People, I beg you, don't ruin this thread by going back to that OLD (Yeah, that one) topic, let's stick to the demo and just comment about it.
Thank you.

So I managed to get me this mag PC GAMER UK and to my surprise new pics along with a detailed demo

Most pics are from the Gameplay Trailer ... some are new

Pic 1: There's 2 of those skeleton/ghoulish warrior things, one looks skinny and the other has a HUGE battleaxe and he looks stronger and he has a little egyptian emperor 'stache, It's taken from a 1st person perspective, you character is hold a sword covered in blood. In the background there are 2 corpses in what looks like a wall tomb, like the ones from the churches in oblivion which had a middle circle shape.

Pic 2: The nord warrior we've all seen before, in a tight spot in a cave where a river stream runs, taken from a 3rd person perspective and he is reaching for his sword in his back with his right hand, you can see there's a lot of "muscle showing" involved, and there's one of the skeleton warriors ahead with glowing blue eyes

Pic 3: Looks like the forest shown in the trailer, the one with the deer in it and the character sneaking up on it, this one shows more light and a little river in the middle

Pic 4: Looks like a wooden house in the edge of a little cliff, triangular shaped roof with hay on it, big mountain in the background


Demo:

The demo starts with Todd playing a little after the beggining, on a wilderness path bracketed by fir trees and skirted by a winding river, Dark mountains loom in the distance.
Mountains are steep, you cant pull the Oblivion stunt of casting Paralyse on the yourself at the top, sliding all the way down and actually survive.
Flower picking is back.
Todd encounters an enemy bandit, a battle ensues, the use of shields of both characters is constant. The combat is described as "Brutal"
Blood Splatters when a blow lands, battle is finished by a finishing move, the enemy gets the sword straight to the chest.

Down the path Todd arrives to Riverwood, a logging village, At the mill a man named Nod is loading logs onto a machine that saws them in half.
"The aim is that every NPC should be doing something when you find them, not just sleeping or pvssyring mindlessly in the street, and everything you see them do, you can do to, If you want, you could join Nod at the mill."

A few moments later, we pass a woman named Singrid, sweeping her porch. *If we can do everything the NPCs do ... is sweeping confirmed?*

"The counter to finding out how much wood a woodchuck would chuck, is to destroy the town's industry" Todd explains that doing so, will impact the local economy
They're working out the extent of the consequences, currently no wood in Riverwood means they can't sell arrows.

Todd enters a local shop and finds Lucan Valerius arguing with his sister Camilla. The author describes the game's conversation as promising and confirms there are more voice actors this time around.

"At the end of the day, it's time and money and we're spending more time and more money [on voice acting]" -Todd

Lucan explains that thieves have taken the golden claw, a family heirloom, Todd agrees to help and Camilla volunteers to show him to the edge of town and point him in the right direction.

This is one of the situations when Skyrim's new radiant story system could have an impact, If Lucan is killed at any point, the sister becomes the quest giver.

Todd climbs until he comes to a view of the Throat of the World, home of the Greybeards

Todd "I think some people, when they go to explore the world, want to be surprised more, Skyrim has a much more unique sense of culture to it that we did in Oblivion. Morrowind, we wanted to feel alien, like a stranger in a strange land. Whereas this we want to feel familiar, but it does have it's own unique culture".

Moving still higher up the mountain, it starts to snow, and the mountain rocks dynamically cover in white.
Todd uses Detect Life to spot 2 guards standing in the fog outside a stone tower, casts Fury to make one kill the other and then ends the fight with an arrow.

At the summit, we find a ruined Nordic temple. There are fallen pillars and a few arches intact, atop which sits what looks like an enourmous dragon statue, It's not ... It's a dragon.

It takes off, spews fire into the air and thumps back down to the ground.

Todd explains that to a dragon "when they breathe fire, that's talk, combat is a debate to dragons"

The dragon sets him on fire, Todd makes a run inside a cave, there are dead bodies all over the temple floor, and in the corner some ne'er-do-wells banter. One of their co-conspiratos, Arvel, has run ahead with the golden claw.

Crouching in the dark Todd fires and arrow into a thief's head, the thief's friend draws her sword. "I know i heard something" Sneak attack bonus x2, she runs at the shadows and gets her own arrow to the face.

There are a lot of familiar stone tunnels in the dungeon ahead, but many of the larger rooms have beautiful details, such as underground waterfalls and dramatic lighting.

The game has 130-odd dungeons, they're built from the same chunks, but there are 9 level designers working on making them feel distinct

The dungeon spirals deeper into the mountain, enemy skeletons appear, called Draugr, and they're angry at you.

Todd uses magic combat, he casts a Circle of Protection in his left hand, sending them running scared so he can smack them in the back with fireballs in his right.
In other areas he casts Frost Rune on the ground to slow attacks and cuts lamp from the ceiling to spread fire.

The caves are covered in cobwebs, Todd hacks his way through them. A giant frostbite spider bursts out, Todd kills it and finds Arvel the Swift tied up in the webs.

