A critique of Call of Duty MW3 2023's Campaign and ways to improve the story

 Hello everyone. I recently completed the main campaign of CODMW3 2023 and I wanted to talk about it.

Let’s start with the gameplay. MW3 2023 has been heavily criticized and roasted for its level design and structure. With some calling it the worst COD campaign in history. Many people really hated the game’s “Open Combat missions” that drop players into part of the Warzone map and be told to go do some objectives however they feel like.

But bear with me on this next section:

 I’m going to drop one of the hottest takes and pretty much ruin my reputation by saying “I actually kinda liked it and feel that with some tweaking and improvements, this has the potential to significantly raise the bar for future COD campaigns”.

Now that nobody is going to take this post seriously, it’s time to explain my reasoning.

To me, the main appeals of a COD campaign are its mix of levels that vary up the gameplay. You could have a level that’s more of an Uncharted style action set piece, followed by a scripted tense stealth level, followed by a more open ended level that gives you more freeform and improvisational gameplay. Followed by a straightforward shooter level with no gimmicks. But I still prefer it when COD levels lean more on giving the player multiple options rather than be 100% scripted and linear.

There is one Open Combat mission in MW3 2023 that I feel really highlights the potential of open combat missions. Highrise. In this mission, you play as Gaz as he’s tasked with capturing Konni operative Nolan on the top of an apartment complex. The gameplay involves navigating through through the various rooms of the apartment complex as you climb higher and higher. But you have a fair amount of options for how you want to progress and fight enemies. You aren't just going through linear hallways (not entirely). For example, you can jump out a window onto a balcony and use that to flank enemies or even bypass them altogether. There are often multiple ways to go up floors such as using the stairs, using the makeshift walkways outside or jumping on certain hanging crates. Gaz even comments that he's using these shortcuts. The mission even rewards your exploration by giving you high quality gear, armour pieces and tools like the Ascender to help you access more areas or shortcut back up if you fall. My favourite part was getting Ascender, using it to enter a side room a couple floors up, and finding a Dragon Breath Shotgun that fires explosive rounds that tore through many of the armoured enemies in my path. I really enjoyed this more freeform level design and progression despite the overall structure of the mission being quite linear.

Another Open Combat Mission, Oligarch has Soap infiltrating the mansion of the Russian Oligarch funding Makarov. This mission is fun because you can either choose to play it stealthily or go loud. The stealth is rather basic but the open ended design of the map makes combat quite engaging. I found I was enjoying it as I was chased and directed around, going into buildings and looting supplies as I fought armoured enemies. The mansion and its grounds offer a lot of variety and interesting spaces to fight in. COD's mechanics and weapons sandbox at this point are quite deep. There's a lot to play around with weapons and their attachments, killstreaks, gadgets and perks. And past COD games didn't really incorporate that into the campaign as much as MW3 2023 is.

The other Open Combat Missions, I feel, are fine. Their gameplay isn't any worse than prior CODs and their missions. The gunplay is snappy, you get quite a lot of rewards for exploring. Them being Warzone Maps means the environments are better designed for combat encounters with more avenues to approach objectives. I'm reminded a bit of the Singleplayer Spec Ops modes from prior CODs. MW3 2023's campaign kinda feels like it's incorporating some of the design of those old modes. Like, I don't feel these missions would be automatically better if they were much more linear and scripted like the older CODs like many of the reviews and posts I've read claim.

I will argue that many of these Open Combat Missions lack a lot of the spectacle and forward momentum. The missions also don't take more advantage of their format to introduce more interactive elements. So rather than feeling like "campaign missions that just happen to be set in Warzone's map", they feel more like "Warzone contracts that happen to be in the Campaign".

As an example, in the mission "Precious Cargo", Farah just needs to plant trackers on the missile containers. Even though the mission is open ended in how you approach it and we get a sense of her and Grave's relationship, once you plant the trackers, the mission just ends.  Or the mission Payload. Here Price is tasked with destroying 3 Konni Helicopters and then entering the base's nuclear reactor. Your primary objective is just to destroy the helicopters and there happen to be a lot of Konni guards in your way.

Imagine, in a hypothetical version of Payload, what if it worked a bit more like Metal Gear Solid 4 where Konni forces were engaged in skirmishes with some local militia and Price's objective was to sneak through the battlefield while the 2 sides were distracted to destroy those helicopters (or some other target as the Helicopters would probably be in use now)? You already have the approach the game already has where you can slowly stealth through, ride past or shoot your pay past Konni enemies (and also the local militia). But now the mission could introduce secondary objectives or interactions the player could do. For example, they could take a detour to free some local militia prisoners so they have a larger force to attack a Konni base. And then they could either join in the attack or use the commotion to sneak around and plant explosives on the Helicopters/Target? Could make the mission stand out a lot more than just being a Warzone contract.

This is something prior COD games have toyed around with. CODWW2 had a mission where you infiltrate a German Embassy and could optionally rescue prisoners you found along the way. And they would then help you out later depending on how many you rescued.

-The Story.

While I have been pretty positive on MW3 2023's Singleplayer gameplay (more than what people think it should deserve), I will be a lot more negative on the story. I have heard CODMW3 2023 was originally intended to be a DLC for MW2 2022 (the game even shows up as a DLC for MW2 2022 on PS5) and nowhere is that more apparent than in the game's story. MW3 2023's story feels like its spinning its wheels, stalling for time and stretching out events in order to buy time for the real MW3. It's even half the length of a typical COD story, clocking in at around 2-3 hours as opposed to the usual 5-6.

The game starts out strong. Rescuing Prisoner 627, learning its Makarov, seeing him go to work and seeing Price immediately abort a mission to go after him really establishes Makarov as a threat. But the game doesn't really progress this dynamic. A major focus on the plot is how Makarov intends to frame the ULF for launching chemical weapons......the same plot point from MW2 2022. And Task Force 141 are able to thwart it so Farah's wishes are fulfilled. Price is poisoned from exposure to chemical weapons......but is fine barely a cutscene later. The world as a whole doesn't feel like it's on the brink of war so there's no sense of forward progression despite what Lazwell says.

