Skyrim, without Quartermastering

[LibraryOgre]

So, can you think of any games that are similar to Skyrim, but without requiring a major part of the game to be inventory management?

[Blackhawk748]

So, can you think of any games that are similar to Skyrim, but without requiring a major part of the game to be inventory management?

Play Skyrim but pick up less stuff? I'm aware this is hard (im a habitual hoarder of stuff in Bethesda games myself) but I have gone back to my Oblivion roots of just keeping a very minamilist inventory.

[Anteros]

Yeah, really all you need in Bethesda games is the gear on your back. You don't actually need thousands of potions and cheese wheels. Maybe FO4 is an exception with their focus on base building, but that's hardly the only way that game fails.

Regardless, it depends on what you mean by "games like skyrim". If you want something first person in a fantasy setting I can't really recommend anything decent. Maybe Dishonored? If you just want an open world heroic fantasy there's lots of choices. I played Kingdoms of Amalur recently and enjoyed it quite a lot, despite its reputation.

There's also obviously the other elder scrolls games. ESO was surprisingly good, although it's obviously better to play it with friends.

[Beleriphon]

Yeah, really all you need in Bethesda games is the gear on your back. You don't actually need thousands of potions and cheese wheels. Maybe FO4 is an exception with their focus on base building, but that's hardly the only way that game fails.

FO4 once you get enough fusion cores to run power armour consistently you can a heavy weapon, a few rifles, an energy weapon or two, and like four melee weapons. Plus all the crap you pick up along the way. Inventory management isn't what's wrong with settlements or the upgrade system.


Regardless, it depends on what you mean by "games like skyrim". If you want something first person in a fantasy setting I can't really recommend anything decent. Maybe Dishonored? If you just want an open world heroic fantasy there's lots of choices. I played Kingdoms of Amalur recently and enjoyed it quite a lot, despite its reputation.

There's also obviously the other elder scrolls games. ESO was surprisingly good, although it's obviously better to play it with friends.

I thought KoA was a great game. I enjoyed it the heck out of it and I liked the leveling system that combined wizard, rogue, warrior in interesting ways. I personally liked the teleporting roguish wizard combo. I've always been sad it didn't do better.

Dishonored is very much a spiritual successor to Thief in that its a mission based game with a hub you can (and should) explore extensively.

[Mechalich]

Skyrim eventually hits a point where you've got dragonbone (or scale) armor and weapons, maximally enchanted, and providing greater than 100% mana cost reductions for two schools of magic. So long as one of those schools is restoration, you now no longer require items of any kind and can freely ignore that whole part of the game as you rampage relentlessly across the landscape. If you want, you can totally frontload this achievement by doing nothing but thieves' guild jobs from one city to the next while stealing/purchasing your way to max alchemy, blacksmithing, and enchantment. This does tend to take the 'challenge' out of the game though.


FO4 once you get enough fusion cores to run power armour consistently you can a heavy weapon, a few rifles, an energy weapon or two, and like four melee weapons. Plus all the crap you pick up along the way. Inventory management isn't what's wrong with settlements or the upgrade system.

You don't even need power armor. Once you've gotten ballistic weave, you can roll through pretty much everything with just the Overseer's Guardian and make all the money you'll ever need just by selling dropped weapons and ammo from enemies.

[warty goblin]

Depends I suppose on what bits of Skyrim you want the game to have. Most open world games are sadly beset by a serious case of Chronic Inventory Syndrome, although on the other hand very few open world games have inventory systems as soul crushingly horrific as Skyrim. Oblivion is about 90% identical to Skyrim, but because of the lack of crafting, there's at least somewhat less inventory grind. The interface is still terrible though.

As mentioned, Kingdoms of Amalur is a good time, although maybe a bit too easy. But it's open world fantasy nonsense, and actually has an enjoyable combat system, unlike the jousting fridge cartons of Elder Scrolls games. Inventory nonsense can become substantial, but only if you get into the crafting. If you're willing to forgo open world shenanigans, Dark Messiah is superb, and has way less inventory management. Just don't think about the story, keep calm, and kick people into the racks of murder-spikes the homicidal goth in charge of decor left everywhere.

If you want open world, but are negotiable on the fantasy, Ghost Recon Wildlands is a lotta fun. The advancement system is pretty flat, and the only thing you really carry are various guns, which you can care about extremely irregularly. Like, you can play for hours with the starter rifle, and it's just fine, leaving you free to continue your mission to fall off of cliffs and crash helicopters while trying to find the ideal position to perforate somebody's skull from 500 meters.

