Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Trailer just went up
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYgrh9z0tFA

whoops, that's the teaser:
http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/24/skyrim-gameplay-trailer/#continued

Trailer looks good. Only 8 1/2 months to wait!

Cannot wait for this.

from the video

-draw distance looks much improved (foggy mountain at 2:00 mark looks amazing)
-area control spell
-looks like you might be able to cast spells while you use 1 handed weapon (maybe not - it's just that you can see the spell hand and the weapon hand on the same screen in first person mode)
-more realistic hand graphics/animations in general (archer's arms look dirty in 1st person)
-assassin kill in 3rd person
-dragon kill looks like a cutscene

now we just have to wait til' 11-11-11

northrend looks awesome in this game

i never finished morrowind or oblivion but i'm really excited for this anyway. i never feel obligated to finish these games, i just play for the immersion

hoping i don't have to buy a new video card to run it well though

Yeah, I never finished Oblivion either.. or even played into the first portal (at Kvatch). My character was sort of like a god that could kill everything in 1-2 hits. Money was never an issue. I sort of want to finish Oblivion but I don't know if I could play my last save game even though I spent forever on "efficient leveling" crap and even got a bunch of skills up to 100.

I'm sure I'll buy Skyrim

What I can't understand is why other gaming companies don't make their own Oblivion clones. I mean it's been 5 years since its release. Maybe the blame is to be placed on MMORPGS. I dunno

http://media.pcgamer.com/files/2011/02/The-Elder-Scrolls-V-Skyrim-Busty-Wench.jpg
right click to zoom

plus checkout the pcgamer article about skyrim

this game kind of makes me want to invest in my first gaming computer

I never say 'squee'. I kind of hate people who say 'squee'. But I have to admit, there's a little fangirl voice at the back of my mind that really, really wants to say... sq.. squ... no. I CAN CONTROL YOU.

*bounce*

In case anyone hasn't caught up with this, this page has the E3 game demo and links to some other stuff (mostly p. repetitive).

http://bethblog.com/index.php/2011/06/16/skyrim-e3-2011-roundup/

This might be the most important game in my post childhood lifetime. Hopefully I'll find a way to afford a gaming computer

My one Skyrim regret, so far, is that the world is only the same size as Oblivion's world and actually Skyrim might be a bit smaller.

Something cool is that you'll supposedly bre able to enter caves/dungeons without having a load screen.

Ooh, you want to be careful chucking words like 'important' around on this forum! Go on, what do you mean?

Immersive FPS fantasy RPGs are my favorite genre of games. There hasn't been anything good in this genre since Oblivion (which was seriously flawed in hindsight).

Who knows if Skyrim will earn an A+. But I'm pretty confident that it will earn an A. Most of my problems with Oblivion have been addressed.

Here's hoping for a good story and nothing too simplified. I'm hoping for a lot more variety, sandbox stuff, as well.

Oblivion was seriously flawed in foresight tbh. I still played the hell out of it, ofc.

There are some decisions they've made for Skyrim that strike me initially as disappointing but I'm not 100% sure I won't grow to love them - ditching classes, changing up the magic system, the fancy 3d map etc. Can't see an upside to the apparent reduction in no. of armour slots. But it *does* look like they're putting in-game travel options back and maybe - I'm hoping so hard here it hurts - getting rid of the quest carrots.

Quite a lot less excited about this since I saw those E3 gameplay videos, just because it looks so similar to Oblivion.

It's a shame they've gone for another of the most mundane provinces instead of somewhere more exotic. Morrowind really set the bar; nowhere else in Tamriel is as strange; but Skyrim is v. much Midgard to Cyrodiil's Albion. I hope they've found ways to inject some originality.

new footage of a lot of gameplay

there will probably be HD footage for this same clip in a couple days

menu system looks great. you can tell that a lot of detail went into this game

"T bag him!"
oh you crazy texan quake con folk

http://n4g.com/news/819643/update-woman-goes-into-labor-during-skyrim-presentation

nobody elses video goose up after 25 mins? seems to loose audio sync

preordered.

goddamn, they killed that video already, anyone seen it anywhere else?

I may have just requested 11/11 off from work >_>

haha awesome

this is pretty much the only game these days that i was willing to preorder without reading a single review first

this and demons' souls, yes.

oh shit, just realized i have november 11 off!
but also that i ordered through amazon and they may not send day of.
I may have to change my shipping method.

just pick the free deliver on day of release option!

?
u pulling my leg?

nope. that and the $10 discounts are really the two best reasons to buy video games from amazon

u r not!
just cancelled my old order and updated! Yay!

i swear that option wasn't there when i pre pre preordered originally

nothing really quite like buying Skyrim for $50 to be delivered to your door the day of release

i dont want to get sucked into this (esp after putting so much time into batman already this month) but damn

so this has basically the same combat mechanics as fallout, right?

pre-download is up on steam <_<

I ordered a copy even though I barely have time for it.

Would love to have a go at this but I could stand to actually play more of/finish Oblivion first, dammit.

basically determined to spend all day 11/11 with this on PS3 as soon as it comes in the mail
will undoubtedly need to spend a half hour downloading patches

I'd real curious to see the first batch of unembargoed reviews; I know they're gonna slaver but I wanna see what bones they pick

will be happy if this game ships even slightly less buggy than fallout 3

I could not get into Oblivion at all but the hype for Skyrim intrigues me.

all the hype of skyrim to me just seems like "Oblivion with dragons!!!!"

i broke down and order this :(((((((

only on my 2nd playthru of dark souls. this will have to wait for a while.

gawd i am so lame: i can't find time for dark souls. gonna save it for christmas break.

This has broken the street date here. Half the people I know have already bought it.

Yeah N says he's on his way to get his now. Unforch its locked to single-user online activation so I wont be able to borrow his copy :( bums. Why didmnt he get a console version dammit.

Mods mods mods. Consoles are nice n all, but you've got to mod these Bethesda games.

I hope my copy arrives on time, I want to spend the weekend hating on this and working out how to fix it, hehe.

yeah i have no idea why i bought this, i thought the skill system in oblivion was retarded and i hated the classes and the combat. but it just looked so gd pretty

I have saved myself considerable amount of time and heartbreak by rendering myself unable to play this game. What you basically need to do is make sure you have no consoles and no PCs in your house and you have to spend all your money.

Pretty dumb but I finally pre-ordered this today. Left it late enough that I'm not going to get delivery until Saturday but I won't have time to play it tomorrow anyway and this way I get a FREE CLOTH MAP.

awwwwww shit really they got a cloth map i am so psyched for this

uh oh - noticed some 9/10 reviews starting to creep in, dragging the average down

i'm kinda excited for this but not enough to marathon it tomorrow. i'll probably play it the same way i played oblivion i.e. wander around and look at things and not advance the storyline much

wtf giving this game clearly the goty and all time 9/10 fuck these assholes this is a perfect game and anyway i notice they gave oblivion 10/10 and then they rite that this is even better than oblivion so how can oblivion get 10/10 but this only get 9/10 also they're clearly sony fucking asshole fanboys bc they don't recognize how great this game is and why do they keep giving 10/10 to sony games like uncharted: indiana jones' revenge when this is clearly superior do u notice they don't mention enough DRAGONs i mean DRAGONS are incredible and also in this game you can do stuff like talk to ppl and wlak around and this is really an 11/10 i mean that's the valid score but i'd forgive someone for giving it 10/10 even bc that's still pretty good but 9/10 is total bullshit. nb i haven't played this game yet but i know it's going to be amazing and these assholes are just looking for attention and that's why they're not giving it the fair score EXPLINA THAT TO ME ECPLAIN THAT!

lol

a spade of dragons

i thought the skill system in oblivion was retarded and i hated the classes and the combat.

― and a butt (Lamp), Thursday, November 10, 2011 12:20 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark

yeah i'm kinda waiting to see if the character build system has been overhauled

character build system sounds completely overhauled but combat supposedly still the same old same old. combat never bugged me too much in oblivion but it seemed like a missed opportunity that a part of the game that could potentially be so rich was left so thin.

My Amazon delivery date's moved to Monday. Cloth map be damned. Cancel!

first person melee combat is a tall order, design-wise. i don't know if it's possible to do right.

that is true but they could still do a hell of a lot better.

i would hate this: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/11/09/you-can-play-skyrim-forever.aspx

re melee combat, what the hell i'm just gonna put these here

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bWISsk0cy74

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTVC25hYJaY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fv-Vut0xb9Y

what we know about this kind of fighting is that it was really fluid, even in armor, much more like wrestling with a tool in your hand than swatting at each other.

hmm, i am skeptical. i am pretty sure melee combat is all about standing still and hitting the right trigger over and over until someone is dead. this looks like something else.

first person melee combat is a tall order, design-wise. i don't know if it's possible to do right.― goole

I've spent a lot of time thinking about how to do just that.