Something MW2019 and MW2 2022 did better than the OG MW trilogy was develop the main cast of characters. What can you tell me about OG Ghost's character? Those games didn't really show much of his character and personality aside from him "being a competent soldier" and wearing a mask (and also being a hit of a hacker). Like, you could swap him out with Ozone or Scarecrow and little would change. You had to read the tie-in comics in order to get some actual character out of OG Ghost. But MW2022 goes out of its way to give Soap and Ghost a bromance in "Abandoned". Their banter and relationship were charming and endearing. You also had Aleandro in MW2 2022 with a very charming personality and Farah in MW2019 who acted as something of a "moral compass" for the cast. Gaz has his bit in MW2019 where he showed off his feelings in Piccadilly. 

MW3 2023 portrays these characters in a far more generic way. Gaz feels much more like a generic and replaceable soldier character. Soap and Ghost's bromance only briefly gets shown in a single cutscene. Farah has this very interesting relationship where she trusts and sides with Graves (the villain of the last game) who every other character hates but that tension never goes anywhere. This hurts because I feel this trilogy was on track to at least make Soap and Ghost's deaths hit harder since we got more character development out of them. But MW3 2023, the way it currently is, makes Soap's death feel way less impactful than it could have. Like, you could have had Soap die in the final mission of MW2 2022 the same way he does in MW3 2023 and that would have felt more impactful because of the build up and relationship he had with Ghost. 

MW3 2023, because of its rushed pace and lack of any significant story or character beats, also suffers with regards to Shepard. Price kills him in the post credits scene. But unlike his OG counterpart, this version of Shepard didn't do as much wrong for Price to want to personally kill him. I guess he may have been responsible for delivering chemical weapons but it lacks the more personal antagonism of OG Shepard. It feels more like Price went AWOL to go after Shepard here rather than a more organic sequence.

Adding to the issue are Graves and Alex' characters. Alex died back in MW2019. Graves (supposedly) died in MW2 2022 (but we didn't see a body so he almost certainly was alive). Not only does MW3 2023 bring them back after several years (significantly undermining the threat of death in this series) but the reveal and details of their re-appearance wasn't even shown in MW3 2023. The cutscenes re-introducing them came from Warzone and its seasonal storytelling approach. Being charitable, I suppose Activision noticed that the Singleplayer story was only being updated a couple years apart while Warzone needed a concurrent story to keep players engaged and so decided to kill 2 birds with one stone by having the singleplayer story continue in Warzone. This isn't even an entirely new idea as CODMW2019's Spec Ops Mode was described as being a sequel to the base game's story as it followed up on some plot points from the base game.

But still, I don't think this is a great idea. I haven't played Warzone since 2022 but I don't imagine Warzone players were that invested in the Singleplayer campaign's story? I figured the Warzone playerbase were kinda like the Zombies Playerbase in that the story was this alternate universe "isolated to the mode" type affair. Kinda like Operation Monarch Event where Kong and Godzilla showed up in Warzone. Conversely, are fans of COD Singleplayer really going to play Warzone just to get more story out of the game? Especially when the story is now limited to the location and structure of Warzone. I imagine there are quite a few players like me that don't play much Warzone and primarily get their COD story from the singleplayer campaigns who were quite confused. A major aspect of modern COD is that there are like 3-5 modes per game and some players are exclusively fans of 1 of them.

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But on a more broad note, I feel the core story issues in MW3 2023 aren't entirely new. They kinda were always present with this trilogy of games. MW3 2023 is just where they caught up to their consequences as its seemingly rushed development really pushed them out on the open. MW2019 had this weird approach where it wanted to be this far more "realistic" and "grounded" game rather than something closer to a Hollywood Blockbuster. Something more morally ambiguous with Price saying "We get dirty so the world stays clean". But the game doesn't commit to either approach. See how MW2019 rewrites the Highway of Death to blame the Russians or how the Russian Occupation of Urzikstan's inspired suicide bombings in the UK rather than Russia. Jacob Geller has a really good video on MW2019 wants to look controversial and serious but fails to actually explore any of its topics and falls back to its preconceived conventions. 

MW3 2023 inherits that same wishy-washy approach but has less to distract from it. It can't seriously explore Makarov's points or explore its characters in any depth because it can't commit to being serious or having characters reflect on their questionable actions. But at the same time, it can't let Makarov kickstart WW3 or have America be affected like in the OG MW2 and MW3 because its supposed to be "grounded and realistic". So all it can do is spin its wheels. This results in a story that doesn't really progress its overall plot or its characters. The new MW trilogy really feels like the kind of Games Spec Ops: The Line was designed to critique. It also doesn't help that the story now needs to be handed off and received from entirely separate modes like Warzone that don't complement a more serious story.

 I suspect MW4 2025 will continue this trend. You may have Task Force 141 pursuing revenge against Makarov in some small isolated section of Russia and/or the Middle East that is completely isolated from the rest of the world. They may even kill him but there won't even be a proper WW3 in the story. Or if there is, it will probably just be US troops vs the local army or something all while the game claims this is WW3.

 Regardless, If I could suggest how to improve MW3 2023's story while making as few changes as possible, here's how I would do it:

Operation 627:  Honestly, I think this mission is fine the way it is. The shake up that you're rescuing Makarov, getting a sense of how he operates and the final cutscene showing Price abandoning a mission as soon as he learns Makarov is free is good stuff. It establishes Makarov as a credible threat. Honestly, I don't think there's much wrong here that needs to be changed.

If I had to change anything, I am not a huge fan of this version of Makarov's design and appearance. OG Makarov's design and voice was more iconic and intimidating. Reboot Makarov kinda looks and sounds younger and less threatening. Other rebooted characters like Price, Soap, Ghost and Shepard due at least look and sound on par with their OG Counterparts. I wouldn't  have been opposed to Makarov here being a copy and paste of his OG self.

