The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Nowhere on the box does it say "50 hours of grinding." I know this because I have the box.

But just take a look at what Kaiser actually said:

Kaiser said:

compared to Oblivion

The previous game in the series has to be a valid reference point, dontcha think?

No, I don't. :-P

In Oblivion, you were basically unstoppable from the beginning and could cheat the system by intentionally not leveling up, which is precisely why it was fixed in Skyrim. When you did level up in Oblivion, it actually became more difficult because everything leveled with you. This is precisely why I called his criticism questionable.

I never felt like I had to play Skyrim for 50+ hours before it became enjoyable and no one really proclaimed that. What people said is you'll need to dedicate more time to flesh out your character, which is as it should be and how it was advertised from the very beginning. One of the most prominent and talked about changes for Skyrim was the new leveling system and while I do miss a few features related to it from prior Elder Scrolls games, I think the overall system is much better and far more rewarding.

There are these magical things called difficulty settings, where you can move this slider and experience the wonderful feeling of being unstoppable, if you so wish. :-)

Craigs said:

Probably because being able to level up extremely fast by jumping off a building again and again is kind of stupid. I personally don't miss acrobatics and athletics. The game should reward the player for actually doing something, such as fighting monsters and bandits, picking locks, and sneaking past enemies. Taking a quick stroll around town, going for a quick swim, or jumping off buildings like the stock market just crashed hardly warrants leveling up.

Practicing acrobatics seemed like a great way for an acrobat to level up, I thought. There are certainly less realistic ways to level the skill, but this is true of all the other skills as well; it doesn't make leaping around the landscape any less fun. The inclusion of enchanted boots to increase acrobatics to insane degrees suggests that the developers also found it fun and wanted to encourage players to try it.

I have Skyrim for xbox 360. Just don't have the time to play it. Need to play this weekend. I think Skyrim is a very good game. My friend advised to buy the game and all my classmate are talking about it.

I got skyrim for PS3 its really good and i have completed it already but ive got a problem. a bit of the screen is cut off on the title screen i can t see any thing from before the b of bethesda. can anyone help

Use a monitor with a higher resolution and/or widescreen aspect ratio?

That's kind of a lame solution, but a friend of mine was complaining about something similar on his Xbox 360 version of the game; the Skyrim UI is apparently broken on his standard 4:3 TV screen, with most of the left-aligned messages being cut off, some not showing up at all, etc.

He said the game was almost unplayable like that, so he connected the 1440x900 LCD monitor from his PC to the Xbox and has been playing with that all week without complaint.

would a HDMI cable help? and my friend has it on the PS3 aswell and its not affected by this

Just released our texture pack's first internal alpha: http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/484159-pretty-pack-first-alpha-release/

Sig-ma said:

In Oblivion, you were basically unstoppable from the beginning and could cheat the system by intentionally not leveling up, which is precisely why it was fixed in Skyrim. When you did level up in Oblivion, it actually became more difficult because everything leveled with you. This is precisely why I called his criticism questionable.

...so basically everything you met from the start you could kill, thus allowing quicker progress than needing to grind up the levels?

GooberMan said:

...so basically everything you met from the start you could kill, thus allowing quicker progress than needing to grind up the levels?

But then because of how backwards the leveling in Oblivion is, everything you could initially kill from the start keeps getting tougher, so unless you micromanage your skills as you progress, your character paradoxically becomes weaker and weaker as you gain levels, compared to everything else around you.

Yet it's still allowing progression. In 12 hours of Skyrim, I've gotten fetch quest after fetch quest and battled a dragon that the AI was more than happy to kill for me. In 12 hours of Oblivion, you've entered and shut down an oblivion gate by yourself.

The early game of Skyrim is far too focused on grinding. That is to say, for people who don't want to put two whole days of their life in to the game to level up adequately. If you want to do the grind, then good for you. But not everyone does or has the time for it, and complaints to that effect are anything but questionable considering how the previous game of the series (and even Fallout) played.

EDIT: Also interesting. A friend of mine put in the grind to get himself up to a high level. And is now finding the game boring due to being overpowered. There seems to be a balance problem in there somewhere.

My early game consisted mostly of wandering around, exploring, killing things and breaking into things. It was fun. It's still fun. I think I've done two fetch quests where I had to actually go fetch the thing because every other time I was already holding the item thanks to my exploring. I also did a drop quest. The drop part was meh, but the dungeon involved had a kick-ass story and was fun.

