Bethesda have announced the voice cast behind The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The man who voices the big bad from Pixar's Up, Christopher Plummer will voice an elder Greybeard philosopher monk called Arngeir who lives "in silent isolation atop Skyrim's largest mountain." That's right. One of the lead voice star in Skyrim plays a man who lives lives in lonely silence several thousand feet above the ground. Hopefully we'll hear from him at some point. Read on for the rest of the impressive cast.

Classical character actor Max Von Sydow, who you may have seen in Minority Report and The Exorcist, plays Esbern. He's an "agent of the Blades who has survived in hiding," and he's obsessed with the return of the great dragon Alduin, and "will teach you how to confront this epic evil." He'll be joined by fellow Blade played by Bourne Ultimatum star Joan Allen.

Lynda Carter, who played Wonder Woman in the '70s show will also feature as Gormlaith Golden-Hilt, a Nord who fought dragons in ancient times.

Bethesda aren't strangers to star power. Oblivion featured the dulcet tones of Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean and Terrance Stamp. Fallout 3 had famous 'man who always plays mentor and then dies' actor, Liam Neeson (apart from in Taken, in which he plays 'man who goes mental and later everyone else dies'). The difference with Skyrim will be the extended extra members of the cast who haven't been nominated for Academy Awards, it'll be those actors that will give Skyrim's characters the variation that Oblivion so sorely lacked.

Here are the other actors Bethesda have confirmed for Skyrim:

Michael Hogan (“Battlestar Galactica”), who plays Imperial General Tullius, in charge of crushing the Stormcloak rebellion.
Vladimir Kulich (“The 13th Warrior,” “Smoking Aces”) portrays Hogan’s nemesis Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm and charismatic leader of the Stormcloaks, who aims to make Skyrim independent of the Empire.
Claudia Christian (“Babylon 5”) joins the cast as Legate Rikke, General Tullius’s chief lieutenant, a loyal Imperial officer as well as a Nord who firmly believes Skyrim must remain part of the Empire.
Diane Louise Salinger (“Carnivale”), Renee Victor (“Weeds”), and Saturday Night Live-alum George Coe (“Transformers: Dark of the Moon”) round out the star-studded cast of more than 70 different voice actors delivering over 60,000 lines of dialogue.

 
Skyrim is due out on November 11. You can find out more in our huge ten page preview in the latest issue of PC Gamer UK, in stores tomorrow.

Mojang's fight to retain the name for their upcoming fantasy card trading game will go to court. It's the result of a legal challenge made by Bethesda earlier this year claiming that the word "Scrolls" infringes on their The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim trademark. Notch cheerily announced the news earlier on Twitter.

"The Scrolls case is going to court! Weee! :D"

Notch's first assumption that "this is hopefully just lawyers being lawyers" doesn't seem entirely true in the light of a looming court case. It seems that Bethesda are very serious about getting Mojang to change the name of their new game. It could set a worrying precedent, and certainly screw over the scribe-sim I'm currently working on, The Elder Elders: Scroll of Scrolls (V). If only this lawsuit could somehow all be settled with a game of Quake 3.

Elder Scrolls fans had a chance to get some hands on time with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim recently at the Eurogamer Expo, and have collated a big old list of information on most of Skyrim's Perks over on The Elder Scrolls Skyrim fan site. These extra abilities can boost your major skills. One will cause your lightning bolt spell to outright evaporate your enemy if their health is low enough. Another will make items cheaper when you buy from the opposite sex you charming rogue, you.

There will be more pronounced racial differences in Skyrim, too. A scaly Argonian will have different baseline stats to a sturdy Orc. They're more adept at picking locks, but can't take a punch quite as well. As with Oblivion, each race will start with a racial ability of which the most impressive is surely the Dark Elf's Ancestor's Wrath, which surround him in wreaths of flame. In Oblivion, these abilities could often only be used once every 24 hours. A bit of Ancestor's Wrath after breakfast would be a great way to start the day, don't you think? Read on for the full list of perks discovered so far.