Precious Cargo: The first open combat mission. I kinda like what this mission is going for here. You play as Farah, her friend Dina gets killed and you have to scavenge for supplies in a dock while Graves is the voice on the radio. Farah's primary objective is to plant tracking devices on shipping containers that hold the chemical weapons Makarov wants. I feel the banter with Graves here as this "fake angel/help" is quite interesting and I wish there was more of that.

If I had to add something, I feel there could have been a linear section after the trackers have been planted where Farah wants to seek revenge against the Konni commander that shot Dina. So you could have a section where Farah disrupts a small Konni command centre, gets into a scuffle with a commander, and learns more of Makarov's plans before the mission ends. But idk, seems a bit overboard for the first Open Combat Mission. Plus it would just be padding anyway. So I'm not too big on this idea.

Reactor: This mission is ok. Price infiltrates a nuclear power plant in an Open Combat mission. Destroys some helicopters, and goes into the reactor where he gets hit with a dose from the chemical weapons.

Not much to add here. I do feel the mission would be improved by my MGS4 inspired idea.

Payload: This is where I start getting more drastic with my changes. The opening missions of MW3 2023, if a little bland, do at least something and follow on from prior missions. Payload is the first mission that really falters here. Price gets exposed to chemical weapons in the last mission but recovers in like a couple seconds of screentime. The consequences of his exposure never show up in the game whatsoever.

So here's my suggestions: Price gets benched for this mission because of his injuries. The player takes control of Gaz while Soap provides recon and assistance via his drone. Kinda like an inversion of "Abandoned from MW2 2022" where it's now Soap who is helping out the player character. I want this mission to have a lot of optional dialogue and bonding moments between Soap and Gaz. We need to milk as much of Soap as we can before he dies. But the story should present it as like Soap and Gaz being worried about Price potentially dying. Flag up Price potentially dying as the red herring to distract from Soap's death.

 

In the current version of MW3 2023, the chemical weapons are marked with Urzikstan's flags so they get blamed for the attack. Aside from being a repeat from MW2 2022, this plot point doesn't matter much because Urzikstan's name gets cleared anyway by the end. If we have to reuse this plot point again, I feel it would be better if the consequences of this are something that are more drastic and can't be as easily undone. Like, in the original MW2 2009, the events of the "No Russian" Mission weren't easily swept under the rug. So I would have it such that the missiles are branded with American Flags or set up in a way to blame the Americans. This strains global tensions and pushes the world towards war. Which at least feels higher stakes than the current version. It also mirrors the OG MW2 2009 which is what MW3 2023 is going for.

This also accomplishes several other things. Firstly, it gives Makarov an actual win that Task Force 141 can't easily undo. It also puts more pressure on Price as the story could frame it as him being out of commission is what allowed the missile launch to actually happen. That if it were Price in Gaz' place, this wouldn't have happened.

Deep Cover: This mission is really brief so there's not much to talk about. Laswell sneaks into a Russian military base, steals a keycard and meets with Yuri but then has to evacuate when the chemical weapons launched in the last mission hit the base.

This one is weird because it introduces Yuri but doesn't do anything with him. If I had to suggest a more drastic change, maybe have this be MW3 2023's version of MW3 2011's chemical weapon attack and have Laswell die in the base (assuming she doesn't have a large role in MW4 2025 or something). That way, Makarov gets another win and Task Force 141 loses a valuable source of intel and support.

For gameplay, maybe this mission could have more ways of sneaking into the base as a way to improve it. CODWW2 showed that is possible in COD.

Passenger: This mission seems to be MW2023's main attempt at a "No Russian" style mission. And in isolation, it's really good. The mission is tense and there are some "choices" the player can make such as "choosing" to fire on the other passengers only to find the gun wasn't loaded.

But in the context of MW3 2023's story, this mission has no consequences as Farah wipes the data in the next mission and Urzikstan is cleared by the end of the game anyway.

I say, if this game is going to take some notes from MW2 2009, why not go all the way? I would change it such that this a framed Russian act of revenge on an American Plane. Really get both countries ready to go to war. If we want to include Samara and the ULF into it, we can still have her be the unwilling scapegoat Makarov uses. This could allow a plot point where Urzikstan is also willing to go to war now and is trying to drag its allies like the US into it and Farah is torn between her loyalty to her country or having to go behind it.

Crash Site: First change: I want this mission's opening cutscene to be a montage of various news broadcasts talking about how WW3 is imminent from both the US, Europe, Russia and Urzikstan's sides.  Really play up the idea that this is serious. In the current version of the story, Laswell says the world is on the brink of war but we don't really feel it. These changes really bring that out into the forefront.

I also want there to be a brief cutscene of Price seeing the rising stakes and choosing to return to the field before fully recovering. Citing that the threat is too serious for him to sit out. That they can't take the risk of Makarov doing more damage and that they need Price now even if he's not at 100%. It's Shepard, funnily, who gives Price the OK here to return to active duty. I want to have it that Shepard has somewhat similar motives to his OG counterpart in that he wants to push America into a war and is hoping that he can use Price as the catalyst to launch it given how easy it is to goad Price into going into a mission by just suggesting Makarov might be there.

As for the mission itself, it can play out mostly the same as it does in the current game. Farah investigates the crash site to figure out what really happened. But the change is that even though she learns the truth of what happened. she doesn't find any hard evidence to exonerate anyone or convince Urzikstan's to not go to war. Farah's internal conflict here where she's torn between supporting Urzikstan's decision to go to war or abstain is really introduced here and gives her character something to do.

Flashpoint: No major changes here. It's a solid flashback mission. And it really sells Makarov as a threat and chessmaster as even though Task Force 141 capture him, because they focused all their attention on Makarov, they missed the Stadium getting blown up. The framing of this mission is that Price feels he needs to get after Makarov as he's too dangerous and Price is the only one that knows how Makarov operates.

