The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Catch-All

DSGamer wrote:
SpacePPoliceman wrote:
Irongut wrote:
Happy Dave wrote:

So I've never played an Elder Scrolls game, although I have played Fallout 3 extensively - will this game make zero sense without having played the previous ones? Or will I be able to dive right in?

Fallout 3 is not in the Elder Scrolls universe.. totally unrelated. Elder Scrolls takes place in a continent(?) called Tamriel. Other than the first two games (Arena/Daggerfall), Morrowind, Oblivion and Skrim are all separate stories in separate provinces of Tamriel.

I suspect "make zero sense" in this case refers to the systems, not the storyline. I suspect that because I wondered the same thing, and found, Happy, the answer was "Elder Scrolls make some sense". First Person Melee still feels weird. Playing Oblivion after Fallout 3 was really hard.

Oh. That could be what he means too. You melee in Fallout, but typically you think of wizardy Tolkein-esk games being 3rd person.

I know that sounds dismissive of "traditional fantasy" games. But I typically don't like them. Dragon Age was one huge exception.

Yeah, it's a bit of both - I didn't want to get the game and then discover the storyline made no sense. Combat and mechanics-wise, I'm hoping a game that comes out after Fallout 3 will be an evolution of the engine rather than a return to Oblivion's standards (which I understand have its detractors, gameplay and engine-wise, but have never played).

Honestly I've never been huge on fantasy settings, but the pseudo-Nordic snow-wreathed mountain setting of Skyrim has piqued my interest.

Capital!

Scratched wrote:

Capital!

Wasn't that sort of a foregone conclusion?

ruhk wrote:

Wasn't that sort of a foregone conclusion?

I don't think so really. You get loads of studios who have previously been fully supportive of mods who drop that commitment or just give a tiny proportion of the tools they have. Often it's for legal reasons though, as they can't distribute the tools or modding code which includes 3rd party middleware libraries.

I suppose one sign you could take from it is that Bethesda still has some confidence in the quality of their tools, as another excuse for not releasing modding tools is that they're not friendly to work with and crash all the time.

Bethesda's a bit of a different case, though, in that the mod community is such a large part of their games' popularity. Even eight years after it's release Morrowind continues to sell solely because of mods, and I can't imagine Bethesda has overlooked the long tail provided to their last three games by their mod support. It just makes financial sense to include it at this point.

I'd be interested to see the PC:Console ratio for Bethesda's games, PC games bringing in much less than console games is the usual go-to excuse for why the PC version of multiplatform games gets shafted. Zenimax is a different case than most publishers though, being a private company so their mission may not be to maximise shareholder payout. I suppose if the tools are good enough, there's little downside to allowing modding, as it does provide good will, free advertising and keeps their game around for many times longer than the content one company could make.

Remember ruhk, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas and Oblivion all use the same game engine. It's a foregone conclusion that any BethSoft Gamebryo game will include mod support because most of the work for that is already done. They just tweak the editor and they're done. As Skyrim will be using a new engine, they can't just rely on all the mod support stuff they've done for their previous games.

It'll be interesting to see the end result with regards to mods, and whether the Creation engine is wholly new or not. There's a bunch of usability issues with mods, such as load orders, conflicts when two mods change the same thing, how non-.bsm mods pretty much just spam into the install directory and are hard to separate out as opposed to each one being a separate 'package'. I'm sure there's probably a load of nasty hacks required in the creation of mods too.

If they've taken the time to rejig their engine significantly, they've got the opportunity to make that aspect of their game a joy to use.

No, but the potential revenue would make native mod support a large priority when building a new engine. It's all about the benjamins, as they say.

Community projects like that Fallout Mod Manager (FOMM) seemed to make mod install and load order pretty seamless. I think the open nature of modding that Bethesda has provided and the individual priorities/focus of any one mod project ultimately is the cause of any conflict / complexity. The one area of modding that seemed to need hacks is around the GUI / script extenders. Maybe they can work a bit more open-ness into that aspect.

I'll be interested to see the timing of their mod tool release. Right as the game launches? A couple months after? Surely not two weeks before so that modders can get used to the new system. :pray:

There's no emoticon for prayer? I guess I'll mod it in. IMAGE(http://i152.photobucket.com/albums/s164/yaffa58/smiley_pray.gif)

The closest I got to modding a TES game was adding in books to Oblivion.

Ha! Hadn't seen this photo related to the mod news until today (via RPS)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/11/jan/kittens.jpg)

Every time you constant enchant health regeneration, Lord Dagoth kills a monster kitten.

Montalban wrote:
tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Ha! Hadn't seen this photo related to the mod news until today (via RPS)

IMAGE(http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/images/11/jan/kittens.jpg)

Khajiit children confirmed for TESV: Skyrim! It's completely official and stuff.

