Skyrim; Wielding Swords, and Banging Nords

[Galactus]

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

Err, Black Isle created Fallout. A good chunk of Black Isle is now Obsidian. (the other half was Troika)

When it comes to Baldur's Gate, Black Isle created the engine, Bioware did the actual games. Icewind Dale and Planescape: Torment were made entirely by Black Isle though.

KOTOR2, Alpha Protocol, NWN2+expansions, Fallout: New Vegas, are Obsidian games.

Planescape: Torment, Icewind Dale 1&2, Fallout 1&2, and the horrible Lionheart were Black Isle Games.

Baldur's Gate 1&2, Neverwinter Nights 1, Jade Empire, Mass Effect 1&2, Dragon Age 1&2 are Bioware games.

Personally thus far FNV is the far superior game to Skyrim, better story, and way less clunky interface. Although that might just be because Skyrim is more consolized.

[Inigima]

I think magic needs a big increase to damage.

The starting magicka pool of 100 is paltry and completely inadequate since you're supposed to be fighting with magic more or less 100% of the time if you're a pure mage. I gave myself 300 magicka via console commands and this was fine and good for regular enemies.

Extra tough enemies and bosses, however, are flat-out unreasonable to kill with magic. They have massive, MASSIVE health pools; even when they don't drain magicka, and many of them do, my mana pool allows me six to twelve firebolts before I run dry. This makes barely a dent in their health bars. There's a more powerful spell called Fireball that does more damage, but it doesnt do much more to their health bar and it costs like 86 mana per cast so I can manage three or four of those before I run out. Let me remind you that I have nearly TRIPLE the Magicka I'm "supposed" to have.

Meanwhile, they can kill you in a few hits. This is especially true as a mage, since you're probably wearing light armor, and have been putting most of your level-up points into magicka instead of health so you can actually use your weapons. (Also, the fact that your level up gives you a paltry ten points in that stat is a fucking joke. That means each level lets you maybe cast an additional 1/4 of a firebolt.)

Let's recap.

Sword and board types have:

- more damage per hit

- less limited resources that regenerate faster, allowing more hits

- shorter fights due to more damage

- higher survivability

Mages have:

- less damage per hit

- only a few casts of their only damage tool

- longer fights requiring more perfect execution

- lower survivability

Who the fuck thought this was a good idea? I finished the College of Winterhold stuff a couple days ago. I might have been able to kill the second to last Big Bad in the quest line, but I'm not positive, and even if I could have, it would have meant an incredible long, tedious fight in which more than a couple missteps would have meant starting over and probably chugging potions by the gallon. After seeing the pitiful damage my spells were doing, I said "fuck it," opened the console, clicked on the guy and typed "kill."

Mages need:

- more damage on spells

- MUCH lower spell costs

- higher survivability

Do additional points in Destruction skill -- the skill, not perks -- make spells do more damage? I also gave myself a bunch of extra points in that, so I could buy some of the perks, but I'm not really seeing much difference, so I don't know if it affects anything besides which perks you're eligible for.

[Kouran]

Skill in anything damage related increases the damage output of that skill, e.g. I do more damage with 50 skill in 2 hand weapons than with 40 skill, though the numbers might be fractions and not shown.

Items enchanted with -% to cast a school of magic are hugely helpful, as are items with + magika regen. Also don't underestimate the usefulness of staves.

[Fez]

Apparently (I'm a warrior, so no worries for me) the trick with mages is to really work on your enchanting. You can create enchantments that greatly reduce the cost of magic and even reach the point where you have 0 magic cost spells from up to 2 schools.

The problem with destruction magic is that it doesn't scale up the way weapon damage does, to do more damage you need to get higher level spells. I think conjurations are probably a better way to do damage.

[Turinqui-Calima]

I've killed my first dragon and now apparently I'm supposed to climb to the top of a mountain but this seemed like a natural breaking point to ignore the main quest for a while and go do my own thing; which I have been.

I would recommend doing the Grey Beards part as soon as possible. I waited to climb the mountain as well, but regret it now. The reason being that I believe the dragons won't attack you untill after you talk to them. I kept seeing dragons flying around but couldn't get them to land. They also wouldn't show up on my compass as a red dot. Almost as soon as I got down from the mountain a dragon showed up and he landed straight away.

Also, shouting is a lot of fun.

I had a wonderful weekend of eating pop-tarts and playing Skyrim. Currently focusing on the Solitude area, trying to collect enough money to buy a house there. It's very annoying that all the shops are so poor, although I do like that realism. I'm feeling really powerful as a two-handed Orc using destruction magic as a longer distance weapon once in a while (mostly when I meet frost trolls).

