Skyrim

[bobby 55]

The thing that makes me want to play Skyrim, from what I've read, is that you can go off exploring/adventuring without having to follow the story line.

[Jetsetlemming]

I bought BF3 off a Russian key site. Had to do some hax (editing the registry, downloading extra files to stick in my BF3 folder (nothing cracking the actual exe, just english language support stuff) to get it to be English, but that eventually worked. Game's pretty good, actually. In my first five minutes, I shot down a helicopter from 200y blind firing with the starter rocket the engineer gets. Feels good, man.

Also Skyrim is great. It fixes my single biggest problem with Oblivion, which was the boring generic world. I loved Morrowind's weird mushroom swamp mountain environment, and I'm glad to have Skyrim's frozen inhospitable landscape. That new "renderer" they were talking up prerelease really does do the trick. The water effects look great close up (unfortunately the water doesn't look nearly as good in the distance for some reason), and the shadows are also really good, even on low settings. Shadows that can sit still for a moment will get calculated at highest quality, and then sit static until they need to move again. Fucking awesome effect, one I've been thinking about and hoping it'd be used in games for a while now.

[Dragon]

The thing that makes me want to play Skyrim, from what I've read, is that you can go off exploring/adventuring without having to follow the story line.

You could do this since the beginning. In contrary to this though in Skyrim or Oblivion it's very static and narrow so you can't really explore/adventure as you could in the old games.

[Zaine]

Aww...Crap. No decent exploration like Morrowind (My favourite so far, I've played them all) means no buy from me (for a while anyway, I'm still getting it).

EDIT: I've just discovered that, while my laptop can run Oblivion at max settings, it runs Morrowind at a snails pace. Rather odd that.

[gamer0004]

No cool weird stuff you can just come across? Side-quests in the middle of nowhere, interesting NPCs to come across somewhere in the mountains, a weird building to find somewhere along the coast (it was some kind of observatory or something... There were no quests related to it AFAIK)? That was one of the things I absolutely loved about Morrowind. There was just so much to see and find (out), and it didn't slap you in the face with it. Most players (even the more adventurous ones like people here on this forums) probably never see even half the content of that game. Absolutely amazing. So is that still there in Skyrim?

[Zaine]

Hell, I've had Morrowind for nearly 8 years (I think) and still haven't seen everything!
I'm also watching a LP of Heavy Rain right now, I soo really want a PS3 right now!

[Dragon]

You have stuff like that but not in that quantity or quality. Side quests are all rather generic and uninteresting. I certainly could not remember an interesting one out of Oblivion for example but I certainly remember memorable moments and quests in Morrowind. I guess it also depends on what you call exploration or adventuring. In Morrowind you felt like discovering something ancient with a history attached to it even if it is not spelled out. In Oblivion or Skyrim this is not the case. It feels like yet another copy-pasted dungeon to fill the world. At least I had deja-vu after a couple of dungeons into the game already.

[Zaine]

Just great, thank the world didn't buy it yesterday when I had the chance. I was hoping it wouldnt be generic like Oblivion but now Im rather dissappointed. I'll rent it before I buy. BTW Saw a Saints Row The Third LP earlier, Its looking sweet! It'll be my 1st Saints Game too im really looking forward to it now!

[bobby 55]

The thing that makes me want to play Skyrim, from what I've read, is that you can go off exploring/adventuring without having to follow the story line.

You could do this since the beginning. In contrary to this though in Skyrim or Oblivion it's very static and narrow so you can't really explore/adventure as you could in the old games.

You're going to have to excuse my ignorance of previous Elder Scrolls games, as my venturing into Oblivion is the first time I've played any of them. I must have misread about the adventuring then, coz the guy made it sound pretty cool, he might have been talking about role playing elements I guess.

[Jonas]

In contrary to this though in Skyrim or Oblivion it's very static and narrow so you can't really explore/adventure as you could in the old games.

