Oh my, I've been reading the reviews and I'm wetting myself it looks that good (I'm a week or so from finishing Oblivion, so it's coming for Christmas).

But I don't know whether to buy PC or XBox

I guess I'd better check what it'll look like (W7 64, Intel i5 2500, 8GB Ram, NVidia 450GTS), with the gfx being the bottleneck....

I've been saving a few bucks per check just for this game for months, as I wanted the experience of buying a brand new game rather than picking up something from the bargain bin. However, I've got a project that is in crunch mode, so I wouldn't have time for it anyway. Hoping to get it soon though.

I got it on launch day, but only got around to playing it yesterday. It looks quite good so far.

Personally, I went for PC because I hate playing any kind of first-person game with a controller. Sure, you can play in third-person, but that's not as immersive. I suspect that the graphics are probably quite a bit better on PC too (certainly than the 360 and probably a bit better than the PS3 too). It wasn't even up for debate for me. I have a Phenom II x6 @ 3.2 GHz and an HD6850 1GB, IIRC. The game auto-detected my hardware and choose high quality.

It's the same maneuver they did with Oblivion/Fallout 3 reviews.

Oblivion: 10/10 GOTY

Skyrim: Remember all the things that were wrong with Oblivion? They're fixed in Skyrim. 10/10!

Ok, that's a bit of hyperbole, but you can see my point. The scoring is meaningless, as they seem to happily ignore all the flaws until the next game comes around.

I've yet to play it myself tho, but considering the pc version, I would give the article on gamasutra a read.

Skyrim, or How Not to Make a PC Game

EDIT: Bambam, go to skyrimnexus.com and search for the nudie mods I guess.

I watched my brother playing it for about 10 minutes. It looked boring as hell.

It is very boring. The first 5-10 minutes or so the whole game is that you sit in a wagon and all you can do is look around. It's also not skippable. If I hadn't paid for it I'd have thrown the game away already.

After that it just continues to be ridiculously easy. About one or two hours in, I'm level 2 or 3, a dragon appears, I shoot some arrows into the air... the next moment it falls down dead. I don't think it would have been possible for me to die at all at any time.

Also the story awareness of the NPCs is done poorly. E.g. after that dragon fell down dead the townspeople made me a Thane and told me I'm a hero for killing a dragon - but they still refused to drop my bounty or reduce the price of buying a house And some quests are outright broken with quest-important people dieing, so now I'm never sure if I reloaded often enough when it happened or someone will be missing later :/

The only good things I can say is graphics and sound, I'm playing in Wine on lowest settings but it still looks really beautiful. Makes me want to keep playing on for a bit, even if just for walking around enjoying the landscape

Visually it was very impressive, but it seems to have the same dead world of Oblivion and Morrowind, devoid of any real charm and mind numbingly sandboxy.

It was pretty linear in the beginning, but now that I've been released into the world it feels pretty open. That said, I did find my first interaction with a quest NPC to be rather clumsy. For one thing, the dialog prompts forced me to talk about the guy that I was supposed to meet there. Truth be told, I hadn't even seen him yet and didn't know that he was there. Apparently he was behind me. Also, it continued to prompt me even when there was only one option... It could certainly be better, but I think it will be enough to power my imagination.

I've never played any other games in the series. In fact, I don't think I've even played a game by Bethesda before. I so far view the game as something like a first-person Final Fantasy, which I personally think is awesome. That's what SquareEnix should be doing instead of what they did with FFXIII (I still haven't really played that game; I enjoy the FMV sequences, but everything else about it sucks...).

I haven't played it. Pros: it looks damn good. Cons: never been a fan of 1st person RPGs, and Morrowind killed all curiosity I had about Elder Scrolls.

A friend yesterday asked me what Skyrim is. I died a little inside.

Anyway, should I play through Oblivion first, or is it ok to just jump straight to Skyrim?

I'm just playing through Gothic 3, some things were improved, some dumbed down. Overall first installment was the best. Anyway, graphics of Skyrim looks good, but that's all. If the game system was copied verbatim from Oblivion, it's a big no no for me. Oh, one more thing - the procedural terrain in TES.

I don't even know what Skyrim is. The first three letters are the same as in Skype, but I doubt that means anything.

I plan to get it. Though I do get a kick out of Bethesda trying to get a copyright infringement on Mojang for Scrolls. I loved the article that revealed the reason for the lawsuit. Scrolls and Elder Scrolls have mountains so Mojang is committing copyright infringement. Glad Mojang won, but doesn't change my mind I still plan to get TESV.

It seems like the buggiest games get the most sales. Everyone bought Mindcraft. Everyone bought Oblivion. Now everyone's gonna buy Skyrim, in the series that has a history for loads of bugs (and I hear that Skyrim is no exception).

The next level after joining the mile high club.

You can buy a Bethesda game when it releases and get some of it, or you can wait a year and get the entire game when the inevitable GOTY edition arrives. Hmmm....

But seriously, Bethesda makes incredibly bland games. New Vegas, rough around the edges though it certainly was, had more raw creativity, inspiration, and heart to it than Fallout 3. That's what you get when you let Obsidian take a crack at things.

Also, bugs.

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(It's at the top of a mountain and has a blacksmithing enchantment)

It was bitter sweet to let Obsidian do it to be honest. Obsidian is made up of most of the original team that made the first Fallout game. Some of the FO3 bugs I liked was the random kill freak out that happened once in a while.

