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The Elder Scrolls Return With Skyrim 158

Posted by Soulskill from the my-horse-could-really-use-some-armor dept.
Today marks the release of Skyrim, the fifth installment of Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls series. The game is set about 200 years after the events of Oblivion, at which point the province of Skyrim is embroiled in a civil war, and dragons roam the skies. Early reviews for the game have been largely complimentary — one at Rock, Paper, Shotgun artfully details all the things the reviewer hasn't yet done, despite playing the game for over 30 hours. Quoting: "I seriously worried Skyrim would, for all its talk of lavishness, depth and dragons, continue the transformation into a trudging, consolified action game filled with clunky acting. It does not. It slams on the brakes then reverses at dangerous speed back into Morrowind territory. Some things are lost (e.g. Persuasion is a sadly watered-down, irregular affair now mostly to do with shopping), many things are changed (e.g. recharging magic items can be done anywhere) and it’s certainly not as weird (no flying or Siltstriders), but it truly reclaims that sense of being in another world, rather than a generic soft-focus, over-familiar fantasyscape." An addendum goes into more detail on the specifics. If you're curious how the game looks in action, Giant Bomb has posted a ~52-minute quick-look video with commentary.
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The Elder Scrolls Return With Skyrim

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  • My favorite quick look so far... (Score:5, Funny)

    by RyanFenton ( 230700 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:14PM (#38025148)

    Elder's Scrolls games are timeless experiences for their bugs and exploits as much as for their gameplay. Here's a simply wonderful example:

    A beutiful expoit [youtube.com]

    Ryan Fenton

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I'm generally of the opinion that exploits in single player games are only a problem for people who are such gigantic assholes they can't help but fuck themselves over. The game does seem to have its share of legitimate bugs too though, but that's not all that surprising for a game of its scope. The important ones will get worked out in time though, and it's still an impressive game.

      • Re:My favorite quick look so far... (Score:5, Interesting)

        by Moryath ( 553296 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:30PM (#38025374)

        What worries me more is that nobody's yet fully commented on whether they finally fixed the leveling system.

        What I mean by that: the way to play Morrowind and Oblivion was to build a "custom" character class designed specifically to AVOID leveling up, with certain major skills deliberately left aside to only be used (hand-to-hand, shield, etc) when you were ready to sit down and level. Otherwise, you'd screw your stats by leveling too fast, too hard, with too many skills left in the dust until you found yourself facing enemies that were far too powerful for you to handle.

        The reason Fallout 3 and New Vegas worked so well in the Oblivion engine is that they went with an XP-based leveling system. Players didn't have to worry about avoiding leveling, because you can't avoid leveling. You just play the game, play your character, and enjoy.

        • Re:My favorite quick look so far... (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Johnny5000 ( 451029 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:35PM (#38025438) Homepage Journal

          What I mean by that: the way to play Morrowind and Oblivion was to build a "custom" character class designed specifically to AVOID leveling up, with certain major skills deliberately left aside to only be used (hand-to-hand, shield, etc) when you were ready to sit down and level. Otherwise, you'd screw your stats by leveling too fast, too hard, with too many skills left in the dust until you found yourself facing enemies that were far too powerful for you to handle.

          IIRC, Morrowind didn't have monsters that leveled up with you. It had it's own set of leveling issues, like it became impossible to level up any more or increase stats beyond a certain point, but I was able to play and enjoy Morrowind without focusing too much on gaming the leveling system.

          With Oblivion, I completely screwed up a few games and wasted many hours by leveling "incorrectly" and running into exactly the problem you described. Plus I generally disliked the idea of leveling up but the monsters kept up with me- why bother leveling up if I'm just going to be running in place?

          • Re:My favorite quick look so far... (Score:5, Funny)

            by CmdrPony ( 2505686 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:46PM (#38025576)
            Well I think it's a nice addition that when you die, your levels and skills will be gone too. It makes the dieing much more persistent, constant threat, especially if you're mining in caves. You also have to eat food, so building a house with a farm should be done first. As much as people say that Notch is a lazy developer, I think he has done some good job with this game.

