May I ask exactly why? Oblivion could take open cities in perfect stride. The only reason the cities got closed at all was because BethSoft panicked about the console support.

Granted, they did have an excuse then, as they only received the Xbox 360 to do actual testing over the last three months of dev. time, but here... not so much. The current excuse is that the consoles can't handle what they are doing. Trouble is, the industry always manages to surprise us with exactly what those consoles CAN handle.

So long as the NPC count in the cities goes up by at least twice what we got in Oblivion, I will be understanding and shall complain no more. If not... well... then I will KNOW you are just being lazy. I want to see progress in making these games the best they can be, I don't want Skyrim to simply be Oblivion HD.

Source

In other news:

- Alchemy is becoming a stealth skill. (Approve! Approve!)

- There will be no minigames involved with the crafting skills (Thank you!)

- Giants, Draugr, and other creatures will receive a bit of culture from the AI engine (Looking forward to this.)

It's CRUNCH TIME at Bethesda, Todd Howard is beginning to sound tired already, lol. (either that or they caught him for the interview in the middle of the night).

I'm worried about the future of TES as a whole, the more I hear the less I like.

-Attributes are no more

-Classes that some of us enjoyed so much are gone

-Several skills have been cut

-Closed cities (personal gripe really)

-I personally hate the menu overhaul and prefer the charts so I can easily check character skills without scrolling

No more attributes? Seriously? Classes I could live without, but how are you supposed to create a distinctive character without attributes (especially at the start of the game when you won't have had a chance to get any of the 'perks')? It's sounding like your character will start off a total blank slate with no special skills or talents whatsoever - talk about boring. At this rate they'll probably ditch skill progression altogether for the next game, and turn it into a sort of mediaeval action-adventure/FPS (First Person Stabber?)

First off I need to stress that I am not a Bethesda apologist here. I have the same concerns about the future of the games as the rest of you. I just don’t understand the negativity about all of this. Can’t we at least try to give Bethesda the benefit of the doubt until we have the benefit of seeing the game?

Classes are no more because the class system tied directly into the leveling system and both were flawed. Maybe they should have fixed it to give us something better, but they chose instead to try something new. Something new does not automatically equal ‘dumbing down’ for all you PC snobs out there (ok most of the time it does ). I give Bethesda kudos for scrapping a flawed system rather than just recycle something that didn’t work properly.

Attributes . . . this one just floors me. Other than overall magicka and encumbrance (both of which are better addressed with perks), what did attributes really do for you in Oblivion? The base weapon (silver does more damage than iron for example) plus enchantments determined weapon damage more than character Strength or Agility. Mastery of a particular school of magic determined spell cost more than Intelligence, Willpower, or Personality. Health gains per level were a static ten points plus whatever your Endurance rating was, meaning that you would still have decent health even if you never touched Endurance.

As for the argument that attributes helped to make distinctive characters, I would ask one simple question. How? Most players max their character’s attributes. I have several characters in Oblivion. My Bosmer is just as strong as my Orc who is just as intelligent as my Altmer. Race, clothing/armor, weapon choice (if any), and faction affiliation did more to make characters distinctive than attributes. I think that we all have a tendency to panic whenever we feel that we are losing something from our beloved Elder Scrolls, no matter how ridiculous that something is. I won’t argue that the games couldn’t benefit from an attribute system that worked properly, they absolutely could. But that isn’t something that we have ever had in a TES game, and whatever we think we are losing in the absence of flawed attribute progression is being compensated for by (count them) 280+ perks.

Open cities would have been nice aesthetically, I suppose. But in a region rife with Giants, Draugr, and other hostile wildlife (not to mention warring factions/clans) it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. To create such only because the technology allows it would feel cheesy to me.

Just my two cents.

I was initially pissed off about attributes being gone, but I listened to a few interviews and Todd basically said what Destri said. And it makes sense too. The game will accomplish the same things, just in a more direct manner.

I don't miss classes at all.

To tell you the truth, I can accept the cities being sort of closed off if Bethesda can at least find a way to hide the loading screen and retain the immersion. Oblivion's method of closing the cities was rubbish, it was a real hack-n-slash compromise decision that didn't really get a whole lot of thought put into it. You walk up to a door, press space, then have to twiddle your thumbs staring at a loading screen. I like to think we have reached a day and age where loading screens are, apart from the initial start-up, a sign of shoddy design. They are bland, uninspiring, and boring.

Here's what could happen: the city gates are closed off, but in order to get inside the major cities, you do not stride up to the gate and activate it so that you are transported to the city cells via loading screen, instead you ask a guard to let you in, and the game loads the city and unloads a portion of the overworld while you watch the gate crew actually open the doors. This keeps you in the game. If Bethesda does something like this, then all will be forgiven. If they decide to make the transition as clunky as it was in Oblivion, no progress will have been made at all and I will have to call them out for simply being lazy.

@ TK

Sounds like ME's infamous elevators... you want that?

Yes. I do.

ME2 was a great technical achievement, but in terms of the product we received it was a huge step backwards for Bioware. As much bling as you put into a loading screen, it is still a loading screen. ME2 just seemed to me that Bioware tried to make the best generic shooter title they could. They made an excellent shooter, but there is absolutely nothing special about the game anymore. ME's elevators, while not particularly in the greatest form, worked, because they kept you in the game while the loading went on in the background. Now with ME2, we get pulled away from the game to watch some flashy blinged-up mini-cutscene while the game loads. I'm sorry, but that was a terrible idea for them to go from not using loading screens to using loading screens. Either way, this is a rather boring part of playing a game that we will never be without, so at least we can do our best to spice things up. Load screens are obsolete in this day and age, can't we just move on?