I'm really enjoying Skyrim. First Elder Scrolls game I've ever played, but I really liked Fallout 3 and New Vegas (and FO 1 and 2 ). I haven't yet encountered any bugs after about 24 hours of playing, so I would say that's a pretty big improvement over past efforts.

I think my only problem with the game is that the quests seem pretty linear and one dimensional. I think having an alignment system or at least reputations with factions would make the game feel less flat. The game itself is fun, though. I love sniping stuff with bows.

A) You can overclock it, I've that same thing with stock cooler with Core Clock being 920Mhz, Shader Clock 1840 & Memory at 2120.

B) AFAIK the GPU is still by far "faster" than any console out there. Perhaps with exception of something really new I'm not aware about.

I really loved FO3 and bought new vegas but stopped after an hour for some reason that I can't remember.

I think after FO3 I was happy you know, it was complete. A bit like adding another add-on/adventure for Red Dead Redemption would be pointless (though i did enjoy undead but that was a completely new game). Maybe I should get myself Anchor and the other dlc to finish FO3 to the natural conclusion...

Yeah, I've not played many of Bethesda's games, but want to get more of them. God, this next line I tried to figure a way to say it without coming out bad, but I don't know if there is a way so.... I wanted to get Wet when it came out and still plan to get it. I own the entire Fallout series on PC (Fallout Trilogy, Fallout 3, New Vegas) and trying to get the TES sceries.

Whatever turns you on.

This game? O_o

I think the first game I'll be playing on Christmas day will be Skyward Sword, not skyrim. I don't care about the metroid like back-tracking, I'll live with it.

Skyward Sword and Ultimate MvC3 are probably the only two games I'm really caring about right now. At least in the AAA-title department.

I'll have to assume that you both already beat Arkham City.

Eh. I found Arkham City competent but mediocre. It was great, just ... had no soul.

Helped my son beat Arkham Asylum (mainly just had to do the boss fights for him). Will get him Arkham City when it goes cheaper. Buy games that I want, but don't play them much. I but more games for my son to play. Surprising to me how good my 6 yr old is at playing them. MDA doctors say that it is great for his hand-eye coordination and the way he lays on the table is great exercise too.

Isn't Arkham rated slightly higher than 6

Yesterday I saw my son's friend (they all about 9 and 10) was playing GTA IV

Do these parents not have a clue what's in a game, they wouldn't let them watch, say, the film Crash (Cronenburg), being the first thing I could think of involving cars and sex.

At least I vet my games, so call of duty is ok for him

Damn... I wish I could expect something like that with some of my games... In the future...

That's simple:

1. Make crappy game full of bugs and bad design choices, but with boosted up graphics

2. Hype up your game on the eye candy

3. 

4. Profit $

My son is 6, but there are more factors to it than his age. He is in a wheelchair, has diminished muscle strength due to his FSH Muscular Dystrophy, and has developmental delays. He has a short range of vocabulary for his age and because of his disability is very stand-offish with kids his own age because he is scared he will get hurt. Games are the only thing he is good at doing, though I have to admit he does love doodling on his dry erase board. I'm proud of him, and he plays a lot of games (Call of Duty, Lego series, Arkham Asylum, Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, LBP 1 and 2, Burn Out Paradise, MKvDC, Smackdown versus Raw 2007, 2008, and 2009) but I don't let him play GTA IV, Saboteur, or anything like that over the nudity and sexual content in them.

How come violence (an illegal and fairly objectively bad thing) is "better" than sex (which is legal and awesome)?

One definition of a Puritan is someone who's desperately afraid that someone, somewhere, is having fun.

What?? So you let your 6 year son play violent games, some of them (CoD) intended for 17+, but then nudity and sexual content is bad? You have it backwards.

I don't think these have been posted yet:

http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/09
http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2011/11/14

I don't think sex is legal or awesome for minors, which is what this issue is about.

And "rape" shall no longer be known by that name, henceforth it shall be known as "forcy fun time"!

sad_list.push_back(another_one);

So violence for minors is cool?

I would argue that scantily clad girls (which is the case in Saboteur) and implied sex (GTA4) is far less potentially damaging than violence. It might not be suitable to subject a 6 year old to either (it's up to the parents I'd say), but excluding the former because he's young while including the latter seems... odd to me.

It's not like those games have explicit sex scenes (iirc), but CoD certainly has very graphic violence (depending on the game; executions, mass-murder of civilians etc).

I don't think either of those things are wrong in any way to have in a game, I just try to avoid making decisions based on what we as a knee-jerk reaction consider good/bad/shameful/immoral.

Kids shouldn't even be allowed to play video games until they are sixteen.

Did I say that? I don't think I said that. I was just pointing out the massive amounts of straw in your strawman.

You would certainly know a strawmen when you saw one, implying that I said sex is awesome for minors

By his choices of games and criteria, he is in fact saying that violent video games are OK for kids, whilst violent video games with traces of sex/nudity is not. I'm curious if he has applied any "meta-thought" to why he might think that.

To make my point I will now post screenshots. Avert your eyes lest they be sullied by the filth that ensues (aka "NSFW")!