          • So, they changed some of the leveling. I haven't played it yet... but, as an example, when you enter a dungeon/cave/area/whatever, as I understand it, your level is "locked." Bad guys are generated/leveled/whatever to match your current level when you *first* enter. If you come back later with +5 levels, the bad guys are still at your original level.

            This seems like, on paper, it'd work as a nice little compromise. The bandit cave you enter at level 5 will be a piece of cake if you go back at level 15.

          • IIRC, Morrowind didn't have monsters that leveled up with you. It had it's own set of leveling issues, like it became impossible to level up any more or increase stats beyond a certain point, but I was able to play and enjoy Morrowind without focusing too much on gaming the leveling system.

            Morrowind had what they called "leveled lists": when adding creatures to a map, the designer often wouldn't add specific creatures, but rather, lists. For example, an ancestral tomb could contain four enemies from the "s

        • Re:My favorite quick look so far... (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Canazza ( 1428553 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:36PM (#38025452)

          They've all but removed classes. You can gain a boost to one of three classes of skills (Mage, Thief or Fighter) and using them skills them up faster, so if you use magic you get better at it (and level up) and if you use Melee and Armour those level up faster.

          Not yet convinced it's the best way, but it's not exploitable in the same way Oblivions was.

        • Otherwise, you'd screw your stats by leveling too fast, too hard, with too many skills left in the dust until you found yourself facing enemies that were far too powerful for you to handle.

          Exactly. For that reason I always played Oblivion with stealth-focused character classes rather than turning myself into a tank hack-and-slash character. With a high marksman and stealth (plus lots and lots of damage-health poison... gotta get that alchemy skill up early in the game) I could ambush enemies and get lots

        • What I mean by that: the way to play Morrowind and Oblivion was to build a "custom" character class designed specifically to AVOID leveling up, with certain major skills deliberately left aside to only be used (hand-to-hand, shield, etc) when you were ready to sit down and level. Otherwise, you'd screw your stats by leveling too fast, too hard, with too many skills left in the dust until you found yourself facing enemies that were far too powerful for you to handle.

          That was not a problem with Morrowind, for two reasons.

          First and more obvious - enemy levels don't scale up in Morrowind. If you come back to the starting areas at level 20, you'd still be killing mudcrabs and scamps. On the other hand, you could head straight for the nearby daedric shrine if you wanted. In fact, if you can survive a fight with a bunch of high-level daedra (very tough but possible), you could get a nice set of daedric gear at level 1, which would in turn make the rest of the game that much

        • That was my main complaint with Oblivion and I'm glad to say in Skyrim the new leveling system is much better. Every time you level you choose to increase your Magicka, Health or Stamina by 10 points (there's no Dexterity or Strength stats anymore). You also gain 1 perk which you can place into one of the ~20 skill trees.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        I'm generally of the opinion that exploits in single player games are only a problem for people who are such gigantic assholes they can't help but fuck themselves over.

        It's not a problem even then. If you enjoy buying books of puzzles, looking up the answers, and writing them in then you'll probably enjoy these 'exploits' too and while it might seem a bit weird to the rest of us there's nothing actually wrong with it. Of course, if you don't enjoy doing that then don't do it.

    • As much as I love Bethesda games, I won't buy them at launch because they are famous for ridiculous bugs. I also recommend buying them on PC so you can install community bug fixes as well.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by ifrag ( 984323 )

        Yep, this exactly. As much as I want to play it, I know from past experience buying it right now is a risky chance to take, and could taint the whole experience.

        To confirm this, I at least took a look over at the Bethesda support forum, and it's most certainly all there. Crash to desktop, choppy framerate on extreme hardware, game freezes, sound issues... the list goes on.

        • I do say the same thing every time. Then I can't help myself. Installing right now...
        • Sound like they're all PC related... what about the console versions?

          • Every review I've read said they've had crashes and issues on the console versions as well that forced them to reload old saves, as well as quests you couldn't finish.

            Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas all have community patches that literally fix hundreds of bugs that were still left unfixed after the final patch (GOTY editions) from Bethesda.

            http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:UMP [uesp.net]
            http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes4Mod:Unofficial_Oblivion_Patch [uesp.net]
            http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3808 [fallout3nexus.com]
            http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/268603-unofficial-new-vegas-patch/ [thenexusforums.com]

            • Re:My favorite quick look so far... (Score:4, Informative)

              by ShakaUVM ( 157947 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @02:41PM (#38027190) Homepage Journal

              >>all have community patches that literally fix hundreds of bugs

              Thousands. In just one game alone.... the Unofficial Oblivion Patch fixes 2,200 bugs when the authors stopped working on it. So people then other took up the banner and kept working on it, because, you know, there were still more bugs to fix. :p

              That said, I'm enjoying Skyrim. It has only been crashing about once every 4 hours, which is on the positive end of the bell curve for Bethesda games - Redguard would crash for people with non-Intel processors *off the boat*. You know, the one you start on.

              The only in-game bug that bothers me is the fact that NPCs will teleport around some time. You'll be talking to this one dude, and then suddenly another dude is next to him. And then he'll flicker away.

              I think a bigger problem is that the game really has been dumbed down from Oblivion... it's a sad trend that we've seen across the board in the RPG industry these days (ME2, DA2, WoW, I'm looking at you...).

              • Say some more please. What do you mean by "dumbed down". Are you talking about character interaction? Combat? depth of stats? quests? or perhaps just general world interaction?

                d

                • One thing I've noticed is that it's very hard to die. Your damage heals pretty quickly from you just walking it off. It's not like Oblivion where you had to be casting heal spells as you walked to anywhere. For now I have the strong feeling that I still suck at the game, but for all my sucking and bumbling, I can't seem to manage getting killed.

                  • Holy crap... it's the Call of Duty RPG.

                    Don't worry about that arm... it'll grow back in a few minutes.

                    Bummer. I actually think this degrades games. I liked the old games where when you got injured you'd have to limp back to town and get healed... all the while hoping you don't run into a large sewer rat or something else. It gave the games a bit more excitement IMHO.

                    d

                • >>What do you mean by "dumbed down".

                  The class system, or lack thereof, mainly. Some perk trees are kinda interesting, some are just plain boring. And there's a lot less skills than before, and no stats at all. It might be because I just finished an epic Oblivion run to warm up for Skyrim, but dammit, I *like* being able to have a speed stat of 100 with 100 athletics, and boost them both through the roof with magic, and run around the world at speed. In Skyrim you just feel like you're running through

        • Crash to desktop, choppy framerate on extreme hardware, game freezes, sound issues... the list goes on.

          I played it for a hour or two last night - got to the 1st town. Seemed very Fallout 3ish... only you have to hit R instead of A to Take All - what is up with That?

          Had no graphic issues but it crashed to desktop when I opened a chest. Figured it was time to go to bed anyway...

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ADRA ( 37398 )

            Its t follow along with their annoying games should be using game pads paradigm that this game is plagued with. Why oh why must a PC release of this game have such a broken keyboard/mouse feel to the game? Disappointed.

            PS: Why couldn't they use A for all? Because A means go left since everything was made for gamepads, and left in a container means go back to the root left menu...

      • I recommend months to a year later (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Sycraft-fu ( 314770 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:59PM (#38025788)

        Reason is again bugs and also mods. They tend to provide top notch mod tools (I don't know if they have with Skyrim, but they have for the games in the past) and there are hard core modders out there. So not only do you get bug fixes, but you get a lot of improvements and changes.

        As an example I really didn't like Oblivion as it was done stock. I don't like the way everything levels with your character. Just ruins the feel of the game for me. Well no problem, I'm not the only one and people have changed that. So I can nab a bunch of mods that change it more to my liking, and improve the graphics and so on, and in the end have a game that I just love and have replayed many times.

        So ya my view is hold off unless you have nothing else you wish to play or are just the kind of person who has to have it day one. Wait a bit, and you'll enjoy it that much more when you can mod it up as you desire.

        Of course that only applies to the PC version, but then the PC is where these games have their heritage so probably the best platform to play them on.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Sciros ( 986030 )

          My home PC isn't beastly enough to run Skyrim (barely manages Oblivion), so I've picked it up for my Xbox 360 and will play it to death on there until my PC either dies or I get fed up with it and upgrade it sometime in 2012, at which point Skyrim for PC will be exactly what it ought to be. Even as it is right now, Skyrim on 360 is far and away the most awesome game I've played on this console in a long, long time, and possibly ever.