I never had any problems with those elevators.

To each their own.

I personally liked the loading screens. I'd rather read something than stare at a wall.

But therein lies a problem: load screen text has become just another way for video game developers to insult our intelligence. All you ever see there nowadays are basic instructions like how to open doors or how to use your sword. I really can't stand the flim-flam that developers are putting into the load-screen text anymore. Even Bethesda is guilty of this, and most of the lore snippets they give you can be gleaned from the in-game books anyway.

If you use hidden loading ala the ME elevators, you can't do that, and so you must find new, meaningful ways to keep the player's attention. ME did this by occasionally broadcasting news clips while you rode the elevators, and I see no reason Bethesda couldn't do something like having the guards outside the city have a little chat about the goings-on in the game world while the gates were being opened, or perhaps having a few random travelers pass by on the way in or out. that keeps the player's interest, and keeps their head in the game.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who didn't mind ME's elevators!

I agree with what you're saying, TK. It sounds like a great idea. I think they should keep it as basic as possible, though. Just the simple act of the guards opening the gate. If you try to include dialogue or other stage business you're bound to run into this scenario:

Say you’re coming up to the gate to Solitude. There are two guards outside minding their posts. You request the gate to be opened. They grudgingly oblige. While you wait for the gate to open they engage in small talk about the happenings in town or the fact that they hate the Skyrim equivalent of mudcrabs. A farmer or two sidles up beside you waiting for the gate to open. You sit there and you go ‘this is really cool! I am so immersed in the game right now!’

Cut to 100+ game days and nearly half that many level-ups later. You are now the full on Dovahkiin. Even dragons fear your steps. You walk up to the gate to Solitude and the guards know you on sight. They immediately begin to draw open the gate. While you wait you manage to overhear the two guards having the exact same conversation that they had when you were an unknown scrub (or scrib)!

Eventually any kind of contrived transition between areas of the game world will suffer through repetition. I do agree with you in that I would like to see them get more creative with the loading screens. Instead of the so-called flim-flam that passes for load screen text, why not give us the full text of an in-game book chosen at random? Those without the patience to read the books can just wait for the prompt that lets them know that the new area is loaded. The rest of us can immerse ourselves in the lore.

Woah. Woah. Attributes are .. gone? They could've made something with that, you know. Like . . . . restrictions. On weapons and armor.

For example, you see an Elven Blade lying on the floor. Being a newbie who always gets Iron, you get excited. But when you pick it up and try to wield it, you get the message that it Requires:

55 Strength for swinging the Blade- Gameplay wise, you do a fraction of the sword's real damage.

60 for doing real damage.

50 Endurance so you don't tire out easily-Gameplay wise, your stamina depletes at a mediocre rate.

55 to get the hang of it- Gameplay wise, your stamina depletes at reasonable-rate.

If any of your attributes are below the required numbers, you get clumsy and tire out easily. Hell, if your Strength is low, you might even hold a longsword as a guddamned claymore!

For goodness' sake, Bethesda should've known that everything has potential to be converted into something new. But alas, I would say that they are veering dangerously close to mainstreaming. Alas.

As for the loading screen, I agree with TK here. I think its time the loading screen be put to rest. In Oblivion, it was simply bad.

This is why I would rather have standard loading screens. ME's elevator rides were mostly in complete silence, because they didn't have enough 'news reports' to play with out repeating them dozens of times.

Okay, I'm going to answer this purely from my own point of view. I don't claim to speak for anyone else.

Firstly, I should point out that unlike most people here, I'm not a big fan of Oblivion. It was my introduction to the Elder Scrolls series, and I wasn't particularly impressed (especially given the insane amount of hype around the game when it was first released). Since then I've played Morrowind and a bit of Daggerfall, and I can see clear trends in the way the series has developed - which from my point of view are in completely the wrong direction. So I have no reason to expect that I'll like Skyrim any more than I liked Oblivion, and good reason to expect that I'll like it less.

Secondly, I'm still so unutterably furious with Bethesda for destroying the only part of Tamriel which I actually care about (i.e. Morrowind) that I'm not inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt on anything, let alone the first game post-Infernal City. It doesn't help that the setting (Skyrim, 200 years after the last game) doesn't interest me in the slightest. As far as I'm concerned, they wasted a golden opportunity to show Tamriel in the chaos following the Empire's fall - a period which could have been really interesting. Instead we just have "oh, the Empire is back but it's on the brink of collapse. Again."

And really, nothing I've seen of Skyrim so far inclines me to change my mind. Apart from the improvements in graphics and AI, which were to be expected anyway, all I see is: A plot which is basically a retread of Oblivion, with extra dragons. Gameplay which has been simplified even further in all sorts of ways. Starting off as a f*cking prisoner AGAIN (seriously, I point-blank refuse to even consider playing the game until someone mods this). A gameworld which constantly rearranges itself around your character, just like in Oblivion. Randomly-generated missions, which I've seen in various other games (including Daggerfall) and always hated. And so on. The only glimmer of hope is Todd Howard's statement that the gameworld will be closer to Morrowind in terms of design, but so far I see no evidence of that.


Well, you said it. In all honesty I couldn't care less about the 'PC vs console' debate; dumbing down is dumbing down, whatever the reason for it.


I never got close to maxing any of my characters' attributes in either Morrowind or Oblivion. It depends on your playstyle; I don't powergame, and don't try to do everything with one character, so I always moved on to another one well before I reached that stage. That said, it is a genuine problem - but the solution is to make attributes more significant and less easy to maximise, not to get rid of them altogether. It's not like this would be difficult; there are player-made mods for both MW and OB that do exactly that.

