It's protocal. It's so that every gamer out there will know when this epic game will be out.

Pretty good interview. Thank you for the link

so the compass tells you every locations = FAIL.

fairwell exploration, was nice knowing you.

Pete should have walked away when that guy asked him that.

I'm an Oblivion lover and it sounds like Skyrim is going to have so much more of what I love; it'll be better than what I love now and I know it's just going to be so much better than Oblivion, which I love, did I say that...so how can I lose?!

We've heard about it before but I like the idea of moving the dungeon design away from the artists more and into a group of people who are specializing in dungeons...can't wait to explore.

Sounds like I'll need a place to call my own pretty quickly to keep all the items I'll be collecting for crafting, etc.

:tes:

How does that stop exploration? You still have to go inside and discover things in it. It is the same as Oblivion and Fallout 3. It is just a thing that says "hey you are close to something go explore it!"

Thanks for the information. Enjoyed the interview. Man...I am getting excited.

Good stuff, oddly, one of my favorite things to do in Morrowind (Tribunal) was delving into the Old Mournhold ruins finding lodes of Adamantium to forge into my favorite armor. And I thoroughly enjoy Alchemy and Survival in Oblivion-New Vegas, so I'm hoping the Crafting system really pays off on that type of gameplay.

I still wonder though how important out-of-combat healing (Food particularly) could be with the regen. While I still don't mind the effect itself, I'm more concerned on if it creates some redundancy with the cooking and alchemy spaces.

But it only takes like 10 seconds max if you use Google to find out when Skyrim comes out.

True, although I look at it as more of a reassurance if anything. Closer we get to launch, and they keep reinforcing 11.11.11 in all of the interviews is a great thing.

Yeah, but if you'd happen to stumble across an interesting interview about Skyrim and watch it till the end - you'd know that Skyrim is out the 11th of November 2011, which is a good thing for the most part, 'cept is spamming us fans.

thank you sebastianTES, you got me the answer to my cooking question, good work. ely

I agree. I want to find things and spot them with my own eyes instead of having a radar to follow. Hopefully the compass markers can be disabled from in-game settings, otherwise disabling them is again a PC only mod feature.

Cool, but the last question is so bloody dumb.

There can be no exploration and discovery while there are neon signs everywhere pointing you to places you could, you know... discover otherwise. On your own. Like a mentally capable person. Who doesn't need to be guided by hand virtually everywhere. The "hey you are close to something go explore it!" isn't discovery or exploration - it's the game taking them away from you and instead telling you exactly where things are.

It is still exploration since it is undiscovered land. Doesn't matter if it tells you on the compass or not.

Thanks ! :tops:

Exactly. In Oblivion, a location would show up faded on your compass. As you approached, it got bold. And then once close enough, discovered (and subsequently showed up on your map).

I think the easiest solution is that a location isn't "discovered" until you walk right up to it and put the cursor on the door to the cave, dungeon, etc., or, if there is no door, until you walk inside the structure, be it a tower, temple, etc.

Just have NPCs give more detailed directions ("Take the road towards Riverwood, but about halfway there you'll see a big rock just off the side of the road that has two smaller rocks on top of it. Behind that rock is a dirt path. Follow that and you'll find your way."), or, have them come along as a companion and show you the way ("Sir, if you pay me 100 gold, I'll happily lead you to the location. I'm afraid once we arrive, we would have to part ways though.")

Another option is to have NPCs give you or sell you a map. Let me explain. ("I can draw up some directions for you here. Just follow this way once you get outside town"). SO, they wouldn't mark the location on your map. They would simply give you general directions-- "just outside town" -- and then draw a crude map on a piece of parchment. So you would have to examine the parchment for landmarks (maybe he draws two big birch trees and one has a hole in the bottom of the trunk. He points an arrow to walk between the two trees and then eventually you'll come upon a waterfall, etc. etc.). Anyone who has played Red Dead Redemption will know what I'm talking about. It's similar to the treasure map concept. That was one of my most fun things in RDR. You got a treasure map, and there was NO marker on your map. You had to find it based solely off the treasure map.

What do you guys think?

Um, upgradeable armor officially confirmed anyone?

Our orc pictures make sense now

Agreed. Hope there is an on/off switch on that - and mods aren't enough, because I am a Xbox 360-player (like the Todd himself).

I kind of agree but honestly the world is pretty gigantic if it was more condensed that stuff would be totally intolerable. Maybe some mods could remove those somewhat cheating compass features if we feel that it's breaking the game somewhat. Oblivion felt way too broken with all of the "easy access features it had"

Anyway the interview was fantastic thanks for posting it!

The compass. Kinda looks like we're going to be stuck with those "lookie here!" prompts. Still holding hope that we can at least adjust the UI settings to fade it down to invisibility, cause I positvely don't want that monstrosity at the top of the screen.
Would have asked Arctickill to pose the question about UI / HUD customization to Pete Hines, but knew nothing about his quest!

Release Date. Always a good question to ask, especially at the end of an interview. One of these times we might hear, "oh , yeah, well, it will be 12/12/12 , as we just discovered a way to make Radiant more powerful. ( meaning, "...Bugs from Elswheyr have overun Skyrim and we can't smash em fast enough....")


These little concerns aside, I'm very much looking forward to visiting Skyrim in November!

why? I didn't get any weird vibe from him at all..

I wonder if they will have human flesh in Skyrim like they did in OB. If they do I wonder if you can make a tasty sammich. lol gross

Would cause a lot of clutter in the inventory if you had hundreds of maps for every single location an NPC gave you directions to. What's wrong with them marking it on your map. If they've been there before and know the way already, they should be able to mark it on your map. You just can't fast travel there until you visit it the first time. Or if the NPC knows the general area, they can circle the area so you have to explore to find the location or the NPC can refer you to another NPC who has been to the location and that NPC can then mark it on your map.

I agree though that while you are exploring out in the wilderness, unmarked locations shouldn't show up on the map until after you at least enter the general vicinity, like the courtyard of a castle or the camp that is set up in front of a dungeon. I don't think it should start showing up as a faded icon that leads you right to it.

However, meh, this doesn't really ruin it for me the way things are. Man, sometimes I wonder at our sense of entitlement, where we get to play video games on expensive consoles and top-of-the-line PC's on our big screen HDTV's sitting on our leather sofas ordering pizza and drinking beer with our friends who've driven over to our nice, fully-furnished house in their fancy cars....when we could be fighting for our lives in the wake of a tsunami or something....but we still feel entitled to [censored] and moan about a game we play to pass the time that doesn't meet our grotesquely high standards.

Sorry, not trying to start any sort of political debate. Just wanted to give an example to put into perspective how easy most of us have it and how silly it is to nitpick an already great video game franchise. :confused:

EDIT: The last comment was more for those who say, "TES FAIL" or "That's a gamebreaker" or "I'm not buying this game anymore because something as small as compass and map markers will ruin all the other great stuff that's in the game". Well, I guess some of us will be missing out come 11.11.11

Anyone catch that he said "select special cook fires". Does this mean certain types of fires cook the food differently?