The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim

[Baddcog]

The dragons look badass and it's cool that he said they are dynamic, not scripted.

 

I don't think the console port thing will ruin it, obviously they want as big of a market as possible.

[jaxa]

What I've previously heard indicates that they are developing and playing on the PC. Obviously consoles are now the target TES market, but to say that the PC platform will be neglected probably will be less a consequence of consoles and more about the dumbing down of the interface and gameplay in general as a trend. Some of these changes will be OK or good, others won't. Changes between each game in the series are inescapable, and going back to Morrowind you have a pretty complex/powerful and sometimes confusing range of interfaces and gameplay mechanics. Oblivion minimalized many things, such as the menus and bartering, and replaced 0-100 lock levels, apparatus quality, skills and the like with universal Very Easy/Easy/Average/Hard/Very Hard and Novice/Apprentice/Journeyman/Expert/Master categorization.

 

It's possible to explain most of the simplification of "Attributes" and the dropped skills. In exchange for all this simplification there are new features including an economy, more dynamic questing (feature or not, you decide), dragon battles which look to be more few in number and eventful than say, the "epic" silt strider battles of Morrowind, shouts (words of power) on top of a magic system which seems to allow spell mixing (?). I will give this game the benefit of the doubt at least until after the release and reviews start rolling in. At least there's more info out about Skyrim than T4, and a greater expectation that Skyrim will live up to the previous titles in its series.

[ungoliant]

In Bethesda we trust. I need to find a way to make some damn money before november to build a machine to play this thing on max draw distance without minimizing all the other effects. Very few games motivate me to spend multiple hundreds of dollars. I have a good feeling about this game, console focus or not.

[rich_is_bored]

It's not feasible to sink a small fortune into the development of a game and not develop for the console market. Businesses are in the business of making money and if you're looking for PC centric games at E3, you'll find them next to the leprechauns.

 

Also, go buy a gamepad. Don't be scared. It's an input device just like the keyboard and mouse your using right now. Rest easy in the knowledge that for games where keyboard and mouse support is lack luster, the gamepad works out of the box.

[Fidcal]

ditto what jdude said. I've said elsewhere that even if they just made a new game with the old Oblivion code and assets and no technical improvements whatsoever I'd still buy it.

[7upMan]

Also, go buy a gamepad. Don't be scared. It's an input device just like the keyboard and mouse your using right now. Rest easy in the knowledge that for games where keyboard and mouse support is lack luster, the gamepad works out of the box.

I did try it out (PS1 game pad at the time and Xbox 360 recently), and I'm just not comfortable with a pad. I don't find playing (a 3rd person game or FPS game) with a pad intuitive. I do admit that there is a huge number of games that fully utilize pads, especially sports games. But imagine playing anything as fast-paced as Counter-Strike with a pad, or even something that Bethesda released in the last years. I just like to be able to move my FOV more directly and quickly than the analog sticks allow.

 

 

[etdarkb]

I just hope they use some real programmers, Morrowind was a great game but ugly technically. (If you do not trust me read the scripting system documentation)

[jaxa]

Or pick up the key in Huleen's hut.

[Northeast]

So long as the modability (moddability?) of this game is at least as strong as with Oblivion, I'll be happy with the PC release. If they gimp that, and I have read no indication that they have, they might just have to cure cancer (by people playing the game) for me to regain interest.

 

Also, go buy a gamepad. Don't be scared. It's an input device just like the keyboard and mouse your using right now. Rest easy in the knowledge that for games where keyboard and mouse support is lack luster, the gamepad works out of the box.

A gamepad makes sense for this game only if one's exclusively using third-person view. The digital input of the WASD keys make the dual-analog sticks (one for camera, one for movement) the better option for third-person. Since the mouse handles both aspects in first-person, and with greater precision, KB/M is much better.

 

Of course, experience with the Witcher 2 using gamepads has been lacklustre compared to using a keyboard and mouse. The problem being on the developer's end though...

Edited June 9, 2011 by Northeast

[Fidcal]

I beg to differ. The KB/M combo is unplayable for me. I hate it. This is why I bought the Xbox version. I played almost entirely first person with the joypad with no difficulty. So long as the joypad is calibrated correctly then it should be fine.

 

I'm pinning my hopes on Xpadder but I'm not hopeful. I seemed to get some conflict in Witcher 2 so took the easy route and used W2's own limited joypad option. This was not possible with Oblivion. Oblivion never provided its own true joypad option because the camera only worked with a mouse. And at that time I didn't know about Xpadder or I would have tried it. In fact if I have any sense I'll try and get it working (in preparation for Skyrim) on my old PC machine because I still have Oblivion installed on that.

 

I have a horrible feeling I'll be getting two copies again - PC to discard and Xbox to play. Hope not. At least with the Xbox you can stick in a disk and know the game will work without a lot of hassle.

[ungoliant]

At least with the Xbox you can stick in a disk and know the game will work without a lot of hassle.

