Darn.

I bet you my left arm that a dragon attacks just as you are about to be executed.

Either that or a rival faction to whoever is executing you attacks. (seeing as how there is a civil war going on)

I don't see why modders should have to do all the work. Doesn't the developers use high-res textures when working on the game, and then downscale them?
Also, I don't know if modders can add DX11 support for the PC version.

And this modding will take precious time. :sadvaultboy:

Ah, well... :mellow:

This info pretty much made me reconsider buying the game - pre ordering a collector edition is definitely out. I may pick the game up after some kind of GOTY edition came up and prices on it dropped, but I don't think I want an low fantasy, action orientated key bashing with the same crappy physics again, and 20 hours main quest... Gee most mods have 20+ hour main quest by now, if they can't stretch saving the whole world for at leas 40 they writers are simply incompetent. And no, I don't care how may of "side quests" that mostly consist of the same old bring-escort-talkto routine they include - the writer that is incapable of making a divers and interesting main story line that keeps up for a significantly duration of time will run out on side quest ideas in half an hour tops.
Low fantasy? Sorry but Oblivion was practically a pseudo historical simulator already, without the "have to know actual history" part, why would I wan anything that is even lower? I mean if you want low fantasy the Witcher clearly does it better, and with actual substance to the plot, anything Bethesda can come up with woun't measure up. A stupidly heroic "me saving the world" stuff never goes well with anything but fantasy world. Why? Because if the world is real the "hero" must be as well, do you recall hearing about anyone saving the world form an epic treat recently? The only once I heard about are locked up in a loony bin. I doubt anyone older than 13 years old will be able to treat a story like that seriously in realistic setting.
And if I want active blocking I'll go play Assassins Creed, again nothing Bethesda would do will be half as good. When RPG game starts to really on player skill instead of character skill it stops being an RPG and turns in to a fighting game, and that means it has to compare to the other fighting games that do ti well, which Bethesdas stuff never does.
Skyrim was not my first pick of a setting, but I could have handled a bit of snow for a very good game, but by the sound if it they are making Oblivion 2.0 with some gimmicks added in. I guess Bethesdas games are just not for me anymore - I dearly loved Morrowind, but with every game they go further and further from the things I loved about it...
Well hopefully someone will make a descent fantasy game line in an open world eventually, most likely not Bethesda, but who cares as long as we get it

"There is no level cap. You will nevertheless not be able to choose all perks with one character."

Well, remains to be seen how good that will work out.

"Technically speaking, Skyrim is an evolution within The Elder Scrolls, and not a revolution (but everything looks fabulous). The magic of the world that Bethesda has created is nevertheless unequivocally present."

Of course it is not - no new console is out, and they don't care how much PC tech have advanced.

"All weapons have different properties, which you can take advantage of by choosing the right perks. Maces ignore a percentage of armor, and axes have bleed damage over time.

Not a good alternative to proper weapon skills. Just a primitive version of it.

"You can use fast travel to revisit places you have visited earlier."

Gee... Joy... A hope around the map thing with no immersion is back. I bet there is no alternative to it either.

"Skyrim is approximately as big as Oblivion."

So claustrophobic again. And since mountain now will take a hell of a lot of space will mostly likely feel even smaller.

"Five big cities and more than 130 dungeons."

Morrowind shipped with 4 large cities and 24 smaller once and 6 forts to begin with. They really should stop bragging about taking a step back. Since the cities are "open" now they are although taking up map space... Claustrophobic again, even more so.

"Low-Fantasy" (Meaning the game does not look as vibrant, vivid and weird as Morrowind did, more like Oblivion) -> "Oblivion was for sure not over-the-top in terms of its style, but Skyrim should be considered low fantasy even more than its predecessor. Much of the locations look realistic, and could easily exist in our own world."

If I want realistic I go and buy a plain ticket, not a game, no game will ever be more realistic than a visit to Scandinavia.

"The overarching narrative of the Dragons is less prominent than the Oblivion Gates were in Oblivion, which does not give you the feeling that you are doing 'useless' quests when you lay aside the Main Quest."