Saboteur objectionable content (which is a free DLC in a part of the game with no other real content btw):

CoD (first mission in MW2, iirc):

Last I checked all games have violence in them in one manner or another. No one had issue with 6 year old kids playing Mario Bros on NES and yet that had a Plumber throwing fireballs at enemies and jumping on them. Also if everyone would get their heads out of their asses, I pointed out that he has a muscular disability. My wife is too weak to pull the trigger of a gun and my son's condition is more severe than hers. He hasn't the strength to do anything violent. I have always loved how everyone overlooks the facts about my son's condition and jump straight into bitching about the games. I don't want him playing games with nudity or implied sex and don't mind him playing games with guns because my father-in-law is ex-Army and retired Marine, and has a huge gun collection he regularly goes and shoots so my son is growing up around guns anyways. All he does in the game is start into the sky and shoot the guns and then throw grenades at his own feet.

He can't pull the trigger to a gun and will never be able to overpower anyone to do harm to them. There are studies that have shown that games affect the mind, but they also point out that it depends on the person's mental state to begin with. Playing violent video games don't make a person violent. Nudity and sex are bad for kids obviously but considering I have the midnight add-on which makes the female women in the bar topless. Violence is easier to combat than sexual situations (as society has shown with all the teen pregnancies compared to teen shootings).

As for MW2 you can skip the intro mission so that is a moot point for that. The rest of the levels are filled with you shooting armed terrorists.

Specter: I'm sorry if you thought I implied that he was going to become violent because of the games. It's certainly not my point (nor do I think anyone becomes violent because of video games). I do not think he will be damaged in any way by playing such games, especially if you avoid the macabre parts

It's just the random moralization that bothered me.

Why is nudity and sex "obviously bad" for kids?

You can't seriously compare teen pregnancies with teen shootings. That's not right - it's not even wrong. Those two things have nothing to do with each other on any plane. It's not like every kid would shoot up their school given the chance. It has nothing to do with "combating" sexual situations vs. violent situations.

If you think about it it is odd. Government says kids shouldn't play violent games before set age, yet at 18 years old they want you to get shipped off to be trained to kill people (whether they are called terrorists or not). Double standard?

My point was that one main reason everyone gets up in arms about kids playing those games is that they think they make a violent person. Yet kids get pregnant and commit murder who have never played a violent game or seen a movie glorifying pregnancy. Getting offended by my 6 year old playing violent games is dumb. I was hesitant to let him play until his doctors local (and specialists) said it was completely fine for him to play them even stating they were great for his hand-eye coordination. The local Children's Therapy Clinic even use COD on Wii for hand-eye exercises among other games like the exercise one's to help get them up and active (latter is useless for my son since he can't walk).

Also I should clarify, when I say play I mean he has them in. With COD and such all he does is load the level, look straight up, fire off all the ammo, chuck grenades making them fall back on him and kill his character. He respawns and does it all over again. Only games he actually plays through from start to end are the Lego games and LBP 1 and 2.

Why have I never heard of this game before?!

Actually the midnight addon was only free in UK. In US you had to pay $2.99 on PSN and not sure how many points on 360 or free to those who bought it when it first came out(like I did, but that was before he started playing because now he plays when he is home and I sit in front of the computer dabbling in programming and surfing the web or watching DVDs). This wiki talks about it in the Midnight and Nudity section:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Saboteur

The Saboteur is actually a quite competent GTA-alike. I might even go so far as to say it's Pandemic's finest game.

Back on topic, having now played Skyrim for a good few hours I'm actually extremely impressed.

Yeah, I'm liking it a LOT. Together with daggerfall the best elder scrolls game (daggerfall is good in a very different way though).

All the focus is placed on human's perceived fears, not an objective valuation of potential harm or suffering. You take that and mix in a lot of profit-driven suggestion, and out pops the Human Book of Morality.

Just the way it is.

Certainly. But you can apply meta-though to try and understand what makes you think the way you do, and strive to overcome your biases and unsubstantiated conclusions. Not just shrug your shoulders and say "just the way it is".

We have a double standard in our country. We complain if our kids play violent games before they are 13 and then want them to join the military at 18 where they are trained to be killers. Apparently we don't want them to learn about violence until they join the military. Violence is on television, if you watch the news you see that there is violence in schools due to bullying, and violence to keep our countries peace. We started playing games when we were 6 or 7 years old and the violence isn't the issue, it is the graphic nature that is the issue. Violence is everywhere, even the Mario Bros game on NES had violence (jumping on enemies, firing fireballs at enemies (which at the time was carried on by parents stating it encouraged children to play with fire). Even old Atari games had violence in the games; Circus Atari had it so if you missed your character it splattered on the ground, Space Wars had you fighting a second player to blow them up. Everyone says the violence is the reason they shouldn't play, and the true issue is the graphic nature of the game not the violence.

That is the thing I find funny. Everyone jumping my case probably have played games since they were 6 or 7 and didn't care about the violence then, but now are up in arms about someone else playing violent games at 6.

On Topic
Skyrim looks great, but as for the bugs. Every game has some sort of bug or glitch after shipping. They will get around to fixing it.

The long intro....mostly for showing off the graphics. Oblivion had a long intro, only it threw you into a long intro mission instead of long intro sequence.

I'm not worried about myself, it's people that control this place. Mob mentality runs the world.

