Skyrim; Wielding Swords, and Banging Nords

[Slick Mongoose]

1. Favorites menu is great, but I can't figure out how to hotkey favorites to numbers, which makes me think you can't do it. Very lame. You can still get through the favorites with only the keyboard which is nice (q plus WASD keys), but it is still not nearly as fast as being able to hotkey stuff. Am I just being dumb and it's easy to do? Let me know :)
   

Open Favourites, highlight item, press number key, or shift+number key for the other hand.

[denstorebog]

I find it annoying that you can't see your resistances and other stats. It's obvious that you're meant to be able to work on maximizing these stats for your character, so why not actually tell us what they are?

[Werthead]

Put together a PC build on Cyberpower that's pretty sweet (and ludicrously overpowered for Skyrim, but I want to futureproof it and run some other, far more demanding games). The cost is slightly higher than I wanted, even taking into account it has a monitor with it (my previous flatscreen blew up, so I'm currently running a ten-year-old CRT or nicking my girlfriend's laptop, neither of which is flying in the long term), so I'm waiting to see if any of my tech-savvy mates can put together the same or a similar system from scratch for cheaper. So yeah, hopefully I'll be playing in a few weeks.

Got my collector's edition Friday evening

Loved the Oblivion collector's edition. A huge book about the ES universe and some nice soundtrack and behind-the-scenes stuff, all for about £7 more than the standard. Excellent value.

Skyrim? Not so fucking much. Okay, a figurine, whatevs, but the map and behind the scenes stuff sounds pretty good. But it's an exclusive with GAME in the UK and they want £120 for it, or £90 more than the vanilla game. Yeah, I don't think so. I assume it was once a reasonable price but has gone up post-release due to limited numbers, but still, that's fricking ridiculous.

[Tyrellius]

Before you click "Buy" Werthead, check out http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=43&catid=2040&subid=1270.

Denstorebog, Tab->magic->active effects. Its shows all your current buff and resistances.

[Slick Mongoose]

Before you click "Buy" Werthead, check out http://www.overclock...040&subid=1270.

Holy shit, you can spend 7 grand on a PC.

[denstorebog]

Before you click "Buy" Werthead, check out http://www.overclock...040&subid=1270.

Denstorebog, Tab->magic->active effects. Its shows all your current buff and resistances.

Yeah, I knew about that one, but that doesn't give me an overview of my total resistances (unless i go through them one by one and add them up) or damage, total armor rating, etc. Maybe I'm missing something.

[Tyrellius]

I was thinking more along the likes of the Viper or Anaconda. But yes, the Ultima does look rather beastly.

[The Winged Wolf Bran Stark]

I'm doing a few quests for the stone city that reminds me of Minas Tirith, the one with the Forsworn and the Silver Bloods, and considering my experiences in it (did the whole conspiracy and jail quests), I'm hoping a dragon shows up and kills both factions. Well, they can kill the Silver Bloods, I'll kill the Forsworn.

[The Anti-Targ]

So, much as I dislike the gameply style of Skyrim, I wonder if there's an upside to fantasy RPG lovers who don't like the Elder Scrolls style, i.e. me and a few others.

Skyrim launched on the same week as Modern Warfare 3. And in the face of that sales monster is still managed to launch to huge numbers for a fantasy RPG. I can see Skyrim being the best selling WRPG ever (given it's on PC, 360 and PS3 it's got a much bigger gamer base than most fantasy WRPGs - e.g. Fable only has PC and 360)

Question is can Skyrim give an overall big boost to fantasy WRPGs? will developers look at the success of Skyrim and think: hell's there's actually a decent market for fantasy WRPGs, as long as it's quality material.

I do know, anecdotally, that Oblivion and Skyrim are about the only RPGs some people play. A few of my son's buddies are FPS guys, the only thing they play most of the time is FPS of one sort or another, with the occasional diversion to Gears of War for something slightly different. But they played Oblivion and they're all into Skyrim. It's the first person element that draws them in. But could such gamers be convinced to try non-first person RPGs, and hence give an expanded audience forother RPG styles? There's party based RPGs like Baldur's gate (I would mention Dragon Age, but DAII is much maligned by many of the party / semi-turn based RPG fans) and 3rd person action RPGs like Dark Souls, and (from the previous generation) Dark Alliance, and more significantly (if it's a good game) the Game of Thrones RPG; which IIRC will be an action RPG. Even true turn based.