Care to elaborate? Seems fine to me.

[Dragon]

In contrary to this though in Skyrim or Oblivion it's very static and narrow so you can't really explore/adventure as you could in the old games.

Care to elaborate? Seems fine to me.

In Morrowind the environment changes a lot with different locations. Cites and villages look totally different depending where you do. You can have anything from fisher villages to large cities and they all have their own feeling. You really feel that each place has their own history, culture and way of living. In Oblivion one city looks like the other just with the streets layout somewhat different or having more or less houses yet the streets, houses and people look all the same. Also the landscape has no real variation. In Morrowind you can look at a screenshot and you know exactly in what region you are. Look at a screenshot of Oblivion and you have no idea where you are as all looks the same. The same for dungeons. In Morrowind you can go into a dungeon and it's rather unique each time. It's always a surprise what you will find when you go through that door down below the surface of earth. You can find anything from nice loot all the way to quests or other interesting things. In Oblivion entering a dungeon you know already what you are going to see as all dungeons of the same type (not many of them exist) looks the same and have similar loot at the end. It's always the same story. Walk down long winded corridors where you can go one and only one way to find at the end some enchanted weapon/item (which is quite worthless to you as you can't even sell it) and get out. Combined with the same looking dungeons build of a few small pieces of lego-corridors this gets dull after a couple of dungeons. Skyrim does this somewhat better but it's the same deja-vu problem. It simply is not interesting to explore since you know already before entering the dungeon what you will get to see and what you will find/do in there. This element of surprise, the suspense what will await you, all this Morrowind had but Oblivion and Skyrim are missing. I hope I could explain it somewhat. I can't say it better than in Morrowind the world has been alive but in Oblivion and Skyrim it's sterile, predictable and dead.

EDIT: It might sound strange but only talking about Morrowind I see again images of interesting places like the temple midst in the nowhere or a dunmer (did I spell this right?) dungeon with strange machinery just sparking your imagination what they could have build here or the floating prison and so forth. Talking about Oblivion I have nothing which sticks to my mind as it's all so generic that nothing sticks out like a sore thumb to remember. That's one of my biggest beafs right after the bad combat mechanics, which Skyrim took over but just doubled the pain with dual-wielding and cutting out any interesting spell (aka anything non-combat/non-healing) which I loved to use in Morrowind or Oblivion (those that had not been ripped out then already).

[AEmer]

I still find the UI to be poor. Wish Bethesda had stuck with a purpose over substance one like morrowind.

Well, there's something to be said for minimalism. When you're exploring the world, theres no interface in your way...only a see-through compass with locations. They presumably got to this "hide" concept by going forward from the (fairly tacky) fallout interface, and by comparison, this is absolutely beautiful. I think the fact that the interface just gets the shit out of dodge is one of its great advantages.

It's also pretty clear that they've borrowed many cues from windows media center and the new playstation interface...this obviously works well on consoles (those two are designed to be piloted from a remote control with nothing but a d-bad, a menu button, and an enter button), but it's also one of the most popular interfaces for touch surfaces, and its very similar to all the traditional dot-list-like menues that are standard fare for the utility menues of games. It's very common, and it's generally not bad if the lists don't get to be more than 7 points. Here, some of the lists _are_ more than 7 points, so they're not good, but most are fine.

The starsign deal is silly, and the "remote controll'able" paradigm breaks down on that one, so that's clearly valuing form over _the established paradigm of the interface_, which is nearly always a mistake.

But the rest...I mostly like it. There's a split menu-submenu type thing going on before we get a pane-item breakup, and I would've prefered top level panes rather than the menu-submenu..., and I may well have preferred thumbnails ahead of columns of text if I could see the two side by side...but like I explained, if the general paradigm is, this must be useable with a dpad+2 buttons, then those suggestions are invalidated right there.