And while getting rid of classes and attributes may not make a huge amount of difference from a gameplay perspective, it's absolute murder from a roleplaying perspective. I don't want my character to start off a complete non-entity, and only develop into something unique at the point where I'm getting bored of playing them. In Morrowind, I can tell a huge amount about my character just by looking at her starting stats: that she's strong and tough, not stupid but not especially intelligent or scholarly; that she considers herself a freelance mercenary; that she's a fighter, trained in various weapons and armour skills; that she's learned a little about Restoration and haggling to help her along in her daily life, but otherwise has no interest in stealth, diplomacy or magic. Already, before I've even begun the game, she has a background and a strong personality which I can then build on.

In Daggerfall, Bethesda actually plans out a detailed background for your character based on your class and starting skills. In Skyrim they seem to be going to the other extreme, giving you a character who is literally a nobody - no past, no strengths or weaknesses, no identity apart from 'hero of today's random prophecy'. The focus is all on how your character is OMG THE DRAGONBORN and none at all on what sort of person they are.


Honestly, I'm not panicking. I never expected much from Skyrim in the first place, so it's hardly a huge disappointment to me that I don't like what I've seen of it so far. My overall reaction to the previews has mostly been 'meh', with a few instances of 'oh God, you cannot be serious'. But that's part of the problem; at the moment I care so little about Skyrim that I'm not even sure I'll bother to play it.

As far as the removal of attributes go i'm not so fussed. For those of us who feel more connected with the traditional stat measurements it's a loss. It was one of the little things in the game that made you feel more powerful, especially in Morrowind. When I started noticing I was getting between A and B faster, that now this skeleton wasn't quite as tough, you felt like progress. It was that little drip freed of encouragement that kept us going, gave us the sense of achievement.

In Oblivion this dissapeared with the levelling of monsters, every fight was now pretty much the same, and the changes to the scale of the world were removed by the fast travelling and just general...sameness of the scenery. Or at least I felt that's what happened. So Bethesda are trying a new system, with the perks we'll get the sense of accomplishment and improvement we got in Morrowind, but without the needless numbers that become redundant in Oblivion.

As far as the closed cities go i'm not that bothered. I mean, we look back to Morrowind as the ideal open cities, but it wasn't always open. Look at Vivec and Mournhould, they seem open at first, but with Vivec especially you were always required to go inside, it was just the sense of scale that made them seem so open. The style though changes throughout the provinces, the more traditional style cities like those of Cyrodil and Skyrim would have gates, they're been routinely invaded, and with the descent of civil war and infighting from the plot closing the gates can well be justified. Vvardenfel was an island with pretty much no strategic value, why would it's cities need gates? Is ash that valuable a resource?

I would like a ME style scene instead of a loading screen, but waiting a few seconds isn't going to put me off the game, and i'd rather get some pretty artwork to look at on a loading screen than a few seconds of awkward silence.

I'm with the crowd of people that have had very low expectations of this game since it was announced so I'm not entirely disappointed or upset at all. I'm almost 100% that the founders of this site fit into this group as well. Sad maybe but alot of the older fans have been alienated by the changes to the series already and I'm sure that many more will be after Skyrim. As I've said before if you have a winning recipe and you make too many changes, at some point that recipe ceases to be good anymore...or at the very least will stop resembling what the recipe used to make.

I'm sure that this game will go on to sell more copies than the old games because these days a game doesn't have to be good to sell, it only has to promote itself well and have an established series. That has been proven to me time and time again. Skyrim will be bought by many just because it is a sequel to Oblivion, by the same people who bought Oblivion just because it was a sequel to Morrowind.

They won't mind that Bethesda opened up an old mythology book and just grabbed out the same tired old things that have filled RPGs for the last 20 years rather than creating something for themselves, or that they've removed more skills, taken away attributes, and generally gone as generic as possible in nearly every way they could. They will enjoy it because they were won over by a game they enjoyed a decade ago even though the current product isn't even even similar or they'll buy it just because in large bold lettering it says Bethesda on the case.

Bethesda changed their "recipe" completely when they created Oblivion; remember that. This is the reason many Morrowind fans (like Helena) refused to continue on, because Bethesda tried to rewrite their tomes and fell flat on their faces as a result. The main reason Oblivion has such a huge modding community is a that it is a testament to how much Oblivion fell short of expectations Practically nothing that was wanted ended up in the final product, mostly because Oblivion was not designed to be as much a "game" as it was designed to be a technical marvel, and such marvels are fleeting and tend to die fast. If Oblivion did not get its SDK, it would not have lasted a year.

Yes, Oblivion did many things most games had never even dreamed of before, such as the distant land rendering that it was possible to explore every inch of (unfortunately, the Distant LOD is horribly low-res and rife with glitches), a dynamic weather system (with broken precipitation), Radiant AI (that is incapable of decent pathfinding and tends to not value their lives), and HDR lighting (that was way WAY too bright).

See what I'm getting at here? Bethesda tried to do too much too fast, and we were left with a bunch of technical features that look great at a glance, but when analyzed are actually kinda sloppy, and that is what we got at the expense of a HUGE amount of Morrowind's atmosphere. Where Morrowind feels unique, and a sort of Wonderland, Oblivion is the generic "been there, seen that" Sylvan forest type landscape. Cyrodiil was supposed to be a jungle, too, until Oblivion smashed that to bits and Bethesda pulled a ret-con on us (I hate ret-cons).

Oblivion does a heckuva lot of stuff, but it does absolutely NOTHING well. It's actually quite similar to GTA III in that regard, I quote an article I once saw in Game Informer:

"If you can't do one thing right, you can just do a bunch of stuff poorly."