Perk Trees
Speech

Buying and selling price 10% better (5 ranks)
10% price buying from opposite sex
Invest in shops and increase available gold permanently in invested stores
Master Trader – every merchant in world gains 1000 gold for bartering
Buy and sell from any merchant regardless of what they normally buy and sell
Intimidation attempts twice as successful
Persuasion attempts more likely successful

 
Alchemy

Potions 20% stronger (5 ranks)
Potions for restore health, magicka or stamina are 25% more powerful (maybe ranked)
Poisons 25% more effective (maybe ranked)
Poisons last for twice as many hits
Two ingredients are gathered from plants
50% resistance to all poisons
All negative effects removed from potions and all positive removed from poisons
2 effects of an ingredient are revealed when testing it for the first time (instead of just one)

 
Illusion

Dual casting overcharges effect for more powerful spell
Cast Novice spells for 50% less magicka
Cast Apprentice spells for 50% less magicka
Cast Adept, Expert, Master etc spells for 50% less magicka (more levels this time around)
Spells work on higher level animals
Spells work on higher level people
All spellcasting (from ANY school) is done silently
Spells work on undead, daedra and automatons
Fear spells work on higher level enemies

 
Conjuration

Novice for 50% magicka etc (up to Master)
Dual casting overcharges –> greater spell effect
Bound weapons do more damage
Bound weapons cast Soul Trap on target
Bound weapons banish certain creatures (and I think summon creature in their place, not 100% on that though, dodgy recording)
Reanimate undead with 100 more health
Summon 2 Atronachs or reanimated zombies
Summon Atronachs at twice the distance
Summoned Atronachs twice as strong

 
Destruction

More damage for each school (fire, frost and shock) – ranked
Novice for 50% magicka etc.
Shock damage chance to disintegrate targets if their health is under 10%
Frost damage chance to paralyse targets if health low
Fire damage chance to make low health enemies flee
Place runes 5x farther away

 
Restoration

Healing spells also restore stamina
Novice for 50% less magicka etc
Healing spells do 50% more healing
Recharging healing spells
More is recharged with each hit with healing spells (unclear)
Spells more effective against undead
Once a day chance to autocast 250HP restoration when health drops low
Magicka regenerates 25% faster

 
Alteration

Novice for 50% less etc
Alteration spells have greater duration (ranked)
Absorb 30% magicka that hits you

 
Enchanting

Enchants are 20% stronger (ranked)
Enchanted armour 25% stronger
“Soul gems provide extra magicka for recharging” – again, dodgy recording but that’s what I heard, even if it doesn’t make much sense
Death blows to creatures but not people trap souls for weapon recharge
Health, magicka and stamina enchants stronger
Extra effect on already-enchanted weapon can be applied
Shock, Frost and Fire enchants 25% stronger (individual perks for each element)

 
Heavy Armour

Increase armour rating 20% (5 ranks)
Unarmed attacks with heavy armour gauntlets – damage increased by gauntlets’ armour rating
Half fall damage if all in heavy armour
Heavy armour weighs nothing and doesn’t slow you at all
Additional 25% armour if in matching set
25% armour bonus if all in heavy armour (not necessarily matching)
50% less stagger if all in heavy armour
10% damage reflected back to enemy if all in heavy armour

 
2-handed weapons

2h weapons do 20% more damage (5 ranks)
Attacks with warhammers ignore 25% armour (ranked)
Attacks with battleaxes do extra bleeding damage (ranked)
Attacks with greatswords do extra critical damage (ranked)
Power attacks cost 25% less stamina
Standing power attacks do 25% bonus damage, chance to decapitate
Sprinting power attacks do double (critical) damage
Sideways power attacks hit all targets
Backwards power attacks have 25% chance of paralysis

 
Archery

Bows do 25% more damage
Zoom in
Zooming slows time
10% crit chance
Move faster with drawn bow
Recover twice as many arrows from dead bodies
50% chance of paralysing for few seconds (might be 15%, can’t really hear…)
Draw bow 30% faster