One change I would add is that partway through the level, there is a single bomb that Soap and Price have to disarm. The game presents this as supposedly being Makarov's plan and it involves responding to a series of faint coloured lights. This is for the Chekhov's gun my story is going for.

Oligarch: No major changes here. The mission is solid and has what little engaging dialogue between Soap and Ghost that there is in the game. And this is a victory that Task Force 141 gets over Makarov as they cut him off his money in Milena.

A change I would make is have Price on comms offer help like "this is where an ambush would be" or something to show that he does know Makarov well enough to counter (or at least get Soap to counter) his traps.

Highrise: No major Changes here. This mission is great the way it is. We could have this be Price's return where he's mostly fine but still suffering from some issues like faded colours or having difficulty seeing some things (this is the important Chekhov's Gun for my version of the story). But to be safe, we could also have Soap accompany us. Both as a way to help Price and to have some more bonding between him and Gaz. And again, we could have some instances of Price recognizing traps or ambushes from Makarov before they happen and warning Gaz and Soap of them.

Frozen Tundra: To be honest, I still don't understand why Shepard is here or why he's Makarov's captive.  The story doesn't do much with it being Shepard specifically. The easy change would be to remove him and have Task Force 141 actually have a prisoner they carry the entire time. Maybe Yuri in this case?

But if we have to keep Shepard because of that tension of "is this the mission where he betrays us?" then I suppose we could. We'd then have to have a setup where he kills Gaz and then escapes otherwise what's the point of having Shepard along? This would somewhat mirror the fate of OG Gaz and be something of a callback to MW2 2009. To be honest, this is what I thought was going to happen when I first played the mission and Gaz offered to watch Shepard. That this is what gets Gaz killed and what motivates Price killing him. I'm not exactly sure how present it in a way that makes sense and doesn't make Shepard look bad in front of his forced that he killed Gaz.

So here's a version of how this could go down. Graves' Shadow Company had also been tracking the captured Shepard independently of Task Force 141. So most of the mission plays out as normally but Gaz and Shepard get separated from the rest of the squad. Gaz finds out about Shepard's plans to goad the US, Russia, Europe and Urzikstan into a war, and goad Price into starting it when Shepard tries to convert Gaz to his side. At this point, Shadow Company come in for the evacuation and Shepard shoots Gaz before he can spill the details to Task Force 141. Shepard "covers" up Gaz' death but Price is not convinced and vows to kill Shepard for it. However, Soap and Ghost have to talk him out of it. Citing that the mission to stop Makarov and the upcoming War is more important.

Gora Dam: This mission is kinda filler in the story. It's another "stop Makarov from launching a false flag attack" mission. I guess we could have that but also have Ghost figure out what exactly Makarov is planning next. If so, we need the tone to be more dour as well as have Ghost and Price discuss their feelings and thoughts. If we have open combat missions that encourage stealth and traveling over long distances, then we need this dialogue to fill the time between and develop these characters as much as they can.

Danger Close: an AC130 mission and one to hit against Makarov. The only novelty here is that you're controlling one of Graves' operatives . But otherwise filler. Maybe not have Makarov "seemingly die" and have Task Force 141 get intel that Makarov plans to hit the Chunnel next.

Trojan Horse: The last mission of the game. I suggest the mission plays mostly the same until the very end where Price needs to help Soap disarm the bomb. Now this is where the Chekhov's gun of Price's condition and the bomb disarming minigame finally come into play. Price's ability to distinguish differences in colour fades so he cannot rely accurate information to Soap which results in Soap's death. We can have it that Soap sacrifices himself to prevent the entire chunnel from being destroyed and Price is broken by what happens. I want the final stretch of gameplay to be Price just hunting down Makarov and fighting through his guards in a blind rage before being snapped into senses by Ghost (maybe Ghost disarms some bombs and needs Price to provide him cover at least). Price is torn between going after Makarov or helping Ghost. He chooses to help Ghost and Makarov escapes as a result. Task Force 141 manages to save the chunnel but the threat of the looming WW3 is still there.

We can still have the end credits scene with now just Ghost, Price and Farah holding a memorial for Gaz, Soap and Laswell. But I would rather the post credits scene where Price shoots Shepard be saved until the next game. Or if it needs to be there, be an extremely brief section of gameplay so it at least has some catharsis.

So yeah, that's my proposed changes to improve MW3 2023's story? I feel it's a bit of an improvement as it gives characters more to do and creates much higher stakes so it feels like progression and sets the stage for MW4 2025 to go more into a WW3 focused storyline and mirror MW3 2011. But the character deaths' value are limited given that we have Graves and Alex come back. If at least Alex remains dead, maybe we could salvage some more tension? I imagine players will still hate the fact I kept most of the Open Combat missions intact and just added more dialogue to them. There also isn't much room to give these characters more development.

Platinumming TES6: Hammefell

 Hello Everyone. I recently platinummed The Elder Scrolls 6: Hammerfell and I want to talk about it.

Unlike my past platinum trophies reviews (which y'all never read for some reason), this one was quite the challenge. At least half the trophies in the game are missable, a couple are buggy, and many are extremely difficult to do without speccing into a particular build. However, as TES6 lacks a respec option, you either have to do multiple playthroughs with entirely different builds just to get a single trophy, or you decide you haven't suffered enough trauma in life and decide to do it all in a single run with a single build and pray to Talos.

Lets start with some of the straightforward notable trophies and work our way up to the more challenging ones.

"Prepared Hero - Complete the Tutorials Flawlessly". While you do start the main story as a prisoner and have to go through a pretty lengthy tutorial sequence, you can choose to skip it. TES6 also has an optional training mode in the Main Menu that gives you an extended tutorial with all the playstyles, upgrades and skills maxed out so you can try out a fully maxed out character. There are also bonus challenges that task you with completing certain activities as best you can with there being time or bonus optional objectives.

