Good evening,

Of the many many pieces of good news we've gotten about Skyrim the thing that I'm most looking forward to is the leveling system. Don't confuse this with the level scaling system which also seems like a pretty good idea. But there is a recent post on the topic. I wanted to discuss this earlier but now that I've played Fallout 3 (bought it used on Sunday) I think I can finally speak on this with some degree of authority.

I've now been able to compare Fallout with Oblivion and I'm fairly certain that Fallout 3 offers a much much better overall gameplay experience. The reason is simple, there is a minimal benefit to grinding. It doesn't matter where you shoot the heads off of super-mutants and ghouls. And, even better you don't have to allow things to attack you to gain on your SPECIALS, they're almost immobile, save perks and some books etc. Skill points are alloted and you distribute them however.

What Fallout 3's system lacks entirely is the great-concept but hard to pull off get-better-at-what-you-do system. It also lacks a great deal of the flexibility in character customization, as compared with Oblivion. But, I don't think that it really matters when looking at the overall experience that I'm enjoying when playing the game. The leveling, despite being completely unnatural gives me a chance to actually play the game. I never have to let a Radroach (Mud Crab) hit me for 45 minutes for my armour skill to raise before I go out and gain that one more skill point in Sneak or Lockpicking in order to level optimally. Optimal leveling is handled by selecting certain perks as soon as possible and waiting to max out your key skills till a bit later in the game.


What really excites me about Skyrim is that there doesn't appear to be any incentive for grinding. It sounds like we loose just a bit of the customization power and it sure doesn't sound like an attempt at a natural style system but oh my goodness! I'll be free and I can still make an optimized character without taking away from the actual playing of the game. And we'll still gain by doing, but just in a slightly different and simplified way.

I cannot but cheer loudly. This will be the best Bethesda game and, thus, the best game ever.