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[Dsarker]

Kotaku's Orc

wait....

Spoiler: This looks like this guy, a little (click to show/hide)

No, it doesn't. He's not drinking his own piss.

[Yoink]

Those just look so damn cool!!
I'm excited, ain't gonna lie.

[Draignean]

Those just look so damn cool!![/b
I'm excited, ain't gonna lie.

Have you ever been so excited,

That your bold tags exploded into the next sentence?


My god though, this is step forwards... Hopefully gone is the age of the ugly women with uniform cup size, now comes the age of the not-quite-so-ugly as the last women with uniform cup size.

Honestly though It's good that bosmer no longer look like fat little hobbits, dunmer don't look like melanistic altmer, and the humans look  vaguely humanoid.

[Virtz]

But can they make the AI stop staring at walls and generally acting stupid?

One other concerning thing that's been seen in the demonstration videos before is the dime-turning NPCs. Recently having played Morrowind, I realize how crap it made certain things look, particularly cliff glider "flight". And it was certainly still there in Oblivion. And Fallout 3. Wish they'd make NPCs actually turn instead of just suddenly changing their angle. It'd be really useful for archers and mages.

[jmancube]

Those faces.... They look like faces. It's beautiful, it seems that we won't have to suffer having asses for faces in skyrim as opposed to oblivion. If those are accurate to what they will look like at release... I have no idea how the gameplay will be, but at least the character visuals are a step in the right direction. Of course gameplay is more important, but nice graphics don't hurt.

[Yoink]

Yep. Them bold tags. Hard to hit the bracket key when your hands are trembling with excitement...
Well, not quite, but still. Those character models are just great... They look realistic, but also fantastic, y'know.

[Sergius]

With all this information about the new game, I must say I feel terribly ambivalent. It's sickening, what they have done to this franchise doesn't give me strong feelings one way or the other. All I know is my gut says "maybe".

The changes they made raise many beige flags in my mind.

[Sordid]

But can they make the AI stop staring at walls and generally acting stupid?

One other concerning thing that's been seen in the demonstration videos before is the dime-turning NPCs. Recently having played Morrowind, I realize how crap it made certain things look, particularly cliff glider "flight". And it was certainly still there in Oblivion. And Fallout 3. Wish they'd make NPCs actually turn instead of just suddenly changing their angle. It'd be really useful for archers and mages.

Short answer, no and no. NPC movement doesn't seem to have been improved at all, if you look at 9:10 of this, you can see the archer sort of sliding sideways very quickly while shooting one arrow after another. That's exactly what happens in Oblivion and Morrowind, which to me means two things: a) Further confirmation that all this talk about an all-new engine is just lies, and b) combat is going to be just as jittery and twitchy as ever.

[Shadowlord]

Lack of spell making has been confirmed:

@GnrlKhalid There isn't spell making. I thought we'd said that, or someone else had in a preview.

[MorleyDev]

You know I've never had a problem with the animations in TES games :S They've always looked fine for a free-roam FPS-RPG of their generation to me...

I mean, when people judge Morrowind and Oblivion's graphics now they forget they were practically the Crysis of their times, a torturous ring of fire to put your computer through to prove your fealty to the gods of gaming...the retailers where I first got the game were *warning* everybody who bought the PC version that their computer probably would die a horrible fps-lag death trying to play it.

No spell making sucks though -.- I mean, first they strip and simplify Morrowind's (imao) amazing Enchantment system in Oblivion, then they outright cut Spellmaking? What about custom enchantments, I wonder if that is cut too...

*sigh* With any luck a Skyrim Script Extender will fix these xD

[Sordid]

Lack of spell making has been confirmed:

@GnrlKhalid There isn't spell making. I thought we'd said that, or someone else had in a preview.

It's really heartbreaking to see the features that used to make this series unique and interesting being stripped away bit by bit in subsequent installments. On a slightly related note, I'm playing Two Worlds 2 at the moment and while it's by no means flawless, it's pretty much what I'd hoped Oblivion to be. And it has a kickass spellmaking system. Stupid lazy Bethsoft, cutting features out rather than taking the time to balance them properly.

[3]

I know it's a fallacy but I can't help presuming that if spellmaking isn't in the game itself Bethesda'll have no reason to be restrictive about the extent of spell effect modding. Having said that, given that the emphasis is on "unique" spell effects this time (as opposed to, say, fire/frost/shock being exactly the same thing bar different projectile handling) it's probably more likely to go the other way, with modders having no control whatsoever over stock spell effects (excepting perhaps a few variables for quick balancing).

[Shadowlord]

I think having the elemental spells have additional effects will be nice, and letting the spells interact is more streamlined than cluttering up your spell list with a bunch of custom spells. On the negative side is being unable to make your own overpowered spells. Or maybe that's a positive. I always made multiple feather spells (which stacked), unlock spells which could unlock anything once that magic skill was trained up, and damage effect plus element type weakness spells (magnifying the effect once the target was hit with the weakness-to-element-type effect).

[HLBeta]

Lack of spell making has been confirmed:

@GnrlKhalid There isn't spell making. I thought we'd said that, or someone else had in a preview.

I've got mixed feelings on this. While messing about with spell effects could be fairly fun, that same system bogged down my attempts at playing a mage. The explosive costs of upgrading combat spells combined with the locational exclusivity of that feature made basic tier progression a nightmare. Battle magic was also easily the most money-intensive playstyle, which worked against it since trade was just tedious and boring in Oblivion. I quickly learned that all I actually wanted out of magic was a 100pt 2sec touch-range charm spell for ripping off merchants or cheesing persuasion challenges and left it at that.

I'd like to see a continuation of spell customization, but the in light of the previous poor implementations I'd rather just have something basic that scales directly with my stats instead.

[Virtz]

You know I've never had a problem with the animations in TES games :S They've always looked fine for a free-roam FPS-RPG of their generation to me...

I mean, when people judge Morrowind and Oblivion's graphics now they forget they were practically the Crysis of their times, a torturous ring of fire to put your computer through to prove your fealty to the gods of gaming...the retailers where I first got the game were *warning* everybody who bought the PC version that their computer probably would die a horrible fps-lag death trying to play it.

Oblivion was no Crysis of its time. In fact, Crysis came out a year later and ran much better than Oblivion. As well as UT3 and STALKER. Not to mention earlier titles like Doom 3, Butcher Bay or Half-Life 2. Morrowind was sort of impressive in its time with the water reflections and bump mapping, but Oblivion? Not really.

I know it's a fallacy but I can't help presuming that if spellmaking isn't in the game itself Bethesda'll have no reason to be restrictive about the extent of spell effect modding. Having said that, given that the emphasis is on "unique" spell effects this time (as opposed to, say, fire/frost/shock being exactly the same thing bar different projectile handling) it's probably more likely to go the other way, with modders having no control whatsoever over stock spell effects (excepting perhaps a few variables for quick balancing).

Bethesda's modding support ain't about restricting access to things, it's about giving access to the things the content developers use in a more accessible form. If all the spells are pre-made, then chances are the spells are hard-coded, with no accessible way of changing them.

Also, good job twisting a clearly negative change into something "positive", guys. Going by the philosophy of "if it's imbalanced, remove it instead of balancing it" is never a good thing.