This trophy requires you to complete said activities and hit all those bonus objectives. For example, for the Pickpocketing challenge, not only do you have to pickpocket all the things without getting spotted, but under the time limit as well. The Acrobactics challenge asks you to navigate across the rooftops using the parkour/acrobatics moves and complete the mini race faster than the recommended time. The various combat challenges want you to use the prescribed weapon or technique to try out all the suggested moves like countering, parrying, light/heavy attacks and take out every opponent without getting hit etc. You also then need to complete the actual tutorial in the main game without taking a hit.

I actually really like this trophy. Yeah, it can be a bit boring at times but I like that it encourages you to actually try out all the playstyles in a safe and isolated manner so you can actually see what you like before you try building for it in the main game. You ever play an RPG where you invest in something, like say, axes, only to find axes are garbage partway through and you can't switch or respec? TES6 at least lets you know that beforehand which I like. In addition, the game is pretty forgiving with this trophy as you can keep retrying the challenges if you mess up and it will let you know if you ace them.    

"Mara's Embrace - Spend the night with another character". This trophy requires your character to get laid. By getting this trophy, you cannot roleplay the average TES player.

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"The Pirate's Treasure- Find the Lost Pirate Treasure".  This trophy requires you complete the aforementioned Quest. The quest tasks the player with finding treasure maps and using them to find 6 lost treasures all over the map. While you can collect some of the treasure maps and the treasures themselves beforehand, the game gives you the quests to collect them individually and sequentially. Moreover, this is the only quest in the game where the quest markers are disabled for most of it. Even if you have Guided Mode turned on. On paper, this isn't a problem. You can use the treasure maps to find out where to go and if you get stuck, you can use a guide. Except, with the way how I played the game beforehand, the quests kinda broke.

 

Ok, so normally, TES6 is pretty good at accounting for the player doing stuff out of order or completing quests before officially accepting them. The quest usually then has the player character going "oh, I already did x" and the quest giver going "Oh great job. You're even better than I thought. So we can skip this next step you should do Y now". This pirate quest is in a weird sort of limbo where it will let you complete some parts of it out of order, but the quest objectives and progression act like you're doing it "intended way". For example, one of the middle quests ask you to use a treasure map to find a treasure. I already found both beforehand 100+ hours ago but the quest didn't acknowledge that for some time until after the quest "started". I was then able to turn in the quest but the treasure maps remained in my inventory and I hadn't seen it yet so it had the "new item" icon on it. This caused some confusion later on as I was using the wrong treasure maps thinking it was the newest one.

And one of the later quests task you with using 1 treasure map to go find 2 other treasure maps and using them to go find the 2 actual treasures. Normally, when you find the first spot, the quest updates and points you to a merchant you need to interrogate who points you to a chest you need to loot to get the 2 final treasure maps. And then the game becomes hands off again like it usually is for this quest. But when I reached the spot, it didn't update because I had unknowingly already looted the 2 final Treasure Maps and just had to go find the treasure. I didn't know this and began worrying I had soft locked the quest. When I looked up guides, they said to go interrogate the merchant and loot the chest he points you to. I could still interrogate the merchant and get him to tell me where to go, though no markers appeared like they normally would and nothing in the game indicated I had already gotten what I needed. I couldn't even loot the chest as I had already looted it before. And when I browsed my inventory, the "new map" I had looked nothing like the one from the guides and there was nothing there. I really was convinced I'd had to do a NG+ run or something and properly do the quest. Before trying that, I decided to try one last leap of faith and follow the guides to see where the treasures actually were just to see if that would complete them somehow and not further break the quest. And to my surprise....that worked. I could pick up those treasures and complete the quests and get the final trophy I needed for the platinum. And it was only afterwards, looking through screenshots of other people's guides, that I realized I had all the treasure maps but the hands off nature of the quest and its weird progression didn't inform me.

 

"Meric's Adventurer: Uncover all Sub-Regions of Hammerfell and High Rock": This trophy requires you to visit every sub region on the map. This game introduced the new ship sailing system and underwater diving and by Talos it's going to make you use it to explore every crevice.

The way the game tracks is that when you open the world map, locations you haven't visited either have a rocky texture if they are on land or have a paper-like texture if they are on water. Once you do visit them, their texture updates to reflect what they actually look like. On paper, this sounds like a fair system. If you explore the map and do all the POIs, you should naturally hit most if not all of the locations. 

 But the problem is that it includes small random islands scattered all over the map. Some of which have the same texture unexplored as they do explored. So if you haven't been keeping track of which of these random islands you visited, it can be really tedious to find them. On top of that, this also includes all of the underwater locations as they also count as sub regions even though they don't explicitly show up on the map as different locations nor are there clear boundaries or borders so you wouldn't even notice if you entered or left an underwater region. 

 I only noticed something was fishy when I was looking through my PS5 Screenshots. Unlike other PS4/PS5 games but similar to Witcher 3, TES6 names screenshots based on your in-game location rather some date string. So if you take screenshots in Alik'r, it will name them as either "Alikr-1-A7-01-01-24" or "Sentinel-04-H9-03-02-23" (even the game has a hard time keeping its political borders straight lol). When underwater, most locations, even those that are POIs, will show up as either located in Tamriel, Hammerfell, High Rock or Illiac Bay. But a couple had unique names like "Thraas-Secrets-4-QZ-09-10-24". These are those unique sub regions that you need to visit at least once. But like I said, it's not always clear which you've already visited. Even PSNProfiles doesn't have a good list of which regions count and which are there. My solution was to dump all of my PS5 screenshots to a USB, dump them to my Mac, and cross reference them with a random YouTube Comment and the Unofficial Wiki that listed out possible regions, double checking if that region has multiple possible names. On top of that, the trophy is said to be buggy where even if you have met the requirements, it can pop hours later.  Fortunately, I got it as soon as I touched Samos Island.