But you CAN'T KILL THEM (without the mod, which also lets you play a scantily clad one because there's something seriously wrong with some people).

tuffalobuffalo wrote:

Ha! Hadn't seen this photo related to the mod news until today (via RPS)

Edit: Picture removed due to blatant advertising grab.

Khajiit children confirmed for TESV: Skyrim! It's completely official and stuff.

I wonder how long it'll take for lolkhagitcats to show up.

Grubber788 wrote:

I wonder how long it'll take for lolkhagitcats to show up.

I can has skooma?

Happy Dave wrote:

Long article about the new combat mechanics over at Game Informer. Worth a read for sure.

Backpedaling makes a huge difference. I'm very interested in seeing how they've changed the power of the magic characters, to if the painful option of only magic is more plausible than in Oblivion (at least, not plausible before you can craft your own spells).

Reading the article it all sounds pretty good. They make a lot out of it being more risk/reward to use a bow, how retreating is more difficult, and how you now have to "commit" more as a spellcaster as you have to have the spell equipped to an empty hand thus giving up your shield. I agree that these are good things as they prevent the hit and run cheese tactics that worked in Oblivion and also prevent you from spellcasting while fighting with a sword and shield. They also discuss tweaks to the blocking system that make timing more important. However, there is no mention of a new timing based "dodge" which to me seems like a necessity for non-fighters if they have now decreased your backpedal speed and required you to leave your shield behind to wield magic.

EDIT: I also meant to question how well these changes actually work if it is too easy to change between equipment loadouts mid-battle. It seems like a lot of the changes wouldn't mean much if you could just swap from magic or bow and arrow directly to a sword and shield layout instantaneously in battle.

When they start messing with the feel of the controls in combat, they run the risk of making you feel like you're driving a tank instead of a biped. As long as it's balanced, I can see myself liking that better anyhow, but I can only imagine the unholy shrieking from people who can't adjust.

TES3/4 on PC your character feels like a tank anyway, with no momentum and robotic movement, so I'm certainly interested to see how the new combat feels. Coming with all the havok stuff it could be a big step up.

It's odd, as from reading the article I don't have too much of a mental picture of how it all fits together, and that for me it really is a 'feel' thing.

Anyone else read that and think 'Mount & Blade?' Obviously not the magic, but the attacking and blocking sounds very similar. And that's a great thing IMO.

Jasonofindy wrote:

EDIT: I also meant to question how well these changes actually work if it is too easy to change between equipment loadouts mid-battle. It seems like a lot of the changes wouldn't mean much if you could just swap from magic or bow and arrow directly to a sword and shield layout instantaneously in battle.

Without having read the article, needing an empty hand to cast spells sounds a lot like Morrowind, where drawing or putting away a weapon to switch modes took a moment.

I heard enchanting is coming back. I want to remake my favorite item from Morrowind: a ring that casts fireball when worn. That means you put it on and it fires a steady, uncontrollable stream of exploding fire till you take it off again. Doesn't even use mana.

The guards LOVED that one.

From Joystiq's review of Two Worlds II:

Joystiq[/url]]did I mention my spell crafting is actually called DEMONS or Dynamic Enchantment, Magic, Occultism and Necromancy System?

A VATS equivalent in Skyrim couldn't have a worse acronym than that at least.

Gravey wrote:

From Joystiq's review of Two Worlds II:

Joystiq[/url]]did I mention my spell crafting is actually called DEMONS or Dynamic Enchantment, Magic, Occultism and Necromancy System?

A VATS equivalent in Skyrim couldn't have a worse acronym than that at least.

Starting to feel like the military here. Not everything needs to be an acronym, especially an uncomfortable acronym that sounds menacing or cool, and double-especially in a medieval setting.

LobsterMobster wrote:

I heard enchanting is coming back. I want to remake my favorite item from Morrowind: a ring that casts fireball when worn. That means you put it on and it fires a steady, uncontrollable stream of exploding fire till you take it off again. Doesn't even use mana.

The guards LOVED that one.

Oblivion had enchanting, but it could only be done at enchanting podiums, and they were somewhat few and far between. After how broken and exploitable the enchanting system in morrowind was, though, they overnerfed it a bit in oblivion. It really wasn't that useful, as random loot was usually more powerful than anything you could personally enchant.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

Anyone else read that and think 'Mount & Blade?' Obviously not the magic, but the attacking and blocking sounds very similar. And that's a great thing IMO.

I would play the hell out of that game.

Haakon7 wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:

Anyone else read that and think 'Mount & Blade?' Obviously not the magic, but the attacking and blocking sounds very similar. And that's a great thing IMO.

I would play the hell out of that game.

If you can ride bears instead of horses in this game i think you may be set!