I been tryin' to keep my eyes offa' most of the info coming out so I don't have any particularly great expectations to be crushed when this does come out, but there is one thing I'd be happy to be spoiled about for Skyrim:
Is magic gonna' be something that you can specialize in fully and will be able to carry you from start to end? One thing I love about Oblivion is that unlike pretty much every other game that's got magic in it magic and the magic profession is actually sustainable, none of that blow-your-daily-magic-wad-and-sleep-for-eight-hours or carry-around-a-metric-fuckton-of-potions-to-chug-between-fights bullshit. No stupid rules or abstract limitations, but something that actually was part of the world instead of having this sort of disconnect that you've got to dive through layers of bullshit to get through.
Heres the bit on magic from the Gameinformer combat article:
Conjuring Better Spell Casting
Keeping in line with the philosophy of making the combat more tactile, Bethesda took inspiration for its spell casting from an unlikely source in Irrational Games' BioShock. Fighting his way through the city of Rapture, Howard was impressed with how Ken Levine's team visualized the power of the plasmids in your hands. They're adopting a similar approach for Skyrim.
“Before when we had magic, it never felt to us like you were actually doing it,” Howard admits. “It was a separate button, it flew out of your fist, and you could have a shield in your hand or a two handed-weapon – you could do it with anything.”
In Oblivion spells were cast with a face button, which allowed you to equip traditional weapons for melee combat and deftly cast spells between swings. By forcing players to equip a spell with one of their hands, players must make more of a commitment to learning the arcane arts. The ability to equip two different spells on your left and right hand raises the question – can you combine more than one spell? “We're not talking about that,” Howard says with a smile. “We're not sure. We'd like to; it'd be awesome.”
Even if you can't combine spells, magicka students will have no shortage of options, with over 85 spells divided into five schools of magic – destruction, restoration, illusion, alteration, and conjuration. Longtime Elder Scrolls fans may notice that the school of mysticism is absent. That's an intentional move on Bethesda's part. “It always felt like the magical school of mysticism – isn't that redundant?” Howard says. The spells formerly housed under the domain of mysticism have been moved to other schools of magic.
One of the more alluring changes to the spellcasting in Skyrim is how you can employ spells in different ways. For instance, you could blast enemies with a flame ball from afar, hold the button down to wield the spell like a flame thrower, place a rune on the ground to create an environmental trap that spontaneously combusts when an enemy steps on it, or equip the spell with both hands to deliver high damage fireball attacks that drain your magicka reserves quickly. The shock and frost spells give players an equal amount of flexibility.
The Havok Behavior technology gives the spells more visual flair than we've seen in past Elder Scrolls games as well. If you cast a frost spell, you'll see the effects on the enemy's skin. If you're wielding the flame spell like a flame thrower, the environment will catch fire for a short while and burn anything that comes into contact with it.
More so than in Oblivion, Skyrim’s new magic system also gives players legitimate benefits to using one attacking spell over the other. Fire deals the highest amount of damage, lighting drains the enemy’s magicka, and frost drains stamina and slows down enemies physically. This gives players more incentive to use particular spells against specific enemies. Why shoot fireballs at a wizard when you can simultaneously drain his heath and magicka with a shock spell? “There’s a gaminess to it that we didn’t really have before,” Howard says.
If you come face to face with another wizard, you’ll want to keep an attacking spell in one hand and improve your defense by equipping a ward spell in the other. Suddenly, magic duels become much more interesting, as you must attack at the opportune time, use the ward as a shield when your opponent is casting spells your way, and manage your magicka level by consuming potions.
Over 85 spells? That is good news, especially considering they dropped one of the schools. Well, good news assuming that when they say spells, they mean spell types, and not literal spells (open easy lock, open average lock, etc...).
According to this page, there was only 62 spell types in oblivion.
Over 85 spells? That is good news, especially considering they dropped one of the schools. Well, good news assuming that when they say spells, they mean spell types, and not literal spells (open easy lock, open average lock, etc...).
According to this page, there was only 62 spell types in oblivion.
Well seeing as how they said you can't create your own spells...
Wonder how that spell system will pan out in regards to characters who are melee/magic hybrids. Interesting stuff to me, 'cos I'm loving my quarterstaff-swingin', acrobatic wandering healer type person on my fresh Oblivion install, and wondering what'll be involved in casting restoration spells in-between crushing skulls.
Over 85 spells? That is good news, especially considering they dropped one of the schools. Well, good news assuming that when they say spells, they mean spell types, and not literal spells (open easy lock, open average lock, etc...).
