Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

[prettyfly]

I was suitably impressed, and once the mod machine get rolling its only going to get better.And yes, the dragon picking up the giant was epically awesome (the flamers on bethsoft forum immeadiatly started complaining that the havoc physics on the giant as it fell weren't good enough for them though). Its good to see that they've given the dragons proper treatment too rather than making them just another fantasy throwaway. And yeah, cool dungeons, cool environments, all the graphics seem nicely themed and fit together very nicely, yeah, generally awesome looking.btw, does anyone think that its possible that the draw distances for shadows have been cut down for the 360 and will be able to be beefed up for PC?

[Arthmoor]

Yes, all of the screens and promo vids thus far have been shot from the 360 version. Todd, Pete, and others have all confirmed this several times. So consider - the 360 version of the game blows even modded Morrowind out of the water. Yes, modded Morrowind looks 10x better than modded Oblivion (except NPCs). So just think of how great vanilla Skyrim will be on PC. Let alone what will happen once the uber-res texture mods show up.

[AndalayBay]

If by dibs you mean us' date=' here, then sure Cause if they're not joinable I'm going to be all about jumping on that one as soon as practical after playing the game completely through once or twice.[/quote']No, I meant my DBC team. But that's ok. We'll let you put out a little teaser mod and then come out with the grand opus, just like the last time Otoh, if you would like to join us... :DDBC was always meant to be a trilogy. Since it got delayed so long, we figured we could get parts 1 and 2 out before Skyrim, but ever since Skyrim got announced, we've been thinking about doing part 3 in Skyrim. We've even been planning how we would carry the story over to Skyrim.I've also been in touch with Amajor7 and we're planning on porting Imperial Furniture to Skyrim too, if the opportunity arises.

[Arthmoor]

Oh, so that means I've probably got 3-4 years before that sees the light of day, right? :devil:You guys really going to be able to get two parts out in 5 months time?

[AndalayBay]

Oh' date=' so that means I've probably got 3-4 years before that sees the light of day, right?

You guys really going to be able to get two parts out in 5 months time?[/quote']You really need to get a LMAO emote! Touché. No, probably not. Which means that I will be finishing up part 2, starting part 3 and porting Imperial Furniture... There is a game in here somewhere, right?

[Arthmoor]

I've heard that there's a game here somewhere... somewhere beneath all these mods.

[Arthmoor]

Some nice new screenshots! Supposedly for the PC this time.

[Dwip]

Well, I guess that answers the horse question.

[Hana]

Saw the horse in the live G4 exclusive demo this afternoon. Beautiful clydesdales (can you say Slof's horses?).The demo was mostly the same as yesterday, with a bit of extended footage here and there. Samson will be happy to see walking into an open Riverhold.Based on those pics, I'm beginning to think that leather is the only armor?

[Arthmoor]

Oh yes, I saw the Riverhold part. Riverhold is not a major city though. It's a smaller village. Those were wide open in Oblivion too, for what few existed. There's one screenshot there though of a city much closer in, and in the video Todd said that's Whiterun. Supposedly THE big city in the province.Those horses look way better than Oblivion horses. Noticeably missing was any talk of mounted combat, but I think now that it's been shown on video they're not going to back out horses entirely.And those "guardian stones" caught my eye instantly. Them crazy Nords always have all the cool stuff.

[prettyfly]

btw Hana, I'm pretty sure I saw elven armor in the video you linked.

[Kayle]

I'm not convinced those pictures were off a PC. The last two look like they were pulled right from the E3 Demo.

[Arthmoor]

No, they're not all from PC. Though the person who linked them on the Skyrim forum still claims some of them are.

[prettyfly]

There's a lot of concern that they've cut greaves from the game, and based on what I've seen so far I've got the feeling that this could well be a legitimate worry.Anyone else concerned?

[Arthmoor]

No, because there's been plenty of shots of characters wearing greaves. Unless those are just one piece armor suits, in which case I personally don't care. I think that would make more sense than being able to run around in steel greaves with a glass cuirass, for example.I think you'll find that there's a lot of paranoid people spreading a bunch of wild speculation about all kinds of things on that forum. Very little of the things they go on about have been confirmed. It's like people crying that they cut spears.... well... there's no spears in Oblivion either.

[Dwip]

Ten Paws greatly misses spears.

[Arthmoor]

He also apparently misses gravity

[Sigurð Stormhand]

Well, given that different weapons have different finishing moves, etc. it's entirely possible they have custom animation sets - ergo spears might be practical to add.Personally, I was hoping for a return of Pauldrons - more gear means more enchantments at once.

[Dwip]

He can't very well be a Mad Killer Flying Argonian without flight, now can he?

[Arthmoor]

No, I suppose not.Flight was cool and all but it's very very munchkin and I wasn't sorry to see it go in Oblivion.Something I find interesting is the number of people complaining that they're taking out levitation and flight - as though they skipped Oblivion or something and don't realize they've been gone now for years. Not to mention the folks upset over the loss of spears and crossbows... when they've also been gone for years.

[Dwip]

I really miss how awfully convenient it was, especially in the days before fast travel. I used to fly to Red Mountain a lot.OTOH, taking out spears was just sort of dumb. It's like what, all of one more set of animations? BFD. But then, I'm still bitter about the whole blunt axes thing, so, you know.Apparently Skyrim is attracting a ton of ex-Morrowind players? I dunno.

