I love this idea, great post OP!

We did have Some life in the water, especially with the mods - but it would be nice to face aquatic life with a brain, something that would challenge me as a player.

Not sure if it fits TES lore though, but the idea is cool! :goodjob:

Do you think Skyrim will introduce water life AT LASTTT?


"At last?" :facepalm:

Bring it back, maybe. Morrowind actually had underwater terrain...grottos, shipwrecks, "real" Dreugh instead of those goofy "Land Dreugh," chests..."introduce water life AT LAST" indeed.

I think there should be fish in the streams, rivers, ponds and ocens. Also, there should be seals and walruses up in the northern seas.

PLEASE James, spare me.

OT: I don't care if they only have one type of fish that's non-hostile, as long as there are water animal mechanics then i'll be happy and will add lots of other fish and fishing too if necessary.

Bears should be dangerous. Bears should hunt for fish, and while they do their aggressiveness threshold is reduced significantly. Of course a bearinne (?) with cubs is not something you want to approach. Keep fearsome creatures to the sea, not the rivers, except a couple of unique ones. The real danger should be getting wet, resulting in cold, resulting in damage and/or illness. Keep us out of the water until our chances of surviving it has improved. There shouldn't be underwater fighting, spellcasting, or crafting (I could sit on the seafloor making potions, lol) either. Be inventive and make some kind of puzzles of it instead. Makes everything a bit more different, challenging, and original.

there's supposed to be fish leaping out of the water and such

Well, they did say they were making everything by hand. Pretty sure at some point they will realize how boring it is as just water. I'm almost positive that they'll have something and that it will be unique and amazing ( it is Bethesda), but we'll have to wait to see just what.

Oh my god. If they had fishing my head would EXPLODE!

Look, haha, I don't want to get into an Avatar debate BUT as a modding man and a gamer you have to respect the digital graphic work in his films.

Avatar for me was like this:

1)Sat in car park outside and had a 'smoke' with a couple of friends

2)Grabbed some munchies and watched it in 3D on a big ass IMax screen

3)Profit

Was it the best piece of cinematography i've seen. No (But neither was the Hurt Locker, which btw has the stupidest name)
Was it a cool flick. Yes

Will you watch Avatar 2. Probably

So chill

I voted other:
Yes to atmospheric water life.
No "everything wants to kill you just because" infestations.

In the Italian magazine: they describe "fish occasionally leaping out of the water"

and gamereactor confirmed there is fishing--at least for npcs (but, so far we've learned that you can do any task the NPCs can for the most part, so I assume we can do as well)







I hope they are interactable though, like---stabable---and then throwable.

The deep water is, for me, a frightening place by its very nature. The hidden mystery of what lies below is somehow psychologically terrifying for me without even trying. But they have never tried to use that dark world to inspire more fear, or to add some 3D dimensionality to their worlds. The life around the shoreline should be fish and sea weed and stuff, but further out, in the deeper areas, there should be some large sharks, serpentine monsters, whales for even further out and deeper, and a host of NEW monsters with special abilities and and/or attacks that we've never experienced in battle before. To create fear, to promote challenge, to make adventure exciting.

The biggest problem with water in previous TES games is that you can't cast spells. There were technological reasons for that I am sure, and hurdles we could not until overcome now, but now is indeed the time! Therefore, I want to propose a solution in case no one has found one at Bethesda. Before you go into the water you cast "Air Pocket" which forms a magical barrier for you against water. When you enter the water, the water does not touch your character, you are floating inside a bubble that you can negotiate in any direction as if swimming. Inside the bubble there is air and the space to move your hands and you can speak, but outside the bubble is a field of energy that rolls around you from front to back, only occasionally covering your vision.

You can use a DX 11 shader to make the bubble appear to shimmer, roll, and distort the imagery on the outside of the bubble (as if it were convoluted glass, only the imperfections in the glass would actually move around and not be attached to any one place in the glass) and that would create the illusion of the water rolling over the magical "glass" dome. When you cast your spell, it shoots THROUGH the semi-permeable barrier using a specialized "Underwater Magic Combat" Arcane Lore skill you must learn before you can do magic underwater. How well you improve that skill is how good your spell is at permeating the barrier to then go out and do what it does.

