It just hit me!!. two things have been confirmed: environments are dynamic (snow falls naturally, water flows naturally, trees burn, ect.), and that there is a dragon shout that stops time. now when I heard time stop, the first thing that came to mind was NPC's and creatures would stop moving. Now it hits me! If Bethesda does time stop right EVERYTHING EXCEPT YOU WILL STOP MOVING including the dynamic environments. Imagine your at a stream on a snowy day and there are trees burning nearby. You then use the stop time shout. The stream is frozen in not ice but time. The snowflakes are suspended in mid air. and the flames are stuck in time.
Then the effect wears off and a dragon comes in and punishes you for wasting a shout. HOW EPIC WOULD THAT BE (excluding the joke-ish dragon thing)!!! hmy: hmy: hmy:

EDIT: yes I get that it's SLOW time .....that just makes things more epic.

That is flatly false.

I actually think that would be cool... it would only make sense that if I stop or slow time, everything around me would be affected, including streams and snow. I don't know if this will be the case in the game though.

Thats why I said "If Bethesda does time stop right"

The shout is "Slow Time". Not stop time.

But yes, it will look cool and function well. Congratulations on your realization of that.

oh....that actually might be more epic

Isn't it SLOW time?

Yeah, stopping time would be pretty ridiculous. But seeing as how with a time limit on it, it would really only be slowing time, because time would continue, since there would be an "invisible timer" for your shout that would determine when it shuts off, and time moves forward again. Basically, a stop time shout would be about equivalent to pressing the inventory button to pause the game so you can change equipment or do whatever. So....there's really no need for that in the game, since we can already "stop time" by hitting pause to go have lunch and then come back to finish the fight.

Anyway, sorry if that was unnecessarily confusing. Point being, the benefits of the Slow Time shout will be huge, especially since apparently it gets even longer duration as you upgrade the shout. Since level one of the Slow Time shout has a duration of 8 seconds, we can assume that the next 2 levels may be 16 seconds, then 24 seconds, or perhaps longer, even. With that being known, I'd say that shout will see some serious use at the basic 8 second level, and in really desperate situations, players will use it's full length just to stay alive in a near death situation. Of course, with each higher level of the shout, there will be a drastically increased cooldown time, so the lowest level will probably be used fairly often, with the highest level being used perhaps only once a day.

As for the effect it has, according to the OXM description, it allows you to casually engage multiple enemies akin to a medieval Max Payne. With that in mind, I'm very excited to use it, and I think that should give you a better understanding of how it will really work in-game.

I wonder, will this only work on npcs/enemies, or will you be able to affect traps if you set one off and get the shout in quick enough. Feeling it's probably the former, but we can only hope.

I don't know about that not stoping completly part, I mean yeah initially its slow time but each shout has like three levels of intensity. The third level might just make time stop or for all intents and purposes make it move excrutiatingly slow. It just might happen. None of us KNOW for sure whether it will or wont.

This made me think...could it be used for the mundane as well? Say, it would take the average individual roughly three in-game hours to cut a decently vaulable heap of wood...but we are no average individual! We use the slow-time dragon shout, and in a matter of one-hour, we have cut the same amount of wood, essentially tripling our productivity. Imagining this from the perspective of the other townspeople is rather humours to me... :biggrin: ...it is kind of reminiscent of Will Smith in the beginning of Hancock.

:biggrin: That would be useful... and funny. Maybe we could be bad at saving people too.

This makes me wonder though if chopping wood and things like that are some sort of mini game, because if they are, it's improbable that we'd be able to use magic of any kind to manipulate them. Imagine slowing down time while trying to pick a lock.

If we can slow time, we can stop it with mods! Probably! I hadnt realized spell effects the enviornment till you mentioned it, it would be so cool to slow down fires and rivers and the like!

I forgot. How did stopping time with Sheogorath's staff work in Oblivion? Did it freeze everything or just NPCs?

That makes me sad....now I have hyped myself with improbable possibilities! Curse you and your realistic perspectives Bloody! Curse you!

Just NPCs. And it had a rather small area of effect.

Doesnt seem like it would be all too hard to just pause animation on anything that has an animation around you, I can see it pausing/slowing down water flow and fire easily. In oblivion it wasnt a major spell effect though and its going to be one this time around.

This would be really cool!

Thinking about this made me even more hyped about the game!

I think this is why people get so disappointed when the game comes out. It's probably not going to be like this at all. For one thing I don't think the environments are nearly as dynamic as you are imagining them.

Yeah, sorry. :cryvaultboy: :biggrin: Maybe they're not mini games though... but yeah, they probably are. :confused:

When i first heard it i suddenly assumed that it meant the whole world slows in time... i didnt for a second just assume it meant NPC's... i doubt it will just be another paralyzation spell, this game will an epic, and decapitating a dragon whilst his blood sprays slowly but plentifully out of his neck before he even knows it will be epic indeed, not just standing around whilst you hopelessly attack at his leg whilst everything else is in real time.

I was agreeing with you, but only said I don't expect it to be implemented, and hopefully I'm wrong. But whatever.