So can Skyrim do for RPGs what CoD (and Halo) did for FPS?

[peterbound]

So, much as I dislike the gameply style of Skyrim, I wonder if there's an upside to fantasy RPG lovers who don't like the Elder Scrolls style, i.e. me and a few others.

Skyrim launched on the same week as Modern Warfare 3. And in the face of that sales monster is still managed to launch to huge numbers for a fantasy RPG. I can see Skyrim being the best selling WRPG ever (given it's on PC, 360 and PS3 it's got a much bigger gamer base than most fantasy WRPGs - e.g. Fable only has PC and 360)

Question is can Skyrim give an overall big boost to fantasy WRPGs? will developers look at the success of Skyrim and think: hell's there's actually a decent market for fantasy WRPGs, as long as it's quality material.

I do know, anecdotally, that Oblivion and Skyrim are about the only RPGs some people play. A few of my son's buddies are FPS guys, the only thing they play most of the time is FPS of one sort or another, with the occasional diversion to Gears of War for something slightly different. But they played Oblivion and they're all into Skyrim. It's the first person element that draws them in. But could such gamers be convinced to try non-first person RPGs, and hence give an expanded audience forother RPG styles? There's party based RPGs like Baldur's gate (I would mention Dragon Age, but DAII is much maligned by many of the party / semi-turn based RPG fans) and 3rd person action RPGs like Dark Souls, and (from the previous generation) Dark Alliance, and more significantly (if it's a good game) the Game of Thrones RPG; which IIRC will be an action RPG. Even true turn based.

So can Skyrim do for RPGs what CoD (and Halo) did for FPS?

And here I thought Baldur's Gate did all that already.

[Muttering Bill]

So all you people made me unable to wait any longer. Picked this up on Friday and spent about 4 hours playing.

Going with a medium armor, sword and shield Imperial. But will also focus on Restoration and Enchanting magics. Didn't get too far yet, Just finished the main Riverwood quest, and will be moving on to Whiterun next.

Now I have to figure out how to set the quick menu to change my weapons. It's growing rather tedious to open the full menu every time I want to switch off for a quick heal.

Question is can Skyrim give an overall big boost to fantasy WRPGs? will developers look at the success of Skyrim and think: hell's there's actually a decent market for fantasy WRPGs, as long as it's quality material.

Between the blockbuster games like Oblivion, Skyrim and Dragon Age, and the niche, but successful for what they are, games like Demon's/Dark Souls and Monster Hunter, it does seem like fantasy WRPG's are getting more attention. We've already gotten games like the Witcher series. A Game of Thrones game is in the works, which probably won't be that good. And there are 2 upcoming that look quite priomising - Dragon's Dogma and Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. I'd say, yes, look for the fantasy WRPG's genre to get oversaturated in the next couple of years.

[Sivin]

For some reason, I can't quote in any capacity. So I'll do my best here to go without.

Anti-Targ:

No one, NO ONE, makes the open-world games like Bethesda (Elder Scrolls, Fallout). Just like no one can make the stories like Bioware (KotoR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc...).

So when you're talking about this, it's just not feasible that the available selection of games will drastically increase with quality additions. There's a reason that only Bethesda does it like this, it's because they're the only ones who can. Not to mention that they're the only ones who have the guts to do something so ambitious.

The Gaming Industry is just like the film industry, they've had success and now they're afraid to take risks. Bethesda has done it before, and know that they can, so they'll continue to do so. But then you get the Fable's of the world.

Fable was a remarkable and great game, but around the time that the Xbox 360 was released videogames grew up and became more mature. But when Fable 2 was being worked on, the developers were afraid to grow up from their silly ways so they just did the exact same thing. And it was an utter failure.

Sure, you're going to see a few studios get a crack at making a AAA open-world video game, but they're not going to know how to do it correctly and it's going to be mediocre at the absolute best.

