Straight off the bat, let us agree that dragons look fantastic. However, a few things make themselves noticed after viewing demo footage from E3 and the like.

1) It might just be me, but does it look like they were taken down and killed rather too easily? When I think of dragons, I think of grand encounters equal to the myriad minibosses of Morrowind (for my money there is a good chance that they are the Jills of Akatosh, that is lesser Aedra). Yet they are brought to the ground by a few spells and then finished by a few whacks of an axe, neither of which look particularly high-level. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9hJMxw126A is a good display of this - Stormcall and two hits with an axe kills it.

2) Will they make traditional pure warriors totally obsolete? What is a sword or axe-wielding warrior supposed to do when confronted with a flying enemy? Even cliffracers from Morrowind (who ironically drove the dragons from old Resdayn) needed to come into melee range to attack, and the only 'flying' enemy from Oblivion were pathetic imps. Yet dragons, as we all know, breath fire - a ranged attack. For mages and rogues ranged attacks, which stop dragons from flying, are no problem. Will warriors be forced into a hybrid build to deal with the flying menaces? Or will dragons stupidly linger in melee range, out of character for creatures of intelligence, with their own language and agenda.

Of course, I judge based on gameplay footage seen so far, which may not be necessarily all that accurate of our experiences. I have faith in Bethesda to deliver a balanced experience, but for the time being I think these are valid concerns.

On your second point, I'm also worried it will be similar to KotoR, where it advertises itself as "be whatever you want" when it means "Be whatever you want as long as its a dragon shout using demi-god"

Remember this though:
In the E3 demo, they were scripted, AND the demo player had 9999/9999 health, making him virtually invincible.
So we can't really consider how much damage REALLY is afflicted from dragons. Also, he was a high level (34). Lastly, I think it's realistic and appropriate that 2 lighting bolts who take down a dragon. Were talking about LIGHTNING here. Its also acceptable that too 2handed axe swings on the head of a nearly unconsious dragon would be enough to kill him. Who knows, you can always switch the difficulty to Very hard.

I hope what was shown in the demo, is when you are having a high level character, I want dragons to be something you want to run away from once in a while.

Agree with above posters


As for point 2

From the demo you can see that the dragon landed a few times...gotta get the old school boss fight mentality in the brain. Dodge aerial attacks until it is forced to land, then deal your blows....repeat 3 times in a row in the glowing eye lol

1. If you take a close look at the stats of the character Todd Howard uses to demo the game, you'll see that he's completely overpowered for demo purposes. I think it's safe to assume dragons will be much harder when you actually play the game.

2. It looks like dragon shouts--essentially a form of magic that even non-mages can use--will be instrumental in bringing down dragons.

I believe the dragons shown died so easily due to "Todd Mode", an even more powerful version of "God Mode". I cannot answer number two, but I share your fears. Hopefully the dragons will land every so often or glide by, allowing for a good sweep with a weapon. (Hopefully they won't simple hover in one area and make an annoying squawking noise whilst we pummel their brains in...) :brokencomputer:

I'm not really worried about the first point, Todd was already quite decently leveled (I believe it was around 36~38 out of the '50' cap that Pete Hines said that by level 50 you are basically uber-powerful.) Not to mention he was using Todd Mode.

For the second point I'm a little worried, but maybe warriors can use scrolls? BTW, Archery is now a 'warrior' skill, so you might as well use that.

I think Dragons sometimes swoop in close while flying, and even land to fight you. I'm pretty sure they don't just fly around the whole time whilst breathing fire constantly.
:flamethrower: :flamed:

Todd was cheating for demo purposes. You should be able to figure out why. That being said you should also figure that the dragons are going to be much more difficult than we have seen.

Take anything you've seen in the demo with a grain of salt the size of Europe. You should only really use demo footage as a guide for what will be in the game, not how it will work. As for the problem with melee only vs flying dragons, they do land a lot of the time (and land or crash when weakened enough).. so you might just have to pick up a bow for a bit. It certainly doesn't break the "Warrior" archetype to do so, but whether or not you personally want to is a different issue, obviously. If you don't want to you shouldn't have to - but within reason. The dragon is meant to be a dragon, not something designed to be killed by you in a game. Dragons fly. Tough luck there I'd say.

So yeh, as far as I know - don't worry about dragons being too easy. And yeh, you might just have to have a ranged option in your arsenal (do people really use melee only, 100% of the time, never ever using anything ranged? )

Everyone seems to forget Todd Mode... :facepalm:... But, we'll just have to see. Though, I have faith :foodndrink:.

This was a demo, so I don't think Dragons will be THAT easily to slay.

You can be a "pure warrior" and fight dragons, but no matter what character you play, you always will be dragonborn. Dragons fear you solely on the fact that you can use dragon shouts. I wouldn't consider dragon shouts magicky, it's almost like a racial ability.
But,
There's one they fear.
In their tongue, he's Dovahkiin:
The dude who can totally own dragons!!!

Am I making sense? :shrug:

The problem is the demo is all we have seen. We will have no real exposure to what the game will actually be like difficulty wise until we buy the game. It's a matter of faith at the moment.

However, I am not very optimistic.

1) i don't tihnk thats accurate. todd mode was enabled.

2) dragon shouts.

You mean swordsmen/axemen/macemen have to be strategic and wait for the right moment to strike vs dragons and can't just hack n slash n smash? The horror!

Anyway, I don't think dragons will ever be easy to kill. The ones with the higher level dragon shouts where they freeze the enemy solid or summon a lightning storm will be dangerous at almost any level. The weaker ones might start to come in pairs if we ever get that strong enough too just to mix it up a bit. I'd like to go against three like Todd, but it seems he had to much fun and had to turn it down. Pitty.

Out of all the things SK is, dragons are not one of the things I'm worried about.

It would be stupid for the Dovakiin not to carry something ranged with him. He's a Dragonslayer. You might be SoL if you stubbornly refuse the bow or magic or even shouts.

I think they probably tuned the dragons down for the presentation. I mean, how much impact is a 5-10 minute grinding battle going to have on the audience? That is fine for my game, but for an impressive video it needs to be taken down shortly in the precious time they have to make a high impact.

I really really hope the player needs to run like hell until at least level 10 when a dragon appears. Otherwise what could have been the most epic thing in the game would be ruined.

From what I've read though, leveling is pretty much removed for the most part, so hopefully the dragons are a serious difficulty issue for low level players. They should be, because I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that they are attacking villages and cities, so something that powerful should be hard to take down. Of course the player is Dragonborn , dragon hunter appointed by the gods, but still, there should be a significant challenge. Hopefully the dragons we've seen are only easy to kill because they were tuned that way for the demo and Todd was level 34 with god mode on.

All dragon encounters so far have been done in Todd Mode, so we cannot judge how hard they will actually be.

1)A: Todd was like 32 leveled in the demo.
2)A: Fus Roh Dah