By Jim Rossignol on July 24th, 2011 at 12:03 pm.
UPDATE: ZeniMax killed the video. We’ll link to an alternative if one shows up later.
Sunday Papers is a bit late today, so why not distract yourself by taking a look at the Skyrim footage from Comic-Con, which I’ve embedded below? Magic is magicked, horses and ridden, and wolves get kicked.
This is what they want.
Dem dragons man. “Come on monster!” – chomp and fling. I am excite for this game, truly.
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I live in hope that one day they make an Elder Scrolls game with first person combat feel as good as in Dark Messiah. That will be the bestest of the games.
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Yeah.. the combat here didn’t look so much smoother than Oblivion.. hopefully more responsive though.
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Why would they do that when Skyrim already has the absolute best combat?
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Erm, does it? It looks pretty clunky and doesn’t look like the swings have much impact when parried or when they connect. I mean that guy gets cut across the throat and doesn’t even flinch or stumble
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Morrowind wasn’t about the combat thankfully, you had lots of other things to do, which made it an RPG. Oblivion was far too combat focused for its own good, which is why the poor combat mechanics reared their ugly head there so much, and this doesn’t look any better at all.
Dark Messiah really did have amazing controls. There were things I didn’t like about it, such as the endless perving over that Djinn (thanks camera), or the incredibly, amazingly linear nature of it, but the combat was still a lot better. It had some nice puzzles as I recall, too.
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“Why would they do that when Skyrim already has the absolute best combat?”
Played it have you?
Dark Messiah combat was great, a tad too easy to just kick everything to death, but if you avoided that the sword fighting enemies were very enjoyable.
Morrowind had lots and lots of combat and it wasn’t great, although there was a mod helped in that reguard much later.
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You mean helped it in that REDGUARD!
I have never been paid for my jokes.
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Edit: This comment belong here! Oh well. I also liked Dark Messiah’s combat. There now it does belong.
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I know Dark Messiah has good combat, but Skyrim’s combat is a huge improvement from Oblivion, simply for everyone who says “combat looks like Oblivion”. Btw Bethesda hired the Dark Messiah developers some years ago so for all we know they might have helped them.
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Arcane is developing Dishonored.They have nothing to do with TES.
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I never got to finish Dark Messiah =( It always crashed to desktop on me during one section of the game where I had to climb/jump from rope to rope and avoid spiders. It was a pretty annoying section of the game as well, so I just uninstalled it and gave up. However, it definitely was some fun first person combat. It’s not easy to do right.
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INFINITY DRAGONS!
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“and wolves get kicked.
This is what they want.”
Jim wins all the fucking Internets for the NextWave reference.
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It still makes gamers sound more than mildly psychopathic, though. :|
This is why I’ve been distancing myself from the mainstream a lot, really. A lot of people tend to still think of gamers as being psychopathically misanthropic and xenophobic. A round of a competitive multiplayer game will show anyone that this is still the case. I just don’t feel that great by association, frankly.
This constant need to kill things and act like rabid white supremacists. Meh. *step back, step back, step back.* That’s pretty much my reaction. I don’t know, I just thought gamers were cooler in the ’80s and ’90s, where the biggest arguments were over the best console.
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90s was Sonic or Mario, Megadrive or Snes. Now it’s PS3 or 360, COD or Halo (BF3?).
That’s very simpified version, but my point is I don’t think much has happened other than we got older.
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I long for the days when people called me a fag for owning a Sega Dreamcast. Of course.
Mario VS Sonic arguments probably made us seem even more psychotic in the 90s than kicking wolves in 2011 does.
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This is more human nature than something particular to gamers. The briefest glance at an average YouTube comments section reveals this.
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He makes a simple cultural reference and you perform a psychological profiling of all known gameia and declare most gamers psychopaths.
Seriously, wtf? Lighten up, for heavens sake. Go to a party and kiss random women or something.
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Wait this isn’t the comment thread I thought it was!
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Burning Man, meet Wulf.
He does this. He’ll probably post another 40 times in this article alone while claiming how uninterested he is in mainstream games and how xenophobic we all are.
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You forgot that he’ll also post at least 3 billion times how guild wars 2 will be infinity better, and how awesome it is, now the art is better, and so on.
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And afterwards, they will explode!
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Based on this footage I’ve come to a shocking realization, this game is going to be exactly like oblivion only shinier.
…not that that’s a bad thing but there really wasn’t anything brain meltingly unique in those clips.
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+1 to that. Oblivion 2.5
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It won’t have the crippling Oblivion scaling.
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same here.
dull oblivion combat…….. (but with that slow-mo death blow thing, which i cant remember being in oblivion?). Still, it might not be as clunky as before.
edit … that bit wher the guy was set on fire and just stood there like a lemon was seriously crap.
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Yup. It just looks like Oblivion.
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Yeah. The graphics aren’t even that good. It basically just looks like an Oblivion mod with a few minor graphical improvements. Heck, there are hundreds of fan made Oblivion graphics mods which already make Oblivion look more or less like that. So what’s the point?
The Elder Scrolls series used to really be at the cutting edge graphically, even if not always story or gameplay wise. I even bought an entire new computer just to play Oblivion when it came out. I know it’s a cliche to say as much, but this does look like BEthesda has come down with consolitis.
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Plus, for all their talk about how they were working on making character animations better, they still look pretty stiff to me. A definite improvement on Oblivion, yes, but no where near Witcher 2 levels or even MAss Effect 2 levels.
And, yeah, combat looks EXACTLY the same as Oblivion—which really isn’t a good thing at all, given that Oblivion’s strength has always been more as a “hiking simulator” than as an action RPG.
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Yeah.
I have friends going nuts over this, but I don’t see what’s so special.
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I miss Morrowind. An RPG where you could actually do stuff that wasn’t running around slaughtering the local ecology. What happened to that approach, Bethesda? Too much work? Oblivion was too combat focused and dull for me, far too much so, and this seems to be more of the same old pap.