Well they corrected an obvious mistake, good for them.

"Dragons are not rare."

Now the world will really feel like Elder Scrolls - with a dragoon on every corner... One for breakfast one for dinner and one as a boss fight.

"Dungeons will be locked at their level once you have been there."

So running around on lvl 1 to 5 and poking my head in to every door than living instantly will intimately level scale the game to lvl 5... Fantastic. Why level anyway if the game will cuter the content to you at nay lvl?

"Even in third person, animations look really good. There has been a lot of progress since Oblivion."

Not particularly hard, even a falling brick looks better aminated than Oblivion did.

"You can read in-game books in 3-D."

Ho, wow, a gimmick... Me happy.

"Every item has a 3D-preview in the Flash based inventory, which you can twist, turn, rotate, etc. Sometimes you will solve puzzles by anolyzing these 3D-previews. Not only armor and weapons can be explored in great detail, also small rings and herbs can be investigated from all possible angles. Every single item in the game can be previewed in the inventory screen." "

Another gimmick, double happy. Really compensates for the rest.

"The Dark Brotherhood is back."

So nothing imaginative or native about the assassins guild, at last Morag Tong had a sense of it's provinces culture in it, DB is simply a generic immoral assassin guild.

"Active blocking makes melee more fun to play."

Uhu... Kay basing, joy!

"More traps and puzzles."

Again "more" is not hard, there was close to non in Oblivion.

"Main Story is approximately 20 hours. Hundreds of hours for other quests."

Not a dissent length for a serious RPG - main quest is supposed to make you see the world and everything you may have missed otherwise, not be something as unimportant as a guild quest lines.

"Every dragon you kill will make you stronger. A piece of his soul will be transferred to yours."

Great like we did not get overpowered in 30 lvls flat before. With dragons on every corner that will be fun.


"We are working at pop-up issues, and we want to make sure that the graphics of the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 are alike. All three will look just as good, aside from the higher resolution and the anti-aliasing of the PC of course."

The three look as good? Translates it will look substandard on PC, consoles are years old by now.

"It is not yet possible to combine forms of magic. It is difficult. Frost magic makes an enemy move slower, and fire does damage over time, and the fire remains on the ground for additional damage. If we would allow the player to use fire magic in one hand, and frost magic in the other, it becomes much more complex. Maybe we will implement this though, but for the time being, 'No'.

Translates as - we thought about key basing for the fighters, but who needs mages in a "low fantasy" game anyway? In Oblivion there where mods that did spell combos. Mods. In Oblivion. But obviously to complex for Bethesda.

"Someone modded Oblivion by changing the physics of shooting an arrow. It made you shoot slower and you almost had to remain stationary to shoot, which increased the arrow's impact. We liked this mod so much, that we implemented it in Skyrim by default."

So doing this is easier than spell combos. I see.

P.S. And of course there is almost a year to release, it may be a stupid hope but I woun't give up on checking the info, who knows maybe something will rekindle my desire to actually give it a go... Things change.

All of the screenshots were the same as the Game Informer article. Only the cover was different. It is linked in this thread somewhere.

You would think. And no, modders can't add DX11 support, that was up to Bethesda.


Graphical Features including DX10/11 support have been added in patches in multiple games in the past. Lets hope Bethesda cares enough to throw us a bone. Somehow doubt it though.

Active blocking is in! Fighting was great fun in modded Oblivion. I just love it. :goodjob:

Which is why it's in scare quotes. Thing is it feels like you just magically transported over there. Especially since spells like Feather don't wear off during the journey.

Thanks!

Just reading the summary, I have to ask... why oh why does Bethesda go to Game Informer? Do they pay really well or something? I have to get the summary from a Dutch magazine to get any interesting information?

I like that the main quest is less obtrusive.
I like the 3D preview. I hated Oblivion's inventory.
I like the words "hundreds of hours".
Why should the return of the Dark Brotherhood be important? The only words I want to hear about guilds is "more" and "better".
The dungeon level-locking thing sounds identical to Fallout 3.
I like that they mention books. Hopefully they'll add many more this time...hopefully a lot more.
The idea of solving puzzles with the 3D preview has a lot of potential for depth. It also has a lot of potential to be a dumbed-down way to solve puzzles. We'll see.

