Official Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim thread

[KcMsterpce]

Originally Posted by CuatroDiablos

Amazing that these demos are running on the 360...on PC it will likely look a lot more sharper.

It could look much, MUCH better on PC.
It might not, though, if the port is lazy and not-good... like Metal of Honor or many other titles.

[vesaker]

Some more screens













I wonder if they are adding horse back riding for this game based on that 3rd screen shot. Would be cool if they did. I thought it was kind of lame that they added quick travel in Oblivion (that didn't require being in a town already) and believe that the real solution is something like riding a horse to speed up regular travel.

[Tyler_Durden_208]

Originally Posted by vesaker

I wonder if they are adding horse back riding for this game based on that 3rd screen shot. Would be cool if they did. I thought it was kind of lame that they added quick travel in Oblivion (that didn't require being in a town already) and believe that the real solution is something like riding a horse to speed up regular travel.

Oblivion already had horses? I'd fully expect mountable horses would be in this game, as it'd be a complete backtrack if not. They are adding mounted combat from what I've heard.
The big rumor right now as far as mounts go is that things such as the mammoth are possibly mountable. I don't believe the rumors of riding dragons, as the logistics of that, engine wise and story wise, just don't seem to fit.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by Tyler_Durden_208

Oblivion already had horses? I'd fully expect mountable horses would be in this game, as it'd be a complete backtrack if not. They are adding mounted combat from what I've heard.
The big rumor right now as far as mounts go is that things such as the mammoth are possibly mountable. I don't believe the rumors of riding dragons, as the logistics of that, engine wise and story wise, just don't seem to fit.

Yeah i never made it far enough into Oblivion to know if they were in that game but now that you mention it i think i recall that being one of the things they talked about prior to the games release.

[Tyler_Durden_208]

Originally Posted by vesaker

Yeah i never made it far enough into Oblivion to know if they were in that game but now that you mention it i think i recall that being one of the things they talked about prior to the games release.

Yeah, they were definitely in it. The controls took a bit of getting used to, but (at least on PC) they were the best I've played with this side of Mount and Blade. I can only hope they've gotten even better and they're not as wonky as Red Dead Redemption or something like that.

[Evil Ed]

Pre-ordered today at Gamestop.

FYI- Gamestop is running a nasty special right now if you pre-order this game. You get an additional 40% trade in bonus on any games traded, that day! Meaning, you can waltz in there with 3 games, get an additional 20% trade in for trading 3 games, preorder ES:5 for $5, get an additional 40% trade in value, use your power up card and get an additional 10% trade in value for your entire trade. Add that shite up and we are talking an additional 70% trade in for the day! Whammy! I traded 3 games in this weekend and get $80 store credit. Can't beat that!

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

Pre-ordered today at Gamestop.

FYI- Gamestop is running a nasty special right now if you pre-order this game. You get an additional 40% trade in bonus on any games traded, that day! Meaning, you can waltz in there with 3 games, get an additional 20% trade in for trading 3 games, preorder ES:5 for $5, get an additional 40% trade in value, use your power up card and get an additional 10% trade in value for your entire trade. Add that shite up and we are talking an additional 70% trade in for the day! Whammy! I traded 3 games in this weekend and get $80 store credit. Can't beat that!

very interesting.......

[Evil Ed]

Definitely check it out.

[vesaker]

Some info on possible DLC

Skyrim to have fewer, more 'substantial' DLC packs

Report By Eddie Makuch, GameSpot Posted Jun 29, 2011 2:51 pm PT

Bethesda boss Todd Howard says gamers can expect "expansion pack feel" add-ons in Elder Scrolls V; calls Fallout 3 DLC scheme "chaotic."

Bethesda Game Studios' latest Fallout game--2008's well-received Fallout 3--welcomed a whopping five downloadable add-ons over the course of its life. However, the Maryland-based studio isn't going the same route with its next role-playing game, according to Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard.

No word yet on new horse armor for Skyrim.

In a recent interview with AusGamers, Howard said that although Bethesda does not yet have specific plans for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim downloadable content support, he envisions that the game will welcome fewer, but "more substantial," add-ons.

"Right now, I can say that we'd like to do less DLC but bigger ones," he said. "You know, more substantial…we don't know what we're going to make yet, but we'd like them to be closer to an expansion pack feel."

Skyrim's predecessor--The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion--hosted a slew of DLC that ran the gamut from sizable expansions like The Shivering Isle and Knights of the Nine to the oft-jeered horse armor.

Howard also offered a note about how Bethesda approached the DLC process for Fallout 3. He called the pacing of new additions to the role-playing game "very chaotic."