Oblivion falls into the latter category; it is a game that stuffs so much into your face it makes it very difficult to realize that the distant landscape is full of tears, for instance, or the rain ignores rooftops and balconies, or the NPCs constantly get stuck on lampposts and repeat conversations in the same conversation and the same person changes his opinions constantly, or the notoriously terrible level scaling, or the hacky-slashy boring and way too drawn-out combat, or the fact that the entire world feels exactly the same throughout, or that Bethesda broke several skills by making them rely entirely on player skill over character skill.

My current load order numbers hundreds of plugins, and 90% of them are dedicated to addressing those above problems (the rest are new quest mods). I really hope Bethesda learned their lesson with Oblivion, because they blew it big time on what could have been something really special.

Doesn't sound like it, seems kinda like Bethsoft is saying "the sales numbers look good on Oblivion so lets remove more stuff to save us time and add in dual wielding and perks...yeah that should do just fine."

To be perfectly honest I really don't know enough about the game to make a proper judgement but so far I'm not liking what I have heard and it definately doesn't sound like an Elderscrolls game to me.

I'm not going to jump on the Skyrim bandwagon. Oblivion was such a commercial success (and for good reason - I'll explain later), that it doesn't surprise me that Beth wants to do more of the same rather than take some serious creative/design risks that could blaze new trails. From what I saw of Skyrim, it doesn't seem to have as much environmental variety as Oblivion (honestly, does Skyrim have much to begin with?). No offense intended to our northern friends, but when I think of Norway or Sweden, I think of glacier covered mountains with slivers of forests and alpine meadows in the valleys dropping down to rocky fjords. If I'm wrong in thinking that's all there is to these two grand countries (each with their own grand histories that I've only skimmed the surface of), then will a resident of either country enlighten me please?

So that's what I think of when I think of Skyrim. Cold, mostly inhospitable, and dark in the winter time. Do I want to spend all my time immersed in winter? I'm not sure about that, even though winter is one of my favorite seasons (fall is the other). I would be rather bored if that was all I saw.

Now, Oblivion has good reasons for its success. Put yourself in my place. I've never played an RPG before, all of my games were either puzzle games (like the Myst series) where death was rare or never, or they were first person shooters (either space-based like Wing Commander or ground based like Rainbow Six). My favorites were those that had strong storylines, though the older games were quite boring once I played them through and learned the story by heart. They were also restrictive in their gameplay in that I couldn't explore everywhere - there were places my PC couldn't go, no matter how much I wanted to go there.

Oblivion was the first RPG I ever bought, and I got it when I got my Xbox 360. I fell in love with it right off the bat, and its limitations were not obvious to me until after I played it with three or four characters (that's more than any other game). Overall it was slower-paced with moments of sheer terror, and entirely under the player's control. In other words, I could choose whether or not to explore that spooky dungeon - if I chose not to explore it, there were other less scary things I could do. I loved the options open to me.

Oblivion on the console gave me an opportunity to let my imagination run wild while being very immersed in the game. I would play for three or four hours straight before noticing the time. And may I remind you, for all of Oblivion's shortcomings on the consoles, the story of Julian that I am writing is based entirely on the console game. Yes, I'm replaying the Main Quest on the PC hybrid that I now have, but it's not adding much to the story Julian already told me.

So while I'm interested in Skyrim, I'm not pulling at the bit for it to come out. I'll sit back and let others try it first, and see how they like it. Maybe I will wait a few years, until the price drops to $20 or $30 (I got the PC version for $20), then try it out. But right now I'm not that interested in the game enough to drop $60 on it.

I am obviously firmly in the "Morrowind" camp- although I think a lot of that is "situational" for me. I have (and loved playing) Daggerfall- even on an old 486 that had to load every city from the CD whenever I went through the gate.

So, Morrowind on a decent PC was a revelation- and it is kind of one of those "first love" things. No matter what, Oblivion would have been hard-pressed to measure up. The fact that Bethesda (in my opinion) dumbed down some of the better aspects of the Elder Scrolls series only made it worse. I do not hate Oblivion- I have enjoyed playing it- and will do so again, when my budget for a graphics card allows (or if I buy the xBox version).

As to Skyrim- the point of this thread- I have very low expectations. I will not be rushing out to pre-order or buy (as I did Oblivion). I may wait 2 or 3 years. And even then, it may be an xBox version purchase. This is one of those cases where I really hope to be wrong- but fear that I am not.

You know, I'm actually holding out some hope for Skyrim, however misguided it may turn out to be. Morrowind, and Daggerfall (which I played after Morrowind), I loved. Loved. Oblivion, well I was looking forward to it like no game I'd ever looked forward to. In truth, I've never been a huge gamer, only about 25 games played properly in 37 years.

Then Oblivion came out, and I despised it. Where was the role playing? Where were the choices? Somebody earlier mentioned it being like GTA 3. Well, yeah. I agree with that. A huge, sandbox adventure game. Albeit one with the biggest immersion breaker ever:


Cue battle music
"Wait, who's attacking me? Oh, bandits."
"Grr! Kill! Fool"
"Hold on. Guys, wait!"
"What?"
"Why are you attacking me?"
"We need the money."
"You're wearing a full suit of glass armour. Carrying a daedric weapon."
"So?"
"Look, I know this merchant, she'll give you a good price. You could buy a mansion. Hell, you could buy a title. You could be NOBILITY!"
"Nobility? Ooh, I like the sound of that..."


After the disappointment of Oblivion, Stargel suggested I play the original Fallout games. Terrific. Choices galore. You want to fight? Talk your way out of trouble? Whatever you wanted, could be done. Then Beth got the rights, and made Fallout 3.

