[DJ]

Yeah the removal of stats thing is odd, but I'm liking it so far. It helps that the perks are generally really powerful as opposed to the Fallout model, where they were useful but still mostly secondary to the stat core outside of a few must-haves. Even if you misplace a point in Skyrim, chances are you got something handy out of it. A 20% flat increase to damage with a particular weapon for a single point is the kind of design decision you don't see much in a post-WoW world, where a 1.7% damage increase is considered massive and potentially game-breaking. I've always hated that that bled into single player RPGs, where you're expected to spend five levels worth of stat increases for maybe a 5% higher crit chance or whatever. Skyrim is like "Hey here's some big dollops of whoop-ass all at once." Even the low level perks are monster increases to your skills.
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[remote]

i've been trying to take this game very seriously



that took me a couple of tries after they did it the first time
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Gideon Zhi]

Yeah, I think I've decided to side with the Imperials. The whole nord racist dark elves (black people) thing just stinks a little too much of neonaziism. Torture bugs me, nearly getting my head cut off bugs me, but blatant racism like that just pisses me right the fuck off.

Edit: To clarify, torture for political/tactical reasons is not okay, but it's better than torture/rape just because someone's a dunmer she must be a spy oh god let's get her.

Edit: However I'm still siding with the Grey-Manes, 'cuz the Battle-Borns are just dicks. Except for Lars.
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Aeon Genesis ~ Ambassador Thorman great man! I do anything he say!

[remote]

I still haven't decided. The Jarl of Whiterun has the best attitude, I think, being aware that he isn't comfortable favoring either side but will inevitably find himself having to draw his sword at some point. If I'm forced, I still think the Imperials are the greater evil. I challenged one of those racist Nords to a duel of fists and beat him senseless.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[diplo]

Please compose for games I want to play, Jeremy.

[Mr. Mechanical]

There are now dragons roaming the skies in my game. When I started playing this afternoon I was getting ready to embark on a major journey across the map to the next location in the main quest after High Hrothgar. However, after I made it into the snowy mountains past Whiterun I encountered my first dragon in the wild. I tried fighting him but I was not up to the task so I had to run away.

Figuring that now my goal of getting the dragons occupying the game world was completed I decided to head back to Whiterun and do some side quests. I ended up exploring this dungeon called Volderuun or something like that, a ways outside Whiterun. The boss and a few of the monsters in there were far enough out of my league that I had to cheese it a bit to beat them by hit and running with my bow and arrow until they lost interest in me, then rinse and repeat. It took me a good while to get through that place but in doing so I leveled my sneak and archery skills a good bit to the point that they're my highest level skills now.

Now I'm level 11 and I'm just wandering the land doing whatever strikes my fancy. I really like how unique all these locations I've been in so far have been. I can't remember all the names too well of all the places but I remember the architecture and the other little details, their layouts and the things I found in them, and none of it's felt cookie-cutter at all. And so far I've only really explored the central part of the map. I also really like all the fog and snow and rain effects, and how the wind blows cloth and big patches of cobwebs. That last dungeon I was in, Volderuun, really felt dank and creepy with the deepest parts featuring fog wafting over the floors. It was very atmospheric and that was just a minor place for a little side quest. The attention to detail in this game has been so far quite staggering. Everything feels handcrafted and it just seems like there's no possible way it could be unless like a million people worked on this.

Also, I've not had any crash-to-desktops or anything like that happen so far. Though I have experienced a couple odd glitches. For instance, I saw a priest in Whiterun sleeping on thin air next to bed and the skeleton of the first dragon I killed mysteriously showed up first in the outer area outside Whiterun and then again right outside the main gate. Also I've seen the odd bit of rock floating above the ground or missing a side but other than that stuff it's been surprisingly stable and glitch free.

And it sounds weird to say it but I really like everything they've simplified. Usually simplification of complex game systems is cause for complaint but in this case it actually works. I like that the perks I choose now define my character and not a mess of numbers.
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[Felix]

The commenters on this mod suggest that Skyrim should feature more pubic hair:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=77

[Flylighter]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

oh, right, I hope someone is keeping track of Japanese Skyrim mods. They're probably just starting to come out.

Do any of the racist rapist nords talk about the dunmer women "wanting it" or something like that? Because that would be terrible and amazing (and tying in with the flimsy lore that dunmers totally think about sex all the time or whatever).

[remote]

No, they first tell her they suspect dark elves of being spies, then threaten to get some bros together and pay her a visit in the night. Still pretty terrible.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[Felix]

Every time I get asked to do something in this game that involves stealth, or really anything other than "enter this cave and kill some dudes," I get incredibly frustrated at the total lack of any contextual affordances in the player's moveset. Crouching behind a door and doing a frogwalk because you're obligated to "pickpocket" somebody to progress in the game really is not my thing.