A fancy dodge system could help but making melee combat as intuitive as the dodge/block system in Super Punch Out doesn't seem so realistic since Punch Out assumes standing in one place and all the enemies are humans capable of having a smart dodge/block AI.

Then I thoght about having some sort of combo attack system but I've never seen this in a First Person game.

I don't really have any more ideas. One thing I've heard that makes melee combat more fun in Oblivion is having a mod that sends hordes of enemies all at once. I'm sure that would be more fun but it doesn't have much to do with melee mechanics.

If any of you have good ideas I'd like to hear them

the solution is to stop making games where first person is the default view

What was the name of that Source engine game from a couple of years ago which was all based around first person melee combat? Didn't play that far into it but I seem to remember it having some nice ideas.

Ah, Zeno Clash. Might give it another go.

kinda feel like the solution to the first person melee combat problem lies somewhere down the kinect road.

first person perspective is an abomination imo and should be abolished. certainly it has no business in any kind of RPG. and there have been some 3rd person action RPGs that have done combat really well in recent times.

mordy rise of nightmares or whatever says no

kinect noooooo

please remember when hoping for kinect solutions that we are all fat and awful at moving our bodies

is kinect the thing you have to stand up for? because...

really the only controllerless advance that will work for your average gamer will be something like the thing that stephen hawking uses to communicate

next step past kinect is xbox live/psn sending someone to your house to larp with you

maybe a kinect sensor that reads body heat and redness and sends a paramedic to your address

pretty sure that comes with amazon prime already

the combat in witcher is p good imo, rewards improvement and thought w/o being too counterintuitive or inhuman

Utterly irritating "deliberatly dressed like dork" hipster dude on the tram this morning, holding forth VERY LOUDLY abt what was pretty obviously this game, he used the phrase "powned" out loud at one point, He was wearing a trucker hat, hipster glasses and an LA Lakers shirt thing. I mean... urerrghrr,rreighetkr.

Witcher is one of the coolest-looking games. Can't wait for the console version.

he used the phrase "powned" out loud at one point,

indefensible

first person perspective is an abomination imo and should be abolished. certainly it has no business in any kind of RPG. and there have been some 3rd person action RPGs that have done combat really well in recent times

Most action rpg's are 3rd person and many of them are good. But 1st person has some very strong merits. I love that I can look out of the eyes of my character. It makes me feel like I'm there. Everything is more scenic when you have this viewpoint. Conversely, 3rd person makes you look towards the ground a lot more often because it's easier to attack enemies from more of an overhead viewpoint. And Enemies aren't in your face - I like that about 1st person. Enemies will surprise you more often when you aren't in 3rd person.

Now back to improving 1st person melee mechanics. Maybe kinnect is the future for first person. However I did come up with some conceptual ideas that could work. Implementing them to fit the game would be a whole different matter.

For instance, what if you had an enemy flash different colors. When he is red that means use an upwards weapon swing to connect. When he is blue you have to use a sideways swing. Don't attack when he is black. This kind of 1st person melee is an abstract idea right now but it's a start at adding some arcade-style fun where there isn't any at the moment. And frankly I rarely switch up weapon swing direction even if there may already be some spotty reasons to do so. (Also, I rarely used the block button when I played Oblivion).

If things were more arcade-like and intuitive (with FP melee) I would have more fun and feel like I'm using some skilled button combos rather than simple button mashing against enemies that aren't too high above your level

until they develop a technology that gives you peripheral vision, "1st person perspective" is predicated on the protagonist having some kind of sight disorder.

How much harder would this game be to play in 3pp? I remember thinking that 3pp looked wonky in Oblivion.

it was hilariously bad, but apparently decent in skyrim

doing realist-ish melee combat is probably best done w/ a locked 3rd kind of POV like gears of war. you need to be able to be aware of what the whole body of your character is doing, especially if there's a defense mechanic

plus peripheral vision, yeah

plus half the fun of rpgs is cool gear, why not see it?

Don't attack when he is black.

cosign this tho

hahahaaaa

I was reading lorax's post above on zing and there were multiple paragraphs before I saw who wrote it but I instantly knew it was lorax <3

Roberto Spiralli otm. strip everything away from a first person shooter, and it is chasing an object with a reticle and clicking the mouse button furiously when they overlap. But at least in a shooter you get to enjoy the illusion of the projectile going toward the target, leading the target based on the speed of the projectile, etc. With melee you don't even get to see much of your character's body moving, and there's no sense of depth or physics. So it's like some guy who has no depth perception fighting with a cardboard box on his head. The real thing that kills me about FPS games is how much it limits your movement. I want to play a multiplayer map with a Just Cause, Prototype, or InFamous type game.

Grand theft auto 4 multiplayer is this^

I haven't actually tried that. No word of mouth of it being fun from any of my friends, either. Any good?

the gametypes were p uninvolving and hence nobody plays it iirc

would love a city-wide capture the flag mode for Just Cause 2

The idea of a never ending adventure sandbox is simultaneously enthralling and terrifying.

I have a friend who says he wants to be put on life support and play Skyrim forever

ok
for no reason at all i feel like i might justify buying this tomorrow. despite not liking oblivion at all.
hmmm

i'm in the oblivion-sucked camp but the something awful people (who are the whiniest bitchiest gamers on the internet) seem to be having a good time. my pre-order should arrive before i get home from work tonight.

i think arena, the first elder scrolls game, could be remade into something awesome. as i remember one could wander across the entire continent of tamriel. the landscape and most towns and settlements were randomly generated and really repetitive but the vastness was fucking nuts, especially in 1994. a remake with decent graphics and 21st century complexity, like a minecraft that doesn't look like a bag of assholes mixed with all this procedural quest-generation stuff mixed with the fact that arena was SUPER FUCKING HARD, would be killer. i was 13 with all the hyperfocus a 13 year old can bring to a video game and i often got killed during the quasi-tutorial dungeon. shit was real.

and by oblivion sucked i mean i still put like 100 hours into it.

took the day off and will be running down the stairs at regular intervals to see if the game is amazonged to my front door yet

last exercise for a while i assume

would answer that zing but am out of breath

i think arena, the first elder scrolls game, could be remade into something awesome

remake daggerfall imho. same scope but such a better game and story.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/11/11/in-skyrim-bucket-head-the-perfect-crime.aspx

LOL

perusing wikia, the character system looks... intersting

no attributes? perks?

buckets on heads was indeed the dumbest/best thing I've seen today

the design of this seems kinda modern fallouty, which is part of why my interest is growing quickly

hahaha buckethead!

pc version is crashing occasionally on looting gold. still pretty fun though. plays like a more polished version of oblivion.

my thief is named 'shank badu'.

I can see your crashes on Steam.

ditto

Just bought this! Also my first elder scrolls game.

Wondering whether I should install this to my xbox to reduce load times. Have you guys heard anything wrt that?

rumours of textures not displaying properly when installed on 360 - don't know for sure tho

ok well confirmed, patch incoming

"Skyrim uses a lot of dynamic streaming systems, including textures. We've seen a few reports of certain textures temporarily scaling down on the Xbox 360, and not scaling back up. We have verified that this issue does not occur when playing off the disk and when the game is fully cached (not installed). Skyrim makes heavy use of the Xbox 360 caching system, and caches over the normal course of play while in menus or interiors. This cache can be wiped when other games are played or when the user manually removes it. We're working on a solution in the next title update for those who have installed the game."

goddammit ups i am very busy and need you to deliver this now so i can start wasting time

you can see my crashes? you mean sudden log off/log on?

yup

How do you design AI to avoid that bucket trick? I guess you could give NPCs a desire to see a given patch of space? And have them move / move objects to make that happen?

Just purchased. Can't wait to get home and play.

just mark "putting bucket on my head" as a threatening action, like stealing apparently is for non-bucketheads.

idk if npc's have a sense of touch. they do if you bump into them maybe, plenty of games have that. it's an interesting design problem. shopkeepers should probably have an 'ideal layout' of their space in mind, if something changes w/o being paid they should get suspicious.

i always liked how you could walk up their private stairs to the apartments and it would be nbd unless they found you up there personally, maybe not even then.

put eyeholes in every in-game bucket

elder scrolls has that dumb "glass" material, make buckets out of that

trying very hard to make a character that doesn't look hideous. failing so far.

anyone been able to lower the drawbridge in the embershard mine? i even cheated and looked at a guide, and it's just like "use the switch to lower the drawbridge". but i...can't...find...the....switch...

NEVERMIND

*turns brightness up on display*

Loving this so far. Perhaps even more than Dark Souls.

i'm loving it too, although i'm a completely overwhelmed with sidequests already! no surprise, i guess, based off of everything i've ever heard about elder scrolls games.

one nitpick: it's a little annoying to not know how much a spell costs (in magika or whatever) before you buy the spell book. for example, i purchased the stoneflesh spell (increases armor), but when i tried to cast it found out that i don't have enough magika to use it, even at max levels.

d'oh!

lol, just hit my first freeze. bethasda, never change.

too tired from baby these days to spend all night playing so i'm crashing now. but good stuff.

