The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[shadowgrin]

Bethesda going for the button awesome route with Skyrim.

Bethesda: Consoles to be the lead platform for Skyrim, aim to make it “really accessible”

Bethesda’s Craig Lafferty said that Skyrim has been developed with consoles as the lead target.
The lead producer on Skyrim said: “We use the consoles as our lead SKU… So we develop towards the consoles and then porting to PC is usually not too bad actually.”

“We wanted to take it and make it really accessible,” the producer said.“… We still have the complexity behind the scenes, but we wanted to make it so that you could pick up the controller and play and it was easy; the average person could get into it…We knew we wanted to make the user interface a little bit more open and available … get away from the stats and things like that.”

[el badman]

Ouch, not a good sign. I wish they could have been as ballsy as the developers from The Witcher 2 and make a PC only game, but oh well, one can dream...

[Lamrock]

If they improve the leveling system, voice acting, combat and depth this one might be okay.

[Lean]

Console-release first?

[el badman]

Some new gameplay footage presented by Todd Howard, and taken from what they are showing at the E3:

phpBB [video]

[el badman]

According to this new Gamespot preview of the game, it looks like the map will be identical in size to Oblivion's, but it will be much denser, with gameplay additions like real crafting that actually seem more derived from The Witcher 2 than its predecessor... Looking pretty damn sweet overall.

[Lean]

We have a demo footage.

phpBB [video]

Time to burn some (video)cards.

[Patr1ck]

Time to burn some (video)cards.

Console port, not possible.

[volsey]

The 3 Part, 1/2 hour video demo showed off the interaction with NPC's. Looks unreal and the best I've seen in an RPG.

There's a dude sharpening his axe on a grindstone while talking to the player, everything looks so natural, really makes Oblivion look like a joke to be honest. Combat still doesn't look too thrilling, and I'm a little worried about the menu system, but overall this is the game I'm looking forward to most before xmas.

[Patr1ck]

I'm concerned about the frame of view and the movement system. It looks like he is having trouble moving the cursor around. Hopefully the frame off view is editable on the pc version.

Other than the npc interaction, we've seen these videos already. It's the same demo that they showed to the press, except the voice over is in the video instead of him explaining it to a live viewer.

I might not play nba2k12 for a while after November 11th.

[Lamrock]

really makes Oblivion look like a joke to be honest.

Not hard to do.

To me, Oblivion is the D-Rose of video games

[Lean]

Now that I'm done with Witcher 2, I'm more inclined to getting my hands on this game. Oblivion took most of my time, and I took it as a personal challenge to close all the Oblivion Gates (which I failed doing, sadly). Maybe this time I'll challenge myself in killing all dragons (which I would fail as well).

[Patr1ck]

I don't really like RPG's, but I played the crap out of Oblivion. I think it was the FPS elements with the melee that really drew me to it. I also liked the quests and the dialog options, even though there were only a few different voices. I closed all the gates, iirc. I also performed the arrow cheat to get a crap load of arrows. Loved sniping with them and causing random chaos.

[el badman]

Some more details regarding the playable races and their attributes:
http://pc.ign.com/articles/119/1196606p1.html

[Lean]

I'm still inclined on using an Imperial but after reading that, I'm having second thoughts.

[el badman]

I'm still inclined on using an Imperial but after reading that, I'm having second thoughts.

I remember playing a Nord first in Oblivion, I'll probably do that again this time around.

Some of the voice talents are now known. I must say I don't know most of them, but it's always good news to have professional actors do the voicing regardless:

Christopher Plummer (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, The Insider)
Max Von Sydow (The Exorcist, Minority Report)
Joan Allen (The Contender, The Bourne Ultimatum)
Lynda Carter (Wonder Woman)
Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica)
Vladimir Kulich (The 13th Warrior, Smoking Aces)
Claudia Christian (Babylon 5)
Diane Louise Salinger (Carnivale)
Renee Victor (Weeds)
George Coe (Transformers: Dark of the Moon)

[el badman]

Just pre-ordered the game off Steam, those 3 weeks are gonna feel pretty long...

Here's another preview from IGN that shows how lush and rich the game will be.

At this point during my play session, I was lost. I didn't even want to bring up the incredibly detailed and useful world map to reveal my position and mark waypoints to get to a populated area. I was happy to wander and deal with things as I discovered them. In the middle of a field I found rotatable stones inscribed with glyphs and a switch situated in the center. Clearly there was some ideal configuration to the stones that would unlock a nearby grate, but after a few minutes of experimentation, I couldn't find the solution. The sun then set and I spied a large bonfire raging in the distance. When I arrived on the scene I found two mammoths and a giant striding around, and I quickly sprinted away.

[Lean]

phpBB [video]

[Angelo]

Holy Shit that was nice

[Lean]

DAMN LAME GRAPHICS

EDIT: Can't wait for this. I can see easter eggs scattered all throughout the open world.

[Lean]

Resurrect chickens.

[kevin02]

Speaking of chickens...
Chicken Bug

[shadowgrin]

Awesome.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/vi ... Informants

Bethesda's Todd Howard said that the design team started getting caught for crimes more often than they should have, and that it wasn't immediately obvious what was going on. "'Why are we getting caught?' 'Oh, the chickens are reporting the crimes!' he joked. "That actually took us a while to track down, that bug. Like, 'Why is this happening?'"

Sadly, despite being incredibly entertaining, the bug, which Howard attributed to the game's Radiant Story system, was fixed. However, several amused fans have vowed to mod it back in, so if you want chickens to rat you out, it might be worth picking up the PC version of the game.

[Lean]

Now there's a reason for chicken brutality.

[Lean]

So when this comes out, I might be out of the NLSC for good:

phpBB [video]