sea's (Mostly Technical) Skyrim Initial Impressions

[Stabwound]

You actually consider that to be incline?

Having the option to not have a quest compass shoved down your throat? Yes, I consider it incline.

 

[Excidium]

I don't think that's much incline when the game is designed with the compass in mind, do NPCs even give you full directions?

 

[Flatlander]

The bucket shit is pretty funny, but really... what could be done about it? Make the NPC attack you for putting an object on their head? Allow them to see through the object? Add a script which makes the NPC shrug the object off their head? Not sure what a proper workaround would even be, especially on this engine.

Easiest solution is to just let the NPCs "hear" things happening in their immediate vicinity, at least in the case when someone is brutally stabbed to death across the room. The right solution would be to have the NPCs have some kind of memory and idea of personal space, which would also solve a bucketful of other problems. But that would be, like, hard.

But in Beths case it's probably best to just give up and at least stop calling this shit Radiant(tm).

 

[Forest Dweller]

You actually consider that to be incline?

Having the option to not have a quest compass shoved down your throat? Yes, I consider it incline.

What's more interesting is that you consider editing of ini files to be an "option."

What's next, we start talking about mods that improve the game to be indicative of incline of said game?

 

[MetalCraze]

Having the option to not have a quest compass shoved down your throat? Yes, I consider it incline.

That's why you are a retard.

I don't think that's much incline when the game is designed with the compass in mind, do NPCs even give you full directions?

Directions = more text and more hassle. People that buy Skyrim hate games that require even 1% of a brain.

Judging by impressions of people that do like RPGs Skyrim is like the dumbest Bethesda game to date. They even stuffed almost a shooter-grade health regen there.

 

[Admiral jimbob]

Don't see why they couldn't have put it in the options menu, but it's there for the enterprising player to use, and was clearly added for that purpose - mods are an obviously flawed comparison. Might as well say that you can't configure DOSBox because you have to go into a text file to do it.

 

[MetalCraze]

You can turn off every single bit of interface in Oblivion one way or another too. Except just like in Skyrim and FO3/NV you will be blindly hitting walls trying to find something NPCs described with a single short line of text consisting of the item name and words "find it"

 

[ksjav]

The quest markers can be disabled from the ingame menu. You can ask quest NPCs directions to your objective, sometimes you get escorted part of the way a la Gothic. inb4 skyrim appologist

PS: cannot beat the first main quest dragon on highest difficulty

 

[crufty]

Having skipped every game since nwn

Playing on ps3.

Nice! I like it so far. The intro is very nicely done, lots of atmosphere. Made a choice, doing the larp thing. Selected a female wood elf. Seemed like a good reason to be rounded up.

Can't remember that there aren't multiple skills, old habits die hard.

PROPS TO BETHESDA FOR NOT MAKING ME START WITH AN IRON DAGGER and bs gear. Also, the escape from jail thing actually works this time. If nothing else this alone is a massive improvement.

The start is very organic and smooth, the fighting is nice. I can see the effort to making the world seem real, good, good.

I can nitpick but I'll take the first liesurely hour anytime. Not sure how the rest will pan out. I plan on skipping the main storyline all together and seeing what I can do making my way across the land.

 

[felipepepe]

Sadly that's not even Bethesda fault, Quest Compass are a DEMMAND of modern players...

WoW in the first years had no quest compass, players had to find people/itens/place by following descriptions, lore insights or sometimes just blindly search. It was nice to hunt for hints by reading between the lines. But then someone created a glorious "follow giant arrow and win" mod. And all the players loved it and used it and demanded Blizzard to put it on the game! The same way Raids required your full attention and awareness, but now every single player has the "follow screen orders and win" mod, and worse, players will kick you out if you try to raid without it.

I just don't get it, why these people play games if they don't want to do the "play" part? It reached a point that even Bioware think is getting too much streamlined, so they had to create gameplay options for those that want to play ME 3 without playing ME 3...seriously, why don't they just go watch "Private Ryan" and pretend they are playing the movie?

 

[Mastermind]

Someone take a hit for the team and play an archer. I want to, but beth fucked them up so badly in Oblivion that I'm gonna go mage for my first playthrough.

I picked it up this morning. The line was so big it burst out of the store. Also, what shitty packaging. It's just like a console game. Leave my fucking boxes alone faggots!

 

[Mortmal]

Since i have a legit copy that works flawlesly i cna give my initial impressions too, although the story is very , very classic, they did a good job in its excution. No more retarded begginings, no emperor giving his family amulet to a convict, no in skyrim you are chained ina cart on way to be beheaded , and you take the opportunity of the chaos engendered by a dragon atack to escape.
Its much more atmopsheric, much more coherent than oblivion, its a return to the source, i would say its as good as morrowind so far, prettier than most games but still a notch or two under tw2.
They obviously learned a few things from other games and it shows, in overall it even have some gothic feeling.
The flaws are as usual a simple combat system, but really it always been the case since arena...Of course after playing darksouls its a walk in the park, skyrim guide you gently holding you by the hand through a mountain track while dark souls crush your face into a granite wall ,rape you and throw your wallet in the sewer drain.
The interface is not bad on pc.. It cant even be considered as an pc interface at all, its a console interface period, and it screams to be played with a pad. Theres a part of thruth telling you are a retard for upgrading your pc just for this game, i bet i probably woudlnt see much difference ona ps3 or xbox version.

