sea's (Mostly Technical) Skyrim Initial Impressions

[Stinger]

Huh, they didn't render nipples this time.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

IT BEGINS

I raise you one fanart

http://i.imgur.com/Lv7y1.jpg

 

[MetalCraze]

You mean Riverwood that is a Nord, Sven that asks you to deliver a latter that was supposed to be from Faendal, a "Elf" and you can do that or say the truth to Camilla were at that point she will direct you to Faendal who will give you a reward and apparently opens up as a follower, Sven does it too if you do what he asks.

Wait ... does that mean ... gasp, a CHOICE with a CONSEQUENCE?

A choice of a 3D model that will follow you for a completely retarded reason that makes no sense?
An exactly the same reward no matter what you'll do and the other character not minding you being an asshole to him?

And yes, its a minor one but its there, Bosmer hunter or Nord Bard ... one or the other.

Which both gladly pick a warhammer instead of their original weapons and fight with it.

FYI in Divinity 2 there's a similar quest. And if you'll give a letter to the wrong character you... fail a quest and they refuse to talk to you forever.

And yet Skyrim is MAJESTIC but Divinity 2 is some obscure shit in this place.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

IT BEGINS

I raise you one fanart

http://i.imgur.com/Lv7y1.jpg

And a dragonborn is made!

 

[Crispy]

 

SHUT THE FUCK UP, SKYWAY


*ahem*

Digging on this a little more as I play. Enough tweaking and it's pretty easy to achieve a nice balance between appearance and performance, but there are many other things that need fine tuning (as usual with many games) such as mouse sensitivity, etc. Half the fun for me is the tweaking process itself, so I'm not complaining.

Looking forward to the inevitable high-res texture mods eventually.

Anyway the game's fun to play, at least for now. I'm going to enjoy it while it lasts.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/images/38-1-1321065772.jpg
IT BEGINS

*sigh*

That's it, I'm going to sleep. I hope I'll fall from the bed and break my neck during the night. Mmmmm, sweet release.

 

[Drakron]

Except you can become like that with every race after a level or two. In Skyrim a character that puts all points into mana and magic still easily wins a fist fight with a character that is all fighter. And a figher character has no problems healing himself with magic and shooting fire.

... No.

Since its "skill by use" that means if I use a bow I keep getting better and will reach 100 before the races without bow as a skill get there.

This is not a "level up - raise your skills" system, not to say your example shows once again your ignorance as you pick what were your 10 points go in at level up ... mana, health or stamina and lets say if you think a character with 200 mana can beat a character with 200 health ...

In Morrowind skills mattered, you could only have so many that would actually develop fast while the rest will develop incredibly slow making them next to useless.

More bullshit from you.

What part of "skill raises by use" fails to register? if I wanted I could have 100 in all armor skills by standing next to a rat and let him hit me as long it was neither a Major or Minor skill I would never level up.

At the enc characters became Masters of Everything because the system was bent towards that, there was no real reason to raise ANY skills because there was always a net gain.

Here a basic character can do everything right away.

Can attempt at doing so right away, he cannot do everything right away ... heck the game allowed me to pick a Master lock and what happened was I wasted every single picklock I had.

And I think crafting is even worst because somethings can only be crafted if you have the Perk, no Ebony Swords without the perk.

You also had zodiac signs granting you special abilities but they are not in Skyrim.

They are almost gone, the Guardian Stones replaced then.
And yes, I am sad about it

Quests fucking suck too. Only two types "kill X", "deliver X".

Funny, I go a rescue quest and a "get me a mammoth tusk" that since it was a miscellaneous quest meant there was no GPS marker.

Dungeons fucking suck as well - a tight linear corridor nothing more.

How do you know? you clearly have not played the game and even if they are corridors ... its a dungeon, its have corridors.

Game world is small.

Feels pretty big.

Health regens fast, Mana regens uberfast.

Outside combat, rely on it in combat and you dont stand a chance.

Combat is about twitching Left Majestic Button as fast as possible.

Its about timing, position and reach and just because you can win by bashing at the target long enough for it to die does not mean its the right way to do it.

You are forced to follow a quest compass.