 

"The Arena's Champion - Defeat all Elite Combatants in the Arena". This was one of the hardest trophies to get. Normally when you're doing the Fighters Guild Questline, you get set to the Arena, this massive Colosseum where you have to fight these overlevelled gladiators in unarmed combat. These gladiators are designed to be extremely difficult to beat and even have instant KO moves they can perform on you if you get stunned too much by their attacks since they are higher levelled and you aren't wearing much armour. When playing casually, this quest isn't an issue because you're supposed to get beaten up so the story can continue. You can even come back later and fight the enemies in a more fair setup. However, the trophy requires you to actually win on this first visit. 

I was stuck on this for quite a while. I'd eventually make a mistake, get struck by a stray punch, or get a rock thrown at my poor character's head from an offscreen opponent, get stunned, and then instantly Knocked Out by an opponent doing a German Suplex or Burning Hammer at Mach 8 on my poor character, breaking nearly every bone in his fragile warlock body, killing him instantly.

My only hope was making that strength fists build with some passive magic abilities because it was the only way I stood a chance. My character could deal some damage, dodge, parry and counter without using too much stamina, and recovered somewhat quickly after getting stunned. But even then it took me a long time. And there are people on YouTube who somehow did this without investing in unarmed! Those people are absolute machines!

I ended up repeatedly making attempt after attempt. Slowly learning the intricacies of the combat a little bit more every time I got teeth kicked in. My poor character may have gotten multiple ass beatings of a lifetime, but at least he was making more and more progress every time. Until finally, I slowly became the John Wick of TES6 unarmed combat. I danced through the battlefield, dodging and countering attacks and getting hits in (until I inevitably messed up and had to reset). Until I memorized every possible situation and thanks to my overly specialized build made specifically for this purpose, I prevailed. I beat the shit out of all those gladiators with my bare hands. I performed the same German Suplexes and Burning Hammers they used to break my neck on them, giving them a taste of their own medicine. They had to catch these Hands as they were Rated E For Everyone. Not even Johnny Sins evil Twin Brother, Sohnny Jins, could unfuck the mess the I left behind. And in the end, I earned that bronze trophy for all my hard work. I no longer have to frequent Super Weenie Hut Jr's. I can now eat nails without milk at the Salty Spitoon.

As for the game itself, I really like it. Bethesda has really improved and it feels like all the lessons they learned from Skyrim, Fallout 4 and Starfield coalesced in TES6. Like, the best way I can describe it is like it feels like a better, more fleshed out and fun next-gen Skyrim.

One major change TES6 makes is something called "alternate controls". Here, when you press a button on the controller like left, it changes your default controls to something for different situations. For example, if you're just exploring normally or fighting easy enemies, you can stay in the default controls. But if you get into a fight with a particularly tough boss, you can press left to switch to "combat mode". You lose the ability to pick up objects, interact/talk to people, sneak and jump regularly. But in exchange, those controls are replaced by more combat options like dodge, grab, parry, kick, throw etc. This system, although confusing, does allow you to have more commands and options than what a regular controller can provide. Because yeah, normally, you couldn't fit an additional kick or grab command onto Skyrim's controls scheme given every button was already assigned and did something. This system tries to address that and lets you assign custom control schemes for combat, stealth and parkour. I imagine even Mouse and Keyboard players might benefit from this as they could swap to more convenient setups on the fly rather than reach over and press like the "k" key to kick or something. Although, I have seen some PC players still assign every single possible command onto the default scheme and it just looks wild. How are those people even considered human?

Character Building is really fun. TES6 has the same approach to levelling up skills and attributes from Skyrim with many of the same categories like one-handed, 2 handed, sneak etc. There are some notable additions. Acrobatics, returning from prior TES games, has been modified a bit. Instead of using it to jump crazy high, it feels more "natural" here. TES6 introduces a rudimentary climbing, free-running, parkour and mantling system. It kinda resembles Mirror's Edge. So now it's possible to climb buildings, jump from rooftop to rooftop, scramble up ledges you barely reach, drop down and hang from ledges and do back/side ejects, and vault over or under objects in your way while running. It's really cool to do these in some of the larger cities and the game rewards you by leaving mini treasure chests and free XP hidden across various rooftops. If you see a place you think you can't reach but still somehow find a way to get there, the game rewards you for it.

But in addition, it's also useful in other places. Many dungeons now have alternate entrances/exits, pathways and secret areas and vents you can find if you look around. Like, you can enter or exit a building by climbing through a window you can break by shooting an arrow and jumping through it as long as you can find a way to reach it. It makes combos really nicely with thief and sneak playstyles as you can further silence or hide yourself while climbing and jumping around. There's also synergy with combat focused playstyles as the "roll after doing a jump" move you can unlock helps you with a much better dodge.

And if you can master and max it out, you can do some wacky stuff. The final unlock even lets you wallrun vertically and horizontally for a short while like in the Prince of Persia games. The only downside is just how taxing both the controls and stat requirements are. At low acrobatics, you struggle to even mantle up small walls even in light armour. Higher acrobatics do make that easier but doesn't entirely eliminate the timing aspect. In TES6, if you want to do any of the cooler and more advanced moves, you need to input the right commands with accurate timing. For example, to do a long jump into a ledge grab, you need to be sprinting with decent momentum just as you reach the edge of a ledge. Then hold jump and keep holding it until you're close to the ledge. Then quickly let go of jump, tap crouch (as it brings your arms and legs up) and then tap jump as you land on the ledge. And all while doing this, make sure you have enough stamina. At low acrobatics, some of the slightly higher ledge grabs require you have at least 90% stamina otherwise your character will lose 100% of their stamina, fail to grab the ledge and fall. Higher acrobatics both lower the stamina requirements, give you more speed and height from shorter sprints, and ease up on the timings. But it can still be tricky to nail even the basic moves here. There's some solace in that the game does tell you what you messed up with a quick prompt like "crouched too early/didn't hold jump enough, not enough stamina" so at least you can work on the timings. But given the different distances and heights of various jumps, it can be difficult to learn all the nuances without a lot of practice. Wall running in particular was murder on my hands as you have to alternate moving the left stick forward and neutral in a really fast rhythm in accordance with the wall running animation which begins vary as it progresses. Being slightly slower near the end and angled slightly down. This really messed me up to the point where I refused to try it ever again.

