How will the crime system work.

What kind of NPC alert system is in place for crime and consequences?

Will each city/town have it`s own distinct militia types?

Will guards have any kind of search pattern that allows you to evade them, say, by running through buildings etc in a town? i.e no psychic homing guards ala previous TES games.

How "quickly" will I be able to switch weapons? The purpose of shooting with my arrow, or setting of spells till they are closer to switch to a sword and board.

Will spell making make a return?
If so how will it work?

What creatures are these in the pics below, are they the same?
What is the armour in pic 2, and will we beable to get it in game?

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8613775/Skyrim/Secret%20Thumbs/thumb2_720.jpg

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8613775/Skyrim/Secret%20Thumbs/thumb1_720p.jpg

Will NPCs also be able to preform finishing moves against each other? Say if I saw a guard fighting a wolf or a bandit, would he also be able to gruesomely end their lives in the style I could?

What DX11 features will you be using, if any?

Will you be able to have animals as companions? It could be modded, but I'd love a wolf-friend properly done by bethesda.

Will there be crossbows?

Are the trees dynamic, so say if you cut it down, it falls down properly.

Have there been any changes to the alchemy system?

How many NPC's will there be, estimated?

How many NPC's are in each main city?

All of my questions will be technical because I know plenty about the game play and setting. I'll just keep editing them into this post as I think of them.

1) Will the new audio compression be a common format and if not will you provide us with a conversion program so we can easily put our own music in the game?

2) Has the new animation engine allowed you to remove the hard coded limit on the number of animations?

3) Is the racial body type diversity achieved through multiple body meshes or mesh morphing?

Hey Todd,
How does crime and punishment work in Skyrim? You mentioned that there will be different types of jails in this game and I'm intrigued. Obviously I'm interested to hear how your team has solved the complaints that guards in Oblivion were psychic and knew about crimes instantly, but I'm also interested to hear if you have employed an escape game-play mechanic. Some recent games have created systems in which you could outrun or outmaneuver the law officers and thereby escape arrest by other means than just paying a fine, (Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto 4 come to mind) and it would be cool to see something like that incorporated into the game.

Thanks,
-Jared

Will there be a join-able or more non-hostile intractable necromancer group in Skyrim? And how will necromancy differ this time around, is it more than a few spells, or the same as in oblivion where all necromancers were hostile?

[EDIT]

Will their be werewolves and/or vampires in skyrim?

If there are please look at my next questions please!

Will there be any major drawbacks concerning becoming one of them?
Will they be very rare and seldom seen, or very common enemies in skyrim?
What will their interactions with vampires be like?
Are there any groups in skyrim dedicated to hunting them down? if yes what interactions can the pc take with this group?
Is the Volkihar clan In game and if yes what powers do they posess?
Are there different clans of vampires like in morrowind that have different powers and abilities?
Will there be vampire werewolf hybrids?

Thank you for your time!

P.S. what about Leafy the dragon? will he make an appearance in game? I love that little guy!

1) How important will the events of the Infernal City and its sequel be to the plot of Skyrim? Are they more for backstory, or do they have a direct influence on the game?

2) Part of the appeal of TES, for me, has always been the number of books available. Can you give us an estimate of how many new books will be in the game, and a hint at which old ones will be coming back?

3) The Radiant Story serves to make each playthrough a little different by mixing up locations and other plot elements, but are there any big, not randomized, differences possible between playthroughs?

4) Besides Scandinavia, what real world (or fictional) references did you look at for Skryim?

5) Any particular reason for setting the game 200 years after Oblivion?

Is the city of Markarth the same as Markarth Side or Karthwasten?

Which are the 18 skills?

How important will the skills actually be? Although I really like the idea of perk system, from what I've heard I'm a bit concerned that improving skills might not be very important for the skills' own practical use, but serves chiefly to unlock higher perks.

How does unarmed (hand-to-hand) combat work? Will there be more or different moves? Holds? Kicks? How about the possibility to equip stuff like brass knuckles and similar h2h helpers?

Are all perks tied to skills or are there also "general" perks? Must custom perks made by modders be tied to specific skills, or can they be "general"?

Will there be any destructible terrain or destructible man-made objects?

Can you manipulate larger objects, such as furniture, or doors that don't lead to different cells? (I would love to be able to just "peep" through doorways by using grab instead of having to open them fully.)

