TES V: Skyrim Discussion Thread

[The Happy Swede]

For sure...but let's not forget all the unintentionally hilarious glitches in Oblivion and Fallout 3

And creepy glitches too : / Like a damn dog without his head walking around o.O or floating heads without eyes :S

[TungstenJustice]

i've got an xbox360, and i'm getting an alienware in january, andI don't know whether to wait for skyrim until I have a PC, or to get it on Xbox. I don't know if the PC version is worth the wait, is it that much better than the 360 version, aside from graphics/Mods?

[Blazin23]

i've got an xbox360, and i'm getting an alienware in january, andI don't know whether to wait for skyrim until I have a PC, or to get it on Xbox. I don't know if the PC version is worth the wait, is it that much better than the 360 version, aside from graphics/Mods?

Get it on 360, then by the time you have your Alienware, there will be a number of mods available and you can decide if you like the game enough to get it on PC and mod it

Blazin

[Mastershroom]

I would wait it out and get it for PC if I were. It's not just the mods, but given Bethesda's history of quality control, there may very well be some game-breaking bugs that take a long time to get patched. On the consoles, you just have to wait for an official patch, but on PC, modders often create "unofficial patches", which fix all sorts of things that the official updates miss.

[moviemarketing]

I would wait it out and get it for PC if I were. It's not just the mods, but given Bethesda's history of quality control, there may very well be some game-breaking bugs that take a long time to get patched. On the consoles, you just have to wait for an official patch, but on PC, modders often create "unofficial patches", which fix all sorts of things that the official updates miss.

Exactly! (plus there will be tens of thousands of mods for this game)

[moviemarketing]

There is now word of a mysterious black door that asks the PC a riddle. It is probably located in Falkreath Hold.

This is a location mentioned in the IGN walkthrough of a 60-minute hands on demo of Skyrim at Quake-Con.

We know that it is near a "frigid" pond in a rocky area, and it is relatively near Falkreath, the only town the author visited during his 60-minute demo.

Perhaps he's referring to the lake in the center of Falkreath Hold, roughly equidistant from Oakwood, Falkreath City, and North Keep.

"at other times I wound up discovering the bizarre and unexpected. Take for example the black door adorned with a skull I found near a frigid pond in a rocky recess. When I approached the subdued soundtrack of a tranquil forest was joined by a faint, menacing drum beat. The door spoke to me in an otherworldly whisper while shimmering faintly, and asked if I knew the music of life. I ran through the conversation tree to exhaust all options, answering drums, screaming, some kind of choir. The door promptly declared me to be unworthy and refused to open. I don't know what the correct course of action was, but knowing that oddities like this exist in Skyrim is just as exciting as the knowledge that I'll eventually be able to fight dragons."

What do you think is the answer to the question:

"What is the music of life?"

Source: Stomping Across the Snows of Skyrim - Xbox 360 Preview at IGN

===============================================
More info from the IGN article:

Character Creation Options: "As expected, after selecting a race there's a spread of sliders that pop up onscreen to tweak the appearance. There are as basic as selecting nose height to as detailed as adding 'laugh lines', coloring cheeks and giving the Dark Elf one red eye and one grey."

Falkreath: "In the middle of the mountain range is a town called Falkreath filled with imposing buildings made more ominous as rain and fog move across the sky to soak the scene. There dour NPCs drag themselves through inns and complain of conflicts far beyond their power to alter, so naturally they ask for help."

Alchemy: "In a dusty corner of an inn is an alchemy apparatus where I can mash together reagents, flowers and plants plucked from fields, to form potions. All the combinations I try fail, so I steal a few things out of frustration and am promptly met by a guard that wants to escort me to jail.

Lockpicking: "instead of sleeping off my jail sentence, put two picks in the cell door lock. One pick moves along the top of the lock and at any point in an arc I can stop it and test the bottom pick. If the bottom pick turns the lock turns 90 degrees, the door opens. Or if I pick the wrong spot to test, the pick snaps."