Hand-to-Hand is the big new melee skill TES6 adds. Allowing you to do grabs and takedowns during combat. You can either do this while unarmed, or with certain smaller and more manoeuvrable weapons. This does make combat more interesting as you can parry an incoming sword strike with your dagger and then seamlessly go into a German Suplex or Powerbomb on your stunned target. I especially like the submission style moves allowing you put adversaries in chokeholds. Either to restrain or non-letally take them out or to interrogate them. Be careful as you can accidentally still kill people here. Either by dropping them on their heads or by choking them too much. Oh, and you can even do some of these on non-humanoid combatants. I loved that one time I managed to somehow put a bear into an ankle lock.

This even plays into quests. Many quests often have a "pacifist/non-lethal" branch you can reach by not killing enemies in combat. This can affect how the quest turns out, what rewards you get and even your reputation. Certain quest givers will either refuse or want to hire you for certain quests depending on your kill-to-knock out ratio.

For example, early on in the game, there is a side quest by a guard that asks you to go attack another guard so he can come in and "arrest you" in order to get a promotion. He even offers to pay you. However, the guard he asks you to attack is some crazy high level boss and you don't realize that until the fight begins. If you kill the boss, the first guard backs out of his deal as he's afraid of you and you get a really high bounty that can't be entirely removed until partway through the main quest. But if you non-lethally just restrain him by keeping him locked in a pretty soft chokehold, you can actually tell him the details of the plan. And he'll want revenge so he agrees to "arrest" you and then reward you with double the money. Another side quest will only trigger if you go through several quests with a low kill count but high KO count. A duchess will ask you to to put her in a chokehold because she gets off on it. I found that very uncomfortable and hated every second of it. After she comes, she returns the favour and it was kinda interesting.

 

The timing, controls and stats for these are tricky here. Even if you do get your opponents in a grab they can be interrupted by other enemies. They can also fail depending on how much stamina both you and your opponent has left, how heavy both you and they are. It's harder to lift and throw a muscle bound fit knight clad out in heavy armour than some random starved bandit wearing rags on the side of the road. Grabbing someone involves making sure all these different factors are accounted for as well as from where you grab. This is where the alternate control system TES6 has comes in handy as you can assign a "grab control scheme" with commands for different attacks, grabbing high/medium/low, and switching positions and throws. It took a lot of fiddling for me but I eventually found something that worked. I put high grab on jump on x, roll/evade on circle, quick strikes on square, position switch on triangle, high grab on L1, Low Grab on L2, Medium Grab on R2, Alt Attack on R1.

There are more weapon types like spears, claws, staffs, chains, handcuffs and whips that have additional commands like twirl and change position that I found too confusing so I won't talk about them here. I'm sorry spears, claws, staffs, chains, handcuffs and whip main. But since there is no trophy for learning how you work, I don't care. 

There's also another cool feature that I really like. TES6 brings the "mutations" idea from Outer Worlds and Fallout New Vegas where depending on your actions, you will get these modifiers with pros and cons. For example, if you fight enough rats, you might either get a mutation that gives you additional damage against rats at the cost of taking more damage against them. I got one that gives you better odds when parkouring but any falls instantly shatter your ankles, one for more success performing stealth takedowns but take more damage against fire attacks, and one for better odds of finding loot and bonus XP at the cost of being unable to talk to female NPCs.

-Sailing and Diving

TES6's big new feature is being able sail around the waters surrounding High Rock and Hammerfell. As well being able to dive underwater using a Diving Bell. Think of how Assassin's Creed 4 Black Flag did it except it's a lot more seamless. You can, at any point while sailing, literally dive underwater and explore. And on paper it is really cool. You can find entire underwater caverns, cities, shipwrecks, monster and mermaid hideouts and more.

But I don't know, I don't really like it in practise. I find it kills the pacing. Much of the surface of the water is quite plain and it takes a while before you hit any interesting islands on POIs. I get that's how sailing works in every game from Windwaker to AC4 but I've always found that rather dull. Diving Underwater isn't much better since it takes a while before you find anything cool. Also, I chose an Argonian character so I wouldn't have to worry about breathing underwater but it turns out that potions and spells that help with that are so dirt cheap and common that it's a non-issue.

I much more prefer land exploration. Land has more interesting and varied terrain. It's more picturesque, it preserves more of the regular gameplay. Buildings are much cooler etc.

-The Story

TES6 continues the common setup of prior TES games of the player of the player being a prisoner and playing through a short tutorial section that also sets up the main quest before being let loose. This time though, you can choose beforehand if you want to be a prisoner on an Empire or bandit ship via dialogue and the rest of the ship changes to match your choice. This introduces the basics of the game as you do some quick chores for your chosen side, get into a ship battle with the other side, and get attacked by a kracken  before getting the option to confirm your choice and start the adventure. This does make replays more interesting than Skyrim at least.

A common criticism people level against many of Bethesda's recent games, especially Fallout 4 and Skyrim is the urgency of their main quests juxtaposed with the player's desire to explore the world and do side quests. Fallout 4 often gets hit the hardest here with "I'm putting off saving my family to go collect glue and explore the world. I have zero motivation to go save them". And Personally, I don't feel Bethesda's approach there is an issue and may even be the best approach for an open world game.

 

For one, a player can lollygag in urgent linear games as well. I can play Uncharted and spend my time looking for useless collectibles for a trophy even though Nate should really be moving on to facing the villain or what have you. And it's fine for a game to do this since it gives the player more to do in levels, a reason to explore, all while the urgent main story is still there for them to enjoy. Players can separate and compartmentalize different sections of games to enjoy them separately.