I was dreading it.

And yet... a lot of the things I hated about Oblivion, they - not fixed exactly - but improved immensely. It wasn't bad, in fact I actually really enjoyed it. It didn't have the depth of the originals (I'm not sure any RPG will ever manage that again), but it was a good game, and much improved from Oblivion. So... I just feel like there is some hope here. I've never powergamed (correct phrase?). That was one of the things that really bugged me about Oblivion. Why? Why should my cloth wearing mage have to attempt to level up skills in endurance? No roleplaying reason whatsoever. The perks I though worked well in Fallout 3, and meant I didn't have to worry about that. I could specialise in skills that were appropriate, and not curse the boar that was kicking the **** out of me, because I wasn't a heavy amour wearing, blade wielding warrior.

I'll reserve judgement of course, but I will be getting it, if only to see if they've learned from the past lessons. Most of what I've heard - which isn't a lot to be honest, I don't want to get sucked in by hype again - sounds fairly promising.

We shall see

I am completely sucked in by the hype and wildly optimistic. Also admittedly too inexperienced with any other games to know what’s wrong with Oblivion. So I’ll be singing made-up songs to the tune of the Skyrim trailer music until I start looking for a skinny little box under the Christmas tree. Or for my birthday if my relentless hinting fails. Bitter rant possibly to follow, but first I’ll be looking at the sunrise over the icy mountains and thinking that although I’m standing in fresh woolly mammoth dung, at least my feet are warm.

Well, as long as I can be a sneaky looking Assassin with perks to support it I will play it. We'll see how it works afterwards, I won't judge the book by its cover on this one.

Luckily for me I have a very open mind when it comes to games. So I honestly don't mind when rpgs have more action than usual. Because of this I was able to enjoy both Morrowind and Oblivion and I reckon I'll love Skyrim as well.
I really don't see why that would be such a big deal.
Seriously, games are alot more fun if you don't build up your own rules of how the game should be.

Who even said anything about the amount of action in the game? All the Elder Scrolls games seem fairly action-heavy to me.


It's not really such a big deal in the grand scheme of things, but for some reason it really, really gets on my nerves. In the first ES game, Arena, there was a good reason for your character to start off in prison - it was part of the story. But now Bethesda seem to have decided that they have to start every single one of their games that way, even where it makes absolutely no sense - look at Oblivion, where no one inside the prison seems to recognise you or have the faintest idea what you're doing there. It's also exasperating from a roleplaying perspective, since it limits your character's background to two basic choices: 'ex-con' or 'wrongfully accused'. That's not so bad for one game, but three in a row is just getting ridiculous.


It's not a question of 'rules'. Like everyone else, I happen to enjoy certain things in games and dislike other things - your criteria may be different from mine, but I'm sure you still have them. So far it appears that Skyrim has few of the things I like in games, and many of the things I dislike, which is why I'm not optimistic about it.

I'm with you, Helena. I've never played the other ES games (well, I tried Morrowind on the Xbox 360 - backwards compatibility, yeah, riight), but having to go through the tutorial dungeon every single time I want to start a new character really gets old. Like about the second time. The first time it was great, because it gave me the chance to learn the controls and how the game plays. But after that, it was just BOOORING. And being on the Xbox, I had no opportunity to go with an alternate start mod. Ugh. That was the thing I hated about Oblivion, how it shoehorned you into the MQ. Yeah, sure, you could ignore it if you wanted, but principled person that I am, I just couldn't ignore the disaster hanging over Cyrodiil or the old man's request.

It would have been nice to have Beth come up with something a bit more creative than "you're stuck in a jail cell, now figure out where to go from here."

It wouldn't even need to be especially creative. Just start with, say, your character arriving by carriage in a big city, and they could be absolutely anyone - including a recently-released or escaped prisoner. They could even go the Daggerfall route and let you choose certain things about your background (e.g. faction relationships), giving the impression that your character has a pre-existing connection to the gameworld.

As for Oblivion's long tutorial, I kept a savegame from just before leaving the dungeon so that I could skip it on future playthroughs (not that I ever really played much after the first game). Even Morrowind's relatively brief tutorial got so tiresome that I ended up installing a 'quick start' mod to skip it.

I actually like what I've seen so far of Skyrim, but then that's me. I haven't played Morrowind that much, and have yet to get Daggerfall to work. Oblivion was the first elder scrolls game I played and also the first game I played in which you were free to do practically what you wanted, and I was blown away by that. Simply the fact that I could ride horses was a big wow for me. But then I never tried to look closer.

haute ecole rider: You asked for enlightment, and I'll see what I can do. I live in Sweden, Stockholm, and until two years ago I didn't see much snow in the winter. There is only these last two winters that have brought loads of snow. Now I can't speak for the northern part of the country, but in the rest of Sweden there isn't any glaciers and now in the summer there ain't any snow. In the southern parts it only used to rain in the winter. Sure it's not much sun in the winter, but I've never found that to be a problem. I run a lot in the forests and there is some great variety(terrain and wildlife). I've seen elk cows running out in front of me on the path two times and that in itself I find wonderful. When you stop to look at your surroundings, you're blown away by how beautiful it is(I am at least). Sweden's got many more lakes than mountains. Fields are common. I love the mountains and the forests, but there is so much more that can't be described with mere words.