4 hours in, I'm feeling seriously ambivalent about this game.

The UI is horrible to use on the PC and the mouse control is dodgy. No paper doll, GoogleTamriel instead of a sensible map an escaped prisoner might buy and stick in her pocket, wretched quest compass and no directions for those who don't want to use it.

NPCs look great, and their dialogue is 100x better than Oblivion even if they *do* talk over each other all the time and constantly blurt out information at you even if you've already talked to them about that thing / are looking the other way / are engaged in conversation with someone else. The sheer amount of dialogue and individual backstory is terrific. The quest writing looks like it's going to be pretty good.

Love the animations for smithing and cooking and so forth - I'm really pleased that they have put cooking in. I'm sad that there's no hardcore mode to make all that tasty food a bit more useful. Can't beleive how they've dumbed down alchemy. And apropos of nothing, why haven't they got bookshelves working?

It's real pretty, and I've always loved the way Beth design the little details, pots, baskets, rugs and shit like that. Armor is boring but at low levels that's cool, I just won't have come across anything exciting yet. The architecture is nice. The shape of the terrain is heaps better than Oblivion. However, having read one review that said the aesthetics and atmosphere harked back to Morrowind, I've been disappointed with what I've seen so far. I've only seen Winterhold and the outside of Solitude, but. I want to be surprised. Mushroom spires and giant shell houses and mysterious rusted machinery: Morrowind was full of things you might not have thought of yourself. Skyrim seems just as one-note as OB, maybe moreso, since the Planes of Oblivion at least had some strangeness to them the first time you saw them.

Has anyone come across anything really spectacular? Fabulous and fantastical? It would give me something to strive for to know that such places exist and I just haven't found them yet. I don't want details just - are they there?

guys what are your character names? its important

My character is named Wink Martindale.

named my lizard dude Apichatpong

my character's name is Arsonal -- same as my char in Obv + Fallout3 + NV. wood elf. mostly been using destruction spells + some sword blows but now i've bumped up archery and sneak so i plan on shifting emphasis soon.

the coolest thing i've seen is SPOILER the dungeon where you get the claw and ultimately the dragonstone SPOILER there's some amazing looking rooms with cascading waterfalls and rivers heading into grates and at one point you step into this room where the water splashes down onto the stones below and when you look up you can see that there isn't a ceiling and just the sky way above you and i thought it was really very pretty.

^yeah, I reached that point late last night and thought it was wicked!

also, i was totally unprepared for the final guy in that dungeon and i basically just danced around the rivers and stones flinging fire at him until he fell to his knees at the foot of a waterfall and i ran forward and administered the final blow with my longsword while water fell around us. that was pretty epic.

unfortunately i also did it out of order so later this guy was like, 'oh hey, i need X from that dungeon' and then i was like, 'oh, this thing?' cause i already had it and he was like, 'oh yeah,' and then achievement popped up and it felt pretty anti-climatic.

Is this worth it if I only want to play in 3rd person?

3rd person much better than oblivion but still not as good as 1st imo. sometimes necessary for when you're backing down long hallways and don't want to get caught in an unexpected dead end

My grumpy Dunmer warrioress is called Zolan. It doesn't suit her. I didn't think I'd wind up keeping my first character, but one advantage of doing away with classes is you can't get the build wrong.

I'm just so bad at 1st person, can't get used to console controllers. Played a ton of quake and it was great with mouse/keyboard, but my skills have not translated.

Er, my wood elf is called Jim.

i'm a Redguard sort of warrior/mage hybrid called Valdiev. This game has so many possibilities that it's kind of frustrating for me to play through, because I know I probably won't have the time to come back for a second round with a different character build. Hell, I barely have time to do this first round! I've never played an Elder Scrolls game, so I went with something that lets me try out both melee and mage stuff roughly equally. I've usually got a weapon in the right hand and a spell on the left. Hope this doesn't come back to bite me later, because I'm basically rarely using a shield and only occasionally doing archery.

also, i feel like a dumbass because i received an enchanted two-handed weapon that i thought of as pretty useless (since i'm focusing on one-handed skills), and i sold it off for pretty cheap. only later did i realize i could have disenchanted it! d'oh!

which reminds me, i know that the speech skill affects the prices you receive for bartering goods, but is there any effect from who you talk to? i mean, if you offer up a pretty good item to some faceless trader in a tiny town, vs. a well-known shop that specializes in the category in a big city, would you get a different price? trying to figure out if it's a huge mistake to just sell off stuff in the first town i reach, or if i should hoard it until i get to a better location.

Sell it, I think. You get pretty overburdened fairly quickly. I've had to leave lots of loot behind. (I yearn for the days of Daggerfall when you could buy a horse and wagon and load up your wagon w/ stuff to sell after every expedition.)

My character's name is Omaen and she is a redguard.

"DIE SO I CAN TAKE YOUR STUFF"

btw I am Clive, an Imperial

did not end up buying this today mainly because target ran out and i hate best buy and they didnt have any deals anyway

also, i was totally unprepared for the final guy in that dungeon and i basically just danced around the rivers and stones flinging fire at him until he fell to his knees at the foot of a waterfall and i ran forward and administered the final blow with my longsword while water fell around us. that was pretty epic.

― Mordy, Saturday, 12 November 2011 16:06 (Yesterday)

this is the coolest shit I have ever heard.

i ran into a village of giants on my way to the location where you're supposed to talk to the greybeards (7000 stairs). thought i was doing well, and then some giant hit me and i flew hundreds of feet up in the air? i'm not sure if it was a glitch or not, but after 7-8 seconds into my ascent to the sun, it went back to the loading screen to restart me.

no, i think that is for real (not a glitch). it's been mentioned all over the interwebs.

next time i play i plan on taking the route on the OTHER side of the mountain!

the problem with these games for me is all the character customization - how am I supposed to CHOOSE

this one kinda lets you ease into it since you don't have to pick anything to start (except race)

the climb to the monastery is WOW

Just started this as a redguard called Claude. Are you all joining the imperial legion or the stormcloaks?

haven't started those quests yet, but planning on stormcloak, i suppose.

lol hrothgar references. this game is just one huge geat homage, isn't it

I was all set to side with the rebels (underdog radicals generally appeal to me) when I realized that they're basically nativists...

It is a testament to this game's awesomeness that I am irritated at having to turn it off and go to the bar for football. Fucking saints, why can't they have a bye this week?

Crunchy the nord relies mostly on war axes, FLAMETHROWER HAND and zombie raising.

i turned up the difficulty by one level. average fights are better now but dragons just destroy me.

also some of the npcs are bugged. I snuck into the alchemists shop and she kept welcoming me to buy things while she slept. I stole all her shit.

how do i get fireball-hand other than the scrolls? do i have to go to magic school city?

this is just sitting there begging me to play it :////

ive already decide im gonna play a pure caster for the first time

i'd love to try a pure caster but i just love archery too much

this is pretty amazing so far; in the dungeon that mordy mentions i made that magic transition from playing a video game pushing a sprite around on a digital map to YOU ARE DEEP WITHIN THE BOWELS OF THE ANCIENT EARTH WHEN THE VIKING ZOMBIE PULLS ITSELF SLOWLY FROM ITS MOULDERING CRYPT, EYES AGLAZE WITH INFERNAL LIFE, JAW AGAPE WITH A HATEFUL SNEER, RUSHING TOWARD YOU SWORD OUTSTRETCHED roll for initiative

i just killed a solid hour reorganizing my inventory. you can micromanage the shit out of this game if you want to.

and it's fun to micromanage btw! very good ui!

is there a way to change the order of items in the inventory? for example, can you lump all of your shields together, all of your boots together, etc?

it auto-orders your equipment into like weaponry / apparel / books / ingredients / scrolls / misc, but you can't reorder it by like boots or shields (at least not that i've seen so far)

The start of the Dark Brotherhood stuff is fun

guess who just figured out there's a sprint button?

my dark elf is named turd burglar. this game is fun as a mufucka.

took me a long time to figure out how to dragon shout

this is pretty amazing so far; in the dungeon that mordy mentions i made that magic transition from playing a video game pushing a sprite around on a digital map to YOU ARE DEEP WITHIN THE BOWELS OF THE ANCIENT EARTH WHEN THE VIKING ZOMBIE PULLS ITSELF SLOWLY FROM ITS MOULDERING CRYPT, EYES AGLAZE WITH INFERNAL LIFE, JAW AGAPE WITH A HATEFUL SNEER, RUSHING TOWARD YOU SWORD OUTSTRETCHED roll for initiative

^^^

This fuckin' game

Takes a while to get started but once it does jesus christ it's addictive

I'm playing as an Argonian named Corky

had to take a break. burnt myself out by playing too much. but so good.

Most of tonight's session was me going round the Jarl's house collecting all his goblets and plates and foodstuffs to sell back at the market. Turned out it wasn't really worth the effort. But the view from his balcony is lovely.

i was just doing that too. the whole soul gem/enchant thing seems annoyingly complex.

first hard freeze, the end for tonight methinks.
but damn if i don't already have level 9 and about twenty possible quests.

btw, who else is playing this on a higher difficulty level? I went one below toughest.

throw yr hands up if yr gay married

you can get married in this?
Beginning to think that this is just what i thought Fable iii should be.

i haven't progressed far enough to get married but Corky's def. gonna get a lavish gay wedding

i'm not sure i get the enchant thing, still. i have the soul trap spell, and empty gems. but everytime i cast soul trap on an enemy and then kill it, it says "gem not large enough" or something like that.

eh.

PC version keeps crashing to desktop. no errors or anything - game just disappears. Am starting to get pissy about it. Does QA even try anymore?

there is one crash that can be fixed by changing sound settings. Think I saw it in Bethesda forums.

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/11/11/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-tweaks-improve-graphics-disable-vsync-change-fov-and-more/

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/14/thulsa-broom

http://penny-arcade.smugmug.com/photos/i-PPTPkRk/0/L/i-PPTPkRk-XL.jpg

man i GOTTA buy a house, if only for my books.
compulsively collecting every one i find. there's some good reading in them! i need them for when i retire.

Guard examining spider corpse on roadside

walk up and pick up spider's leg and wave it around a bit, looks a bit like dead spider is dancing

guard snaps 'put that down'

cosign -- and for all these fucking dragon bones + scales

xp

lol getting married. man i hated that girlfriend shit in san andreas, ringing me every five minutes, why would anyone consider this?

i'm thane of that one place (at work right now, can't remember location names), but everyone's still treating me like shit! "you disrespect the law, you disrespect me", says the lowly guard. "I'M THE FUCKING THANE MAN"

http://i.imgur.com/UPkWF.png

lol what a choad

ordered btw!

doing a pretty bad job on the "not sounding a hipster" front there!

i'm not a *thing*, but *is thing*

classic move

if that motherfucker was for real he would've gone thru this when daggerfall got rereleased as GOTY edition for all those fucking newbs to pick up so fuck him long live Battlespire

did he play the fucking awful redguard adventure game? hell no little bitch.

I has a house

50 grand for a house seems prohibitively expensive; how did you scrape up the cash?

isn't it 5000 for a house? at least in [name of town that i can never remember where you first become thane]

you might be right, i may be misremembering.
5K is still hefty but doable.

I should buy this game so I can offer ya'll good subprime loans on your thatchroof cottages

I have trouble spending money in this game, at least on items. The prices always seem like a bit of a ripoff, considering you can usually get the best item in the store for free through questing. I suppose I should be saving my money for training and spell tomes.

$$$ trade your cash for daedric artifacts $$$

i'm also always wondering what to do with shit like dragon scales. if i had a house i guess i'd keep it there, but as an already highly-encumbered dude trudging around skyrim i pretty much just sold them immediately or probably not a good price.

The prices always seem like a bit of a ripoff, considering you can usually get the best item in the store for free through questing.

this is like every swords and sorcerors game ever? like in diablo II, only a fool would buy his weapons from the blacksmith!

I got some daedric something or other from the god of the hunt and I have no idea what it is/what it does.. I should google it or something.

i bet it's badass

it involves turning into a wereworlf if you have lycanthropy.. fuck that noise. I ran into a couple vampires earlier this morning and freaked out that I would get vampirism..

they got rid of them for oblivion but when you became a vampire in daggerfall you belonged to a particular house of vampires w/ varying benefits and disadvantages. it was very Vampire: the Masquerade'esque

are there whores

vampire whores?

no just whore whores

i'm sure there must be tho now that i think about it i can't remember running into any yet...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=j50u0zUeCmU

i got turned into a vampire.
weaker in sunlight
"possessed of an unearthly thirst"
Took a cure disease potion.
the end.

no shit? that's all it takes to get rid of vampirism these days? the alchemy field has really made some strides over the years...

i think you can also go to a shrine.

in the old days you'd have to find a vampire hunter and get him some ingredients so he could make a cure for you.

ok i have this now due to crafty trading at gamestop

stupid being at work

how the hell have they created the flowing streams of water in this game? shit looks incredible.

TBF that vampirism/cure thing was the same in Oblivion.

Yeah this is a slow starter huh

I got a pretty dope staff valued at 1800 gold twice cuz the staff fell off the body after I killed the dude, then appeared in the inventory of the body too. sweeeeeeet.

jjj: yes but once it gets all four wheels on the ground, whoa nellie

I thought that was a joke because it starts with your execution being interrupted by a dragon burning down a castle

yeah but that intro part's not all that fun, it's basically just a tutorial. the game really picks up when you go into your first dungeon.

Or at the very least when you get out into the open world.

it was that dungeon that got me and the realization that what i thought was gonna be a five minute bullshit excursion was actually a really well crafted trip into the bowels of the earth and each new room opened up into a fresh, unique exciting chunk of architecture

I'm having to curb my competionist tendencies with this, and it feels odd. Usually in a town like Whiterun I'd make sure I'd exhausted all the sidequets before pressing ahead with the main...but the more I clear the more it generates for me, I need to force myself to let go and just move on.

yeah you can't complete all the quests, it'll just generate more. its usually pretty obvious which ones are the main scripted quests and which are the generated ones though.

Already I'm treating this as the last-thing-before-bed relaxing random mission type game that Morrowind was so good for. I'll do the main quest if it's the low-hanging fruit of the minute, otherwise I'll do whatever. Give me a thing and I will do it.

i.e. last night it sent me on a big long mission to find THE SEPTUM OF GOR-BLAGUÜL or some such and at the very end it said "FAIL, SOME GUY BEAT YOU TO IT, NOW GO HERE INSTEAD". Ordinarily I'd be razzed off but with Skyrim I'm not invested in the individual goal so much as the overall experience.

I dunno, I'd find that annoying! I guess it depends how immersive it all is tho.

pickpocketed a guard and got away with it.
wandered out of the city and hey, here's three massive guys he sent to kill me.
Which they do.
Like fifteen times.
Until I just take off running and they get hung up on a bug that keeps them trapped in a small area. So i jump up, fire magic at them to kill them and fall back. and do that like fifteen times.
Some of the glitchy combat makes this not very fun sometimes.

i thought they only send the guards when you don't get away with it. otherwise... how does he know it was you???

i have no idea! but when i ganked the thugs there was a contract on me from a guard in their pockets saying "kill that dirty thief"

does it not tell you if you got caught? that'd be sweet

oh man the possibility that sometimes this game pretends you have successfully pickpocketed someone but then sends powerful assassins to kill you for it is the single best thing i have read about it so far

They were RIDICULOUSLY overpowered; three guys in heavy armor who appeared as soon as i walked out of town, said "We're here to teach you a lesson", surround me and then bang the shit out of me.
Seriously, I kept dying for like ten minutes until I finally leapt over the top one and just lit out running off the side of a cliff on some omar shit.

Already I'm treating this as the last-thing-before-bed relaxing random mission type game that Morrowind was so good for. I'll do the main quest if it's the low-hanging fruit of the minute, otherwise I'll do whatever. Give me a thing and I will do it.

i haven't had much spare time so i've kind of been playing it this way too, and really enjoying it! after thinking about enchanting again (i was whining about it earlier), i realized that the combination of me being a really low-level enchanter and the fact that only filled gem i had was something called a "Petty gem" probably resulted in the really weak results. i'll probably continue to enchant shit, in the hopes that a few weeks i'll be enchanting everything with Inflict Diarrhea

i like that this game is happy at any time to kill you. idk if i am just pushing forward too hard for my level, but i got killed a bunch of times on the thousand steps. fucking troll asshole. i am level 5 btw.

also as an added bonus that def taught me to follow RPG tradition and remember to save often.

from what i have read there are places/enemies in the game that are never leveled down.

this is in the mail!!!

hey btw if i join up with the companions, does that lock me out of the other guilds, or can i switch when i get to the much despised by nords magic college?

i decided to walk to winterhold or whatever, the place with the magic college. i left whiterun on saturday afternoon and kept getting distracted by stuff i came across. investigated a dead horse in front of a lighthouse, spent like 4 hours clearing a dungeon underneath. agreed to investigate some nightmares, ended up arguing with a disembodied daedric lord. i finally got to winterhold on monday night with some not insignificant playtime in between.

i am both a companion and a student at the mages college.

oh also i am enjoying the fairly realistic casual racism that permeates the game, nords saying stuff like "well of course he stole that, hes a dirty elf".

xpost ok awesome. i am thinking that i should derail the main quest after doing this graybeard dungeon crawl and just do random shit for a while.

