Skyrim - What's New Interview @ IGN

[DArtagnan]

Space Siege?

*shudder*

Well, not really a shooter - but pretty awful in any case.

 

[azarhal]

The technology was "new enough"? So is this his way of saying that it's really just a heavily modified Gamebryo?

Gamebryo was only the rendering engine, they redid that part (say so in the article). The rest was always their own stuff or 3rd parties (Speedtree, Havok).

 

[bemushroomed]

I thought we established that long ago?

I thought we established that you cant just take someones engine and call it your own.

It's great that its a new rendering engine (the only thing wrong the old game engine except for animations) + the old tech mixed with new / upgrades is good too, especially if you want mods to come out day 1.

 

[ikbenrichard]

Haha, I find this amusing

Well i do prefer to taunt people... Perhaps i succeeded...

 

[kalniel]

Space Siege?

*ding*

okay, not really a shooter.

 

[guenthar]

They axed the spell making system and all you have is what they have talked about with duel wielding spells and different mouse button presses doing different things with spells. That pretty much means they dumbed down the spell system severely and it is now very limited. Since I was planning to go exclusively mage from now on in TES games I will not be buying Skyrim. If I can't do the kinds of spells I was using in the previous games (which were mostly mixed spells) then I won't be using magic and since I started to hate melee (have always hated archery) in these games I won't be playing.

PS. Even though Enchanting is a magic based skill how does it really belong to magic users when you barely get any benefit out of it and the character type that gets the most benefit out of it is the melee archetype. You can enchant your clothes, jewelry, and staff but that barely does anything compared to a properly created spell.

 

[crpgnut]

You know, I think a good part of the reason I like TES so much, is the music. I can listen to Morrowind and Oblivion's music and immediately be taken back to their worlds. I was listening to other tracks from Jeremy Soule and the guy sure is talented.

 

[kalniel]

You know, I think a good part of the reason I like TES so much, is the music. I can listen to Morrowind and Oblivion's music and immediately be taken back to their worlds. I was listening to other tracks from Jeremy Soule and the guy sure is talented.

Interesting. I don't rate him that much (clearly, better than I could do ). He produces a nice sounding track, but they tend to be rather to formulaic.

 

[TheMadGamer]

Coming off of Fallout 3, we made a pretty big list of what we wanted to change technically. So we redid the rendering, lighting, shadows, animation, faces, foliage, mountains, scripting, interface and more. And by the time we got through it all, it was clear the technology was new enough to give it its own name, The Creation Engine.

Out of everything listed in that quote, the only thing that I'm really interested in is what they've redone with the interface.

All in all, this interview had little substance and focused mostly on things I don't care about... graphics, consoles and multiplayer.

 

[crpgnut]

Consider the source: IGN. They're all about consoles, multiplayer, and graphics. It's not really surprising that their questions focused on these issues. I liked hearing that magic is getting some loving. No longer will we have to find a spellmaking altar if we want to create a customized spell. That's good news to this mage.

 

[TheMadGamer]

Consider the source: IGN. They're all about consoles, multiplayer, and graphics. It's not really surprising that their questions focused on these issues. I liked hearing that magic is getting some loving. No longer will we have to find a spellmaking altar if we want to create a customized spell. That's good news to this mage.

Point taken.

Just to be clear, I'm liking a lot (though not everything) of what I'm reading about relating to Skyrim. This particular interview just didn't have much material in it that was interesting to me.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

Is spell customizing available in this one? They are unsure about superposition of effects for spells.

 

[crpgnut]

The part that's unclear, at least to me, is whether we can dual-cast spells. Spell effects can be mixed for sure, but whether we can cast two spells if we have no weapon equipped seems to be up in the air. I can ask MSFD, he's the magic system developer, but I'm unsure whether he'll be allowed or even have time, to answer. I'll post here if he replies.

 

[ChienAboyeur]

I wrote that because I read that

In Oblivion spells were cast with a face button, which allowed you to equip traditional weapons for melee combat and deftly cast spells between swings. By forcing players to equip a spell with one of their hands, players must make more of a commitment to learning the arcane arts. The ability to equip two different spells on your left and right hand raises the question – can you combine more than one spell? “We're not talking about that,” Howard says with a smile. “We're not sure. We'd like to; it'd be awesome.”

Even if you can't combine spells, magicka students will have no shortage of options, with over 85 spells divided into five schools of magic – destruction, restoration, illusion, alteration, and conjuration.

http://www.gameinformer.com/games/t...2011/01/24/skyrim-building-better-combat.aspx
Reported on January. So it means they have managed to perform what they wanted to.

 

[azarhal]

From what I understand, Spellmaking is now done "on-the-fly" for the most part. It's different from the other games, because now magnitude and "shape" are set "on-the-fly".

There is one fire spell (effect) and depending how long you old down the button(s), which one you press, etc. you get:
- fireball
- powered up fireball
- flamethrower
- rune/trap/glyph
- touch
- AOE centred on self (we can see a fire version in the in-game trailer.)

The only thing they haven't mentioned is how timed spells work (buff, summons).

 

[Thrasher]

I hope this "new" doesn't also let stuff fall through the floor or other objects. FO3 irritants are still in mind.

I am a little concerned that they are still trying to "squeeze in new features" to paraphrase. At this point in the development (7 months before launch) they should be spending all their resources on testing, balancing, and fixing bugs.

 

[azarhal]

Development changed a lot since people used "Waterfall" (code everything, then test it). Now it's all about "Agile".

 

[Thrasher]

Even with agile programming you should allocate a good chunk of time to do stress testing at the end unless they have had a huge test team from the start. Most do not. Has anyone participated or even heard of a beta?

 

[crpgnut]

Bethesda has a whole QA Team, so I'd guess that the betas are all private. I've bought all of their games on day one and I haven't had many issues since Daggerfall, which could have been called Buggerall instead. Rob Gray is the QA manager at Bethesda, last I looked.

 

[ulixes]

They axed the spell making system and all you have is what they have talked about with duel wielding spells and different mouse button presses doing different things with spells. That pretty much means they dumbed down the spell system severely and it is now very limited. Since I was planning to go exclusively mage from now on in TES games I will not be buying Skyrim. If I can't do the kinds of spells I was using in the previous games (which were mostly mixed spells) then I won't be using magic and since I started to hate melee (have always hated archery) in these games I won't be playing.

Where did you hear that there was no spell-making?
The only thing Todd implies is that there is no skill for it. Nor was there one in Oblivion.

PS. Even though Enchanting is a magic based skill how does it really belong to magic users when you barely get any benefit out of it and the character type that gets the most benefit out of it is the melee archetype. You can enchant your clothes, jewelry, and staff but that barely does anything compared to a properly created spell.

Depends on how they implement it, doesn't it?