This is something of an odd suggestion, but Conan Exiles has a somewhat Elder Scrollsish feel, albeit with a lot more gore and nudity. It's got if anything more inventory management, but it actually builds game systems around quartermastering, instead of just dealing with the giant pile of stuff you acquire. Going questing for iron in the arid, and extremely dangerous, uplands, is a memorable experience. Not least because of the goddamned spiders.

[veti]

So, can you think of any games that are similar to Skyrim, but without requiring a major part of the game to be inventory management?

Yeah, it's called Skyrim.

Seriously, how do you manage to make inventory management "a major part of the game"?

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Breath of the Wild? Open-world RPG, minimal inventory management needed. The only stuff that really needs managing are weapon slots.

[Lord Raziere]

Yeah, it's called Skyrim.

Seriously, how do you manage to make inventory management "a major part of the game"?

In my case its picking up every single unique weapon, armor set and so on just so I can store them in my house and wear them later but only rarely actually do, and often only take them out to upgrade them to usability, but even then find me doing the inventory management puzzle as I try to figure what I WANT to take out to use today and what I CAN take out and carry to use today.

then I piled on top of that by getting various mods to make even MORE armor sets and weapons then use those.

and of course you have to get ores and gems for crafting various things, enchanting, things like that.

and of course you still need to make money by selling stuff, but you can't pick up such useless valuables if it over-encumbers you and slows you to a crawl. oh and you acquire three different elder scrolls, at least one weighs a lot. and get dragon bones and scales which also weigh a lot per piece and are needed to craft the best weapons and armor. or get the money to get daedra hearts for certain things.

and sometimes you just completely forget that half the reason you have a companion is to carry some things for you. and really when you need a packrat, that kind of speaks for itself how major inventory management actually is.

it all just....piles up.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Breath of the Wild was the only thing that really came to my mind. I expected not to like it initially mostly because I figured it was going to need a lot of inventory management work done in it. Games done in that style are ones I rarely ever play and even more rarely get anywhere decent within them.

[Kaptin Keen]

Well there's always Enderal - a free Skyrim total conversion - but I suppose the inventory gets only marginally less cluttered and overloaded than in original Skyrim. It is, however, absolutely excellent.

[Cespenar]

Kingdom Come had a pretty severe (and realistic) weight limit. You still could carry your bric-a-brac, but it was barely around the tenth of what you generally had in Skyrim.

Also, if you can't control yourself otherwise, there should be tens of mods for Skyrim that would limit your inventory realistically (if that's what you want), or arrange them better.

[Wraith]

Mods are the answer to your problem.

There's ones for Skyrim that give you unlimited carrying capacity and gives unlimited money to Merchants for trading - inventory management becomes "once a week, go to a shop and sell everything that you don't need" and life is much easier for you.

There's a mod in Fallout 4 called something like Merchant's Stall - you build a box at your home and everything that you throw into it gets sold automatically, so all you need to do is pick up your money every once in a while without the hassle of going from vendor to vendor. It cuts your entire inventory down to 3 boxes; a chest full of stuff you want to keep, the toolbox full of stuff you want to craft with, and the Stall of stuff that sells itself without your intervention.

I haven't seen it for Skyrim, but I'd be amazed if there wasn't something similar to make life even easier.

SkyUI is another mod that rebuilds the inventory to look as though it wasn't designed by and for alien crab-people; consider that one too, so that what little time you do spend in the inventory is far less painful. :smalltongue:

[Spore]

I have had characters that I used console commands on to give them a carrying capacity of 10000. Seriously, even 300 lbs. is BEYOND unrealistic and does not enhance the gameplay other than penalizing wizards for not investing in stamina. But Skyrim is an open world game that happens to have RPG elements. One half of the game is exploring and looting. FO 4 is even worse where some of the gameplay loop literally boils down to "loot stuff until you are overencumbered, bring it back to base and do it again".

Dark Souls 1 is pretty good if you want an action RPG with an open-ish world.
Kotor 1+2 is pretty open in how you tackle the planets (granted it is more D&Dish)
Saint's Row 4 is open world with an XP component, though thematically vastly different.

