In a post on the Bethesda forums (via this tweet from Nick Breckon) it was confirmed that the company plans to release a modding “Creation Kit”.
“Do you think the ‘Kit’ refers to a Construction Set analogue, thus enabling moddability of Skyrim?”
Yes it does. We’ve always been impressed with what the community has done with our tools. Like the Elder Scrolls Construction Set for Morrowind and Oblivion, we plan to release Creation Kit so you guys can mod Skyrim :celebration:
Expect to see a nude mod within 50 seconds of the Kit’s release.
Why should you be able to go anywhere and have the game adjust? Why not have areas that are too hard for your lowly character? Why have freedom harm gameplay? Etc. Some sense of design and direction is still needed even if your game is supposed to be mostly open world. You don't have to make the character capable of reaching 99% of the content from the first hour if he decides to just to be called open world. Would and should a LOTR game just let you walk into mordor from day 1 like it's nothing?
At least if they do it this way, by slowly enabling more quests for the taking, it's better than having all quests from the start yet as easy as they need to be for your character, but then that harms the open ended feel of the game really. Why shouldn't the huge dragon a hard quest wants me to slay be there even if I'm too low to do the quest, effectively blocking an area from my crappy character until I'm tough enough for it, with that area (and dragon head) being my reward for getting stronger?
Instead that area will be clear and ripe for looting if I come across it, and only after I hit lvl 20 or whatever will the dragon show up there? And will the dragon be there after that level or only after I accept the related quest?
At least with the former way I would see stuff as I travel, and have them in the back of my mind to return to and overcome later, rather than randomly revisit areas to see if anything new has popped up. Hopefully they at least have relevant dialogue show, something along the lines of someone looking for a merc or whatever, looking at you and thinking to himself that you don't seem up to the task or something...
This type of thing could make the world feel like it changes and evolves over time but only if it's handled right. If things just pop up out of nowhere when I accept a quest it will feel very instanced and mechanical. But in the end it's the same goal people wanted done in a different way. Have content too hard or too easy for my character, there's nothing wrong with that (why should a bunch of ragged bandits suddenly upgrade to awesome equipment to match me if I decide to do the quest much later, rather than react to my obvious strength and flee in that case?) and they seem to half-get it. They just wanna block the too hard content to not deter newbies who won't be able to understand the game logic, ie, that you need to become stronger to take on that challenge or something. I think that just sells gamer intelligence short.
Anyway, hopefully they get whatever they want to do right because they certainly didn't last time.
The optimist proclaims we live in the best of all possible worlds
while the pessimist fears this is true.
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