Source

This is good. I preffer few but larger expansions to ones that only add a small area and a couple of quests. For FO3 the best DLC was Point Lookout if only for how big it was and the challenges it presented.

The only way the smaller ones work is if they are released quickly and close together, like a month or so apart, like they've been doing for New Vegas or even like the amount of stuff thats already availible for Rockstars L.A. Noire. I swear i see new DLC for Noire every week, lol.

[DaveyJoeG]

That's great to hear. At $10 a piece, most of the DLC for Fallout 3 was very overpriced for how much content they provided.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by DaveyJoeG

That's great to hear. At $10 a piece, most of the DLC for Fallout 3 was very overpriced for how much content they provided.

Yeah pretty much the only way to stretch some of them out was to get all the trophies regardless of how tedeous it was. I recall the Pitt having a trophy for finding all 100 iron ingots with out giving any way to track the ones you've found. Otherwise only Point Lookout and Broken Steel were worth their price.

[Evil Ed]

I live in Pittsburgh, so I downloaded the Pitt to check out the game to life comparison. I never got the expansion pack to work. I read all about how to listen for the signal etc online, it just never came to my game. Very disappointed.

[DaveyJoeG]

Originally Posted by vesaker

Yeah pretty much the only way to stretch some of them out was to get all the trophies regardless of how tedeous it was. I recall the Pitt having a trophy for finding all 100 iron ingots with out giving any way to track the ones you've found. Otherwise only Point Lookout and Broken Steel were worth their price.

Yeah I'm a total trophy whore but that trophy for hunting the ingots in the Pitt seemed far too tedious and mind numbing for me to even attempt. I hated gathering 18 of them for the quest, I can't imagine wasting time going after 100 of them. I would agree that Broken Steel and Point Lookout were the only DLC releases worth anything close to $10, I think the average DLC should be priced $5 at the most.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

I live in Pittsburgh, so I downloaded the Pitt to check out the game to life comparison. I never got the expansion pack to work. I read all about how to listen for the signal etc online, it just never came to my game. Very disappointed.

Yeah that sounds like it jsut didn't install properly. There is a radio station to listen for but that's just part of it. If the DLC installed properly you would have gotten a quest telling to to find the radio signal.


I've read some ppl are having trouble installing the newest DLC for New Vegas as well. I've downlaoded it but have yet to play again since so i'm not sure if mine worked fine or not.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

Pre-ordered today at Gamestop.

FYI- Gamestop is running a nasty special right now if you pre-order this game. You get an additional 40% trade in bonus on any games traded, that day! Meaning, you can waltz in there with 3 games, get an additional 20% trade in for trading 3 games, preorder ES:5 for $5, get an additional 40% trade in value, use your power up card and get an additional 10% trade in value for your entire trade. Add that shite up and we are talking an additional 70% trade in for the day! Whammy! I traded 3 games in this weekend and get $80 store credit. Can't beat that!

So finally got around to preordering

Here in Toronto the Gamestops have a bit of a different promotion going on. Here when you preorder Skyrim and trade in game towards it you can trade in 2 games as as long as they are worth at least $8 each Gamespot will put the value from $16 to $50 on the preorder!

So i traded in 007 Bloodstone and NHL11 and got $50 off my preorder of Skyrim, making only $12 more to finally purchase

I would have kept 007 and traded Arkham Assylum instead but it was only worth $7 apparently, lol.

[vesaker]

Bit of a hands on

This last little bit in the article made me smile

Our hands-on time with Skyrim left us with the impression that Bethesda isn't trying to reinvent The Elder Scrolls formula. Instead, they're taking what was great about the previous games and adding some interesting new content on top of them.

This is a good thing. I'd hate to get close to the release date only to find out it was a debacle similar to Dungeon Seige III.

[vesaker]

Some more Demo stuff

Some interesting info on dungeon design and crafting. This game is sounding better and better. Can't wait.

[vesaker]

Somw more screens They've got all the newly done character models, check it out!

Argonian


Dark Elf


Khajiit


Nord


Orc


Redguard


Wood Elf


I think they're looking pretty good though there is no info on what resolution and such that these are being dyeplayed in i nthe first place. If i recall correctly the only regular race that is missing here is the High Elves or the Aldmer. Now that doesn't mea they aren't in the game but they may not be.

Oh well i'm always a Nord anyways.

