Elder Scrolls : Skyrim

[Sutekh]

Hi,

I was surprised to not see a thread in here on this subject yet.

My local gaming store broke release date and i got this yesterday (the 10th) although was of course hamstrung by Steam who let me get the goodies at 9pm last night.

Ive played perhaps an hour tops, just hit level 2. The game looks really good (esp outside) and while Ive only travelled to town Im noticing some similarities to fallout in terms of WHAT things look like (how trees/rocks are drawn) and the lockpicking mini game. Ive also been collecting roadside ingredients.

What are other peoples impressions so far?

Matt

 

[Janx]

Does the rubber band stealth training trick work? basically rig the controller to sneak and move into a barrier so you build skill.

Can you make custom spells and items?

Can I get 100% invisibility or 100% Reflect Damage? Those were game breaking things in Oblivion.

I think the wife is heading out today to aquire a copy. Then she'll be playing that non-stop...

 

[Janx]

The wife has returned with Skyrim and is playing now amidst complaints that the dog is trying to help.

She is not a FPS player. So watching her run through the intro section brings back memories of Oblivion and watching her flail about staring at the floor or sky and licking the walls while danger lashes her backside.

practical yet tactical advice:
keep your back to the wall, not your face. Walls don't attack, whats in open spaces does.

angle your camera to mostly match the incline you are on. Going up, look up. Going down, look down.

if you can't figure out where to go, follow the perimeter in a consistent fashion, like always going left. It will also keep a wall on your side, which is one less direction of threat than running around in the open trying to figure out where the Keep is.

 

[CrimsonReaver]

Sadly, I think I need to upgrade my computer before I can play Skyrim, and that will likely have to wait until next year. Though, the advantage to that is, by the time I'm able to play, they'll hopefully have patched any of the more crippling and frustrating glitches.

 

[Kzach]

Sadly, I think I need to upgrade my computer before I can play Skyrim, and that will likely have to wait until next year. Though, the advantage to that is, by the time I'm able to play, they'll hopefully have patched any of the more crippling and frustrating glitches.

This is me. I have minimum specs for the game but IME minimum specs means that even when you have all options turned to low, the game will still be jerky and slow; on top of that, though, it will also look awful.

I'd rather wait until I can run it with full specs and there's some patches, a character editor and forums I can go to for answers and some DLC, etc.

Until then, I can run SWTOR.

 

[Janx]

Sadly, I think I need to upgrade my computer before I can play Skyrim, and that will likely have to wait until next year. Though, the advantage to that is, by the time I'm able to play, they'll hopefully have patched any of the more crippling and frustrating glitches.

This is why by the late nineties I quit playing games on PC and switched to console. Sony sticks to their 6 years between generations, and MS seems to fit their xbox between that.

FPS have been done very well at this point. And Elder Scrolls being a top title (game of the year winner EVERY time).

A console won't satisfy everybody I supposed, but they're not to be sneered at. They certainly have a better longevity for support to cost ration ($300-$400) for 6 years of being the "current" rig. Contrast to annual more frequent and more costly upgrades to keep playing the latest games on PC.

But back on topic, Skyrim on the 360 is pretty good. The menus are a bit laggy to open up or accept an initial accept response, though.

Arrows have zero weight, so no worries about clogging up your inventory.

I like the Oblivion world map UI a bit better, and the character management menu too.

Graphics are nice though. And it is fun. Dual Wielding is fun, especially dual-casting.

Money is a bit tight. Shop keeps buy your stuff from their coin pouch. Meaning, they may run out of money to buy your stuff. This makes it harder to bulk sell loot to build up cash to buy your first house to stash supplies.

Also, since you level up automatically, you can't wait to level up so you can go buy your 5 trainings per level. You'll basically fly by opportunities to train before your ready with the money to do so. In Oblivion, since you controled when to level, you could earn the XP but not level, get the gold, train up, then sleep to level. Thus ensuring you did not miss the opportunity to boost your PC by buying training each level.

 

[CrimsonReaver]

This is why by the late nineties I quit playing games on PC and switched to console. Sony sticks to their 6 years between generations, and MS seems to fit their xbox between that.

There are a lot of games I'm content to play on consoles, including many first-person shooters where, previously, I never would've played them without a mouse for aiming, but there are definitely those titles that I'll only play on a computer. Elder Scrolls is one of them.

I've read in a couple reviews and heard from a few people now that the loading times, particularly when entering buildings in town, get to be extremely frustrating. Even if it's only a 10-second load time, that'd quickly get on my nerves as I try exploring the towns. Constantly have to wait for the new location to load, having my game experience interrupted as I move through what should be a seamless environment, would just ruin the experience for me.

Plus, I find menus, like inventory, are typically handled better on PC than consoles. Just a personal preference. And given the number of releases coming out this time of year, there's a large enough selection of games I can and will play on the consoles that I can easily afford to wait for Skyrim.

Besides, I also want to upgrade my computer to make sure I can handle the highest settings for The Old Republic and Diablo III. (Though, Diablo III probably won't require much, since Blizzard tends to ensure their games to run on the lowliest of systems, never pushing the limits for processing or visual requirements.)

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

Downloaded it Saturday morning, spent all Saturday afternoon surfing forums trying to figure out why it had no sound at all and hung shortly after the title sequence (directX problem it turns out - it ships with directX 11 but I had to download the end-user whatsis direct from Microsoft to get it to work).

Played it all afternoon today. Never played any other Elder Scrolls games but did play the hell out of Fallout 3 (which was my first entry into that series) so the experience is very much the same. In fact, it uses the identical lockpicking widget. I could nitpick (as one could Fallout 3) but so far it's been fairly fun and gives me a second game to play outside of City of Heroes.

 

[frankthedm]

Got it for Xbox 360. Because my 360 is old and near the end of it's life, I have to install it to the HDD to not murder the motor. Unfortunately this means the graphics suffer do to a bizarre glitch. Xbox News: Dev fixing Skyrim 360 installed texture glitch - ComputerAndVideoGames.com .

Also got the two hours of infinite magicka glitch after going to the mage guild. I didn't do too much with it, though it was the only thing that let me live running through the one way "Sightless pit". Didn't clear it out, just ran my squishy mage through constantly healing with Falmer ice casters freezing my buns while making my escape.

Fought a second dragon so far but I only won due to having a convenient tower nearby... again. I'm REALLY worried about having to fight one of those thing in the open with my squishy mage.

 

[LightPhoenix]

Playing on the computer, my specs aren't great but not terrible, the game runs on Medium pretty well.

The UI is not great, which surprised me a little. I'm hoping this will be focused on for the next patch.

My character is mostly a sneaky assassin - focused on Archery/Sneak, dabbling in Alchemy/Conjuration. I just hit level 12 and found a second Shout. I've only fought one dragon thus far. I'm much happier with the character here than in Oblivion.

Training is both (IMO) overly expensive and not terribly worth it, though that may change at higher levels. I've found myself gaining skill ranks fairly easily as I explore. You can't really game the skill system any more, but I haven't felt like I needed to. In the natural course of play my Sneak is high 40s and my Archery is low 40s.

My one complaint with the skill system is that the skill trees are a little too uneven. Archery, for example, is pretty great. Sneak, on the other hand, I'm finding rather lackluster. So I've found myself hoarding perks until my Archery ranks get higher and more perks in that tree open up.