I agree and I do not care about dragons or lore for that matter.

Skyrim will probably be my favorite because of the "perky skill trees."

1) I'll give credit to Bethesda, they're doing a really good job of bringing dragons to life in Skyrim. It's just not something i'm excited about though. Dragons really don't interest me. If seeing one in the wild was a rare event and meant 'run and hide or you WILL die' that would be really cool, but my understanding is they're going to be quite common and relatively easy to kill. The novelty will wear off fairly quickly.
2) I'm not saying the grunts weren't bad, just that shouts are a bigger step forward in the same wrong direction.
3) I didn't mind that too much. Personal taste I guess.

Except I never argued for "most". I argued for "a lot", especially amongst those who's opinions I trust. But anyway... need I state for the third time that my point was NOT to convince anyone that Civ3/5 and Oblivion were universally despised, but rather that making dogmatic statements of a game's quality before anyone has played the game is irrational at worst and short sighted at best.

If you'd like to turn my examples on their heads (especially in the case of Oblivion), the forums were just as rife with people who hated the game even before playing it as those who adored it before it hit shelves. Both dynamics pretty much prove my point.

Cool, thanks for the article!

me 4, but you never know until closer the date :shrug:

EDIT: Sorry for double post, stupid computer didn't put it in my post above :brokencomputer:

Really? I noticed it quite unmistakeably every time one of my hulking, battle-hardened male characters got hit in battle and squeaked like a little girl. Different strokes I suppose. :shrug:

I learned to just drown the grunts out as background noise. Shouts are going to be far more noticeable considering how much of the game revolves around them. For players who don't like the voice of their character, this is going to be more than just a slight annoyance.

I don't know where you are getting your information, but dragons are going to be uncommon, and Todd himself mentions how you will need to use all of your abilities and strengths to defeat them. In the demo he gave, he beefed up his character so that he wouldn't die.

I seriously doubt the voices are going to be a problem.

The lore issues of a Dunmer or Khajiit dragonborne are something else entirely.

I'm pretty sure they'll be reasonably common. A good portion of the game is centered around them after all, so you'll end up seeing a fair few of them throughout one playthrough. I also don't expect them to be too difficult to kill. We already know that you encounter a dragon fairly early on in the game. If one dragon is possible to kill when you're at a relatively low level, chances are most of them won't be too tricky to beat.

Then you'll love Skyrim. ES will always suprise you.

I agree. Yet another problem I have with this game.

That's actually not an issue if you read the lore correctly.

Fortunately, though, it is quite rare to absolutely recent your voice or others for that matter. I can't seem find a logical explanation why this is. It ruins your imagination? I like to hear my character's voice and I felt that my character squealed and scream too little in previous games, but yay, we've got shouts.

Shouts are composed of three word segments,
Fus (force) Roh (push) Dah (err.. i forgot.)
So thats one of the longer ones.

I just prefer my character to be silent in RPGs. To me it's almost as essential as being able to customize how your character looks. Sure, if the developers pick a set look for you (like Rockstar did with Red Dead Redemption) most won't have any problems with it, but it's taking away an element of player freedom.

An example of an RPG with a fully voice-acted player-character which really irritated me is Two Worlds II. I hated my characters voice. It dictated the personality of my character completely, making them an American with a smug attitude. They may as well have given the character a name and a set appearance because the voice had already taken away the freedom to make a character as I wanted.

I want a character that has a fully customizable appearance, no voice, no background story which might give away personality (something Bethesda are good at and are maintaining with Skyrim), no name until I pick one, etc. etc.

I definitely wouldn't want my character fully voiced, but the shouts are far from that and don't bother me.

Force Balance Push

thank you, i couldnt remember off the top of my head

Pretty much my feelings right now. I am almost positive I'll like it better than Oblivion, if that isn't the case, I will be disappointed. However, I'm not expecting it to top Morrowind, gaming standards have changed since then, I won't say for the worse, but they definitely aren't following my tastes. One thing does give more more hope for Skyrim than anything else though, Fallout 3. The great strides they took using roughly the same Tech as Oblivion, and now they don't have tons of middleware weighing them down.

Good read

Too bad the writer didn't know that the Dovahkiin isn't the only one that can use Thu'um though

Would you pefer your character not to speak at all? Even without grunts? For me, that would be a step backwards... in realism. People make sounds, even if they don't want to.

"ONE of the best games of the year"? His modesty is insulting!

@sheogorath, i thought maybe you were joking when your complaints ruining the games for you were that the characters sounded like "a proud american" or "a smug american." Now im not sure if when you say american you mean the americas in general or just the united states but you seem to have some odd vendetta against america or everything sounds american to you. Its kind of funny because the actors voicing those characters arent actually from america that i know of(the guy from two worlds is from england and skyrim from sweden i think?) just wondering if you could explain in a little more detail how the character in the trailer shouting fus roh dah(sp) comes across as a "proud american." Maybe there are very subtle american accents/vibes im not picking up on.

You forgot "bravado".