Miscellaneous quest do not have markers, kinda of a bitch when the game creates a quest and since it cannot give directions for it you have to check on the Journal the name and were the place is on the map (bounty quests are annoying because of that).

So what's so good about it that I can't see? WHAT?

Its more natural that Oblivion that felt small since everything was 5 feet away and frustrating as there was no indication of character progression.

Its not New Vegas but its certainly not Oblivion II.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

UI controls are gothic, if you played those games you'll not have issues with this. (it's 90% keyboard)

 

[Turjan]

I will wait for impressions after two days. Both, Morrowind and Oblivion, had their moments in the beginning. Don't get me wrong, I loved Morrowind, but did you get anything like the Fargoth quest anymore later in the game? And although many here on the board say that they immediately saw that Oblivion sucked, it took a while for me. The first hours were actually quite impressive to me. The warts showed up later on.

So, I guess that it seems to be a bit early for a verdict. Let's see how the shit develops.

 

[Turjan]

I guess this kind of physics was included for the lols? In Fallout 3, it kind of made sense in a comic book way and if you did not think too much about it. But here? Is that animal made from hard rubber?

 

[Stabwound]

What possess someone to spend countless hours, sitting at the computer all day trolling threads about a new game? It's almost pitiable.

Anyway, I was digging around the game's files and it seems as though almost everything is moddable. The menus, etc are in flash format, and it looks like they are far more moddable than the menus from Oblivion, so I'm sure eventually someone will get around to making them more PC-friendly. It looks like Darn (who did many of the popular UI mods for previous games) awoke from cryostasis, so maybe it will be him.

It looks like modding out the point of interest icons on the compass might be something I can do. I can see the icons etc, anyway. I don't exactly know if editing the file will fuck up the game, or if you have to recompile it or what, but I'm going to try it anyway.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33

No kill moves mod. I'd probably leave them in since I'm a popamole, but the more monocled among you might want it.

Having a hell of a time. Shouldn't have asked for the game for Christmas. I GOTS URGES.

 

[Mastermind]

So where's the conflict exactly? Do Thieves ever respond? Being in a fighter guild also doesn't stop you from being in a thieves' guild. For a conflicting factions accepting you into both seems retarded.
Because there's no conflict but you can LARP there is.

Fighters' guild has two sides. You can pick the good one and only get into conflict with the thieves guild early in the game. You'd know this if, you know, you had actually played the game. Skyway gonna skyway.

Actually TES is more friendly to people who are terminally retarded. Maybe that's why you are so upset about me pointing out its flaws?

How would you know, you obviously never played it.

Incidentally you are just a dumb fanboy. You can do those linear quests killing dudes from other houses all you want but besides those quests there's no shitstorm coming your way or your faction's way from other factions whatsoever. You just do your sweet generic "kill X" quests and that's it.

I never claimed there were major conflicts. Here's what I responded to:

"There were no interfaction conflicts in Morrowind. You could only join one out of three available and that's it"

So go fuck yourself and your shifting goalposts. Or even better, go fuck yourself with your shifting goalposts.

 

[Mastermind]

Streamlined morrowind maybe yes, but theres really some character development at least, it seems you really have to specialize at something, like 2h weapons + heavy armor and forge and cant be master of all like in oblivion, but then again i dont know how many feats points you get in the end.

Not only is there no real difference between morrowind and oblivion in this regard, but since there was no training limitations in morrowind it was several magnitudes easier and faster to get all skills to 100 in morrowind than it was in oblivion.

 

[sser]

How does it run on the Xbox? (I don't think my main desktop could handle it.) I don't plan on getting it for awhile, but if I end up going on impulses at a store somewhere it'd be good to know I'm not pissing money again.

 

[Mastermind]

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=33

No kill moves mod. I'd probably leave them in since I'm a popamole, but the more monocled among you might want it.

Having a hell of a time. Shouldn't have asked for the game for Christmas. I GOTS URGES.

The kill moves aren't a big deal at all.

 

[torpid]

So shitsux but everyone's playing it? CodeXXX

Seriously though, how is Skyrim anything more than a simple upgrade of Oblivion? From what I've seen/watched it plays pretty much the same, with slightly better graphics and "atmosphere," and no character system, turning it into yet another action game-calling-itself-an-RPG. How does it compare to, say, Gothic III, or other mediocre open world RPGs?

