The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

...And there goes the rest of my thirties. Dear God in heaven above. It's finally official, and it's almost here.

There will dragons. And Max von-Fucking-Sydow.

I've actually got tears in my eyes. I'm so fucking happy right now. Can't wait to see Bethesda's new game engine at work. It will only be 11 months between announcement and release. Less than one year is what we have to wait. Most games spend half that time simply to go from announcement to reveal, and another year to go from reveal to release. This is the kind of development I've been looking for.

Memo to all gaming companies: Don't tell me about your long-term plans; I don't give a shit. Tell me about what I can expect in a year or less.

Now I can maintain maximum hype, instead of allowing my hype to die out and becoming turned off with how long I have to wait.

With Elder Scrolls V, Dragon Age II, Two Worlds 2, the first StarCraft 2 expansion, and Mass Effect 3, this will be the best year for RPGs ever, and just maybe something else entirely. Thanksgiving 2011 is going to be epic..

My body is ready.


Mountains, snow and possibly lots of cavernous halls. If they can pull of a Beowulf vibe I'm gonna be over the moon.

Remember Bloodmoon?

...Yeah. All I'm sayin'.

That, and I happily earned all 1,250 Achievement points in Oblivion. When I saw the snowy mountains and chanting Nordic monks on the VGAs, I thought it was going to be the crappy Chris Hemsworth/Thor segment they'd just announced minutes earlier, right before the last commercial break.

However, the moment they mentioned Todd Howard's name, it all suddenly clicked into place. Seconds later, my wife was wondering where all the high-pitched little-girl squeals were coming from.

Lord. My computer might run this.

Apparently one of Skyrim's mountains is named Hrothgar. You're welcome. I want epic poetry in this, dammit.

I very much like the geography of this move. Morrowind remains one of my favorite games of all time, and I think a lot that is because of the unconventional setting. Cyrodill struck me boring as hell, so hopefully this will find a happy medium between the two.

Also: Nord wars.

So since this is coming out relatively soon . . . does anyone have any idea what kind of engine this thing is running on?

Because it can't be Gamebryo. Right?

ETA: Oh hey, they are. Well shit. Maybe they can use some of those Fallout dollars to buy a new animation team, at least.

It's a version of Gamebryo, which is just the underlying tech. Even Morrowind used a version of it.

They're in the same company as id now. The least they could do is to use idTech 5.

That's what I was thinking. Evidently their reasoning is they want something that's better at rendering huge expanses.

Same here. Loved Morrowind, it was just big enough to be sandbox but they put a lot of variety into the towns and regions. Oblivion was very samey, not to mention generic and distinctly whitebread.

Plus, it will probably take a while for the tech trees between id and Bethesda to actually come together (and they seem like they should, given the fact that they won't be selling the idTech engine to outside developers any more).

But yeah, interested to see how this looks. I kind of wouldn't mind something that's not super bleak.

This is the news I've been waiting for since I finished Oblivion, and it's going to be in Skyrim, the bit of the world I've always wanted to see a game set. If it's anywhere near as good as the Morrowind's Bloodmoon expansions we're going to have a hell of a lot of fun come November 2011.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim -- exclusively for iPad!

I'm wondering if the "Dragon Born"-bit is going to mean that we play the Enantiomorph, or possibly another Septim. That would be fascinating. All the Nords (and Redguards, sometimes) get a last name based on their deeds or lineage. Example: "Aevar Stone-Singer."

So I'm guessing the main character in this one will be an important Nord of some sort, or else the PC will be his reincarnation, like the Nerevarine (which reminds me -- will we be seeing a traditional opening Elder Scrolls prison-break?).


Yes, they've upgraded their engine -- developing a new engine is a large part of the reason why they haven't even made a peep on what they've been doing for the last two years. It's probably not going to be related to the idTech 5 engine, though. If anyone wonders why they wouldn't use the idTech engine even when they could, the reason is simple. The id engine is made similar to the RAGE engine for Rockstar, and is best used for medium-to-large open worlds, though id (the company) is best known for corridor-shooters like DOOM, so that engine may be better suited to smaller environments.