[Thomas Kaira]

I'm still amazed when I wander onto the Skyrim forums to find people calling Oblivion lore-rich because it introduced a lot of new books. News flash: books ain't good enough. A real lore-rich game has its own personality and culture, and the only faction in all of Oblivion that got developed reasonably well was the Dark Brotherhood.Just admit it, Skyrimmers, Oblivion had serious storytelling issues, and there's no point in avoiding that (just like I recognize that Morrowind had serious gameplay issues).Anyways, back on topic. I am noticing increasing amounts of evidence that Bethesda aims to further "streamline" the armor by taking away the greaves slot.Really, guys, there is a difference between streamlining and flat-out stripping a game, and Bethesda seems to be doing a lot of that right now. I can understand the attributes, and I can also understand extricating the pauldrons as they were fairly minor pieces, but taking away a major armor slot? When they're going to be modeling that particular piece of armor anyways?Are these guys high? How can they possibly think this is a good idea?

[Arthmoor]

Heh. Being lore-rich due to a bunch of books is a bit silly. The factions might not have gotten the best of treatments but the main quest was pretty good, at least I thought. That's going to be the major source of canon information. The fall of the Septim Empire is pretty damn important stuff, and we got to be there to see it happen.I'm still convinced the main reason Oblivion didn't come out as well as they wanted was because of the last minute hatchet job they had to do to get it into shape for the 360. Hindsight tells us that they should have just said screw it, released the PC version as-is and ON TIME (they would have made November 2005 easy) and then worry about the console babies later. Factions clearly suffered, politics and intrigue hurt badly, the AI system was crippled to the point of nearly being useless, and do we really need to discuss level scaling? I think most of the issues in Oblivion weren't story or lore related. They were very much gameplay related.Fallout 3 is proof that they managed to correct most of the major mistakes that caused Oblivion so much trouble. Dwip could speak for F:NV, but I've seen nothing so far that tells me they haven't got this 360 thing licked now.So when I see people crying about spears, pauldrons, crossbows, flight, levitation, and medium armor all being gone, I just have to laugh. The shit's been gone now for 6 years by the time Skyrim is out. Yes, some of us miss it, but it's not coming back no matter how much we want it. The Morrowind people need to wake up and realize this.Compared to all that, the loss of attributes, 3 more skills, and possibly greaves (I apparently can't find these threads lamenting it) is pretty minor. Considering we're gaining a vastly superior perks system with something in the area of 300 perks to pick from. I'll gladly hand off vague attributes for that. Plus there's been hints floating about that they're going to break axes apart from blades again, and that there may be two different classifications of bows (long/short) which is something.So no, I don't think they're high. I think they're just doing something that fucktons of other RPGs already take for granted - a suit of armor is one uniform set. Not a hodgepodge of individual pieces. Honestly I'm surprised to hear only greaves are on the chopping block. Why not gauntlets too? And boots?On balance, I really do think Skyrim is going to be a great RPG. Easily better than the dog that is Dragon Age 2, and I dare say it should be better than Witcher 2. What else could possibly even come close besides those?If things end up going to shit, well, I guess that's why modders exist and it'll suck to be a console player (btw, linux, go die, and take Apache with you)

[Thomas Kaira]

Well, I was rather dissatisfied with the MQ in Oblivion, as it never felt like there was any gravity to my actions, I never felt the Oblivion Crisis ever really meant anything (through the course of it, we had one city destroyed and another slightly damaged, but apart from that, nothing else happened), and there were truckloads of missed opportunities in the story.The FG questline really took a dive at the end with it's laughable attempt at Black Ops, and it was a bit cliche, as well, with it's "evil corporation is taking over the world" approach.The MG questline, we build up to an epic encounter with... some snooty, runny-nosed Altmer?! The fuck? The huge anticlimax of the ending there really destroyed the idea that my actions were really worthwhile, as I absolutely refuse to believe that idiot we fought at the end was really Mannimarco.The TG questline... well, that one I liked. However, I really do have to wonder why security in the Emperor's Palace, specifically the Library of the Elder Scrolls, was so lax. Nonetheless, story-wise, this one was okay.The DB was quite good... up until it was over. The ending was definitely rushed for this one.Okay, I have now come to a conclusion: Bethesda sucks at endings. Between the Morrowind strategy of Guild quests hitting a brick wall when you became guildmaster, and Oblivion's strategy of just tanking on the plot... Skyrim might be in trouble here.

[Arthmoor]

Well, to be perfectly honest, you could ignore the gravity of the situation in Morrowind just as easily. Don't want to go deal with the nasty guy in the volcano? Ignore the MQ and go wander. There's a reason it took me eons to finish Morrowind the first time through. I did plenty of ignoring. The consequences should have been at least as dire. I guarantee this is why they pestered you to death with DB assassins in Tribunal. Hard to ignore determined assassins jumping you at every opportunity.I did say the faction quests all suffered hard in OB, yes? The FG and MG moreso than the TG and DB. I suspect that the FG and MG were somewhat rushed and may have been in the middle of their development when the panic over the 360 cuts set in. I don't think the DB ending was rushed. I think Bethesda intended them to be crippled by the end of the story line.There's been speculation that the ending for the MG was as you say - not really the guy you think he is. Some people have claimed this means the real Mannimarco will make an appearance in Skyrim, or that they're holding on to him for an even later TES game.I'm still holding out hope that they've learned from this and the last 5 years weren't wasted. Time will tell, but even if they utterly fuck it all up, it will be hard to say it's worse than the crap Bioware put out this year. Witcher 2 is their only real competition IMO.I think this whole greaves thing is unfounded now btw. I'm reading through the big thread about how horrible it is that they don't exist, and people are basing this on the fact that it wasn't seen in the inventory of one seriously brief shot somewhere in one of the E3 demos. If this is the standard of proof we're using, then I may as well claim that there's no weapons made of anything other than iron and steel since that's all we saw. There's screenshots floating around that sure seem to imply we still have greave slots.Oh yes, and IIRC, we're getting a crafting system. So really. One armor slot lost vs an entire new gameplay system added. I'm OK with this.