Is that a bad paradigm? Well, even if you were designing straight for the PC, they _still_ may have followed it if they wanted to make sure gamepads were supported...and generally, it isn't, it just isn't mouse-only optimized.

So yeah, a big mistake that could've definitely been avoided, and several minor ones that were probably unavoidable.

Magicka>Skyrim imo.

The interface during fights...well, in Magicka, the interface is an intrinsic part of the game, and its been designed to make optimal use of that fact. In skyrim its a slave to the game, and the various hotkey combinations have arisen dynamically, and aren't particularly fun during misfires...so yeah, Magickas is more fun...or had more planning put in, so it's better...or whatever the greater than signifies, it's probably(?) true.

Not really the point I was making...the point is, you'll be doing keyboard gymnastics to get what you want, combining 8 keys to get the right weapon or spell combo up.

[AEmer]

I think Dragon is being pessimistic about Skyrim.

To those of you who are on the fence, let me tell you what life in Skyrim is like.

I'm level 23 btw, but I have focused a lot on levelling the crafting(non combat) skills...I've spent my perks on smithing (which is awesome), on heavy armor, archery and enchantment, but I also mess around with alchemy. Generally, the perks you can from levelling a skill are enough to feed the skill full of perks, but Archery and enchantment both gobble up a lot of perk points, so they're not quite self sustaining, and neither is alchemy (which I really want to get better with, but can't afford).

I'm playing a nord, I have an epic ebony bow (because I smithed it, improved it with a grindstone, and enchanted it with a human soul...), and I run around in the biggest armor I can make...though I really need to enchant it with some elemental magic resist.

So here's a loose chronology of my Adventures as Tryndamere the Smith:

I arrived in skyrim as a prisoner, but was soon set free. A fellow from the empire helped me out, because a dragon attacked, and it seemed only a few people survived.

So I was out in the wilderness, on my own. First thing I did as I was making my way towards Riverwood, a small dwelling the imperial had marked on my map, was to hunt several deer, a fox, and a rabbit...I didn't quite have hunting down, so I wasted all my arrows and ended up finishing the job with a greatsword in all cases. How did I run out of arrows, and get some again? because I recovered some of them after I'd gotten my pelts and my meat. Especially two of the deer were a problem, since they lead me on a marry chase through the town I had just escaped...fortunately the dragon was gone.

So at the dwelling, called riverwood, I was introduced to smithing by a man the imperial I had escaped with introduced me to. The smith of the town wanted me to go tell the jarl of the area of the troubles with the Dragon. He also gave me a lot of supplies. The Imperial suggested I go join the imperial legion. The towns merchant was missing a golden bear claw, so he wanted me to go recover that. He also suggested I could go to the Mages College if I wanted to study magic. Finally, the towns woodmill owner thought I should chop some wood and earn some dough for a hard days labor. Yeah, no thanks.

I decided to track down the golden claw; how hard could that be? I set off westwards, as the merchants sister described the path to the villains hideout. Along the way, I shot some game. I came upon some bandits, a patrol of 4 people...I dispatched one with my bow, then pulled out my sword and killed two of them, then hunted down the last one.

I came upon a hut, with an old woman living in solitude. I thought she looked like she was hiding something, so as she was tending her leaks, I snuck into her house. I found nothing out of the ordinary tilll...I found a trap door. I picked its lock, and lo and behold, there was an arcane enchanter, and a letter she had penned to a girl she wanted to tutor...she wanted to start a witches coven. I went up to confront her about what her intensions was, but she yelled that noone could know her secret and attacked, so I killed her. Then I stole her belongings.

I journeyed forth, up a steep mountain pass. So far the journey had taken me along a vale with a central river, but as the elevation grew, the vegetation decreased. At an old watchtower, three more bandits tried to jump me, but I quickly dispatched them and took their stuff...by now, I was overburdened with loot, but I found a location I could mark on the map, fast travelled back to riverwood, sold a lot of stuff, fast travelled out again. As I entered the villains hideout, I overheard two of them talking of their leader, who had gone on ahead. How there was some secret to the golden bear claw. I flew forward and killed them. Fortunately, the Skeeters (giant rats) had made short work of some of them.