Will ragdoll physics be more potent in mid-combat? (In Oblivion it seemed like the ragdoll physics only kicked in with the killing blow, using stock animations for everything else)

What are the differences between the races? I guess they'll have different skill bonuses, but will they also start with different perks or have different "hard-coded" attributes, such as different running speeds or maximum encumbrance, etc.?

Will there be varying day lengths depending on the time of year? (Even if the actual weather and seasons are not affected by what month it is, I always found it a bit annoying that the sun rises and sets at the exact same time every day).

Will there be real-time lockpicking, pickpocketing, container or inventory management, or time-compressed (animated!) waiting and fast travel (or whatever travel system is used)?

Will there be locational damage? Different effects whether you hit arms, legs, torso, head, etc.

What is the overall political situation of the game world? Is the empire still running things?

Will any of the following appear: (You can just answer yes or no to the whole list to avoid spoiling too much, or give a number like playing Mastermind)
Calaxes, Jagar Tharn's child, Fal Droon, Shalidor, Vuhon, Vehkships, Thalmor, psijics, joysnow, inverse tigers

Are there unique items to be found in the world outside of quests that are not level scaled? This was one of the most important, great features from Morrowind that never made it to Oblivion.

How will player houses work this time around? Will it be more like Morrowind where I can go off and find the one I like and claim it? Or will they limited to purchasable houses like Oblivion?

Also how will the customization work with player homes? Will there be a better grab system to set things up? Will there be themes like Fallout? Will there be proper armour displays so my awesome armours I work so tirelessly to collect won't have to sit in a chest in the corner of my basemant?

Regarding the economic system: Have you found the sweet spot yet?

Greetings Team Bethesda,


Three questions, If I may:


1) Will Skyrim feature effects on the environment from fire/frost/lightning magics? Maybe a bit of environmental destruction, like trees and such?

2) Will the player choices of skills/ perks change the way NPC's view the player with radiant story? Such as an assasin, thief or wizard being regarded as such by townsfolk?

3) There has been some buzz in the gaming community that Skyrim console players may get to see some of the user-mods from the PC community if Bethesda approves. Any comment?


Thanks, and looking forward to hearing more at E3!

How have you approached armour in skyrim? :celebrate:

Will the engine be able to handle, say 15-20 NPCs on screen at once without slowing down to a crawl like the old Gamebryo engine did?

Will there be unique and powerful items in the game that are not a part of quests and are not level scaled? This is something sorely missed from Morrowind for many.

Will there be 85 spells or 85 spell effects?

Will there be a limited edition?
If yes what would come with it?

Will hand to hand combat return in Skyrim and if so how will it be similar/different compared to hand to hand combat in Oblivion?

How big are the 5 "massive" cities in comparison to the Imperial City in Oblivion?

Hi, I'd like to know how it is with towns and cities. Todd said

“There are 5, what we call, big cities, and they’re all really, really unique. There’s a couple of shots of them. Those 5 are really unique. Skyrim is broken into 9 holds – a hold is like a county and each county is governed by a Jarl, who’s like a King of that county. 5 of those holds are kind of bigger – they have big cities – while the other 4 have smaller, what we would call, like a town. A little bigger than but like that. So towns, we have 8 or 9 of those.”

and it confused me. He said 9 holds, 5 cities, 4 towns, and 8-9 towns? So this could mean [5 cities, 4 "head of hold towns" and 8-9 other towns], [5 cities, 4 "head of hold towns" and "8-9 towns in total, not counting the cities"] or [5 cities, 4 "head of hold towns" and "8-9 settlements in total including cities and towns"]. So which is it? I'm confused. Or are perhaps these all wrong (There have been several conflicting reports)?

Hope that's not too long a question! If it is, I would just like to ask "How settlements in the game are there besides the 5 major cities?".

Thankyou.

In an interview with http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim/b/xbox360/archive/2011/01/28/skyrim-menu-system-overhaul.aspx, Todd Howard said that they had taken inspiration from Apple in designing Skyrim's new menu system:

I found this quite ironic as Skyrim will not be available on Apple's Mac OS X - or at least, it hasn't yet been announced that it will.

My question(s), then, would be: have you considered porting Skyrim to OS X? It has only been announced that Skyrim will be available on XBox 360, PS3 and (ostensibly) Windows based PCs. Can we expect an announcement of a Mac version somewhere down the line? Or will I have to buy the PC version?