According to this page, there was only 62 spell types in oblivion.
Well seeing as how they said you can't create your own spells...
As long as they keep the "remove target's clothing" spell, I'm happy :twisted:
Mattie on
3DS Code 0001-3323-2884
Xbox Live Gamertag: Suplex86
Over 85 spells? That is good news, especially considering they dropped one of the schools. Well, good news assuming that when they say spells, they mean spell types, and not literal spells (open easy lock, open average lock, etc...).
According to this page, there was only 62 spell types in oblivion.
Well seeing as how they said you can't create your own spells...
As long as they keep the "remove target's clothing" spell, I'm happy :twisted:
Add in panic and range= the cube of infinity and you have a winner.
Wow, a face that doesn't look like balls. How far we've come.
EDIT: In seriousness now, after reading some stuff and looking at the screenshots, the game looks gorgeous, and they've apparently dropped the whole "procedurally generated" thing and handcrafted every single environment in the game, so cities all look different, and dungeons are all unique. I really really disliked Oblivion because everything felt like it was just slapped together, it wasn't a compelling enough environment to explore, but it really sounds like this will fix all that.
Guy who hated Oblivion is now officially excited for Skyrim. It's Bethesda's game to fumble now.
Wow, a face that doesn't look like balls. How far we've come.
EDIT: In seriousness now, after reading some stuff and looking at the screenshots, the game looks gorgeous, and they've apparently dropped the whole "procedurally generated" thing and handcrafted every single environment in the game, so cities all look different, and dungeons are all unique. I really really disliked Oblivion because everything felt like it was just slapped together, it wasn't a compelling enough environment to explore, but it really sounds like this will fix all that.
Guy who hated Oblivion is now officially excited for Skyrim. It's Bethesda's game to fumble now.
Me too. I still fear the dialouge writing, but if they can improve in other areas this much I give them the benefit of the doubt.
Yeah, I'm sure the story will be terrible. At least with the whole Dragonborn thing I can be reasonably confident that they won't pull a Fallout/Oblivion and will actually make me the hero instead of the hero's assistant. I just wanna wander around a lush beautiful environment with awesome handcrafted dungeons and cities I can rob the crap out of.
l337CrappyJack on
0
wiltingI had fun once and it was awfulRegistered Userregular
At least with the whole Dragonborn thing I can be reasonably confident that they won't pull a Fallout/Oblivion and will actually make me the hero instead of the hero's assistant. I just wanna wander around a lush beautiful environment with awesome handcrafted dungeons and cities I can rob the crap out of.
Very heroic! ;-)
Cautiously optimistic about this. Like what I hear about using both hands.
* There is a perk that will lower the sound of your footsteps.
* Perk for Axe that enables deeper cuts, which means prolonged bleeding. You can hit someone once and they will eventually bleed out.
* Eventual perk upgrade for Maces that will allow you to hit for full damage, ignoring armor stats.
* The article mentions placing runes on the floor (that we know already) but in particular talks about 'lob a frost rune down and if an enemy wanders over it, shards of ice will be launched through its body'
* Telekinesis is an available spell.
* 'No more agility to build up so don't have to keep jumping around to level up' (I assume they mean no longer skills like acrobatics and athletes but they use the word agility)
* When you kill a dragon you're able to absorb its soul which will make you learn a new dragon shout.
* There is a dragon shout called 'Unrelenting Force' which pushes anything standing directly in front of you backwards.
* Dragon shouts have cooldown periods after each shout performed. Individual shouts will have their own cooldown time.
* In the northern parts of Solitude is the Bard's College. The city is a busy port and there's event similar to bonfire night that has the burning of an effigy of King Olaf.
* Windhelm is the largest city. It has a palace that should look spectacular. This is also apparently the hangout for the Imperial Guards who monitor the path to Morrowind.
* Bleak Falls Barrows is a dungeon, with ancient Nord catacombs which features rivers, tree roots coming through the ceiling and light coming through odd cracks.
* 120 Dungeons and they claim that 'no two areas will be alike'.
* Just to re-confirm this fact straight from Todd Howard. Oblivion had 1 dungeon designer with artists doing the rest. Skyrim has 8 dungeon designers.
* Whole world is hand-crafted. Oblivion had some generated landscapes and there is NONE of that anymore used in Skyrim.
* The Shivering isles expansion inspired the team that unique, hand-crafted cities, where no two buildings look the same, was the way to go.
