Last week, I played three hours of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, at my leisure and free to go and do whatever I could. I’m telling a series of anecdotes based on what I saw and did; here’s the first and below is the second. If you have a deep-seated fondness towards the undead, don’t read on.
Thwack!Thud!‘Heheheheheheheh.’Swoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooosh.> (more…)
Last week, I played three hours of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, at my leisure and free to go and do whatever I could. I’ve written a lot of Skyrim previews over the last year, however, so for this one I’m going to present it as a series of anecdotes across the day. Here’s the first. (more…)
A veritable who’s who of people you sort of recognise, Skyrim’s voice cast appears to promise the starriest Elder Scrolls yet. We already know about Max Von Sydow, but just announced are the excellent Joan Allen and Christopher Plummer, plus a raft of cult TV familiar faces. Battlestar’s grumpy boozehound Saul Tigh is in there, Bablyon 5′s Claudia Christian turns up, and best of all is Wonder Woman herself, Lynda Carter.
Plus some other guys! Yessir, those are some people’s voices alright. Full details below.
Bethesda haven’t officially documented all the various skills, abilities and perks due to crop up in their now not-too-distant game of roles, but keen-eyed Men Of The Internet have been poring over every screenshot, preview and public demo (including last week’s Eurogamer Expo, at which Skyrim was drawing mega-queues) they can lay their meta-hands on in order to compile this long and growing list of how you’ll be tailoring your own personal Dragon-born. Also covered are the game’s various Racial Abilities. I’m particularly glad to hear that the Khajit will be retaining Night-Eye, which means I’ll doubtless be playing Skyrim in a very similar see in the dark cheeky but non-murderous thief fashion to Oblivion and Morrowind.
I’ve listed all that’s known so far below, but you should know it originated at fansite theelderscrollskyrim.com and you should keep an eye on that original post for further updates. (more…)
You’ve read, potentially, thousands of words about the Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but you probably haven’t been able to see all that much of it yourself. That is because you are bad>, and naughty>, and not to be trusted>. That’s also why we locked you in that dank cellar for so long. Now you’re too malnourished to attack us anymore, we can sit you down and show you some 20 minutes of the game in safety. Keep those hands where we can see them, and do stop trying to gnaw through your gag. (more…)
Bonus for people who don’t like reading: new footage and some video comments from Todd Howard also await you below.>
Elder Scrolls games have many, many merits, but being a great spectator sport perhaps does not number amongst them. While I am personally very excited to see an hour of Skyrim being played as it is intended to be played – from the start, exploring and making it up as the player goes along – it’s a stark difference from the massive fights with massive dragons and crazy spell combinations I’d been shown previously. What I’m seeing today is Bethesda’s Pete Hines rummaging through corpses’ pockets for loot and doing mental arithmetic about weapon stats – demonstrating that Skyrim is at least as much about calculation as it is about combat. Watching someone compare swords sure isn’t as much fun as watching someone shoot a dragon out of the air. It is, however, more important – because here he’s playing Skyrim you or I would play it, showing off its proudly nerdy roleplaying heart rather than its crowd-pleasing flashy face. (more…)
Bah. There’s always something to grumble about. This time it’s the not entirely unexpected news that Skyrim DLC will have at least 30 days timed exclusivity on them thar three hundred and sixties. Two pieces of DLC have been announced and this mini-delay is almost the sum total of what we know about them. We don’t even know when they are released at all. It’s a timed delay to announced but undated DLC for a game that comes out on November 11th. Words on the internet speak of their size as being “substantial” so maybe it’s best that they don’t arrive too soon. After all, the game itself is rumoured to be supersubstantial and we’ll all need to get through that first. On the bright side, at least this means they are definitely confirmed for PC and we don’t have to worry that we’ve been abandoned, even temporarily, as we were made to with New Vegas.
You’d imagine gaming would lead the way on more liberal values, but it’s surprising still how rare LGBT characters are in games. The compromise tends to be Sims-like universal polysexuality, almost no characters deliberately written as anything other than straight, with rare exceptions. One such company that tends to recognise a same-sex relationship is BioWare, which makes the news that The Old Republic won’t be supporting them a little surprising. It seems Star Wars might not have room for gays. However, in better news, we learn today that the realms of Skyrim will not only allow same-sex relationships, but also same-sex marriage.
There was some speculation earlier in the year – I believe after a GFW badge was spotted oozing across the surface of Skyrim box – about whether Skyrim would be using Games For Windows Live for its content delivery, savegames, DRM, and general online nonsense, but apparently not. The official Elder Scrolls twitter typist has confirmed it will be using Steamworks. That means we can sidestep the extra login, and the fear that GFWL will attempt to “update”, breaking irreparably and causing your beloved but distant relatives to catch on fire, pass out, and drown in their soup.
Markus “Notch” Persson, creator of Minecraft, is currently in dispute with Bethesda over the trademark for “Scrolls”. Mojang’s next game is called Scrolls, which Bethesda says is too similar to The Elder Scrolls. A lack of hilarity ensues. Except now Notch has struck upon a potential solution. A Quake 3 match. He suggests three from Mojang take on three from Bethesda, pick a map each, and compete for the name.