back to Oblivion too

      So watching everyone realise that Skyrim has a boring world, dogshit quests in both writing and design, combat design that sucks from any approach, stealth or melee or magic, classes have been removed, and the main story is awful… definitely a big I-was-saying moment.

      I have not heard arguments for enjoying Skyrim that don’t involve modding the game so much it stops being Skyrim either. When people mod New Vegas, they’re usually adding shiny graphics or tweaks to bullet travel, not gutting the entire magic system or replacing the game’s entire main story.

      There are games I can accept just aren’t for me, liks I don’t get along with the way movement works in Read Dead Redemption or how momentum builds in Super Mario Bros 3, but Skyrim… not-good

      • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
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        I enjoyed vanilla Skyrim when it came out, and I enjoy it now, I don’t really see why I’d need to, or even how I would “argue for enjoying” it. I like the quests and the combat design and the levelling system. I also know many people who feel similarly. It’s not a super duper amazing game, but it’s fun.

        I don’t really care that much, I just think declaring “this media is objectively bad for these subjective reasons” is a very silly take.

        • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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          Well grats, if you do I’m not gonna stop you or like, call you unserious or whatever. The “objectivity/subjectivity” thing is such a red herring though, this post is more about general consensus turning to match views that were deeply unpopular a decade ago.

          Where did I say “objectively bad”, people always do this but pls point out where I said “my view is objective fact and unassailable”?

          • CarbonScored [any]@hexbear.net
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            Skyrim is dogshit

            Skyrim has a boring world, dogshit quests in both writing and design, combat design that sucks from any approach

            the main story is awful

            There are games I can accept just aren’t for me … but Skyrim <not good>

            These are objective statements. At no point in fact did you ever say or even hint these were opinions, I can only find objective statements declaring an absolute truth. The word “realise” alone implies people are coming to believe a certain truth.

            Maybe we’re just talking across dialects and crossing wires, so if that’s not what you meant, then sure that’s fine and apologies for the misunderstanding. But with your wording, that’s how it comes across to me.

            I read a very different meaning from the phrase “Watching Gmers slowly realise Skyrim is dogshit has been an experience" than I would "Watching Gmers slowly agree with me that Skyrim is dogshit has been an experience”, for example.

            EDIT: If we had an emoji called “opinions” I could’ve avoided this silly argument, QED it should exist.

            • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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              Is this the bit where you want me to preface every opinion I say with “IN MY OPINION” or “SUBJECTIVELY SPEAKING” instead of just taking it as red that views are subjective? Also coming out to defend a 40-million selling game by saying you don’t care and basically demanding that a discussion not happen (“I dont feel the need to argue”, which if u dont then dont) or only happen with specific qualifiers is pretty funny.

              I knew you were gonna bug me about “realise”, the reason I use that is because, as in the OP, the public opinion seems to be turning quite suddenly, people are realising they don’t actually think it’s good, lol.

              Maybe we’re just talking across dialects and crossing wires,

              This is basically all nitpicking yeah. People mostly do this when they dislike what someone says, I find. Something that’s worthy to note is that I had long considered Skyrim to be a “lost cause”, in that everyone enjoys it and I just hate the fucker. So it was quite a surprise to see people suddenly turning around and start beating the game up for the same things every Bethesda game since Oblivion has done. Funny…

              • Diuretic_Materialism [he/him]@hexbear.net
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                Is this the bit where you want me to preface every opinion I say with “IN MY OPINION” or “SUBJECTIVELY SPEAKING” instead of just taking it as red that views are subjective?

                90% of the time when people say “IN MY OPINION” what they’re doing is signally that they don’t hold the opinion they’re about to express so strongly that they’d be willing to get into a heated debate/argument over it. They’re basically conceding you permission to disagree.

                That’s morphed into people expecting that declaration for everything so they don’t feel disrespected by disagreement.

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                  1 month ago

                  Which is super weird cause it only seems to apply in certain circumstances, usually media criticism. If I say “Jack Black was always an annoying asshole.” No one smugly tells me I should have instead said "it is in my humble opinion that Jack Black has always been an asshole.’ They just make the very easy mental connection. If a statement is either inherently an opinion based on its nature there is no need to preface it, it’s a waste of time.

                • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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                  1 month ago

                  Yeah, Idk why people assume they have to have that “permission”. Obviously I am hip to the idea people like Skyrim…

            • FumpyAer [any, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 month ago

              The fact that it’s opinion is implied unless they specifically say “objectively” or similar (and even then, that word might actually be intended as hyperbole!). Art criticism by definition is opinion-based regardless of how it is phrased, and you shouldn’t have to state it unless you’re a YouTuber trying to stave off hundreds of angry :gamer: comments.

              It is frequently taught in English and public speaking courses that phrases like “I think” and “in my opinion” undermine your persuasiveness without significantly changing the meaning of a sentence, and I would have to agree.

            • GalaxyBrain [they/them]@hexbear.net
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              1 month ago

              It is perfectly okay to state an opinion objectively. The fact that you figured out that that these cannot be genuinely factual statements shows you are capable of parsing context cues. It’s not necessary to preface an opinion with the fact that it’s an opinion.

      • GarbageShoot [he/him]@hexbear.net
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        1 month ago

        Starfield doesn’t have 100% overlap of criticism with Skyrim (easy example: Skyrim has horses!) and certainly not Oblivion

        To be clear: Fuck Skyrim, it’s an overrated piece of shit game and the only thing good about it is the modding support, but I strongly believe Starfield is even worse.

        • ashinadash [she/her]@hexbear.netOP
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          1 month ago

          Yeah tbf Starfield has its own special problems like planets as little instances and no mooncars. A lot of the same applies though, bad writing copypasted dungeons lifeless characters stripped back mechanics…

        • RyanGosling [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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          1 month ago

          I remember seeing footage of Starfield for the first time. I don’t keep up games so I genuinely thought it was some leaked beta footage but then I realized it was set to launch like a year or so later lol