The sun or moons? how are you gonna say anything about the sun or the moon, without knowing directions? "when the moons are kind of touching each other, walk left"? And if someone tells me to walk left at the big mountain, I'm gonna kill him, because Skyrim is largely made of mountains.



Quests aren't even usually part of FPS', was there quest markers in doom? In real life I would have a compass, or a map with everything marked on it. In real life I would have the ability to get someone to mark what is not marked on the map. I really don't give a [censored] about what else I find, because I'm not trying to find anything but my lost friend in your scenario. When I explore, I explore, and when I do quests I do quests. I absolutely hate this notion that being lost equals exploring. I don't need to be forced to explore, I like exploring, I hate being lost.

I've never been there myself, but I would guess if I were on the verge of death my vision wouldn't be perfect. Its suppose to be distracting, you're near death. That said, I wouldn't mind some other way to show the player losing health. Something.

As for magic and stamina, a false fire of a spell could tell you that you are to tired to cast a spell and when you slow down considerably cause your out of stamina would mean you're to tired to run.

A few shooters I played actually increased your focus by slowing down time and turning the screen black and white before death. Sounds become muffled. A heartbeat is heard, and as death approaches, the heartbeat slows, until it stops and your character dies.

Sometimes, that little bit of slow motion gameplay is just enough to get you out of a jam.

So maybe it would be cool for the in-game map to not even show your location. Real maps don't do that. Then you would have to ask somebody where you are or match some visible landmark to one on the map. Hmm.. just a thought.

Didn't they say that the hud-free thing was optional?

Personally, I'd say that having a marker on your compass and having one on your map (Which sounds like what they're doing from the article.) really doesn't make that big of a difference. The game is still pointing you to the exact location that you want to do go, only it's easier to ignore and requires you to go through the lightly greater trouble of opening up your map to see it.

What I'd really like to see is to have the quest markers be optional, asking to not have them entirely is likely to accomplish nothing, but that doesn't mean we can't have an alternative. What I'd like to see is to have the option to choose whether I want a quest to have a marker on the map or not, to go with that NPCs could give us directions, which would make sense from a role-playing standpoint anyway even if quest locations are still marked on your map, because in real life, when people want you to go somewhere and you don't know how to find it, you can usually have them give you directions, you don't need to be able to psychically know its location even if no one tells you.



No, that would just be annoying, not "cool" at all. I play games for entertainment, not for map reading simulations, and I see nothing entertaining in not having any clue where you are in a large gameworld.

In Morrowind, there was no hud compass and quest marker, so we had to look more into the screen for a clue or a land mark that would trigger a memory of the description of the direction that the quest giver had told us.

It resulted in more immersion in the actual game, as I had to give the scene my full attention.

In Oblivion, most of my attention was at the compass to the red or green arrow head, and also all the other places revealed in that compass, so that I know how many mines, caves, dungeons and other important places are around.

This was like navigation through a system that isolated us from the actual game environment, and gave us a lot of information before we could find them ourselves in the game, and the game lost all the immersion, novelty, and surprise that finding places gave us in Morrowind.

I hope we would be back to Morrowind standards in Skyrim.

Fry Cry 2 was HUD free, but that did not mean the health,etc were not there.You just press a button and the stuff comes up for a moment.

Micromanaging the HUD doesn't seem like my idea of fun.

:whistling:

Others have said that but nobody seems to be giving me the source. The GI article never mentioned it being optional, unless I missed it, and if I did, I'd appreciate hearing what page it was on.

Nope, you had a directional arrow on the map marking your position so all you had to do was look at the map to determine which way you were facing.

This may have already been said, but I don't feel like going through all 4 pages right now.

The problem is, if the quest markers are still in the game at all, I'm afraid Bethesda is just going to use them as a workaround to having NPCs give you directions to places, like they did with Oblivion. Honestly, having to find my own way to places was my #1 favorite thing about Morrowind, so hopefully this won't be the case.

Some folks enjoy a challenge. But it's not for everyone.

I never played Morrowind, but this sounds interesting. I hope Skyrim is more like this.

I have a feeling that there will be the option to have a HUD.
The HUD is a video-game staple, it's always in. If they let us customize the hood though... That would be glorious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHTSf2dmhRc&feature=related

~55 seconds in.

Something like that, basically "iron sights" for the bow, would work perfectly.

Ya, something like that would work very well.

Agreed. And doing things like periodically turning parts of the HUD on, or having to flip through extra menus just to get basic information kind of defeats much of the purpose of the HUD-less screen.

Having a Quest-Compass would be nice, for noobs !

But having none is no problem, just teach the players to:

- Read the landscape and visible bookmarks.
- Look at the sun, moons and stars.
- Know where North, South, West and East are.
- Give them a little compass to show North.
- Give them a few maps of certain places or cities.
- Give them a clock or a sundial to estimate the time.

These will provide players to develop real skills and not digital skill points.

honestly, how hard is it to follow morrowind type directions. its not rocket science. how do people function in everyday life if someone gives them directions to a store or something. oh wait.............they just pop it in there Tom Tom and tada, you got yourself a quest arrow. that seems to explain alot. :facepalm:

there was only one maybe two quests in morrowind that had me searching for an extended period of time *cough* dwemer cube *cough*...........even if you cant find whatever you goal is you can just look it up on the interwebz. its certainly better than having your diapers changed for you and a pacifier put in your mouth with the quest arrow.

pretty soon they are going to have to remove all the words in the game that are over 4 syllables long so that certain people dont get overwhelmed with them. :rolleyes:

That's right and I do not remember even the Dwemer cube gave me any problem, or any other quest that gave me any frustration that some other seems to complain about.

I just enjoyed the sense of adventuring that it all gave me, and the opportunities that the search gave me to stumble upon hand placed monsters and items and new dungeons and the like.

I loved it all, and badly missed it in Oblivion, especially as it was not worth the effort, because of level scaling.

It's not confirmed.. but imagine a TES game without a health-bar. It would be like "I'll take 5 more hits and then I'm going to take a Strong potion of hea.. oh crap, I'm dead...". There's also this annoying reason that, unfortunately, TES is going more and more mainstream... I think it's safe to assume that you'll have a health-bar on your screen.. at least for the non-hardcoe mode..

Have you ever heard of "immersive HUD-indicators"?

For health, you hear your heart beat faster the lower your health is. Lower health could also give a subtle blur.

For stamina, you hear heavier panting sounds the lower your stamina is.

Do you see?

This is, to me, much better. And much more realistic. It's kinda wrong with how it was in Oblivion. Even though you were exhausted and about to die, the player didn't see or hear any difference whatsoever. A big immersion-breaker for me ^_^

Ah shoot, I liked to look at my compass to see where I was going.

That's great! But it still can't replace a health-bar for the mainstream... Some people would just like to play a game, while the majority on this forum, including me , would like to live there...

I mean figureatively..

I'm not such a nerd.. i'm not.. no, no, no, NO...