4461

And you can gear your companions to have 100% mitigation to a damage type, because that’s how Bethesda’s systems team rolls ;)

Heck, if your companion is a nord or dunmer you’re halfway there.

4462

I always hack at my summons when I’m done for some extra points. Not sure if it even works.

4463

It doesn’t.

4464

Who cares? The guards in Whiterun casually refer to me as a thief.

I was practicing my shouts in town, and a guard came by and said I was scaring people. I asked him what he was going to do about it, and he said he would have to take me to jail if I continued. I told him to come get done, son, and then got mobbed and slaughtered by every guard in town, each one having to physically run to me from the keep.

Unfortunately, murdering people still doesn’t make much of an impact if you’re not caught, but this game has bar-none the best NPC-NPC and NPC-player dialog interactions I’ve seen in a game that isn’t more or less on rails (Witcher, Mass Effect). There are actually some quests you get from overhearing a conversation between two NPCs that you haven’t seen interact before (i.e. it’s random).

Do quest lines branch?

Who gives a fuck? This is a ridiculous question for an open world game.

Are there any quests that don’t involve fighting or killing?

Do you need to get an item from someone that otherwise won’t give it to you without a fight? Pickpocket it.

Finally, I assume the game doesn’t have an economy or an ecology.

Again, who gives a fuck? For a single player game, economy is pretty much bullshit unless it’s a trading game where things are bought in bulk to be sold somewhere else. They only have to roughly estimate how economy works for a game like this.

Sounds like you want something that won’t ever exist, at least not in a form this playable, gorgeous, and compelling.

4465

Careful with this. I’ve been dual-wielding daggers for quite some time, and you really want points in Stamina, not Magicka, in order to spam the dual-wielding power attack.

4466

My archery skill was 75 (I think) and now its 25, and the 25 shows up as a red number. I don’t have any diseases and I’m not wearing anything to negate my archery skill. Anyone have this happen to them and if so did you find a solution?

4467

I think people have said leveling up clears this out.

4468

Yes, leveling or, possibly easier, buying training in that skill.

4469

Thanks for the tip! That makes sense, especially since a rogue build would need lots of carrying capacity to haul loot around - and picking stamina growth at level up builds carrying capacity.

4470

I’ve had this happen as well. I get out of it by tapping TAB a few times until the menu comes up. Never had to reload. YMMV.

4471

I give a fuck and don’t see why it’s such a ridiculous question for an open world game.

4472

I think Pogo’s point is that there is so much to do and so many quests to follow, that whether some of them branch or not isn’t as important as it is in linear RPGs. Because its open world you have plenty of ways to uniquely define your gaming experience without having to worry about how much choice you have on one particular quest.

But to answer the question, some of them do, in fact, branch.

4473

I had this happen and tab didn’t work. Lost about 10 minutes of leveling enchanting. Now I quicksave while using the enchanting table.

4474

Sorry, but what the fuck?

Just because you can move with freedom in a huge landscape means the quest can be bad?

4475

Yeah, I do that too. Do a couple things, back out and save, get back in, repeat. An odd bug, being on the PC I suppose there are bound to be some wierd bugs that can’t always be accounted for.

4476

Neither do I. But I do trust Qt3, and you should not discount the near-unanimity here.

4477

Not only are there no branching quests, but I don’t even think you can fail quests. I had a quest where I had to kill a bunch of dudes from stealth, some of them saw me, and I still succeeded. Skyrim is a very long game, but it’s not a particularly deep one. It’s no Alpha Protocol.

4478

I have had the enchanting table lock me in if I use my mouse scroll wheel. If I use the scroll wheel and it starts changing my view…ie zooming out, instead of scrolling the list, then I know I will get stuck. However if I let it sit there for 20 or 30 seconds, it fixes itself, have not had to exit the game or anything.

4479

Yeah I don’t quite understand Pogo’s hostility (other than it being Pogo) there. The question was not framed well as ‘branching’ is a term for linear RPGs. The question should be about the flexibility of the quests and narrative. While plenty of RPGs let you roam around, not many let you do what you want. And many that let you do what you want end up having no real structure (ala M&B.) Does the narrative or at least parts of the narrative have both structure and the flexibility to acknowledge who your character is (something FO3 didn’t really do) and to what degree? In other words, is there a living ambivalence?

This of course is quite the achievement so the question could rightfully be dismissed, but it’s also the ultimate wish of lots of RPG lovers. The question should be answered soberly I think. IMO, Skyrim (from my only second handed experience at this time) doesn’t advance leaps and bounds beyond previous Bethesda games, but it does advance a little towards creating that living ambivalent world.

4480

stusser–There are some branching quests. Not as many as Fallout 3, but I’ve encountered several. There’s one small one in the very first town. And actually, the intro itself has two branching paths.