iCake;n8112670 said:
Why are bringing the Witcher 3 into this? All I ever questioned was your claim of Skyrim's virtually endless replayabilty. I never said the Witcher 3 is an example of that or even if it's better. Please, don't steer the conversation away. One might assume it was either your great love for Skyrim, which is obvious (no harm there) that carried you away or your desire to sidetrack the conversation.
No, there was no intention to sidetrack, TW3 was just an example to compare with.
So.. short, plain explanation - Skyrim world and mechanics + some mods + small bit of player's imagination create such variety that even TES fans will tire of game earlier than they will try all possible ways to play.
Detailed:
NPC reactions. Active magic on you - random different comment from any NPC. Shout - NPC will comment, and guard will run to you. Throw something to ground - NPC will come and ask if he may take it. And he will not only take, but also wear it if it is valuable enough. Cast telekinesis or simply jump on the table and some items will fall from it - people will ask - why in the hell are you doing this. And list may be continued for long, including membership in the fractions, skills, secondary quests and your personal level of favor with this NPC. I agree that majority of reactions will be the same each play-through, but there are so many of them, that in period of several days they will be various enough.
Physics. In Skyrim we get rather real physics. Stand on the hill, take book and throw it from you inventory - it will not teleport to ground or fall like a brick and stick to surface, but will roll around several times with animated pages and lay still even on hillside. Now throw something more rounded - like bottle, egg or helm - it will roll down the hill and you will never find it. But if you run fast enough and see where your bottle fall - it will be laying there, where physics place it. If it rolled down to water, then light items will flow above water surface and heavy will sink down. Place a basket on water and it will swim, now carefully place something heavy in this basket - basket will sink with item inside.
Lighting. There is huge difference in stealth with dependence of lighting. It's not some pre-defined hand picked zones of guard control and places of light. If you use mod with dark interiors you will be nearly invisible indoors - but this is not because somebody remaked all zones of sight in entire game, it's only light sources changed and everything connected to them changed automatically. Cast a lighting spell (with perk for silent casting) to enemy which stands turned back to you and he will react only when magic light will fly close to him, then he start searching - and will find you if you didn't hide from light. But if he stood looking in your side, you will be detected in moment of casting because light appears as soon as you release spell. Same comes with sound - you may wear heavy armor without perks - and no matter your stealth skills, enemy will easily hear you movement in close range. But you may use special shout to distract or throw some item from the table with spell or your own hands and bandits will run in desirable direction to investigate what happened. This is not scripted, it's game engine. Why bethesda need to place adventure-like scripts for silent kills if you may silent kill or distract enemies by game physics?
Balance. Map size, density of map objects, quests that make you travel huge distances, non-immortal and costly horses (stolen horses will runaway from you at first opportunity), universal crafting and alchemy materials, small number of trainers and a lot of skills which require training, it all makes world balanced and rewarding since you need to constantly think where to craft, where to sell, where to train, who I might kill (on high difficulty you can't kill anybody you want until very late game), what follower to take with you and how to gain his favor (also matters on high difficulty, without follower to absorb damage most enemies will kill you from 1-2 hits and there is no direct dodge to avoid this).
Variety and depth. Each hold has different trainers, resources, followers, standing stones, unique useful artifacts available in early game and critical for different classes. A lot of unique mechanics such as silent roll, shield tricks, magic effects are put on high level of skill development - so developers were confident enough to hide a lot of content from availability in 1st playthrough. My favorite Telekinesis spell makes miracles but you may cast it freely only after you become skilled alteration mage and enchanter - and I guess there is rather little percent of builds with focus on alteration school. To put it further - there are daedric artifacts with unique mechanics, there are dungeons with unique mechanics and this dungeons are not a part of main questlines, you will find them only occasionally or for example by reading certain book which will never happen if player don't pay attention to books.
Now put it all together and you will see how many ways exists to create and play different "builds" without any sufficient limitations. Idea may look boring, but funny NPC's, beautiful music, graphics and a couple of new mods will turn this "another dull build" into real adventure - if you want to.
If we return to title of this topic - "long life of skyrim because modding community support it". Yes it is true, mods are essential for TES, but community can't do anything without appropriate game engine. TW3 is not that bad from that side and there a some of complex mods for it. And for opposite example look at ME - there is almost no mods, because there not so many mechanics in "Unreal" engine, it's all scripted from start to end through all Mass Effect series.
