Good Afternoon Kids,

This is my first posting, so take it easy on me as I have noticed the neverending comments regarding redundant topics.

Here's a silly one for you... I noticed that the cosmos shown on the Skills Menu Tree picture there is a guy holding a dragon's claw staff; this resembles the character in the centre of the stone carnving during the trailer.

Any idea of who he is, and what his purpose may be throughout the story?

Take it easy on me.. now!

Skills are broken down into three categories: The Thief, The Warrior, and The Mage.

Since the skills shown are associated with magicka, I'd say the person you see represents The Mage, and is not inherently tied to the story.

I doubt he is anybody, just a back drop of a mage because it was displaying the magic skills. I imagine that when you are scrolling through the combat skills a warrior will appear in the backdrop.

Why is smithing shown then?

Because if you scroll across to the right, you get to the combat skills, and the over-arching constellation changes, same as the stealth skill alchemy is on the left.

[When did the use of the phrase 'skill tree' become commonplace?]

when people decided it was better to stop referring to perks as perks so as not to confuse them with Fallout 3's perks since they're functionally quite different.

also: you can only barely see it, but on the far left side of the screen it says "AFT". as in CRAFT. as in SPEECHCRAFT. :3

True enough - I find the use of perks something out of a FO world.

Skill Tree still sounds better to me as many of the, ...don't shoot me now..., "perks" have multiple levels to them. Perk Tree sounds a little like a nice green plant that people use to alleviate glucoma(SP?)

Are ye dry!

Yeah sorry, was talking about alchemy while posting, got confused.
But seriously, why are they being called trees? There is no evidence to suggest that there isn't a totally free choice, apart from multi leveled perks, from the start. Are we really using a term, to avoid confusion with with fallout, that describes a totally different system. I always took a skill tree to mean branching choices, you can take these skills IF you have this one.

Not to get overly complicated, but doesn't the existence of 280 perks (please correct me if I am wrong) with only being able to select a total of 50 (not including ones that are achieved through bashing mud crabs and slapping around some dragons) dictate that your character will have a form of skill tree to select from?

I an unable to determine where the post came from, but is Todd not claiming that each chracter will be completely different from the next - due to the limited slections each player can choose from. This would be how the game will randomly provide quests that are right up your characters ally (killing mud crabs(fighter) versus will'o'wisps(mage))

Dunno, still think tree implies branching ( obviously ) choices, but as far as we know it's a free choice. One more thing we would like to know, but we will have to wait and see.

we don't actually know how they're structured yet, but the fact that we can only pick 50 perks before we're cut off and the fact that we can only pick one per level implies that even if the perks for each skill are free, it's still very much geared towards mastering a handful of skills, which would kinda sorta be like a skill tree, just without locks.

i don't like the term "skill tree" either - i've personally been advocating "proficiency" or something similar. it's closer to a skill tree than Fallout-style perks, though, so it's not really that inaccurate to refer to it as skill trees.

Case Closed - Thanks for the replies!

As for all of those flamers out there - Flame Away

You are seeing http://www.imperial-library.info/content/mage-and-charges-apprentice-atronach-ritual Which in past games has been referred to as one of the guardian constellations alongside http://www.imperial-library.info/content/warrior-and-charges-lady-lord-steed and http://www.imperial-library.info/content/thief-and-charges-lover-shadow-tower Each guardian constellation has three charges. With The Serpent freely slithering around the sky.

In Skyrim they have shifted the guardian constellations into http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebula. As far as the Skill Menu goes each Nebula houses the skills for the particular archetype. So, you see The Mage as the backdrop for the "skill constellations" relating to the magic schools and enchantment. If you scroll to over to the stealth related skills you will see The Thief and if you scroll to the combat related skills you will see The Warrior.

We currently have no further information as to how this change affects the rest of Tamriel's astrology, or if it's just for visual flair.

Just to be on the safe side I've made some edits to the Skill Menu Screenshot to help explain http://i391.photobucket.com/albums/oo360/relvain/Forumz/Skillmenu.jpg?t=1299267491

Obviously if you could scroll further to the right you would see The Warrior Nebula and if you scrolled to the left you would see the Thief Nebula. (Notice they show Alchemy and [..]Aft both stealth related skills in Skyrim)

We've known this since the Skyrim issue of Game Informer. And this information is also right on Game Informer's website.
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Welcome to the forum. Have a http://images.uesp.net//c/c4/Fishystick.jpg!