Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim’s Balancing Act

Fans of the Elder Scrolls franchise know that when you sign up for one of these epic RPG’s you can go about things in any number of ways.  You can grind through the campaign in the fastest way imaginable, or you can just run around the world doing what you please, adhering to no rules but your own.  In Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, you’ll once again have these vast options at your fingertips, with a twist.

Skyrim’s game director, Todd Howard said in a recent discussion with Markus Persson, the creator of Minecraft, that he’s done with trying to make the gamer’s play the Elder Scrolls games in a specific way.  He advised the independent developer to ” Give the player tools and let them run wild”.  Apparently, that’s what Howard has in store for us this fall.  Considering that he also claimed in the interview that “Everytime we try to get control back, either we do it the wrong way, or it doesn’t have the impact of just giving people the tools and letting them go crazy.”

So with all of the things to do and see in a game that is said to be as massive as Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, how does Howard and the developers working on the game reel people in to complete the main agenda?  Howard said in the interview that “If a plot’s not worth following, people won’t follow it.  If “People say I avoided it, that means Ok, the game was fun, I guess, but you didn’t make people care enough.”  Like it or not though, whether your on your main quest line or not, “What’s good about dragons is, we can make people not avoid it.”

Source: Game Informer