Game News Skyrim is Going to Make You its Bitch

[Black]

...the new Clairvoyance spell that draws a path along the ground to your next objective.

Whoa! Next-gen quest compass!

 

[Machocruz]

Fable 2 > Ultima 7

 

[DraQ]

The Clairvoyance spell would be fine if it was a high-level spell and not some base cantrip that a half drunk Barbarian could cast right out the slam.

Fixed.

I'm also curious - what college of magic will this spell belong to? I'd say "mysticism", along with all the divination-like spells from previous games, but mysticism got dropped.

Illusion? Doesn't fit, since the hard part is not drawing pretty lines in the air, but obtaining a very specific, context dependant piece of knowledge.

Destruction? Of players' mental facilities, perhaps, otherwise no.

Alteration? Wut.

Restoration? Wat.

Conjuration? Wot.

Echantment? Enchantment!

Truly, the noebeth is a reverse Midas.


And when I think what kind of divination spells could be implemented to a great effect in TES...

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

Its Conjuration and thats why its low level

At low level you summon a spiritual bloodhound
It points you in the right direction

At mid level you summon a spiritual unbalanced attack. It wins battles for you

At high level you summon a spiritual demon name Ragequit that completes the quest for you

 

[felipepepe]

Its Conjuration and thats why its low level

At low level you summon a spiritual bloodhound
It points you in the right direction

At mid level you summon a spiritual unbalanced attack. It wins battles for you

At high level you summon a spiritual demon name Ragequit that completes the quest for you

That's why I shall chose Alteration school and summon a modder to fix the game.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I thought it was a dragon shout.

WHERE THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO GO

DOHVAKIIN, DOHVAKIIN~...

 

[XenomorphII]

Its Conjuration and thats why its low level

At low level you summon a spiritual bloodhound
It points you in the right direction

At mid level you summon a spiritual unbalanced attack. It wins battles for you

At high level you summon a spiritual demon name Ragequit that completes the quest for you

I would be laughing at this if it wasn't so terribly likely to become standard fare in games.

 

[Excidium]

I thought it was a dragon shout.

WHERE THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO GO

DOHVAKIIN, DOHVAKIIN~...

 

[memebot3.0b]

skryim: u will believe a dragon can fly

 

[DragoFireheart]

So Skyrim is confirmed to be shitty? Will it still be a good Action-rpg hybrid / hiking simulator? I have a special place in my heart for hiking simulators. Even Oblivion got some play time until I couldn't its shittyness anymore.

 

[Callaxes]

Does anybody have any idea why they'd go for respawnable dragons? I can see the reason behind fast travel and the quest compass, but this idea has no logic behind it whatsoever. Even reducing the factions to that archaic 3 stereotypes (warrior, mage, thief) or getting rid of attributes makes sense if you're looking for simplicity in design. Level scaling was badly implemented, but it was supposed to offer a consistent challenge, so there was logic behind it despite the incompetence.

So what's the logic behind this? What are they trying to achieve? Why is infinite dragons in their eyes better then 10 or 20 or 30 dragons?

Did Todd suddenly feel the need to contribute something to the board one morning? Was the main storyline designed by two bitter rivals and these infinite dragons are just the outcome of a good idea being sabotaged?

I know Todd has a bad perspective on game design, but this can't be the result of one man alone, even if he is the boss. No matter how many sycophants you round up in one room, the ought to have been at least some outcry at this within their ranks. I can't imagine any of the programers or animators or concept artists agreeing with this decision unless they were forced to at gun point.

And I can't really blame them for being uninterested either because unlike Oblivion, I'm actually seeing some love and enthusiasm going into this game. Yes, despite the stupid decisions and half-assed attempts at creating an original setting this game has more enthusiasm behind it than Oblivion ever had and you could see the same thing with Fallout 3.

Although right now, their enthusiasm isn't reassuring.

 

[catfood]

Does anybody have any idea why they'd go for respawnable dragons? I can see the reason behind fast travel and the quest compass, but this idea has no logic behind it whatsoever. Even reducing the factions to that archaic 3 stereotypes (warrior, mage, thief) or getting rid of attributes makes sense if you're looking for simplicity in design. Level scaling was badly implemented, but it was supposed to offer a consistent challenge, so there was logic behind it despite the incompetence.

So what's the logic behind this? What are they trying to achieve? Why is infinite dragons in their eyes better then 10 or 20 or 30 dragons?

Did Todd suddenly feel the need to contribute something to the board one morning? Was the main storyline designed by two bitter rivals and these infinite dragons are just the outcome of a good idea being sabotaged?

I know Todd has a bad perspective on game design, but this can't be the result of one man alone, even if he is the boss. No matter how many sycophants you round up in one room, the ought to have been at least some outcry at this within their ranks. I can't imagine any of the programers or animators or concept artists agreeing with this decision unless they were forced to at gun point.

And I can't really blame them for being uninterested either because unlike Oblivion, I'm actually seeing some love and enthusiasm going into this game.