This is a game I’ll be picking up in the bargain bin to play some intelligent mods with, and to ignore the included content which is clearly aimed at the lowest of lowest common denominators. At this point, I really miss Morrowind, and I miss old RPGs. It sounds crazy to want a game that isn’t so much about killing these days… but think back to Ultima VII. How much killing did you do there? It was mostly sleuthing and trying to solve a murder.
I miss RPGs where you were actually not some sort of insane madman.
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I don’t get this. Morrowind had just as much combat as Oblivion, and short of having several more generic responses to squeeze out of people, it wasn’t a whole lot more in-depth in the other areas either. Morrowind was about as good as Oblivion, but they both had their flaws. Nostalgia may be distorting your memory.
If Skyrim does turn out to be Oblivion 2.0, well, that’s fine, because while Morrowind definitely had a better setting and a bit more variety in items and locations, Oblivion simply had better gameplay by a long shot. It’s still Elder Scrolls, and it’ll still be awesome.
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Yeah, I really don’t get this incredible rose-tinted glasses approach to Morrowind vs. Oblivion.
Oblivion’s combat may not have been great, but it was definitely an improvement over Morrowind. There also isn’t any MORE combat in Oblivion than in Morrowind. Are people forgetting cliff racers? Remember those guys? The dudes that forced you into combat every couple of minutes while you were off exploring? Those were in Morrowind.
Morrowind did have a greater diversity in combat SKILLS, so that’s something Oblivion is worse for, but it’s not like the different weapons really had a lot of practical difference in the way you used them, short swords played like long swords, so it’s debatable how much of a loss that was.
Aside from combat, Oblivion’s stealth system was a direct improvement from Morrowind’s. The dialog systems weren’t tremendous in either game, but I think I actually prefer Oblivion’s. Yeah, obviously there was more stuff you could talk about in Morrowind, but the way it was handled just made everyone feel like a walking encyclopedia.
The big difference in game mechanics between the two were, to my recollection, that Morrowind had more quests than Oblivion, but that Oblivion’s then tended to be more involved. Much like the difference between Fallout 3 and New Vegas. New Vegas had maybe three to four times as many quests as Fallout 3, but that was because it had a huge volume of quests where you did very little. So yeah, Morrowind may have had more quests where you didn’t get into combat than Oblivion, but that was because it simply had more quests where you didn’t actually do a lot. Also, because Morrowind didn’t have quest arrows, quests felt more involved because simply getting where you needed to be required followind directions.
This is maybe the biggest indicator that Morrowind’s game mechanics were “smarter” than Oblivion’s. Personally, I don’t put a whole lot of stock in following directions as complex puzzle solving, but I suppose I can see why some people might.
Aside from that, the big difference is that the world of Oblivion is more trad-fantasy than Morrowind. Which is fine, it’s fairly accepted that the world building / content of Morrowind was more “fresh” than Oblivion, but that doesn’t suggest to me that the playing of the game was any “smarter” than Oblivion. You spent more time getting to where you wanted to go because of the restricted fast travel system and the lack of quest arrows, but I rarely see people actually praising Morrowind for being a tremendous and immersive “getting from point A to B” simulator, so I doubt that’s the big difference everyone is remembering.
Unless, is it? Do people want more involved getting where they are going game mechanics?
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Re: graphics. Choose: big, open world OR cutting edge graphics. It’s technically impossible to have ‘em both.
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Morrowind wasn’t combat-oriented? Christ, my index finger is still sore from how many cliff racers I had to bash to the ground.
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Personally I just want some of the gameplay mechanics from Morrowind back into the series.
Like stamina draining while running all the time. Or how much stamina you have actually affecting your magic use (thus removing a problem that Oblivion had; there was no reason why you shouldn’t be wearing full armour and a two-handed sword as a mage). Being able to get NPCs to do a wide variety of services for you, like enchanting, but all for a high price of course. Greater difference in weapon lengths and types (throwing weapons anyone?). So on and so forth. All of this will likely be modded into Skyrim if it isn’t already in, though. Else I’ll see to it myself :)
^ I think these may be some of the things that most people mean when talking about how ‘Morrowind did things better’.
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Now, I might be viewing Morrowind with a bit of a nostalgic bias, but I think I’m being fairly objective for the most party when I say that Morrowind was the digital incarnation of the second coming of Jesus Christ.
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The graphics aren’t even that good. It basically just looks like an Oblivion mod with a few minor graphical improvements.
The graphics engine isn’t drastically better (not surprising since it’s still an XBOX 360 game), but I’d say the artwork and art direction is a whole lot better. This looks a lot better than Oblivion to me.
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I think I have seen those scenes before. Was that some kind of in-game trailer?
Edit: Also, kicking: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS49Dazin3E&feature=player_embedded Thanks goes to JG Man for sharing that awesome link.
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new content starts at about 1:20, ends about 1:50. everything else has been shown before at E3.
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Very little to nothing new here. Even 1:20 – 1:50 is in some other videos, although I believe there was a dev talking over the game sound during that section in the other video.
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The UI is a bit meh and short (high quality) draw distances on stuff but thats the problem in multiplatform games. I have this preordered and I will play the vanilla game to judge if bethesda has improved in making it’s rpgs. After that I’ll wait for mods to fix/improve things for second playtrough.
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Minimalist UI with disableable (I assume) compass? I rather like it.
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hopefully PC owners will be able to whack up the draw distrance
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Maybe it’s the small resolution and console design of the UI that makes it look so big and the compass being up the screen is a bit distracting but otherwise its ok.
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Have to agree, that UI looks quite wrong, from the fonts to the way the text appears and fades, and the stupidly positioned compass.
I’d prefer to se a return to some more analogue RPGing template in regards exploring, mapping, and finding in these games — perhaps having an actual compass model that the character could consult rather than that distracting abstract graphical entity. You don’t always need to know where you are or what direction you’re heading in, after all.
Finding your way by landscape, through landmarks and so on, would lead to much more satisfying and interesting gameplay (more fun, more “fun”, and also more “FUN!”), particularly given how much time is spent figuring that kind of thing out in these games.
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I can live with a mediocre inventory UI, but I really want to see the trade UI. If it’s as awful as Oblivion, I’m going to be annoyed.
As for the HUD, I like the style, but the layout does seem a bit wonky. Should be trivially moddable, though.
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Why no co-op, whyyyyrrrrggh
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Why would you want a co-op mode in The Elder Scrolls? It would require a complete overhaul of the series. Plus coop games are a lot more shallow.
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I don’t know, I like playing with friends.
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So play most any other game in existence. TES/Skyrim is obviously designed to be single-player. You can’t even do a Baldur’s Gate and plug an extra human in as functionally an NPC, because there’s no party to begin with.
If we’re going to request pie-in-the-sky dream features, multiplayer would be very very low on my list.
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http://www.next-gen.biz/features/pete-hines-why-risk-relative
Read this why Skyrim won’t have multiplayer and finally stop bugging us.
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That doesn’t answer it at all. Coop in an Elder Scrolls game would be fantastic. Instead of focusing on beheadings and tits in armour, make a Morrowindy explore em up that is coop.
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“Why no co-op, whyyyyrrrrggh”
Please God no. Every game in the world seems co-op-ified at the moment. Even Portal, the epitome of single player goodness got infected with it in its second incarnation.
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I’m with jaheira, and I say that as someone that’s genuinely enjoyed co-op in a lot of games. Multiplayer is the antithesis of what I want from an Elder Scrolls game. You can’t climb to the top of a mountain and stare out into the distance if you’re playing with friends. TES games are there to be played slowly, almost meditatively. They’re about exploration and wandering, about solitude, adding another person to the mix would destroy that. All you’d be left with is the crappy plot and mediocre combat, if you want co-op go play virtually every other game released in the last few years.
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Jeez jaheira, you make coop sound like a disease! It’s not like you could have just perfectly ignored the coop campaign of Portal 2 while playing the wholly unblemished single player one.
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Wow, that looked really duff. Oblivion 2.0, with improved graphics but everything else kept the same.
Honestly, whoever thought that sort of flailing combat is good? They need a Dark Messiah system (though it was probably just too much work).
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Why on earth haven’t more devs copied Dark Messiah or Mount and Blade combat? Whyyyyy?
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Oblivion 2.0 is a great name for it, because it’s almost as if it’s a sequel or something.
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Yeah, it’s not like sequels are expected to have improved gameplay or anything
Oh wait
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Agreed. Mount and Blade has the best melee combat system of most newer RPGs, I think. I suspect devs shy away, though, as it’s alot harder to learn. I had a really hard time with Mount and Blade my first 10 hours or so, but once you get it down it becomes incredibly fun. But try as I might, I still can’t get mouse controls down for melee (I’m only able to hit where I want like 60% of the time with the mouse, so I just use keyboard), but watching people who are really good at the melee system fight eachother in multiplayer can be amazing (to me anyway. Maybe I’m easily impressed, though.)
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@DainIronfoot … because it’s difficult to do properly.
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Once again I find myself in agreement with Nighthood.
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Demon Souls combat is pretty fun too, if you’ve played that.
Dark messiah, mount and blade and Demon’s Souls are definitely the best melee combat systems. Perhaps the only good melee combat systems.
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Awesomesauce. Needs more dragons though.
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wow, there’s no evolution here except the graphics…
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Haha, evolution? This is a BETHESDA game!
Seriously though, it looks pretty good, but nothing revolutionary thats for sure.
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Barely even the graphics. The lighting and bumpmapping still gives the same everything-smeared-with-wax effect (that I’m really, really tired of after Oblivion, Fallout 3, and Fallout: New Vegas). Animations are puppets on strings (the horse was particularly poor). Draw distances look good, and higher polycounts appear to be in evidence, but nothing that makes the game look good to me. Lighting is key (in my taste), and this still doesn’t look right.
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Looks ok, but it looks like the game will get annoying very quickly if it takes control away when you do the finishing moves.
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I want my Sunday Paper,Jim!
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Well, this game certainly features war ponies.
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I think the pony needed another dress since it looked like it had a gigantic behind in this movie.
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Nice to see that Bethesda’s modellers are still completely shit at modelling animals. As they always were. This wasn’t really noticeable in Morrowind because they were creating these wild, non-existent creatures and it looked rather amazing. But from Oblivion onward their deficiencies became fairly evident.
The horse proportions were completely off in Oblivion. Really. That’s why its animations didn’t work, either. It’s nice to see that the tradition of awkward, animation-killing proportions hasn’t changed.
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Grrrr I’m angry about this vidya gaem. Fuck you Bethesda you killed my father stop making games you killed my dad!!!!!
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And today your lowest common denominator example is provided by… pipman! Let’s give him a hand, folks.
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I think you missed the joke there Wulf. I believe the term “Whoosh” along with a hand motion sweeping over the head is fitting.
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@Starky:
He’s far too busy spreading hate across the entire comment thread to notice the “whoosh” noise.
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Guys. Can we get serious here? This man’s father has died.
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Eh? The world doesn’t stop turning and people don’t pause mid-step when you start a conversation?
What is this madness?!
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Yep, the biggest advancement of Skyrim is that they’ve finally fixed their conversation system.
Woo-bloody-hoo.
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Jesus Christ wulf mate you need to get a life, instead of slagging off Bethesda at every possible opportunity on this thread. You don’t like Bethesda. We get the message.
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Why does every sequel or new game following a great game have to be revolutionary?
When you play a bad game you complain its not a good game, when you play a good game you complain that its not a great game, when you play a great game you complain its not revolutionary.
Games are for fun and this game looks fun its as simple as that.
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I think a lot of people here (like me) are of the opinion that Oblivion is a rubbish game. So in order to be not rubbish, Skyrim will have to change a lot.
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“Games are for fun and this game looks fun its as simple as that.”
-Define game
-Define fun
-does it look fun? Definitely not to me given the above-mentioned definitions
-what does simple mean to you? What consequences will simplicity bring to the planet?
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Yes, excellent logic at work here. Let’s make all our games sequels to existing ones, and change nothing, because they are perfect! Innovation is overrated!
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I think it’s less that and more this: It looks like it’ll be entirely shit compared to Morrowind.
They got the RPG right with Morrowind all of those years ago, since then they’ve just been floundering and fucking the notion of what an RPG is up. An RPG is about choice, but there has been less and less choice in every Bethesda game since Morrowind. That’s a shame.
I guess what I’m saying is that since Morrowind there hasn’t been one, single meaningful decision that you can make in a Bethesda game, not one that hasn’t been a mockery or a shambles. (Blowing up Megaton or not blowing it up is an ethical dilemma? Please.)
It looks like Obliv–er… Skyrim will be another Bethesda game where you just switch off your brain. Which is why I’ll always love Obsidian so, so much more.
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Oh John P – oblivion is rubbish ? Reeeeeeeaaaaaaaally ?
Sad life you must live.
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I thought the Elder Scrolls series had a reputation to uphold.
Nevertheless, until we see a diagonal run animation I refuse negotiations!
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Wulf: Now, granted, I’m only about halfway through Morrowind, but honestly cannot remember a single point in which I was actually given a decision to make in a quest, aside from the ever-present option of just murdering a vital NPC. You might want to go back and replay Morrowind, and you’ll probably realize that despite the brilliant setting and relatively interesting story, the gameplay is complete shit. Yes, it was amazing in 2002, no doubt. I’d like to think we’d have moved on from that point by now though.
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I’m playing through Morrowind right now (modded to fuck), the quests are a bit more open ended than Oblivion’s but it’s not vastly different. E.g. ‘I need x done, do it however you like’ compared to ‘Go do x’.
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Wow. Man set on fire by dragon. Just stands there, no screaming or running, just a pissed off silence. Then he gets eaten.
3rd person view on a horse. Why? Games should let you choose the view you want, FP or TP (or even SP?).
Two Worlds let me have FP for most of it, but it was irritating that it became TP on horseback. I don’t like third-person views in general. I’m currently playing The Witcher (started last night, own a boxed version and the GOG version, and Witcher 2 despite having not played any of them – just because I like the devs DRM-free attitude). I find it a bit irritating that I have three TP views, but no FP view. It makes me feel like I am watching miniatures run around a board game, rather than I AM that character.
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You can switch between third and first person at any time in Bethesda’s games. They’re actually one of the few companies that do let you choose your viewpoint.
Also, does SP stand for second-person? How would that actually work in a visual medium?
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My mistake then – seeing frist person fighting then third person on horse brought back Two Worlds memories (it was actually quite a good game).
Second Person = games like The Experiment?
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3rd person view in Oblivion looks pretty bad, though. Your character is poorly animated, and if I remember, his feet barely touch the ground most of the time. I could never stand to have 3rd person on for long in that game. It just seemed like a cheaply tacked on edition to me and it was clear the devs never actually expected anyone to play it in 3rd person.
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Choice, you say? In a modern Bethesda game? You must be barmy.
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The lack of a staff weapon irritates me a bit. I enjoyed having a staff in Dark Messiah. When I played Oblivion for the first time recently I decided on the kidn fo character I wanted to play BEFORE I started the game. It was a staff-wielding priest who liked to drink. Imagine my disgruntlement when I completed the game and still hadn’t found a staff I could fight with.
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A second person view would be something like this.
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Cool, thanks for the link. I must admit that my brain was boggling trying to figure out what a second-person game would actually looks like.
(I hope this goes to the right place; this is my first day commenting on RPS and the reply system is…not intuitive).
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> See 5 seconds of footage from massive game.
> Not satisfied with what you see?
> BLAAAAM this piece of crap!
I, for one, welcome our new dragon overlords.
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It’s actual gameplay and a sizeable amount of it too, considering you’ll spend a lot of your time seeing clueless AI get smushed by dragons.
If it’s gameplay, you’ll scream “it’s in alpha/betaaaa”!
If it’s a playable section, you’ll scream “it’s a demooo”!
How the hell are we supposed to decide on a purchase?
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“How the hell are we supposed to decide on a purchase?”
Wait for a review, like in the olden days.
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Even then we’ve been told to be sceptical about reviews. DA2 was lauded by many sites but the fans absolutely hated it. I trust myself to be able to form an opinion on something by utilising the PR that the companies employ.
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Why are all these videos about combat? Who the fuck cares about the combat in an Elder Scrolls game? Just show me what it’s like to break into a house and steal all the silverware!
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+100. Stealing shit from random houses at night was the most fun I could squeeze out of Oblivion.
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Unfortunately, Todd Howard cares. Todd Howard cares a freaking LOT. He’s like Michael Bay, except his thing is fighting and action. Well. Maybe explosions too.
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Love the work horse, instead of the usual sleek, built for speed types. I am expert horsologist.
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Thing is though, you don’t ride horses like that. They’re meant for, y’know, carts.
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u do if ur DARGONBRON
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Exactly. I… really have nothing to add to that. Well done, everyone.
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Maybe the first part of the clip is missing, where the character murders a cart driver, steals his stuff, and steals his horse to escape the guards. he will also have -10 to athletics while his thighs recover.
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In the middle ages and before they DID ride horses like that.
What you see in that (now dead) video that is pretty damn close to what a medieval charger would look like to us.
Ye olde European horses were smallish and bulky compared to today bred for racing breeds (at least the common ones for common solders, horses for nobility may have differed).
They were bred for stamina, and strength and speed (probably in that order) and would probably look like a cross between a normal riding horse and a short draught horse.
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Does anyone know a stupid amount about horses who could clear all this up for us? Anyone?
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Can’t wait :-) Bethesda’s games have consistently been my favorites from Morrowind on, and this one looks absolutely awesome. I do hope they bring back some of the crazy architecture from Morrowind (and to a lesser extend, Shivering Isles); Oblivion was kind of bland in that respect.
Also, horses! One of the first things I did in Oblivion was attempt to steal a horse while getting killed by the guards over and over again.
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Hah. Yeah. Good luck with hoping anything from them that even touches on the brilliance of Morrowind.
