Does it look good?
How will the assigning hands thing affect magic?

Don't really see much in the way of magic use. I've seen a hand outstretched like an on-touch fire spell with a troll that has some whisps of fire around his body, doesn't look too different to how Oblivion handled on-touch fire.

You can choose to have both hands free and combine magic spells, or if you have a sword etc you can use just the one hand for single spells. I'm guessing this is to give pure mages more oomph.

If you can make spell combos with spectacular effects/results, that'd be just awesome.

I believe someone said spell combos are in, especially when using both hands for spells.

I think the double-spell thing sounds really nice.

Yeah it sounds cool that you have to have both hands free to do it too. Adds more roleplay to being a mage or having to sheath your sword if you want to pull off more powerful magic spells.

it said you could combine spells to make more powerful effects etc. im very curious about this. my favourite piece of information in the magazine :thumbsup:

What I'm curious about is what happens if you use two handed weapons, does this mean you can't use spells since both hands are used to hold the weapon? If so, how does this effect staffs? Are staffs one handed now to allow a slot for using a spell? Or do staffs(Staves?) have special rules? Because the common fantasy stereotype is for a mage to use a staff, and it would be pretty stupid if you couldn't use a staff with your spell caster.

As far as how magic looks, hope that there's a little more variation in the effects for spells this time around, because, visually speaking, magic has been pretty boring in past Elder Scrolls games. In function too, since spells were either cast on yourself, on your target, or on whatever you touch, no variety such as firing a jet of fire that hurts anything in its range or having a bolt of lightning come down from the sky instead of your hands.

I'd love a water spell combined with a lightning spell. That would be awesome.

From what it sounds like, magic and combat is going to be awesome.
I was very impressed with what I heard.

If you played Fallout 3, you'd have noticed a major difference in the visual effects (fiery disintegration, pulse effect from grenades etc...) vs. the visual effects in Oblivion. I think the spell effects in Skyrim will look quite nice.

In first person, it looks like Bioshock 2 except with the ability to use dual wield weapon or dual spells.

I wonder if you can use a shield and weapon, and still sling a spell.

The fire effects looked just like Oblivion. I was a bit disappointed by that, and was hoping for a more realistic fire effect such as in Bioshock 2.

But really, I can't judge from one picture. Hopefully I'm wrong.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eg68rAox75Y

Looks damn good, but I wonder if we will be able to cast a spell while having a bow equipped, since when the string is not pulled back one hand is free. The same is true for many other weapons that would require a second hand to attack with, but not while just wandering about. Staves can easily be carried with a single hand, but attacking is generally done with both hands used, and would therefor follow the same logic as the bow. My main character in both Morrowind and Oblivion stuck to the shadows and used various illusion spells to aid him, only letting an arrow loose once a decent spot has been found. Switching to a spell whenever I need to recast invisibility would not be too much of a nuisance, but would almost feel like a step back from Oblivion in a sense. Does anyone know if we can cast with 1.5 handed weapons equipped?

I hope they fix the magicka cost percentages the most. Those were killer in Oblivion, I mean...I could freeze the blood in someone's veins with ice magic and a few magicka points, but I'd have to completely drain myself for a 10 second paralysis spell, WTF.

I hope in that case, they make everything a bit more balanced, and make it so any race could be a powerful mage with enough practice, then basically just pigeonholing you being a Breton or a High Elf if you wanted to be an effective mage.

Staffs are one handed. You can wield a staff and cast spells simultaneously. You can also put a sword in your off-hand Gandalf style!
Simultaneously conjuring a shield and sword is total bad-ass. I'm stoked.

I really like the idea of being able to switch between single blade/empty off-hand, double-blade and weapons sheathed to accomodate the situation based on how much i feel I need to rely on magic . Delicious thought, mmmm... If you're at a distance from a large group of packed enemies, you go for sheathed and the double spell combo. When they're finally close to you, you draw one blade to go "might and magic, baby!". And when you're out of magicka, you draw the second blade to finish the job with brute force.
If they get it right, it will be awesome. I'm really for not letting anyone cast a spell with both hands occupied. Letting a knight with shield and sword in hand cast spells as well as they could do it with both hands free was one of the things that svcked about Oblivion - what was the point of being a mage if you could do magic with a warrior just as well?

You could still cast magic in oblivion even if you had a two handed weapon or shield/sword combo couldn't you?

You could. Your weapon hand was able to sling spells just fine. It look like in Skyrim, this won't be possible anymore, but you should be able to switch between weapon and spell with ease and efficiency, so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

I'm hoping the magic will look a lot more destructive depending on what you use.

Hurling fire balls was always kind of boring in Oblivion, unless you designed a custom spell to make it expand on target, but that always cost a ton of magicka. To much to make it be worth while.

On the subject of combining spells, what it sounds like is that you can either dual wield spells (so, left clicking casts spells one, right clicking casts spells two, I'm guessing), or you can wield a spell as a two-hander by equipping the same spell to both hands, increasing the spell's power. And you can also wield one spell alongside a single-handed weapon or shield.

It'll be interesting to see how staves work into this. One of the screenshots show that mage staves are one-handers, but there is still the question of whether staves are still 'magic guns', or something else.

Are you judging one handed-staves from one of the pictures?

Where does it talk about simultaneously conjuring a shield and sword? Do you mean the magic effect of conjuring weapons and armor?

It was a staff and he held it in one hand... One-handed staff I think. Liches wielded their staffs in one hand.

Yes, I meant the spells conjure sword and shield. Weren't you able to conjure a shield before? Or was that a mod? Anyways now you can wield a shield and have a free hand. Why wouldn't there be a spell to conjure one?

o yah sorry shield and sword users no more spells for you, unless you put away one weapon/shield and cast , very paladinish

definitely spells need to be more varied and visually appealing