I think they want you to gain stronger spells not by tweaking sliders, but by investing in new perks. It might have been difficult incorporating custom spells into the game with how spells now operate, too, with the different unleashing of spells via a click or a hold, and the dual wielding/charging of spells. This isn't the same magic system we had before.
I do have to add that I've always hated playing mages or mixes. With what they've done with magic, however, I'm actually very tempted to try it on my first character.
And really, some of you aren't interesting in the game now because of an untested new leveling system and the fact that you can't tweak your spells with sliders? What about the huge, beautiful world there for you to explore? Monsters to slay? Quests to complete? Loot to find? The number game is probably the least important thing to me, and the combat actually looks fun this time around.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
I find the leather armor with that dumb-ass helmet we've seen everywhere in promotional art and in videos and screenshots pretty ugly (I've never, ever been a fan of the whole "manly man is too manly for sleeves and covering more than 20% of his chest" motif). The Khajiit's armor I'd have to see on a non-Khajiit - and in full, since it looks kind of loincloth-y at the bottom - to make a decision, though.
korodullin on
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
I find the leather armor with that dumb-ass helmet we've seen everywhere in promotional art and in videos and screenshots pretty ugly (I've never, ever been a fan of the whole "manly man is too manly for sleeves and covering more than 20% of his chest" motif). The Khajiit's armor I'd have to see on a non-Khajiit - and in full, since it looks kind of loincloth-y at the bottom - to make a decision, though.
But all Nords are Vikings, what else are Vikings meant to wear other than awesome helmets and sleeveless tops.
I find the leather armor with that dumb-ass helmet we've seen everywhere in promotional art and in videos and screenshots pretty ugly (I've never, ever been a fan of the whole "manly man is too manly for sleeves and covering more than 20% of his chest" motif). The Khajiit's armor I'd have to see on a non-Khajiit - and in full, since it looks kind of loincloth-y at the bottom - to make a decision, though.
But all Nords are Vikings, what else are Vikings meant to wear other than awesome helmets and sleeveless tops.
I really don't know what I'm going to play as in Skyrim, and that's kind of a first for me, since I almost always go heavy warrior with a shield. The spellsword in the 14 minute demo looked like a lot of fun, but then I see screenshots like this and I can see myself being a sneaky thief potentially investing in some illusion spells and marksmanship:
also, depending on how new/clean they were, and what dyes they were using it's quite possible their equipment was that bright and shiny.
I was joking.
I know Vikings were not like the Nords in Skyrim. But the stereotypical Hollywood vikings are pretty similar to the main guy we have seen so far.
I am currently debating on buying Morrowind (the combo with the expansions obviously) and just patching enough for stability. Then doing a Morrowind Pure run on my PC. Just to taste it...
But don't you want your Morrowind to look like this?
Honestly, Morrowind without the oppressive fogs of the swamps & mushroom forests and encompassing howling ash storms of the highlands doesn't feel right to me. The first time a Silt Strider loomed out of the mist was indescribable.
Looks like the components for my broke-ass computer aren't going to arrive until tuesday so I am stuck on my laptop until then.
I don't think my laptop is going to tangle well with Morrowind. It would probably work, but I don't feel like playing that game with poor resolution and framerate.
So. Daggerfall.
I have a reletively high threshold for shitty graphics, but I have never played Daggerfall. Since it's free and I am restricted to laptop gaming I might as well dive into some Elder Scrolls all historical styleee. I guess what I am wondering is - how difficult am I going to find playing this game? I know a lot of people really like it, but is that nostalga talking? Is this game going to bore me to tears and make me pull my hair out with poorly aged gaming mechanics or should I get up on this and adventure my bum off?
Also - is it easy to get it working or do I need DOSbox? Me and DOSbox haven't gotten along well in the past.
Looks like the components for my broke-ass computer aren't going to arrive until tuesday so I am stuck on my laptop until then.
I don't think my laptop is going to tangle well with Morrowind. It would probably work, but I don't feel like playing that game with poor resolution and framerate.
So. Daggerfall.