I finally got it, but have only had a few hours to play. The first few things that bother me:

• Intro screen is an image of a 3D rendered dragon-thingy with smoke and music. That's it? No Patrick Stewart narrated cinematic. Disappointing...

  
  

• I don't like navigating through the menu system, seems clunky and not very user friendly, especially the Perks screen.

  
  

• I WISH they'd get rid of "favorites" lists and opt for user input sequences (I'm on xbox360 btw). Like, right bumper (start sequence), X, Y, X, right bumper (end sequence), character switches to sword and fireball. Right bumper, X, A, B, B, right bumper, character switches to two-handed great sword. I already have more than two setups, which is all the favorite menu can do for me before I have to actually open the favorites list, causing a break in the action.

These things aside, I am enjoying the game. It's just accompanied with some

That makes me think I should wait until some friendly modder makes an unconsolise/pcify mod and get it on the PC :X

My major gripes are:

- All GUIs are total shite. They've put zero effort into everything from the options menu through to shops, inventory etc.

- There don't seem to be mounts in the game.

- The default controls are dreadful.

Though the core game is far better than I was expecting, particularly the speech.

There are mounts -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp6OecgFvcQ Don't know if they made anything else have the ability to ride it. Rumor flying around the net is that you ride a dragon, but I don't think this is realistic as they couldn't make a good interface so dragon riding would be most likely terrible and clunky too (and limited by the sandbox size).

Gameplay Video, shows mounting and riding -> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NhevGw_qBw&feature=related

I was able to steal a few horses. Can't fight while mounted though so compared to fast travel they seem somewhat useless.

And yes, an update which fixes all the keyboard assignment bugs and adds a better UI (and makes the whole intro skippable, I still don't get why they did this horrible intro in the first place) would have changed my initial opinion of the game a lot.

As for the core game, I'd like if each quests had a fixed level I think. Then if a quest is marked as level 10 I'd know I can only do it at level 5 if I use all the tricks I have and have stocked up on potions and so on. But if I do it at level 15 it will be easy and I can just run through.

The way it actually seems to work though is that all opponents always have my own level - at least so far I could do each quest after a few tries and this would be an explanation how that can be. It would mean I'll likely not encounter any easy quests but also will be able to kill anyone.

I'd doubt that. If Skyrim uses same system as Oblivion does, i.e. upon entering the town new map is loaded, then flying for the player is disabled by design.

Well I said I didn't believe it. Like I said looking at how the UI is and how clunky it is. If they had done it the dragons would most likely gallop.

Actually, today I played for a bit and I'm actually really impressed with just how much backstory and whatnot there is. The NPCs are actually pretty impressive. I rather approve. The only thing I think is lame is how certain NPCs are invincible.

Got it. Will be December or later before I play it though.

To clarify, I think it's lame how the NPCs just suddenly get back up after going down. It would be better if they stayed down "wounded" and would magically be back after you leave and return, complaining of injuries and maybe being sour towards you for a day, etc. That is, of course, only if they can't be killed off.

I'm not sure how that works. My follower can take on a dragon 1 on 1 and go down for a while then get back up again, repeatedly. But in a dungeon, a few lower level creatures can kill her permanently. And I've killed NPCs too so I don't know what the rule is.

I'm pretty sure your follower can only die if you kill her, or she dies from falling, drowning etc. Maybe you hit her with a spell?

Almost all NPC's are killable - those that aren't are vital to the main story line (iirc).

These are the rules that I have inferred:

• You can't kill NPCs that have primary roles in primary quests (or, I assume, future primary quests). I don't know if it applies also to side quests, but I don't see why it should.

• You can't kill shopkeepers, presumably because if you could then you could kill all shopkeepers in the game and cripple your ability to trade. Still, I think that should be your right.

• You can't kill children, which is understandable, since I'm amazed that there are even children in the game at all. Children don't even seem to take damage. The others do seem to take damage and I think can all go down as if you killed them, but they pop back up after a few seconds. IIRC, the children run away and yell for help (thus far they're all also unarmed) and they never seem affected by attacks.

From what I can tell, once a mortal NPC is actually killed it remains dead forever. At least, even hours (maybe days) after completing a quest, returning to the area still revealed corpses laying around from the people I had slayed. I doubt that the corpses are indefinite, but I think you do have to go out of your way before they are destroyed.

bamccaig: that was nice in Fallout 1 and 2; you could kill anything and anybody, including children (only in second and only in some versions). Though killing children impacted your karma and earned you childkiller perk. Who gives a damn about shopkeepers? Kill them and loot the shop, although most of the games don't tend to have shop items in the inventory of a shopkeeper.

Related:

My experiences with Skyrim are very up and down. Now I can't seem to make any money, nor find any enemies of sufficiently low health to level up with. I don't get it... I don't have enough materials for crafting either and can't find enough to make it worthwhile. The game seems completely unbalanced. Even just animals that I encounter in the wild can kill me pretty easily unless I take advantage of their stupid AI and hide on a rock, but that's if I'm lucky enough to find one. And then there's the horse. I finally broke down and bought it (for 1000 gold) thinking it would save me a lot of time traveling, but it doesn't seem to move much faster than on foot, and even if it can all of the predatory animals all attack it! You can't defend yourself on the horse so you get off the horse and they all just go after your damn horse instead of fighting you! It's retarded. My horse was killed not long after I bought it! And 1000 gold is proving difficult to come by so that was not cheap. Fortunately, I reloaded a quick save, but I really wish I didn't have to. I've been trying to avoid save whoring, but it seems necessary in Skyrim...

