I have my paws on the December issue of PC Gamer, which has a sweet article about Skyrim with all new pix.

But there's a VERY nifty sidebar

I obviously cant post scans or copy the article but I assume saying this is OK.

The sidebar starts with some info we all know:

Number of levels Skyrim is balanced to: 50

Max level if you're insanely dedicated: 70

Total Perks: 280

And then it drops a bomb:

....

No further info or details are provided, but it both suggests the conventional wisodm that you can only get one perk per level is wrong, AND that there is a possibility to get over 70 through massive investment of time. Considering we've been told that completing all the quests would take about 300 hours, I can only logically guess that there is some kind of very grindy, non-quest-based system to accumulate extra perks. That doesn't tell us either whether this hypothetical system is linear and repeatable or that 93 perks is an actual hard cap of sorts?

In fact, I'm purely speculating about this and would really welcome other thoughts or explanations!

It was said we could obtain a 3rd of perks in one playthrough.

93 is a third of 280, the 1000 hours bit could be a joke.

Im of the opinion someone pulled those 1000 hours out of their "backside".

My theory is that you're going to also gain perks through quest completion as well, like in the Fallout system.

I saw that in the article as well..wasn't sure what to make of it. Exaggeration most likely.

I'll race you for it!

More importantly, PC Gamer has the first glimpse of the sabertooth tiger. Looks cooool!

What made that journalist think it will take 1000 hours to get 93 perks? Did he play for a 1000 hours? Did a dev tell him?

Well either a dev told him or we're back to the backside theory, because they only played for 3.5 hours.

I wouldnt be suprised if it has FNV challenge perks, like XX% dmg vs all YYYY after you kill certain number of YYYY

Well, considering the Mudcrab Armor DLC joke came from them as well, I am gonna take this as a exaggeration

I'm hoping their are side perks like in fallout 3. I find a colony of Cannibals. Choose to help them out by bringing them some fresh food, I gain a cannibalism perk. Things like this... and hopefully this example exactly. I want to be a cannibal.

It would take 1000 hours to get 93 perks? I'm with the 'He's pulling that out of his backside' idea.

-Mr. Maric

It's probably a joke. Stop taking every word you read seriously, people.

Game journalists tend to exaggerate and state unconfirmed facts a lot. I read a lot of nonsense in Dutch gaming magazines as well. If I would take them serious I would be convinced that there were werewolves in Skyrim amongst other things.