The Debating Society
Hobbies & Interests
A place where ModDB members can debate civilly, and learn from each other's views.
I've recently compared Dragon's Dogma and Dark Souls here:
But back in 2011 the debate was between Skyrim and Dark Souls. Both released around the same time and both competed against one another. Despite Skyrim selling more, many gaming sites such as Forbes and Eurogamer thought of Dark Souls as the better game in many departments. I'm sure even Skyrim fans will admit that Dark Souls has the better combat system.
For me, Skyrim just couldn't compare at all to Dark Souls. One might say they are "like apples and oranges" but apple and oranges are both fruits so they can be compared.
Skyrim had a bigger world but that was it. Your choices didn't matter. The main story-line was linear and there were many restrictions (i.e "you can't kill this bastard because we believe you won't be able to live with the consequence and although he's part of a quest-line contrary to the character you're role-playing we won't allow you to kill him"). The combat was tedious, non-challenging and repetitive.
Dark Souls had a smaller world but every area was worth exploring. Every area told a story, had uniqueness, its own enemies, treasure and its own bosses. The combat was deep and many weapons had their own combo sets and the variation and almost limitless weapon set-ups and builds meant you can build almost any character you could imagine from a warrior dual wielding two giant greatswords in each hand to something as ridiculous as a character with using a fist weapon on the left hand and a shield on the right hand.
The story in Dark Souls was deep but left up to the player to find and interpret. Your choices had consequences too (i.e killing Gwynevere or siding with Kaathe).
And apparently science has proved that Skyrim is "a gay, buggy patch-fest, whereas Dark Souls is bastard, cunting hard" according to the below source:
Thegrumpingdrowned.wordpress.com
XD
As for the image:
I don't even...
I found it by Googling "Skyrim vs Dark Souls" and I think the Skyrim image must be from a mod where ponies from MLP are the dominant race and the humans are the mules. I hope it's humor otherwise the next topic we need to debate should be about whether humanity is heading towards extinction earlier than we thought.
Skyrim has a better modding community so I think its better but I should really play some dark souls when/if I have time.
That's not really a good argument elf. Anything produced within the modding community should be credited to the modders who are the ones developing new scripts, mechanics, animations, campaigns (or whatever).
Either way this is more or less Dark Souls vanilla vs Skyrim vanilla. However even Skyrim with mods still has a crappy combat system. Anything else (such as campaigns developed) should be compared separately.
Both are good games, but remember that both games are very different. It's like trying to compare Arma and Red Orchestra. Both are amazing games in and of themselves, but if I was being asked which I would rather play, I would choose Skyrim (or any TES game for that matter) because it's open world with mod support allowing it a lot more replayability.
Depends on your definition of replayability.
Would you play through all the content of Skyrim again?
Or are you talking about new compaigns and quests?
In which case I wouldn't call that replayability. Dark Souls has a lot more due to its metroidvania structure and the almost limitless character builds. Your choices also impact the world and your choice of weapon will have to make you adjust your play-style. There's also the multiplayer.
Both are RPG's so they're fair to compare.
You said any TES game? So you would choose even Arena, Daggerfall, Battlespire and Redguard over this? None of of those have toolsets and the later weren't exactly received well either.
But take the mods away from Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim and you've got very bland games with the exception of Morrowind which stood out on its own, unfortunately ruined, IMO, by bad combat but also the first and last good TES game in my view.
Skyrim is a sandbox rpg, Darksouls is a linear rpg.
I see them as completely different, so I won't compare them. Due to my preference, I enjoyed Skyrim more, but I don't have a problem with people who think otherwise.
I would take arena or daggerfall over darksouls- maybe not redguard though. I can really get into retro games. Even without mods, the 3 contemporary Tes games you're talking about aren't at all bland or uninteresting depending on how you play them.
My preference in games requires a lot more freedom than a game such as dark-souls, regardless of whether or not its good.
Okay fair enough.
Just one thing though:
Dark Souls is actually a non-linear RPG. Non-linear because it's a metroidvania. It's not open world like Skyrim, sure, but there are often multiple routes to reach different areas as well as different paths and optional content and regions in each area. It's considered a free-roam for that reason.
A linear RPG would be a game with one path where you can't really do anything in the story either. Linear RPG's force you down one path. Dark Souls doesn't.