Kinda cool but at the same time, Im gonna miss how Oblivion worked with Swords, Shields, and spells.

They removed the spell button, and replaced with the Shout button (for Dragon Shouts).

You now have to equip spells in your hands, in the place of a weapon.

You can only block if your left hand is empty, has a shield, or a shield spell.

Because it means that each play style feels more distinct now, and that playing a battlemage now has distinct disadvantages in comparison to both pure mage and pure warrior in addition to having the advantage of flexibility, unlike in prior games where it was just plain better to be a battlemage than either pure build. It's an increase in character variety, and additionally a better presentation for magic, so it feels more like magic and less like pointing at people and hitting them with math.

I'm similarly happy about the fact that wearing heavy armor significantly impedes magicka regeneration, which logically is how it should have been in Oblivion in the first place. Lore-wise, magic isn't about incantations and gestures and magic words (Thu'um being the big exception to that last one) but about willpower and belief and imagination. Wearing heavy armor should reduce your body's ability to absorb ambient magicka, not make you crappy at casting spells. Choice and consequence and meaningful character builds and best of all, flavor. That's why it's an improvement.

A feature was added.

um...yeah k sure.


Greg, why should armor stop Magicka Regeneration? magick Casting sure but Regeneration?

Read my post before that. We can use Shouts now a long with wielding what we want in either hand.

Sword/shield/spell- Oblivion

Sword/shield/shout- Skyrim.

Feature added.

your post made it seem as if splitting the ability to have weapon shield and spells was a feature added. if your gonna cite shouts just say Shouts

No, heavy armor shouldn't impact casting at all, because lore-wise it's not tied to your range of motion whatsoever. The closest explanation we get to how magic actually works is in some volume of 2920, though I can't recall which, in which Sotha Sil explains briefly that belief is the primary factor of spellcasting. The students are being subjected to a test of their ability to resist fire, and they succeed because they "know" the fire will not hurt them.

Magicka itself flows down from Aetherius through the sun and stars, suggesting that it's basically everywhere and living things naturally absorb it. Some have deeper reserves than others, and some are able to more quickly absorb it, and some aren't able to absorb it from their environment at all, and must absorb it by absorbing the magicka of others. It would make sense for heavy armor to cut people off from ambient magicka to a degree. I think it works better for gameplay anyway. In the old games when you got your skill high enough any drawbacks from heavy armor were eliminated to the point that they might as well not have existed. This way there's a consistent penalty for wearing heavy armor that gives the play style an inherent disadvantage.

Yeah, you can't... But admit it. It would be insanely great combining spells randomly.

In Oblivion, you could only have one spell selected at one time. Now, you can have two spells equipped at the same time. If you have a sword or shield in one hand, then that hand can't cast any spells, which seems more realistic.

It looks like hes asking a different question then we all SAW in the posts, OP maybe you should rephrase the question.

but i will try and answer as best as i can.
OK SO! Basically, there are a few reasons that poeple were excited.
1) Rpers enjoyed the aesthetics and how it added realism to the game
2) Pure Mage players (FUN AS HELL I MIGHT ADD) got excited because it added a new level of magic complexity, mostly because of the ability to combine spells to make them stronger, and using both at once.
3) GENERAL F**K-YEAH-ING.
4) People playing with one handed swords without shield or anything now get to utilize that hand.
5) Primary reason is that it showed of dual wielding for the first time, so the excitement wasnt JUST about the magic it was that both hands were free for offensive weapons.

Was that good?
Hopefully so!