    • Re:My favorite quick look so far... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by errandum ( 2014454 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:26PM (#38025322)

      This is actually something acceptable. You can also write in the console and have infinite money, but that won't make your game any more enjoyable. This follows under the same category, in my opinion. you'll only screw yourself out of a great experience if you want to - no one is forcing anything.

      And honestly, whoever thought about this, deserves that piece of bread that got stolen. Genius

      • Lets be honest, this looks less like a bug and more like an easter egg!

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward

        "You can also write in the console and have infinite money, but that won't make your game any more enjoyable."

        I can assure you that I enjoyed Oblivion much, much more with infinite lock picks and infinite gold than without. It instantly transformed it from a grind to a marvelous world to explore freely. Your point is well taken, but be aware that it doesn't apply universally. You can only speak about yourself when you say things like "doing X won't make the game any more enjoyable".

    • Re:My favorite quick look so far... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DrXym ( 126579 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:51PM (#38025644)
      I think part of the beauty of complex games is seeing how you can exploit them. I used to love Nethack for this but inevitably they plugged virtually all of the exploits and I think in the process killed half of the charm of the game.

    • That and dragon *chomp* [youtube.com] make me giggle more than I have any right to. I'll likely pass on getting Skyrim, but with some remorse.

    • After seeing this bug, I want to play this game even more. How can that be possible?

    • That video would have actually convince me to buy the game if I haven't already. It demonstrates the old problem with all "sandbox" games - they have sufficiently many independent components that user can arrange them in a way not easily foreseen, and get some useful result that was not intended by game designers (and make the game much easier, or simply look hilarious). Still, "sandbox" RPGs are much better than linear crap that we're being fed recently, so a game that has flaws like that is a good game in

    • The contradiction is amazing. On the one hand, there's the attention to detail such that putting an object on an NPC's head means they can't see. On the other hand, there's no reaction by the NPC to the PC putting an object on their head, and no effort by the NPC to get the object off their head.

      Classic Bethesda.

      As an added bonus, there's the good old CRPG standby, in which taking a loaf of bread means the NPC is now committed to a fight to the death.

  • 52-minutes is 'quick-look'? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by daveewart ( 66895 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:16PM (#38025170)

    52-minutes is 'quick-look'?? Really?

  • I love it (Score:5, Funny)

    by SharkLaser ( 2495316 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:16PM (#38025172) Journal
    I'm not really far in the game yet, but Skyrim has great feel. Magic seems to be better than in Oblivion, and the world is beautiful. It does kind of need a better texture pack, but I'm sure modders will be working with that. In the beginning (after you get out to the real world), there's a nice old lady who says it's so nice to have a visitor. I felt kinda bad after bursting her into flames and robbing her house.

    • Re:I love it (Score:5, Funny)

      by Baloroth ( 2370816 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:57PM (#38025754)

      there's a nice old lady who says it's so nice to have a visitor. I felt kinda bad after bursting her into flames and robbing her house.

      Her mistake. She didn't specify what kind of visitor.

    • I've only played through the intro, a bandit camp, and a cave full of bandits, but I definitely agree, so far magic is way more fun than Oblivion. Setting people on fire, or watching lightning arc across their skin is way more satisfying than almost anything in Oblivion. Additionally, more than once, when I've run across multiple enemies, I've shot some fire at them with my left hand, realized I should try to use my sword to level that too, but I kill them with fire before they even make it to me. That's

  • I am very excited (Score:3)

    by milbournosphere ( 1273186 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:19PM (#38025244)
    I saw the official strategy guide and it is VERY thick. Looks like there will be plenty of quest/campaign content in the game, which is awesome. I look forward to hunkering down in the basement to play this weekend :)

  • Back to Morrowind (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Xanny ( 2500844 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:27PM (#38025334)
    Since I can't afford Skyrim right now, I went back and started replaying Morrowind with the graphics overhaul called Morrowind 2011. Reminded me how detached attacks feel, and how ridiculously slow you walk and run at the start of the game. And then I started walking all over the place, going in caves, killing crazy monsters. And times were good. Hoping Skyrim goes on a steam sale around xmas so I can get it >.>

  • Man, that Notch guy works fast! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Speare ( 84249 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:29PM (#38025366) Homepage Journal

    I've been looking forward to that latest game from Mojang-- they sure delivered this latest installment of Scrolls quickly!

