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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."
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.
In all of Bethesda's previous games, the answer to that would be an unambiguous 'yes'. They haven't indicated anything to suggest different for Skyrim.
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
No, you're definitely not the only one to feel that way. In fact, I'd say it's a time-honored tradition for older games to come out and poo-poo the latest Elder Scrolls game, regaling us with stories of how complex and deep the older games were. That's not to say that I disagree; in fact, I whole-heartedly agree with this criticism. However, I also find the later games to be enjoyable for what they are. As long as you're willing to accept that certain features have been irrevocably streamlined away, and they're not coming back, you can still have quite a bit of fun with Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 (which isn't an Elder Scrolls game, of course, but still uses the same engine).
I get just as frustrated as everyone else, when I load up the newest Elder Scrolls game, and some weapon or skill that I liked is gone, but -- usually -- the rest of the game makes up for that. And they can never take Arena, Daggerfall, or Morrowind away from us. If you want to levitate, while shooting a crossbow, well, you can always load up one of the older games. In fact, Morrowind and Oblivion both still have a surprisingly active modding community (or, they did, when I last re-installed the games and was collecting mods).
Now, I'm not a fanboy, and I'm not saying Oblivion was an amazing, top-notch game -- but each of the Elder Scrolls games has been deeply flawed in its own idiosyncratic way, and I've been able to overlook those flaws, because I like the overall game design. Arena is a bit fuzzy in my memory, but I remember it being a bit shallow. Personally, I thought Daggerfall was almost unplayably buggy, soullessly random, and had a horrendous UI. Morrowind was frankly a bit boring, with nothing but endless Cliff Divers for miles and miles. Oblivion heavily penalized you for improving any non-combat skills, and the vaunted Radiant AI was a total joke. But there were aspects to those games that kept me playing for years. So, in the end, I'd advise cautious optimism and trust in the game design. The worst thing that happens is that you post another stereotypical "back in MY day" rant on the official forums and wait for a mod that fixes all the bone-headed decisions they made in the new game.
Already up for pre-order on Steam, and they will probably be using SteamWorks activation for the DVD (when asked about it, Todd Howard's only reply was "We like Steam") so whatever policies Steam applies will hold.
If it uses SteamWorks it will require an internet connection to activate but can be played offline after this.
-- Insert witty one-liner here. --
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.
The auto-level balanced was terrible.
Game started easy and stayed easy on easy mode, and started some-what hard and got impossible on hard mode.
Doing side-quests actually hurt your chances of winning with the difficulty set to be hard enough to be worth playing at the start, and never to doing a couple side-quests make the next main mission easier, unless you started with the game too easy for it to matter.
I also found that Oblivion and Morrowind felt smaller than Arena (when walking between towns), but there was a long gap between when i played them and Arena. Part of the thing about Arena though was that it was years before games came that felt as large and open. Playing in an open environment in a first person type perspective was amazing in the mid 90's.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
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.
Doing side-quests actually hurt your chances of winning with the difficulty set to be hard enough to be worth playing at the start, and never to doing a couple side-quests make the next main mission easier, unless you started with the game too easy for it to matter.
What they IMO should have done is have the auto-balance only be relative to your progress on the main quest line. This would have rewarded those who do side quests, who would then be more powerful versus the late level foes than someone who didn't.
But what really made Oblivion a game I don't return to is the lack of voice. You have people gathered, apparently always in somber mourning, because they're silent. In battle, I hear the swoosh of a sword, the bang of a fireball, but I can hack a guy to pieces and he bites his lip not to make a sound. There are lots of things I can ignore in order to dispense disbelief, but that one hits a nerve.
Second, to that, how everything is so sepia. Not as bad as Morrowind, but still. No, it's not "gritty", it's just plain yellow and brown.
Third must be how all tactics boils down to "run backwards and fire constantly until the enemy drops". Many games have this AI flaw, but Oblivion and Fallout 3 more than most.
and what's wrong with that? It's 2011, a dual analog controller should be standard PC equipment by now.
Hint: It isn't, because we have something better: a mouse.
Once you have an analogue controller that allows you to turn around and aim at an arbitrary tiny spot of your choice within a fraction of a second, you can come back.
The only thing I feel a PC need is a WASD touchpad replacement, that offers infinite directions instead of just eight. But a mouse against the other controller is no contest at all - the mouse wins for both speed and accuracy.
Yeah. They should just create less actual game content and instead require you to get through 15 levels of tetris in order to move an item in your inventory. You'd get to spend way more time playing their $60 game then.