*indirect spoiler alert, maybe?*

fwiw, i purchased the strategy guide along with the game (hasn't actually helped...at all, basically. i think i just wanted an easy reference table for items and shit, not the other 400 pages that come in the guide), it suggested finishing the first 1/3 or so of the main story arc before branching off, which i think is around 7-9 main quests. the reasoning was that you'd pick up skills and unlock features (like the shout ability, etc) during the course of that first 1/3 that would come in handy with all the sidequests. so i dunno, i'm still doing a lot of random shit but i am trying to finish up this first bit of the main story arc sooner rather than later.

oh hey, should I get this y/n

Definitely.

dan, you will love it.
i got derailed at the greybeards already! too much to do!

so now that people are playing this, is the gameplay/combat actually fun? or is the appeal mostly about exploring the giant massive world, which i think might just stress me out?

i think i might be enjoying this thread more than i would enjoy the actual game.

kk brb, heading to Best Buy

combat is fun but frustrating at times. I really like the brawling.
as mentioned before, enemies often get confused by the parameters in which they can explore and will often stand ten feet in front of you gnashing their teeth and you can fire spell/bow and arrow them to death.
On the other hand, sabretooth tigers are monsters that fly all over the goddamn plain after you. it's inconsistent.

I have a friend who does AI for games and according to him there haven't been major advances in pathing for like forty years.

that sounds about right.

This is pretty neat:

http://www.gamepro.com/article/news/224985/heres-how-to-make-morrowind-look-almost-as-good-as-skyrim/

so wait: if i buy oblivion on steam, can i modify it?

oh hey, should I get this y/n

― sex-poodle Al Gore (DJP), Thursday, 17 November 2011 03:59 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

okay I thought Oblivion was a dull trudge through samey countryside with tedious missions, and after only 6-7 hrs I am confident that Skyrim shits it into a cocked hat.

i like that this game is happy at any time to kill you. idk if i am just pushing forward too hard for my level, but i got killed a bunch of times on the thousand steps. fucking troll asshole. i am level 5 btw.

― Princess Nancy (jjjusten), Thursday, 17 November 2011 03:35 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yeah, the frost trolls are hell to kill without a companion, and those giant things will take you out in one hit. Fortunately they can be avoided by just talking a different route to wherever it was you were going. I had no trouble whatsoever on the 7,000 steps though for some reason.

oh and I have just hit level 6

Did you run into a frost troll about 3/4ths of the way up? He gave me a little trouble xp

without a companion

wait...do you mean without a follower in general, or without a Companion? i was thinking of tackling that quest tonight.

also, my first follower died in pretty much the first big battle i had with her in tow. in the heat of battle i just lost my shit and started spewing fire at everything in the surrounding area, toasting friend and foe alike. then i stole her shit

if i could have, i would have cooked her and eaten her as well. my name is valdiev, creep of skyrim

btw "those giant things" are not the same as "the frost trolls" (just read back my own post)

Mordy: I never saw a front troll on the 7,000 steps iirc

Z S: 'Follower' and 'companion' are distinct things? Some woman called Lydia has been following me around and getting stuck against rocks, I just assumed she was my companion.

my follower WILL NOT DIE; she's been killed at least a half dozen times.
Maybe they're just beating her to the last inch of life and then abandoning her and coming after me as a main target? Can't tell?
She's the Ulgrid the Unbeatable or whatever; the red sonja character in the bar who claims no one can beat her in a fight. Well i brawled the hell out of her and now she won't leave me alone. Dating in Skyrim is complicated.

The Companions seem hella lame to me btw. Gonna join their group and then ditch them for the Empire first chance i get.

ahh Companions are a Blades-like society thingo, right

I think u can join the Blades too tho. Companions are like the warriors guild.

Yep, ta, I just didn't know the Companions were a thing until just now.

Man, I really want to play this tonight. I haven't played since the weekend. I was all set to play last night but then water went out all day in our building and we ended up staying somewhere else so alas. but tonight. tonight i will play.

im pretty sure that the only way one of your followers can actually die is if you kill them, ie spraying the area they are stupidly standing in with fire etc.

i am envious of not running into that frost troll on the 7000 steps, are you playing on normal difficulty?

lol i always wonder how there is even a functioning society at all with all these monsters roaming around.

racist

really can't wait to play this now

can't wait to gloriously murder companions

i am envious of not running into that frost troll on the 7000 steps, are you playing on normal difficulty?

yes

might've been slightly higher level tho

re racism, i remember in Morrowind they were all severely racist against Argonians/Lizardman and I swear that someone once either made this joke in the game, or we made the joke so many times about the game that I can't remember but I'm pretty sure it was actually in the game: "two lizardmen in the back of a wagon, who is driving? the constable!"

i'm playing argonian and people keep basically making vaguely racist lizardman comments and i keep having to remind myself they're talking about me!

I swear that someone once either made this joke in the game, or we made the joke so many times about the game that I can't remember but I'm pretty sure it was actually in the game

ease up on the ganj bro

i am envious of not running into that frost troll on the 7000 steps, are you playing on normal difficulty?

oh wait, I forgot to mention I'm in novice, disregard everything I said or ever will say again

i should clarify that there were for sure a plethora of racist jokes about argonians in Morrowind, I just don't remember if that was actually one of them -- but i think it was.

this game is fucking awesome and I hated oblivion fwiw (despite dropping probably 150 hours into it)

It's funny how there's not necessarily anything that's easily identifiable about how boring Oblivion was. There was the really really stupid way they implemented the invisible walls (which was 80% of my dissatisfaction) but other than that it was just vaguely boring. Skyrim (and Morrowind for that matter) has the X factor that Oblivion completely lacked.

the main quest was kind of incomprehensible/not compelling and had fuck all to do with the player character (you were pretty much an errand boy for the empire iirc). At least for me. So I would go vast amounts of time avoiding it because who cares. And all the writing was kind of shit.

yeah i was really turned off by the gross mystical royalism of the whole thing. and every single person looked fucking deformed.

Also, Oblivion took place in a really generic gameworld. Nordic stuff + weird mushroom dark elf world are not played out in RPGs at all, but like every RPG over the last 30 years has been vaguely Arthurian Western Europe

Yeah that's true. And the side-quests were dull and (iirc) involved loads of waiting for something to happen. It's a shame, because that first view you get in the game (of the big white citadel thingo in the centre of a verdant Cyrodiil) is gorgeous, but then you realise that the entire game looks exactly the same.

AND, while I'm railing against Oblivion, the aforementioned invisible walls actually chopped paths in half (so rather than facing a precipitous mountain face or deep water you just got a dumb message saying you couldn't go any further). Bloody stupid. So far I've not come across anything like that in Skyrim.

xxp Oh god yeah, very weird character modelling.

Also, Oblivion took place in a really generic gameworld. Nordic stuff + weird mushroom dark elf world are not played out in RPGs at all, but like every RPG over the last 30 years has been vaguely Arthurian Western Europe

― Mordy, Thursday, 17 November 2011 10:27 (9 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I want to say it was full of hideous Eddings-style tropes but that's probably not the writer I'm looking for. So annoying. Both Morrowind and Skyrim have proper grit.

climbed a little ways up a mountain today and stopped by a river that fed into a waterfall. i paid some guy wandering along the path a few gold to sing me a song while i just looked around and enjoyed the pretty scenery. was really feeling the *~IMMERSION~*. the ambient nature sounds are beautiful coming through in surround sound. and i love how deeply time of day, weather, and season affect the general mood of the moment and character of the landscape. anyway, when the guy was done with his song and i was finished with the little moment of reverie i got back on the path and a sabretooth tiger immediately jumped out of a bush and mauled me to death. it was a funny moment.

so whenever i'm in a tight tunnel trying to back up away from a fight (to get a few more arrows in before we go into melee) i keep bumping into lydia who doesn't know well enough to move back herself. so i've taken to screaming "lydia!" in annoyance and frustration every so often. finally my wife was like, "why do u keep yelling at lydia???"

I left Lydia guarding my house. If it was Lydia the Tattooed Lady I'd cart her around but no such luck.

also, she is always disappearing on me and then i wonder -- lydia, are you dead? but then, no, a few minutes later she is there again.

She gets stuck behind things.

i get worried bc she's carrying all my dragon scales

If you lose her completely, save & reload or sleep/wait for one hour and she'll just appear.

which reminds me, i really need a house or something to stash all my gear

Wait what? You can give her stuff? I've been selling all my dragon scales.

one of the options when you talk with them is "i need to trade some equipment". They're basically pack mules with crossbows.

what are the popular options in this thread for housing/storage?

xp omg awesome

Storage, I'm going nomad atm. Dumping stuff or selling it.

So horses are kinda shit in this? Am I doing it wrong? Barely faster than walking and getting on and off is a nuisance. I just ditched mine in the woods. Sorry horsey.

Fucking vampires in groups are bullshit.

You should try fucking them 1 on 1

Got stuck in a stupid loop with this bloke who insisted I pick a lock and pickpocket someone. Like fuck. Apparently no way to get out of it, so I restored an older saved file and the whole PS3 crashed.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/15/skyrim-companion-lydia/

Comments not short on ways to get the most out of Lydia.

well this came in the mail but i dunno if i'll have time to play it much until the weekend.

the map that comes with it, just, why. there is a LAKE GEIR tho.

Read mayor jingleberries' comment as an xpost to clay. Seemed like strange advice, but unusually to the point!

So horses are kinda shit in this? Am I doing it wrong? Barely faster than walking and getting on and off is a nuisance. I just ditched mine in the woods. Sorry horsey.

I haven't ridden a horse yet, but I did read that the sprint key works for them.

so my initial impression of this is that at some point I should actually read the manual and figure out the controls, because my strategy of "mash buttons and run away" doesn't seem to be effective past a certain point

do you guys like not try all the buttons when you play a game

fyi, mario could jump.

Dan, my big tip is to use the favorites menu to the full extent, switching from bow to 2 handed to onehanded plus spell on the fly is super key

also at least for me the normal setting is pretty challenging - anyone have any good tips on the cave full of vampires or should i just level up for a while before i give it a shot again?

fyi I did try all of the buttons; I think at one point I was able to block using my weapon but I haven't been able to replicate it (although it has led to some amusing "jump up and down while zombies hack you to bits" moments)

the giant spider in the barrow kept 2-shotting me until I perfected the "set it on fire/run away/run back and chop it" pattern

I am liking the favorites menu but HATING the decision to enable sneaking by pushing in the left stick, which has also led to some amusing "turn around and try to slowly skulk away while bandits stick swords in you" moments.

Yeah, normal is hard enough for me. Maybe I'll try hard on a second playthrough.

another thing that i didnt get until recently is how to use power attacks (hold attack button and push the directional stick) which also really would have helped during that spider fight. also sneak attack with bow is key in any of the dungeons full of draugrs on shelves, i think on the last one i didnt actually have to fight any of them.

Do you have power attacks from the beginning?

yeah, it's all tied to how long you hold down the attack button

Dan, my big tip is to use the favorites menu to the full extent, switching from bow to 2 handed to onehanded plus spell on the fly is super key

...and as it's not obvious, for PC users; you can still hotkey weapons and spells, just click a numeric key when you have the item selected in the favourites menu.

Blowed if I can work out how to make it do LH / RH right though, it keeps giving me Healing in both hands, doh.

click = press

yeah, it's all tied to how long you hold down the attack button

Do you have no be still when you do it, or can you be moving forward (or etc.) and then change direction?

lol dunno, I am still trying to keep from dropping into sneak mode mid-battle

i keep accidentally sneaking too. i may try to remap the buttons a lil' bit tonight

just a lil' bit

it is kind of hilarious though, to watch my character leap into swashbuckling warrior mode and then suddenly crouch down and MOVE VERY SLOWLY around my foe like he's playing a violent game of peek-a-boo or something

I keep doing that and then clicking the right stick and ending up in third person crouching combat. Many a foe has been knee-capitated.

you guys are frustrating the hell out of me!!

i'm having basically every above issue. also playing it on the harder (but not hardest) difficult level and i am getting two hit killed A LOT

i haven't tried dual-fisting magic yet, but can you wear heavy plate and dual magic? presumably the only thing stopping you would be that the robe stuff is all enchanted with the magic user goodies -- but can't you just level up your enchantment a bunch and enchant your heavy armor with magic user enchantments?

magic tank build ftw?

i'm wearing full heavy plate armor and occasionally dual magic. it's a pretty ridiculous combo but it's working out pretty well! other than that i'm really slow and can barely carry any extra shit.

i kno someone described above how dual magic works -- ie: why you don't just get smashed to bits the moment an enemy gets close enough -- but I don't remember the explanation?

i'm certainly no pro (first elder scrolls game, and also i don't dual magic too often), but i generally try to a) decimate the enemy before they get too close, b)be ready to switch to a healing spell in one hand to offset any damage you might receive, and c)be ready to use a potion or two if necessary.

also d)continually run backwards and maintain distance, of course

is there some kind of slow or freeze spell, so you can lock them in place and then unload DPS?

i wish you could explore more constellations in a single playthrough. like i really want to screw around with alchemy + enchanting on top of archery, lockpicking, all thieving skills, etc. i get that this gives the game more replayability, but i can't imagine wanting to play thru this game again finishing my first 1,000 hour session

i still havent used any of my perks, which i know is stupid, but i am *paralyzed by options*

totally understandable imo. tho some of them are great. the archery perks really make archery fun. esp the one that slows down time when you zoom in. that one perk is really a chunk of my enjoyment of the game.

I am only a level five and I already have two spells. But I really don't have a knack on how to use them well yet. I'm not sure how precisely I have to aim or how close I need to be.

totally planning on nerding out to this tomorrow (day off)

i am magic tanking btw. Level 13. i'm basically healing/oakflesh, then flame or firebolt attack then switching to axe/shield up close or greatsword if i think i can just smack them the fuck down

Didn't want to scroll through this in case there are spoilers. But before I buy this, are you guys running into a lot of game-killing bugs? What I mean is stuff like getting stuck in walls, game freezes, etc. I'm still trying to figure out if I should just wait for a patch before buying as I've read there are many general bugs -- somthing along the lines of random horses obtaining Pegasus-like powers and other assorted wackiness.

only bugs i've run into were freezes (only 2 after many hours of playing) and they didn't corrupt my save or anything. i just reset the xbox and went back to playing.

My game has frozen a couple times. I had to reboot once.

I'm on ps3.

i know this is begging for trouble, but no freezes yet for me. 360

I don't think I've had a freeze yet or encountered too much physics weirdness even (360)

Man, this Let's Play guy I'm watching is so dumb.

in my head i keep calling this elder scrolls vee

2 crashes on the first day I think, none since

I had four thugs try to kill me for pickpocketing somebody in Riften, despite the fact that a dragon was destroying the city at the time, it turned into a bit of a ruck with the guards, and then three characters for a minor sidequest got set on fire and died, so I reloaded

the second time, an old beggar woman I'd previously given money to ran up to the thugs and started stabbing them, allowing me to hit them in the head with an axe and throw them in the canal

It's fair enough if people you've crouched next to suspiciously for ages later twig that you robbed them, but I hope people you've robbed with immaculate stealth don't get to just psychically figure it out and send dudes after you

I had a fight with a moody woman on a moonlit bridge in the wilderness; when she died northern lights appeared

I played Oblivion on a tiny standard definition TV so I still habitually call this game 'Skyrm' - pronounced 'Skyrm' because I couldn't read the text properly and that was what I thought it said every time they referenced it

No game-killing bugs. People get stuck against rocks and a crucial enemy got jammed in a mountain at one point, but the game seems fairly adept at sorting out its own bugs as they happen.

It's like the list of bugs was so insurmountable that they found it easier to write AI into the game that deals with the bugs as they happen.

just found a book called "Notes on Racial Phylogeny and Biology: Seventh Edition"

it speculates about which of the Elder Scrolls' races can mate with one another to produce offspring

there's an app for that

My housemate just now, in an email containing a sentence I dont think i EVER expected I'd ever read:

"I have no idea how they managed to get the buckets on their heads so easily, I must've spent about 5 minutes gently rubbing a mans bucket on his face without anywhere near as much success."

irl lols at "gently rubbing a mans bucket on his face"

Haah yeah that was what killed me.

THE FUCK

I have been playing this game for 7–8 hrs so scenarios such as bucket-face-rubbing have thus far eluded me but seriously WHAT

u see, when a dark elf loves a khajit very much, and they decide they want to have a baby...

<consults "Notes on Racial Phylogeny and Biology: Seventh Edition" to make sure this scenario is valid...>

Adam: see upthread if u missed it, apparently chucking buckets over merchants heads blinds them and you can pilfer from their stores.

Lord only knows what anyone was thinking to even TRY this.

hm. so the ai is smart enough to let you pickpocket someone, trick you into thinking you got a way with it, and then later get swarmed by a band of bloodthirsty mercenaries out for revenge. but if you throw a bucket on someone's head and steal all their shit, they have no idea who might have stolen their goods?

That is unspeakably awesome, and now your email quote makes sense xp

I had one hard-crash about 2 hours in where "Skyrim has stopped working" (PC, obv), but otherwise I've not seen any bugs, not even things getting caught in the scenery, so colour me surprised.

oh, and from upthread:
Do you have no be still when you do it, or can you be moving forward (or etc.) and then change direction?

