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Skyrim Is Getting Kinect Support, Dragon Shouts Included

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-when-you-swear-at-lydia-she-can-hear-you dept.

jjp9999 writes "Bethesda announced they're bringing Kinect support to Skyrim. It doesn't sound like this will include motion detection. Rather, it will be around voice commands — tons of voice commands. It supports dragon shouts, trading, navigation, switching weapons, and a whole lot of other features that usually require you to assign hotkeys or to sort through menus. They also gave a brief hint at new content, stating they've 'been hard at work on creating the first set of game add-ons that will be exclusive to the Xbox 360. This additional content will add new quests, locations, features, and much more to the world of Skyrim.'"

10 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Fix bugs first by kwark · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Instead of adding new stuff, please fix the bugs first.

    1. Re:Fix bugs first by Forty+Two+Tenfold · · Score: 5, Funny

      They were gonna, but then they took an arrow to the knee...

      --
      Upward mobility is a slippery slope - the higher you climb the more you show your ass.
    2. Re:Fix bugs first by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Christ don't be such a fucking wet blanket. The capacity of some people to bitch when a cool game company adds really cool new features post launch FOR FREE is fucking astounding.

      Elder scrolls games are going to have bugs. Lots of them. The size and the scope of the project makes this inevitable. The trick is to kill the real nasty showstoppers and IMO they did a great job with Skyrim. No, more importantly the goal is to make sure the game is FUN.

      Ex - Giants launching you in to the sky. Is it a bug? Yes! Is it fun? Oh fuck yes it is! It's a fucking riot! It went viral before the game's official launch and probably did more to sell the game than most features they spent a lot of time and money actually developing! It's not worth fixing, and it really doesn't do much to the gameplay. Why? Because its a bug in the execution animation. You'd never see a launch if you weren't going to end up dead anyway.

      Another example would be the buckets over the head of shop keepers. Hilarious and unintended, but an amazing advertisement of the game's capabilities. It showed the game had extremely fine grained collision detection and a physics model that respected it. It also showed how the NPCs had real vision based what they could actually "see".

      So take your bug fixes and stuff it. Furthermore, if you purchased the game on the "right" platform (PC) you'd know that elder scrolls games have a life years beyond their launch date due to excelent community created content.

    3. Re:Fix bugs first by vic.tz · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've heard this line before, and it makes a lot of sense as a player. But as a developer, I know that I have a LOT more fun working on new content and features than hunting down and fixing bugs. When I'm working on new content, it's more fun, my progress feels more traceable, I feel more productive, and the result is a new shiny feature. Conversely, when I'm hunting down bugs, it can be tedious, aggravating work, and even when I fix the bug, all of my headaches can be attributed to some stupid error or design flaw made many, many months ago. Essentially, it's easier and more rewarding for me to add features vs fix bugs.

      I know this sounds superficial and/or unprofessional, but it no doubt affects how I work. Granted, the projects I work on are much smaller than Skyrim, so it's hard to compare to the mindset of a multimillion dollar project.

  2. Oooh voice commands by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Depending on what gets voice commands, you can have a lot of fun by walking up to someone playing this with a Kinect.

    "Hi Bob, looks like that giant is geting a bit close... EQUIP FEEBLE DAGGER."

    1. Re:Oooh voice commands by StikyPad · · Score: 4, Funny

      From my experience of Kinect's voice recognition, it would go something like this:

      You: XBOX EQUIP FEEBLE DAGGER! XBOX EQUIP FEEBLE DAGGER! EQUIP...
      Friend: [Punch to the face.]
      You: OW!!!
      XBox: Are you sure you want to save?

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
  3. What happens when... by getSalled · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... I yell "LeRoy Jenkins!" ??

  4. Re:Why not PC? by schitso · · Score: 5, Informative

    You mean like this?
    http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5626

    These kinds of mods are exactly why I prefer PC gaming.

  5. Re:Why X360 and Kinect exclusive? by Mike+Mentalist · · Score: 3, Informative

    PC gamers already can FUS-RO-DAH in Skyrim with this mod - http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=5626

    Enough with the conspiracy theories. Your paranoid sense of persecution is unwarranted.

    --
    I put my books on Amazon, Smashwords, Demonoid, ISOHunt and Pirate Bay. Search for 'Michael Cargill'
  6. Re:Exclusive to xbox? feh! by The+Dancing+Panda · · Score: 3, Informative

    Did you bother to read any other comments? They're using the Kinect API to do voice commands, they didn't roll their own voice recognition (as that is much more difficult). Furthermore, there is apparently a mod that allows you to do this on the PC. Not everything is some terrible thing Microsoft did to fuck you over.