He cant give you the claw until you cut him down, Todd cuts him down, Arvel starts to run, Zooming with his bow, Todd sticks an arrow to his back and loots the Golden claw

At the end of the dungeon is a door with a central lock and a series of rotatable rings around it, each showng an image of an animal, only the right combination opens the door

Todd brings up the inventory system. he can zoom in and rotate items, doing so with the Claw, reveals the correct order of the animals on its palm: Owl, Hawk, Bear.

The door opens and Todd ascends to a cave. As he aproaches the far wall, chanting rises in the distance
"Dovahkiin! "Dovahkiin!"

He finds a Word Wall, and the words it bears are Words of Power, one of those words glows yellow and reading it unlocks a new Dragonshout that slows time ... It's called Slow Time.

Todd activates it and everything in the cave turns a brilliant white, dust particles floating in the air. When time resumes an angry, floating Dragon Priest appears and summons a Frost Atronach, a curved headed, no faced upright lobster creature with an electric blue shell, Todd smashes at both of them with fire and swords until they're dead.

He shows another known Dragonshout, Unrelenting Force which staggers people at its most basic level and sends people flying at its strongest

"The nice thing with dragons in this is that we can move around them, so we can have the main story hit you wherever you are. And learning the shouts and doing all that really ties into the main quest. In Oblivion and Fallout there isnt really a gameplay power reason to do the main quest, but with the shouts You're like 'Well those are fun, Im going to become more of a badass, I'm going to do this questline'".

Like all good dungeons, there's a much shorter exit from the main hall than going through, so it's only moments before he's back on the mountainside.

The dragon is still here, and the ground shakes as it flies over head. Todd sends some fireballs its way, which miss, and the dragon lands in front of him and again starts setting him on fire.

Todd slows time and bashes the dragon with his mace

The dragon dies and his body bursts in flame and Todd consumes its soul.

END DEMO

After the demo Todd confirms several things about the game

They're aiming to have mod tools out at launch
There are dungeons inside glaciers
Athletics and Acrobatics are gone
There are kids, but you cant kill them
Horses are not a definite inclusion
Levitation is not included
The ability to buy houses will return
At least 5 full cities.

"And what we've seen so far is just a tiny fragment of the game"


Everything that has been said simply confirms the same thing: I can't wait to live in Skyrim.
And that's about it, ENJOY!

No Levitation confirmed???

This is the first mention of the 'Circle of Protection' spell I have seen in the numerous articles written about that demo. Same with the chanting as well. I wonder why so many other people did not mention those things...

Seems so... although in my opinion Dragon Shouts are going to make up for it... slow motion? Force Push? Bring it on! And those are (I think?) the only two confirmed shouts while there's going to be alot more.

Yeah, no levitation confirmed

I'll quote on that: "We found any cool level design idea can be ruined with 'Yeah, I levitate'".

huh?


Old news are so exiting.

Still my favorite part. I sure hope this will allow us stealth people to turn the lights out as well.

Ah well...

sweet thanks for the info, im going to assume the difficulty was lowered for the demo becasue killing a dragon with a few bashes from a mace seems strange

Well it depends in my opinion... I'd expect a high level character with a decent weapon to kill a dragon quicker than low level characters. That is, if the dragons don't level up with you (please not!). Also, didn't Todd already confim he's using a boosted character for the demo? Would be odd if he got killed while giving the demonstration ofcourse.

I believe Todd said he was of a higher level than the player would usually be in this dungeon for the sake of demontration all three play styles. Not sure in which of the demo write up articles I read this in though.

Thanks for posting it again :goodjob:


These little things make me so excited about this game. I wonder what happens to the two halves, do they disappear after a while, like in other games, or do they pile until someone picks them up and stores them somewhere?

Yeah, I think he confirmed he was using a boosted character, now I hope he makes this clear before he plays, or people will start flaming over "how easy it looks"

Thanks very much for the post!

This talk of levitation is reminding me how easy it was to glide through dungeons in morrowind and hack at people from above. :biggrin:

But yeah, very cool information. These runes sound fun. I hope there are multiple varieties/strengths. So excited!

Levitation is def out, read that in article yesterday, guess it could change though

hey man, upload the demo pls

There's no demo video yet, this was taken straight from the mag.

yeah he said his character was tanked, and the dragon nerfed, so it was an easy kill for the demo, said in the actual game the dragons will take everything you got to take em out

ohh okay, all good

We can't levitate items like in oblivion?

I really liked to pick things up and mess around with it. Like when raiding a dungeon and you see a table with stuff on it. I pick up one item and i start sweeping with it over the table to clean it up and to make a mess

thats not levitation thats telekinesis and I am sure that will be in game

I'm pretty sure you can still do this. It wasn't "levitating" the objects. You were supposedly moving them with your hands.

Thank God! I really liked how this demo looked until I got to the end which was like "Oh, heres a fierce dragon. I use a power, hit it with my weapon and he's out in less than a minute". Good thing this was forced (I was expecting it anyway).


Thanks for the post! Really cool information

And I won't mind dragons leveling up with you. I liked that thing about Oblivion and it makes sense to me that dragons have to be fearsome enemies regardless of your level.

Cool thanks! Only thing that is a bit strange in my opinion is "when they breathe fire, that's talk, combat is a debate to dragons". What's that supposed to mean? I hoped we could actually talk with dragons...