    Oh, wait....

  • Works on Linux too! (Score:5, Informative)

    by tjbp ( 2499800 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:38PM (#38025478)
    I got this working on Wine only an hour after it arrived in the post, using v1.3.32 on x86_64 Arch Linux. Additionally you'll need to install vcrun2008 via winetricks, and set it to use d3dx9_27 as a native library. After that it a very reasonable speed on ultra-high settings using an Intel i7 2600k and a 570GTX Nvidia card. Overjoyed to see the new game has a bright future with Wine, just like its predecessor. :D I've submitted it to the app database on WineHQ too, hopefully it'll be approved shortly.
    • Very nice to hear! I had some issues at first with Fallout where it was just excruciating to converse with any of the npc's as the entire game just ground to a halt. Looking forward to playing Skyrim.

    • any steam related hurdles to jump through?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Andy Dodd ( 701 )

      That makes me even more tempted to buy it...

    • Re:Works on Linux too! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Darinbob ( 1142669 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @04:52PM (#38028948)

      But this is the first Bethesda game infected with DRM. How do you get around that? You have Steam under wine?

      I was amazingly disappointed when I heard it was going to be Steam based. Especially since Fallout 3 and the earlier Elderscrolls had no DRM and just simple copy protection (ie, no need for a DVD in the drive even). I thought they were going to be the last company to go with DRM. What is going on here, is everyone doing this now? I even hint that I don't like Steam on some forums and suddenly I'm being flamed. Not only are they getting fans to accept DRM without question, they're managing to get fans to defend and promote it.

      Why would consumers want to promote DRM on games when they're so adamantly against it in music and video? Slashdot is full of anti MPAA/RIAA posts but where are the anti-DRM and anti-Steam posts? Yes, I know Steam is convenient for some people but it could be convenient without the removal of your consumer rights, or only include DRM if you download online, or not default to automatic updates that break your mods, or allow you to run the game without the nanny engine starting first, or not pop up ads when you're done playing. This is insidious stuff and I am honestly baffled why users just take it happily when otherwise they're so skeptical of DRM elsewhere.

  • Only one problem (Score:5, Informative)

    by mseeger ( 40923 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:44PM (#38025556)

    The only problem is the curse of the video game console. The PC user get's crappy menus for the sake XBox/PS players.

    • Which with Oblivion and Fallout 3 was fixed by mods very quickly.

  • I *Hate* The Elder Scrolls (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RobinEggs ( 1453925 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:52PM (#38025656)
    For one big reason:

    Thanks to the Elder Scrolls being Bethesda's cash cow and major recent experience with RPGs, the revival of Fallout became "Oblivion with guns" rather than a decent sequel. They raped its corpse.

    I mean, I still played it twice. There's something to be said for the Elder Scrolls formula. But Fallout 3 is still far behind 1, 2, and Vegas when it comes to having solid plot and characterization rather than relying on a massive, largely empty environment to drive the whole game. I swear to God, Fallout 3 barely had a quest per square mile. That damn aircraft carrier was practically empty.

    That's what the Elder Scrolls means to me. The poisoning of decent CRPGs with set-piece driven exploration games.

    • Yeah New Vegas was awesome. 15 minutes into the game and it was obvious it was the true successor to FO1 and 2. The only downside was Vegas itself, possibly a Gamebryo engine limitation, but more likely just lazy developers.

  • Great, but control issues exist on PC (Score:5, Informative)

    by Colonel Korn ( 1258968 ) on Friday November 11, 2011 @12:57PM (#38025762)

    If you try to play with a gamepad it works great - or as well as a gamepad can work. Like in any fps, you turn slowly and imprecisely compared to mouse control, but that's not so bad.

    The mouse is another matter. Mouse behavior throughout the UI is inconsistent. It's learnable, but even then it's not entirely predictable. I tried this a bit last night. In many cases I'd place the cursor over an option and click it, but the click either wouldn't register or would happen away from the cursor. The best solution seems to be to jiggle the cursor a bit and try again.