Whereas, Bethesda open-world games can be considered massive and detailed, around 5x larger than a typical GTA city, basically meaning idTech 5 would need to sacrifice a massive world, detailed and immersive, for beauty...though the id engine definitely has a lot of perks for a game like RAGE.

As far as the environments themselves go, the status quo changed pretty much everywhere in Tamriel after the events of Oblivion, so we shouldn't expect TES5 to be exactly what we'd anticipate.

If dragons are going to be a factor, and it looks like they are, I'm wondering if that could affect Skyrim's snowy landscape. I'd imagine most of Skyrim would be covered in snow, but the existence of dragons would be a good excuse for some additional variety -- i.e., burnt wastelands, "dragonally"-warmed areas, etc.

I'm just excited for the Nords to finally get their due. It feels like the series has always been very Human/Elf centric so I'm liking the idea of exploring the less defined Nords.

Also, and even though it sound silly, I kind of dig the idea of being able to play in a frozen wasteland in the run up to Christmas.

Exactly. Even if Mass Effect 3 gets delayed till 2012, at least we'll be playing this for the next three hundred free hours of our lives.

Frankly, there's just a couple of things I'd like to see, as far as improvements go for the next game:

1. More vampire involvement. Sure, the vampirism cycle in Oblivion was way better than in Morrowind, but I still thought that they could have done better in setting them up. I like the way you evolve through either choosing to feed or not to feed, but they could have also made more opportunities available, like having vampire guilds, vampire questlines, vampire hideouts, etc., similar to Morrowind.
   
   
2. More Dark Brotherhood-style missions. They're awesome.
   
   
3. Guild improvements. When you’re the leader of a guild, you should actually get to make actual guild-leadership decisions, instead of just having access to lame stuff like the Alchemist's Chest.
   
   
4. Followers that don't suck, or at least have a personality.
   
   
5. Put Axes back in the Bladed Weapons category. They have freaking blades on them -- how the hell are they "blunt"? In fact, instead of separating weapons by "blade" and "blunt" categories, do one-handed and two-handed. Makes more sense, realistically. If not that, then give Axes back their own damn category, like in Morrowind.
   
   
6. More weapons. Like polearms, fist-weapons, bo staffs, flails, crossbows, guns, explosives, traps. Also environmental hazards. There were the rolling logs at the beginning of Oblivion. Have more of that. Like catapults, traps, and such that can be used by the player and enemies.
   
   
7. A better facial-hair system when creating characters. Instead of that slider-based crap, have selections like in Fallout. Except, make mustaches and beards separate options. Adds more customization that way.
   
   
8. Duel-wielding! I always play a quick-duel-wielding class in RPGs, and hated you couldn't do that in Oblivion.
   
   
9. Environmental puzzles! Have parts of the world where you gotta use certain skills to make it into a given area. See a door covered in vines? Burn ‘em up with a fire spell, or chop ‘em away with a sword. Or a big ice-block in front of a cave? Break it down with a hammer, or blow it apart with lightning. Some obstacles should only be passed with certain skills, opening up different regions for different character classes. Which would then encourage multiple playthroughs with a variety of character-builds.

Not that the law-and-order system in Oblivion is bad and all, but I wish that Bethesda had added more possibilities for allowing players to realistically survive in Cyrodill as an outlaw. Sure, you can rampage and steal and assassinate and all that, and even refuse to pay the bounty. It does make you feel like a bit of a badass for a while, zooming around the countryside enslavin' civillians, raiding dungeons, and breaking into cities under the cover of night to rob from the rich and give to yourself. It's awesome.

But the one thing that kills it is when you've just done the whole crime package (killed off an entire village, stolen their livestock, pilfered their cutlery, etc.) only to dismount in a lonely, isolated clearing, gaze at your inventory, the countless red hands, your quest list, and your thousands of gold in bounty, and then realize that almost every last quest-giver, merchant, house, and guild lie inside the domain of the Imperial Guard --and they ALL hate your stinking guts.

There is literally no reasonable and progressive way to exist as an independent criminal without eventually caving in to the unbearable isolation and walking happily into jail. It's just not fair to evildoers.

