Yeah secret passage has always been there


for your other point as far as anyone there knows you DID just cross the border, that is why you were arrested.

Its like how Dunmer of Morrowind KNEW you weren't from there.

Which requires metagaming. If you RP it, there's no way your character would know how to get in without joining the College or the Thieves Guild. You're never told that you can ask Kareeva about Esbern and can go there on your own, and are instead led to Brynjolf to get access to the Thieves Guild. Same with the Elder Scroll, you're led into the College who in turn point you toward Septimus, but aren't told about the secret entrance (let alone that it's essentially trespassing into the College, and probably not something Bethesda intended as it's the backdoor exit to a dungeon), nor are you told about Septimus before getting into the College.

Or you can just, while exploring a random cave, happen to find a man who tells you information about the ES.

I found septimus on accident and skipped that entire quest.

Then you got lucky. Luck is not a valid excuse. Given how much content Skyrim is stuffed full of, it is foolish to the extreme to assume the player will just happen across this guy in the middle of nowhere who just happens to be critical to the main quest by accident. And once you are aware of his location, going back to him to skip the forced joining of the College would be considered meta-gaming. You can't accidentally discover something you already discovered before.

The game never bothers to tell you there is a secret entrance to the College OR that you can visit Septimus on your own steam. There is no other way to slice it, Bethesda tried to railroad you into the College of Winterhold through the Main Quest. Bypassing that portion requires meta-gaming or a lot of luck, and so those solutions are invalid.

The cave you speak of is a tiny little cave on a tiny little island out in the the Sea of Ghosts. I'd wager that 99% of players will never "happen to find" that cave before they do the quest. Heck, I went looking for the cave and I still had a hard time finding it.

Claiming that one can "happen to find" a back path is no fix for bad quest design. It is still bad quest design, back path or not.

I dont think it is bad quest design

IRL people don't just give you information, nor can you get to people wit information without having to join a group.

TES VI Preview part 1: Com(bo)bat
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1329452-how-much-more-streamlining/page__view__findpost__p__19997440

"Unexciting and unrealistic combat has always been one of the major flaws in the TES series. Sure [TES V] made a lot of improvements, but somehow something was still missing. Once we had finally found what was missing it was just a matter of streamlining. Streamlining, God I love that word."
- Todd Howard, executive producer

Bethesda recognizes that the melee combat in the TES series was generally dull and uninteresting. "Skyrim already had realistic deaths in the form of finishing moves which will naturally be kept. Now it was our duty to find the combat-equivalent of a finishing move." says Todd. The talented executive producer claims that the combat in the games was unrealistic because it always used the same animation. According to him it is a lot more than that: "When you are in a battle and you punch someone then you aren't going to punch him in the exact same way again 5 seconds later. No, you would follow up with as many punches as you could. Those follow-up punches are called a 'combo' , and they can be broken by your opponent depending on his combobreaker level." claims Todd Howard who is clearly speaking from experience.

Due to these 'combos' combat on the Summerset Isles will -at least visually- be a lot more exciting than previous TES games. The new combo animations are really beuatiful to watch. "It makes the combat feel a lot more intuitive. We were still worried that the player would be intimated by the complexity of mashing these buttons so we found a solution to that. Whenever the player makes 5 combo-hits in a row there will be sparkles followed by a deep voice yelling "Combo!". This is all just to let the player know that he's a good boy." -Todd Howard

Pete Hines (Public Relations) laughs away the fans worrying that TES VI has become an action game instead of an RPG: "It is like with fast travel. We do not force you to use it, do we? Sure, if you do not want to get killed you'd better use it, but our older fans are smart they will find a way around that. Don't like it, don't use it."

Our next installment will focus on the gameword and how Bethesda has masterfully streamlined it. "A sword is a sword and who cares if it is iron or steel?" - Todd Howard, executive producer

Right. And even if you do join the college, you're under no obligation to actually do anything for it.


I did hate the Thieve's guild part, though, but that has more to do with the stupid structure of the Thieve's guild itself more than the forced referral to them for the guild - There's no way to dissuade Brynjolf of his illusion that you're some kind of dirty pickpocketing thief, and there's no way to kill or intimidate him for making such libelous claims about your character.

Where's the dialogue option: "No, Brynjolf. Actually, every one of my coins is earned either honestly, or from killing those [censored]s out to world a worse place than it already is - People exactly like you. I was willing to just buy the information you had. However, now I'm thinking of reserving that for paying off the fine for murder if you don't tell me what I need to know."

Forced 1st person, and a multiplayer part with randomly generated arenas.

6 skills for each archetype, 4 weapon types, (Sword, Mace, Axe, Dagger). Perks were a good idea in my opinion. I doubt they'd go so far as to meld 1 and 2 handed weaponry into 1 skill. Honestly i think they'll simply try to improve on the perks system, the skills seem pretty good where they are. I can see them combining Sword and Dagger again into blades of varying speeds/reach/damage, so long as they do similar for the other weapons.

That was in Daggerfall and Arena.

Yes but those were very different to the latest 3.