Choosing Perks: " Leveling unlocks a point to allocate to one of numerous skill trees, from lockpicking to schools of magic to light and heavy armor, bows, blacksmithing, block, pickpocketing and a lot more. Points don't need to be used immediately, so it's possible to store them up across levels in case, at the outset, I haven't yet decided the type of character I want to be. There's certainly a lot of choice, as each skill tree features multiple nodes that trigger bonuses when activated, and most nodes can be upgraded multiple times for enhanced effects. I chose to upgrade my one-handed sword skill to do more damage, but it's clear that when Skyrim eventually ships on November 11 I'm going be spending a lot of time staring at this screen in agony as I decide which paths to follow and which to forsake. "


==========================

Destructoid Walkthrough of 60-minute Hands On Demo:

A Second Cave Near Starting Location: "I then made my way to a nearby cave. Near its opening, I was given my first opportunity to test out Skyrim’s combat. With a shield in my left-hand and a iron sword in my right, I went to battle with some jackass bandit. Like all jackass bandits, he had some dumb wolf with him. Or maybe he was attacking the wolf. Either way, I killed them both."

Combat: The hit-detection, sound and weight of melee combat feel great. As someone who never loved Oblivion due to its combat, this is somewhat of a revelation. You’ll still need to adapt to strong sword blows, but at least the timing is consistent. Even better, you now have critical deathblows that let you finish off an adversary with an intense thrust to the gut or slash across the throat...

Combining Weapons with Magic: After getting a handle on using my shield, I changed over to using a firespell with my left hand. It turns out that lighting people on fire and beating them with sharp things is a pretty good combination. If you really want to humiliate these cave-lovin’ freeloaders, though, you can carry a torch in your left-hand and set them ablaze with it.

Archery: My favorite weapon has to be the bow. The revamped physics and controls made me feel responsible for every arrow shot. The trajectory of the arrows is realistic and not randomly determined by stats, but the damage is. A stealth arrow to the head is something I don’t think I will grow tired of during the many hours I plan to spend with Skyrim.

Level Design: The cavern itself was rather impressive for being such a hum-drum locale. The elements of Skyrim’s new engine are displayed to great effect. The lighting generates a haunting atmosphere, and a waterfall coming down the multi-tiered levels of the cave presents a spectacle that interiors in Fallout 3 and Oblivion lacked.

Companions: NPCs will follow you based on their perception of you -- a mix of your karma, dialogue choices and quest favors all brought together through the new Radiant AI system.

Bards Confirmed: Additionally, there are new features such as...requesting a bard to play a song in a tavern. Now, if only you could get him to follow you into a bandit cave and abandon him.

Source: http://www.destructoid.com/first-eve...m-207990.phtml

[moviemarketing]

UK Gamespot Review of 60-minute Demo

http://uk.gamespot.com/events/quakec...e;1&pid=615805

Some Highlights:

Face Paint: " Between the reptilian Argonians, cat-like Khajiit, pointy Dark Elves, and many more, we decided to play an Orc with a striking coat of yellow face paint. The striking yellow face paint was one of the many face paint options available via the face paint slider."

Character Creation: " As you would expect, there were dozens of these sliders to choose from in creating our devilishly handsome (or perhaps hideous) character. Everything from skin tone to jaw width to eye depth to facial hair could be tweaked to our liking. And if we switched to another race in the character creation screen the game saved our customizations so that we don't have to redo them when we returned to that race."

Traveling/Camping Merchant: "We decided to test this out on the unsuspecting merchant we spied camping along the bank of a nearby river. At first he was more than happy to have a customer at his little shop, and gladly bought the wolf pelt we'd collected earlier. However, his mood quickly soured after we cracked him upside the head with our hand axe."

Gardening/Farming: "Flush with victory, we equipped the new weapon and took practice swings at nearby trees until we happened across our next victim: an elderly woman who was outside gardening."

Alchemy System: "In her basement there was an alchemy station where potions could be brewed. All we needed to do was combine two to three alchemical items (pilfered from upstairs) that shared a special property. Each item had four special property slots, all labeled "unknown," and the only way to find out what they were was through trail and error at the station, or by eating the item. Either method consumed the item(s). Our first potion failed, but the second succeeded since two of the items shared the "resist frost" property. This information was then recorded in the item's description for future reference."