* Example of a 'Radiant Story'. OXM UK recieved a quest to go to Bleak Falls Barrow and retrieve a golden dragon claw antique and take it back to shopkeeper Lucan. If you killed Lucan, the quest would change to his friend Camilla instead.
* The Snow. Has been a lot of confusion about this. OXM UK says that snowfall is dynamic. Instead of a texture with a bit of white added, landscapes realistically get dusted with snow landing in appropiate nooks and crannies.
* There are one-off puzzles in certain dungeons.
* Example of new AI: 'Wolves have a den. Few times a day they go out and do a patrol and hunt in a pack. If they kill something then they'll hang out there. If you go outside and they're on patrol they will come after you. If they've killed something they will guard that and not chase you down as they want to look after it.
Dragon Shouts
The fact about the 'absorb soul of dragons to learn new shouts' has caused a little bit of confusion.
The dragon shout phases, of up to three words, can be found inscribed on the walls of ancient Nord dungeons. When uttered by the Dragonborn (the player) the words invoke powerful magic powers. For many of the shouts you can learn more phases which in turn will allow you to unleash a lengthier or more powerful version of the shout by holding the shout button down.
This appears to be the main way of learning shouts, by finding the word inscriptions. However the OXM article also mentions that you can learn new shouts in the process of absorbing dragon souls. The article doesn't mention anything else about this, maybe not all dragons give shouts, we don't know yet.
* Page 31 - We see a dragon on top of snow covered ruins. There is a huge backdrop behind it showing off mountains, new clouds and fog. Draw distance looks great.
* Page 34 - There is a picture of the skyrim worldmap which lists the locations listed above. On 2nd look they've used the same map as the one on the UESP wiki, so it may be outdated.
* Page 38 - A player appears to be wearing Elven armor and dualwielding a sword and staff. The staff is able to cast light along a corrider. (Was in gameinformer but bigger shot here and addition info)
* Page 39 - 2 new screenshots here, we see a hooded stealth character performing a stealth execution (Assassin's Creed style, blade to the chest up close). We see a new dungeon called the 'Hall of Stories' which features a locked door and a puzzle to open it. Stonework looks fantastic with spider webbing across the walls.
MongerI got the ham stink.Dallas, TXRegistered Userregular
edited February 2011
Example of new AI: 'Wolves have a den. Few times a day they go out and do a patrol and hunt in a pack. If they kill something then they'll hang out there. If you go outside and they're on patrol they will come after you. If they've killed something they will guard that and not chase you down as they want to look after it.
Fantastic. Anybody doing anything remotely like the artificial life system that STALKER originally intended to do is fine by me.
For those that have played Nehrim: Do people talk differently towards you because of your sign? I can't tell if nobody will talk to me because they just weren't programed to say anything, or because I chose the "villain" sign.
For those that have played Nehrim: Do people talk differently towards you because of your sign? I can't tell if nobody will talk to me because they just weren't programed to say anything, or because I chose the "villain" sign.
I left off playing pretty shortly after picking my sign but my experience up to that point was that most random village NPCs don't have any dialogue. (And of course most guards will only say "I can't talk now, I'm on duty!")
Also shows clear and very nice [STRIKE]shadows[/STRIKE] tits.
I really hope they jazz up the atmosphere of the inns and bars of Skyrim. Fist fights, dancing and wenching is the order of the day!
Oblivion bars and inns were just so dull. I longed for a drinking festival or banquet of some kind to liven the spirits up.
Occasional rowdy viking drunkards I can see, but the way I imagine taverns and inns in the bleak, freezing tundra of Skyrim is mostly people sitting by themselves, hunched and brooding by dim firelight, listening to the howling night wind outside and hoping that in the bottom of their tankards of ale they can find temporary escape from the certainty of some Nord equivalent of Ragnarok.
Gaslight on
0
FiggyFighter of the night manChampion of the sunRegistered Userregular
edited February 2011
It looks like the bar maid is back there sweeping. Does that mean NPCs will do things other than walk around and then suddenly stare at me when I pass within x meters?
It looks like the bar maid is back there sweeping. Does that mean NPCs will do things other than walk around and then suddenly stare at me when I pass within x meters?
I think they're saying again that NPCs have actual tasks that they perform, yes.
It looks like the bar maid is back there sweeping. Does that mean NPCs will do things other than walk around and then suddenly stare at me when I pass within x meters?
Yes. Now they will sweep when you are within x meters.
LittleBoots on
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
It looks like the bar maid is back there sweeping. Does that mean NPCs will do things other than walk around and then suddenly stare at me when I pass within x meters?
