Maybe we can already call it confirmed:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_4lrm97dBqNo/TTBT9yT0JnI/AAAAAAAAAWc/7xFGXKipUOM/s1600/skyrim_007.jpg

3 wolves yea? And I read somewhere about wolves having their own dens, killing prey and guarding it. Think it was that dutch gamerinfo. Sounds great. :foodndrink:

I think fighting larger groups of enemies should be the natural progression of the combat system.

You start out with 1 guy, early on, as you're learning the system. You grow, you gain new moves, feats, and tactics. The game gets a little easier, so now you might see 1-2 enemies come at you, trying various tactics against, training you to fight and kill more efficiently. Eventually, you grow again, you become more powerful. The game starts to get easier. So the evolution continues .... Now 3-4 enemies confront you from time to time, but they are still lower level than you.

A lot of your special moves can stun an opponent, or knock an opponent to the ground. In the time purchased by leveraging your more successful attacks (since the enemies are lower level than you, more of your attacks work against them to buy you time), you switch to another opponent, and do your best to weaken or find that precious moment when you can turn the tide of battle with one of your well-timed strikes.

Maybe then, in combat with multiple adversaries, you could gain some special moves that allow you to quickly switch opponents. Say you strike the blue warrior in front of you with a staggering blow, and instantly spin and strike the red warrior behind you as he closes in. You do a few strikes, gain a new special move, execute a staggering blow, and whirl back to the blue warrior again, keeping all of your enemies in the whirlwind of your battle frenzy.

As you gain more levels, say you're like 20th, now you can sometimes be surrounded by 6-10 warriors. You sweep your sword in an arc between forward strikes, pushing enemies moving in from behind back, you grab some enemies and throw them into the other ones, knocking down 2-3 of them. You throw a dagger at one enemy behind you, which strikes a nerve, causing them to writhe around in agony instead of trying to attack you. While these 3-4 enemies are wounded, you attack the ones that remain. One blow is so forceful you knock your enemy off the ground. He collapses on his back. You whirl and face the next one. He's tough, but you're faster. Your flurry of strikes knocks him senseless, and while he is recovering, you whirl and execute a killing strike (finishing move) on 1-2 enemies (decapitating two of them with one sweeping strike of your longblade. If you have a dagger, then no!) ...

Eventually, you can walk into a group of 25 enemies, shield bash them, sidestep them, trip them, throw them into each other, slide under them (toppling them), all the way levying cuts against them, where each strike you make is 80% of the time a killing strike. They are fighting a war of attrition against you, each one only able to get 1-2 strikes against you before you dispatch them. So that you know you are powerful because it takes a small army to fight you.

Not every battle, but once in a while, yes. There should always be awesome new powerful enemies to face 1 on 1.... but to leave out the opportunity to demonstrate your awesomeness in having worked your character up so high, it would be nice to see crowds of enemies confronting you in their futile hubris ...

... then and watch them die beneath your mighty blade ...

hell no............this is a horrible idea. lets not turn this game into assassins creed where i can take on several npcs at once. using the OPs example if your fighting two warriors and two archers at the same time............you should be dead, period, end of story. i can see fighting 2 enemies at once assuming they are guards or decently equipped and trained fighters but anymore than 2 should be almost impossible and if you go above 4 you die.

the only caveats i would put are when your fighting peasants or other mobs that arent expected to be proficient in the art of war or when fighting at a choke point where only one npc at a time can get to you, but when it comes to fighting groups of hardened soldiers or mages i do NOT want to be able to just wade through enemies willy nilly.

Using OOO I fought off 3 goblins. Two at the pointy end and the other casting in support. In a confined space. In level 19.

In Tribunal you three of them attacks you at once. Lucky I had the Chrysamere with me. Got me out in some tight spots. bash Bash BASH!!!!!!

In my way in Buma doing one of my contract faced off against four arches. Sweet

One of my best battles going towards Bravil accounted three casters and a fighter. It was a running battle.

As long you have two or three with the swords and/or blunt and one or two as support.

In Fallout3 with MMM what a hand full.

Francesco's mod had a good system for this. The higher level you were, the bigger chance of encountering more than one enemy at a spawn point. The draw was however, that more enemies usually also meant more lower level enemies. So instead of fighting one goblin berserker you'd be fighting two skirmishers, or instead of a warlord you'd fight a berserker, a skirmisher and a normal goblin. As a swordfighter you could focus on blocking the big guy's attacks first while dealing with the small stuff in a few hits, and then going one on one against the stronger enemy.

Well, if you want to demonstrate an area effect spell, you would want to do it on multiple enemies, because using a spell like that against one enemy would be kind of pointless. That doesn't mean things like that will be common, though.

But honestly, it seems to me that past Elder Scrolls games really didn't handle combat against groups of enemies (In this case, I mean three or more.) very well. While I like to use mods like MMM for the variety they bring to enemies, the larger amounts of enemies they introduce can get rather annoying at times, and I think the problem comes from two things. First, the combat AI, past Elder Scrolls games have never had very good combat AI, and this becomes especially apparent when you have to fight multiple enemies. Enemies would still imploy the same rush in blindly tactic whether they were on their own or in groups, rather than working together to use their numerical superiority to their advantage. You wouldn't see groups of multiple enemies trying to flank you, or the warriors moving to protect their more fragile allies. For another thing, there's the fact that the combat system was clearly designed with fighting single enemies in mind. There wasn't really any especially effective way to fight multiple enemies at once, except for using area effect spells. Logically speaking, if one person had to fight multiple opponents, you'd want to use different strategies from fighting a single enemy, but aside from taking advantage of the environment, like trying to lure enemies into small passages where they can't all attack you at the same time, the game didn't really provide many tactical options for fighting multiple foes.

Before trying to add battles against large groups of enemies, I think Bethesda should think about how to make that more enjoyable, because there's no point in allowing players to fight large amounts of enemies on a regular basis if they can't make doing so fun.

you should play OOO with MMM and see how fun that is

I personally just build up my character like a tank then go to town with either a hammer or a two-handed ax and have my way with masses. MUHAHAAAA! :gun: :rofl: :flamethrower: