The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Press Event Preview Roundup
The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim Press Event Preview Roundup
Preview - posted by Jaesun on Fri 22 April 2011, 18:12:27
Tags: Bethesda Softworks; The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
From the recent press event held for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim a number of details have surfaced from various websites. First off is MTV Multiplayer:
One of the long-running complaints about "Oblivion" was its limiting experience system. In order to level up their character, players had to use skills which they selected as "primary skills" at the beginning of the game. Players would even intentionally avoid using primary skills to keep from leveling up faster so that the game's scaled monsters wouldn't get harder. It was ridiculous.
In "The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim," the experience system has been modified significantly to make things a bit more straight forward. At a recent press event, Todd Howard, the game's director at Bethesda Game Studios, explained some of the differences.
Basically primary and secondary skills are out the window. All skills are treated equally and whenever you raise a skill to a higher level, it'll push your character's experience higher (with more experience for higher level skills). Hit a certain amount of experience and your character will level up. It's much simpler than it sounds.
Despite the same terminology, perks work differently than they do in "Fallout 3" or "Fallout: New Vegas." When you character levels up in "Skyrim," you'll be able to select a skill perk which is specific to an individual skill. For example, you could select a perk under Marksmen (the bow and arrow skill) which would allow you to zoom in and slow down time when aiming. Or a perk under Blade weapons which adds a chance to cause bleeding damage.
Another big change in "Skyrim" is the trimming down of the number of primary attributes. In "Oblivion," there were eight attributes: Strength, Endurance, Speed, Agility, Personality, Intelligence, Willpower, Luck). In "Skyrim," there are just three: Health, Magika, Stamina.
When you level up, instead of selecting one of those eight attributes to boost, you're just picking which of those three main attributes to boost. Howard explained the rationale for the change:
"What we found is that all of those attributes actually did something else. So a fan might say, 'You removed my eight attributes!' and my answer is, 'Which ones do you want?' 'Well I've got to have Intelligence, because it affects my magika!' Well, now we just have magika. They were all a trickle down to something else. We just get rid of that so now when you level up, you can just raise your magika. In Oblivion, you had to raise your intelligence, knowing that your intelligence raises your magika to cast more spells...so we got rid of them."
EuroGamer tells us about the new and fast leveling system and dungeons:
Skyrim players will find they level up faster than they did in Oblivion and Fallout 3, game director Todd Howard said at Bethesda's showcase event last week.
"We do balance this game," he said. "The levelling is faster. Oblivion and Fallout 3, we think of them as 1-25 games. This is a 1-50.
"But what that means is we just sped it up. It's not like it's going to take you longer. There are so many perks and the power really comes from the perks, we wanted to get it going faster.
Bethesda has increased the number of staff creating dungeons so they end up feeling varied.
"We've got eight or nine guys now who are really good. We have at last count 120-some dungeon dungeons, and then we have another 100 plus what we call points of interest, outside encounters.
Xbox360Achievements writes:
Horses and Oblivion – especially those with armour! – have become a bit of a running joke in the games industry in this console's life cycle, but despite that, Bethesda aren’t 100% committed to putting them in Skyrim just yet. They’re “looking good right now,” but Bethesda’s Game Studios’ Game Director, Todd Howard warns that if they’re not adding anything to the game, they’ll be cut.
“As far as mounts and horses, it is something that we’d really like to have,” said Howard. “We’re messing with it. So we’re definitely not ruling it out.”
“We wanna make sure it’s a gameplay addition, you know, they’re not just like there and feel like klugey... Horses have come a long way in games,” Howard notes, clearly referencing Red Dead Redemption, “So we want to make sure we’re paying off on that. As I say, it’s looking good right now, but if we feel it’s not adding, we’ll probably yank the feature if we think it makes the game better.”
AusGamers explains modding and DirectX 11:
"Basically, it's mostly a DX9 game in terms of [how the] shaders work," Todd told AusGamers. "When it comes to DX11 there are things they give us for free in terms of performance gains, and that's really what I meant.
"So we get performance gains out of it, versus an older version, and there are specifics that DX11 does like tessellation and that kind of stuff; we aren't taking advantage of that right now. But that doesn't mean we won't in the future, we just aren't right now."
In the very same Q&A session that Todd answered our question above, he also confirmed the game would offer full mod support in much the same model as their previous games, and that he was hoping to have it ship day and date with the full game, but offered no other details.
NextGenBiz ponders over the why the Glorious PC Super-Race is the only platform from which one can use fine quality user made content and mods:
The fruits of the Creation Kit, the suite of modding tools for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, could reach consoles, developer Bethesda has said.
Speaking to us at last week’s preview event in Utah, executive producer Todd Howard explained that while the tools themselves will only ever be available on PC, user-generated content made with the Creation Kit also runs on the console versions of Skyrim.
“It works on all the consoles,” he said. “As far as the 360 and PS3, right now there’s not an avenue for us to make that available, but we’d very much like to find a way. We have talked to Microsoft and Sony, and so there's a chance it might happen one day, [but] I don't see it happening for release.
Finally, Computer and Videogames let us know Bethesda want Skyrim to look the same on PC and Consoles:
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim looks so good on Xbox 360 (and presumably PS3) that the studio is aiming for minimal visual difference between console versions and the PC counterpart.
That's according to Bethesda game director Todd Howard, who admits that Skyrim on console does get a little bit of help from playing habit.
"But most of that... What we want at the end of the day is that the game looks the same. The benefit you get is when you're playing a PC game you're playing this far away [demonstrates a short distance], when you're at home on your console you're usually sitting about six feet away so the game looks the same."
Spotted at: GameBanshee
From the recent press event held for The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim a number of details have surfaced from various websites. First off is MTV Multiplayer:
One of the long-running complaints about "Oblivion" was its limiting experience system. In order to level up their character, players had to use skills which they selected as "primary skills" at the beginning of the game. Players would even intentionally avoid using primary skills to keep from leveling up faster so that the game's scaled monsters wouldn't get harder. It was ridiculous.
In "The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim," the experience system has been modified significantly to make things a bit more straight forward. At a recent press event, Todd Howard, the game's director at Bethesda Game Studios, explained some of the differences.
Basically primary and secondary skills are out the window. All skills are treated equally and whenever you raise a skill to a higher level, it'll push your character's experience higher (with more experience for higher level skills). Hit a certain amount of experience and your character will level up. It's much simpler than it sounds.
Despite the same terminology, perks work differently than they do in "Fallout 3" or "Fallout: New Vegas." When you character levels up in "Skyrim," you'll be able to select a skill perk which is specific to an individual skill. For example, you could select a perk under Marksmen (the bow and arrow skill) which would allow you to zoom in and slow down time when aiming. Or a perk under Blade weapons which adds a chance to cause bleeding damage.
Another big change in "Skyrim" is the trimming down of the number of primary attributes. In "Oblivion," there were eight attributes: Strength, Endurance, Speed, Agility, Personality, Intelligence, Willpower, Luck). In "Skyrim," there are just three: Health, Magika, Stamina.
When you level up, instead of selecting one of those eight attributes to boost, you're just picking which of those three main attributes to boost. Howard explained the rationale for the change:
"What we found is that all of those attributes actually did something else. So a fan might say, 'You removed my eight attributes!' and my answer is, 'Which ones do you want?' 'Well I've got to have Intelligence, because it affects my magika!' Well, now we just have magika. They were all a trickle down to something else. We just get rid of that so now when you level up, you can just raise your magika. In Oblivion, you had to raise your intelligence, knowing that your intelligence raises your magika to cast more spells...so we got rid of them."
EuroGamer tells us about the new and fast leveling system and dungeons:
Skyrim players will find they level up faster than they did in Oblivion and Fallout 3, game director Todd Howard said at Bethesda's showcase event last week.
"We do balance this game," he said. "The levelling is faster. Oblivion and Fallout 3, we think of them as 1-25 games. This is a 1-50.
"But what that means is we just sped it up. It's not like it's going to take you longer. There are so many perks and the power really comes from the perks, we wanted to get it going faster.
Bethesda has increased the number of staff creating dungeons so they end up feeling varied.
"We've got eight or nine guys now who are really good. We have at last count 120-some dungeon dungeons, and then we have another 100 plus what we call points of interest, outside encounters.
Xbox360Achievements writes:
Horses and Oblivion – especially those with armour! – have become a bit of a running joke in the games industry in this console's life cycle, but despite that, Bethesda aren’t 100% committed to putting them in Skyrim just yet. They’re “looking good right now,” but Bethesda’s Game Studios’ Game Director, Todd Howard warns that if they’re not adding anything to the game, they’ll be cut.
“As far as mounts and horses, it is something that we’d really like to have,” said Howard. “We’re messing with it. So we’re definitely not ruling it out.”
“We wanna make sure it’s a gameplay addition, you know, they’re not just like there and feel like klugey... Horses have come a long way in games,” Howard notes, clearly referencing Red Dead Redemption, “So we want to make sure we’re paying off on that. As I say, it’s looking good right now, but if we feel it’s not adding, we’ll probably yank the feature if we think it makes the game better.”
AusGamers explains modding and DirectX 11:
"Basically, it's mostly a DX9 game in terms of [how the] shaders work," Todd told AusGamers. "When it comes to DX11 there are things they give us for free in terms of performance gains, and that's really what I meant.
"So we get performance gains out of it, versus an older version, and there are specifics that DX11 does like tessellation and that kind of stuff; we aren't taking advantage of that right now. But that doesn't mean we won't in the future, we just aren't right now."
In the very same Q&A session that Todd answered our question above, he also confirmed the game would offer full mod support in much the same model as their previous games, and that he was hoping to have it ship day and date with the full game, but offered no other details.
NextGenBiz ponders over the why the Glorious PC Super-Race is the only platform from which one can use fine quality user made content and mods:
The fruits of the Creation Kit, the suite of modding tools for the PC version of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, could reach consoles, developer Bethesda has said.
Speaking to us at last week’s preview event in Utah, executive producer Todd Howard explained that while the tools themselves will only ever be available on PC, user-generated content made with the Creation Kit also runs on the console versions of Skyrim.
“It works on all the consoles,” he said. “As far as the 360 and PS3, right now there’s not an avenue for us to make that available, but we’d very much like to find a way. We have talked to Microsoft and Sony, and so there's a chance it might happen one day, [but] I don't see it happening for release.
Finally, Computer and Videogames let us know Bethesda want Skyrim to look the same on PC and Consoles:
Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim looks so good on Xbox 360 (and presumably PS3) that the studio is aiming for minimal visual difference between console versions and the PC counterpart.
That's according to Bethesda game director Todd Howard, who admits that Skyrim on console does get a little bit of help from playing habit.
"But most of that... What we want at the end of the day is that the game looks the same. The benefit you get is when you're playing a PC game you're playing this far away [demonstrates a short distance], when you're at home on your console you're usually sitting about six feet away so the game looks the same."
Spotted at: GameBanshee
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