Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

[Dwip]

Huh, that is cool.Provided they do it well, anyway.

[Arthmoor]

Provided they don't forcefully shove it in my face the way DA:O did I'm not going to complain.

[AndalayBay]

yeah, but since I usually play male characters, I loved the options DA: Origins provided... Glad to hear it's an option in Skyrim.

[prettyfly]

Its only going to bother me if you get hetero and homo sexual options on every character you can marry. Otherwise, its good to hear. Since I'd feel uncomfortable seducing a man if I was playing as a woman in the game.

[Thomas Kaira]

Okay, now this is a question I really would like answered:Will Skyrim provide native OpenAL audio support for PC users?I sure hope so, DirectSound3D has been deprecated for us with Vista's release. And I'm not going to be very happy if I need to use ALchemy for Skyrim, because ALchemy simply shouldn't be necessary for modern games.

[Arthmoor]

No idea. Has anyone brought the subject up in the main forum? I have a feeling the answer will be no though if DX9 doesn't mesh with it.

[Thomas Kaira]

Why not go take a look in the main forums, then? :tongue:

[Arthmoor]

Well there you go, but considering the shaft job PC Gaming is getting this time around, I wouldn't count too heavily on them making sure to use XACT unless they had to for the 360.Oh yes, and a hearty fuck you to timed DLC exclusives.

[Thomas Kaira]

Look, Ma! DLC exclusivity!Joy! :headbang:(This comment is geared mostly to the PS3 users, who are getting completely shafted by this announcement. The PC still has mods to make up for this.)

[Dwip]

Not wildly surprising, but still utter BS.

[prettyfly]

Ok, so no armor degradation. (I'm hoping you guys haven't already been through this all while I was away).Jesus Bethesda, what the FUCK are you thinking :headbang:

[Arthmoor]

Meaning.... no repair skill? Because I can't see how one would be useful if nothing ever degrades.In case it hasn't become obvious yet, Bethesda has sold their soul to Microsoft.

[prettyfly]

Its not the loss of the repair skill that bothers me, its that they've decided to drop a realism providing feature that allows for all sort of different things to occur in game to make things more interesting.Pete Hines actually defended the decision, saying that they decided to focus on Smithing instead. Well, great, you've made this brilliant Smithing feature which would have been perfect to integrate repair into, but for some reason you've decided to cut this feature altogether. Here's for a Creation Kit that will allow modders to rectify this issue.

[Thomas Kaira]

It's all about trying to make the game appeal to as many people as possible. The vast majority of gamers nowadays are instant-gratification, zero-challenge, realism-only-if-it's-not-too-hard types. These are the people Skyrim is being designed to appeal to. The people who demand a huge open world, and at the same time demand a way to completely skip it whenever they want at no cost to them. It is shameful how much of this non-sequiter logic has found its way into the game at this point. Stripping out armor condition means that armor material no longer matters, nor does crafting skill for those who wish to make it. Instead, all that differentiates armor now is looks and damage reduction. So we have this gigantic crafting skill, but we never need to repair our armor anymore and therefore we lose a critical use of the skill (which would be a great way to help aspiring craftsmen get some experience)?And the argument of "to reduce clicky work with repairing" does not work, because Bethesda could easily just put in an auto-repair function that calculates total repairs performed and resource costs with minimal button pressing. But no, yet again, they take the easy way out. Instead of properly streamlining the system, they strip it instead.Lazy, lazy, lazy, lazy.

[prettyfly]

Since it looked so good here you decided it was fit for Beth forums too, didn't you :grinning:

[Thomas Kaira]

What can I say, I like to cross-post. :tongue:

[AndalayBay]

Actually I don't mind. I get nice summaries over here since I have no intention of even visiting the Skyrim forum on Beth

[Arthmoor]

I bet they haven't bothered to consider the consequence of this either. That you'll never ever find damaged armor in the wild, not even stuff that should be close to falling apart because it's been in a tomb for 500 years. Every piece of armor, everywhere, must therefore be in pristine condition. Why buy the shit in stores now? Just go to one of their 130 dungeons they're so proud of and pick it up off the floor.

[Thomas Kaira]

Here's my list of obvious hand-holding mechanics that will need to be modded out so far:We no longer need to repair our gear, the game does it for us.We no longer need to create our character, the game does it for us.We no longer need to rest or cast a spell to heal, the game does it for us.We still don't need to explore to find our quest objectives, the game does it for us.

[AndalayBay]

I just hope we have the opportunity to mod it out. If gear can't be damaged, there may not be any concept of health at all and there is nothing for us to mod out, for example.

[Thomas Kaira]

Bethesda has new plans for squishing bugs. Essentially, all copies of Skyrim are going to be hardwired directly back to Bethesda over the internet so that when bugs or balancing issues start popping up, Bethesda can fix them and everyone gets a patch for the bug within a few hours of its discovery.Essentially, this allows for Bethesda to patch the game's master data file (that is, Skyrim.ESM) on the fly. Engine bugs will still need to be patched in the more traditional manner, though.I certainly support this new system. It won't hurt modding any, since the general consensus about modifying the game's master data file is NEVER EVER EVER.

[prettyfly]

Apparently there is the concept of sharpening your weapons, so theoretically that might give us an opportunity to create some sort of degradation system, assuming sharpened weapons loose their sharpness over a period of time.

[Sigurð Stormhand]

I bet they haven't bothered to consider the consequence of this either. That you'll never ever find damaged armor in the wild' date=' not even stuff that should be close to falling apart because it's been in a tomb for 500 years. Every piece of armor, everywhere, must therefore be in pristine condition. Why buy the shit in stores now? Just go to one of their 130 dungeons they're so proud of and pick it up off the floor.[/quote']Not to mention armour degredation, and weapon degredation, spells will no longer exists, that's going to hurt Mages badly.

[Hana]

Wait a minute ... so, not only are they going to force me to get an unnecessary Steam account to play, they're going to force me to play over an internet connection so they can change stats of swords whenever they feel like it? (direct quote from that link).Er, no thanks.

[Thomas Kaira]

No, more along the lines of checking for updates when you start up the game with an internet connection available. The game skips that step if you are playing offline.Most likely it's going to be piggybacked onto Steam's auto-patcher for PC users.