Barbarian: The First Perk in Two-Handed Tree, Multiple Ranks: "At level two we first had to choose between improving our magicka, health, or stamina attributes. Next we got to pick a perk from one of the many skill constellations. From the two-handed skill set we chose to improve the first skill, barbarian, which granted our character 20 percent more damage per rank when using a two-handed weapon. "

================================================


New Italian Article -

Multiplayer IT Review of 60-minute demo: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Provato per PC Windows del 05 agosto 2011 | Multiplayer.it

there is some new info there

WE CAN CRAFT CLOTHING!

Loading screens look cool

hand to hand attacks have a much improved gravity and physicality

random NPCs that you persuade to join you are interesting companions

pop-up issues, vsync, polygon management, etc., fixed (I guess this is more relevant for Xbox version)


rough English translation:

Spoiler :

Version tested: Xbox 360

Sooner or later you will find a short article on QuakeCon 2011, the id convention being held in Dallas at this time at the Hilton Anatole, a large hotel complex situated in the middle of a city that exists only for business and for oil. It feels a bit like walking on the moon, especially coming from Italy, because I do not know how many colleagues have ever attended and since we are the only ones invited to this event.

The id family has grown recently, however, when Bethesda bought Carmack's software house and this is how it came to be that we have the opportunity to play one of the most anticipated titles of 2011: The Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim.

The game contains one of the features most requested by fans of Oblivion, dragons, but there was no sign of these flying reptiles. We will meet them during the main quest, which was disabled in this pre-alpha version of the Xbox 360 (Skyrim will also be released on PC and PlayStation 3 on November 11), which we played from the character creation until the early quests, freely, along with ten other colleagues for a moment in time when [everyone was so focused that] you could hear a pin drop. Imagine a room, wrapped in silence, except for the words of Pete Hynes and Todd Howard, Game Director and Vice President respectively, of Bethesda, who turned in their chairs to help those who were playing. In search of dragons ... that were not there, though.

In the footsteps of Oblivion

One thing is clear, Skyrim is a game too complex to be dealt with in one hour of play. Too many things to do, too many unanswered questions [and not enough time] to be able to concentrate and actually do something productive, really.

Imagine a dozen stations, and at each there was a journalist who did something completely different. The writer has found himself manufacturing armor upon leaving the starting area, delivering a letter and exploring dungeons a bit .

There are those who became archers, who killed wolves and deer, and who traveled through at least a couple of urban settlements, shown on a 3D map with the names of the outposts, including using fast travel, but only after having first explored the area on foot.

To reach this myriad of end results, we all started from a save following shortly after the start of the game, which takes place in a dungeon, as usual, leaving the details of the story to our previous article which is rich with details.

Character creation has always been the pride of Bethesda, and this is no exception, thanks to new engine models, which allow much more rough and realistic faces marked by a thousand details. Tattoos, scars, hairstyles and appearances can be modeled with detail even higher than previously experienced. The races are the races of Oblivion, what has changed radically is the class selection, which no longer exists, as the evolution of the character is completely linked to the skills that you decide to develop, as you level up by playing.

Each of the skills, from wielding two-handed weapons, one-handed weapons, or casting spells to heal, has an indicator that tells you how many times it is used. Each of these contributes to the skill level and every time we reach a new character level, we are asked if we want to increase the magicka, stamina or the health of our alter egos.

Afterwards you can invest one point in any of the skills, to select a perk that permanently increases the abilities of the main character. Each skill is represented by a constellation, each of these branches arranged in a tree, marked by perks that can be activated by having the minimum requirements. Each of the perks on the tree has different levels of development, going to create an overall picture that sounds like a headache, but already at first glance it appears to provide a sufficient level of complexity with greater immediacy than the guilds and classes of Oblivion.

Good old TES

Who has not played Oblivion may not be familiar with the controls of The Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim , at least at first. Upon discovering how the different spells and equipment are handled in detail via the favorites menu, the basic commands remain the same. You jump with Y, with A you interact with objects, with B you activate the inventory / map, with X you draw your weapon or stow it away for exploration.

The trigger buttons still handle the task of launching attacks, one for each player's hand and left hand side is the left trigger, until you have run out of stamina.

The similarities however, stop at the layout of the buttons, since the answer to the demands of the player is completely changed.

Just hitting your bare hands, with the new engine offers a physicality and a gravity unknown before, they actually feel like blows, and this makes it difficult to walk around beating your fists in empty air.

