4041

I’d agree that Skyrim feels a lot like Nehrim because of the whole “it ties the room together” feeling the game has – Skyrim feels less like a loose collection of McDungeons and disparate game systems than Oblivion did. Skyrim’s hand-crafted components interact with each other almost globally as opposed to Oblivion where every little facet almost seemed ignorant of what was established in the rest of the game. Things “make sense” more in Skyrim. But I stick by my mod statement – load Oblivion down with something like one of Jason’s mod collections, and you get something awfully close to Skyrim.

4042

It’s possible I didn’t give the mods enough time when I played through Shivering Isles for about 10 hours this fall. For example, do the magic mods ever give you something as cool as the ice spike spell in Skyrim? It’s a very simple change, but the added speed and impact make the Oblivion spitballs seem sad. I wouldn’t call that “awfully close.” Mods can move Oblivion to the top of its tier but it never made the leap to greatness for me.

Here’s another example. MINOR SPOILER

Back in Fallout 3 you had different tiered enemies that were mostly the same in the end. In Skyrim there are high level draugr that occasionally bark some crazy shit at you in a weird language. When I first heard it, it blew me away.

The funny thing is how much it surprised me. Bethesda has huge teams spending years on these games. Someone ought to be able to come up with cool stuff like that, right? Yet it’s been absent until now. Maybe a lack of soul? It’s too early to tell if Skyrim nails that, but so far I’ve been presently surprised.

4043

Which is Bethesda’s secret weapon, really – they are clearly learning from their own modding community. (Wonder if they hire any of them?) It will probably be harder to do a Nehrim for Skyrim since Skyrim raised the bar so significantly, but I’ve learned not to count modders out :-)

If ES6 is as much better than Skyrim as Skyrim is better than Oblivion, then I might as well write off a whole year of my gaming life when that one comes out. Skyrim will monopolize my PC for the next three months as it is. I thought I was going to play one additional game (Arkham City) this year. NOPE!

4044

The funny thing is how much it surprised me. Bethesda has huge teams spending years on these games. Someone ought to be able to come up with cool stuff like that, right? Yet it’s been absent until now. Maybe a lack of soul? It’s too early to tell if Skyrim nails that, but so far I’ve been presently surprised.

That’s just Bethesda finally, FINALLY moving away from ctrl-c ctrl-v content. Which makes me wonder if a)the mod community showed them the way (like RepoMan stated above), or b)finally has enough juice in the tank to afford all that customized content – like unique barks for generic bandits. (And if so, maybe they should have splurged more on Ferenger’s VA. Oh. My. God.)

4045

I’ll have to take your word for it on the mods (other than Nehrim, which “showed the way” despite being developed in parallel). That’s because I don’t think I can ever go back to Oblivion. (I still want to play Morrowind though.)

But yeah, I went in assuming we’d see improvements to animation, melee combat, etc. I figured it was either the design style or technical limitations. I didn’t expect the love and care I’ve seen so far.

4046

I don’t know who that is but even Ulfric who is apparently one of the main characters is pretty bad. He forgets to do the accent every other sentence.

A lot of the others makes me laugh; it’s like Conan O Brian doing a Schwarzenegger accent.

4047

The wizard who sends you on the Dragonstone quest at the start of the game. I think his name is Ferenger, or something. Epic bad. Like, “Get the intern in here to cold read this dialogue.”

4048

I don’t really get the “hated Oblivion, love Skyrim” comments either. It almost sounds religious.

Skyrim is a more polished and evolved Oblivion. I could see “liked Oblivion, love Skyrim”, but hated? It’s not that different.

4049

I will just add that I lost interest in Oblivion. Believe the apex of my enjoyment of the game was the Brotherhood quests, and I sort of petered out after that. Perhaps the same thing will happen with Skyrim, but on the whole the games feels more cohesive.

4050

Since I’m one of the big Skyrim boosters (today at least) I should mention I liked Oblivion. Or rather, it’s like recent Bioware games: I enjoyed playing it but there were so many bad designs I want to rant about now that I’ve had time to think about them.

People who actively hated Oblivion still need to use good judgment before purchasing.

My hope for staying power in Skyrim is the mini-bosses in most dungeons. That’s enough to make me want to see everything.

4051

I liked Oblivion, until I put it down in disgust. Between the level scaling and the endless Oblivion gates, I just couldn’t bring myself to keep playing. I would say I liked parts and hated parts (but no outright blanket hate) but since I put it down hating it, that’s what I remember most.

4052

One of the very often used voice actors is guy who voices Ezio in Ass Creed. Always makes me chuckle :)

And the guy who sounds like Arnie Conan is funny too.

4053

Disable AA and try running with this instead: http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21

Then repost the same screenshot for comparison.

4054

YES - HE - IS - BAD. I — THINK - HE - IS- SOMEONE’S - SON - OR - SOMETHING.

(my imitation of him, above.)

Seriously, this guy has to have been someone’s son or a friend who visited the company and they said, hey, let’s do something cool and let you voice a character. 'Cause there’s no way anyone listened to his dialog and said “That’s great! Just what we were looking for!”

4055

I can mention…

slight spoiler about the existance of something

There is a way to get a reusable soul container, and a specific way to make it work like a black soul gem (it holds ANY kind of soul), as well.

4056

Jesus, Skyrim up to 96 on Metacritic, and Skyward Sword down to 95. Didn’t think I’d see that happen. Skyrim totally deserves it.

4057

I think it’s more that their ambition to create a huge world wasn’t matched by an ambition to populate it with variety and distinctiveness. This wasn’t as noticeable of an issue with Morrowind, because Vvardenfell itself is fairly exotic. But when you transition to the fairly generic medieval fantasy setting of Cyrodiil, the seams start to show. And while they introduced fully voiced dialog in Oblivion, they hired only 13 voice actors for tens of thousands of dialog lines, only two of whom were reserved for specific characters, one of whom dies in the first few minutes of the game.

Reportedly, Oblivion had one person designing the dungeons. Skyrim had eight. At level 25, my character has yet to find a dungeon whose layout looks copied from another. Both the climate and the geography of the land are clearly more varied. The guards of each hold have specific uniforms, shield emblems, and flavor dialog. Every vendor, innkeeper and bartender in the game seems to have something unique to say or a problem that needs solving.

You can also overhear a few scripted conversations every once in a while (Skyrim appears to have gratefully abandoned the “dynamic” NPC dialogs of Oblivion). Many of these can trigger quests if you follow up and ask them what they were talking about. In one case, doing this got me an item to get somewhere that would otherwise be inaccessible.

4058

Jesus, Skyrim up to 96 on Metacritic, and Skyward Sword down to 95. Didn’t think I’d see that happen. Skyrim totally deserves it.

4059

i-PPTPkRk-XL.jpg800×401

Now they will probably put a fucking broom dungeon in ES6, and I will have to go slap Gabe personally.

4060

I just don’t get that personality. At all. For me it’s more like I’ll hit a dungeon and take one or two items. I’ll often ignore even gold because it’s just not worth the time to pick up. 10 gold pieces? I SAID GOOD DAY, SIR! My brother, on the other hand, isn’t happy if he leaves a single thing behind.