They left that on the roadside years ago in favour of: “Stupid people like hitting things and kicking things, right? They love that! That and beer. Well… we can’t do beer without being controversial, so let’s just make our entire game about hitting and kicking things! That’s what they want! Choice be damned!”
:|
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Wulf – No choice at all! Kick! Kick! They gave me no choice but to kick you! Kick! Stupid stupid people! Kick you in the face Wulf, kick because thats what stupid people do! You have no choice! Kick!
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*kicks*
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Perhaps I should clarify: I loved Oblivion, and played the hell out of it. I do hope that they get some more cool architecture and political tension into Skyrim, but by no means did I think Oblivion was a bad game. I actually liked the combat system a lot better than Morrowind’s :-)
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Er… why does it look like oblivion ? This is 2011, what did they do all those years ?! Might as well be another oblivion mod…
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It’s made for the same generation of consoles, so we shouldn’t expect too big a difference.
But yeah animations and stuff also look the same as Oblivion. I thought they were using a new engine? They’ve obviously re-used a lot in any case.
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Maybe you need to go back and look at the animations in Oblivion for a few minutes.
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It’s really not a leap at all. I think the biggest problem is that thematically it is Oblivion, and will probably invoke the same lack of choice. Blech.
@woodsey
I played Oblivion recently due to wanting to go and visit the Deserts of Anequina (mod). I can tell you that the animations aren’t really a notable improvement. They are an improvement, yes, but whereas Oblivion’s animations looked like they were from ’03, these look like they’re from ’06. Considering that it’s 2011 now I’d think we should be seeing animations that fit that.
The consoles can do better than this.
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Hope you can toss a guy’s shoes up on the roof and being chased by the whole town with the Benny Hill music playing.
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I still say this is the same engine as the previous games, modified and upgraded. They just decided to call it something different at the last minute due to how angry everyone got at the outdated tech.
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I agree. You just know that they’ll protest in the most strenuous terms possible, up until the point that the game is released and it has a shedload of config files all referencing ‘Gamebryo’ and an identical game editor.
Having said that though, I am still excited for this game, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen a diagonal run animation somewhere around, which is most of what I wanted.
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Looks great, not sure what everyone above is whining about.
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Agreed, it looks amazing. Sure, the combat seems to be very similar, but everything else seems to be better.
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Ding ding ding, “whining” buzzword detected!
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I’m with Tuan. It looks excellent.
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I’d love it if this had a co-op mode. I don’t see at all why this would require a redesign of the entire game – I don’t particularly want a separate campaign, just the ability to bring a friend into the same game world.
Obviously this won’t be happening as it would require netcode and systems development, as well as lots of testing to ensure two players can’t break the game too badly. I still think it would be really cool to play in the sandbox with multiple players though.
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Reply fail! This was supposed to be attached to the co-op topic above.
Isn’t the reply fail a rite of passage around here or something?
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Yes. I’ve just PM’d you the secret knife. When you hear the catchphrase “Staring eyes”, cut your eyes out and place them in the disk drive. You will receive instructions then.
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I still find the bit where the dragon drops the guy unintentionally hilarious. The way he seems to just stand still as he’s falling.
As though you can hear him saying “oh… not again…”
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More like “Fuck this shit again. Not even going to try :( “
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Here’s not a ‘guy’, he’s a Frost Giant. Slow and ponderous in thought, it takes considerable time for information to reach his brain receptors, such as news like being plucked up into the air by a passing dragon. That would account for the general lack of flailing limbs and relative statuesque state.
I’m not an apologist for Bethesda’s animation department, honest.
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The animation after he’s been dropped looks absolutely fine to me. If we assume he’s stunned/shocked/dead, that’s pretty much how it’d look.
However, the animation as he’s being scooped up is terrible; when he’s being jerked around, that’s the point where you’d really expect him to lose the stance. There’s no rotation when there clearly should be.
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This just lowered my huge expectations, probably a good thing.
That guy that was flung on fire out of the dragons mouth sure looked unanimated…
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Yep. This is typical Bethesda ‘animation’ right here. Even Obsidian, whose animation is also sometimes a bit suspect, is years ahead of Bethesda. The geckos in New Vegas were by far the most interesting to watch critter that Fallout’s had since 3. It’s really fun to watch them at a distance through a scope, because they have a variety of animations. The deathclaw alphas are fun to watch, too.
Bethesda doesn’t do animation, or choice, or any of the things that matter to me. Roll on the next Obsidian game!
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Wulf – you’re crazy. You’re posting like a madman. Even though I probably like the same things in games like you do I don’t get your black&white tunnel vision.
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I remain so very thankful that the RPS guys implemented the ability to ignore people in the comments almost solely because of Wulf.
And amanda. But that’s not the point.
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I think it’s sad that I can pick out if footage is captured on a PC or a console simply based on the camera motion :\
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I think you mean “if it was captured using a controller or a mouse” and that’s been true for at least 10 years (since Halo came out).
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Yeah, all we know for sure is that they used a gamepad… We can only hope it means this is the console version, and that the PC version will look better.
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I hope that this time around not every animal on the planet always wants to eat you.
I’d welcome a more varied approach. Bethesda should have a look at the animal AI mods for Oblivion.
The fact that dragons are actually just another hostile animal, although spectacular in appearance, was already disappointing enough. I had hoped for a little bit of Drakan-like dragon riding, or at least some wise friendly dragons.
I also hope they get the vampirism right this time. I’d hate to have to try out tons of vampire mods to make it feel right.
From what I have seen it feels like Bethesda is not nearly ambitious enough with this game. It suspiciously feels like an Oblivion reboot. But it might be to early to tell.
Nevertheless I think it will be worth my time and money. More so than most other modern games that will give you at most four to eight hours of gameplay.
I love a digital world to escape in. And Bethesda is going to deliver on that. That is for sure.
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You’re expecting Bethesda to work on an ecology? Yeah, good luck with that. Everything will be suicidal in order to give stupid people something to whack with their manswords. It’ll be down to the modders to create an ecology, as it always is. Have you seen the ecology mods out there? They’re absolutely amazing and far beyond anything that Beth could put together.