I have a reletively high threshold for shitty graphics, but I have never played Daggerfall. Since it's free and I am restricted to laptop gaming I might as well dive into some Elder Scrolls all historical styleee. I guess what I am wondering is - how difficult am I going to find playing this game? I know a lot of people really like it, but is that nostalga talking? Is this game going to bore me to tears and make me pull my hair out with poorly aged gaming mechanics or should I get up on this and adventure my bum off?
Also - is it easy to get it working or do I need DOSbox? Me and DOSbox haven't gotten along well in the past.
Daggerfall had some good game mechanics. Crazy big dungeons (I got lost a lot) all over the place too. You didn't so much min-max your character as max-max it. You could end up being stupidly skilled and powered, and being a good klepto meant that cash was never a problem.
Downside is that it was the most unstable game I ever played. I think it caused me three OS re-installs, plus god knows how many game re-installs. Hopefully that has been improved in the last decade or so.
As far as removing features in order to allow railroading goes, sure it's annoying. I'm just willing (somewhat) to accept that if the developers put in a really cool big-bad that they really really want you to fight, then you're going to have to do that. They just went for a ham handed approach that removes some of your options for avoiding certain situations. It's fug, but the alternative would have probably been a shockingly large number of 'no-fly' or 'anti-magic' zones around the game. Personally I'm more unhappy about the removal of the spell making altar.
Hopefully all these things will be fixed next year with Skyrim: New Vegas.
daveNYC on
Shut up, Mr. Burton! You were not brought upon this world to get it!
I've noticed a few people complaining that hardware has come a long way since Oblivion so the merging of chest and leg armor is bullshit.
Which I would agree with, if it weren't for the fact that unfortunately Bethesda is developing this for the 360 first. Its hardware has not been upgraded (other than some firmware updates I'd imagine).
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the next Elder Scrolls game, which would probably be on the next-gen console, will have more options again. Maybe that's just a pipedream though.
I've noticed a few people complaining that hardware has come a long way since Oblivion so the merging of chest and leg armor is bullshit.
Which I would agree with, if it weren't for the fact that unfortunately Bethesda is developing this for the 360 first. Its hardware has not been upgraded (other than some firmware updates I'd imagine).
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the next Elder Scrolls game, which would probably be on the next-gen console, will have more options again. Maybe that's just a pipedream though.
My point was actually we've come a long way since DAGGERFALL, and stuff is still getting removed. :P
I got Daggerfall installed this morning and played a little before work.
Y'know, for 1996 the atmospherics in the opening dungeon are really good. It's nowhere near as aye melting terrible looking as I expected.
I was having al ot of trouble getting to grips with the controls though... looking down, for example, is something that completely escaped me. Fighting rats was pretty much impossible. And I hate clicking the edges of the screen to move. Is there an alternative? Would mouselook be asking for too much?
Creating my character was fairly amusing too. Choose thy face.Name thyself!
I was having al ot of trouble getting to grips with the controls though... looking down, for example, is something that completely escaped me. Fighting rats was pretty much impossible. And I hate clicking the edges of the screen to move. Is there an alternative? Would mouselook be asking for too much?
You can go in the options and turn on mouselook IIRC.
I think it's called view mode or some shit, the game plays almost exactly like Morrowind with it on.
Skyrim looks very nice and I hunger for an engaging open-world medieval fantasy RPG. However, I loathed the leveling system in Oblivion. Is there word on how you get experience in Skyrim? Will I want to avoid using my chosen skills?
I don't think it will matter much with only the three attributes and perks. I think that's one of the main reasons for having gone with a system like that.
edit:
As far as we know leveling is still dependent on raising x amount of skills. The are only three attributes this go 'round.
Health, Fatigue, and Magicka. I'm not sure but I think you pick one to increase when you level and then you pick a perk.
So there will be no more worrying about getting the right combination of skill level ups to get the multipliers you want.
If that's something that interests you.
Macro9 on
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Zilla36021st Century. |She/Her|Trans* Woman In Aviators Firing A Bazooka. ⚛️Registered Userregular
Skyrim looks very nice and I hunger for an engaging open-world medieval fantasy RPG. However, I loathed the leveling system in Oblivion. Is there word on how you get experience in Skyrim? Will I want to avoid using my chosen skills?
