3881

“Burlap-like material” ha! It’s just fancy textured paper, unless I miss my guess. No biggie, but it’ll take a while to get the creases out of this one to put it on my wall.

3882

Can someone comment on the difficulty settings and the variables they influence? Did they implemented something like the “hard” mode in FO:NV, where you had to eat and sleep regularly?

3883

I always turn off music in games like this. I’m going for more of a role play and not so much a character in a movie, if that makes any sense.

3884

Oh, now that you mention it I realize I got a bit confused. Yes, I suppose there were two different types.

3885

When you say slim, are you talking PS3? I may have been confusing, I have the 360 version (I had to dig through the PS3 copies to find it.)

3886

He may be referring to the “slim” Xbox 360 introduced last year (it was last year, right?).

BTW, re: my earlier comments about the music-- it is extremely atmospheric, no question, and sometimes sets the mood just perfectly.

3887

Someone posted it before already, but it’s something like

Normal = 1.0 enemy health and enemy damage
Hard = 1.25
Very Hard = 1.5

3888

Sorry should have said S Model instead of slim. It’s the current xbox 360s aka black xbox 360 S model with the 250g hd.

-Tim

3889

I’ve been playing the game on Very Hard on the PS3; the sort of vibrant glow of the Plasma TV is just more atmospheric than the harsh white glare of the LED display on the big computer. Very hard is hard! I’ve had to tip toe through the first dungeon, running backwards, and constantly dying, with a Breton Mage (i must have died to that first trap about five times, god, no short term memory at all). Going to get the hardcover guide on Monday. And still not through it yet. I need to level blocking, because i can’t block for anything, and the two handed guys are killing me in two swings (and no rolling/maneuvering ala Demon Souls either).

But what pushed it over the line was changing to color temperature on the Plasma. Normally i run it on “Warm” to give a warmer toned outdoor look to games (this looks great playing Red Dead Redemption) but i noticed that in Skyrim had a slight green cast to things, and i remembered those color control. So i set it to “Cool”, and oh man, perfection :). Blues are icy blue, white snow burns with cold, just nails the setting.

The PS3 is just too weaksauce for this game, shadow textures especially are weak here. But, still, it’s not Witcher 2, it’s very much Oblivion 2.0, with all the strengths and weaknesses of that heritage, so even on the PC, it will have better graphics to a degree, but not such an improvement that l feel as if i’m missing something.

Kind of miss the old levelling system, though the new way is superior in most circumstances. In the old skill system i hardly ever saw a “75” level skill perk, and never saw a “100” level perk, in all the hours and days of playing. So much of the content was permalocked away behind hours and hours of grind (or at least grind in as much as that’s what i’d be doing, trapsing through gates to level skills). Now, i’m still unlikely to see a 100 perk, but there are many lower level perks that i’ll hit before the end of the game. What i do miss though is the gradations of regen; a 50 Will character is regenerating mana faster than a 40 Will character, and so on. It did create subtle shades of differentation that are now lost.

3890

I think my brain just broke reading that statement. Surely you don’t mean the system by which if you leveled up due to use of your primary skills and they weren’t combat, everything would start owning you in combat a couple of levels in.

3891

You know it still works that way right?

3892

Well, he said “kind of,” and then proceeded to give a Eurogamer-like review of the new system.

3893

I thought it didn’t anymore. I thought there were certain areas where level 1 or 2 newbs dare not venture, right? And that if you show up there late in the game, you’ll own everyone and everything.

3894

It doesn’t. Perks are way more important than skill level, and you can perk up all of your combat skills right out of the gate. It doesn’t matter which skill gave you the perk point. You can level up using Speech and use the perk point to raise your one-handed damage by 20%.

The only way to really screw yourself, combat-wise, is if you never use your combat skills, and eventually get to the point where you don’t meet the skill level requirement for additional combat-oriented perks. But it would be pretty hard to do that unintentionally, like you could in Oblivion. If you never fight, then obviously you aren’t going to be good at fighting.

3895

6970 here on the latest drivers. Everything is running smooth as silk.

3896

It’s a bit different thanks to them seeing some reason and adding some non-scaling sections, but the general concept is the same. Ben provided a pretty good summary.

3897

Having SOME non scaling parts is a massive, massive improvement. It’s so nice to be able to run into creatures and quests that will stomp you into bits at level one; it makes the ‘scaled’ stuff seem worthwhile to do.

In Oblivion, I wondered why I was bothering to level up at all.

3898

Elegantly delivered, just this side of plausible.

3899

"Diary of an unknown traveler:

Day 71 - Alea, my shield companion, stayed behind to clear the mess and interrogate the remaining silver swords. As i’m traveling south, i see movement ahead… a royal stag, 50 feet ahead of me, grazing in some bushes.

I ready my bow and quickly poison a serrated steel arrow with frost poison. Above me blue skies, sun behind me, a small breeze from the east, and my target still, the perfect kill.

Or so i though. Suddenly startled, the stag runs away, and before i can blink, the ground shakes and a deafening roar fills the skies. Turned around and got briefly blinded by the sun, but i don’t need to be able to see to know i went from hunter to hunted.

Toss the bow and arrow aside, and hunker down with my shield raised as the surroundings turn into a fiery inferno. My left leg gets a nasty burn, but no time to waste. By the sudden gust above i know the dragon just flew directly above me and should be circling back for the next blazing dive.

Quickly quaff a healing potion and look around. 5 seconds. Trees to my left. 4 seconds. Bushes to the right. 3 seconds. Rocks behind me. 2 seconds. A roar. 1 second. I roll and put the rocks between me and the fiery breath, escaping death again.

Trees crack behind me. “Always behind me” i think, as the Dragon lands and starts to turn around. Without thinking, i sprint into his direction with sword and shield. The enormous tail swoops above my ahead, nearly decapitating me, but i reach his left wing\arm before his head can reach me.

The smell was sickening, a mix of putrefied meat and ash, but tossed those thoughts aside as i slashed 2 massive cuts into the thin wing membrane. I can feel a burning heat from my right as the massive jaw approaches, and i roll near the rear legs, and outside reach again. In a thrusting movement, i push the point of the sword under a scale under the massive leg and into the dragons flesh.

This is when the tail hit me like a whip. I’m tossed 15 feet aside, breaking Gods know how many bones in the fall. I crawl to a shallow hole and try to stay still…

2 hours have passed, and he still circles the area in the skies above me, don’t know for how much long i can last here…

  • Torn page of a bloodied diary"

My first death in Skyrim, had the biggest scare ever in a videogame when i got jumped by a freaking dragon while taking a walk in the wilds.

3900

I don’t know, maybe it’s just my game, but I’m borderline inundated with dragons. Whether it’s finding the map marked ones, or the random ones that plummet from on high to stand atop my crushed corpse, to random ones trying to burn down the town I’m currently in, I’ve killed maybe 8 of these bastards and I’m only level 12.

Maybe that’s not out of the ordinary, but it sure feels like it.

And I can’t not help myself from getting as close as I possibly can to a mammoth and then running away giggling when they turn into an enemy.