Large scale battles would be a unique aspect my dear friends of bethesda...yes you too Todd Howard. Imagine standing amidst the scene of more than 5 men per every 20 minutes...imagine standing at the sidelines of a 100 men per 40 minutes battling each other for the glory of the land/quest/story! imagine horseback archers stampeding into the battle and firing every last munition in their quiver! for instance...take a look at a lesser game that has incorporated large scale battles...Mount and blade warband...this might be a topic spent well read beloved artists of the pixelated fantasy world...

...and then watch the game crash...

YES an ultimate fight cannot wait
takes one step closer
*crash*
either having to spend 100's of dollars to upgrade computer, buy a console, or buy a good computer

This is hopefully gonna be in elder scrolls VI. Next-gen at least.

Mount and Blade manages to do 1st person combat alongside hundreds of soldiers very well with little lag at less than about 500. I have no doubt that we could at least have 50 soldiers total in a battle at once, regardless of the higher graphics and A.I. requirements.

Well...the vast battle could be you fighting ten guys on a gorge watching the less detailed npcs a couple 100 feet away...dragon age wise...less animated characters killing each other! not up close...but small areas where people 20 people duke it out in small areas you walk into...with the cool battlefield a couple hundred feet down below inside the gorge...a less vamped this gen style battle...look at dragon age for instance...and assassins creed...they are not comparable i know that...but simply look at minor details of their large scaleness.

Your PC will need at least an Intel i7 2600K, 16GB, GeForce 570 as minimal specs.

(kidding)

Unlikely. Mount and Blade uses much more primitive graphics, and despite having a vastly superior combat mechanic, doesn't have to deal with magic or a dozen other things.

BUT, I don't see why 10-20 men is not possible. If they needed epic scope, idk, use sprites or something.

Never was a fan of large scale warfare, just don't see the appeal, unless I'm playing an RTS of course But in RPG? Whatever for? So thank you but I'll pass.

I'd pass on the large battlefields that take away from the value of my Totally Awesome Character.

Of course, I hear the Creation Engine's going to be far superior to the defunct Gamebryo for handling larger battles.

So stomping lots of little guys might still be an option.

^This. I wonder if the XBox360 and PS3 could even handle it too?


Yeah, I'm not interested in large-scale warfare either. =)
Maybe a small band of people as backup, but then I would be worried about them getting stuck and dying, lol!
Who needs them when I can just DragonShout a whole village down, muhahaha! XD

Who isn't interested in large scale battles?! Why would anyone deny that they would be a step up? All that i am suggesting are upgrades dear friends...not immature wishes to be deemed destructive...am i demanding them in skyrim...no...i demand them in next gen systems...to all who wish to understand what I wish to see for this gen simply look at my last comment on this subject...

Well not to mention the AI destroying townsfolk and towns.

Also it would cause all gaming systems to crash PC's also no current hardware could run a game like Skyrim with thousands of people in all out war.

Smaller scale battles would work out alot better in certain locations so no important game NPC's are murdered and no problems with game crashs or AI issues.

Also building up the lore for the series is more important than draining gamesass resources for something thhat would ultimately would fail.

i want to fend of hordes of opponents with my guitar solo shouting powers

Why would you people insult the grand idea?! shouldn't you people be supporting the idea so that they consider at least bigger battles and a cool scenery battle behind it that you can see?!

I just dont really see how a large scale battle would enhance our experiance with the game.

I once thought it would but I think now it would be better to focus on the story and the world instaed of a glorious battle...

I support the idea, but with technological limitations, I'm not sure it's all to plausible. I've suggested having low poly-count models performing pre-set animations and sequences being placed far in a background, inaccessible area (like in Oblivion's Arena) to simulate a larger battle, before, but actually having a large number of NPCs all fighting in one area just doesn't seem likely, to me. Bethesda has improved their game designing technology since Oblivion, but I still don't see them putting significantly larger battles into a game running on the same hardware as Oblivion, in which the Battle of Bruma alone was enough to make my PS3 struggle desperately.

people that hate large scale battles hate a challenge i guess. Or they dislike the combat and are more into role playing, i can live with that but being apart of a war that will shape the future of tamriel thats an achievement and would never want to miss out on something like that

Forgive me...i do not mean to sound demanding or rude...but this should be supported...not put down...this game can only be bettered by larger more epic battles then the out of style band of heroes/team of super humans...wouldn't you rather have an epic grand war than some 5 vs 5 end battle?...the imperial city is overrun with "thousands" of deadra! "by the nine what do we do?!" 'well...lets just send our five guys in the courtyard to fend off the 5 guys totally slaughtering our "thousand" of warriors!".........no...we need at least 20 guy small battles that lead to more 20 guys fighting areas...do not doubt they could at least do that and have a large scale battle in the couple hundred feet down gorge of fake undetailed characters fighting one another...(you can see this battle from above of coarse)

Did you play New Vegas? At the end, there were some fairly large battles, with like 20 NPCs in the cell at a time. And even my relatively beastly computer had huge lag at that part.
Probably wouldn't work, not with how demanding each NPC with this engine.

this is exactly what I mean...I've suggested having low poly-count models performing pre-set animations and sequences being placed far in a background, inaccessible area (like in Oblivion's Arena) to simulate a larger battle...this is what i meant...th next generation of tech and games should however have the awesome detailed npc 100 man bloodbath battles!

Large scale battles would be nice. Especially castle sieges. It wouldn't suprise me if we see something like this with the Nords.

Why don't you play Mount and blade? Its first person sword combat with 1000+ people on a battlefield at the time. Or download a mod to it and have 4000+ on the battlefield.

friend...i do play m&b...

Well I see now that would be better, it could help out if its done right and make things more interesting. It would add to the atmosphere of the game. I would like to see something like this implemented with few to no framerate drops then I would not mind. Who knows they might be able to put this in current gen hardware I dont feel we have milked out all power from all the three major systems ranging the Xbox360 to the PC.