As for the people, I've heard some say that we aren't very welcoming, if you say hi to someone on the street you often don't get an answer, which is true. But I've also heard people say that if you get to know swedes and are invited into their home, or only get to know us, swedes can be very loyal, which I'd like to believe is true. Of course there are different people as in all countries, but I think that actually the nords at Thirsk could be a good example of the real people of the north. As I've seen them anyways. They might be hostile at first since they've got bad impresions from imperials, but when you gain their trust you find a really warm community. And I think the buildings look a lot like the longhouses the wikings used to build. I wished at first that the game took place in Elsweyr, birthplace of the khajiits', but now I'm overjoyed that they chose Skyrim. Because well, I love the terrain and Elsweyr to me seems like a much less hospitable place because I don't like heat. It is in the end a question of preference.

Back to the real subject then. I'm not bothered by closed cities or the removal of attributes. If they didn't have closed cities the game would probably be much more demanding on the computer, and I can't afford to buy a new computer. As for the removal of attributes, well you are going to be weaker and less acustomed to talking to people when you've been in prison. It's only appropriate that your skills reflect that. As for the prison thing, I've actually began thinking of a new fanfic that will take place in Skyrim in which the main character has been framed for murder only because the nord nobility(or something) are pissed on that persons foster mother. Otherwise I'm a hundred percent certain that someone creates a mod to change that. As for classes I think it's better without them because then you don't have to choose who you are right at the start, you can make it up as you go along and discover the world.

I've got high hopes for this game, I'll admit that, and I think a lot of them are coming true. Simply the fact that I'll not be stuck in one place talking when people are attacking(As in Weynon priory) is a huge plus for me. I also like that I'll be able to put pretty much what I want in each hand. And then the graphics seem awesome, though I'm not completely sure of that until I get to see elves, khajiits and argonians in action. Anyways, as it looks right now I'll be buying the game when it comes out if our computer can handle it.

But then again, all of this is just my opinion, and I do like it when games are visually attractive.

If I didn't want a character to start in prison, I just played the game and didn't start my story until I got where ever I wanted to start at. That's a very simple solution.

It's hard to just ignore the tutorial when you still have to play all the way through it (barring mods, but that's exactly why I said I'd wait for a mod). It's especially hard when it's a fundamental part of the story, as in Oblivion. Oblivion's prison sequence provides the entire setup for the game's plot; you can't just discard it unless you want to ignore the whole of the main quest.

Which after beating it a few times, is exactly what I did

Rumor has it that now Bethesda has chosen to merge together the Cuirass and Greaves armor pieces into a single generic "Armor" piece.

Anyone else think this is a horrible idea? I understand pauldrons, but greaves? Uh-uh.

Bethesda really seems to be falling into stride with over-streamlining their games to the point that it has a destructive effect on the end result. Just look at Oblivion and how they changed the skills, two of them were completely broken because of them being "streamlined."

Bethesda, please, stop fixing what isn't goddamn broke!

Perhaps I'm passing judgement early, but so far, this is where the evidence points, and if this gets confirmed in the fan interview, I expect no less than a massive ragefest on the forums from people who think this ruins the ability to customize your character's appearance (like the barbarian who wears no shirt, or the thief who goes without greaves to maintain the mobility of his legs).

But you never know, if this gets confirmed, perhaps the community will get mad enough that Bethesda will decide to retract this idea. One can dream.

What? I hope the rumors are just rumors, BioWare did this with Dragon Age and it was guddamn MISTAKE THAT EVERYBODY SHOULD NOT REPEAT!

If this gets confirmed, Bethesda would lose fans. Lots of fans.

I really hope not

Is that a joke? That's one of the things people on forums comlain about the most. I didn't direct that at you in particular.

From my point of view, it isn't an increase in action that's the problem, it's the direction towards combat.

Let's say, just for the sake of it, you've decided to roleplay a diplomat. You increase your speechcraft, with the aim of talking your way out of trouble. An increase in action would put you in the position where you have to use that skill more frequently. A direction towards combat means that skill becomes useless, as you have to fight - whether by sword, use of magick etc.

See the difference? The Elder Scrolls series has always prided itself on letting you create any character type you wanted, yet the increase in direction towards events where you have no option but to fight limits the approaches you can take - which for those of us who don't just want to create warriors or battlemages is a problem.

Now, to address a point you made earlier in the thread:



Well, the problem is how it's marketed. Oblivion (and Skyrim I assume) are not marketed as Action/ Adventure games - unlike say GTA. They're marketed as Role Playing Games, with every connotation that comes with that. So it's hardly surprising that game players who want an RPG get frustrated when they're forced to play the game as an Action/ Adventure, and can't roleplay as they'd like, because the game has become much more combat based.

Now, for me? I'm not really expecting an RPG this time, I'm expecting a huge action/adventure game, and I doubt I'll be disappointed by those criteria. Oblivion I was, as I was expecting an RPG, and I didn't really get one. I've grown to like Oblivion, but on the terms of an adventure game, and not an RPG - which was how it was heavily marketed.

That's my opinion on the matter anyway

As per the discussion about starting in prison every game, it is an Elderscrolls tradition. Kinda like how its a tradition for them to remove skills and features from every game with the goal of eventually presenting a completely gutted FPS with a large world so they can call it an RPG. Sure there are now perks but only as a subtitute for the classes and attributes that they removed.

I know you didn't; my point was, why even bother raising the subject in a thread where no one else has mentioned it?


There probably will be, but I'm sure there'll be an equally massive backlash from the people who think Bethesda can do no wrong. *sigh* There's a reason why I'm staying away from the official Skyrim forums. People over here may disagree over Skyrim, but at least we can still have a relatively civil discussion about it.

