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I'm heading to a midnight release event for Skyrim in about two hours. Despite all I've heard (good and bad) I am pretty damn excited for the game, getting a PC copy. Here are a few things I've heard so far from early reviews:

+ Huge world with far more variety than Oblivion
+ Procedural generated quests that change every time you play again
+ Character models and generation look far superior to Oblivion

- No ability to craft spells. This is confirmed. I've not heard about enchanting.
- Cannot navigate game menus with mouse, must use WADS/Enter
- Severe bugs that will be fixed by a day-one patch. It has been said that this was done to piss off pirates.

I've not heard any news about modding tools for the PC version, but I would think it to be a serious blow to current and future PC TES ventures if Skyrim did not include these tools.

Let's discuss Skyrim and also our experiences/stories/insights about all past TES games. These include Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, and Oblivion.

I played Oblivion and Fallout 3 and now RPG's like that feel like reruns.

I haven't played any other TES games, but I've played several other fantasy RPGs. I'm only a tiny bit into Skyrim but it's blowing me away so far.

I've been playing for about an hour. So far, I'm liking most of it. What I don't enjoy is the UI, which is suffering heavily from consolitis. It looks as if it would work fine with mouse+keyboard, but it feels clunky. Some things you think you can click, but you can't. Others you can click on. It's quite confusing. I have yet to figure out how to use the quick access key to change my main hand weapon.

The graphics are also quite lackluster. The models, especially, look terrible. Once you're playing, you don't notice it too much, because you're too busy killing shit, but during the intro scene, I gagged a little. I don't know if this is because of consolitis also, but overall the graphics don't look like too much of a step up from Oblivion - other than the fire and water effects.

Any insight/first impressions from your first days in Skyrim? I have it but haven't had the chance to install it yet.

I think the fast travel system that was introduced in Oblivion takes quite a lot away from the experience, although I acknowledge it's usefulness in such a large game world. In Morrowind I remember that without the fast travel system there was a greater feeling of adventure when you were forced to survive against the elements in a remote location. I remember being over encumbered, diseased and with my armour falling to pieces but still pushed on in desperation to complete a quest, and it was intense. I had to dabble in alchemy, armour repair, and carry a medicine cupboard worth of potions and herbal remedies just in case. In Oblivion you fast travel back to town, repair, fast travel back in 2min flat.

I think the Morrowind six weapon skills (short sword, long sword, axe, blunt, spear, bow) to three in Oblivion (sharp, blunt, bow) to Skyrim's (one handed, two handed, bow) is on the rebound by merit of the perks. Thanks to the perks you can again specialise in a specific weapon, however in Morrowind for example, a dagger's governing attribute was speed which played to a stealth characters strengths, spears were endurance, and bows were agility.

+ Huge world with far more variety than Oblivion

I understand that in Oblivion they used (to some extent) a automagically-generated-terrain-black-magic whereas in Skyrim it's more hand crafted. The difference in environments are more pronounced, and culture and differences in towns will be more pronounced.

I've not heard any news about modding tools for the PC version, but I would think it to be a serious blow to current and future PC TES ventures if Skyrim did not include these tools.

Surely they must, the DLC and more so the community developed mods are one of the best reasons to go PC over console.

nevon wrote:The graphics are also quite lackluster. The models, especially, look terrible. Once you're playing, you don't notice it too much, because you're too busy killing shit, but during the intro scene, I gagged a little. I don't know if this is because of consolitis also, but overall the graphics don't look like too much of a step up from Oblivion - other than the fire and water effects.

The models look terrible? I was suitably impressed when I saw the character models they released on the Escapist Magazine.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... Characters

-Kazagha

Kazagha wrote: I understand that in Oblivion they used (to some extent) a automagically-generated-terrain-black-magic whereas in Skyrim it's more hand crafted. The difference in environments are more pronounced, and culture and differences in towns will be more pronounced.

Oblivion was hand crafted, but the amount of detail versus Morrowind was severely lacking. Morrowind also had a wide variety of terrain types and unique flora/fauna (Nix hound, Scrib, Cliff Racer) compared to Oblivions common fauna (Bear, Deer, Wolf). I'm installing Skyrim right now, we'll see what happens

Kazagha wrote:The models look terrible? I was suitably impressed when I saw the character models they released on the Escapist Magazine.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... Characters

-Kazagha

Those are very favorable screenshots. I haven't tried fiddling with the settings much, so maybe I could get some more out of it, but it does auto-set the graphical settings for you - and I have a fairly beefy rig - yet the models look terrible, for the most part. The hair, especially, is atrocious.

But like I said, once you're playing, you don't notice it. During the intro, you have nothing else to do but watch, so it's extra noticeable then.

medium settings (no, these aren't models )

I will not buy anything from Bethesda ever again. Not after they did this. I can't reward that assholery with my money. I've bought some indie games instead.