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Early Look At The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Bethesda plans to launch their newest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, in November, and they've finally started to take the wraps off the game. A preview at Eurogamer provides some information about the game's combat, the UI, and exploration of the game world. Quoting:
"RPGs send you into menus more than almost any other game genre, so it's weird that more thought doesn't go into inventory design, but as I play around with powers, weapons and items to lighten my load it becomes clear that Skyrim is a welcome exception. Its nested menus are accessed almost as smoothly as iPad page swipes, and navigating them is quick and clean. You can set favorites, equip items to either hand, and examine things in detail. More than once during my brief hands-on I have to rotate an object to look for a clue to a puzzle, or read a document, and it's all done without going to a different screen or do anything more complex than wiggling sticks and hitting a face button. It's easy to imagine that a system like this in Oblivion or Fallout could have shaved hours off the average player's actual game-time. As it is, it saves valuable seconds in my hands-on, and seconds are my currency today, so thank you to whomever at Bethesda designed the inventory."
Am I the only one to think that they want to make it a plain console game, slowly taking away the RPG features. Okay, it's not yet a giant corridor with a single path. I don't want to say "things were better back then"... but look at all the gameplay possibilities the player lost since TES 2: Daggerfall... Climbing, Flying, many objects and inventory slots, spells... That said, I'm not really impressed by this Skyrim preview... but I look forward to try it. I don't want to rage about a game I didnt try.
Is its DRM reasonable? If you buy the game, can you play and reinstall it as many times as you want on whatever computer you want, and can you play it without internet connection if single player?
Thanks.
First fail you mean.
These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Stick!? Face button!? What are these foreign things you speak of!? My TES uses a moue and keyboard. I hope there's no port drama.
Disappointedly, that's what she said
If I was witty I'd put something funny here but, as it stands, I am not and have just wasted seconds of your life
No I didn't!
This tagline was transcoded to result in at least one smirk. If you experience failure to smirk, please consult your Gen
Let's hope the HoKaM experience isn't too dumbed down...
One thing that bugs me about Bethesda is that they almost never ramp up the excitement. Sure there are plenty of interesting story lines, but I can probably count on half a hand the moments where something really exciting happened—a situation that made me go "oh shit!" and freak out a little about how I was going to survive. Not every quest line needs to have an awesome climax, but they could definitely use a lot more.
And make magic a first-class citizen, please. I'd love to use it heavily for offense/defense, but it was weak as hell in Oblivion compared to just wildly swinging a sword around. I really like being able to get creative about things, like walking on water while shooting enemies with my bow as they try to swim toward me. Other times I just want to be a little more Rambo and run in throwing fireballs looking badass. But in Oblivion the fireballs look and act like you're just throwing candles. There's nothing badass about them.
I don't care what the previews say, good or bad, my copy is reserved and my kids have ordered theirs too. Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion have all kept me entertained for hundreds of hours, and I doubt Skyrim will be any different.
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
anyone else just get a grind in your gut when the reviewer mentions ipad anything.....
Morrowind, horribly crippled on the PC with regards to loading, although this was fixed when the PC only expansions arrived which suddenly realized PC's had more then 32mb of ram available and a speedy HD. Before: Loading every other step After: No loads ever.
Oblivion, OH MY GOD CAN THAT TEXT BE ANY LARGER and an inventory system from hell.
Consolitus has struck heavily in the realms of the elder scrolls. Luckily so far the games have been very modifiable meaning paying customers could fix the game unpaid but beggars can't be choosers.
At least they still bother with PC versions. Yes I am looking at you Rockstar, feeling to good to acknowledge your roots eh?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
don't let this be a shit console port. press B to continue.
Have they done anything to fix their stupid leveling system?
You know, the one where players can take a bunch of mostly worthless skills, and then level all the good ones to max in order to have godlike power, while all the monsters are scaled for a level-1 character...
Dude, if "seconds are [your] currency", then RPG is not your genre. Go pick up a pure shooter and twitch.
From the article:
How nice, the game developers are looking for ways to help us spend even less time with their $60 games. I'm so glad they've got our best interests at heart.
Don't get me wrong, I like a well designed inventory as much as anyone, but I'm uncomfortable with the notion that a game developer would have as a goal, making our experience of their game shorter.
To be fair, Bethesda is not one of the companies that's really guilty of cheating us out of game-time like some others I won't name (Infinity Ward). I've never really played a Bethesda game and felt like I didn't get my money's worth.
You are welcome on my lawn.
"As it is, it saves valuable seconds in my hands-on, and seconds are my currency today"
If seconds are so valuable, then WHY are you even considering playing an RPG? Has gaming really gone so ADHD? Im sure we have FACEbook to thank for that.
Probably the same person who hated the Witcher 2, because it required some time from the player to learn how to play it, y'know like games USED to be.... Sheesh
But...but...but...I haven't even finished playing Oblivion yet! In fact, I've only had it since March of 2006!!
Bullshit. And frankly, the farther I see you going down this line of pulling stuff out of the ass about keyboard controls, the more comical it gets.