Someone on the TV Tropes Wiki once commented that if Bethesda keep 'streamlining' their games, eventually the gameworld will consist of nothing but a single room containing a large red button, and the only skill will be 'Button Pressing'. OK, so it was a joke, but come the release of TESVI I can quite easily see Bethesda deciding to abandon that 'skill' nonsense altogether. Heck, they've already got rid of linear skill progression and many of the other RPG elements - why not just go the whole hog and turn the games into action-adventures? I'm sure they'd still sell like hot cakes, sad though it may be.


What gets me about the 'tradition' argument is that it's not even true. Daggerfall didn't start off in a prison, just a random cave where you were shipwrecked (which happened to look like a dungeon). Two games in a row do not a tradition make - and as you point out, even if it were a tradition, that's still not a good argument for keeping it in. All the ES games so far have been poorly voice-acted and horrendously bugged, but I don't see anyone clamouring for more of those things in Skyrim on the basis that they're 'traditional'.

Fair enough.

See . . . this is what happens when you are absent from the forums for awhile, you miss out on some lively debate! Again, I am not a Bethesda apologist (even though I think it seems like it re-reading my own comments), but please indulge me while I comment on a few things that struck me when reading this thread:


So what you are saying is that you are throwing a ‘Mourning Morrowind Tantrum?’ I would not be surprised to learn that the reason that Skyrim is set 200 years into the Fourth Era is because Bethesda is looking to remove the stain of the Infernal City from the hearts of fans. Bethesda has shown a history of squandering a number of opportunities for compelling stories in the Tamrielic timeline (The Alessian Reform, The War of the Red Diamond, and the Rise of the Camoran Usurper immediately come to mind). You yourself lament the repetition of tired motifs in Bethesda’s games, wouldn’t yet another game set in the too often mined Third Era just be another repetition? Besides, I am of the opinion that events moving forward can be just as compelling as what has gone before.

I may be wrong but I don’t believe that there is a very strong Imperial presence in Skyrim. A country at war with itself isn’t likely to recognize any outside authority. If what you meant is that the world is on the brink of collapse, well, of course it is. How can we be the hero otherwise?


This one I can’t argue at all since I agree with you. Let’s hope that the rumor that you open the game being led to your own execution finally puts paid to this tired and clichéd plot device.


I wasn’t commenting on your personal play style. The fact that you didn’t choose to powergame doesn’t mitigate the fact that it was possible to do just that. I was commenting on the homogeneity created through powergaming. In terms of ‘roleplaying’ as elegant as your solution is, it is not the only one. Even with attributes and skills you still start the games as something of a non-entity. Other than a negligible 5-10 point bonus/deficit in certain skills and attributes there is no real difference between a female Bosmer and a male Imperial. The individuality of your beginning character in Morrowind didn’t come from the game, it came from you. The initial skill/attribute spread could have been shared by any race/gender that you chose to use. It wasn’t the game that decided your character ‘considers herself a freelance mercenary,’ and that she has ‘no interest in stealth, diplomacy, or magic.’ You don’t need the game to tell you those initial considerations of character. In Skyrim the hope (I believe) is that those decisions will be made by what the player chooses to have the character do instead of what the player decides to tag.


Can't say it any better than this! The hope shared by those of us who are optimistic about the game is that they succeed.


I think this is what has me at least willing to give Skyrim the benefit of the doubt. In Fallout 3 we can see that the system of perks works in ways that a broken system of attributes doesn’t. If the reports are true and Skyrim is giving us ten times the number of perks provided by vanilla Fallout 3 then I remain optimistic.


Yeah, I’m with you here. This is a terrible idea! I hope that there are enough people who feel the same to make Bethesda rethink this.


I lament that the days of navigating the games strictly as a ‘diplomat’ are gone. I think the number of new fans drawn by the intellectual prospect of gore and severed limbs outweighs the loss of a few Neanderthals who wish to explore dialogue possibilities!


"No, your wrong and stoopid! My opinyun is the only won that matters!" – Official Skyrim Forum Banner.


Well, that’s not really a fair comparison, is it? Starting in prison is not a mistake or glitch in the game, it is a deliberate (albeit nauseating) plot point that has been repeated enough times to be reasonably considered a tradition. I agree with you in that I would like to see it removed, but in all fairness it has become something of a tradition.

All right, yes, I'm throwing a 'Mourning Morrowind Tantrum'. I'm not buying the 'making up for Infernal City' idea, though - the timeline and setting for Skyrim must have been decided long before TIC was released. Frankly, the impression I get is that the devs are fed up of hearing Morrowind fans compare Oblivion unfavourably to MW and wish they'd all just shut up. I'm not going to accuse them of deliberately blowing up Morrowind to piss off the fans, but either way it seems spectacularly mean-spirited of them.


I don't see that at all. For a start it would be set in the 4th Era rather than the 3rd, but that's pretty much irrelevant anyway - there's no way a game set after the Empire's collapse could just be 'more of the same'. It has to have a massive effect on Tamrielic society and politics, at least in the short term - in the long term it's obvious that nothing significant ever changes in Tamriel anyway, which is precisely why fast-forwarding 200 years makes no difference. Even the factions are still the same - the Dark Brotherhood is back, as are the Fighters' and Mages' Guilds (oh wow, they have different names now. I may faint from the excitement).


I don't know the details; I'm just quoting from the official Skyrim site: "The Empire of Tamriel is on the edge... The future of Skyrim, even the Empire itself, hangs in the balance" yadda yadda yadda.


But this isn't a 'solution' at all. It's just the devs throwing up their hands and saying "we couldn't fix the old system, so we had to get rid of it altogether" - which is complete rubbish. There's a very popular mod for Morrowind called Galsiah's Character Development, which deliberately sets out to make characters more distinct and powergaming much more difficult, and by all accounts succeeds very well (I've never used it myself as I've never really felt the need).