Really you’d expect to see a pack of wolves chasing deer, like Gothic III did it, rather than having lone wolves charging suicidally at a platemail-armoured player. Nothing breaks my immersion like that because it just doesn’t make sense. Think about it, how do these creatures manage to keep up their numbers if they do that with every soldier or armed person they see? It’s impossible. :| Anyone who’d bothered to expend any amount of thought on this would realise that.
But no. Stupid people like to hit and kick things. Therefore all of the animals will be suicidal and there will be no ecology, and my mind will explode trying to figure out how the hell there are so many animals if they all keep doing that. There must be a high-tech cloning facility somewhere just popping them out.
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Infinite Wolves.
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The giants and mammoths were passive, weren’t they? Until they got attacked.
And I think they’ve mentioned some sort of wildlife ecology this time, but I may be misremembering.
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Stop it, Wulf. Just. Stop. We get it, you hate Bethesda since Morrowind. No one cares.
Besides, you’re completely wrong on this one. Soon wasn’t misremembering. They did put in an ecology of sortsThe mammoths that are herded by the frost giants (and the giants themselves) mind their own business unless you mess with them. That’s right, GIANTS that aren’t hostile.
Did Todd Howard kill your family or something?
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Why is everyone so grumpy today? Did I miss the memo or something?
Although I have to admit that my first thought on seeing the dargon was “Why can’t we have any Monster Hunter games on PC?”
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Why is everyone so grumpy today? “Skyrim Footage”, man.
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Well, we do have Monster Hunter Frontier, though it is a spin-off from the series and a MMORPG at that, also. Don’t know if it has active community anymore or if it’s any good.
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hmm, does this mean I can’t cast spells with a sword and shield out, without swapping away to a slightly irritating glowy hand? Because thats something of a step backwards (yet again).
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Actually, it was a step backwards in the first place to be able to cast spells while having your hands full. As in, what’s the fucking point of being a traditional spellcaster with a staff or wand or whatever, when a guy in full plate armour with a sword + board can cast just as well. I know that’s The Elder Scrolls’ ‘thing’, to be able to do ‘everything’ with one character, but it’s just retarded.
I think this hybrid ‘yes you can cast but its not quite as good as double-handed casting’ is really good.
Anyway, heaven forbid the combat gets a bit fucking complex. Oblivion’s combat was so fucking boring.
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You could also go the route of allowing casting when a sword and shield are in your hands, but make it so that the casting gets various excellent advantages if you’re holding a staff instead. ‘Course then you get people swapping between weapons mid-combat which would just look silly.
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“Actually, it was a step backwards in the first place to be able to cast spells while having your hands full”
From what exactly? You’ve been abe to do that with pretty much every ES game. Its a step backwards from what you could do in previous games, like Oblivion was full of steps backwards.
A guy in full plate with sword and shield should, in game terms, be able to cast as well if he also focused on spell skills, thats not stupid, thats what battlemages and the like in ES were about. Its not “complex” having a hand that shoots fireballs sitting there like a shotgun or something any more than the other way, just limiting for no reason.
Then again, they also took out the choosing of skills to focus on aspect too.
There are better ways they could do what you suggest.. like say boosting your spellcasting abilities with a staff equipped like a focus or whatever.
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Been taken down for a copyright claim by ZeniMax. =/
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Seconded — it’s time to retire the our-world-is-entirely-made-of-plastic look. Lighting is everything. I long for a Bethesda game with an Unreal engine type finish… the one that gives every game based on that engine such a nice, warm, fuzzy, textured feel.
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Lighting is not everything unless your only focus is realism. Which even movies tries to avoid, as stylisation is expression. Also lightning is not texture feeling. Lightning is about contrast and shadows mainly, color atmosphere next, then only reflectivity. I am not picking that order out of nowhere, it’s how gestalt works. First you pick shapes, and shapes are designed by contrasts. Your mind get that first, and look hugely fast to identify some shapes (eg : to get a face). Shadows of course hugely affect the shapes your mind deal with. Color atmosphere, well, it’s pretty obvious a red dominant in the lightning is something noticed prior to any plastic looking. That’s why I’d take a plastic look ten times over the awful set of colors of the Witcher 2 (which seems to be “colors are intrinsically beautiful, let’s put as many of them as we can”).
I really am ok with the plastic looking actually. I see it a bit like Pixel Art. It’s a part of computer styling in representation and in a way, it’s charming. Think about it : any Pixar movies is packed with plastic looking – way more than most CG animation we see in the gaming scene. Still, it’s clearly working. Sometimes working with the limitations is better than trying to hide them. Even for a med fan RPG which clearly cool use some dirt and warmness in the look.
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I dont like it.
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Back to the old drawing board!
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Highly relevant
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“This video is no longer available due to a copyright claim by ZeniMax Media Inc.”
Boo.
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It’s okay, if you have watched the other videos up to this point you’ve seen 80% of that one =)
edit: well ok, it might be a different dragon fight this time, but essentially the same….even talked to that same dude at the grinding wheel that all the other videos talk to. Is there no one else in the town worth chatting with?
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Not sure if this is the same video or not, but I’m sure people will be uploading copies to Youtube at least as fast as Zenimax takes them down: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aLfIudfOj4
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aLfIudfOj4
Working link not a clue how to embed it
Wait, wait I just did
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Thanks.
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I hate that I always seem to have opinions so opposed to theprevalent ones here on RPS but I am really looking forward to exploring Skyrim’s world. It’s going to be a beer and pretzels RPG-light type experience but sometimes that can be just what the doctor ordered.
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+1 I don’t get all the bitching. Obviously there’ll be more fun stuff to do than combat – combat is just their poster thing. Showing assassinations, poisoning, stealing silverware and drug smuggling is not the best PR for a game.
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+1 here, too.
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As long as there’s still a toolset included, this is a day 1 purchase as always.
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Smells Like Console Spirit.
