One thing I'm unsure about Radiant Story though, is that you'd have to have a lot of repeated voice acting for different characters with the same exact lines if the quest givers are going to be dynamic and different depending on certain variables. There's also the matter of the quest-giver telling you which dungeon you'll need to go to, and there will be multiple selections of dungeons for the quest giver to give to you. That's a ton of voice acting for this, and it seems like a waste.

I liked what I heard about spells, (still leary about skills but no longer am panicked) even tho it was implied that spell creation was out.

Mostly, yes.

No spears? Well, that's a little disappointing, but hardly a dealbreaker. And there's that little qualification about "in the classic sense", so...

No spell creation? Well, apparently that's still being worked on, but at least I appreciate the reasoning. The design philosophy seems to be to "hide the numbers", to make the customisation feel more concrete in how you play the game. And I tend to agree with Todd that Morrowind style spell-creation - for all of its benefits, which I really liked - is not in keeping with that design philosophy. I just hope that magic based characters will still have substantial options to do cool things with magic that the devs might not have foreseen or intended, or the ability to customise their skills to a substantial extent.

These were really the only things which I was left a little disappointed about after hearing Todd's answers.

What I liked was the info about guilds - they've changed a lot, and there'll be new ones. Good. I think this is sign that we won't just have generic Fighter/Mage/Thieves guilds, but also location and culture specific factions. Also, while that question about how Skyrim might appeal to someone who liked Fallout 3 but not Oblivion was a bit dumb (and I think Todd was also pretty bemused by this as well), it was reassuring to hear Todd's description of Skyrim's architecture and landscape, especially in contrast to Oblivion/Cyrodiil.

EDIT: I also got a little excited about the "280 perks", not so much for the number, but because this is pretty much confirmation that when you level up, you'll have the option of picking a new ability, or the option of upgrading an ability you already have.

OMG NO SPEARS!!!!!

Is it even worth listening to? Or is it all just stuff we've seen in the magazine and on the GI website? If so I'm disappointed. I mean, understand it's still only a month from the announcement, but don't waste our time with a podcast that has no new info, or with lame ambiguous answers, just be done with it and let us know what we don't already whenever you think it's appropriate.

I don't think there's heaps of new info. There's a little.

It's mostly: (i) discussion of the design philosophy, (ii) directions they want the game to go, and features they want it to have, (iii) extra clarification (from a definitive source) of things we've read/heard elsewhere.

True, much of the stuff was already known, so many of the questions that people asked were already known and yet GI still included some of them in the pod cast, and some of the others like "I played Fallout and did not like OB, will I like Skyrim?" were a total waste of time.

I'm pleased they actually did a special podcast with Todd. The release is 9 months away!!!! 9 months, can anyone relate to the amount of info we will receive in that time, so I will try to be patient and wait for more about this great game!!!

No. <_<

Couldn't be happier. Well unless I had the game of course!

i agree 100%. Though bad questions were asked in some cases, Todd did great at answering what he could.

I only heard talk of werewolves but no vampires so why is people saying this? O_OI still want to know WHERE we are going to have to look up the new info i mean we mostly got it from the GI hubupdates and since this was last one than where are we getting the rest of the info?

eh, other big magazines. E3 of course, IGN. we'll get info some way or another, but it probably wont be as frequent.

It was okay - I can listen to Todd for ages he's got a good style of explaining the game and his respect for the fans is really refreshing - there could have been a few more questions asked though

Leveling still puzzles me - faster leveling than Oblivion? - good grief I couldn't believe how fast i leveled up in Oblivion - i was always trying to slow it down

The radiant story is still a mystery to me - sounds like it smarts up the AI but dumbs down their dialogue - why call it a story if there is no story?

You can take lots of NPC's as companions but Maiq has waved his banhammer and told them to all shut up - I like companions to give me some background as to why they are willing to accompany me on a quest not just be meat shields

I felt a bit more unsure about the game than before - I'll still get it it's just that I was hoping they would flesh the world out more with dialogue than Oblivion and I keep getting the impression that there is less talk more action in Skyrim

Cooking - hmm - well if they implemented mirrors on wardrobes I'd be pretty happy, i play games to forget daily activities like cooking not to replicate them in game

Enchanting is in alchemy is out - i don't get it - I used to run around the worlds picking sacks and sacks of ingredients and enjoyed the alchemy minigame - well it was a bit too basic in Oblivion - looked cool but with a 100% success rate I felt unchallenged - still i never cared for enchanting - if I found something useful i'd use it but could never get excited about building my own in game cheats.