Sounds like my Skyrim is going to collect dust for a long time before I actually play it.

I'm having the opposite problem. I'm yet to find a single difficult encounter. I'm pretty far through the main quest-line (I've already defeated the "main" enemy dragon, even if it was only to make him flee), and yet I'm still only level 12, I'm using the second weapon I've ever had, and only have 3 spells. Every encounter feels trivial because I can just strafe around hitting flanks to avoid damage, or kite, heal, kite some more, heal etc.

I immediately dismissed my "housekarl" helper because she was making easy fights even easier.

I've tried turning up the difficulty, and all this does is making everything slightly more tedious whilst still being possible.

I really don't like the fact that there are no impossible encounters. I have absolutely no desire to just adventure and level because it feels totally unnecessary.

The game is missing what I consider vital to every RPG, which is what I call the dragon encounter. I know this sounds ridiculous considering that Skyrim has the most impressive dragon fights of any game by a mile, but let me explain: the dragon encounter is where, early in the game, you encounter a foe that hands your arse to you on a plate. There is no defeating it. No chance. You have to come back later when you are stronger.

There is no such thing in Skyrim. Those giants in the comic? I sought them out hoping the would be it. Trivial: I killed both of them while I was level 6 using my starting weapon and spells. Sure, they one-shot me, but it's still easy to kite them and hit them without them hitting back.

It's such a shame, because the game is wonderful in so many ways but the bare basics of what makes an RPG fun (progression!) is as lazy as the GUI.

[edit]

Oh, and that Gamasutra article is shit. Reading it made me think that he played the game for 5 minutes and then decided to winge about his findings. Sure, the GUI is awful, but it doesn't play a big part in the game and can be forgiven. The performance issues don't exist for me - the game as run flawlessly on my machine, and the remaining issues he discusses are minor.

The real issue is as I've said: they've ignored the basics of how to make an RPG. I should most certainly not feel the need to avoid progressing my characters skills and abilities because I'm worried about making the already trivial encounters even easier.

Bamm: Have you been training very much on a specific non-combat skill? Enemies will level with you a bit, so if you level to much without actually becoming stronger, you might have a hard time.

Nice idea. I'll use that.

Just to elaborate on this point. This is how RPGs are supposed to work: if you follow the main quest-line, the gradient at which the enemy's strength increases will be steeper than your own, and you will be forced to either level (side-quest), or face encounters that are nearly impossible. At all points in the game, there should be this tension created by the fact that while your progression is noticeable (= satisfaction), the enemy's progression is steeper so you are always facing a challenge (= fun), and moreover everything that contributes towards your strength (every position, item advancement etc.) is meaningful.

This is a basic formula used by nearly every single RPG ever made. Why does Skyrim ignore it? Why does it allow you to change the difficulty in-game? WTF were they thinking?

Just how I feel about it. With the kind of auto-leveling they did there basically is no point in having levels at all. They might just as well have left the player and everything else at level 1 throughout the game. Which completely takes away the game element where you want to continue playing to grow stronger.

The level scaling in skyrim won't let you complete the whole game at lvl 1.

But the Oblivion's one will.

I don't know. I've basically trained on whatever I've found a teacher for as I've encountered them with enough money. If that is the case then it's fucking retarded... If they're going to try to automatically change enemy levels to match your own then they should take into account your actual skill levels, not your overall level. Even better would be if they remained at a static level, growing increasingly stronger as you venture away from your starting point. This way, as James Johr said, there would be those foes that you could not defeat until you progress, whereas people like me don't get fucked over by their progression choices. As for actually leveling up, I've tried to keep it relatively balanced between Magicka, Health, and Stamina.

I thought I read somewhere that when you go to an area, that area is locked to your current level. So if you go away and come back, the monsters would be easy.

My first dragon fight was...meh. Stand in the fire, chop on its face, run back and heal. Although, it was fun to jump off a ledge and hit with a two-handed great axe (ala Reign of Fire style), which turned out to be the final blow.

My first dragon fight was completely disappointing. Firstly, it happened way too early in the game. Dragons are supposed to be these fearsome creatures that all of the NPCs are afraid of, but I'm supposed to go out and fight one while I still struggle to defeat a shop full of people (2 or 3 people)... Worst of all, I we succeeded. I'm sure that the NPCs mostly defeated it by themselves, which makes me feel unnecessary and fake for being hailed for having this special gift revealed at that point in the story. Maybe 5 or 6 regular soldiers managed to basically defeat the dragon by themselves without suffering any casualties. Evidently, this special gift isn't so special after all.

And that pretty much spoiled the grandeur of dragons in this game for me. I'm seriously more afraid of bears and mammoths than of dragons. The dragons don't even attack you! I noticed one circling overhead just outside of Whiterun so I decided to see how I fared against one all by myself (I fully expected to die). I started trying to shoot it with arrows, but after firing like 30 I had both failed to hit it and failed to provoke an attack. It was literally flying right above me. I am therefore not afraid of them.

Trolls, on the other hand...

Which reminds me of Oblivion.