A bunch of us have been playing TES games just fine with a keyboard and mouse too. And there are many millions of people world-wide playing WoW and other games just fine with keyboard and mouse.
And sorry, MOVEMENT is hard for you with a keyboard? WTF were you even trying to do, that movement was such a problem? Tightrope walking? Or WTH? Especially if we move out of the realm of FPS frag-fests and into RPGs like the TES series, then we can pretty much even exclude "jump puzzles" too, and I'm drawing blanks for ANY game where accurate movement with a keyboard or anything else was ever a problem.
Was there any map in Oblivion where it even mattered if you moved half a foot more or less with the keyboard than with a gamepad? Even the extremely few places where you could take a shortcut by jumping, were actually made for a game where Acrobatics skill made a huge difference in how much you CAN jump. I.e., the maps were designed for the case that you really can't jump more than a couple of FT.
So even in your delusional world where apparently PC gamers don't have trained thumbs and presumably can't press the space bar in the same time as you push the jump button, where the fuck in Oblivion did it ever matter how precisely you move with a keyboard?
Look, I know it's usual among cretin console fanboys to just make up their delusional bullshit about PC gaming. But, really, when you have to reach for such idiotic extremes of bullshit as that
- MOVEMENT with a keyboard and mouse is a problem, or that
- everyone disagreeing with your delusions is only playing FPS frag-fests, or that
- everyone disagreeing with your delusions doesn't also play console games, and doesn't have enough training with a controller to make an informed comparison (hint to the clueless: some of us play both)
that should give you pause for thought, really.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Eurogamer reviews,.. never trust them.
As far as I can tell, the combat is still dependent on *my* twitch shooter skills as much as *my character's* combat skills. So whatever wonderful story, exploring and interacting experiences are on offer, I'm not going to get to see them.
Combat doesn't *have* to be turn-based, I've learned to work with Dragon Age, for example. But it *should* be based on my character's abilities tied to my decision making, e.g. I choose to shoot a bow at the orc over there, the character's archery skill determines if I hit. If my accuracy at pointing something in the right direction with my right thumb is involved, it's an FPS, and I'm not interested in playing it.
I'm still baffled as to why this series is held up as the crown of "hard-core" RPGs, when it's such a hybrid...
That review told and said nothing, why was it posted? Just to annoy?
More than once during my brief hands-on I have to rotate an object to look for a clue to a puzzle, or read a document, and it's all done without going to a different screen or do anything more complex than wiggling sticks and hitting a face button. It's easy to imagine that a system like this in Oblivion or Fallout could have shaved hours off the average player's actual game-time.
Uh, now every time I pick up something I need to visualize it in 3 dimensions and then figure out if something is scrawled on the back of it? This is in a world where you can grab and lift just about everything in the game?
This is starting to sound like something out of Riven, where somehow the designers confused challenge with tedium (walk up to door, then turn around 180 degrees and click the magic pixel on some object).
Once I learned that every time I leveled I was screwing my character up by not ALSO levellng other minor skills I got sick of the game. Keeping track of what I leveled when to make sure I get three +5s was not fun, and it served no purpose other than to make the game harder.
If you want to make the game harder, just do it, you don't need to make the game mechanics harder.
Remember that Microsoft insisted that XP activation would be patched out when XP went EOL.
All I can say is if the inventory system is once again designed for some crappy console on a 320 line screen like Oblivion's was, I'll be waiting to buy this until the PC-mods come out.
Other games have had that issue, but I never played a game (up to that point) on a PC that was so clearly designed out of the box for a console/gamepad that it made PC play almost painful.
-Styopa
I will buy this game if the following are true (as compared with Oblivion):
1) Creatures don't level along with the player. I hate almost every game I've played that has this mechanic. It's not that I like to grind a lot and breeze through boss fights or anything, it's just that I like to feel I've progressed in the game or that there is a reason to actually level up. Creatures leveling up with the player destroys that feeling for me.
2) The game is playable in third person mode. Yes, I know there was a third person mode in Oblivion but it was horribly clunky, especially in combat. First person RPG's suck.
That is all.
How's the character selection or face customization compared to Oblivion? I haven't seen it mentioned yet.
I set aside vacation time for Elder Scrolls after Daggerfall nearly made me fail college.... So, there are just a couple requests that I hope Skyrim delivers on:
No multiplayer. Every game doesn't HAVE to have a multiplayer mode. I don't want to talk to other people while I'm playing this game.
No online-always DRM. I want to buy the best GPU on the market the day the game comes out, put it in my 6 core AMD 1100T, backup linux, install windows, install skyrim, and drive to a cabin in the mountains with no internet and play the game for three weeks straight.
No micropayments. For the love of all things good, I would pay $100 for this game if they follow my rules. Facebook games started this micropayment cancer, and they deserve to burn in hell for it.
Shit, I could convince myself that $200 is ok, as long as there is not f-ing multiplayer, the thing works offline, and there's no nickle-and-diming me.