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Ah, so we are bashing this game now are we? *tries to keep up*
It looks a lot better than Oblivion if you ask me, and Morrowind has it’s own share of problems that people always seem to forget (Morrowind is my favourite too, but c’mon). I’m going to be optimistic and focus on the good stuff for now. *shrugs*
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Indeed. Loved Oblivion, so I’m most definitely looking forward to this.
And I’m honestly getting a little sick and tired of all the Morrowind worshipping. Yes, it was good, but it wasn’t the best game ever by any stretch of the imagination and had a modicum of problems by itself. Plenty of things were stupid, plenty of things didn’t work, plenty of things were unbalanced, and there were plenty of completely idiotic, WTF design decisions that everyone just conveniently forgets.
Just shouting “Skyrim will be terrible because MORROWIND!!” (as many people around here are doing) doesn’t really make that much sense, nor does it make for any real argument. I liked Morrowind as much as the next guy, but if people are this obsessed over the game why not just…go play it instead? A bunch of people here are bitching that Skyrim looks like a rehashed Oblivion 2.0, yet there’s another little camp of people who are bitching that Skyrim should be a rehashed Morrowind 2.0 instead. Is that really “solving” anything?
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“no longer available due to a copyright claim by ZeniMax Media.”
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I think it looks like it might be rather fun. I’ll wait for a review, though, because I don’t want to judge an Elder Scrolls game on a combat trailer.
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ragdoll looks just as bad as in oblivion…mods to the rescue!
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Wulf, were you lonely today? Yes, Oblivion lacked in a lot of aspects, we know that, it’s been 5 years already, you can stop now. Oh, and if it wasn’t for Bethesda we wouldn’t have had a New Vegas.
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I thought the animations in New vegas very poor….as for Skyrim…I, from what I’ve seen so far, honestly can’t see what the fuss is….I mean to me it looks like pretty average RPG and lagging behind in visuals if compared to say The Witcher 2…it looks like a big standerd console game…
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Looks like Oblivion with dra-guns.
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Please shut the fuck up, whiners.
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“Please shut the fuck up, whiners.”
Ah, the salty tang of youth. At least he punctuated! Anyhoo.
Please continue, whiners. Years of reading forums has taught me that many of the complaints about current RPGS, (see: linearity of Baldur’s Gate), are actually remedied in later RPGs(see: you picked which path in Witcher 2? Elf-lover!).
Sometimes, of course, they go backwards. Still like Fallout1 and 2 over 3. Although 3 was a good game.
If they can mix the funky stylings of Morrowind with the slick play of Oblivion, I’m in.
Also: Vikings + Dragons? Yum.
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I’m glad to see this Fathom fellow is elevating the level of discourse on RPS.
“You’re wrong. Or you just have bad taste and/or ADD”
“Some of you people are stupid.”
“Please shut the fuck up, whiners.”
What pearls of wisdom will he regale us with next? Oh, the suspense!
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The whiners should shut up because they have nothing to offer. “Oh, it’s oblivion with dragons, I’m not playing it” qualifies for nothing other than whining. I don’t care that random internet guy number 3 doesn’t want to play this game. Not only that, but these brilliant gamers have made a judgement call on the entire game with 3 minutes of game footage. They are so eager to dismiss and ridicule that it makes them look like complete shut-ins.
And the people who said the first half of Game of Thrones were objectively idiots. Their problems with the show were completely made up or contradictory.
The fact that no one wants to admit is that most of the people here are old and jaded gamers who have nothing better to do with their time but blame upcoming games for their own problem. Nothing is good enough for some of you people. It’s some kind of elite gamer snobbery that is completely sickening. If you were to step away from gaming for a year or so, you might regain your objectivity and realize that the fact were even able to play stuff like Skyrim is pretty amazing.
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It would probably be a good idea for you to take your own advice.
There are plenty of reasons for reasonable people to not be drinking the kool aid here. Oblvion promised lots and seriously under delivered. Remember Radiant AI? The promised voice work? The stoopdity of having the demon castle incursions be basically identical? Not to mention the poor support for problems, or even the acknowledgement that there were certain technical issues in the game? Anyone at Bethesda ever explain what the frozen fire/door bug was? Are people still depending on a fan patch to play the game when things like that happen to them?
I certainly voted with my wallet and haven’t bought a Bethesda game since that sad mistake. Fallout 3 was given to me as a present, and with my low initial opinion, it actually was more enjoyable than expected. Still, there were major issues (like it crashing randomly every hour or so of play for several months) not to mention the terrible shoehorned ending. New Vegas seems to be doing things a bit better, from what I have seen of it. Of course, someone else was involved there.
Still, there’s ample reason not to be lapping up whatever PR drivel on Skyrim that they’re putting out. You, apparantly, can manage to get your whine on about that though.
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Although I wouldn’t express myself quite as eloquently as Fathom, the man/woman/unit of length has a point. People do seem to be bashing on this game just for the sake of it, without any substantial evidence of it actually being a disappointment. I can gaurantee you, disappointment or not, it’s still gonna be better than most of the stuff released this year.
Anyway, I see where everyone is coming from, but I say wait until the game is out and we’ve actually played it, or at least read some reviews, before we decide to boycott it.
And by ‘we’ I mean ‘you’, I’m gonna play the shit out of this game.
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“I don’t care that random internet guy number 3 doesn’t want to play this game.”
Then why do you want him to shut up? What’s the difference between not wanting to hear random internet guy number 3 who doesn’t want to play, and not wanting to hear random internet guy number 2 who does?
From the comments a lot of it IS based off that gameplay. “It looks like Oblivion 2.0″. Well, that’s because it DOES, Fathom. Say it like you see it. Calling people shut ins because they don’t like the game you like is childish at best. Few people have condemned the game, instead expressing disappointment at this footage.
And your fanboy is showing.
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>I don’t care that random internet guy number 3 doesn’t want to play this game.
Then why do you have the apparent need of mentioning that you don’t care? In other words, you’re contradicting yourself.
I only understood your posts as whining about whiners.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jh9xryYYfOQ
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Oh jesus, wasn’t Oblivion released years ago? Why are they showing those videos?