The worst thing about Oblivion was the level up system. I loved that game to death, but I can't revisit it on account of the horribly broken leveling. Fix that, and they can keep whatever else they want. I'm really excited to see what the new engine can do.

I'm still pissed that my character got turned into a vampire in Oblivion. I gave up on it after I got stuck about 3/4 of the way to getting the vampirism cure because I didn't have enough whatever-gates open and then decided the best thing to do would be to just give it away to my brother instead. Still spent 100+ hours playing it though.

Man, I hope there's a 13th Warrior-inspired side-quest.

Absolutely. I don't have an issue with the game getting tougher as I level. Hell, I welcome the challenge.

But when a bandit tries to shake me down for 100 gold when he's sporting several-thousand-gold worth of daedric armor and weapons...well...it tends to break immersion just a tad. I also don't like that once you hit a certain level, all the wolves in the world go extinct, and are suddenly replaced with bears. I shouldn't have to manually self-manage the game's hardness so that it gives me a challenge, but not too much of a challenge.

With Oblivion, I had to level my Bosmer Wood Elf one level for each portion of the main quest I'd completed just to keep the game playable. I had to nuke my Level 11 Alchemist because everything became unkillable.

This is much more the crux of the problem for most people. It's not just that the game attempts to scale enemies for your level -- if your character isn't combat-focused, this doesn't seem to be a problem at all, although hybrids/not-so-combat-y builds struggle with it a bit. And it's not just that it scales enemy loot fairly quickly, either. It's that the game levels up nearly every enemy (and their gear) pretty much game-world wide, completely indiscriminately.

What this effectively means is that while there are always level-appropriate areas to explore, you tend to die a lot, as well. There aren't many situations that make it clear that you're more powerful than you were "x"-levels ago (for example, riding into a backwater farm at Level 20 and helping the farmer get rid of the goblins he's been fighting off with his shovel...you should smack them up easily, not be amazed that they now suddenly have way better gear than you, if a stupid farmer was holding 'em off).

There should also be dark and foreboding places where the enemies are always nasty, tough guys -- places that you want to wait until you're at Level 25 to go back to after you stumble across them and get slaughtered at Level 15 -- not places where you think, "Man, better hurry up and clear out that area with my Level 10 char, because by Level 15, they've outscaled me."

So long as you set up your major skills as mostly combat-oriented, you should be OK. However, if you set your majors as something that you only really use in a city (say Mercantile), and then spend a few hours doing things in the city that cause you to level-up without doing much to your combat skills, you can find that most enemies are now extraordinarily to hard to kill.

The PC mod-community is a big help in this regard, but it can get frustrating if you're playing on a console. It's certainly possible to work around the system, but it is a bit constricting. Here's hoping this is something that Bethesda changes for the better in the new game.

http://twitter.com/Bethblog/status/14010984884604929#

Looks like a new engine.

The peasants rejoice!!

or, more appropriately:

Thank the Nine!!

ETA: I guess Trevor already posted this, in sneaky hyper-text fashion. I consider this huge news, not only for Skyrim, but for the next Fallout games as well. I very much hope some of that iD tech seeping into Bethesda's technical expertise.

"You have my ear, citizen."

The ONLY way my dark elf battlemage could survive the higher level Oblivion portals was to judiciously summon Clannfears, and that was a last resort. I clearly remember spending hours in a field summoning imps to get my Conjuration level high enough to be able to do this. Once I got the hang of avoiding levelups to make the game playable, things became much easier, but that's a gameplay kludge that nearly hamstrings everything.

Also,

::Resist Arrest::

Then pay with your blood! STOP RIGHT THERE, CRIMINAL SCUM!

NEW ENGINE! that is great news.


I wonder if they'll bring back the Werewolf stuff like they had in Morrowind's Bloodmoon Expansion?

"Look at the muscles on YOU!!"

Which is especially funny (on a strictly immature 12-year-old level) when playing as a male character, and it's a male guard who says it.