Interview: Todd Howard On The Scope, Vision Of Skyrim
t's hard to believe that the last game in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series came out more than five years ago with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The sprawling RPG was a hit, and helped set the stage for a genre that would continue to increase in popularity on consoles.
Gamasutra recently sat down with Todd Howard, design director on Bethesda Softworks' long awaited Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is launching this November on PC and high-definition consoles.
Here, the long-time game developer talks about working with the game's all-new Creation Engine, how the studio changed up the Oblivion formula, and whether it's possible to convey the vision of a single designer through such a massive project.
Howard also explains how the studio approaches accessibility (hint: "It's not something that we think about a lot"), and the bugs that manage to sneak into Bethesda's massive, do-what-you-want games.
How hands-on are you with [Skyrim]?
There are a lot of great people who work on the team, we've worked together for a long time. We're focused on one game at a time, so I'm extremely hands on, design a lot of the systems, and play the game every day and give the guys feedback.
But we have a great group -- Matthew Carofano, who's our lead artist and was on Morrowind and Oblivion as well, Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann, are lead designers on [Skyrim]. I worked with them on Daggerfall, so they've been with us for a while.
What's kind of nice about our group is that a lot of us have worked together for a long time. So the amount of time that I have to "manage" is low. We can focus on the game.
When you have a game with so many different components and lots of content, how reasonable is it to expect the game to have a singular vision?
I view the game as -- the first line in the credits is "Game Design: Bethesda Game Studios." I view it as a studio project. It is too big for one person. I don't know all parts of it. In each of the games we did, there are probably three or four people -- from myself to usually the lead artist, lead designer, lead level designer -- you'd have to combine those four people to know everything.
We like to remain very flat as a studio. One of the reasons our games end up so big is we put a high premium on tools, and then we let people run wild. We think that gives us the best game. So the main thing that we try to instill in people is really the tone of the game, and then they'll create content that matches that. And the work will be checked by lots of people, and it won't be me all the time. It often isn't.
So a priority is having your programmers make tools for designers and artists to go crazy. Some studios don't work like that.
No, we put a big premium on our editor, which we then ship with the games. It's going to come out again with Skyrim, the Creation Kit. So when it comes to content creation, we just have so much of it that we have to put a lot of development time into the tools, because the game is so big.
We're hoping [the Creation Kit] will be available as a download on launch day. I don't know if I can promise day-one, but it will be very close.
What aspects of Oblivion did you look at when planning Skyrim? What did you want to change? I know Skyrim began development a long time ago, so you may have to reach back into your memory banks.
Each game is its own thing. There are certain things that Arena does better, or that Daggerfall does better than Morrowind or Oblivion, or even better than Skyrim. There are certain things, depending on the game you make, that you'll sacrifice to make that particular game. But I think we tried a lot of new stuff with Oblivion, and it was new -- it came out four months after the Xbox launched.
So that was very difficult to get all of those systems running on a console that was still in development at the time. So we sort of came out of it very happy with what we got on the screen, but knowing that there were things we could do a lot better. Some of that we did better in Fallout 3.
But I think the big things for us are still -- and we still struggle with -- are the NPCs, the interaction, and how they act. That's because the game is so dynamic, we don't want to script them, so weirdness can ensue sometimes. So we came out of Oblivion thinking, hey, how do we get more believable characters on the screen who are reacting to you.
I always thought we did environments well, and we want to keep doing it well. But I'd say the characters and how they perform on the screen was probably our number one [focus].
That's something too, that maybe some gamers don't understand when you have a game that big, that there will be "weirdness." Do you think you could ever ship a game that squashes all of those bugs? Would you say Skyrim has less of that "weirdness" going on than your other games?
It matters how you define "weirdness." There's going to be some [weirdness], like the player did X, Y and Z that we didn't expect, and now he's attacking the town, sleeping in this guy's bed, he killed his wife [laughs]... We sort of learn each time how people play these games and experience them. So we get better each time, but we do at the end of the day sacrifice, say, a well-paced story. It's almost impossible for us to do. We'd rather let you go do whatever you want. So that's a sacrifice that we're willing to make.