If it's a fire spell, obviously, counteracting with water, it is very hot but it should begin to dimish in size the further out it goes to its target. At close range, you could achieve 70% of your spells natural ability, but with greater distance continues to diminish its power until it simply vanishes. You could make bubbles appear all along its path to indicate its affect on the water through which it is passing.

If you shoot an ice ball, it speeds up underwater due to how melting ice becomes superfluid, and it creates a spear of ice from your bubble to the target which later falls to the bottom under its own weight and colder density.

If you shoot a lightning bolt, everything from your magical barrier to the target and beyond is electrified simultaneously, but you (inside the air bubble) are immune. Maybe some electrical forks snake back around and coil around your sphere in a frightening way, but still no damage is done, its just for show.

In this way, you can have a new and immersive system for magic underwater and allow for some true underwater adventure to lost cities, secret pools, dungeons that can only be entered from beneath the water (this was in MW already) ... but now it could be filled with dangerous underwater battles offering a new perspective that could take RPG's in new directions (especially when you factor in the Mods that would come out of that!) Wow, so awesome!

Sorry, it was OOO, my bad.

Avatar is the most overrated movie of all time but hey, kudos to JC for not pulling a Spielberg and coveting the film like E.T.
Don't get me wrong, It was an alright movie but some movies just shouldn't have sequels.
I have no problem skipping movies, especially when I didn't love the first one.
Avatar 2 will be easier to skip than Transformers 2 and Percy Jackson 2 combined.

They said fish would jump out of the water periodically now.

YOU CAN GO FISHING!!!!

yes yes YESSSSSSSSS

Ha Percy Jackson!! This is getting pretty off topic now but just remember JC does have a sweet track record with sequels, which are notoriously difficult to make, Aliens and Terminator 2 spring to mind, both arguably better than the originals. I think Avatar is only overrated by people that argue it's overrated, it's just a good romp with mint effects in everyone else's eyes, probably even JC's. You should look into how the film was made and how long each effect took to make, quite interesting.

OT!! The point was making is I bet the underwater effects are going to be cool and i'm all for Nirn and Beth to incorporate some of this coolness into TES. Since we know there are kind of eco systems for wolves and other animals, and you can fish and cook, i'm betting for better stuff from Skyrim bliviongate:

Not just in their eyes. You hear a lot of people saying how perfect it was in every way and the emotion and the perfectly handled themes and issues, how it was so unique and original etc. etc. which I don't think it does to any amazing level.

ON TOPIC
They have dynamically moving dragons. They need dynamically moving sea serpents and snakes and stuff.

True, they can get [censored]

ON TOPIC
Hell yeah!! I think there is another topic on this but a sea-monster would definitely be cool, very cool

Yeah, not just predators everywhere like Slaughterfish and Dreughs.

Something I missed in past games are realistic eco systems that include prey. It seems the only prey in Vvardenfell and Cyrodiil are kwama, guars, mudcrabs, deer, horses and a few more. And the predators only hunt down humans for some reason... There should be so many more, like squirrels, birds, a few fish species that DON'T kill you and maybe even insects if Beth are willing to go that far. But that's not important, the main thing is that there can't possibly exist 10 different predators every hundred meter. It makes the game feel somewhat cheap. Make the encounters a little less common and more exciting, while you can still see prey animals roaming around. Imagine you're wandering in the snowy pine forest. You see a squirrel running up a tree as you walk the trail. Later on (maybe 100 meters down the road) you can see a group of elks walk around among the trees. All of a sudden, one of those elks gets attacked by a troll, and another fight unveils. There can be dense monster zones as well, but they shouldn't be evenly scattered. Hunting grounds for different predators would be great. If you want to level up, go into a cave or to a place where the trolls (if ou want to hunt trolls, that is) usually hunt.

Morrowind had pretty cool underwater areas. I remember having to fear Dreughs every time I'd swim to take a shortcut. Heaps of shipwrecks and underwater caves too. Oblivion's waters were certainly lacking in comparison.

Slaughterfish and mudcrabs.

It would add so much to the game and if it's not there, I'll just stay clear from all forms of water.

I'm not a Lore-Expert, and i don't know this does/can exist, but what about an underwater argonian community? I think that it'd be awesome if they had one.

There was one in Oblivion But it was hostile...