The issue for stealthy/rogue-class characters in Oblivion, I think, stems from a couple of problems. Marksman stats at around 50-75 are, while damaging, not very versatile, and raising them is SLOOOOOOOOOOOW. Also, Hand-to-Hand sucks multiple balls simultaneously.

My very first rogue/assassin character build wasted a major skill on H2H, but put good use to his Illusion, Sneak, Marksman, Alchemy, Light Armor, and Security abilities. Around Level 8, I started noticing that killing enemies took forever. A couple levels later, I stumbled onto an Elven Bow, and started finding Elven Arrows all over the place. This made life far easier. Getting a Grand Soul Gem, and throwing a "Drain Life" enchantment on your bow, can make a huge difference there.

Make it last 3-5 seconds, for as much damage as you can muster. Casting a "Drain Health" spell is just temporary, but if you kill the person before it runs out, the temporary nature doesn't matter. It helps big time in the mid-levels.

Once your Marksman hits 75 (and I highly recommend paying for the training), you finally get your knockback ability. This is when you start thanking God that you're a marksman specialist, as it goes off fairly frequently. I loved it whenever I was fighting multiple daedra on the Oblivion plane, and was knocking several of them at a time into a lava pool. Made life far easier.

http://img249.imageshack.us/img249/4246/226407.jpg

Wallpapered.

Probably the best theory I've read since last night is that the three dudes to the left of the Dragon Born (who is on the far right-ish) are the three prior dragon-born: St. Alessia, Reman Cyrodiil, and Tiber Septim -- and you, the Dragon Born, are the fourth founder of a completely new human empire, arising out of the old Cyrodiilic one.

But, if true, that also means there'll be lots of adventuring to do to just to make that work. Bring it.

Oblivion was my introduction not just to Elder Scrolls, but to the new generation of game consoles in the form of my first xbox. As a consequence it will always have a special place in my heart. The fact the game itself was so phenomenal that I lost more hours to it than almost any other was definite gravy.

Skyrim as a consequence will be an instant buy for me.

What collection of months is this expected to be released in next year?

In the 11th hour of the 11th day of Sun's Dusk...

I think.

For all the issues I had with Oblivion, most of which were deeply fundamental, the orgasmic glee I felt at just the announcement of an ESV meant I must have liked ESIV a fair bit. Morrowind, of course, was brilliant.

ESIII was a significant graphical leap ahead of anything I had seen before and ESIV was another really huge leap. Kind of boggles my mind to think that ESV could do the same thing. Zeni and Beth have all the money in the world, and theoretically at least Carmack to consult on their tech, so I guess it could happen.

But the issue as always will be the deep-design decisions they make. I felt that ESIV went way too far to make things accessible to the herd, but FO3 added a lot back in for more hardcore players so maybe ESV has a chance to not just be aimed at the lowest common denominator players.

No matter what though I'm pretty sure I'll be picking up a CE.

My morning just went from "I wanna go back to bed" to "Holy shit there's a new Elder Scrolls game coming!" As awesome as all the other announcements over the weekend were (new SSX!), this one came as a complete surprise and is all the sweeter for it.

Totally. People have already thoroughly illustrated how bad the leveling system is, but I got to a point where I was really good at doing speed runs through the Oblivion gates, without stopping to fight a single enemy because it was too damned frustrating.

And there are certain areas of the game, like the point in the story where you infiltrate the Mythic Dawn, where you can only win through the most ridiculous amount of trial and error, or just sheer dumb luck. That scene in particular is pretty ludicrous if you're anywhere over level 10. I ended up having to pick-pocket people, hoping I wouldn't get caught and have to restart, until I had a good enough weapon to not die instantly. Then I had to kill the nearest mage, grab his staff and run around the "stage" for a half hour, taking pot-shots at the half a dozen assholes following me.

But it's one thing to just skip fighting a million Daedra. It'll be a damn shame if fighting dragons is no fun at all.

So I've been thinking of picking up the GoY edition of Oblivion. Should I skip that plan since there seems to be so much of an issue with the level up system? Or is it worth barreling through because of the story?

I'd get it for the PC if you have a reasonably good video card. If you've played through either of the recent Fallouts, the Gamebryo engine will be disappoint, but the exploration and mission variety make it worth a visit.