 

Pretty sure that's exactly how they want you to feel. "I feel like playing a new video game. What should I buy? Well, console games work easier, so i'll buy one instead of a PC game". I'm sure many of us could go on with that subject for a long time, but.... /derail

[jdude]

The whole problem with PCs is the lack of standardized hardware for developers. Even in our mod we've had issues with ATI drivers which needed to be fixed. I wish ATI and Nvidia would work together to standardize some of their drivers to allow for easier cross hardware development, but that's very likely never going to happen.

 

From a business perspective cross platform development is simply a must. You'd be giving up millions of potential sales by ignoring these markets.

 

The biggest flaw with cross platform development is this enforcement of consistency across all platforms. TBH only a couple minor design changes would be required to help appease the PC community. Off the top of my head, eliminating "press this button" on the top of the screen, increasing complexity of controls, eliminating dumbed down menus (Crysis Graphics Menu), using higher quality textures (which the dev companies should have laying around) etc etc. Why don't developers just do this stuff? I have no idea. Think about how different the reception to Crysis 2 would have been if the dev team took an extra week and made these changes.

[stumpy]

There's been some interviews coming out of E3 from developers which sounds like they're fed up with having to dumb down their games just to get them to run on consoles. Lack of actual memory in a consoles build is a big complaint, most have been saying consoles should have a minimum of 8 gigabytes of memory.

 

The reason why they dont make the graphic on a pc better than the console version is that when they sign the contract with microsoft, it states that the pc version of the game must be identical to the xbox version. This includes game content and graphics quality, everything must be identical. And any additional content must be exclusive for the xbox, no additional content for the pc version. But then xbox players are idiots if they are willing to sign up to a network like microsoft live and pay a monthly subscription, for stuff you would normally get free.

Edited June 12, 2011 by stumpy

[Fidcal]

It's a wonder the contract didn't also force them to secrecy. "you are not allowed to make this game better and you mustn't tell anyone" M$oft up to their usual tricks. The unfree market. Customer last; profit first.

[Fidcal]

Getting close now and looking really good.

 

 

FastestFasterFastMediumSlowSlowerSlowest

[SiyahParsomen]

WOW! This is getting mind blowin'.

 

I wonder if my end run it smoothly. Is there any estimated specs?

[7upMan]

http://www.pcgameshardware.de/aid,851479/Skyrim-Die-Systemanforderungen-Update-Erklaerung-fuer-geringen-Festplattenplatz-News-des-Tages/Rollenspiel-Adventure/News/

 

Minimum: (Quality: Low)

- OS: Windows XP/Vista/7 (32 or 64bit)

- CPU: Dual-Core CPU with 2 GHz

- RAM: 2 GiB

- Graphics card: DX9-compatible graphics card with 512 MiB RAM

- Internet access for activation on Steam

 

Recommended: (Quality: High)

- OS: Windows XP/7

- CPU: Quad-Core CPU

- RAM: 4 GiB

- HDD: 6 GByte

- Graphics card: DX9-compatible graphics card with 1 GiB RAM (Geforce GTX 260/Radeon HD 4890 or better)

[SiyahParsomen]

hey, that's much less than I expected. Thanks.

[Shadowhide]

i wonder what you like in TES 3 and 4

its boring and liner(unforgiving for RPG game) also cat-people is fucked up and stupid

right now skyrim looks like TES 4 clone with better graphics,world design is not impressive at all

Edited October 31, 2011 by Shadowhide

[SiyahParsomen]

i wonder what you like in TES 3 and 4

its boring and liner(unforgiving for RPG game) also cat-people is fucked up and stupid

right now skyrim looks like TES 4 clone with better graphics,world design is not impressive at all

 

Actually I'm not a fan of this kind. I'm more likely interested with enviromental and architectural design. I saw some nice elements and waiting to explore them.

[Shadowhide]

i dunno,when i was exploring caves and ruins in TES3/4,only thing that i found was another gay armor,not new NPC's nor quests

exploration was interesting and worthy in Gothic1/2 and even 3

[PPoe]

TES3 was amazing.. Oblivion had very bad levelling system of monsters, but with OOO... One of the greatest games ever. Even with things like relatively booring and repetitive dungeons. If skyrim will be better in that and will stay mods friendly, then It will be great game. For me, TES was never about story, but abouth walking in the forests, hunting, collecting plants, exploring caves, earning my ranks in guilds, helping normal people.. Main storyline was just something that had to be there.

Edited November 1, 2011 by PPoe

[7upMan]

I just hope they won't be having just 5 vocal actors in Skyrim, as was the case with Oblivion. Really, hearing the same 3 male and 2 female voices over and over in the most different roles totally sucked. I expect(ed) better from a multi-million dollar project with several hundred ppl working on.

[Komag]

Totally agree on that last point 7upMan - they need about 3 to 5 times as many voice actors. I absolutely hated the SAME voice actors doing all the voices in Oblivion, definitely the worst aspect of the production.

[Jesps]

Still, somehow hilarious, when someone would change to a completely different voice in the middle of a conversation.