[CuatroDiablos]

This game is looking better and better , this mut be the 360 peaking it's hardware. I hope the PS3 doesn't get a lazy port.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by CuatroDiablos

This game is looking better and better , this mut be the 360 peaking it's hardware. I hope the PS3 doesn't get a lazy port.

and this is why i buy it for PC

[Evil Ed]

Oh here we go with the ignoramus Xbox vs PS3 battle. When are Xbox fans just admit the fact that PS3 is much more powerful? Cartoony graphics vs Realistic, I'll take realistic anyday. PS3, next best thing to having a high powered PC

[MikeMovie]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

Oh here we go with the ignoramus Xbox vs PS3 battle. When are Xbox fans just admit the fact that PS3 is much more powerful? Cartoony graphics vs Realistic, I'll take realistic anyday. PS3, next best thing to having a high powered PC

PS3 is capable of having better graphics than 360. And often it does. It's more powerful hardware like you're saying.
BUT, games are usually ported to the PS3 from the 360. Games are easier to develop for the 360.
When a game gets ported from the 360 to the PS3, there are flaws and glitches and some graphical detail gets lost altogether.
It's very possible to have the same 360 game have better graphics than the same PS3 game.
I remember when Mafia II came out, the Xbox 360 version had grass and blood. The PS3 version didn't look as good by comparison and lacked the grass and blood that the 360 had.
It was little graphical details like that, that made me almost wish I still had 360 because I want a good port.
Hopefully if Skyrim is ported for the PS3 it'll be treated with the same amount of attention as the 360 version. But who knows...
Although, if Skyrim was a PS3 exclusive, it could have much much better graphics.

[Evil Ed]

I get a long just fine with the PS3 graphics, and enjoy the graphics for Xbox as well, honestly the difference is so miniscule in games it's hard to even notice. Usually it just looks like something is darker or a little blurry on screen shots.

[vesaker]

I've read through several articles where they compare a game over the 2 systems and see which is better. Games like Ghostbusters and Crysis 2 the only difference was some of the textures and things like harder edges on shadows and the like.

At the end of the day if you are actually playing the game and not just sitting there looking at it you're not going to really notice the difference without both systems running on side by side screens.

The PS3 does have the one up though since it uses Bly-ray disks and can fit more data. If i recall Final Fantasy XIII was something like 3 dvd's on Xbox and 1 bly-ray disk on PS3.

[MikeMovie]

What's so cool about Blurays is how much data they can store. I think some hold 20 gigs, and others can hold up to 40! that's insane. This means you can have uncompressed data on it, and more data than a standard DVD. Thus more information, and better graphics.
That's why PS3 exclusives are usually MUCH bigger games than 360 exclusives. And usually better graphics too.

[Evil Ed]

Oh man, FF13 absolutely killed my old PS3. It was way too powerful, just burned it up, gave it the yellow light of death. To this day I still haven't put that game in my new PS3.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

Oh man, FF13 absolutely killed my old PS3. It was way too powerful, just burned it up, gave it the yellow light of death. To this day I still haven't put that game in my new PS3.

lol, well i played through 110 hrs of it in my new PS3 so you may be safe.

[Evil Ed]

Did I mention it also made my PS3 trap NHL '11 inside of it? Yeah, I thought it was just FF13 that was messed up, so I popped it out and put in NHL, the system yellow lighted again and would not spit the game out. I had to take my PS3 apart to get it out. I figured I'm losing a system, but I won't lose the war and let it take my NHL as well.

[vesaker]

Got some more screen, Bunch of examples of the faces that you can customize for the races:

Argonian


Brenton - Didn't have a full model pic in the earlier post for this race


Dark Elf


Altmer (High Elves) - Seems they are in the game after all


Imperial - Not show in the earlier post


Khajiit


Nord


Orc


Red Guard


Wood Elf

[Evil Ed]

Nord with Magic and Power, so sweet.

[vesaker]

Yeah i've only ever played Nord since Morrowind for some reason. Probably something to do with their racial bonuses making the most sense to me. If i recall there aren't really any races that fit into a single roll (melee, ranged or magic) completely in terms of racial bonuses.

One thing i'd like them to do is refine the magic skill lvling system as it just doesn't work well with how its set up. The need to constantly use magic to lvl it up when you start with next to no majicka its ust a snails pace. I recall in Oblivion that healing magic was the only one i wanted to go after and i had a basic healing spell i could cast twice for it drained all my magicka and it would take for ever for the magicka to refill.

Now this may of had more to do with the fact taht i was playing Nord instead of the Dark Elves or Altmer but it just seemed like i'd have to invest a ton of time just lvling that one skill up to make it viable.

Lvling your sword skill by hitting things with a sword is fine, there is no shortage of things to hit and your stamina replenishes at a decent pace at the start of the game, but having to do it with something that has a horrible resource pool to start with just feels broken to me.

