http://www.gameswelt.de/videos/videoarticles/25709-The_Elder_Scrolls_V_Skyrim_-_Video_Interview_mit_Todd_Howard.html Thank you Bavmorda's Muffin.

"We wanna pay of on all those gameplay styles. Guilds is where we do that, but they are different than we've done before, but we still wanna pay of on people who wanna, you know, perform those roles." Todd.

Edit: To make it clear. This is only what I hope this will mean.

Because of Dragon shouts and a more focused way of playing the different classes, (perks in skill trees) I think it will be possible to go pure class this time.

The way I see it;

Pure mage = Magic. No armor.
Pure thief = Bow and short blade.
Pure warrior = Weapon and sheild.

(Being able to play Skyrim as a thief, I hope is equally possible as in the Thief series. It may be that I'm eager to play Thi4f.)

I'm sorry for any misspellings.

I'm super psyched. How about you?

Umm in Oblivion I played as pure class character's all the time. Its nothing new that we'll be able to do that.
Though I'm reallyr eally really looking forword to information on what guilds we'll be able to join. I loved the politics that dominated in Morrowind, now I liked oblivion but morrowind had some intricate guild systems. Would be nice if they brought back some of those intrigues.

I wish I took german instead of french

Uh, we always could....

Are you kidding? Since when have you NOT been able to play as a pure ANYTHING? All this means is doing everything is going to, hopefully, be even better than it was before.

Exactly. Hopefully that quote means is that you won't be able to advance through the mage's guild equivalent as a warrior-centric player.

The interview is in English.

That would be epic. I liked that about Morrowind, and disliked that about Oblivion.

I'd like to see a "warrior/fighter" character go through oblivion without magic. Haha. Would be very, very difficult.

And no you can't use alchemy.

Warrior alchemist? I think not.

Uh, I did...

Pure fighter/thief/mage, yeah not very difficult.

I think the more exciting part comes from being able to play more than just a pure "anything" class. We have always been able to play pure classes but this is a genius way of mixing the possibilities without the worry of attributes holding us back from experimenting.

Yes we did, but this time it will be on equal terms. I personally found it hard to close Oblivion gates as a pure mage or thief.

In response to the OP: :whistling:

How did you deal with multiple casters that retreat?

Maybe you're just insanely bad at Oblivion, because it is incredibly easy.

Yea, i played as a Thief, and it was very easy to go through the whole thing without much Magic.

Charge and swing sword? Or there's always a bow.....



Might depend on what style of warrior one played.... the sword-n-board blocking fighters I played always have a good bit of damage pound past the shield block - especially against people wielding two-handers or trolls/ogres. Needed a good bit of constant healing to keep going. Going a pure no-magic route, you'd have to buy a large amount of healing potions from the shops if you went that way.

Guilds are different then before? This could be good or bad...

Could probably chase them down once you have very, very high athletics/speed. But that won't be for a long time. Archery does not fall under "pure warrior" in my mind, and anyone else who understands the concepts of "pure" and "warrior" in RPG sense.




Ya, I suppose you could sort of game the system by traveling all over and buying tons of potions and waiting for restock if need be. Never really bought potions so not sure how that would pan out on the higher levels. I'd assume the potions scale with level though.

I also do not think he is assuming payers abusing the leveling mechanic in the game-- like having 100 heavy armor and 100 blunt when they aren't primary skills for you. Basically, playing the game "normally" without abuse/cheese.

Isn't he speaking english in the interview?

Because of Dragon shouts and a more focused way of playing the different classes, I think it will be possible to go pure class this time.

The way I see it;

Pure mage = Magic. No armor.
Pure thief = Bow and short blade.
Pure warrior = Weapon and sheild.

Anyone that claims this was easy before, are just showing off. (imo)

Um, actually what the interview was saying at that bit was that the guilds were going to be playing more appropriately, fighters guild would play more like an action game I guess? thieves guild would play like a stealth game, and mages guild would play like a ...er, magey game? ....I don't really know... I guess it's a little more like the morrowing guilds?

I've played many pure characters and many hybrid characters. There's always a way to work things out and no - I don't mean exploiting - I mean playing the game as if the character is a real person in a real world, who just happens to be a pure mage or thief or fighter or hybrid of any of them.

Pure mages, as a matter of fact, are tremendously easy to play. Probably the toughest part of playing a pure mage is the Leyawiin MG recommendation quest. Once you get into the AU, it's pretty much a cakewalk.

Pure thieves are not only easy to play, but I can't really see much point in playing one anything other than "pure," other than for roleplaying purposes. Most of my thieves are "pure" - light to no armor, short sword or dagger, bow (often not even a bow, since with sufficient sneak, they can get in enough sneak melee attacks they really don't need one).

The toughest one to play is probably a truly "pure" warrior, and that only because you have to work around healing. If you include only the ability to cast healing spells then I've played lots of those characters. Without the ability to cast healing spells, the only one I've played is Hale (from my sig). And yes - that is a hassle, but in spite of the rhetoric quoted here, I'm sure it would still be a hassle in Skyrim. I don't believe that when Todd sings the praises of specialists, he means a warrior completely lacking the ability to heal himself. I believe that, just as in previous games, every single character will start the game with the ability to cast the basic healing spell.

And speaking of the rhetoric quoted here, for me, this just reinforces my concerns about specialization vs. generalization. Yes - generalist characters arguably had at least a bit of an advantage in previous games. Not as much of one as many seem to believe, and bluntly I attribute that primarily to simply a lack of skill and/or imagination. That's something I see all the time on the Oblivion forums - players who want to try to play a mage, in particular, but they insist on putting him in armor and dragging along a sword, no matter how many people tell them that that's really not necessary and actually sort of counter-productive. They're convinced that it's not possible to play without armor or weapons, in spite of the fact that it absolutely is, and I think that misperception is a lot of what's driving the current specialization frenzy. There just weren't enough people who figured out that it was always possible.

But anyway - what I'm seeing in all the rhetoric surrounding this issue so far, including this interview, is the implication that instead of making sure the game is balanced such that neither specialists nor generalists have an advantage, the game is being designed, and deliberately so, to punish generalists and reward specialists. I think that's a bad move, since all it's going to do is make it imbalanced in the opposite direction. As I've noted before, it could simply be that the emphasis on specialization is to drive home the point that generalists won't have an innate advantage, but I remain wary that it's because the game really is being designed so that specialists WILL have an innate advantage.

And more broadly - I don't think there's anything that discourages me more about this game than listening to Todd talk about it.

I am a pure Knight in Oblivion :mohawk:

I agree to some degree. Playing a "pure" class in OB was possible, but you quickly got weaker than many of the monsters in the vanilla game. I have played a pure warrior(even used the preset class) and I found myself in trouble everytime I encountered gloom wraiths. It may have been easier with mods that balance out the leveling.
Btw: Pure thief = Bow, short blades and light armor.
Pure warrior = Weapon-and-shield and two-handed. Heavy Armor.