[Eldan]

Actually, I found Breath of the Wild quite tedious in that regard. One of the things that made me gave up on it was that I found some amazing looking and feeling magical weapons, only to have them break after two or three fights so I had to constantly scavenge for more weapons and equipment. When I tried taking on a few stronger foes for the challenge (those lion centaurs), I once managed to go through like five or six weapons in one fight.
That, plus the fact that all the quests felt quite samey and there were no interesting bosses or dungeons really soured me on that game pretty early on.

[Anteros]

FO4 once you get enough fusion cores to run power armour consistently you can a heavy weapon, a few rifles, an energy weapon or two, and like four melee weapons. Plus all the crap you pick up along the way. Inventory management isn't what's wrong with settlements or the upgrade system.


That depends on if you want to play the base building mini-game or not. If you do, then inventory management is a nightmare.

I'll second Enderal if you want something similar to Skyrim. It's free, and it's honestly better than Skyrim's base game. The music and voice acting are excellent as well.

[Cikomyr]

One of the official mod you can get directly on the Skyrim platform implement more various powers for the various Standing Stones. They are all pretty cool.

The new Shadow Stone near Riften will now give you access to an extradimensional space that you activate like a Shout. Using that shout is like opening a container that will hold everything you want without losing anything.

I too dislike the Inventory game after a while - I get why it's there, but I play to have fun and this has a negative fun effect on me. So this is probably the single greatest Quality of Life mod I ever experienced.

Just be careful not to overclutter your extradimensional space. It can get rather.. Busy if you aren't careful.

Next, go in the Dwarven Museum and steal 500 pounds of Dwarven wreckage!

[CrunchyCHEEZIT]

divinity: original sin 2 has a similar inventory system, but never did I ever feel like my inventory was too cluttered since most of the random objects you can pick up around the world beyond weapons and equipment are pretty much completely useless unless you want to sell them or eat them, or you like crafting.

of course, crafting in that game is also really lame so there's not much point in carrying ingredients around anyway

[Anteros]

divinity: original sin 2 has a similar inventory system, but never did I ever feel like my inventory was too cluttered since most of the random objects you can pick up around the world beyond weapons and equipment are pretty much completely useless unless you want to sell them or eat them, or you like crafting.

of course, crafting in that game is also really lame so there's not much point in carrying ingredients around anyway

How far along are you? DoS2 get's super cluttered as you go along. To the point where I basically gave up on even gearing my characters properly towards the end of the game. It's not so bad if you're playing co-op or lone wolf, but managing 4 separate inventories and equipment load-outs is a nightmare. Especially since that game expects you to re-gear everyone every level or 2.

[DeadMech]

I kinda wish I could boot up my save of Morrowind on my Xbox just to see how many plates I have squirreled away in my house.. not even in my house... on that one dead body that never despawns. (Sadly I can't. Morrowind on xbox was broken. The save file over the course of play would eventually become larger than the hardware was able to handle.)

I probably spend far too much time in Skyrim carefully organizing stuff I don't need and have no plan to use, putting everything into a box or crate or dresser. I got a dresser for clothing and a crate for armor. A barrel for uncooked foodstuffs, one for cooked food. Ect.

I really miss the Morrowind inventory. Actually I miss most of Morrowind's UI. Being able to move around and resize windows for maps, inventory and the like. Also the inventory displayed as a grid instead of as a scrolling list meaning you could fit more items in the same amount of screen space for browsing.

[DBear]

Gothic III is an older game, but without the inventory management. 20 weapons in your backpack? No problem!

[Crow]

I too greatly enjoy Ghost Recon Wildlands. There is just enough inventory to make it an interesting part of the game, but no need to quartermaster.

Kingdom Come: Deliverance is also fantastic; and as long as you don't go around picking too many herbs or stealing silverware, doesn't reach anywhere near the quartermastering level of Skyrim.

[Kaptin Keen]

Gothic III is an older game, but without the inventory management. 20 weapons in your backpack? No problem!

But is it good though? I absolutely loved Gothic II, but when I bought III, the quality of ... all sorts of things, animations, graphics - I just couldn't stomach it. Also, it annoyed be I could handle 20-30 swordsmen without any sort of problem, but add just a single archer, I'd die. That felt decidedly idiotic - how does archer guy effortlessly target me in the midst of dozens of his own? Bah!

