Good article, I'm glad their adopting a Fallout type stealth system where if an enemy NPC hears you he explores instead of saying "Damn Rats always skirting around in the shadows making me jumpy". The blocking I'm concerned about, I wished they would have left it like Oblivions blocking which is perfect and simple to use. Combats going to be hard and interesting so I can't wait for more info and to one day see it in action.

Also to the Devs Keep the X10 for the Dagger

Would be nice if I can equip weapon in my left hand, as I am left handed in real life. :tongue:

LOL, the picture of the guy fighting ice wraiths in the GI mag clearly is using a shortsword.

Spears! They didn't mention any spears!

Use your sword instead.

How would the mechanics work then? You can either equip the same spell to both hands or you can equip a defensive spell in one and an offensive spell in the other, I guess.

Pretty excited about the different effects for each spell though (fireball, flamethrower, etc).

I immediately thought pommel strike.

You can equip two separate spells you just can't cast them at the same time. But if you have two of the same spell you can cast them at the same time.

i hope spears are in this game.
i felt like a badass when i killed someone with a spear in fallout new vegas

It's just to make every weapon feel different and actually have a use. I personally don't care it isn't all that realistic. At least now there is a reason to play through with different kinds of weapons.

OK, My new skill list, gathered from new information.

I think that now the classes are out of the window, we do not need to categorize the skills into three archetypes any more, and the players can choose any skill that they like and improve them, as they like:

• Stealth
  
• Security
  
• Ranged = (Bow+Crossbow+Throwing)
  
• Athletics + (Acrobatics/Dodge/Running/Swimming) + Martial Arts?
  
• Persuasion = (Speechcraft+Mercantile)
  
• Alchemy
  
• Illusion
  
• Conjuration
  
• Destruction
  
• Restoration
  
• Alteration
  
• Enchanting
  
• Smithing = (Crafting+Repair)
  
• Two Handed
  
• Axe
  
• Blade
  
• Blunt
  
• Shield

Spears?
Crossbows?
Throwing Weapons?
Hand to Hand?

Sadly, the topics I was curious about haven't been addressed.

No, they balanced it by greatly reducing the number of arrows available to you.

Sword bash? What if you don't have any weapon equipped?

You'll bash with your weapon(s).

There's one very enigmatic hint at the bottom:
"Though the dagger is still considered a one-handed weapon skill, the perks for the weapon are housed under the stealth banner."

So perks will be assigned to to the three archetypes and not necessarily the same ones as the governing skills? Now there's a headscratch. How would that work? :shrug:

That sounds pretty accurate although I think Ranged will be just Bow or Marksman

Equally effective, in my opinion. When you think of ranged combat in the middle ages, it was practiced more with the intent of quickly eliminating individuals or outright poisoning them than being a kinetic, ongoing "launch 20 arrows into one person" affair.

I would replace the melee weapon skills with 1-handed and 2-handed weapons, and add light armour and heavy armour.

FALCON PUNCH!!!

Nice update - great detail on the troll and the weapon.

Not really. If there are spears, Bethesda is saving them for a later time to announce.

No, you don't get them exclusive to daggers. The thing is, when you sneak, a sneak-attack gets you different multipliers, depending on your weapon. In Oblivion, you got a 6X for blades, 3X for arrows. I'm assuming that that all stays the same, and they just added 10X for daggers.

Now, to balance the whole stealth archer thing, they should get rid of the sneak attack with arrows. Whether they notice you or not, your arrow is still going to go where you aim, so you shouldn't get a sneak attack bonus (especially since they made arrows deadlier anyway).
Blades are already more powerful than daggers, so a 10X for a dagger is very reasonable, and if you sneak up behind someone with a dagger and considerable skill, you should be able to kill them in one quick attack, thus justifying the 10X.

i wonder how the staffs would work in this.
will it only fire spells? or can you combat people as well when they get in your face?

Wow three pages quite a big article this time.

No axe, sword, blunt aren't skills anymore

The article says daggers are under the one-handed skill