Favorite moment so far: Killing some bandits at night with the sky lit up by the Northern Lights, and then - Dragon.

[Muttering Bill]

I would recommend doing the Grey Beards part as soon as possible. I waited to climb the mountain as well, but regret it now. The reason being that I believe the dragons won't attack you untill after you talk to them. I kept seeing dragons flying around but couldn't get them to land. They also wouldn't show up on my compass as a red dot. Almost as soon as I got down from the mountain a dragon showed up and he landed straight away. Also, shouting is a lot of fun.

How long does that take? I just got to Whiterun. I joined the Companions instead of talking to the Jarl. I was planning to continue with that, but if it doesn't take too long I could do another mission or two on the main story line to open up random dragon attacks.

[a wooden chair]

Dragon attacks happen after you slay your first, I know this to be true because my low level mage had to deal with them on 2 separate occasions IN the college of magick. I swear whenever I had to go to the courtyard for that questline there would be a dragon waiting for me.

No greybeards needed.

[Werthead]

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

Yup, Overclockers are noticeably more expensive for an inferior system. For example, to get parity of components, Overclockers charge £50 extra and that's with an inferior monitor, only one optical drive (I want a separate super-fast DVD and Blu-Ray drives), less memory and no free software (the Cyberpower build comes bundled with Arkham City and Shogun 2). So it seems a no-brainer that it's not as good value.

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

Two problems with this:

1) Obsidian, in their former incarnation as Black Isle, co-developed BG1 and co-developed the engine in tandem with BioWare. So your point is actually factually incorrect in the first place, but,

2) Even if true, that doesn't mean that that another company cannot develop a superior game on the same technology base. Half-Life was built on the Quake engine, but saying that Half-Life owes everything to id and nothing to Valve would be insane.

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

Your point here approaches the outer boundaries of being logical, since BioWare created the Aurora Engine for Neverwinter Nights, which they then reused in a new iteration (the Odyssey Engine) for KotOR before handing it off to Obsidian for KotOR 2. BioWare also got Obsidian the gig, so in this case BioWare are responsible for KotOR 2's existence. Of course, the storyline, characters and game features are Obsidian's and Obsidian's alone.

Also, whilst its lack of completeness means that KotOR 2 cannot be called superior to KotOR (though the potential was there), certainly lots of people would argue that CDProjekt's The Witcher and its sequel (the former of which uses the Aurora Engine, the latter of which uses a technology based developed off it) are. Though I wouldn't.

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

Obsidian, in their former incarnation as Black Isle, created Fallout in 1996. So anything that Bethesda did with it later on was an idea of Black Isle/Obsidian's, at least going by your chain of logic.

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

Because it was Bethesda's engine, and most of the criticisms of FONV revolve around crashes, bugs and technical issues from the Gamebryo Engine (in many cases the exact same bugs that afflicted FO3), so the negatives can be traced to Bethesda's code. But the story, the characters and dialogue, all widely praised as being superior to FO3, were Obsidian's work.

I've never played Planescape: Torment

Your loss.

[RaceBannon42]

Wert,

Just a piece of anecdotal experience, but Cyperpower sucks to deal with. I ordered a machine from them one time, had to send it back twice to get worked on, within the first 90 days, finally after more issues they never fixed, I asked for a refund, the refused as it was outside of their refund time frame. Well of course it was because of all the time spent dinking around trying to get it running. I eventually got it running acceptable, but still had issues with it blowing hard drives. I bought from a local shop for my last rig, and I've not had any issues.

[Turinqui-Calima]

Dragon attacks happen after you slay your first, I know this to be true because my low level mage had to deal with them on 2 separate occasions IN the college of magick. I swear whenever I had to go to the courtyard for that questline there would be a dragon waiting for me.

No greybeards needed.

Anyone know why this happend then? I did a quick google search and saw several theories (including the greybeard one) but none seems conclusive. Anyone else have dragons flying around but not attacking?

[Kouran]

Stupid double post.

[Fez]

I would recommend doing the Grey Beards part as soon as possible. I waited to climb the mountain as well, but regret it now. The reason being that I believe the dragons won't attack you untill after you talk to them. I kept seeing dragons flying around but couldn't get them to land. They also wouldn't show up on my compass as a red dot. Almost as soon as I got down from the mountain a dragon showed up and he landed straight away.

Also, shouting is a lot of fun.