 

 

In addition, the concept of "zero motivation" could apply to any game. Like, I technically have no motivation in Dark Souls 1 to go ring the bells of awakening. There's no urgency if I don't go and ring it as soon as possible (hell, the world is screwed anyway). My character doesn't have a backstory or explicit reason for wanting to do it. He could just accept his fate and go hollow like others since there isn't even a chance things would work out. But players are still cool with going through it. Since the motivation the player has to play the game is more important than the character's reason in-universe.

Secondly, if we accept this is a problem, then there are only really 2 solutions to address this. The first is the "Jak 2" approach where there is basically no side quests in the open world. It's all just the urgent story. But this defeats the point of an open world which is to allow the player a world to do other things in besides the main quest. The second approach is the Minecraft approach where there is no main story and everything is equally up to you. But this limits the stories such games can tell.

I guess there is a third possible approach. You could do what Assassin's Creed does and have the premise be that you are playing through a simulation of what happened centuries ago. Where your character did actually do the main quest quickly and urgently but since it's a simulation, you're free to go do other stuff in between main quests and it would still make sense. Allowing it to have both an urgent main story, and side quests and have the fact the player can lollygag make sense no matter how they play it. But it's not like the fact AC has this diegetic explanation means its open world main quest is magically the most immersive thing ever. So clearly it's not that important.

Urgency is often necessary to give a story stakes and something to enjoy. A main story where the main character just goes and does whatever the whole time with no real continuity isn't a very interesting story. Even the open world games people claim "do this right" with no forced urgency like Witcher 3, RDR2 or Morrowind, still actually have points where they introduce urgency for stakes (e.g Witcher with Ciri or RDR2 with Arthur's illness). I often joke that if the people that complained about urgency in open world games wrote Breaking Bad, then the entire first season would have been about Walter White being a chill teacher and the cancer only kicking at the start of season 2. That would really hurt the pacing and flow of the show since it would take forever to get to the actual interesting parts.

Bethesda's approach allows for you to have that main story with urgency to give it stakes if you want to follow through it, while still allowing you the freedom to go explore the open world. It doesn't "dilute" one in order for it to be cohesive with the other because it realizes both can be enjoyed by players. Some players may play the whole main story so that story probably should be interesting. Some players ignore the main story and only do side quests so the side quests should be interesting. Some players do both.

 

Custom Quests:

One of the coolest aspects of TES6 is that players can create their own custom side quests and share them with others to play. In addition to being all to bring in mods even on consoles. And I really love this aspect. Yeah, the gameplay in these quests isn't much of a departure from the regular quests at this point (likely due to the limitations of the creator and how new the feature is) but the story and dialogue choices can be a lot more interesting. I have played really cool quests like the one where a guy made this parody of Castlevania where you can help this guy named Belmont deal with some sort of monster like Dracula and there were multiple choices and outcomes based on what you did during it. I've also played very boring ones where you have to escort an NPC across half the map. I've played ones that had really boring gameplay, but had writing that was "so bad it's good". Like one of them was this sorta epilogue for the main story and had the player character interacting with their family afterwards. But it was full of edgy deviantart swearing, typos and even some self awareness of that (like when Darius says "I killed the King of Skyrim (I forgot his name btw)"). And in between these conversions, there was an NPC called "Exposition Man" that tells you what's going on and how much time is supposedly passing between you waking between 4 NPCs. I was enjoying it even if it was so laughable.

Some of these were even designed to help the player level up. There are even these "XP Farm" Quests where you just kill some enemies or talk to NPCs and get a lot of XP quickly. There is one that exploits a glitch to help the player quickly synchronize viewpoints.

I genuinely recommend people try out the custom quests as they can be great. I also wish more games had a feature like that. The only other open world console game I can think of that has something like this was inFAMOUS 2 back in 2011. I remember spending quite a few hours messing around there and seeing all the wacky and serious content other players made.

 

-Other Stuff:

 

I love the game's implementation of Photo Mode and wish it was the standard for all over games. Here, you can enter Photo Mode and take a picture at any point. That photo now shows up on your map and in the games of other players. You can even see the photos taken by other players, upvote them and the photo with the highest votes in the last 24 hours gets highlighted as the photo of the day. Personally, I'd love if this was taken a step further with an optional "Dark Souls-esque" system where you can see in the world, icons that a player has taken a photo here and see the photo rather than using the map. There is one downside however. In more "unique" places such as bossfights with elite monsters or other monsters, or in Divine Temples, there tends to be a lot more photos by players which does spoil the surprise. Personally, I don't mind since so much of the map isn't unique that ways to highlight what content is there that's unique is great.

During the minotaur challenge questlines, one quest requires you to obtain a challenge token. If you choose to buy it, one of the other competitors will admonish you for wanting to "pay to win" and ask you "where is your sense of pride and accomplishment". Which is ironic given the game has a microtransaction store.

If you choose to romance Kyra, the player character says "We have a lot in common. I was hoping when the smoke clears, we could find somewhere quiet". Kyra responds: "And what exactly do we have in common? ". The player characters responds: "I just... We... I just thought that's what people said to each other. I wasn't expecting a follow-up." I found this funny.

 I love how the game not only finally has an in-game codex/database allowing you brush up on in-game lore in the game itself. But also how it has an "audiobook" mode for the codex/database where you can listen to those entries as you play the game. Almost like podcasts. It's great.

In closing, I really enjoyed my time with TES6. Yeah. It was a painful game to platinum at times, but the beauty and fun I had is unparalleled. Any minor frustration of annoyance I felt was eventually overturned by how novel this game can be. A true light in the world we only ever blamed for the shadows it created.

 I hope you enjoyed reading. Next up for me on the PS4/5 is that new Half Life game. On the VITA side, I hope to platinum that Gran Turismo game exclusive to it. See you all then.