Will the mountains in Skyrim restrict our explorative nature? is it going to be all winding little roads with an unclimbable mountain side to our right and a deadly drop to our left? so that we more or less get funneled from place to place?

One thing i noticed about fallout 3 was that while there was still freedom the map was not as open as in Oblivion, with some area's needing huge detours to get to, sometimes only accessible through underground passages, what do you think, are we going to see the same levels of physical freedom we had in Oblivion or is Skyrim's very geography going to make for a more linear travelling experience?

im wondering the same thing very good question. Hopefully it wont be like that but if is dont bother me much id still play the game a billion hours lol

Yeah this was one thing that made me stop playing New Vegas, you couldn't climb over the mountains and you HAD to take the one same road at the beginning of every playthrough. Of course you could go north...and get ripped apart by Cazadores and Deathclaws.

They've already stated that you can climb mountains.

Really? i had missed that, thanks for the heads up.

I kind of like the idea of having impassable terrain, its not about restricting exploration but more about giving obstacles for you to find your way around, makes things more interesting than simply traveling in a straight line to your destination.

Well the only way around something to get to a destination is around it, which is linear in itself surely? once you've found the passages through or around your obstacle those are the only ways open, wheras before in Oblivion we could walk through fields or across hills in any direction.

*just had a thought that if mountains are climbable, then a slow moving levitation spell is a pretty big possibility.

Yeah, but when they say "climb mountains" they could mean, "you can get from the bottom to the top, but you have to stay on the trail." I'm hoping you can actually climb them, but what they said was too ambiguous to confirm one way or the other.

That is what concerns me with regard to linear travel.

Not true, there are many paths that could be offered around the obstacle such as the long safe way, the shorter but more dangerous cave passage ect.

I was talking about being able to get over mountains with paths and such, no word on actually scaling mountains. It's a game full of mountains, there not going to make them invisible walls.

But they are still finite passages, the locations of which can be remembered are they not? not open spaces?

Depending on your acrobatics skill you could always jump over the mountains. :shakehead: :whistling:

As long as they don't make excruciatingly small obstacles impassable I'll be happy. Just got done playing Far Cry 2 :swear:

I like the concept mountains, as opposed to Oblivions "go straight for 5 minutes" without anything the stop you.

I hope they get in the way.

This is why spells such as Levitation, Mark and Recall should have never been removed from the Elder Scrolls games. They said Oblivion was this massive open world for you to explore, yet you couldn't get to the top of all mountains and explore them, only the ones with paths on them could be explored. I'm sure Skyrim will suffer from the same nonsense.

I do of course understand that the game needs it's boundaries (the map can only be that big) , but if it could work with Morrowind (and it did, very well) then it sure can work here too.

fair enough, to my sandbox mind that is a linear nightmare, i don't want to feel like an ant travelling around the base of an egg-carton box

Impassable physical terrain in Skyrim will restrict exploration in the same way buildings do. You might have to go around sometimes, but would it really be more rewarding for exploration if there were no buildings? Exploration isn't really about being able to go anywhere as the crow flies.

I wonder if climb mountains actually mean climb mountains with climbing animations... or if it means just follow a path and run up the mountain, or jump up rocks to reach the top.

I'm hoping it's the first but I fear that it's the latter. Bethesda's technical amibition seem very low in Skyrim I think.

mountains are a lot larger than buildings and will take a long linear detour to get around, i'm not saying it shouldn't be this way, just asking if it will be less free than Oblivion.

Yet it is still a lot more interesting than just offering a boring open space to traverse no? But you are forgetting that with an open space unless you plan to stagger around like a drunken hobo there are really only 2 paths to get there, a straight line or take the roads, with obstacles like mountains they can offer many more interesting paths to your destination, use your imagination.

Well like I said, there will be less options to travel to a given place (simply because in OB you have almost unlimited options due to easy to traverse land), but exploration will be all the more interesting for it because you'll have to take unusual detours and explore out of the way places you might otherwise avoid. You can still climb mountains, but it will surely take much more time and effort.

Well thats the thing, finite passages restrict my imagination, i like open spaces i can go anywhere i like, i'm not a big fan of linearity, so although we do not agree on which is best, we do agree that there will be less open space to actually move over than in Oblivion?

True, it was mentioned when Todd was talking about the level of detail in one of the recent videos, now, I'd imagine you can't just walk up mountains with ease, but that's reasonable, I mean, look at the mountains we've seen pictures of, do those look like something you can just walk up? They have many sheer cliffs, and I'm glad for that, because they now actually feel like mountains, the mountains in Morrowind and Oblivion felt more like very steep hills. Of course, this may somewhat restrict our freedom of movement, but that's a reasonable restriction, I never feel like the game fails as an open world game because I can't walk straight up the wall of a building, I just don't want the game to restrict me in a way that feels artificial, such as what New Vegas did in putting invisible barriers across places you should be able to cross (The borders though don't count as I realize the game needs to keep me inside a finite area somehow, it can't include the whole world as an explorable area.) if it looks like I should be able to reach a place, I should be able to reach it, but I don't mind the game not letting me do so in a way that I should not reasonably be able to take.



I'd say we can expect that, though given that Skyrim is supposed to be a mountainous region, I'd say it's pretty reasonable, in fact, it would be a problem if the map was as open as Oblivion as it would mean Bethesda did Skyrim poorly.

There are finite passages, yes... but that's how it's in the real worl, in mountains. I like the idea of exploring to find a way to go through the mointains, looking for passes, caves or whatever. I liked it in Fallout, as well.

You make a good point there, i guess my problem is with the geography itself then.