Thanks very much @Goalie8 for taking the time to translate and share all this info with us.

It's as if we were presented with two new updates today. (And yours had a few more juicy details.)

The GI magazine says about books and items in 3D and such. The only thing it doesn't say is the Dark Brotherhood, and the puzzles. Everything else is in the magazine.

Would have liked a revolutionary engine a la RAGE or Cryengine 3 that does not look absolutely awful on PC compared to pretty much any other PC game like all the Gamebryo games after Morrowind and maybe Obliv did.

Hearing that it will be low fantasy has to be one of my favourite bits of news from this article. I really like the idea of a pseudo-historical Conan-type world.

Oh Oblivion was gorgeous too, but that didn't prevent it of looking repetitive and boring in graphics after playing a few hours.



How many hours of quests did they say Oblivion had? If they increased it in skyrim, that's cool.

Most of it seems good. Too bad it seems they're going for the massive amount of pointless dungeons again. Less is more, in this case. Oblivion's dungeons didn't feel special at all because they were literally EVERYWHERE. It also seems like the game will have heavy level scaling. The rest sounded good but man, the biggest complaint about Oblivion, level scaling, and they didn't axe the idea.

ya its got me worried to. :sadvaultboy:

Oblivion's dungeons didn't feel special because they all looked exactly the same. If you've seen one Alyied ruin you've practically seen them all. We don't know if Skyrim will be like that, but it better not be. If each dungeon is a bit unique and worth exploring, then 130 dungeons will be great.

The more dungeons there are, the less likely that will be. Level scaling + too many dungeons = bad. Now all we need for them to do is bring back the Oblivion compass that shows you all the dungeons (that are all placed just in the middle of the fields for no reason) and the game will be almost unplayable.

i would call it mid fantasy. it is set in a realistic environment and feels real to the player, but with some seriously unreal things like the undead and dragons and magic and.....etc.. the list goes on, but i would say its in the presentation, thats what determines how real or fantastical it feels.

great, inflicting frost damage to your enemy makes them move slower, changes the color of their skin too

EVERYTHING looks Amazing!!! I can't wait for more info!

Except for this one fact. "Main Story is approximately 20 hours. Hundreds of hours for other quests." -- Me = "FUUUUUUUU!!!!"
Main quest! Y U NO BE LONGER???

It took me about 20 hours to play through Deus Ex. Most modern games take no more than perhaps eight hours.

Y U NO BE THANKFUL?

Hi folks, I'm a heavy lurker here and I rarely post, but on account of low sleep levels and rising cranky factor I gotta say something. Not that I'm taking this particular poster to task - but a lot of people seem to be taking an unusually harsh angle towards the 'Low Fantasy' comment. Here's my two cents : I don't think Todd was using that term in a strict, literary sense. I think he was using it in a very broad manner to drive home the point that the game will be dark. Gritty, bloody, stylisticallyrealistic, not strictly. Like what The Dark Knight is to Batman. He's not gonna slag off his own critically and commercially successful prequel ( Oblivion ) ; yet the comment seems to suggest that he acknowledges TESIV had a strange, candy-coated sheen and vibe. Whatever distinctions Wikipedia draws between High and Low Fantasy, I think this description - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/LowFantasy - paints a better picture ( notwithstanding the entry about 'Plot Scope' ) Not all art conforms purely to guidelines delineated by a genre - a genre is created out of art, not before it. Skyrim may have deities and dragons. But the overwhelming - and immediate - sense I get is that they are leaning towards showing us a dark, harsh land, dominated by mountains and cold, battered by the elements and political unrest, and drawing grim inspiration from the essentially fatalistic Mythical Norse/Scandinavian worldview. There may not be giant, colourful mushrooms or a Ministry of Truth, but tonally speaking it certainly sounds a heck of a lot more like a previous entry in this series than the last.

Anyway thanks ! : )