Nope, you don't have to be still; you can use your power-attacks while moving. When doing the Golden Claw and that Draugr Overlord got out of his box at the end I decided to just full on sprint and him and over-head smash with the two-handed sword. It was pretty satisfying, even if it only did about 25% damage.

i was using the Whirlwind Sprint shout to cruise through Whiterun until a guard tracked me down and told me to knock it off because people were getting freaked out. i reluctantly agreed.

just found a book called "Notes on Racial Phylogeny and Biology: Seventh Edition"

― Mordy, Thursday, November 17, 2011 6:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it speculates about which of the Elder Scrolls' races can mate with one another to produce offspring

― Mordy, Thursday, November 17, 2011 6:54 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

about time

this is something i have wondered about since morrowind's "ahnassi, a special friend" quest

i assume you guys have all noted that reading books will raise attributes sometimes, but have you run across the ones that trigger questlines? pretty awesome idea imo.

I need to become better at watching the HUD, I was killed last night because I noticed the one zombie running at me with a sword and completely missed the two with bows standing in the back shooting the shit out of me until I was suddenly low health

healing in WoW has ruined my ability to process visual game info

i bought a house just to store my books.
actually want to set aside time to read my ingame library! some of the writing is pretty good.
and there are SO MANY books... i swear i saw a volume 23 of one longer story.

Which reminds me that a friend posted this the other day.

Bah, I mean posted a link to.

had my first random WTF moment when a draugr came falling out of the sky, smashing against the top of menhir and sliding to the ground. I looted him and went my merry way.

well huh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xE4uzGaQDQg

lol, always love bethesda's ponderous pointless sitting animations.

Just finished the Molag Bal quest -- totally awesome and everyone should do it. (Plus it has a sweet prize at the end.)

this game is really p freaking awesome

some of these side quests (and not even -- just random caves + dungeons) are more exciting and well designed than some game's main quests

OMG that arrow YT made me burst out laughing, I wasnt quite expecting what happened.

How was that possible? You'd have to be some sort of trigonometry genius to figure that out.

ok, i'm a few hours into this, at level 5? or something, and it's awesome! i'm playing a thiefy type wood elf

i'm a huge complainer about all games as u all kno, and i don't have anything bad to say so far about this. the only time i was like whaaat was finding some gold pieces on a dead animal.

it's fucking beautiful. and the UI is so well designed. the controls make sense, it's kind of hard, the story seems interesting. love love love that the first few minutes throw a choice at you w/o letting you know it's a choice. the radically simplified no-class no-attributes character system is brilliant. freedom, man!

instead of following the dude out of the first dungeon i thought, well ok my character isn't from here and doesn't want to be in this mess, how bout i try to head south and see what happens? cleared a small cave with wolves in it, found a small keep called "bloodlet throne" filled with vampires that i had to leg it out of eventually, now i'm in a nice little house that has some kind of secret bandit mining operation underneath it.

The design of Markarth and the area around it is awesome

This has basically been my entire Saturday. Gotta hand it to Bethesda, they killed it with this one. So much fun. Can't wait to see what they do with the next Fallout.

Yeah me too.

My best buddy's wife just gave birth to their first child today. She was sleeping on his chest for the first time as he texted me "what if she is dragonborn dude."

so, just started and...this isn't influenced by fallout, it actually IS fallout, but with snow and swords and a bit of ui polish? i approve!

lydia and i had a big adventure today. we broke into a museum and the moment we got in, she bugged out and started saying, "you're not supposed to be in here!" whenever i tried to talk to her. this was a problem bc i had previously told her to wait for me (i was doing super stealthy thief things and i didn't want to be interrupted). anyway, after leaving and reentering numerous times hoping she'd follow me, i eventually gave up and decided to execute poor lydia so i could at least get another (non-bugged) follower. so i shoot her to death arrows and just when she has died -- she suddenly gains all of her hp back and the game says that she has left my group. she begins to walk away, newly unbugged, and i chase after her to apologize. i start to talk to her and the option to have her follow me is on her discussion menu. i request, she agreed, and we went merrily along our way once more :)

I'm hoping this holds up in the endgame. Big problem I had with the Fallout games was doing everything I could and I just got too powerful for it to be any fun anymore. I hope for the new Fallout they make it as much as possible like this. Being beholden to some of the old franchise precedents just doesn't work. Kill VATS or do something wildly different with it.

As a stealthy, thiefy character, Lydia has fucked me over so many time. Give her a lot of "wait here" orders. Companions are pretty essential for archer types though, I do appreciate the tanking.

The sound design is so good! And the music! Letting lose a full dragon shout is fucking satisfying.

Pretty sure I am going to clock hundreds of hours in this game, but mostly because I appear to be completely terrible at it.

I still need to "finish" oblivion :/ I havent even played the main quests in it yet! I get caught up doing spells and shit.

Oblivion meh, burn it and buy Skyrim

I killed a dragon and a mammoth back to back and felt like a god.

I killed my first giant. It was a quest from the jarl of sadtown (I can't remember the name of the incredibly depressing town with the giant graveyard in the south) and it was surprisingly easy. Of course, Lydia and the worst dog in the world kept him busy at close quarters while I just feathered him with arrows and my conjured atronach pelted him with fireballs.

Having a gang is really useful outdoors. Indoors, not so much.

Gone back to the main questline, was about 1/3 of the way through then got sidetracked, now I'm level 30 and most of the base-level bandits and draugrs are one hit kill. It's kinda fun to charge round dungeons without fear like a maniac - sometimes I'll just stand still and let the swordblows rain down on me, to increase my armour skill - but might increase the difficulty level if it really stops being any kind of a challenge.

Bump that difficulty up even one notch and you won't be standing still for long, i can tell you that

I've broken my vanilla playthrough vow and installed 2 mods, one replacing the boring sans font with a more elder scrolls-y font, one adding some extra bookshelves to Breezehome so I could tidy the fuck up. I still wish I could put a skull on a bookshelf, or put stuff on a plate and not have it spontaneously leap onto the floor but nvm. I'm pretending I have a geist in the house.

Trying to decide whether to get that dog or not. Hm.

decide to destroy the dark brotherhood, we'll see how that goes

one adding some extra bookshelves to Breezehome so I could tidy the fuck up

skysims

i think it's kinda funny how there is gold everywhere. like every pot in a forgotten ruin has a few coins. and you have all this shit worth thousands. but nobody in business has more than a couple hundred at a time. you're like a walking liquidity crisis.

whiterun blacksmiths are doing pretty well, >2k between them every day. (took me an age to figure out you can buy from 'er outdoors, and she has a separate cash pile.)

thx for new display name

WoW years mean I'm slightly disappointed at merchant funding caps & their unwillingness to buy any old junk I want to clear out of my bags.

Only just getting into dropping stuff on the floor in Breezehome. Pigsty by next week.

put it in the endless chest

but i like leaving stuff on the floor. it gives the place an easygoing bachelor pad feel.

Got a free flat when I became arch-mage, why is everyone buying real estate

Gotta do something with all the money.

I hope to have vacation homes throughout Skyrim. I'm not renting a bed for a good night's sleep.

here's a design quirk i'm a little embarrassed to say just crossed my mind: unlike fallout or dragon age, i don't think there's any sex in this game? but you can get gay married! the chastity feels so odd considering how vicious and murdery some of the quests are. idk i'm not asking for anything that isn't there, it's just odd to think about how these elements get put in or not.

Can you imagine how bad the animation for that would be? That 30-seconds to sit animation is bad enough.

Plus, you'd probably get stuck.

MINIGAME!

*shudder*

"I am SWORN to put your penis in my vagina..."

"Let me guess, somebody stole your sweetroll"

really shd have left this one alone

A whole new line to explore in alchemy...

I'm sorry, I'm still lolling at the idea of Lydia rolling her eyes at my sexual advances and being super sarcastic about the whole thing

That damn dog would get in the way.

sorry, but all capacity for fantasy world sexuality was directed toward Game of Thrones. there's none left over for any other fantasy worlds. we'll just have to make due.

even all of the fantasy world sex was not enough for Game of Thrones, so they had to borrow a little from Blind Date and the Bachelor. sorry about that wedding night, bachelor!

holy god played too many hours of this last night

I had to restrain myself from turning it on at 11:45 last night because I knew I would play until 3

haha i can echo both of those sentiments

echoechoecho

come on skyrim, drop in price you dick

need to bring bo'bahg into life

honestly though as someone who plays maybe A game a year, owns a mac, and has never owned a console, i've just been giddy being able to play something so good. the last sandbox game i played was GTAsomething, years ago, for a few days while at a friend's house. also WoW, i guess. i feel like i got to skip over years of bad gaming and had this dropped in my lap.

mostly its the size of it, there's just so much to DO, and theyve managed to avoid making it grind-y. like, it seems like you could finish the main story (barely begun), the guild quests (i'm doing thief+assassin), and just dick around leveling crafting skills and still have fun with it.

do these games typically have DLC/expansion packs?

this will almost certainly have DLC. From what I understand, someone's found Oblivion sketched into the code outside of the accessible game; sounds likely that they'll be adding that entire world as an expansion.

dang

of course i probably won't be able to play the expansion stuff, since my copy is cracked and in some weirdo wrapper, but maybe they'll have a legit mac version out someday

someone's found Oblivion sketched into the code outside of the accessible game; sounds likely that they'll be adding that entire world as an expansion.

wat. i just don't even understand.

the expansion i played for oblivion was pretty dumm. but i didn't like oblivion anyway so eh

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/06/29/skyrim-dlc-to-have-more-of-an-expansion-pack-feel/

Mordy: http://www.geekosystem.com/skyrim-explorer-travels-morrowind-oblivion/

The landmasses for Cyrodiil and Vaardenfell have been created and shipped with Skyrim. Nothing on 'em, just the lansdcape.

right but they could be populated or something

when do i get to meet some fucking sea elves already?

considering the number of waterbreathing rings i've spammed, should be soon /wakkawakka

am I missing out on anything by not going underwater?

