Remember how there was always snow on the ground in Bruma? Is it too much to ask for seasons?

The return of seasons would rock. Some seasonal music should accompany it.

Obviously the developers thought about that. Being cold weather doesn′t mean it has got to have ice and snow, specially in valleys.

Hopefully not too much to ask, especially as, in theory, they'd need to actually implement only two of the four seasons (assuming a seasonal change was a specific, recurring time-based event and not a seamless/continual progression); Spring is similar enough to Summer, and Autumn similar enough to Winter, at least visually.

The fact that Skyrim's using a new game engine is promising as far as this kind of thing is concerned, so I hope we're not disappointed.

Well Bruma certainly would ever be lush and blooming, but still maybe like a little snow over the grass in warmer seasons...

And holidays with store discounts and free drinks at the taverns!

Maybe a possible way to make seasons in the game is to craft 4 versions of the map. Every time you change to a new season, the map would change aswell. I don′t know if they will do it, but either way, it would be very time consuming. :shrug:

While I agree with you in theory, Skyrim is a cold, nordic kind of place. Seasonal change might not mean much, in practice. In fact that may be why Bethesda chose the province.

Maybe have a small transition to represent Spring and Autumn.

The first stage of the winter transition can include change in leaf color.
The second stage can include falling leaves and a slight decrease in outside activity (or at least a change, so some animals can only be seen in winter and some only in summer).
The third stage can have small amounts of snow and a more significant change in activity (maybe have stall venders start moving indoors or closing up, and indoor shopkeepers getting less frequent shipments of items).
The last stage can be full on winter, where things stop changing untill the summer transition.


I didn't put a lot of thought into this, so I have no idea if any of that stuff would be noticable or if it would be worth putting in.

If this was the case then humans would only have two seasons. Going by appearance, Autumn and Winter are nothing alike. Leaves change colors in Autumn. This alone destroys the notion that those two seasons are alike in appearance. Add in the fact that trees still have leaves on them during Autumn and you get that knock-out blow.



You can have holidays without seasons. Just make specific dialogue options only unlocked on certain days. Discounts can be done by changes in trader's mercantile level. This is much easier than making entire seasons. A script could enable new decorations on a wall. All of this is easily done even in Oblivion if there is a variable that shows what day it is/how many have passed.

This would svck for people who don't have internet connections on their consoles/computer but you could have seasons done as free dlc, like when it is winter in real life have a download that would change the game so on. Sounds lame I know, but it would make things simpler....

Bruma is high up in the mountains, far away from water. That makes for a pretty cold climate. Many parts of Skyrim, although further north, might have more temperate climates.

I'm from Norway, considered a pretty cold country. The summers can still get pretty hot, even all the way up north in Finnmark, which is the northernmost part of the country. So I don't see why there is a need for permafrost in EVERY part of Skyrim, although there will probably be in many areas.

My guess is they'll do something like Morrowind and create a diversity, even though it might contradictory to what's said in lore previously. An entire game-world covered in snow all the time would be too boring. I'm sure there will be plenty of diversity.

That is a terrible idea. DLC for something like this? Seasons, if included, should be part of the core game. It makes no sense to only make them available as downloadable content. I don't see how it make things simple, it actually over complicates things.

I don't care if they don't add seasons, but I don't want snow everywhere...

but the seasons wouldn't have to be real time. the ES calendar lines up with the Gregorian calendar perfectly in Oblivion, the only thing that is different is the names of the months and the days of the week, the lengths of the mont stay the same. if they were going to do seasons they could line them up with there real world counter parts in some of the more northern countries of the world. also Bruma want snowy because it was in the north, it was snowy because of the mountains. in Skyrim they should have the climate be sort of chilly, similar to early/mid-spring in the valleys to the south and have the higher mountains be frost capped and not covered in snow top to bottom. the farther north you go it should get colder until there is a permafrost, if the permafrost covered the entire map it would be a very bland looking game.

I really really like snow, but it of course shouldn't cover every meter of land. That said seasons would be nice too, but not really THAT important to me.

The most "north", cold and rugged places on earth even gets green or partly green in winter. Siberia, for instance, gets very very cold in the winter but in summer it turns into a lush landscape full of life. Seasonal change mean incredibly very much a lot

I for one would definitely want to see real seasons. Real snow on objects in winter. More life and things starting to come to life in spring. Lots and lots of life and green stuff in summer. Lots of orange, yellow and falling leaves in autumn

A lot of people don't understand the huge amount of depth this would require. For every single item that has some kind there would need to be either a duplicated model with an alternate texture for every season, a script that can edit base game files on the fly and still alternate textures for each one, or some kind of new 3d model type similar to a .mkv for video files. For people not familiar with file formats an .mkv is a container file that can have multiple video files, audio files, and subtitle files. If they make some kind of new 3d mesh "package file" that contains a model and alternate skins that could all be loaded at once and swapped on the file.

Well, I was speaking only in terms of what might be realistic to add to a game world; if resources are limited, cutting the variations down to "warmer" (Summer) and "colder" (Winter) seasons would make sense given the relatively minor changes of the other seasons. I'd think leaf colour, animal activity, etc would be much less significant than the presence or lack of snow and leaves.

On the other hand, you're certainly right about how different they are (I appreciate them all a great deal in the real world), and to include seasonal change at all is probably to include all of them.

No. You're totally wrong. That would have been the way seasons could be implemented for Gamebryo.

With newer engines, there is something called Blend Shading and Color Grading (really effective ones). Two engine features and boom you have seasons (basically). Look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-D9oINHI11E
Gamebryo is old. Incredibly outdated.
If Bethesda have included these features it would be fairly easy for them to do seasons. Other things that would need to be added are scripts for falling leaves (not very hard...) and scripts for new animals and such.

This was done for Shenmue on Dreamcast. I think it could be recreated on a modern system pretty easily.

I think this would be the perfect opportunity to introduce properly done seasons, and weather, to the series.

Yes please snow only high up north, it would be to boring to have snow everywhere all the time. This way no need for seasons, just geographycal weather.

Didn't they already say that there would always be snow in Skyrim?

I swear that 90% of people on this forum think Skyrim is going to look like planet Hoth.