NPC: "Aaaah! Gates to hell have opened near our city! We're all gonna die! Aaah!"
<player walks into city>
NPC: "That silly orc is an awfully precarious fella".

The lack of awareness of what is going on from NPCs destroys the immersion of the game. The lack of proper scalability (which leads to the feeling of both accomplishment and epic-ness) destroys the immersion of the game.

reminds me of Gothic 3 where I'm afraid of any suspicious piece of vegetation in the forest in case a boar is hiding there

I just completed the main quest line. The game feels like it didn't even get started. I'm still using a weapon I got 1 hour into starting the game, and the same 3 spells I started with. I've not had to buy a single item in the game, and I'm yet to fight an encounter that wasn't trivially easy to win by kiting.

The final boss fight would have been extremely impressive if I hadn't fought the identical dragon fight about 10 times already.

It's almost criminal that a game which has so much attention to detail in some places was so poorly put together as an actual playable RPG.

Admittedly I did enjoy it, but while the quality of the animation and voice acting was exceptional, as an all-round game it was piss-poor. But hey, it was better than I was expecting.

They apparently need a clear area to land. I don't know about engaging from above though.

Agreed here. On the vampire quest, I discovered that

It seems Skyrim contains all the land of the Elder Scrolls myth, including all areas of previous games, although they are not explorable unless noclip is engaged. Personally, I do not like RPGs, but it seems interesting just to explore the huge area.

Actually I'd call the game more of a hiking sim than an RPG.

I'm inclined to start over and follow a walkthrough so I don't get fucked this time.

Just walking around in nature is very relaxing. Unfortunately, I cannot do it whenever I wish, and so games such a Skyrim offer such a possibility.

I'm more or less done with Skyrim. Just bought Arkham City this morning. There goes my imaginary productivity this weekend.

Well if it is imaginary then you will still be productive just in beating AC.

Personally, I was horrified by the interface after spending five minutes trying to get my mouse to do things in the character creation menu (I assumed something was broken, some part of installation must have failed). It took me probably two or three days to get over it and start enjoying the experience. It's still irritating.

That could be a problem in and of itself, depending on where you're sitting.

Leveling beyond enemies as motivation for progress isn't such a compelling mechanic that I miss it. And like James says, it's been the de facto standard for thirty or forty years -- I'd encourage anyone to mix it up. I'm enjoying the game as a story; it's captivating just to explore the lore, the situations that play out, and the capabilities of your avatar. Fighting is a secondary priority that facilitates actual progression through interesting game content. The only reason I'm concerned with leveling at all is because I'm interested in seeing what new spells I can learn, or to reduce time spent grinding on generic thugs in a generic dungeon (so that I can skip ahead to the interesting thugs in the interesting dungeon ).

It's similar to Portal 2 in that respect. My friends hated it because they didn't spend as much time stuck on puzzles as they did in Portal (concerned with the challenge of solving puzzles). Others enjoyed it as a delightful piece of work, despite the hand-holding (concerned with the game content). If you go into Skyrim looking to crack some heads and max out some stats, you probably won't be very happy with it.

I just started my second character a couple days ago and I'm happy to report a couple things:

• The game is still fun to explore and progress through.

• Playing as a different type of character is unique and interesting, something I was longing for in Oblivion and Fallout 3.

There is no grinding, there are no interesting thugs, and there are no interesting dungeons. You can pretty much beat any boss/mob/dungeon with your opening items and spells - at least, everything that is part of the main quest line.

In the last "dungeon" prior to the final boss, you'll open chests which contain the exact same items and gold quantity as the very first chest you ever open in the game.

Nothing is fun because it's all pointless. Why bother to buy better items or learn new spells when all it's going to do is make the fights even easier (and therefore less fun!). There is no progression - you just go wherever you like and do whatever you want.

Like I've already said, the game has some truly fantastic features, but falls on its face because some aspects are incredibly poorly executed, or just terrible design decisions.

Aw, what? There are lots of interesting thugs and dungeons!

Though not by that metric, as I said before.

This probably has something to do with you never 'stopping to smell the roses'. I've been meandering from side quest to side quest and loot is definitely getting more and more interesting, as are the people I'm coming across and the stories I'm becoming involved in.

It's a video game, you invent the 'point'. The one you chose is no fun.

I wouldn't bother, if my main concern was the difficulty of fighting.

Going places and doing things is my kind of progression.

Games generally have structured objectives. If there's no point then it's a toy, not a game.

I still don't know what people are talking about with things being too easy. That's definitely not my experience. They're easy adjacent at times because the AI is usually pretty dumb, but some of the people and many of the creatures are actually very difficult to defeat (i.e., I don't have a chance)... Perhaps the main quest line is really easy. For me, I accept every side quest I encounter and have like 20 on the go. I always feel like I should do the side quests before the main quests... The side quests that I'm trying to do are no easy task, at least not for my character.

Oh, I was thinking real-world 'point'. I have a friend who often, after I pitch a game idea, says "so what's the point?" (meaning real-world purpose) To which I can only reply "to have fun".

There are clearly structured objectives: quest lines. That's what guides me from thing to thing. The stories and situations are what keeps me playing.

Exactly. Moving chess pieces randomly around a board is not fun.

Freedom loses its novelty very quickly, and lasting enjoyment really requires boundaries to push against and challenge.