 

[Crispy]

I put up a few thoughts in the op but fuck if I'm not too tired to even think about doing any more until maybe later today.

Overall impression so far is that I'm not impressed.

 

[Excidium]

But is it better than Two Worlds 2?

 

[Crispy]

Heh at this point I would say it has the potential to be, but I won't know until I have more time to Rim the Sky.

 

[Stabwound]

The quest markers can be disabled from the ingame menu. You can ask quest NPCs directions to your objective, sometimes you get escorted part of the way a la Gothic. inb4 skyrim appologist

PS: cannot beat the first main quest dragon on highest difficulty

I think the in-game option only disables the floating quest pointers, ie the "Deus Ex HR" type shit that appears on the screen. I could be wrong, though. And yeah, I love the difficulty: it really is a challenge if you crack it up all the way. Coming across a dungeon that you can't handle and noting it for later is great fun in my book.

Sadly that's not even Bethesda fault, Quest Compass are a DEMMAND of modern players...

WoW in the first years had no quest compass, players had to find people/itens/place by following descriptions, lore insights or sometimes just blindly search. It was nice to hunt for hints by reading between the lines. But then someone created a glorious "follow giant arrow and win" mod. And all the players loved it and used it and demanded Blizzard to put it on the game! The same way Raids required your full attention and awareness, but now every single player has the "follow screen orders and win" mod, and worse, players will kick you out if you try to raid without it.

I just don't get it, why these people play games if they don't want to do the "play" part? It reached a point that even Bioware think is getting too much streamlined, so they had to create gameplay options for those that want to play ME 3 without playing ME 3...seriously, why don't they just go watch "Private Ryan" and pretend they are playing the movie?

Quest compasses are ridiculous in games of this type, and completely kills the fun for me. I just googled quickly, and it's funny how many people are/were looking for a quest compass mod for Morrowind (which was one of the last games to NOT have such a "feature").

Skyrim is perfectly playable with quest markers disabled, and I think it makes the game way more fun. It's by no means perfect, but I'd put it somewhere between Morrowind and Oblivion on the rating scale so far. Morrowind's setting is probably never going to be beaten, which is sad.

I'm going to dick around and see if I can remove the enemy markers on the compass, etc.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

Disable D3doverrider, game is natively triple buffered and i just gained a shitload more performance and removed a metric fuckton of input lag in demanding areas.

 

[sgc_meltdown]

oh man the mass production quality was worse than I thought

compare to the glamor shot
http://i.imgur.com/XlkeL.jpg

 

[snoek]

Have also tried it out & am already bored with the game after 2 hours or so... not for me

 

[Luzur]

Finally, yeah, the UI is unforgivable. Like I said, it reminds me of the Might and Magic 3-5 UI. It's entirely keyboard driven - it has mouse support, but it's just tacked on and barely works. It's by far the weakest point of the game so far. Not even hotkeys - just fucking awful. I have no idea what was going through their minds with this one.

did you play them on console or something? i never had any mouse problems in MM3-5.

also, i hope to God that someone mods out that damn console menu shit thing before i get to play the game...(waiting for the torrent to get a fucking move on.)

 

[Luzur]

oh man the mass production quality was worse than I thought

compare to the glamor shot
http://i.imgur.com/XlkeL.jpg

could be used as a dildo holder, i guess.

 

[Crispy]

Disable D3doverrider, game is natively triple buffered and i just gained a shitload more performance and removed a metric fuckton of input lag in demanding areas.

Good tip, thanks. I assume that's in the .ini file?

 

[hanssolo]

Skyrim is perfectly playable with quest markers disabled.

Is this for reals? Like, do quest-givers/journal entries suggest the location of places or is it all "Go to this cave here I'll mark it on your map" like in Oblivion.

 

[fizzelopeguss]

D3doverrider is a tray tool that comes with rivatuner/MSI afterburner etc. It's used for forcing triple buffered vsync. It clashes with this game.

 

[Gerrard]

So apparently changing the key bind for TPP view (which was F) caused the "Favorite" function (which was also F) to stop working too. Brilliant.

 

[Giauz Ragnacock]

Skyway wrote:

They even stuffed almost a shooter-grade health regen there.

Wait a minute. Wastelnd had the wait and heal mechanic way before any shooter, though certain injuries could prevent or continuously worsen your condition.

As for the screenshots and Crispy's technical criticisms, I guess I would have to be more of a technofile to care. My only technical complaint is I want the bugs to go away... from ALL gaming as whole. Yes, I know that they have always existed and probably always will, but they used to not be so in my face and all that people are raging about online.

As for everything else. I'll have to see for myself when either my brother or I rent it or one of his friends brings it over.

Here's hoping that this Elder Scrolls will be the first that I feel like I want to keep playing after the first half hour.

 

[sea]

My Skyrim impressions:

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchw ... C_Game.php

You may notice I don't talk about the actual game much. That's because I spent most of my time tweaking INI files and trying to figure out which parts of the interface work and which ones don't.