Will boats be the same in Oblivion or will we have the ability to travel, sail, and even fight aboard a ship?

I hope there will be alot of content in Skyrim concerned with boats.

I agree

I hope they are not static, and that you can pay to go on scheduled voyages around Skyrim, and if you want to travel somewhere instantly, just go to sleep on board. And then you can also be a pirate and take over a ship or loot it.

Such an awesome idea! + >9000

Creating functional sailing boats take years... as you'll need a new box of script for sailing forwards 380 times depending on which rotation it currently in... you'll need to create a bunch of animations for everytime it takes damage, you'll need need 380 extra boxes of script for if you colide with something you'll have to take a little damage and then sail backwards... so this would be over a thousind boxes of script, and it would need to be altered for EVERY single kind of boat, new animations for every boat, and none-player-controlled boats would only be able to move around in a certain route, which would also requirre heavily scripting, if they need to stop then move towards the player when people on the boat sees him its even more scripting, and if they survive the encounter they'll not be able to get back on their route and will A. teleport back to where they where. or B. Stand still forever...

so for sailable and damagable boats its 10000+ boxes of scripting... for not-player-controled ships it would take something between 1000-100000 lines, if its even possible... that is unless bethesda makes heavy changes to the scripting... so sorry but I don't want bethesda to waste time on something which would take years to make and most people wouldn't use it...

Does sound like a nice idea. I know from the break down by IGN of the gameplay trailer that there was a rather large boat featured in a bay of one of the port cities. I didn't really look Viking in design although again this was a shot taken from a distance, so its hard to say. My guess would be you could certainly explore on the ship, below and on deck although it would be static for reasons NeverComingBack gave above. Although on a plus point I can see it having purpose for fast travel amoung the port cities of Skyrim? Oh and I would imagine too there definatly being some shipwrecks to explore off the coast ^_^