There seems to be enough story stuff to do early on that you can level while doing it and not feel like you're grinding.

My biggest complaint is nothing really ever branches. The dungeons only have dead-end branches and always have a quick exit. The quests never branch either. That's the part of Daggerfall I miss.

The leveling system feels like Fallout 3, which I also liked. It's easy to become very powerful or not at all powerful depending on how you play. Gives you the freedom to do things like wear the set of armour you think looks coolest because you worry less about whether you're going to die.

you shut down your first oblivion gate in 12 hours! ive completed it once in 13 hours

EDIT: well the main quest anyway

GooberMan said:

...so basically everything you met from the start you could kill, thus allowing quicker progress than needing to grind up the levels?

Except in the end all it did was lead to an overall dull experience. You never had to worry about a dungeon being too dangerous to enter because no matter what, the enemies would always be pretty much on par with you in terms of stats and equipment. Loot is also rarely, if ever interesting because it too scales to your level.

In 12 hours of Skyrim, I've gotten fetch quest after fetch quest and battled a dragon that the AI was more than happy to kill for me. In 12 hours of Oblivion, you've entered and shut down an oblivion gate by yourself.

In 12 hours of Skyrim I've become the arch mage of the skyrim college, became a werewolf, obtained a staff that has completely random effects on enemies (once it turned a bandit into a sweet roll which I immediately ate), and gained a power that allows me to call down lighting on everyone in the immediate vicinity.

Craigs said:

Edit: Also just got my first dragon since the patch. All I can say is: God damn it Bethesda

??

So what's your issue with them?

I've played maybe 2 hours with the new patch so far and I've seen 2 dragons. I managed to miraculously shoot one with an arrow, once somehow, but from what I can see they are not at all interested in fighting anything that isn't a mudcrab or elk or sometimes sabercats that are all a good click away from where I am. Or they just fly straight up into the air...really really high and refuse to come down except to kill a rabbit or chicken or some shit.

Pre-patch I they would always spawn if I was in a town so I would have town guards help me to corral it into a smallish area so dragons could actually be battled and killed

Quast said:

??

So what's your issue with them?

I've played maybe 2 hours with the new patch so far and I've seen 2 dragons. I managed to miraculously shoot one with an arrow, once somehow, but from what I can see they are not at all interested in fighting anything that isn't a mudcrab or elk or sometimes sabercats that are all a good click away from where I am. Or they just fly straight up into the air...really really high and refuse to come down except to kill a rabbit or chicken or some shit.

Pre-patch I they would always spawn if I was in a town so I would have town guards help me to corral it into a smallish area so dragons could actually be battled and killed

The patch seems to have seriously broken them. The last two dragons I ran into turned towards me as soon as they saw me and then immediately flew away from me backwards, then began circling around me (still flying backwards) not even bothering to attack before flying away insanely fast.

About twenty hours in on my main character, I battled a dragon alone in a swamp area (near the Eldergleam Sanctuary or whatever it was called) while it was dark out and it was one of the most epic, fun and intense battles I've ever experienced with a game.

However, I kind of wonder if that was an anomaly since most of the time they do what everyone else is complaining about-- flying away from me and attacking bears or random bandits, primarily being beaten down by my horse while I safely pick away at them with arrows. I wish the dragons would focus more on you (being the dragonborn and all) rather than random guards or finding civilians threatening to beat them to death with their bare fucking hands more of a priority than me.

I also have a weird issue where each and every single time I fast-travel to Dawnstar, a dragon spawns without fail. Kind of annoying. For the central gimmick, I think the dragons are a massive improvement over the shitty Oblivion gates from Oblivion but ever since that one battle with a dragon and realizing how amazing it could be, I've found myself a little disappointed with every dragon encounter since.

Speaking of dragons, I kind of wish there was a little more variety to them instead of just subtle anatomical differences and varying shouts/powers.

Would of liked to seen a Chinese-style wingless dragon living in some cave, for instance.

Even before the patch I had noticed some weird dragon behaviour of the sort Craigs describes, though I wouldn't put it past Bethesda screwing up the AI even further in the update. So far so good for me, though.

Another thing that seems odd to me, but it might just be intended behaviour: around a quarter of the random dragons that I've seen have totally ignored both me and all the surrounding wildlife, proceeding to fly around in circles bellowing dramatically for a few minutes before flying away without doing any harm. The only way to attract their attention seems to be to damage them, but it's tough to reliably hit them with arrows when they're in the air like that. I've had more luck with magic; I grabbed the attention of several of these "pacifist dragons" with lucky firebolt and ice spike spells, but it's still difficult to lead the shots against a flying target.