[GrimmSweeper]

I'm a confirmed Thief now instead of someone who fiddles with locks in his spare time. I think they're playing with procedurally generated quests here! The introduction quest was something quick and simple too, demanding no more of your time than say 3 minutes tops. While your recruiter draws their attention you have to steal something and then place it on someone all in the same location. Then afterward you realize some of the background noise is the guy that was framed getting hassled by the watch. The game doesn't demand your attention here, it just lets it play out. Not sure how good the motivations of the guild is, but I'm going to play it by ear and see how it resolves. I'm going to be burning BEES next mission; this is going to be exciting.

PROTIP: get the three Novice elemental spells soon as possible. Frost keeps the heavy guys from power-attacking you dead. Lightning keeps the magic guys from elementalling you dead. And fire is just damage that BURNS.

Saw two dragons after the tutorial one. The first was when I was trying to infiltrate a fort filled with elemental adepts during night so I didn't want to start a ruckus with them close by. The second was deliberately finding the site and then getting completely surprised by the dragon sleeping when I reached the top of a tower. Killed that one after a good long battle, using a level up to top me off when I was down to 3 hit points.

Ran into a wispmother. That's another grueling fight that came out unexpectedly I was trekking to the south-east corner.
Also got lost in a troll cave after getting one angry at me. That led to me wandering full tilt into four more, evading them and dashing away for the entrance.
Once shot a bandit stealthily that led to him slumping over a fence and falling over the edge of the cliff. When physics works like in reality, it feels so much more satisfying.
Once shot a bandit chief point-blank several times. He could not see me even after his death. Stealth kinda breaks the game?
Bears are ornery bastards. Same with above ground trolls.
Ghosts are well done this time around. Completely hilarious to pop them with one arrow but if you let them they will put up a fight. That's not even touching on the Barrow guardian I ran into. He will mess your shit up.
Jarring to run into invisible walls. =/

[parker]

I instantly solved a murder case cause I broke into the murderer's house and found a journal confessing to the crimes in a trunk full of murder tools but instead the game made me follow along the quest and arrest the wrong guy. Guess I got to wait for the murderer to kill somebody again before I'm allowed to do anything about it.
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[TXTSWORD]

I, too, am going the thief/assassin route. I can't wait to have the ability to kill people by putting poison in their inventory so I can secretly kill off all the bratty children of that lord of dragonskeep or whatever the fuck and then watch as he never even brings it up. I'd love if the game had him go into mourning. His only dialogue being about the death of all of his children. He no longer can be bothered to give you quests because he's too depressed. Slip a little something into his inventory to help him ease the pain.

[Mr. Apol]

when i got home today i saw my brother had bought skyrim. i put in dark souls instead.

#burn
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[Tulpa]

[Dark Age Iron Savior]

don't forget to mention how hideous it looks

[Tulpa]

It's not as unappealing as I was led to believe by all the trailers and screenshots.
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[scratchmonkey]

Just cleared the upper levels of a Dwemer ruin of bandits, haven't bothered going to the bottom bits of it because while I'm aces so long as you don't see me and I'm in bowshot range, I'm capable of taking on a single basic enemy in hand-to-hand and that's about it. Thinking about turning the ruin into my base of operations, there's some pretty cool architecture; however, there aren't really any good places to store the shedload of books that I'm carrying around. Also I've found precisely dick in terms of any decent magical items, which actually is kind of nice.

[Tulpa]

I'm slowly warming up to this game but man I still feel like it is very flawed.
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[Talbain]

No, it's very flawed. Play Xanadu Next or Dark Souls. Or Demon's Souls. Why is it that there have been so many good RPGs released lately, yet people decide this piece of shit is the one they're going to talk about?

Maybe that's just our complex. I guess eventually it will be worth playing once it's modded to hell and back. The music's nice at least.
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[DJ]

I'm going to be terribly amused when people find out how much Dark Souls actually sold, realize it's now mainstream, and start calling it crap compared to whatever other desperately-underground thing Google told them exists.

Anyway: Climbed the Throat of the World today:



Fought a Frost Troll on my increasingly snowy way up:



Finally found the monastery at the top:



The seven thousand steps are completed. I feel like I'm playing Elder Scrolls Batman Begins. Figured this would be a good point to save it for the night as it is NOW ALMOST 6AM I HAVE BEEN PLAYING FOR NEARLY 24 HOURS STRAIGHT aaaaaaaagggggghhhh

Also just before this I went to go do what I thought would be a simple side quest and wound up following a talking dog (this guy:)



across half the damn continent (you know how in escort quests the escort-ee moves really slowly and will die if a snowflake hits them? This dog is the opposite -- it ran at mach speed through the fucking mountain-woods with no indicator on it at all and had usually chewed everything in half by the time I got there while still at full health), into a den full of vampires, and then shit only got weirder from there. For Elder Scrolls veterans, this should be a good clue:



I was beyond shocked that it actually wasn't Sheogorath this time. If you're really, really hardcore then you know what's missing from that statue.

