Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Out of all the "reviews" so far, this one seemed to be the most honest and fair one to me:

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/10/skyrim-review-pc/

He adresses some strong points the game has, as well as weak points and compares it to previous games. Quite ok, imo.

 

Funny, some reviews (like PC Gamer) are pretty critical in text, but still give it stratospheric scores. It seems just like a refined, bigger Oblivion with less retarded design decisions. No big surprises there.

 

Ready to take one for the team when I pick it up tommorow sah!

 

But why would you buy something if you think it will be bad ?


Speaking of which, I am not gonna play this (Medivial stuff bores me unless it is the Middle East/China/India) but if this is what the new engine Fallout will run on how is it doing so far?

 

Well there have been some pre release movies here and there on the Internet.

I know that some of the badness is simply because of bad programming or scripting but from time to time the engine really acts weird.
As weird as in FO3 or even more.

In one movie the player is being chased by the corpse of some woman he killed earlier.

 

well I saw that 3 hours game play footage someone uploaded on youtube. And well the game stinks to much after Oblivion for me to really believe that I can enjoy it. Of course people might have a different opinion and I might be wrong. But ...

1. The visuals seem to be some improvement but I don't see the "revolution" inside it compared to even a few older games and to what Bethesda said - yeah ... animations are not that great and the they still cant make high resolution textures ...

2. Story. To many reviews I have read so far say ... awesome world (sandbox yay!) but boring main quest. How can a "main quest" of some RPG be so trivial ? The best part is watch out for a mild spoiler, once you kill the biggest bad ass in the world (the so called "end boss") almost no one of the NPCs even the important characters for the main quest will mention it! Not to forget infinite Dragons. At some point you will take 2 of them at the same time (after you finish the main quest). And how can that be "immersive". Replace "Oblivion gates" with "Dragons". And you have it.

3. Combat. It. Is. Still. As. Boring. Like. In. Oblivion. Button smashing par exellence. At least thats is what some review (german) said. They say its "fun" because you ... yeah kill Dragons and because you can use 2 spells at the same time ! YAAAAY ! But still. Not to mention there are those slo-motion cinematics you get sometimes for a "critical" hit. Like it was not absolutely boring enough in Fallout 3. No clue if those are "optional" though in Skyrim. But they mentioned that you most of the time only need one single attack and the enemies will drop. Tactical thinking it is not!

 

I don't actually, heck I even found some enjoyment from Oblivion though much like whoever takes up the role as the Gray Fox I can't quite remember what it was.

I just treat these games as the equivelant of a B-movie, something fun and relaxing and not to taxing on the ol' brain box.

 

SOLD! (my soul to Bethesda)
That said, I can't find any recent news about the game editor. Is it included? Available for download later?

 

Oh god, the pc interface is so horrible. I haven't played a Bethesda game yet which features such a horrible pc interface. Really. I thought Oblivion was bad. I thought Fallout 3 and New Vegas was bad. What the hell? I know, I shouldn't be surprised, but I am actually surprised by this badly done pc interface (what am I writing, this isn't a badly done pc interface. This is a badly ported console interface). Sometimes the buttons don't seem to react, then it is really non-intuitive, it seems complicated and inefficient, in cases it seems like the menu is like frozen, etc.The worst is, I don't even know if modders would be able to fix that. Though, I hope it will be possible.

Regardless of how good the game might be or not. Fact is, the interface is bullshit.

 

agreed. the interface is complete bullshit and it's embarrasing that they've released the game like this. it's complicated, you have to scroll through everything all the damn time and it's pretty unresponsive. the skills/perks menu looks neat and all, but is a real pain to use. you can't quickly scroll between the skills, you have to wait for the perk tree to sort of "light up" before you can scroll to the next skill. unless you hold the key down, which makes it scroll too fast to really be useful.

other than that, I've actually been pleasantly surprised on many occasions so far. the atmosphere is really good, way way better than Oblivion. it feels more dark and gritty, but it's hard to say yet how that will hold up. but all in all it feels so much more "mature".

and the skills/leveling system is much better. it's a shame there are no attributes like strength and intelligence, but at the same time leveling and raising skills feels a lot more natural and fluent. no need to focus on the "right" skills to be able to raise strength for example. and perks seem promising - some special moves in combat and some other neat bonuses. being able to cast spells silently? sounds perfect for my soon-to-be mage/assassin. raising health, magicka or stamina by 10 per level feels somewhat odd as well. it's hard to tell what will be more useful in the end.

and as for the slo-mo finishing moves, they actually work pretty well. they don't feel at all as intrusive as the ones in FO3/NV. they're shorter and they simply don't feel as out of place.

more reflections and impressions tomorrow, I've only scraped on the surface so far.

 

I thought this shit came out tomorrow?

 

I'm glad I'm not the only one having this problem. The interface is HORRIBLE, so bad I'm not even going to bother playing it until mods are out that fix the interface. I've gotten past Helgen into that first town the dude tells you to go to to meet up with his blacksmith uncle...and that's as far as I'm going. the fact that you can't even click on menu items with the mouse does it for me.

Creating my character was the worst -- I had to do the whole thing using the keyboard, and if I moved my character around to check out what my face looked like at a different angle, I could no longer click on the left menu without first clicking on the top menu (??) makes no sense, but that's Bethesda.

 

Played a little bit more and I have to say, I actually died a few times. Had to use some poison on my sword, to get around some bandits and there was a small door-opening puzzle in a quest dungeon. Graphic looks good. Could be better here and there, but so far I've expected worse. I am still very annoyed of the interface.

 

Recent information (read; moar $) has me considering if I should get it or not. Beyond the predictably rave reviews, it seems like the game has genuine qualities, but what bogs it down are the horrid interface (mods ftw), usual bugs/AI quirks (used to it by now) and infinite dragons (oh, had I hoped they would not make that crucial mistake! Dragons are supposed to be mighty foes, not just ''oh look, yet another flying superpower dispenser coming from above'').

The graphics seem overall very decent from what I have seen of player-submitted screenshots, but I have also seen a shot (allegedly of Utra settings) were the sword the PC wielded has textures not dissimilar to those present in Low quality Oblivion. I mean, jeez, it is too much to ask that the weapons that are in the player's face 95% of the time get some amount of special treatment and don't look like shit? Goddamn limited console VRAM.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6PG2CPSxE_0&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

 

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-0Gw5DM4TIo[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K27GuSSha0s[/youtube]

 

Ahahahahaha! Now I'm actually interested in buying this game. At least there are some hidden comedy factors in the game.

 

Well it looks like that mechanic is working perfectly.

 

Please let me know if the NPCs that act as your companions always storm into battle with suicide written on their forheads, or if they have introduced some viable form of party control.