Just to state it upfront, Skyrim still looks very much like the Elder Scrolls games you know and love. Bethesda has been talking all kinds of game lately about working with a new engine and improving its dialogue system and stuff like that--and yes, the graphics and dialogue look noticeably better, among many other obvious improvements--but the fundamental look, sound, and feel of Skyrim will be unmistakably familiar to anyone who spent a few (or a few hundred) hours traipsing around the world of Oblivion.
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Well, there’s an awful lot more than 20 reasons to be helplessly nerding out about the next Elder Scrolls game, but a nice round number is a good place to start, right? Let me be clear: I love Morrowind, quite like Oblivion and really didn’t get on with Fallout 3. I am what you might call a doubter. Nonetheless, I am impossibly excited about Skyrim, having recently been shown an hour of it (and listened to a bonus hour of lead dev Todd Howard answering questions about it). Here are just a few reasons why…
 
1. Killing a dragon involves knocking the enormous thing out of the sky, with a combination of arrows, magic and whatever else you can think of.
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The re-thought Elder Scrolls levelling, skill, attribute and perk system in Skyrim is already proving divisive (as witnessed in comments on the last post), but I fear at least part of the reason for that is it’s not been explained terribly well as yet. And, to be honest, that’s partially because there’s only so much of it I can explain until I’ve had proper hands-on time and experienced it rather than been told ‘it’s better this way’. I like the sound of it, because I always thought Oblivion’s system was fussier and more opaque than it needed be (in terms of what it actually achieved), but I certainly don’t want a reduction in depth any more than the next Morrowind nut. For now though, here’s all the quotes on the subject I’ve got from Bethesda’s Todd Howard, which hopefully clear things up a little more – plus offer some extra detail on how the stealth and persuasion mechanics work:
 
“Every skill affects your levelling. Every time I get a skill raise there’s a level bar that moves. The higher the skill the more it pushes you to levelling, so you want to use your higher skills.”
 
“I find most people, no matter what character they want to make, they use the best thing that you give them. I find when I play you’re best off focusing on something, particularly when it comes to the perk tree, but it’s so easy to mix styles up [he also references the dual-wielding as adding to this].”
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