People give you guys a hard time about bugs. You have very well-received games, but there are also plenty of fun clips on YouTube that originate from Bethesda games.
[Laughs] You know what though? Those things are there, and it's fair that people call us out for them, we've got no problem with that.
How does the new engine handle the world's size in Skyrim? What's the scale of the game?
It's about the size of Oblivion. The scale changes with each game, based on a number of factors. The factor in [Skyrim] that messes with the scale are the mountains. So putting mountains on the screen, they feel like mountains when you see them, but they're at the same time small enough where you can scale them without taking a really, really long time. And they cut up the terrain.
In Fallout 3 or Oblivion, you can cut across the landscape, for the most part. You can draw a line and say, "I wanna go there." But in Skyrim, you can't. You might run into a mountain, and you might have to scale a mountain. In general, we try to make the game harder the higher the elevation you're in. That changes the flow of the game.
As a design director, is there an overarching design philosophy that you follow that has worked over the course of so many games?
We have one for the studio. Our motto is "Great games are played, not made," meaning you can spend a lot of time on paper coming up with great ideas, then as soon as you put it in the game, you're like, "I was thinking wrong." So we try to just bullet point things on paper, then get it in the game, play the game, and get ready to throw your ideas out.
With Skyrim, the dragon's design was a one-pager. "Those are gonna work." A couple bullet points was what we were going for. One of our other rules is "define the experience." With dragons, it was more about defining the experience we wanted to have as opposed to "here is the feature set and technical design, etc. etc."
As far as Skyrim, what is the experience? It's the experience you had with the other Elder Scrolls, in that you be who you want to be and do what you want, but the tone of Skyrim involves a more rugged world, a more lived-in world, where magic is more low-fantasy world. There is more violence in it, not for gore's sake -- there's not a ton of gore in the game -- but it just seems like it would be a more violent place.
When it comes to game features, we are more about iteration. The only area we're document-heavy in is the content of the world. We have to be, with all the people, quests, items. We're very document-heavy and we have a really slick wiki at work, and have an interactive map and you can see who's building what today.
But when it comes to game features -- the more time you spend on paper, the more incorrect assumptions you're making, and it's just going to pile up on you.
What about accessibility -- making Skyrim a game that's inviting to people who might not play RPGs as much, and also the hardcore people who have been playing The Elder Scrolls since the beginning?
Honestly, it's not something that we think about a lot, in that we've found that we're getting a pretty big audience making a game that we want to make. We want to make it for whoever it is -- even if you've played Elder Scrolls before, you haven't played this one, so you don't understand what a skill does yet.
... We want to remove confusion, that's what I'd say. As opposed to making it more accessible, we'd like to remove confusion for anyone who's playing. What we're trying to do now is lead you into it more... In our games or others' games, they give you a character menu and say, "Who do you want to be, what powers do you want?" [Players think,] "I don't know, I haven't played yet!"
What happens in Oblivion is you start the game, play for three hours, and then think "I want to start over, I chose wrong." So we'd like to sort of alleviate some of that. I also think the controls work better [too] ... it's more elegant.
You look at Call of Duty, the most popular game in the world, and that's actually pretty hardcore. At the end of the day, it's a hardcore game, has RPG elements in multiplayer, making classes, picking perks. I think the audiences are there, and we tend to make our game more for ourselves and other people who play a lot of games.
Finally finished the bitch of the modding process of Morrowind. I had to reinstall about eight times because I couldn't get the Morrowind Overhaul to work right. I reinstalled the first time because I wanted to fix a bug that wasn't going away, and then it stopped working altogether. When I finally got the overhaul to work I had problems with the MGE -_-. Now I finally got that working and most of my mods working and I think it is safe to say I need to play the fucking game now. Ugh that was a pain.
What kind of problems were you having with the Morrowind Overhaul, and did you install the patches, too? I thought the install guide it came with was very well-written and it was a very smooth process to get it working.