The reason Beth have ditched the old system is not that it's inherently flawed, but that their design philosophy has changed. They're targeting a different audience, one that prefers action-adventure-style combat to stat-based RPGs where the character's skills matter more than the player's. They're hoping it will help them sell more games, and they may well be right. That doesn't mean I have to like it.


You're missing my point somewhat. What's important is not that the game gave my character particular attributes, but that it allowed me to set them up that way before I'd even taken a step in the gameworld. I want a character with a pre-existing background and skillset, not a blank slate.


I really don't agree that three non-consecutive repetitions make a tradition, and the devs' choice of voice actors at least is definitely not a mistake or glitch. But regardless, there's no sense in pleading tradition when there are massive differences between all the games, and the devs are constantly dropping and introducing features of gameplay and lore with each new game (often for no good reason). There's no good argument for keeping this one boring, overdone plot device in the name of 'tradition'.

I’m sure the setting was decided, but the timeline may not have been. From what I’ve seen the game could have just as easily been set a few years after the events of TIC (or even after the Oblivion Crisis). The idea that the devs somehow blew up Morrowind in a fit of spite is indeed mean-spirited, and is a take that I never even considered (I wouldn’t put it past them though).


I can understand what you're saying. I think the difference lies in the two games. What I was saying is that initial attributes and skill levels were attainable by any race/gender chosen. However, I do realize that skills were far more relevant in Morrowind which makes opening skillsets an important consideration. In Morrowind starting off with Long Blade at 35 as opposed to Long Blade at 10 (or 15) was the difference between killing or being killed by the first mudcrab that crossed your path! By Oblivion a low Blade (no distinction between daggers and claymores thankyouverymuch) skill only meant that it took slightly longer to kill something. Applying Oblivion's lack of skillset considerations to someone who professes to love (and play) Morrowind more wasn't fair on my part, so I apologize if it seemed like I missed your point. I do maintain that any pre-existing background given to your character was more a function of your imagination than any mechanism within the game.

My point was not that my character's personality and backstory are determined by the game, but that you can still tell quite a lot about her from just from her starting stats, skills and class. Daggerfall's character creation system is even more complex - perhaps a little too much so - but incredibly deep and flexible, allowing you to customise all sorts of things about your character, from individual strengths and weaknesses to their relationships with various in-game factions. It also provides you with a detailed character background based on your class and various other factors, and while I wouldn't want to see that in future games (since it removes the player's freedom to choose their own backstory), in many ways I really like it. It gives the impression that you have an actual connection to the history and politics of Tamriel, instead of having sprung fully-formed into existence on the day the game begins.

I started playing Mass Effect 1 about a week ago, and noticed that it does not have attributes either. You just have your character's class, and then the skills you increase. You even start with one of every type of weapon in the game. I mention it because this appears to be the same direction Skyrim is taking.

My impressions on how this effects the gameplay is that my character feels less distinct then the ones I have for Oblivion or Fallout. After all, the skinny Asari scientist is just as strong as the hulking Krogan thug, and the Krogan is just as smart as she is. There appears to be no real difference between the races at all, except for how they look. It is more like I am playing a generic 'toon' in a game then a real person. I hate using that term, but it really does fit under the circumstances.

Without attributes, I wonder what sort of actual nitty gritty differences there will be between the races in Skyrim? I suppose just once-a-day powers like the Redguards and Nords have, which I never use anyway. Plus the few permanent bonuses like the Breton magicka boost. I imagine that where 75% of people seem to play Bretons in Oblivion, it will climb to 95% in Skyrim if that is the case...

OTOH Skyrim will supposedly have Fallout style perks to hopefully round out the characters. But when you look at those perks, at least half of them are just adding a few points to two of your skills. Nothing really defining there. Most others give you something like a bonus to hit in vats, or let you do more damage. Only a few, like Child At Heart or Animal Friend, seem to really say something about who and what your character is. So it seems unlikely to me that the perks in Skyrim will really make characters feel unique.

On the subject of the ME1 elevators, before the first ride was over I was wishing for a load screen instead. I have sat in thousands of boring elevators rides IRL. I don't play games because I cannot wait to experience more of that special kind of ennui. I vastly prefer a loading screen with a status bar that shows me how long I have to wait. If it is going to be long, then I know I can get up and get a glass of water. If not, then at least I know I am not going to be sitting waiting forever.

I don't think 75% of Oblivion players default to Bretons. 75% of power-gamers, sure, but there are plenty of people more concerned with things other than in-game stats and maximizing damage immunities.

Not me, though. But then again, I'm pretty sure I'm not in the majority of Elder Scrolls gamers.

Todd's basically said that unlike in Oblivion, characters in Skyrim won't be able to obtain every perk and benefit with even the most careful leveling. Which means that a master of bloody freaking everything is next to impossible in Skyrim, even though I've got three of those running around Cyrodiil.

Skyrim will use Steamworks for DRM.

Make of it what you will. I will tell you that A LOT of people will be VERY unhappy with this news, though.

My major concern is how we are willingly handing over a monopoly on PC game distribution to Valve. It's only a matter of time before Antitrust lawsuits start getting filed if this trend continues.

Alternate source (See post 52)

So what does that mean then? Will I have to DL the client just to play the game? Or is it just a 'register your game' thing?

I'm going to be really unhappy if I have to be connected to their servers just to play the game.

Yes, you have to download the Steam client, (or rather, it will be installed for you by the game install procedure if you don't have it) and it has to be running alongside the game at all times.

There is an offline mode for if you have no internet connection, but the installation must occur with an internet connection present.

But remember, Big Brother is always watching....

Well, that's bad news indeed.