[factotum]

I found Gothic III to be rather poor when I played it on release. The combat was just bad--it was too easy for one of the participants to get stunlocked, which meant fights tended to be either really, really easy, or one-way trips to the grave, depending on whether it was you or your enemy who got stunlocked. I don't know if they ever fixed that because I never played the game beyond release, had too many actual good games to go through.

[Spore]

Gothic 3 is basically 2 with slightly updated graphics which is basically 1 with updated graphics and an updated engine. And it shows. But the story and the living world is great. I also fondly enjoy that the game does not throw its factions at the player. They're not: "you helped one of our lowest members with a menial task, here is your uniform and complementary unique weapon like the Dawnguard but you have to do a small job for most of the faction's small guys, and you get to know them better. Act 2 is usually dealing with the big bad and strengthening your powers since you start off as a newbie adventurer still. Act 3 is the finale.

Back in its day, Gothic had two things going for it. A large world where every NPC was named and somewhat important, and one of the first RPGs entirely in 3D. With that you would excuse many glitches, bugs and a terrible control scheme. But the concept did not age well at all. But I have an understandable positive bias towards it because its original publisher was Austrian, and I am too.

[Calemyr]

There's a particular mod (can't remember the name off hand) that makes it so that using weapons and armor slightly tempers them. In other words, you pick up Dawnbreaker and use it exclusively, it'll eventually become legendary without the smithing skill. End result is that you can limit yourself to a weapon or two and still kick some butt. Since the tempering bonus to damage eventually gets larger than the material bonus, a sword you get early on and use heavily can become quite powerful.

Another mod I'd suggest in connection to this restrings the temper levels from Fine to Legendary to follow other schemes. In particular, the D&D style of +1 to +6. I'd much rather use a +1 iron sword than a fine iron sword, but that's just me.

[Morty]

divinity: original sin 2 has a similar inventory system, but never did I ever feel like my inventory was too cluttered since most of the random objects you can pick up around the world beyond weapons and equipment are pretty much completely useless unless you want to sell them or eat them, or you like crafting.

of course, crafting in that game is also really lame so there's not much point in carrying ingredients around anyway


How far along are you? DoS2 get's super cluttered as you go along. To the point where I basically gave up on even gearing my characters properly towards the end of the game. It's not so bad if you're playing co-op or lone wolf, but managing 4 separate inventories and equipment load-outs is a nightmare. Especially since that game expects you to re-gear everyone every level or 2.

Yeah, the inventory and gear treadmill in DoS2 are atrocious even by RPG standards. It's one of the reasons I quit it.


But is it good though? I absolutely loved Gothic II, but when I bought III, the quality of ... all sorts of things, animations, graphics - I just couldn't stomach it. Also, it annoyed be I could handle 20-30 swordsmen without any sort of problem, but add just a single archer, I'd die. That felt decidedly idiotic - how does archer guy effortlessly target me in the midst of dozens of his own? Bah!

Gothic III really is pretty bad. I can't recommend it to anyone in good conscience.

[warty goblin]

Gothic III really is pretty bad. I can't recommend it to anyone in good conscience.

Risen 3 however is pretty fine. I mean it's not going to incinerate you with joy or anything, but you will be pleasantly warmed with good vibes.

[Kris Strife]

I have had characters that I used console commands on to give them a carrying capacity of 10000. Seriously, even 300 lbs. is BEYOND unrealistic and does not enhance the gameplay other than penalizing wizards for not investing in stamina. But Skyrim is an open world game that happens to have RPG elements. One half of the game is exploring and looting. FO 4 is even worse where some of the gameplay loop literally boils down to "loot stuff until you are overencumbered, bring it back to base and do it again".

I was going to be disappointed if someone didn't mention console commands for this exact purpose. Though you're a few digits short of what I prefer, but I tend to pack rat until opening my inventory has a non-zero chance of crashing the game before storing it somewhere.

Alternatively, mods that give you access to summonable storage boxes work pretty well, ime.

[LibraryOgre]

I cannot believe I didn't consider a summonable storage box. Arvak is my favorite spell; this might be in competition, especially if it can carry quest items.

[Triaxx]

If you have Frostfall, it's Summon Shelter Spell has a chest built into it that maintains storage.

[factotum]

If I remember right, one of the Black Book rewards from Solstheim (Dragonborn DLC) gives you a choice of a summonable Dremora merchant or a summonable Dremora who will carry stuff for you. Personally I always pick the merchant, because it's better to sell excess stuff than carry it around everywhere, but the option is there.