Yes. Now they will sweep when you are within x meters.
As long as they keep their filthy fucking eyes to themselves.
Well now. That is a substantial improvement over Oblivion.
I hope this "new" graphics engine (rebuilt Gamebryo?) can actually run this efficiently, instead of it being just the old, horribly-performing Gamebryo with support for more horribly-performing shinies.
I hope this "new" graphics engine (rebuilt Gamebryo?) can actually run this efficiently, instead of it being just the old, horribly-performing Gamebryo with support for more horribly-performing shinies.
Yeah, I'm reserving my excitement until I see the gameplay in motion on a non-dev PC or play it myself. Oblivion looked jaw-dropping in screenshots before its release as well, and it turned out to be a huge mess of poorly-optimized middleware solutions that always seemed to be at war with each other using your PC as their battlefield.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It looks like the bar maid is back there sweeping. Does that mean NPCs will do things other than walk around and then suddenly stare at me when I pass within x meters?
Yes. Now they will sweep when you are within x meters.
Posts
Is magic gonna' be something that you can specialize in fully and will be able to carry you from start to end? One thing I love about Oblivion is that unlike pretty much every other game that's got magic in it magic and the magic profession is actually sustainable, none of that blow-your-daily-magic-wad-and-sleep-for-eight-hours or carry-around-a-metric-fuckton-of-potions-to-chug-between-fights bullshit. No stupid rules or abstract limitations, but something that actually was part of the world instead of having this sort of disconnect that you've got to dive through layers of bullshit to get through.
According to this page, there was only 62 spell types in oblivion.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Well seeing as how they said you can't create your own spells...
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
As long as they keep the "remove target's clothing" spell, I'm happy :twisted:
Xbox Live Gamertag: Suplex86
Add in panic and range= the cube of infinity and you have a winner.
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=16534
Also shows clear and very nice shadows.
It looks like they solved the dreaded neck line seam issue that always annoyed me in Oblivion.
Nothing like having your characters skin from the neck down be 2 shades darker or lighter than their face.
PSN = malickai XBL = gdragonstar Pokemon SS = 3095 7347 2659 Pokemon White = 5028 4446 2386
EDIT: In seriousness now, after reading some stuff and looking at the screenshots, the game looks gorgeous, and they've apparently dropped the whole "procedurally generated" thing and handcrafted every single environment in the game, so cities all look different, and dungeons are all unique. I really really disliked Oblivion because everything felt like it was just slapped together, it wasn't a compelling enough environment to explore, but it really sounds like this will fix all that.
Guy who hated Oblivion is now officially excited for Skyrim. It's Bethesda's game to fumble now.
Me too. I still fear the dialouge writing, but if they can improve in other areas this much I give them the benefit of the doubt.
Very heroic! ;-)
Cautiously optimistic about this. Like what I hear about using both hands.
Also a bunch of info (some new and some old):
Source: http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1165346-oxm-uk-new-info-screens/
Sneaky..
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
I left off playing pretty shortly after picking my sign but my experience up to that point was that most random village NPCs don't have any dialogue. (And of course most guards will only say "I can't talk now, I'm on duty!")
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
It was a stick.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I think they're saying again that NPCs have actual tasks that they perform, yes.
Yes. Now they will sweep when you are within x meters.
Tofu wrote: Here be Littleboots, destroyer of threads and master of drunkposting.
I have Uncharted AND Batman AND Mass Effect AND this coming out at the same damn time.
All right, people. It is not a gerbil. It is not a hamster. It is not a guinea pig. It is a death rabbit. Death. Rabbit. Say it with me, now.
The longer you hold the button, the more wenches come with ale.
http://i.imgur.com/FxmfI.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/GBdfz.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/Xsdo9.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/3PpaO.jpg
Sneaky..
As long as they keep their filthy fucking eyes to themselves.
Holy crap I thought that was undead Darth Vader on the right for a second.
Well now. That is a substantial improvement over Oblivion.
I hope this "new" graphics engine (rebuilt Gamebryo?) can actually run this efficiently, instead of it being just the old, horribly-performing Gamebryo with support for more horribly-performing shinies.
All I can say is FUCK YES.
That is all.
Yeah, I'm reserving my excitement until I see the gameplay in motion on a non-dev PC or play it myself. Oblivion looked jaw-dropping in screenshots before its release as well, and it turned out to be a huge mess of poorly-optimized middleware solutions that always seemed to be at war with each other using your PC as their battlefield.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
That or stick out their bosoms.