The gameplay is essentially the same as WoW, so I guess I have an unfair advantage in that I used to play WoW arenas competitively. I'd bet money on any half-decent WoW arena player being able to complete any part of the main quest line with the starting items/spells without any real practice. The only difference is that it takes about 1/100th the skill level that WoW does (WoW requires you to lean 30+ keybindings to play a class properly, Skyrim takes learning 2).

I have about 30 quests and don't even know which one is the main quest... is it marked somehow? Half of my quests are in big bold letters (so I suppose they can't all be the main quest) and the others are grouped under Miscellaneous or something.

Oh, and incidentally the one side-quest I did try (fetch books for a chap in the library of the mage academy) bugged and became impossible to complete without resetting it via the games command-line console.

[edit]

Actually, there was another very cool side-quest I did involving a lot of bugs beneath a lighthouse which was actually pretty cool, so perhaps I'm being a little unfair.

I just feel cheated because of the fact that I know I would have enjoyed doing the side quests had they been necessary to level to complete the main quest chain.

Competitive book-reading.

That probably explains a lot -- because of your history with games you're more likely to look for a means of expressing a game in numbers, to reduce it to its functional elements, to see it in a 'hardcore utilitarian gamer' kind of way? I could definitely see the whole affair being disappointing from that perspective.

I played Quake 3 semi-competitively for a while and had a hard time appreciating slower, less technical FPSs.

No, I'm talking purely from experience. I enjoy things a lot more if I feel that I'm working towards something: improving my skill/knowledge/physique/living conditions whatever. It's called delayed gratification and is apparently a sign of intelligence.

There are some exceptions: I read purely for pleasure, and I do appreciate natural beauty.

True dat, I have a chronic case of being that guy who's always too busy working on stuff to hang out. I guess you could say I enjoyed Oblivion/Fallout 3/Skyrim in the same way you might enjoy an incredibly rich 1,000,000-page choose-your-own-adventure book. It's a completely different type of entertainment than a skill game.

While the topic of FPS's has come up, Counter-Strike is apparently on for ten bucks on Steam (along with a lot of other titles; big sale). Bambam evangelism commences in ten ...

To be fair I was really enjoying it. I'm just a bit bitter about the fact that it ended so soon. I was actually looking forward to doing the side-quest, I was just waiting for a moment where the main quest-line got too tough so that I could enjoy a few side-quests with the feeling of "I'm gonna come back stronger and kick whatever evil was stopping me's arse". I was secretly hoping that the main quest-line was epically long and that I had only really just begun.

When it suddenly ended (to be fair, it wasn't sudden and it was an epic ending by most standards), I was a bit shocked and disappointed that the whole game was suddenly dead.

It's exactly the same with books or films: the book or film is alive until I've seen the very end. Some of the books I've enjoyed most, I've deliberately stopped reading 3-4 chapters before the end so that I can come back later and re-read the whole book from start to finish because there is the feeling of anticipation for discovering how it will end.

All Skyrim had to do was make the last boss extremely hard, and I would have gotten sooo much more enjoyment out of the game.

\o/ I still have the "Allegro Game Community" server running, but I haven't gotten around to configuring it properly yet. >_> I need motivation from other people.

I give them credit for trying something new. I don't like it either, but it isn't totally a lost cause. It would also be nice if it showed more information about what I had in my inventory/equipped/spells when hovering over related items so that I know how many of something I have or so that I can compare equipment to what I'm already using without switching menus.

...overall, Skyrim is pretty. The story doesn't really pull me in and I already played Morrowind and Fallout3, so it feels like the same old game with better graphics. Nothing wrong with that, either.

I think you give too much there. I believe (but could be wrong) that the UI was designed for the consoles and they just didn't take the time to adapt it properly to the PC. That said, I found it hilarious when one of the Ok/Cancel menus that pop up could only be selected by... the mouse.

UIs and control setups originally made for a console and then not reworked to work properly on a PC is a fairly common problem. Bioshock and Far Cry 2 are two games I've played lately that show symptoms of consoleitis.

I just wonder whether they actually ever bother fixing any bugs reported at test time. In Oblivion main quest line, I'm up to where I've got to find the large sigil stone and as part of that to find the son of some king who's in the gate on a folly. Thing is, you find him and are on a tiny bridge attacked by a few daedra and every single time he gets killed and falls off the side into the lava, but you've 'got' to get his ring.... took me 5 goes to avoid getting him killed and fall off.

I've got about 20-30 hours in now and my thoughts are still about the same. Still not a fan of the menu system (and I play on a console), but I've gotten used to navigating it. The story hasn't really impressed me yet and I was hoping something big would happen at High Hrothgar (the first time you get there). The battles have become really easy, e.g. I feel over-powered while in Oblivion I always felt under-powered.

And the scripting still seems awful. Two examples. Kill a dragon in a town and nobody really seems to recognize the feat immediately afterwards. Another example, I exited a cave and my follower said "hey, there's a cave, I wonder what's inside."

It's nice to be in a fantasy world with the ability to do whatever I want, but these little details greatly reduce my overall rating of the game. It seems like from Oblivion to Skyrim, we've gained a slight bump up in graphics and cinematic finishing moves, neither of which are a big deal to me.

Well the only thing I've seen changed is the spell casting, and graphics. Nothing worth making me pick it up yet. I bought it, but just not picked it up to play it and all the things I've heard haven't made me want to rush to pick it up and play. I'm sure I will eventually play it, I think.

