at the very least i expect to be able to smash trees...

if trees cant be smashed the game is probably broke.. large creatures such as dragons wouldent allow indestructible trees...


i dont expect some advanced physics engine where i can destroy a house stone by stone. i do expect some things to smash though!


glass bottles,plates (and potions) need to be smashable
urns and chests need to be smashable
furniture needs to be smashable
candles, lanterns and torches need to be destroyable
doors need to be smash able

skeletons need to be smash able

anything wood,hay or similar needs to be flammable

it would be fantastic to be able to burn houses. for both interior and exterior. imagine walking into a house and letting fire rip everywhere.. then getting outside and seeing the house in flames... then watching the flames stop to visit the burnt interior after


every material type needs to react at least to the point where they get overlays to every type of damage... so although that wooden door that leads to another cell cant be smashed it should at least look damaged

Well, you can set the enviroment on fire, and dragons can supposedly cause destruction in cities.

It'd be nice if when you ran through an overgrown field hacking away the grass got cut

i wonder if npc rebuild

I wouldn't get my hopes up for destructible anything. They have never done it in the past, and if they were doing it in Skyrim, don't you think they would have mentioned it as a selling point and improvement for the series? I think it would be a cool feature and all, but it's not something that would really take away from the game if it wasn't there.

As far as the dragons go, I'm pretty sure they will keep them scripted to the areas where they can't be killed in a forest or city. Imagine the collision detection issues of bringing a 5 ton dragon down into buildings and trees while traveling 50 mph. I could be wrong, but I would bet that the scene of the dragon crashing to the ground seen in the trailer was probably a scripted kill. Watch it again and you can clearly tell that the dragon crash was animated and not physics enabled. It also seemed a bit too convenient that there was NOTHING in its path as it skidded to a stop. It would take some impressive work to blend the crashing animation with ragdoll/body physic simulations of the dragon interacting with any potential part of the environment.

I don't mean to sound negative hear, I am really looking forward to Skyrim. I just think some people are expecting too much from the game. Honestly, on the subject of physics, I would much rather them focus on the character physics and feel of combat than make trees that can be knocked over with a spell.

yeah they have, bro. Fallout 3 is full of destructible things - generators, fire extinguishers, cars, tons of stuff. modders have extended that system to apply to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2fv9WA6bbk&feature=related, and while most of that boils down to "stuff blowing up" there's doors, toilets, sinks, even some walls.

besides, they're not limited by Speedtree this time around, so destructible trees would be fairly trivial - they've been in games for ages. i doubt there'd be destruction on the level of Battlefield 3, but i'm sure there will be a good amount of stuff that can be broken.

I was heavily disappointed how in Oblivion, the mages guild in Bruma is eventually caught in an eternal limbo; it's on fire but never burns down. . .
Ma'iq the Liar makes a reference to this I believe, don't remember the exact phrasing.

As I recall it, some spells in Arena allowed one to tunnel through the environment. Another game from about that time 1994s Magic Carpet had a destructable environment. The games 'Black' and 'Red Faction' on the PS2 had destructible environments too. And today we have MineCraft.

I really wish Bethesda had explored this aesthetic more than high end graphics. http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3201-Graphics-vs-Aesthetics

Sorry, I should have clarified "none of their games without guns and explosives" (i.e. Elder Scrolls) have done it before. I think destruction is a little more important in games where the goal is to blow things up, than games where you smack things with handheld weapons. Also, most of things you mentioned from gamesas(cars, generators, etc) have fuel of some sort, and make sense that they would blow up. I really don't see a wooden chest or a bush exploding any time soon.

Anyway, I hope you are right and they at least have some destruction, I just don't really see it happening. It causes WAY too many complications for something so trivial to the genre. Think about it, if trees are destructible, they must model them to react to specific forces. If like Crysis, they would have multiple breaking points, all of which would have to react with other parts of the environment. Then what happens when you leave? Do they magically pop back up as soon as you are out of site, or does the game have to remember that they were destroyed, thus taking up more memory. Imagine the slow down you would see if a dragon crashed into a dense forest. With graphics like Skyrim already has, consoles would probably melt if the game had to also take into account all the physics collisions and destruction taking place.

Yeah and afterwards there is wanted posters put out or a building team comes in to fix it in about 48 game hours

I'm not going to cry bloody tears if we don't have destructible environment in Skyrim, but i will if we don't have it in TES 6