Traditional European and American RPG is one of the first forerunners to put forward the concept of open world, and “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” is an outstanding representative of this type.
It is a magical open-world RPG game developed by the famous game manufacturer Bethesda, in which the player plays the story of a legendary dragon descendant with dragon blood against the world-devouring giant Oduin.
In addition to the main plot, the skyline civil war, magic artifacts, underground relics, organizational forces and other branch lines and hidden missions, huge world outlook and high degree of freedom, orthodox American RPG play, rich MOD expansion, all let the players of “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” indulge in it.
Since its launch, its cumulative sales have exceeded 40 million units, and it has been nearly a decade now, and it is still very popular.
This is a highly narrative game, but there is a conflict between “High Freedom of the Open World” and “complete narrative”. How do we tell a good story in an open world game?
Generally speaking, RPG games will have a must-choose main plot task, such as brave people to defeat dragons, heroes to save beauties, “defeat the devil to save the world” and so on.
But it is true that some players do not play cards according to the routine. the most common is that the players say, “the princess is dying but the brave still wander around the world”,
“his daughter has not been found, but the white wolf is still playing cards with people”,
“the prince has no intention to return to the country but indulge in fishing” and so on,
which means that players are addicted to all kinds of games in the free exploration and open world, instead of promoting the main plot.
Besides, this also brings another problem is that the sense of fragmentation of the plot experience will be obvious, shelving the plot task for a period of time and then doing it later may forget the previous plot.
So how does “The Elder Scrolls” solve this problem?
1. The construction of a rich and full world.
Because of the contradiction between freedom and narrative, The Elder Scrolls gives its own solution: to fill the whole world with high-quality narrative elements.
In “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”, playing the main task is the beginning of the game, how do we understand it?
Because in the general game, after playing the main plot task is to clear customs, the game is cleared, what do you still play?
In the Ancient Scrolls, in addition to the orthodox magic world and the main plot of dragon slaughter, there are four branches corresponding to the four major organizations in the game world: comrades-in-arms, Winter Castle, Thieves Union and Dark Brotherhood.
Each organization has its own rich plot content, and even some plots are tortuous and wonderful than the main line, as well as corresponding skills and artifacts of different professions, etc., and eventually players can become the leaders of these four major organizations.
So the main plot clearance for players only understand the tip of the iceberg of the game, there are countless stories in the world waiting for players to discover and explore.
Of course, this is only the branch line of the four major organizations. in addition, there are nearly 100 dungeon tasks, large and small cities and villages, werewolves and vampires, magic artifacts, and so on. every family, everyone, every city has its own story, and there are hundreds of carefully written books that can be read all over the world!
The final result of this massive high-quality narrative content is that “players continue to explore in the game, and finally let the main plot become an introduction, and explore and understand the whole game world has become a real hidden main plot.”
From the point of view of the capacity in the plot, a narrative open world may be equal to several or even dozens of linear flow games!
That’s why we all know that games like “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim”, “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt” and “Red Dead Redemption 2” are good, but you can’t copy them, because it requires high-quality narrative ability to master the grand world, and the key is to have sufficient development funds to play.
2. Dual freedom in and out of the game.
In the “provide freedom” experience, “The Elder Scroll” is also unique, it provides players with two layers of free space inside and outside the game:
In the game:
Players can choose from up to 10 races, each with different talent characteristics, and more than a dozen classes, each with a variety of skill systems and corresponding talent trees, with nearly 10 different operating experiences and different weapons.
In addition, many plot trends provide branches, and players can influence the fate of NPC and the development of part of the game world according to their own wishes.
Outside the game:
What is distinctive about “The Elder Scroll” is that it provides a fully open MOD community.
It is the magic of the MOD expansion pack, which is the key to the vitality of “The Elder Scroll”.
Whether you think the game visual is not good enough, the characters are ugly, the game plot is not good, or the combat experience is not good, you can find the corresponding MOD to install and solve any of your problems!
You can see it on Nexus Mods, the world’s largest MOD website — the number of MOD of “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” has reached 58,613, and many players have less than 10 gigabytes of games on their hard drives, but MOD may have hundreds of gigabytes.
Therefore, as an old game released nearly a decade ago, although it is still a stand-alone game, “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” can still be seen on the steam platform in the number of visitors is still ranked in TOP20, in a variety of player forums there are still a lot of discussion and active, is definitely a rare classic masterpiece!
Some time ago, Microsoft spent a huge amount of US $7.5 billion to acquire its parent company, ZeniMax,. The value provided by “The Elder Scrolls” is definitely due to the fact that Microsoft spent a huge amount of US $7.5 billion to acquire its parent company, Microsoft.