 
Sneak

20% harder to detect (ranked)
Sneak attacks do 6x damage with 1h weapons
Sneak attacks with bows do 3x damage
Sneak attacks with daggers do 15x damage (end perk on skill tree)
Noise from armour reduced 50%
No longer activate pressure plates
Sprinting while sneaking performs silent forward roll
Running does not affect detection chance
Crouching can make hostile enemies lose sight of you and search for a target

 
Racial Abilities

ORCS: Beserker
REDGUARDS: Adrenaline Rush
WOOD ELF: Resist poison, resisit disease, command animals
NORD: Battlecry
KHAJIIT: Night-eye, claw attacks
IMPERIAL: Voice of the Emperor, find more coins when looting
HIGH ELF: Regenerate Magicka more quickly
DARK ELF: Ancestor’s Wrath (surround self in fire), resist fire
BRETON: Dragonskin (absorb spells), resist shock
ARGONIANS: Histskin (regenerate health quickly), resist disease, breathe underwater

 

Sometimes a trailer can make you want to jump right in and explore the world. This video of the Andoran mod for Oblivion, spotted by Redditor SolInvictus, is one of those trailers. The voiceover is in Russian, but you don't have to speak the language to see what the modders are going for. It's a darker, grittier take on Oblivion with new cities, factions and creatures. The remarkable new architecture and strange environments have a whiff of Morrowind about them, but the engine upgrades make it look more like Skyrim.

The Andoran mod site is down for now, so it's hard to get hold of precise details, but we'll provide a link and more info as soon as it's available. Viewed alongside yesterday's amazing GTA IV overhaul, it's been a good week so far for ambitious mods.

Skyrim game director Todd Howard has been talking to Ausgamers about DLC plans for The Elder Scrolls V. Bethesda's last game, Fallout 3, had no less than five DLC packs, delivering a series of small adventures separate from the main quest. Howard says that while they have no specific plans in place for Skyrim yet, they want to do fewer but much bigger DLC packs with "an expansion pack feel."

"They’ve been really successful and we like making them," said Howard on expansion packs. "Right now I can say that we’d like to do less DLC but bigger ones -- you know, more substantial.

"The Fallout 3 pace that we did was very chaotic. We did a lot of them - we had two overlapping groups - and we don’t know what we’re going to make yet, but we’d like them to be closer to an expansion pack feel."

While the Fallout 3 DLC packs were too short to be deemed full expansions, they were much larger than Bethesda's earliest efforts with Oblivion, for which they released the now infamous horse armour. Hopefully Skyrim DLC will offer something closer to Oblivion's lengthy Shivering Isles expansion, which added new lands and 30 hours of additional questing.

For a good look at Skyrim, check out the tremendously exciting E3 footage, with Tom Francis' scene by scene breakdown, and read Graham's Skyrim impressions from the E3 show floor.

Bethesda have been discussing the length of Skyrim at E3.

Lead Producer on Skyrim, Craig Lafferty went into detail about how long the upcoming RPG will take for you to complete. Don't worry - it's a long, long time.

Talking to Tim Clark, reporting for CVG, he said: "We estimate the main quests take you about 30 hours or so. And the additional content - we haven't played it all yet - but I'd guess two to three hundred hours of gameplay there.

"That's one thing we haven't scaled back on. We keep going bigger crazier. More and more content and dungeons."

We've just gone hands-on with the Elder Scrolls. You can read our trailer analysis here, and grab yourself a nice wallpaper from the newest screenshots.

Earlier tonight I talked a bit about what we saw in the 7 minute demo Bethesda gave to Spike TV. Now there's a 14 minute presentation - with about 7 minutes of overlap - on G4. It shows the in-game interface - including the gorgeous in-engine map - and some hot man-on-horse action. I mean literally, he's on a horse.

Anyone else notice the G4 presenters ask the same questions at the same points as the Spike guys, where the footage overlaps?