Mmm, I've had dragons attack me twice. The first time was out in the woods and I was demolished, the second time was right outside Windhelm and with the guards' help and some wandering Khajit we took that sucker down. (It was after this happened that I realized that since I gave up on destruction magic my warrior needed a new range attack of some sort so now I'm trying to level up my archery at least a little bit)

And that second dragon soul powered my second shout, Flame. Shortly after that I found a third shout, but no soul for it yet. Interestingly after I accidently used a shout in WIndhelm (against the serial killer, no innocents harmed) a courier came up and gave me a note saying a "friend" was now taking an interest me. Dunno if that's MQ related or what though. I know its not Dark Brotherhood though, their notes have been much more ominous.

Anyway I think the Greybeards can wait, if they wanted to meet me so badly they could live in a more accessible place. I'm busy enough as is. I think I've basically exhausted Whiterun of quests (and the surrounding area of dungeons) except for the Companions, which I think I'm pretty far along on, and while I really like my house there I've moved on to Whitehelm being my base of operations for now. I've also been to Dawnstar but there didn't seem to be much to do there beside that Nightmare quest, and I visited Riften for a quest but didnt' stay long enough to get involved in anything. That means there's still 5 cities I haven't even been to yet, and still lots to do in at least 2 of the 4 I have been to, and I've already put 15-20 hours into the game!

[Slurktan]

And that second dragon soul powered my second shout, Flame. Shortly after that I found a third shout, but no soul for it yet. Interestingly after I accidently used a shout in WIndhelm (against the serial killer, no innocents harmed) a courier came up and gave me a note saying a "friend" was now taking an interest me. Dunno if that's MQ related or what though. I know its not Dark Brotherhood though, their notes have been much more ominous.

You were lucky. I accidentally shouted at one of the people in the town at the foot of Greybeard mountain and then was forced to kill every citizen thereof when they all attacked me. I figure there was a strong law against noise in that town.

I also have the "problem" of dragons just flying around and never attacking. I figure they are scared of my Conan like character.

[Turinqui-Calima]

I also have the "problem" of dragons just flying around and never attacking. I figure they are scared of my Conan like character.

:lol: Do you have a Kynareth blessing? I read that might be the reason? Or some other effect?

[Werthead]

Just a piece of anecdotal experience, but Cyperpower sucks to deal with. I ordered a machine from them one time, had to send it back twice to get worked on, within the first 90 days, finally after more issues they never fixed, I asked for a refund, the refused as it was outside of their refund time frame. Well of course it was because of all the time spent dinking around trying to get it running. I eventually got it running acceptable, but still had issues with it blowing hard drives. I bought from a local shop for my last rig, and I've not had any issues.

Cyberpower USA, I'm thinking? Yeah, their reputation is not great.

Cyberpower UK seem to have a reasonable rep, and like I said I used them for my last machine. They were great and helped me speedily resolve a failed hard disk issue, as well as giving me some good advice on another issue that took place out of warranty, but they helped out anyway. So my experience with them has been very good.

I'm not sure what the relationship between the US and UK arms is, but I imagine it's not very close, so problems with the American arm don't really impact on the British side of things.

[Sivin]

Ok, here's the deal.

This was started because I said that BioWare makes the best stories in the business. And Bethesda makes the best open-worlds in the business.

This has degenerated into people claiming that Obsidian is pretty good too.

Here are the questions.

1) Does Obsidian make better stories than BioWare?

2) Does Obsidian make better stories than Bethesda?

For me, the answer to both questions is no.

[Tormund Ukrainesbane]

Anyone know why this happend then? I did a quick google search and saw several theories (including the greybeard one) but none seems conclusive. Anyone else have dragons flying around but not attacking?

I am a master dragon slayer (seriously I've killed at least 30+ by now) I think it has something to do with whether the dragon AI sees you or not. If they are too high up or facing away from you, they'll just keep flying. I chased one most of the way from Morthal to Falkreath before it found something interesting enough to land and start attacking.

[WrathOfTinyKittens]

Tormund's right. An interesting outgrowth of that is that sometimes even when the dragon sees you it doesn't think you're the most interesting thing to fight, necessarily. I was fighting a dragon near Riften in the swampy part of Eastmarch that flew up and away in order to attack what turne out to be some Skeevers and a wolf (not sure if they were all alive when the dragon attacked or if they'd been fighting each other). Kind of insulting to be a lower priority than a skeever.

[Kosciuszko]

Ok, here's the deal.

This was started because I said that BioWare makes the best stories in the business. And Bethesda makes the best open-worlds in the business.

This has degenerated into people claiming that Obsidian is pretty good too.

Here are the questions.

1) Does Obsidian make better stories than BioWare?

2) Does Obsidian make better stories than Bethesda?

For me, the answer to both questions is no.

And for me the answer to both questions is yes.

I suggest if we continue this we do it in the Videogames thread.

[Inigima]

No, please don't shit up the video games thread with this.