I hope that answered your question.

 

[Callaxes]

You know, I really don't wanna hate him. Hate solves nothing and all that jazz...

So instead I'm just going to think of him as a skinny Jack Black. No wait, that doesn't work.

He's a geeky teenage George Bush... No.

He's the white version of Chris Tucker working in the game industry.

Yeah, this isn't working.

 

[Xor]

If I had to guess why, I'd say it's because they still don't want to cut off any options for the player. You killed all the dragons and now you have a quest to get some dragon scales? Don't worry, we'll just make more.

 

[BlackCanopus]

So what's the logic behind this? What are they trying to achieve? Why is infinite dragons in their eyes better then 10 or 20 or 30 dragons?

In an E3 interview Todd Howard boldly said that the game is 300 (yeah, 3 hundred) hours long. They must fill it with something, alright. What's better than an infinite number of dragons which you can bash and bash and bash and bash and bash and bash and bash and bash... for 300 hours.

Infinite number of dragons in Skyrim seems exactly like the same mistake they did with oblivion gates in Oblivion. They think filling a game with that kind of stuff is cool, while it is plain boring. We are talking about Todd Howard and his team, the same people who came up with the idea that removing stats from an RPG is a good thing. Remember?

And the path-finding spell, like many other features like the ability to buy and rent out houses or move in with your wife/husband is an imitation of Fable. This clearly shows which audience they want to please most.

 

[felipepepe]

My guess would be player expectations....If there where only like 5-10 dragons, I would almost DEMAND they being unique, both in battle tactics and in models, making each of them one-of-a-kind enemies, like the Weapons in Final Fantasy series.

Making unlimited dragons means they are just bigger/stronger foes, nothing special. You can have all them looking/fighting the same, so it's way half-assed easier to do, and that's why Bethesda choose it.

Much like the "no spears cause I would need to animated them" logic.

You know, I really don't wanna hate him.

Don't hate the guy, just pity the poor simpleton. It's way more .

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Because dragons are probably gonna be everyone's favorite enemy, so unless they were very unique bossfights, putting an arbitrary number of dragons in the game wouldn't satisfy everyone. Also, so they don't have to create "post dragon extinction" content - I think Oblivion had 60 Oblivion Gates (only a few are obligatory for the main quest), and closing them all wouldn't change people's feelings about the invasion.

Plus, people were gonna mod respawnable dragons one week after release anyway.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

You know, I really don't wanna hate him. Hate solves nothing and all that jazz...

So instead I'm just going to think of him as a skinny Jack Black. No wait, that doesn't work.

He's a geeky teenage George Bush... No.

He's the white version of Chris Tucker working in the game industry.

Yeah, this isn't working.

Whats crazy is that he is a big fan of the classics but then so am I and I loved Oblivion.

My theory is that Howard is a smart person infected with a kind of corporate conservative hivemind that offsets artistic thought for efficient generalities. Its the same type of thought that would freak at st the suggestion that MMOs should have perm death. Its the same as if someone stated that level scaling is a bad idea. I know you heard the pro-level scaling arguments. They are logical and general.

 

[DraQ]

Whats crazy is that he is a big fan of the classics but then so am I and I loved Oblivion.

I know you heard the pro-level scaling arguments. They are logical and general.

More along the lines of retarded and lazy.

 

[Luzur]

At least they made it a spell, a spell you don't have to use. Better than having to mod out quest compass.

Problem is, Oblivion was designed with the quest compass in mind, and Skyrim may well be too - think obscure fetch quests with tiny objects hidden in massive levels, wandering NPCs that are impossible to find, kill X of a special monster type, that sort of thing. The quest compass was as much a bad idea for gameplay as it was a design crutch, and simply turning it off doesn't fix the problem.

To a certain extent I find myself agreeing, although, if the alternative to the quest compass is the "glittering path" (or similar retardo-proof device), the quest compass becomes by far the lesser of two evils, even if the quests have been designed around it. Goddammit, even Quake 2 didn't have anything of the sort and the levels were way less linear than those in most of today's RPG.

Honestly, I can't even remember the last time I found myself "lost" or "wandering" in frustration. Yes, we've stoopd so low that at this point I'd even welcome the frustration of not finding a quest location/item/NPC over the big massive shiny arrows pointing to it.

usually i just write down the description (or look it up in the journal) i get for things i am tasked to get.

 

[Kaanyrvhok]

More along the lines of retarded and lazy.

You know the saying about the road to hell being paved with good intentions. Such is true with many stupid decisions. They are often made by brilliant people. One of the smartest people I have ever worked with thinks level scaling is a sound and wise mechanic. I used to argue against relatively smart people who thought that going to war against Iraq was a good idea. Some even argued that it would save the US money in the long run.

I’d be willing to bet Todd Howard has a high IQ and did well in school but I’m not sure if that is a good litmus for an RPG developer. I want someone that has done jail time that has flunked out of something, that has a DUI, or beat someone's ass.