The rest of the temple was full of traps, critters, and a giant spider who had ensnared the bandit leader. I freed him, and killed him when he tried to run, then got the bear claw, unlocked the secret of the temple with it, and...apparently learned a dragonword.

That's the first quest, and the first dungeon, I did.

Here's a summary of the rest of the dungeons:

-I came upon the lair of a wizard breeding magical spiders. A fellow adventurer warned me of it, but I snuck in and killed him anyway.

-I raided a lair of chitinous insects and pale, hairless mole-people for a steel battle axe heirloom, on contract for some mercernaries. Very creepy, I won't ever be doing a quest in that environment again. Spiders I can abide, but centipedes and weird bug-tunnels and houses that look like they're made from giant bettles? brr.

-I've journeyed to High Hrothgar, throat of the world, and the seat of the greybeards, masters of the voice. 7000 steps up that mountain, with plenty of icewraiths, and a snow troll, at the upper altitudes.

-I've studied as a mage, and my first teacher took me to an excavation of an old town, looking for artifacts, as he lectured about its significance to me and my fellow students.

-I've fought a cult of necromancers trying to keep alive their master, inside a corrupted version of azuras star. Their dwelling was blasted to ruins and had sunken beneath the surface of a lake, so most of the rooms inside were flooded.

-I've joined a mercernary company, and my initiation quest was to seek out and cleanse an area of a particular kind of rebels, trying to topple the Jarl of the reach. Turns out they were into human sacrifice, and I found evidence of their battleplans in their camp and dwelling.

-I've saved a persecuted redguard from her redguard assasins from high rock, very difficult fight, 10 redguard with scimitars rushed me near the end...but their leader did try to convince me to help them instead.

-I've discovered someone I was working with was a werewolf, and killed a lot of members of a secret society of werewolf hunters...and been offered a taste of the beast myself.

-I've cleaned out a silver mine and had some fine mining ore from that.

-I've messed up 4 dragons. Each time I had to keep running till I found the right terrain, then I could slowly kill it
while it couldn't get to me. The last one killed my horse.

The only dungeons which have shared tilesets and enemies (beyond the normal "stone") have been the one where I discovered the werewolf, and the first dungeon...the rest have been distinct, had visual differences, and unique features. The reason those two dungeons were similar, of course, is because they're both part of the same old nord religion, and are therefore filled with dragonheads, more or less well done, and undead guardians.

In the mean time, I've journeyed accross the rocky reach, and the flatlands of whiterun, and the snowcovered winterhold provinces...and I've been to solitude, a massive city on a spectacular rock, and the capital of skyrim. Each provincial hold looks significantly different from the last.

Look, I'm not disputing that Dragon had a bad time playing the game. If he says he had a bad time, he had a bad time.

But for what it's worth, I believe this game is much, much better than morrowind. Much more exploration, and far more unique locations, and more tilesets. Much better skill system, much fewer grievances. Things are simpler, and you can get right down to exploration and adventure...and oh the sights you'll see, so many unique, weird things to discover.

[Jetsetlemming]

The thing that makes me want to play Skyrim, from what I've read, is that you can go off exploring/adventuring without having to follow the story line.

You could do this since the beginning. In contrary to this though in Skyrim or Oblivion it's very static and narrow so you can't really explore/adventure as you could in the old games.

Did you play past the intro level with the dragon? Because that's the only excuse I could possibly think of for this incredibly wrong characterization of Skyrim. You apparently didn't play past the dungeon intro of Oblivion, either.

[bobby 55]

@ AEmer: Wow. That's what I was hoping the game would be like. Tryndamere eh? That's an awesome and appropriate name (for the Skyrim world) in my opinion.