Everyone keeps freaking out about spears being "confirmed" to not be in the game because of the podcast. Todd Howard literally says:



So, this clearly shows that spears being out is up to debate, else he would not have said that second sentence. I don't know why everyone is saying that spears are definitively out of the game with no chance of existing.

Not sure if this needs a whole thread for itself, but yes, people like to jump to conclusions around here.

Akin to the horse armour DLC, they'll get what they want on the Skyrim dvd, only that they'll end up paying ￡3 for a DLC to unlock spears, although for some people, money is no object.

The most interesting part of Todd's statement was the phrase 'in the classic sense'

Most people seem to assume that some sort of polearm or halberd is going to make the game, as distinct from the spears we saw in Morrowind

I don't see why people are like '' OH NOES NO SPEARS IN DA GME SKYRM IS GONNA BE CRAP'' spears aren't some major game changing item really calm down.The game isn't broken because one weapon isn't in the game.

I know, eh? People also like to generalize around here.

I can understand why fans of spears are disappointed at this stage - as much as the lack of spears isn't quite confirmed, it's far more likely that they won't be in, as a thrusting/piercing weapon with long reach.

Polearms, on the other hand, are confirmed, at least according to PC Gamer. Do most people know the difference between a glaive and a spear, or a halberd and a spear? We're seemingly getting spear-like weaponry, in any case.

Oh, like http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Spears "as distinct from the spears we saw in Morrowind?"

Yes, because halberds are not spears.

Really, there's a tendency on these forums (and hell, on the internet in general, it seems) to take everything Todd says and find the most pessimistic possible interpretation of it. If they cannot find an interpretation that makes it sound like Skyrim will be terrible, they will assume Todd is lying. There's some basis to it (see: women fireballing dogs) but people have raised it to a paranoid conspiracy theory wherein they either assign Bethesda bizarre, alien motives or assume that profit is both directly related and inversely proportional to game quality. Somewhere on the internet, I'm sure, somebody is convinced that Skyrim is going to be a multiplayer-only sci-fi FPS and that all evidence to the contrary is a horrible, horrible lie.

What is this "evidence" you speak of?

Anyway, back to planning my Space Elf character. Can't wait to see what sort of laser rifles the devs implemented in Skyrim!

Maybe he meant classical spears as the spears you throw. Thus, we might have polearms indeed.

Spears "in the classic spear sense" are two-handed wooden pole-arms with a pointy metal bit on the end, used exclusively as a thrusting weapon. Any other kind of pole-arm, including throwing spears, is still fair game.

I love this post.

People will zealously want anything they take out. No matter how small, it becomes crucial.


Polearms are in, according to some magazine. It's close enough for me. I never cared much about spears or crossbows.

The way I interpreted that podcast snippet was that there might be some halberd/polearm type weapons that are effectively long handled axes, and that use axe (or perhaps hammer) animations, but there will be no actual spears.

Is that enough to satisfy people, in their randomly overemphasized craving for spears? I suspect not. (Edit: As Davii says, its probably the fact that they have been removed that makes them so sought after, rather than the fact that they are spears)

So are you saying that you think the clarification that there just weren't any spears currently meant nothing?
And @Davii, in case you didn't listen to the podcast, people were asking about spears with the same vigor even before the podcast.

It's also possible that they might add spears in later, I guess.

Really, though, the reason people were clamoring for spears is that spears are symbolic of everything people think Morrowind did better than Oblivion.

Considering the fact weapon skills have been consolidated into "Two Handed" and "One Handed" etc, it seems like it will be very easy for them to add them in. The only thing is what the perk tree for spears would be. I imagine that is where they are having issues.

I have no idea what the perks would be. But I really hope they are in, simply because they are badass and I can go all 300 on their asses. THIS IS SKYRIM!

Also, if there are spears. pls to have 1 handed spears too. I need a shield too!

Two-handed pole-arms were confirmed, and one-handed pole-arms implied, by the PC Gamer UK preview, by the way.

Not at all. I think Todd means exactly what he says. That there will not be spears in the classic sense. We know that there are polearms. So its not a massive leap to assume that the polearms will not handle like spears, but like one of the other existing weapon groups.

Make sense?

Spears are confirmed not to be in. Other polearms however are. The other polearms like bardiche and halberds have the same feel of spears except they aren't broken because they don't stab, they swing.

We have polearms, which is good enough for me personally. I'm sure spears could be reworked to fit nicely into Skyrim's new combat system, but it's understandable if they've put so much work into overhauling the other weapons that they don't want to divest too much time into them.

While the way the quote is worded certainly leaves the possibility for spears to be added in later open, it certainly doesn't guarentee it. Bethesda hasn't done spears yet, and while they might do them in the future, they would not guarentee it, that's what the quote says, if you want to take a more pessimistic outlook, you might say that there probably won't be spears, but since Todd knows people want them, he worded the answer in a way that indicates there's yet some hope as seeing them. Whatever the case, if Bethesda was sure there would be spears, the answer would be "Yes, there would be spears.", if Todd wanted to say they had not been implemented, but expected them to be, he would say "We haven't implemented spears, but we expect to have them in the game before release." that's clearly what many people want to hear, so why wouldn't Bethesda tell us that? The only explanation seems to be because saying so wouldn't be true.

Now, I'm not too upset about spears not being in the game, not because I have any reason to believe they'll be in he game, but just because I can live with them not being in the game. I wanted to see them, of course, I can't think of any real reason anyone would want spears to NOT be in the game, but if they're not in then they're not in, their absence never stopped me from playing Oblivion, and I don't expect it to stop me from playing Skyrim either.

In any case, it sounds like we have pole arms, just not spears specifically, so we do have something to satisfy the need for a weapon with an exceptionally long reach.

Not necessarily. It was pretty obvious leading up to the podcast that Bethesda were teasing us about spears. We do know pole-arms are in, so it's pretty obvious that the line about not having spears "in the classic spear sense" was deliberately misleading.

He did it for the lulz, basically.

There is a picture with a halberd, which is a polearm, the class to which spears belong. There may not be 'spears' but there most likely will be Polearms.