Lightning bolts appear to be more reliable, since they have a near-instant impact, but it seems like the effective range is shorter than than the other two destruction types, so the tradeoff is that you need to get closer to the dragon to hit it, using whatever hills or structures are in the area. I hear there's also a shout that forces dragons to land, but you need to go through a bunch of the main quest to get it, and I'm still having fun just wandering around exploring right now, so screw that.

Anyway, I agree that the dragons are a massive improvement over the lame Oblivion gate gimmick from the last game, and have given me some memorable battles so far. Earlier today, I was wandering between the little islands in some random-assed river with my hired thug, when this massive forboding shadow swept right over our heads from behind. By the time I turned my gaze skyward, the dragon was already on the ground attacking from another direction, spewing flames all over us. The mercenary fell within seconds, so I ran toward the nearby shoreline to regroup, frantically blasting off ice and heal spells as I backpedalled. The dragon took to the air and followed, making continuous strafing runs over me with its flames, at which point I'd almost succumbed to the constant damage before I ended the battle with a decisive fireball of my own, knocking the dragon out of the air mid-charge as it was coming toward me. The crash left this awesome trench of pushed-up dirt where the dragon skidded alongside the river, and its impact with me (since I didn't have time to get out of the way when I saw it coming down) knocked my ass back into the water again.

I survived, though, then absorbed the dragon's soul and used it to unlock a shout that lets me freeze living things as solid blocks of ice, which is now my preferred method of hunting deer. Also, hitting the de-souled dragon skeletons with firebolt/ice spike spells, then watching the ragdolls fly around like they're made of tissue paper, is hilarious.

I'm enjoying it so far. I'm still undecided on the simplification of the the system skills from Oblivion and Morrowind regarding signs, skills, classes what have you. But it's fun, simple but fun. But today I encountered the first thing in game that made me laugh. I'm low level, haven't played it long, but I was adventuring through a cave and met up with the Falmer. Killed a few of them. I ended up in a room with three of them, ran down a corridor away from them them, and turned around to attack. I killed the one in front of me with a strike from my axe, and was promptly shot down by an arrow from the Falmer at the back. When the camera zoomed in around my body, I saw that he had killed me with a direct shot to my junk. May be immature, but seeing that arrow sticking out from my sack made me laugh. Well, then the quest in Hillgrund's tomb where his aunt's corpse was sticking vertically face first in the ground with her legs up in the air. I kind of felt bad looting her corpse while her nephew watched.

Mithran Denizen said:

dragon battle

hot damn. that sounds awesome.

Jello said:

When the camera zoomed in around my body, I saw that he had killed me with a direct shot to my junk. May be immature, but seeing that arrow sticking out from my sack made me laugh.

I don't know why, but whenever I kill an enemy with my bow it always seems as though I hit them in the crotch. I'm not intentionally aiming there but for some reason the arrows always home in on enemies' groin.

DoomUK said:

Speaking of dragons, I kind of wish there was a little more variety to them instead of just subtle anatomical differences and varying shouts/powers.

Suddenly Windhelm finds itself under attack by a dragon unlike any they've seen before.

Craigs said:

Suddenly Windhelm finds itself under attack by a dragon unlike any they've seen before.

Wtf am I looking at here. What.

I'd just lost Lydia during the first battle with Alduin, so I had a sad. Then while jogging across the plains, I see a dog fighting off two wolves, after which he sits in front of me. Henceforth he shall be my traveling comPanion, and his name shall be Nimrod.

DoomUK said:

Wtf am I looking at here. What.

You didn't get the Neverending Story on that side of the pond eh? Lucky bastards.

Yeah we did. It's not his fault he hasnt seen some terrible movie from like 20 years ago.

AirRaid said:

Yeah we did.

Damned right we did. We even provided the guy who sung the song.



What fine specimens of 80's "fashion" he (and his band Kajagoogoo) were.

Enjay said:

Damned right we did. We even provided the guy who sung the song.

I don't care what anybody says, that Neverending Story song rules!

AirRaid said:

Yeah we did. It's not his fault he hasnt seen some terrible movie from like 20 years ago.

Oh come on, you've got to admit that the first one was actually good.

Dragons killed half of the population of Riverwood. Ik occasionally go there to use the enchantment table. One also popped up over Solitude, no casualties there though. The one in Riverwood was a tough son of a bitch.