Even the new animations, especially those of the protagonist that can finally be controlled with a third-person view without being ashamed to show what really happens on the screen.

The surrounding world seems less obsessed with having to tie a physical reaction to any interaction, but the detail and quality are from a different planet compared to Oblivion. The pop-up problems, vertical sync and even management of polygons all appear to be completely resolved, leaving room for a glance obscured by trees, flowers, trees, rocks and houses far on the horizon.

At the E3 presentation, we feared, among other things, such grace had been bestowed on a world with an almost lunar quality, too devoid of NPCs or enemies, but this test has dispelled this doubt, since the animal encounters and NPCs were frequent, giving the idea of a truly populated world, even unexpected encounters and animated in a much more credible way.

First Steps

Apart from the desire to recover from back to playing with a new episode of The Elder Scrolls, enjoy the view and the new "physicality" of our hero (which Bethesda should send a screenshot in the coming weeks), there was just enough time to interact with some NPCs and explore a little the world of Skyrim.

One of the first events that struck us was the active quest indicator, in the compass at the top center of the screen, guiding us even to the doors of houses where you need to enter, thus making it much easier to move into cities in search of the NPC [related to the quest].

Load times appeared a little long, populated by polygonal models, however, interactive, and always different, at least in this first test, dragons, statues and figures of the main quest and all well made.

The ease and immediacy with which the the mode of progression in the game seems to have changed were also evident in some aspects of quests. As we helped a person to receive a letter in this brief quest, we could ask him to follow us, and he became an intelligent and careful fellow companion adventurer.

In short, among other things, we were able to craft some armor and weapons at the blacksmith's forge and carve skins to make our own clothes, under the watchful eye of a master blacksmith met after a few minutes in a village.

As the darkness fell, we appreciated the new lighting and thick fog that enveloped the earth, and this took us into the bowels of a mine not far from where we started playing.

There was the usual attack of robbers and rats of different kinds and sizes, with a pleasant sense of dejavu. In short, it seems that Bethesda in preparing The Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim has certainly given the strengths of Oblivion, creating an obvious point of continuity, but also sought to solve the cumbersome aspects that could have kept away many players.

Obviously it takes a lot longer to understand the balance of this new nature and the direction taken, in particular in assessing the behavior of the NPC and the merits of the new skill structure, but the first good news is that at this stage of pre-alpha, The Elders Scrolls V: Skyrim seems much cleaner than it was Oblivion at launch and this is already a good starting point.

The fact that this happens within the context of aesthetics so lush and detailed, then, can only be expected to improve further by November 11th, the game's release date.

[The Happy Swede]

Hey guys, so if its not to much, can anyone try and find the link to some of these mods in this vid :S Im not very good with oblivion mods and such, so it would be a major help. Ill rep whoever can provide some links to some of them!
‪The Elder Scrolls - Oblivion The Beauty of mods - HD / HQ‬‏ - YouTube

[Nascentes]

I should NOT have read through this thread. I am so excited for this game it's not even slightly funny. Unbearable xD

Going to buy the collector's edition when it comes out!

Hey guys, so if its not to much, can anyone try and find the link to some of these mods in this vid :S Im not very good with oblivion mods and such, so it would be a major help. Ill rep whoever can provide some links to some of them!
‪The Elder Scrolls - Oblivion The Beauty of mods - HD / HQ‬‏ - YouTube

Just search for them on this site -> The Elder Scrolls Nexus - Oblivion mods and community
(The search bar is on the right side)


Edit:

Yessssss



I think it just came out today?
http://www.tgdaily.com/games-and-ent...ectors-edition

http://www.amazon.com/Elder-Scrolls-...2581286&sr=1-3

[The Happy Swede]

I should NOT have read through this thread. I am so excited for this game it's not even slightly funny. Unbearable xD

Going to buy the collector's edition when it comes out!




Just search for them on this site -> The Elder Scrolls Nexus - Oblivion mods and community
(The search bar is on the right side)


Edit:

Yessssss



I think it just came out today?
Bethesda teases Skyrim collector's edition | TG Daily

Amazon.com: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Collector's Edition: Video Games

but.. but... there is soooo many mods :O I was hoping that someone knew some of them or something, it is going to be hell trying to find those...