Well, be aware that when we say the game is ruined by the leveling system, that's still, like, thirty hours into the game at a minimum. I mean, I think I spent five hours collecting nirnroot without even realizing it. The game is a massive timesink even if you end up breaking your character and giving up.

If you've never played it before, definitely get it. Despite some issues like leveling it really is worthwhile experience for any fan of rpgs.

It's an absolutely beautiful game, and can be wholly immserive. As long as you're aware of when you're leveling and why (and you keep it to a minimum), it's a very satisfying experience.

Fun fact: I've yet to beat either FALLOUT 3 or OBLIVION, yet I've probably sunk 50+ hours into each of them. I just always end up running around, exploring, doing sidequests, finding hidden locations, etc., etc. The main quests almost seem beside the point in these games.

Can't add much more to what's already said, except to use some of the leveling-tips in this thread (and elsewhere on the Internet), and you should be solid.

Having poured a few hundred hours into the game, it's something I'd still do all over again in a heartbeat. Sidequesting almost supplants the main quest itself, if you let it. Nobody puts more content into their titles than Bethesda.

I really hope this goes more into Morrowind's direction than Oblivion's. I feel a lot of people have forgotten what a literally awesome experience it was when you first played it. And it hasn't been approximated since.

When people are talking about the levelling system being broken, it seems they're referring to the fact that enemies level with you, which did indeed suck. Morrowind did not have this feature and I never had any issues with the levelling system in that one for my character, which was more or less the same as Oblivion in all other regards. I do enjoy having my skills improve as I use them, even though it means I'll be bunny hopping for the first ten hours or so to max my acrobatics.

This is my most anticipated game for the next year and will likely stay on my system for years afterwards.

To be sure, Oblivion hits you with a pretty massive sense of wonder the moment you step out of that prison-sewer and behold the incredible world around you, but there's slightly less variety in some of the environments than what Morrowind presented us with (swamp, ashlands, volcanoes, frozen tundra, giant mushrooms, canal-cities).

Under normal circumstances, I'd be worried about how Skyrim is going to tackle this issue, with even less potential natural variety than previous games, except I'm more than certain that the devs are thinking this very same thought, too. They can't make the entire game Bruma and Solstheim, because nobody wants to experience snow-blindness for a couple hundred hours.


Morrowind does upscale your enemies during the game, but it's done in a much more subtle, gradual fashion than in Oblivion. For instance, you'll see Scamps near the shrines up until you hit roughly Levels 10-12, then you'll finally start seeing some Atronachs and Dremora Lords, but very slowly in comparison.

With Oblivion, as soon as you hit Level 10, suddenly anything goes.

ETA:

Word of advice: Use the fast-travel option sparingly, if you liked the scale of exploration in Morrowind, where you had to have a lot of shit to do on one side of the continent before it'd even be worth undertaking the epic journey to get to the other side. Fast-travel was featured in The Elder Scrolls I and II, but it also sorta destroys that sense of expansiveness.

I'm expecting alot from this. And I'm also expecting to pay for the game three times over in DLC.

Im going to be the dick who hopes you can level up without having to sleep somewhere this time around.
Also, i hope the "adoring fan" doesnt return...i hated that guy. just hated him.

I lured him out into the forest, and watched gleefully as he got torn apart by bears.

Or, what this guy did.

I plan on making some nude mods this weekend in commemoration of the new game coming out.

It was pretty much inevitable, but speculation is rampant right now that Bethesda will be adding some sort of online multiplayer component to Skyrim. This MIGHT work, but it depends on the execution. They should take a page from how Atlus did it in Demon's Souls. Your character remained the main center of attention, yet you could get temporary outside help that was useful, but didn't affect your storyline in any non-gameplay-oriented way.

Personally, I wouldn't mind multiplayer, but limited enough to keep your character AS the main character. For example, you could have:

• Arena Combat: Enter the arena, compete for gold with your character, and have 1v1 or Team-vs.-Team PvP battles that do nothing but allow you to win some extra dough during your travels. Maybe even let you observe and wager on other people's battles.
  