All in all i enjoyed hearing Todd and hope he does some more interviews before the game is released - it was great to hear the things he and the devs were fans of in the game

Roll on November

I thought Howard handled himself very well. He answered things fairly, and was honest about when he didn't want to reveal something. Most of the time what he says makes a fair bit of sense, even if his priorities are different from yours. On mounts, for instance, he acknowledged that they have had difficulties working with them (they want them to be better than in Oblivion, or else they aren't really worth it), but that they really want them in there. I was reassured by the time they spent on dragons. I think dragons are kind of a monumental task, and they can go really wrong, so hopefully Howard is right when he said they are really impressive. His emphasis on Skyrim having an atmosphere is a major thing (Oblivion did feel bland, though I loved the game). If they get a cool atmosphere, that will go a long way. Also having big mountains and a worldspace that FEELS big is great. So I think they are really on track in that aspect. I just hope the quest writers have done a good job. That isn't something we can tell at this point, but will go a long way. I think people give Howard too much abuse, he has a vision for the series and I think they are doing a pretty good job of keeping it on track.

Umm.. I'm not sure how you arrived at some of these conclusions....

1. Todd was pretty explicit that Radiant Story doesn't "dumb down" dialogue. Quests are still mostly hand-crafted, it's just that some of the locations/NPCs/rewards will be conditionalised based upon your character.

2. Alchemy is still in.

Like Howard said, Radiant story isn't going to be a big deal to the player really, it is just a method by which they create quests. It has a bigger effect on the Devs themselves, as they no longer have to spend as much time writing tiny quests anymore, it is more "cookie cutter". Its now just easier for them to implement that randomness into the game. It won't really change your experience very much compared to the same types of quests written by writers..

Alchemy is still in. Pete said on twitter that alchemy is one of his favorite things in the elder scrolls series and he spent many lunches with one of the devs planning out alchemy. Its well looked over. Don't worry.

Also, cooking is a cool side activity. Why complain about it? You don't have to do it. I'm sure you do things in your game others don't care about but its still there for those that like it. What's the problem?

Not specifically what I mean. at 280 perks each portion of each skill can rank up multiple times. Yes you only get perky either 49 or 50 times depending on how the last level works from perk cap level to softcap level. My concern is that a lot of these are "generic" passive abilities so commonly used in bad RPG's these days. I.E. +5% firebolt damage perk. I would like something that holds better value than that. Example. Firebolt evolves to Fire Lance perk and instead of just another pretty fireball it relates onscreen to a lance of fire burning and cauterizing foes. It sounds as though Havok is very capable of handling such areas. Another example might be a warriors blitz attack perck. Using a portion of stamina and leaving your defenses a bit more open you rush a foe and bash him with your shield disorienting the enemy or flat out knocking him on his ass.

In the end I feel this characterizes more or less a portion of your character persona and looks better and feels better than "oh my warrior is good with maces" so he passively just ignores my opponents armor dealing more damage. To me that is just shoddy and unimaginitive.

Shout back about your thoughts. I don't say this to be a TES rager. I think Beth is the finest developer out there now and I try to be a constructive critic

I was baffled by the sheer loads of terrible questions.

Thought the community was more relevant than that.

Only relevant was the werewolf question, spell crafting and multiple endings.

What about

• Levitation potions and spells.
  
• Good/bad moral as in Fallout.
  
• If there will be Daedra shrines and daedric armor.
  
• hardcoe mode option.
  
• Additional travel options like mage guild teleport and mark/recall spells.
  
• Skills that were in Oblivion but is now being cut out of the game.
  
• How Skyrim will handle handle the quest marker.
  
• If pauldrons be separated from the cuirass and vice verse with gloves and pauldrons.
  
• The notion that Oblivion had over 200 hours worth of gameplay and how many they expecting are expecting to fill up with Skyrim.
  
• If lower level characters are be able to find high level loot as in Morrowind.

You know relevant question that alters the whole gameplay.

Towards the end up the podcast when he was talking about the leveling he said something like "we wanted to keep it interesting even after 200 hours".

Edit: here's the exact quote courtesy of vamphaery in the gi podcast transcribe thread.....

"(Perks being more fun) It's the thing you're always shooting for. Even 1 - 50 it slows down a lot as you play. If you assume there's 200 hours of content, you can sort of figure out, 'how often do I get to level?' We think we can balance that with the perks. That's what happened. We did the perks, and we figured out quickly, 'oh, to make these work, we need to be leveling faster.' And it is more fun."

I also wanted to know about levitation, and now I remember he said the compass will always be showing up in the HUD for sense of direction. A compass should be something you look at in case you're lost. It reminds me of when I would play Everquest and sometimes get lost, so I would have to get better at having my own sense of direction, but then the new versions got the compass always showing up. Not as fun like that.

I'm pleased with the information. There was a lot more info than I expected

No answer on DX11 effects..../sadface.

I'm pleased... Spears arent a deal breaker for me so... i'm happy. Cant wait for 11-11-11