Also the skies in this game are amazing.



This game has near-Morrowind levels of violently Non-Tolkeinian greebles all over it and I love it. It's what I wanted Oblivion to be. I can see why those who aren't Elder Scrolls lore dorks don't quite get it, but for the true believers this is pretty much the holy grail thus far.
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[Talbain]

[Flylighter]

The only thing that stood terribly out during last night's gameplay session was that my thieving exploits found me randomly happening upon the hilt of Mehrunes' Razor in some random farmer's dresser.
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I'm on Steam! ----- I'm on Youtube!

[Toptube]

mayhbe that farmer found it while he was tilling soil

[Teflon]

[CubaLibre]

[gooktime]

[remote]

[TXTSWORD]

[Teflon]

I broke a sequence and the game actually had dialog to acknowledge this :spooky:

[Talbain]

[Felix]

Yeah, I think my single biggest problem with this game (other than the female-corpse-derobing) is how little the player seems to actually partake of the world around them as compared with a game like Human Revolution, which is similarly not-at-all-innovative but is probably the nicest-feeling 3D game I've played since MGS3. It's impossible (and pointless) to hate Skyrim -- it basically succeeds on scale alone -- but trying to play in third-person for more than five minutes and watching your dude do nothing but move his feet around glitching through every other floor really drives home how limited the game is. It's occupying my thoughts when I'm not playing, and then I boot it up and remember that I don't really want to endure fifteen more hours of stun-shouting-and-zapping bad guys.

Is there anything you can do in Skyrim that you couldn't do in the first Thief?

Maybe it'll get more interesting when the warring-factions bit becomes more prominent. This is the sort of thing I'd tolerate in a multiplayer game, but as it stands, it's just exhausting.

[remote]

I find myself switching back and forth between first and third person as I go just to get whatever view looks best/feels most comfortable/breaks immersion least depending on what's going on at the moment. Combat feels a little better in third person, I think, especially as a two-hander melee juggernaut flinging himself around. If I go for a power swing in the first person view and end up stumbling past my enemy I get a little bit disoriented, but being able to see everything around me makes it a lot easier to regain my footing and go for another attack. It doesn't feel perfect and fluid and just right the way that Demon's and Dark Souls do, but there is a different sense of weight and motion going on here and I rather like it. In its favor, it actually feels like my character is putting a lot of effort into swinging this huge battleaxe, and despite the lack of visible wounds or dismemberment the impact of each blow feels pretty good. There are definitely moments where it fails and feels a lot flimsier than the aforementioned, but for the most part I don't really have a problem with it.



Looking forward to exploring these dwarven ruins, if I manage to find the key...





About these heavy dragon bits they each drop: can these eventually be used for heavy dragon scale armor, maybe? Got a big pile growing in the chest in my breezehome in Whiterun.
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letterboxd | last.fm | steam

[DJ]

[DJ]

[DJ]

Random question: Did they ever pronounce "Elsweyr" in Oblivion? I could've sworn they did, and it was pronounced ells-WHY-err. In Skyrim it's being pronounced like "Elsewhere".
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[diplo]

You could make an argument for the atmospheric and narrative relevance of Silent Hill's limited combat. I'm not sure what argument for relevance could be made for the (apparently) poor combat in Skyrim. If you put any stock in intent, it becomes a larger issue, too, if the developers have made explicit comments about improving it over the last games.

[Felix]

The "combat," narrowly defined, is actually improved (as it was in Oblivion, among few other things) and is about as good as I'd expect from a first-person RPG. Blocking feels good, two-handed spellcasting feels good even if it basically cries out for a spell-combination system that isn't there, and the range of melee attacks available to you is pretty reasonable.

It's just that interactions in Skyrim, including combat, still basically feel like one upright rectangular box bumping into another upright rectangular box the same way that they did in the late 90s. It's a credit to the developers that your blows actually look and sound like they have some sort of impact, but they don't quite feel like they're connecting, due to an outmoded design philosophy that extends far beyond the combat.

Like I said, it's both impossible and pointless to discredit the game on the basis of this, because the sheer scope of it really is that impressive. But the art direction needs to work really hard to sell it, because the lore is incredibly dense and the player's range of interactions aren't that interesting. They might've been able to better-conceal this if the character development system rewarded micromanagement, but I already mentioned how impressed I am with the effective removal of core stats.

[thestage]

[Rud31]

GHOST MOB.
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