[Evil Ed]

I played as a Dark Elf in Oblivion, and it took forever to get my magic up too. I used the basic healing spell and had to cast it 10 times just to refill my health meter. I think it's just natural that everything sucks for a while until you spend 20 hrs leveling up.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

I played as a Dark Elf in Oblivion, and it took forever to get my magic up too. I used the basic healing spell and had to cast it 10 times just to refill my health meter. I think it's just natural that everything sucks for a while until you spend 20 hrs leveling up.

i can understand that but it's just that when you comapre the ease of lvling a weapon or even an armor skill in comparison to a magic skill it seems like a large gap.

I mean i suppose it makes sense that a person wouldn't learn how to better use magic before learning how to properly swing a sword but it's still annoying lol.

[Evil Ed]

Yeah I agree, that's why in Oblivion I didn't even play around with Magic too much. I was stickly a sword and armor guy that used a healing spell and threw some weak fire and ice spells. Can't wait to get my hands on this game though, everything I've seen looks great.

[vesaker]

So yeah, this is kind of lame.....

Skyrim DLC to be Xbox 360-exclusive for 30 days
By Brendan Sinclair, GameSpot Posted Aug 26, 2011 8:38 am PT

First two add-ons for The Elder Scrolls V will debut on Microsoft's console a month before any other platform.

While it's increasingly rare for a third-party publisher to release a highly anticipated game exclusive to one platform, that hasn't stopped Sony and Microsoft from trying to secure an edge on the competition. As a result, PlayStation 3 players have seen console-exclusive content for games like Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and Dante's Inferno, while Xbox 360 fans of Call of Duty: Black Ops and Homefront have been able to get early access to the first-person shooters' add-ons.

Microsoft is furthering that approach, as today the company announced timed Xbox 360 exclusivity for Bethesda's upcoming open-world role-playing game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The first two add-on content drops for Skyrim will debut on the Xbox 360 and remain exclusive to the platform for 30 days. Last year, Bethesda agreed to a similar Xbox 360 exclusivity window with Dead Money, the first DLC pack for Fallout: New Vegas.

While it's unclear what will be included in those two packs, the exclusive add-ons are likely to be meatier than The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's notorious horse armor DLC. In a recent interview, Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard said he envisions that Skyrim will welcome fewer but "more substantial" add-ons compared to its predecessor.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is set for release November 11 on the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PC. For more on the game, check out GameSpot's previous coverage.

Source

The ways these companies are trying to make these ever elusive extra dollars is just getting out of hand. I mean at the end of the day this situation wont really matter. If the DLC's are like past ES add ons they'll be outside the main stroy and possibly not even acessable until afterthe main story is finished. However if they are more like the Fallout ones which are pretty much side quests you can go and take on at any time in the game then this will suck a bit.

I mean what the hell is Microsoft really trying to accomplish here? They just want their money first or something? Do they really think doing things like this will sway a person anymore to buy an Xbox over a PS3?

[CuatroDiablos]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

Oh here we go with the ignoramus Xbox vs PS3 battle. When are Xbox fans just admit the fact that PS3 is much more powerful? Cartoony graphics vs Realistic, I'll take realistic anyday. PS3, next best thing to having a high powered PC

LOL WTF?..who started a console war here?..and 360 and PS3 have little to no difference when it comes to great looking games...they are both equal.

[vesaker]

So there have been a few new vids posted on Gamespot.

Introduction Gameplay

Dungeon Gameplay

Dragon Gameplay

This last one is some sore of feature

Skyrim Video Blowout

[Evil Ed]

Definitely picking up the strategy guide for this one. I think I didn't like Oblivion as much because I was totally lost on what to do story wise. I roamed around the entire map finding places and gaining endless sidequests that I never really touched the main story line. I heard this one is a little more focused (think along the lines of Fallout 3) then Oblivion was, so that's a huge plus for me.

[vesaker]

Originally Posted by Evil Ed

Definitely picking up the strategy guide for this one. I think I didn't like Oblivion as much because I was totally lost on what to do story wise. I roamed around the entire map finding places and gaining endless sidequests that I never really touched the main story line. I heard this one is a little more focused (think along the lines of Fallout 3) then Oblivion was, so that's a huge plus for me.

Yeah, Oblivion definitely lacked direction as to the main quest. I even tried to do it one time, got to the point where you enter the first Oblivion gate to close it and got totally lost! i found some tower and killed some demon and smashed some sort of orb or something if i recall but nothing happened.

I'm really hoping that Skyrim is more like Morrowind in terms of how much they toss the main story at you from the get go. At the end of the day the Main story is what SHOULD WANT to play while mixing up the pacing by doing side quests from time to time.

[Mongo]

This game looks amazing. I'm going to dust off Oblivion now lol.