I found a ship graveyard that looks cool but I have to go back to check it out; no potions or rings on my person at the time.

there are some alchemy ingredients that are found underwater. a lot of time the designers throw a chest down there too.

i know there was one quest that required i hunt for something in a lake. and there was a dungeon that had a 2nd exit through an underwater tunnel.

so, maybe? not much tho

haven't found much but i like the freedom it affords when running away from giants or just exploring
i'm argonian btw

I'm also argonian but so far I haven't had much of a reason to go underwater.

I am tempted to stay underwater to see how long it takes to drown

I have been trying to build up conjuration but it doesn't seem like making a flame atronach at the beginning of a fight before slashing dudes to pieces is a very quick way of getting anywhere with it.

magic is a slow business.

I wish there was some ship action.

did you find the stone that lets you learn magic 20% faster?

Yeah I've had it on for the entirety of my game.

aragonian dudes i dont know how to tell you this but the nords have been saying some pretty unflattering things about you behind your back xposts

ah

well, it's kind obv but it's a lot easier to lvl destro and resto than anything else ime

easier to lvl destro

Yeah, I'm trying to avoid destro this playthrough.

it took me about 10 murders to realize the dark brotherhood forever quests will never end

I did just enough of the Thieves Guild quests to get access to their appraiser and then peaced

i mean cmon its dark brotherhood forever

i know rite

i decided to let this tragedy stand last. sacrifices must be made :`(
http://i.imgur.com/7vTC1.jpg

last night*.

am I missing out on anything by not going underwater?

― Bam! Orgasm explosion in your facehole. (DJP), Thursday, January 5, 2012 9:00 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

here I will note that I swam the shit out of the big lake in fallout new vegas and there was not a fucking thing under water there. =(

at least in skyrim theres soooooooome stuff. nothing amazing but better than 0.

aragonian dudes i dont know how to tell you this but the nords have been saying some pretty unflattering things about you behind your back
― blurgh (jjjusten)

The greybeardfs have sent me into a cave to get back a stone or something. SO I go through the dungeon, kill evberything, and this stone is si8tting right in front of me, and I can't pick it up! Stupid bethseda.

How early on is this? Were you trying to get THE HORN? There should be a note from someone who got THE HORN before you, you have to track them down and get them to give you THE HORN.

maybe the note got dislodged with careless shouting.

so just how camp is people's appreciation of skyrim, on the whole, as a fictional environment

why is there always a whiterun guard in my house just ...leaving... whenever I return back to my wife from a long adventure? what kind of shop is she running?

that and the dead naked lydia in the spare room make me thinks our marriage is not what it should be.

xp A restart solved it. Star of something? I got to take it somewhere to get fixed. Then I got the note telling me the HORN has been stolen, so that's something else for me to do.

Trying to get a half a broken amulet, and there's a bridge that won't come down. The lever just booby-traps some spikes at me. It's very frustrating. I don't want to have to go to a walkthru, but it's pushing me.

lol I didn't even notice my horse had been killed because it ran away and got into a fight with some other random creature I didn't know was there and I assumed it had done its usual "run from scary fight and magically appear at next destination" thing

lol i hopped on a horse at one point, it must have been left over after some bandit encounter or something? idk. i rode it around for a few minutes and then left it somewhere.

i played through the college of winterhold questline, and at the point where the magic anomalies are attacking the town, there was "my" horse, getting killed.

there were about 10 solid hours of gameplay between these things, swear to god, never saw the horse once in that time.

I went to the fruit n veg stall in Winterhold, asked the woman what she had for sale. "Some people call this junk. Me, I call them treasures." Ok good luck with yr treasure cabbages luv.

Winterhold Windhelm Whiterun. So many similar names in this thing.

yeah that's a problem

markarth, morthal

kind of lolling at the idea of there being characters in this game world who would be all "basic foodstuffs? that's junk!" but then I remembered we are in Nord country

Venting frustration.

http://i43.tinypic.com/24zjeo1.jpg

am I missing out on anything by not going underwater?

There are underwater chests here and there, but so far I haven't found anything spectacular (read enchanted weapons/armor) in them, just ordinary loot.

Northwest of Winterhold there is a wreck of the Pilgrim's Trench under 100+ ft of water, just visible if you swim out to the middle of the frigid bay. I suspect that one might hold remarkable loot. My alchemy mojo is pretty good (60+, with perks, and +20% hat/necklace/gloves/ring), so I've got some 90 second waterbreathing potions. I just haven't had another excuse to head that way (nearby catacomb Ysgramor's Tomb looked main questy).

magic is a slow business

There are ways of leveling magic quickly (eg. casting muffle anywhere, casting soul tap on bodies, healing self after self-injury on spikes @ Halted Streams Camp) but I'm roleplaying here.

I halted my first playthrough with a stealthy archer/dual wielder/crafter at lvl 40 doing Thief's Guild and Dark Brotherhood quests as I felt a bit overpowered on main quests. Second playthrough I'm trying a stealthy conjurer/illusionist/crafter/archer doing Mage & Bard College quests mixed with main quests at Expert level. I sort of direct the action from the rear, and silently casting frenzy and later sending in my atronach & tank to mop up the carnage is fun. I've forgotten where my shout key is.

I'd add the symbiosis between enchanting/alchemy/smithing is great, and one can really "level up" with just 4-6 perks in each. Alchemy is a fast, painless gold generator after a slow start.

Of course, this guy beat the main quest just investing in heavy armor, smithing, and enchanting:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhBiNx749Zw

sneak makes it pretty easy to exploit any fight. kind of wish it was handled more like deus ex - where once they were tipped off you there it was harder to sneak up on them even after they stopped searching for you.

I leveled sneak highish (30some) just by doing a few dark bro missions and got through the dragonstone dungeon without waking any draugr, it ruled

i am working on grinding enchant, smith and alchemy up to 100 and i have grand plans to make insane gear. i'm going a little bit ham w/ this.

here's a tip (that may come close to a cheat for some of you): when selling a bunch of crap off, sell what you can (after buying whatever you need), and then stand there and wait for 48 hrs. the merchant's money supply will refresh. works great if it's at a thieves guild fence: more money, plus a bunch more lockpicks to buy.

Note that fast travel consumes game calendar time too, so you could just as readily have a circuit of market towns you frequent to offload loot (or in my case, valuable potions.

A video I came across at this excellent compendium of Skyrim tricks and tips is the series Felix the Peaceful Monk, who plays as a pacifist:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2d2KRIUYCM

It will be interesting to find where Felix is halted in main/faction quest lines.

here's a tip (that may come close to a cheat for some of you): when selling a bunch of crap off, sell what you can (after buying whatever you need), and then stand there and wait for 48 hrs. the merchant's money supply will refresh.

h8 this shit

imo waiting is always cheating

we all cheated while ilx was down

ok that stamina/cooking tip is pretty nuts - but i probably won't take it to heart.

Aaaaargh! I put all my loot in my chest at Uthelred's house in Whiterun, and when I went back to get it later, it was all gone! That has seriously pissed me off. I thought ex-followers' houses were cool to put stuff in, but apparently not. I had a fortune in amulets just to start with!

I think the same thing happened with my room in the mage college. I wouldn't have thought that counted as a public area.

oh shit i've got tons of shit in the dark bros sanctuary

Don't worry, the dark brotherhood are known for their trustworthiness.

I will be playing this for the next year at least.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bifmj1O3D24

not feeling the disco inferno but the SNAP INTO A SKYRIM is awesome

ive benen the deenger zoon

Anduin's ice cave lair with all of the psycho stabby ghost girls was really frustratingly difficult... right up until it suddenly became super easy; I don't even know what I did differently tacticswise*

I pwned Anduin by hiding around a corner and chain-casting artronarchs, lol

* well actually yes I do; on the pull where 2 ghosts and a zombie would run up and own me, I let Lydia and a flame artronarch soak up dmg while I stood in the back with J'Zango's flame cloak on and ran away from things when they tried to kill me until they exploded

only 1 r in atronach /annoyingstickler

my bad, I meant rartrornarchr

sometimes the centurions bug out and stand there like punching bags. dwarven craftsmanship way overrated.

I started a third character last night. My orc will be focusing on two-handed, destruction, and illusion.