Oh, and if you haven't already, I definitely recommend enabling all of the "More Trees" options. It makes those areas look less sparse. Balmora especially looked strange to me without that setting.
Dashui on
Xbox Live, PSN & Origin: Vacorsis 3DS: 2638-0037-166
What kind of problems were you having with the Morrowind Overhaul, and did you install the patches, too? I thought the install guide it came with was very well-written and it was a very smooth process to get it working.
Oh, and if you haven't already, I definitely recommend enabled all of the "More Trees" options. It makes those areas look less sparse. Balmora especially looked strange to me without that setting.
The first time I did it absolutely everything was perfect. But I got finicky when I saw that the night sky was blurry (I believe because of MGE and I had accidently installed a older MGE with the blur distance function). I figured it'd be easy to redo everything so I uninstalled Morrowind and reinstalled. Next thing I know the overhaul would not complete setup due to some errors. After several trial and errors of restarted, deleting everything, and reinstalling I finally got it to work. MGE has been the main source of the problems however. And after all that I still am getting weird night sky problems such as the blur... still.
It sets up the same way regular MGE does. It just gives a little better performance and stuff with shadows.
Alright I am going to try it out; it looks pretty good from the screenshots I see.
Wow it looks much better.
However I am getting a weird glitch at night where after a certain distance everything is black. Going to try to play with the fog settings and see if thats it.
Posts
I do have to add that I've always hated playing mages or mixes. With what they've done with magic, however, I'm actually very tempted to try it on my first character.
You don't like the Conan the Barbarian look going on in some of these screenshots?
http://images.uesp.net/d/da/SR-DragonApproach_wLegal.jpg
http://images.uesp.net/7/72/SR-prerelease-2011-04-01-2.jpg
I think the armor on this Khajiit looks cool, too:
http://images.uesp.net/1/15/SR-KhajiitArcher_wLegal.jpg
And really, some of you aren't interesting in the game now because of an untested new leveling system and the fact that you can't tweak your spells with sliders? What about the huge, beautiful world there for you to explore? Monsters to slay? Quests to complete? Loot to find? The number game is probably the least important thing to me, and the combat actually looks fun this time around.
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
But all Nords are Vikings, what else are Vikings meant to wear other than awesome helmets and sleeveless tops.
http://images.uesp.net/8/82/SR-prerelease-2011-04-01-5.jpg
Hello, Assassin's Creed.
Oh, and that's one nice thing about the new class mechanics. I can experiment a bit before I decide on my path! Hooray!
And there are Nordic armors in the game with sleeves, for crying out loud.
I always find things like this to be so funny. The people are always so clean, and the uniform colors so bright.
chair to Creation and then suplex the Void.
also, depending on how new/clean they were, and what dyes they were using it's quite possible their equipment was that bright and shiny.
I was joking.
I know Vikings were not like the Nords in Skyrim. But the stereotypical Hollywood vikings are pretty similar to the main guy we have seen so far.
On a semi-tangent, I'm really sad Oblivion dropped the semi-Roman motif for the Imperial Legion.
No lorica muscularum for us.
Honestly, Morrowind without the oppressive fogs of the swamps & mushroom forests and encompassing howling ash storms of the highlands doesn't feel right to me. The first time a Silt Strider loomed out of the mist was indescribable.
I made a game, it has penguins in it. It's pay what you like on Gumroad.
Currently Ebaying Nothing at all but I might do in the future.
I don't think my laptop is going to tangle well with Morrowind. It would probably work, but I don't feel like playing that game with poor resolution and framerate.
So. Daggerfall.
I have a reletively high threshold for shitty graphics, but I have never played Daggerfall. Since it's free and I am restricted to laptop gaming I might as well dive into some Elder Scrolls all historical styleee. I guess what I am wondering is - how difficult am I going to find playing this game? I know a lot of people really like it, but is that nostalga talking? Is this game going to bore me to tears and make me pull my hair out with poorly aged gaming mechanics or should I get up on this and adventure my bum off?
Also - is it easy to get it working or do I need DOSbox? Me and DOSbox haven't gotten along well in the past.