The good thing is that I didn’t allow myself to grow some hype around this game, otherwise I would be really disapointed about how crappy the game looks, guess we will never get another Morrowind.
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Another fuckin’ Skyrim thread so it’s about time,
To bust a rhyme, like a troll, but with flow, so here we go:
First quarter ’94,
a game with mad bugs,
Like the kind that make your shit crash not the kind under your rugs,
First-person, on a disc, and it wasn’t called “Myst”,
Game was deep like underground, world was huge like my dick,
Dying every hour ’cause the balancing is sour gotta play increase my power no I got no time to shower,
Named Arena,
It was first,
Like Ju-on before The Curse,
Now shut up and listen close because here’s the next verse:
Every prequel has a sequel some are shitty some are equal,
Some are dope and some are weird with Solid Snake sporting a beard,
And stupid hair,
Indeed,
A game on weed?
Not a game for me,
But I digress, I must confess,
Tee Ee Ess was not the best,
Until this next game came along,
Bigger than Britain and hotter than your mom,
Which doesn’t take much but this game was dope,
You can be a wereboar but you cannot be the pope,
I’m sorry, that rhyme was wack, back on track: Worm King attack,
Mannimarco was cool but you take him to school,
I mean if you find him,
Fucking awful UI, a dunmer can’t see what’s behind him,
Or ahead, for that matter,
Cut the chatter,
Doing lines of sugar off a Redware Platter.
Third time’s the charm and charm is broken like a hack,
Stab Foryn Gilnith in the back,
Didala’s Knack,
Then take his shack,
This place is odd,
A Daedric god,
A guy named Todd,
Sheogorad,
Why so pretty?
Oh,
A mod,
Extending gameplay approximately forever,
Everything the devs fucked up is made clever,
I can finally change the fucking weather,
Will I stop playing? Fuck you, never,
This is the best game, the rest came, but felt shame,
No more pseudo-3D ’cause that shit is lame,
Three actual dimensions but I wonder which is which?
Am I chilling in Moonshadow with that Azura bitch?
Don’t tell me what to do because I’ll do whatever’s gooder,
I spent forty-seven hours spelling out the word “BOOGER”,
I used a ton of skooma and a lotta moon sugar,
And in the game,
My claim to fame:
A thousand hours plus to my name,
But the next in line I played fewer,
Implying that the better isn’t always the newer,
To be fair though I put in a fucking crazy chunk of time,
Despite the engine, which was cheesier than this rhyme,
Seriously, Gamebryo? That shit was old ten years ago, bro.
Still, living in Oblivion had its advantages,
The dedicated Elder Scroller always manages,
To spend at least a couple days,
Real time,
Learning to ragdoll, forgetting how to climb,
Or cross bows or arm poles,
Not that Poles need arming,
We’re all too Charming,
Which was another thing missing, I think,
Or maybe it was levitation in a drink,
Shit, now I gotta check,
I’d better re-install Oblivion and uninstall Brink,
New game coming!
Just how old are these scrolls?
Classics stay forever but the fuck-up comes and goes,
Oblivion or Morrowind? Will we love or will we rue it?
Will I get to kill a god this time, or will I watch Boromir do it?
Well I hope the acting doesn’t suck,
I hope the combat’s more than luck,
I hope the skills I like come back,
I hope there’s no Cliff Race attack,
I hope the scenery is pretty,
I hear the animation’s shitty,
But fuck, son, whether Elder Scrollin’ or a Fallout gun,
I’m gonna buy it like a bitch,
Bethesda says “buy our game” and I say “which?”
I am deeply sorry to anyone who read the whole thing. Or any of it, really.
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What are you talking about, this is stellar shit.
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I applaud you, good sir. Well done, indeed.
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Absolutely brilliant, well done sir!
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Can we have another internet? I think Buttless Boy has just won this one.
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Awesome stuff.
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thanks man
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Well, now I’ve read this.
I guess I shouldn’t be sad. It was a good life.
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n/t
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzNSONgpvN8
A working (for the moment) link.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IlouIYS_w&feature=player_embedded
working link
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1IlouIYS_w
Meh, nothing we haven’t seen on E3, most if it is just the same footage actually.
I gotta say, considering it’s supposed to a new engine, I expected A LOT more.
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How some people can dismiss this game after such video is past me. I mean, sure it’s not as good as say, you’d actually live in Skyrim and experience it in flesh, but I don’t see half of a competitor miles away. I mean, let’s consider you prefer the Bioware’s take on RPG (or the japan take) to Bethesda’s, oki doki, but you cant really argue DA2 to look better, can you ? And how much sense does it make to argue against a sandbox RPG storytelling features to be not as good as the storytelling features of a… storytelling based RPG ? OK, Oblivion or FA3 way of dealing with dialog fails to be half as convincing as standard Bioware but that would only be a grip if those games were failing to deliver what is wanted from a sandbox / Bethesda RPG, ie a heap of them. Considering there probably is 5 times more side questing in Bethesda’s games than in any other, why can’t people, instead of bitching about the simplistic representation of NPC dialog, admit they prefer one story told as good as possible to “more, more, more stories” ? Oblivion or Fallout 3 are both games that are 100 hours + game play without addon. That can’t be said for ME2 (less than 30!) or TW2. So it’s a trade off, and I don’t get why some people fail to see it that way rather than a flaw.
Because me, well I do prefer, by far, Bethesda’s take on RPGs to any other, but I will certainly not blame ME for lack of freedom, or TW2 for not letting me pick my character. Two things that really turned me off in those games, but make no sense to bitch about : it’s just consistent with the whole idea behind them.
So back to the original question : what establishes a clearly superior landmark to what is seen in that video, especially in western RPGs, so that dismissing it is not an absurd stance ? I can see The Witcher 2 being that one for some (certainly not for me, on my dead body, I’d still play Oblivion over TW2, really, I mean even the look is still better to me) but the “clearly superior” mark can hardly be established even for that recent game. So what else ? Dismissing Skyrim, even if it was for sensible reason (wich I contest), ok, but for what game ? Especially in the open RPG genre ?
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