I've started rambling at some point here, so let me cap:

Bethesda is the open-world studio. They do it because they were the first, it was their inspiration, and they do it the best. When other studios get the opportunity, they're going to try and copy it. Which they can't. There's a reason that I would be horrified if BioWare tried to make something like Skyrim, it's not because they're trying something new and different, it's because they'd be trying to make something that is inspired by someone other than themselves. INCEPTION... ;)

Chris Nolan and Peter Jackson are my two favorite directors (just like BioWare and Bethesda are my two favorite game studios), but I would not want to see Chris Nolan direct TLotR and Jackson direct Memento.

Sorry, I'm not piling on you Anti-Targ, I just felt like rambling about something. :)

[Kosciuszko]

For some reason, I can't quote in any capacity. So I'll do my best here to go without.

Anti-Targ:

No one, NO ONE, makes the open-world games like Bethesda (Elder Scrolls, Fallout). Just like no one can make the stories like Bioware (KotoR, Mass Effect, Dragon Age, etc...).

Obsidian has better stories than Bioware. And Fallout: New Vegas was superior to Fallout 3 (though that was on the Fallout 3 engine, so I'm willing to give Bethesda some credit here)

[Nathanael]

Agreed. I'm loving Skyrim (sneaky one-hander+destro Dunmer here), but Obsidian is my current favorite RPG developer overall. And I haven't even played NWN2 (don't much care for D&D rules, may try it someday) or FONV because Fallout 3 won't run for more than 5 minutes at a time on my Windows 7 machine (which is ludricrous, since it plays Skyrim, Oblivion, and Morrowind without a hitch). I do still like Bioware, but honestly I'd love it most if Bioware just gave all their game development over to Obsidian with maybe a few bits of input here and there, and then Bioware did the final polish/quality control of all their games.

[Howdyphillip]

Obsidian has better stories than Bioware.

I strongly disagree... Most of the older games that they are now selling were created by bioware.

And Fallout: New Vegas was superior to Fallout 3 (though that was on the Fallout 3 engine, so I'm willing to give Bethesda some credit here)

I agree that Vegas was a much better story then fallout 3. Obsidian wrote the story on the Bethesda engine though.

So far, I think the story line in Skyrim is decently compelling. Not the best that I have ever played, but interesting enough to be highly enjoyable. So far, I have completed the Thieves guild, Mage College, Bard's College, and a bunch of the Daedric quests. I am just starting the Dark Brotherhood, and I am about two thirds finished with the main storyline. All in all, it is pretty damn good.

[Sivin]

I just can't quite grasp what you guys are saying. I respect your opinions, of course, but I don't get it. Obsidian produces decent stories, but they never make anything original. And the stories are never as good as what BioWare puts out there.

And yes, KotoR 2 had the potential to have a better story than KotoR, and I know why it failed, but that doesn't change the fact that (in my opinion) BioWare is the best in the business.

[Verboten]

Obsidian has better stories than Bioware. And Fallout: New Vegas was superior to Fallout 3 (though that was on the Fallout 3 engine, so I'm willing to give Bethesda some credit here)

What? Why do you think Obsidian has better stories than Bioware, Bioware made half of their stories anyway.

[Kosciuszko]

Alpha Protocol is largely regarded as being pretty damned well written.

I'll take a Bioware game over an Obsidian game 90% of the time for technical/gameplay reasons, but every Obsidian game I've played has been better written, IMHO (not touched Dungeon Siege III). I also think KOTOR II's story is a bit better than KOTOR, despite it not really having much of an ending. Everything up to the end just seemed better and that's the most important part to me.

ETA: I'll take that back. Every modern Bioware game. Nothing beats Minsc.

[Werthead]

BioWare has never made any stories up for Obsidian. Not sure where that idea is coming from. I suspect people are thinking of the days when they were Black Isle and they collaborated with BioWare on the Baldur's Gate series, where the division of labour has always been somewhat fuzzy.

The problem with that is that means you can also raise Planescape: Torment and Fallout 2, so insta-win for Obsidian/Black Isle anyway.

[Sivin]

BioWare created Baldur's Gate, so anything that Obsidian did with it afterwards was an idea of BioWare's.

BioWare created KotoR, so anything that Obsidian did with it afterwards was an idea of BioWare's.

Bethesda created Fallout, so anything that Obsidian did with it afterwards was an idea of Bethesda's.

And on the subject of Fallout: New Vegas, they had a Bethesda team come in and work on the open world with them.

I've never played Planescape: Torment