 

[Raapys]

According to people here it's apparently game of the decade.

At any rate, to me it feels kinda like the Nehrim mod for Oblivion if you've tried that, worse than the mod in many areas( character development, weapons/armor, spells, UI, etc.) and better in some( mainly just production values/polish and more content).

In other words, nothing much to talk about. Which is why I don't get why people are masturbating over it.

 

[torpid]

In other words, nothing much to talk about. Which is why I don't get why people are masturbating over it.

The same thing happened with The Witcher and Dragon Age, because for all its cynical attitude the Codex is just as susceptible to hype as any other place. Plus, video gamers are addicts who will play what's given to them if there's nothing else out there. Gotta wait a few weeks for things to settle down. Not saying that it's necessarily utter shit, but Oblivion sucked balls, so a simple upgrade of Oblivion is suck balls + 1, which is still firmly in swallow-my-nuts territory.

 

[Surf Solar]

I don't see any people masturbating or overhyping the game here to be honest.

 

[Excidium]

You people might hate the game but you sure as hell love to talk about it.

 

[ScottishMartialArts]

So shitsux but everyone's playing it? CodeXXX

Not me. I'm keeping my Kool Kodex Kred intact by playing Pool of Radiance.

 

[Stabwound]

It's by no means perfect, and yeah, hype is definitely a factor. Having said that, at the bare minimum, you can turn off the shitty quest / settlement / dungeon markers and you have a fun hiking simulator. No, it's not the best game ever. No, it's not better than Morrowind. It's sure as hell better than Oblivion, though, and much more fun of a hiking simulator compared to New Vegas (which I quickly got bored of - never played Fallout 3)

I think a big complaint with the game, ultimately, will be that a large majority of the outdoor scenery, including towns, is snowy, which means white. There are non-snowy areas, but trudging through endless snow blizzards, with the terrible "snow covering" effect will probably get old. I guess it only makes sense given the game's lore, but I'm sure it's going to be a sore point with some.

It's pretty damn atmospheric, if nothing else.

And yes, there is a point to quests. You don't get experience (as far as I can tell, unless it's in the background) but you do get useful items as well as skill-gaining tomes sometimes.

 

[commie]

You people might hate the game but you sure as hell love to talk about it.

Well it is fun to bitch about the decline, particularly while playing a AAA example of the decline. One gets a sense of self righteous affirmation in ones beliefs. Nothing wrong with that and actually better to actually play the thing to be able to critique it rather than to do a Skyway and rage about the fine faults of games that one has never played or don't even exist.

 

[Metro]

You people might hate the game but you sure as hell love to talk about it.

This is the Codex where your average thread on old school/actual new indie RPGs average about two or three pages and threads on stuff like Skyrim, Mass Effect, etc. average about twenty pages.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

If you hated morrowind you'll hate this.

 

[Raapys]

It's by no means perfect, and yeah, hype is definitely a factor. Having said that, at the bare minimum, you can turn off the shitty quest / settlement / dungeon markers and you have a fun hiking simulator. No, it's not the best game ever. No, it's not better than Morrowind. It's sure as hell better than Oblivion, though, and much more fun of a hiking simulator compared to New Vegas (which I quickly got bored of - never played Fallout 3)

I think a big complaint with the game, ultimately, will be that a large majority of the outdoor scenery, including towns, is snowy, which means white. There are non-snowy areas, but trudging through endless snow blizzards, with the terrible "snow covering" effect will probably get old. I guess it only makes sense given the game's lore, but I'm sure it's going to be a sore point with some.

It's pretty damn atmospheric, if nothing else.

That's just it though. There's nothing more. If you will, for a moment, put away the highly improved atmosphere and the admittedly decent game world design, and look at what you have left. You've a shitty and further dumbed down character/class system, poor combat, mostly uninteresting enemies, mostly run-of-the-mill quests, crappy dialog as always, still the shitty follow the quest compass!! gameplay style, boring items/weapons/armor and enchantments, no spell maker, heck not even an interesting spell, and tons of other stuff. Basically it's still the same old shitty Oblivion underneath, and it's actually even worse than OB in some areas. But this time they managed to hide it under an actual good atmosphere and a better game world design.