Daggerfall had some good game mechanics. Crazy big dungeons (I got lost a lot) all over the place too. You didn't so much min-max your character as max-max it. You could end up being stupidly skilled and powered, and being a good klepto meant that cash was never a problem.
Downside is that it was the most unstable game I ever played. I think it caused me three OS re-installs, plus god knows how many game re-installs. Hopefully that has been improved in the last decade or so.
As far as removing features in order to allow railroading goes, sure it's annoying. I'm just willing (somewhat) to accept that if the developers put in a really cool big-bad that they really really want you to fight, then you're going to have to do that. They just went for a ham handed approach that removes some of your options for avoiding certain situations. It's fug, but the alternative would have probably been a shockingly large number of 'no-fly' or 'anti-magic' zones around the game. Personally I'm more unhappy about the removal of the spell making altar.
Hopefully all these things will be fixed next year with Skyrim: New Vegas.
Sono davvero tosta, trovare la salvezza nella morte. Inoltre, questo gioco cazzo regola.
Requiescat in pace.
Roughly translates as "give me back my father you son of a bitch".
Which I would agree with, if it weren't for the fact that unfortunately Bethesda is developing this for the 360 first. Its hardware has not been upgraded (other than some firmware updates I'd imagine).
I wouldn't be terribly surprised if the next Elder Scrolls game, which would probably be on the next-gen console, will have more options again. Maybe that's just a pipedream though.
My point was actually we've come a long way since DAGGERFALL, and stuff is still getting removed. :P
On that note:
USE DAGGERFALLSETUP
USE IT USE IT USE IT USE IT.
It installs like literally every other windows program and takes care of all the DOSBox shit for you.
That was pretty funny.
STEAM
Y'know, for 1996 the atmospherics in the opening dungeon are really good. It's nowhere near as aye melting terrible looking as I expected.
I was having al ot of trouble getting to grips with the controls though... looking down, for example, is something that completely escaped me. Fighting rats was pretty much impossible. And I hate clicking the edges of the screen to move. Is there an alternative? Would mouselook be asking for too much?
Creating my character was fairly amusing too. Choose thy face. Name thyself!
I was having a hard time figuring out the "cazzo regola" part.
Man, y'all'd best not be missing my Princess Bride reference, because Inigo Montaya will straight up cut you.
He's a nice guy.
He might cut you, though, if you fail to collect your assigned soul on time.
Also, first Skyrim playthrough is totes going to be Ezio Auditore da Bruma
I think it's called view mode or some shit, the game plays almost exactly like Morrowind with it on.
Skyrim looks very nice and I hunger for an engaging open-world medieval fantasy RPG. However, I loathed the leveling system in Oblivion. Is there word on how you get experience in Skyrim? Will I want to avoid using my chosen skills?
edit:
As far as we know leveling is still dependent on raising x amount of skills. The are only three attributes this go 'round.
Health, Fatigue, and Magicka. I'm not sure but I think you pick one to increase when you level and then you pick a perk.
So there will be no more worrying about getting the right combination of skill level ups to get the multipliers you want.
If that's something that interests you.
Did you play Fallout 3? It'll be similar to that.
http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/35678/Interview_Todd_Howard_On_The_Scope_Vision_Of_Skyrim.php
Oh, and if you haven't already, I definitely recommend enabling all of the "More Trees" options. It makes those areas look less sparse. Balmora especially looked strange to me without that setting.
The first time I did it absolutely everything was perfect. But I got finicky when I saw that the night sky was blurry (I believe because of MGE and I had accidently installed a older MGE with the blur distance function). I figured it'd be easy to redo everything so I uninstalled Morrowind and reinstalled. Next thing I know the overhaul would not complete setup due to some errors. After several trial and errors of restarted, deleting everything, and reinstalling I finally got it to work. MGE has been the main source of the problems however. And after all that I still am getting weird night sky problems such as the blur... still.
Alright I am going to try it out; it looks pretty good from the screenshots I see.
Wow it looks much better.
However I am getting a weird glitch at night where after a certain distance everything is black. Going to try to play with the fog settings and see if thats it.
Should be this
And set distant static at 150 or lower.