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How did Skyrim become so popular with "casual gamers" ?

taizuke

Member
Being on consoles helped. While Oblivion was available on 360 early on it's lifecycle the series popularity was mainly on PC. By the time the Skyrim came out it had been a couple years into the 7th generation which had just started to hit it's stride.

Also, the name. Often times i see the word "Skyrim" before anything. While that is true for other ES titles i think "Skyrim" has a more cooler and appealing sounding name.
 

niilokin

Member
dragon slaying, norse looking aesthetics, oblivion was popular and created lots of memes, dual wield, cat men dealing drugs, modding
 
Part of it I think was the series building word of mouth title after title, I didn’t know what Daggerfall was till someone showed it to me and got me into it, most of my friends didn’t know what Morrowind was till I showed it to them and got them into it, and most of those friends got Oblivion when it came out and in-turn showed it to others and got them into it. It’s like the word of mouth grows exponentially every title.
 

Fbh

Member
I think one thing that makes Skyrim stand out from other RPG's, specially for more casual players, is that it's still pretty fun if you just want to fuck around with the world. It's almost like a medieval RPG equivalent of GTA.
They give you the freedom to go wherever you want really early on, and if you just want to ignore the main quest and go exploring, fighting, improving your character, screwing around with NPC's, etc you are still going to have a fun time.
You often hear people being like "I've played for 60 hours and haven't even touched the main story beyond the dragon shout!!!!"

I'm not saying it's the only reason, but there just aren't a whole lot of RPG's with that level of freedom while maintaining casual friendly mechanics.
 

Doom_master1122

Neo Member
It was 100% the streamline and approachable mechanics. While Oblivion was popular to a point, it still had some hurdles to bring in the casual crowd. Leveling up and character building still had relics from past entries such as Major and Minor skills + Class systems and attributes. You had to be careful when leveling up, you could easily end up with very low attributes and high skills, which made the game a bit daunting to play for too long. Skyrim made combat much more enjoyable from Oblivion with more fluid actions, add in the fact your "class" is whatever you want it to be, and be able to switch up your play style any time you want. You had tons of freedom to do almost anything you want in the world with no real repercussion. Approachable controls for console players, with menus that weren't cumbersome (Unless on PC. Thank Talos for SkyUI). Of course add in Dragons and other surface level things like shouts, Nordic themes and a cool new environment. Follow all that cool launch trailer that got everyone excited, and you had a game that would invite nearly any player in, and give them a warm welcome and be able to keep them invested.

Skyrim wasn't my taste when it launched, but even still, I'll admit sinking hundreds of hours into it. Coming from Morrowind and Daggerfall, the in depth RPG mechanics are what I wanted, and the elaborate and insane amounts of choices for role playing, Skyrim had significantly less than those games. However, what I got was something else that still kept me wanting to play more and see more.
Even now I'm currently replaying it to see how my opinion has shifted over the years since it's initial launch, and I'm still finding myself enjoying the game for the same reasons I did back then.
 

Shubh_C63

Member
Skyrim isn't actually casual its just appealing to casuals
Its a game type that does have a barrier of entry.
Graphics aren't pretty and first person sword wielding is jarring. And yet new people ate it up. I don't think it was friendly to casuals.

edit: I think it was just really really immersive. most paths begged you to take them.
 
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Mercador

Member
Just the good balance between casual and content. Previous TES were really good as well, just unknown to the casual mass. You can expect that TES VI will be at Cyberpunk-hype level. Seeing Fallout76, I'm a bit worried though.
 

Fools idol

Banned
I sank something like 750 hours into the game on 4 different platforms and consider it to be my favourite RPG (not counting cRPG's as that is a whole other genre).

It just does everything so well.. simplistic yet addictive gameplay mechanics, wonderful exploration, and a world packed with lore to uncover at your own pace.

I don't think it's the best Elder Scrolls - but as a product, even with all the bugs it had at launch, it's very close to percection.

It's popular because it's a damn fine game, not because it's 'casual' per se. It's also an incredible cozy world and has so many nice areas to walk around with a great soundtrack and day / night cycle. Super relaxing shit.
 
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lordrand11

Member
Remember when Skyrim first dropped and nobody would shut up about it? Suddenly dudes I knew with 360s/PS3s who mainly just played CoD or sports games were all up in the latest Elder Scrolls title

Was Oblivion super popular outside of the enthusiast market? I have like no memory of how it was received. I remember discovering the Elder Scrolls through Morrowind on Original Xbox and thinking I had stumbled on pure nerdy gold.

How the heck did this have such crossover appeal? Something to do with Fallout 3?

Please explain to me, a casual
The marketing and advertisement campaign, the introduction to the lore, ease of access to pick up and play were all some of the key highlights on why it got so popular.
 

NeoIkaruGAF

Gold Member
The market got flooded by casuals in that period, and Skyrim was the big game to play.

Also, it was kind of a perfect storm. Huge but accessible, open world, traditional fantasy appealing to everyone, good looking enough. And the memes, of course. Skyrim was a huge pop culture item.
 
It’s just a phenomenal game. When I first played it I was blown away. Easily some of the best gaming memories I’ve had. People who try to argue Oblivion was better are idiots.
 

Mozzarella

Member
Everyone has their reasons to like the game, i can't give a general answer to explain why people like it, but if i had to guess.
It was open world at a time where open world wasn't made by everyone.
It had tons of freedom on gameplay sandbox system, in open world with fantasy rpg setting and good lore.
It is easy and you play as you want.
Immersive game.
Mods
Good visuals and music.

It's a great game, it can appeal to a lot of people.
 

Vaelka

Member
I think it was the first open world fantasy game a lot of people played.
That or Oblivion.

Imo Morrowind > Oblivion > Skyrim.
Skyrim feels extremely empty and dead the world is not interesting at all and the writing and voice acting is just rly bad.
I loved it when I first played it but I think that was just hype, the more time has passed the more I've begun to see how lackluster it really was.

It was because of the awesome main theme song. Finally we swedes understood what it was all about:



That's actually hilarious xD.
Only line that occured to me was '' ostkaka '' but when I read the subs it all sounds so clear to me.
 
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