    Mouse acceleration is present but can be disabled in the .ini file. Since few people on gaming forums even know what mouse acceleration is, it gets blamed for all sorts of unrelated things like input lag, but in reality it's not a problem. Cursor lag, however, is a bit of an issue. I need to mess around with triple buffering and non-fullscreen modes to look for potential improvements, but with default settings on my rather overpowered system mouse movement seems to have around a 100ms delay. This is common in modern games because gamepads are rather sloshy and don't make input lag apparent due to their inherent slowness. However, cursor movement in menus is actually quite crisp, which is a big improvement over the majority of modern games. That's a big deal and gives me hope that a well modded and patched PC UI could be very satisfying.

    The worst and most bizarre mouse input problem, however, is probably the worst mouse input bug I've ever encountered in any piece of software. The y-axis sensitivity is different from x-axis sensitivity. That's not rare in gamepad-based games, since a major concern is keeping console players from accidentally looking excessively up and down while rotating. That's even fixable in a lot of mouse drivers - I can set my x and y mouse sensitivities separately. However, the problem here is, as far as I know, unsolvable without a real Bethesda patch: the y-axis sensitivity is highly variable. If you move your mouse up 2 cm to look at the ceiling and then move a few meters and do the same thing, you're likely to find that looking at the ceiling now takes a 10 cm move. I've heard that this is because y-axis sensitivity is dependent on framerate, but I think that the dependency must be either nonlinear or more complicated than that.

    I'm thinking of switching to a gamepad, but then combat is slower paced and it's more difficult to handle groups of opponents by darting between and around them mouse style.

    • Re:Great, but control issues exist on PC (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 11, 2011 @01:43PM (#38026286)

      fixed for you already:

      add the following keys to SkyrimPrefs.ini in your My Games dir

      fMouseHeadingYScale=0.0100
      fMouseHeadingXScale=0.0200

    • I *really* hate gamepads for these kinds of games, but Skyrim is the first one where I made the switch. It's still aggravating sometimes, but for the most part -- especially walking around and watching the scenery, which I seem to do a lot of --, it's fine. Combat is more difficult and shooting arrows in particular is MUCH more difficult, I'm sure it's "costing" me an entire difficulty level at least. It's sometimes frustrating when you die and it feels like the controls are part of the reason. But I try to

  • I found this [killscreendaily.com] to be a nice look at skyrim. Also, oblig. Penny Arcade [penny-arcade.com].

  • Oblivion was broken, but Skyrim is not Oblivion (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rocket rancher ( 447670 ) <themovingfinger@gmail.com> on Saturday November 12, 2011 @11:57AM (#38034914)

    Skyrim is not Oblivion. It is still the Elder Scrolls, but this is a new way to experience it. Oblivion was a flawed game because of the leveling system and the armor/weapon/spell crafting system.

    The leveling mechanic in Oblivion was abandoned for Skyrim. Suffice it to say, getting your ass handed to you by some motley crew of bandits while exploring a cave at level one is expected. What the Oblivion devs didn't realize was that having your ass handed to you by that same motley crew at level twenty is fucking frustrating -- what is the point of leveling up if the monsters level up with you? In an RPG, I *like* being able to go back and deliver some leveled-up payback to the monsters of my youth. Not being able to revisit lower levels after gaining enough armor/weapons/magicka to handle them contracted the game down to a series of frustratingly similar encounters.

    Crafting, especially spell crafting, is not the same in Skyrim. Being able to customize your armor, weapons, and spells was a cool innovation in the earlier games, and I was pleasantly surprised by how satisfying it was in Morrowind. But Oblivion was a living example of why too much of a good thing is bad. An RPG that allows a level one character to become permanently invisible and craft a spell that can one-shot the final boss is broken, period. The game should be about testing your skills and knowledge of the game world, not resisting the temptation to exploit a design flaw in one of the game's critical subsystems.

    So, Skyrim is addressing both of these well-publicized and documented problems. I'm downloading this from Steam as I type this, and am looking forward to playing it through.

  • I love the word "consolified". Like the series belongs as a PC game and consoles somehow infected the franchise. So bitter. Yes we all want another Morrowind, but give us a break - the series is what it is, and gaming is what it had to become.

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