  
• Instanced Dungeon-Crawling: As you go through the world, it's your standard Elder Scrolls massively single-player adventuring, but when you reach a cave/castle/whatever, you get the option to see if anyone is "starting" that area, or invite a friend to join you in the dungeon-crawling there. After you complete the dungeon, they leave. My biggest problem with co-op is that it would make the game too easy, and it's ridiculous to have the game suddenly scale to the addition of a new character. However, if it was only for selected caves or missions, it would give a chance to add some fun and challenge without ruining the integrity of the entire game.
  
  
• Market/item-trading in stores around major cities, where you can look for other people selling/looking to trade, or post up items that you have, and are willing to trade. Where I can seeing this going wrong is that it just doesn't make sense to be able to buy the Umbra gear at a communal shop, even though, in your world, Umbra is still alive and has her sword. Part of the fun of the game is finding the right armor (even when it’s frustrating when you can’t). If I could just save for a while, and get glass armor right from the get-go, where is the progression?
  
  This concept might take some tweaking to work properly. It could be fixable by not letting you trade/sell unique items like Umbra online, just enchanted/regular items. Also, to prevent giving a Level 2 character the most powerful custom-enchanted sword possible, they can just have level or skill prerequisites that prevent you from wielding (or wielding effectively) any item that you don't have the skills for.

As long as they follow the philosophy that Demon's Souls had of always being online, yet never 100% feeling like you’re online, any online aspect to The Elder Scrolls V could potentially be great.

I'd be okay with these, especially if it involved some C.H.U.D members, and that I can pickpocket them... or give you a delicious poisoned apple.

Let me be the first to shout this from the rooftops:

PLEASE NO GODDAM MULTIPLAYER.

This constant creep of 'me-too' mutiplayer into great single-player games has got to stop somewhere. There are plenty of free-to-play MMOs out there if you just absolutely have to slay RadSKorPIon69.

I haven't. Morrowind was an absolutely stonking game. For someone who's only real experience with RPGs was KOTOR and Neverwinter Nights, I was astounded at the depth and variety of Morrowind.

It's telling that Oblivion gave you the option of fast-travelling straight away, almost like they knew the world they created was vanilla and repetitive. Give me those loopy-as-hell Telvanni towns over walled-off cities any day.

I loved enchanting on Morrowind over Oblivion, although with enough gold you could make yourself a monstrous weapon or boots that let you fly.

As for Skyrim, yeah, gonna buy. Duh.

Oblivion's fast-travel system featured strongly in the first two Elder Scrolls games, but I read some dev-interview somewhere several years ago where they mentioned that the reason it was taken out of Morrowind was to prevent gameplay imbalance. The probable solution is for Bethesda to make traveling into an adventure, like in Betrayal at Krondor (in which fast travel became available only late in the game, and in very few places).

Travelling through the wilderness in Oblivion was actually rather peaceful at times. The music was soothing, and even the enemies weren't so bad at the early levels. Oblivion is slightly easier to get into than Morrowind, and the learning curve isn't nearly as steep.

For me, personally, I never had a huge issue with Oblivion's scenery, except that Oblivion had four basic landscapes: town, Oblivion, low-density forest, and dungeon. Yet, the game was such eye-porn that it didn't really matter. To be sure, it also had rocky landscapes, snowy mountains, and the Realm of Madness, which is like a whole different type of landscape all on its own. Still, with Morrowind, you could travel a few miles through a bog and end up in the middle of a choking dust storm. And it was spectacular.

I have to disagree with the "all-the-cities-look-the-same" sentiment, though. Granted, they're not as dramatically different as the ones in Morrowind, but each city does have its own distinct architectural style -- I thought this was rather well done, and a nice touch. There's no mistaking dumpy Bravil for homey Bruma or gothic-y Skingrad.

Give me more of this, though, Bethesda:

You know, I was really surprised upon revisiting Morrowind earlier this year, and that screenshot reveals why. The draw distance is extraordinarily short, even at its maximum setting, yet I don't recall ever being bothered by it at the time. It's amazing what a few years will give you.