I know a comic was posted earlier, but yeah, fighting giants is a bad idea.

I managed to kill a giant and then a mammoth. I took advantage of the stupid AI and hid behind rocks.

I hear that's a highly viable tactic ...

Ha that reminds me...

I had a quest very early on where I was supposed to get a mammoth tusk. I went out into the world and found a whole herd of them just standing there this huge bonfire. So I run up to one and light the beast on fire and next thing I know the whole herd, as well as a bunch of giants (who I guess were herding the mammoths) start chasing me. The mammoth managed to get one good smack at me and I was dead. "NOPE NOPE NOPE" were my thoughts at the time. Needless to say I decided to put that quest off for a bit and luckily while doing the next quest on my list (killing bandits) I found a whole cartload of mammoth tusks just sitting in this mine where the bandits were. So I yoinked a bunch and sure enough was able to complete the quest easy peezy.

When I did that quest, the bandits (minus the chief and his right-hand men) were just outside the camp, trying to kill a mammoth. I sat on top of a hill and watched the mammoth take out each one of them.

Reminds me of Oblivion quest to get 20 bear pelts. I gave up trying to find bears and just kept moving time 24hrs and going into shops, got the 20 within 5 minutes

Well it's a lot easier when you bring a companion along. I'm having a lot more fun now and being a lot more profitable since the companions can carry quite a bit of extra weight; albeit, not infinite as the Interwebz claimed (maybe that was changed in a recent update, I don't know). It also helps that I assisted in killing another dragon at random shortly after learning an actually useful shout (the first two that I got proved practically useless in combat). Still, I find it a struggle at times, so I'm not sure what other people are doing that makes it so easy.

I've been enjoying it a bit more now that I'm not expecting it to be perfect. Yeah, I still roll my eyes from time to time, but nothing that has made we want to go on a mad, rage-rant.

What type of character are you playing? I'm a Nord focusing on heavy armor, smithing and one-handed weapons (war axes) and restoration (uh, a Paladin). Fighting a single mage is typically the easiest battle for me, since they have very light armor. But if a group of mages gang up on me, they can destroy me in a hurry. And I've taken on a skilled mage who could one-shot me.

Dragons are nuisance because they typically kill...my follower.

I'm a Nord. I began focusing on heavy armor and one-handed swords. Lately I've been putting more focus on magic though (i.e., ideally I'd like to get myself to a likeness of Cloud Strife, at least in combat...little armor; huge, powerful sword; lots of magic )). In the past I've struggled with finding the necessary materials to do various kinds of crafting, let alone figuring out how to do it (i.e., alchemy or enchantments). I've just recently began to understand how that works so that helps too since I can now explore that a bit and possibly create some better weapons myself.

Companions are ridiculous. The developers need to read "A retards guide to balancing a game". I dismissed mine immediately as it was totally destroying what little sport I was having.

I'm installing Witcher 2 now. I'm confident that it can't possibly be as poorly balanced as Skyrim.

That's your experience, but it isn't mine. I need my companion to survive. I would say that you just play too-goddamn-many Bethesda games and maybe you need to go outside. You probably already knew how everything worked and didn't have to experiment or struggle at all. New players do and will. I literally could not raid this camp without my companion. Even with Lydia we still died 3 or 4 times before we managed to kill all of the bandits. Also, with just my carrying capacity I have to leave most of the loot back at the quest location, meaning I barely get away with any coin either.

I'm not saying that the game's combat system is well designed. I would prefer something more like FFVII, where the different areas of the world map had statically strong enemies. The further you progressed (or ventured away from your starting point) the more difficult the enemies typically got. That's how I would prefer an RPG. That said, there aren't enough enemies in the game to actually level up like you do in FFVII. You can walk half way across the map and only encounter a few battles along the way (walking that distance probably takes 10-20+ minutes of real-time). Considering you are opened up to the entire world pretty early on in the game it wouldn't be practical to level-up before venturing off. It would take you forever. There either needs to be more battles, faster leveling, or ... I don't know. In any case, I'm playing the game for fantasy and story, not for a challenge. If I want a challenge I'll go play Counter-Strike against real people, or a simulation game like Gran Turismo.

Until Skyrim, I had never played a Bethesda game. In fact that was what held my interest at the start: it was totally new, and I had no idea what I was doing.

However, as I mentioned, the core combat game-play is essentially the same as WoW, and once I realised this and put it in 3rd person, it became easy. Admittedly it was extremely fun too for for first hour until I realised that my search for something tough was totally in vain.

Now my brother tells me that enemies do actually become harder, items more interesting, and loot more varied as you level up. This would be fine (and indeed makes perfect sense) for side-quests, but applying it to the main quest-line has basically destroyed what would otherwise have been an excellent game.

Using the enviroment against enemies completely destroys any challenge to combat whatsoever. You can argument that "I shouldn't be breaking the AI with cheese to get through the game". But this 'cheese' is just using common sense. Use cover, attack from a high spot, etc.

It just doesn't make any sense when you see those giants that kill you on one hit with a club, but they seem to happily take arrows on their faces if you're above a rock. How do they even manage to survive everyday?

Game award, and think yourself lucky you haven't got the PS3 version.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16136691