» Thu Sep 22, 2011 8:29 am SCREENS
- The first section of the spread is a 2-page screenshot of a bird's eye view of Dovahkiin screaming at you standing in the snow with a massive dragon curled up in front of his feet; mainly showing his massive head and neck. It looks as though it was rendered in CGI, but regardless, it's an amazing shot.
- Another new screen of a frost atronach raising one of its mallet arms at you outside. The scenery is beautiful, looks like there's quite a blizzard going on, and there seems to be a fort or a tower of some kind in the distance behind him.
- Same screenshot from OXM with the bound bow spell and the grizzly bear, except it looks like it's a little larger and less pixelated.
INFO (in order of appearance in the article)
- Mentions how diverse the creatures are in the world in a small caption, revealing a possible new creature confirmation (?), "ice golems".
- One of the people playing the demo at a recent press conference went into a forbidden fort and ended up starting a small war between guards of two neighbouring factions. Very cool.
- Gourds confirmed as an alchemy/cooking ingredient.
- None of the landscape or facial features are procedurally generated; everything has been hand crafted and fine tuned by artists.
- The player runs into a couple mages while traveling who claim to be "Vigilants of Stendarr", a sect devoted to demonic worship. Further down the road a conjurer (necromancer) is experimenting with a skeleton laid out on standing stones. He summons a "ghost-cat" when he spots the player. (This was previously confirmed in another play through somewhere if I'm not mistaken)
- During a quest to apprehend some bandits for a Jarl of Falkreath, the player finds a burning wagon near Knifepoint Ridge. He ends up going the wrong way apparently and gets ambushed by bandits rushing out of a wooden fort of some kind. (It's info like this that I love, where it shows how much work is going into the world to make it look and feel more lived in, and the fact that there are even encounters like this is testament to that)
- Nearby is Knifepoint Mine. Inside he kills the bandit leader with a new kill animation where the enemy falls on all fours and tries to crawl away on his hands and knees.
- (New perk confirmed?) Sprinting with your shield raised, ploughing enemies aside in your path.
- To go into more detail of the decapitation that was recently confirmed. Todd Howard, when talking about perks, says "There's another one where you can decapitate people. It's not super-gory, but it's a surprise when you get it and heads start flying off." No mention as to what perk tree this is in.
- Depending on who you befriend (or upset, I would assume), that NPC's friends or faction's disposition will change towards you. For instance, if you befriend a Jarl, the guards may like you more. This also plays into the crime system, where it apparently has a lot to do with who you are close with on a faction level, and on a personal level. Details are pretty vague, and confusing, so I'll leave it to the reader to decipher the process behind this.
- Thieves guild tidbit, quoted from the article while briefly talking about the major factions: "...while the thieves lurk in the sewers beneath Riften."
- The player is sent to dispatch some bandits at a place called "Valtheim Keep", which is designed beautifully if going by how it was described. (The detail BGS is going into this go-around is awesome to read about.)
- The Shrine of Talos can be found in Whiterun.
Anyhow, that's basically all the interesting / important tidbits. Not sure if anyone has beat me to the chase yet, but it was a fantastic read and I'm happy to share the info I found interesting.
Cheers
