1). WATER: From the few images I saw in the GI article, I am very impressed with the water in TESV: Skyrim. One of the images shows a man in "Elvish-looking" armor with a glowing axe and it looks like the water is undulating and splashing photo-realistically around his ankles. Did anyone else notice this? Does anyone know if gamesas is using some new kind of water physics system in Skyrim?

2). WEATHER: We know from the article that snow is going to be amazing - actually accumulating and forming on surfaces - even trees! What about rain? Will it rain in Skyrim [hopefully so! ] and will it be as realistic and jaw-droppingly impressive as the snow?

3). SHADOWS: The article also mentions that all objects cast realistic shadows - but it doesn't mention if they will affect/cover the player or other NPC's, etc. Will self-shadowing and true soft-shadows feature in Skyrim? Some of the screenshots seemed to show this, but others did not.

4). OBJECTS and NPC's: Also, I would like to know more about the amount of rendered objects in Skyrim. Oblivion had over 9,000 hand-placed objects in the world and 1,000 NPC's populating the world. Will Skyrim feature more of both? :goodjob:

We really don't know much...as for knowing what technologies they're using we have very little info except it's a new engine. So it's still early to say everythig it can do.

As for NPCs and items I would assume there is more. Especialy with the whole "if you kill a shoppkeeper his sister will get the shop" type talk. Plus the who thing about people fighting over a sword you dropped makes me think there will be alot of extra NPCs that are not needed for quests and will be there to give a look of life to the world as well as talk to eachother so you can gain info. Also if two guys fight over a sword one will likely die so there should be alot of NPCs or a system that replaces NPCs when killed.

I think it'd be pretty ridiculous if it never rained in Skyrim. I'm sure there will be plenty in the low elevations.

I dont believe the xbox 360 can handel this.

I am really curious to know what exactly it means when they say "water flows." Does this mean that it moves more realistically, or does it actually flow, as in it moves in a direction and downhill? If it actually does flow downhill and all that, I would be very impressed and happy.

Not sure how many hand placed objects and NPC's their are but it will most likely be more than Oblivion from the way they talk about NPC changes in the magazine.

Aparently the engine is optimized to make it work on the 360. If the game was made in gamebryo I know for sure nothing said to be possible in Skyrim would be possible and if it were it would be glitchy and cause horrible performance issues.

I hope so! I really want to see more activity in the cities and towns in the game - especially at the taverns.

Also, it seems like this game is more akin to Daggerfall than Oblivion and that is superlative choice AFAIAC, as I love Daggerfall!

For some reason, real-time shadows/self-shadowing are incredibly important to me - it was what got me excited about the first Oblivion presentation [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=de1M4Q_g2eg]. :touched:

The magazine talked about water flowing in swift currents.

Thats something i don't like to hear, "optimized to make it work on the 360" sounds like dumbed down to me, id love to be proved wrong though.

Agreed 100%. :foodndrink:

Hopefully, the PC version will have sliders on the settings/options screen that when at max, set the bar FAR above the console versions - using DX10 and DX11 to add elements not possible on the consoles.

i would love to see NPC's reacting to the weather. like people on the streets running for the tavern when it starts raining, or home, or even to a nearby shop to wait out the storm.

That would be superb!

Hopefully the dev team has thought of that, or can add it to the game!

or pull out a mud crab umbrella of some sort

Spells for clearing the snow at your feat, or deflecting the rain from above you? AWWW YEEAAHHHH :flamethrower:

But in answer to number 3, I think any game to come out in 2011 on any platform but the Wii would have to be ashamed of itself to not have dynamic shadows, soft and hard, self shadows, all that stuff, its old tech. Like...a decade old.

And I'd like to hear more about number 4 as well, like how many NPCs can be on-screen at once, as that was a big limiting factor in Oblivion, though I'm sure its been drastically increased.

1). Agreed 110%!

2). I want to know about the total number of NPC's across the game world and also an estimate of how many hand-made items like weapons, armor etc. that we will have access to.

You are getting svcked too far into the hype and will be bitterly dissapointed upon release if you believe all these features will be in the game, exact same thing happened with many other games in the industry before, Oblivion, Spore, Fable 2 and even Morrowind.

1. To have completely simulated water in lakes, rivers and puddles would take up a lot of usage but would be even more demanding with all the other processes undergoing in the game. I highly doubt the water will be anything other than animated and that this water flowing around a players ankles will be exactly the same as it has been in games for the last 10 years, an animation triggered upon contact to a physical object. I also think these apparent flowing rivers will be the same, for example see "Dear Esther Update - The Caves - 29/06/2010" to see flowing water which is not physics based. Water that is dynamic, for example in "From Dust" is possible, but this is due to a limited number of other actions going on in the game world and this dynamic fluid being the main focus in the game, not to mention the size of the map is significantly smaller.

2. For the snow I think it will be the same, an animation that after a certain amount of time snowing, trees will accumulate snow on the model. I think it will not be a result of snow falling and settling on the tree but will be more like a slider which changes to show snow on a tree.

3. Dynamic shadows are not rare in games and I think and hope the game will contain fully dynamic shadows and lighting.

4. I hope the game world will be expanded, but unfortunately due to limitations in consoles and a result of attempting to dumb down the game to accomodate a larger fan base I have a worry that the game world even if expanded, will have a lack of interesting and rare dungeons that require real exploration to find, even moreso than Oblivion. From what I hear though, there seems that there will be a significant increase in NPCs and objects that detail the world.

I just hope that a super-powerful PC running Skyrim at max settings will make the game look DRASTICALLY different than the console screenshots we have seen so far.

It's not that they are bad, but they just look too similar to Oblivion for my taste - like an Oblivion 2.0 - and I want the PC version of Skyrim to shine far brighter than the console versions.

On top of that, PC gamers get the Creation Kit, so we can make anything we want and that is always nice. :foodndrink:

If anyone can make the 360 handel this, it's BGS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq1Iv3DkwVs

I think you can see self-shadows on the pic with the giant. In regards to weather I'm also impressed by the volumetric clouds on the mountain top.

I wonder if when it rains in Skyrim, will it just rain - or will we have random thunderstorms that flash lightning across the sky, illuminating everything for just a brief moment. Also, will it react dynamically to the environment like the snow? Imagine fighting a huge Dragon during a thunderstorm! :drool:

Atmospheric and creepy - I love rain!