Skyrim - Preview @ Manatank

A site called Manatank has a hefty preview of Skyrim, covering just about every aspect. I can't see much new but it sure covers a lot of territory - here's a random snip:

There is plenty to do within each city aside from interacting with the inhabitants. For the first time you will have access to simple jobs such as wood cutting and farming. Whatever you see an NPC doing, you can do as well. Blacksmith shops have forges you can commandeer and upgrade your weapons or you can go run the local lumber mill if you wish. Again, it’s entirely up to you.
Your interaction with the game’s NPCs will also be drastically different than before. Rather than a static, in-your-face camera angle, Skyrim will feature a more casual, zoomed out NPC camera where the characters will continue to behave like normal humans even as you talk to them. Approach the busty waitress as she is making her rounds and she will talk to you as she continues her duties.

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More information.

Nice article.

Stepping back to the days of Morrowind, I was impressed when I was able to walk 100 yards before the game needed to load, and then even more impressed when Oblivion was capable of streamlining that load to an almost unnoticeable level. Fortunately, Skyrim is yet again improving on that formula to bring you a truly seamless experience, free of almost all pop-ups and short draw distances. You see that mountain in the distance? Walk to it… load free

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To me however, that is something they should be able to achieve with a great number of cells loading independently from one another.

I'm really keen to see the new LOD scheme in action - Oblivion's LOD management was terrible. They also used restrictive tricks like no flying/levitate to manage problematic (high geometry) areas like cities. I suppose they have done that again? Pre-loading cell geometry is only one aspect, you need to seamlessly manage LOD transitions otherwise people notice. I always notice ;-) And here I mean general camera views - allowing a player to look off to the horizon, not like Dungeon Siege which cheated by locking the camera to a (mostly) overhead view. Every game i have played has introduced LOD transitions that are very obvious - but I think people just accept them as being necessary. Given that Skyrim has to run on console hardware too, I don't have extremely high expectations.

manatank said:

The series has always dramatically ratcheted up the map size from title to title

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O RLY



(needs some editorial oversight as well - they refer to Skyrim as Oblivion at least once as well)

booboo said:

I'm really keen to see the new LOD scheme in action - Oblivion's LOD management was terrible. They also used restrictive tricks like no flying/levitate to manage problematic (high geometry) areas like cities. I suppose they have done that again? Pre-loading cell geometry is only one aspect, you need to seamlessly manage LOD transitions otherwise people notice. I always notice ;-) And here I mean general camera views - allowing a player to look off to the horizon, not like Dungeon Siege which cheated by locking the camera to a (mostly) overhead view. Every game i have played has introduced LOD transitions that are very obvious - but I think people just accept them as being necessary. Given that Skyrim has to run on console hardware too, I don't have extremely high expectations.

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I thought FO3 already did it a lot better. There was still the occasional texture and mob pop-in, but nothing like in Oblivion, where it was really bad, I agree. It also didn' have the problem eith but-ugly distance landscape texture that Oblivion had.

Yes the LOD is really bad in Oblivion and especially in FO:NV where parts of the mountains is often flickering really bad until you get up close. It seems like almost everything got worse with FO:NV, in FO3 i didn't notice the cell loading at all, in FO:NV it's almost as bad as in Morrowind at times.

"but the team has assured that all three consoles will be as graphically similar as possible"

"I can assure you the PC version looks even way better." - Todd @ Quakecon.. and i didnt know PC is a "console".. Overall a quite sloppy written article imo..

vurt said:

It seems like almost everything got worse with FO:NV, in FO3 i didn't notice the cell loading at all, in FO:NV it's almost as bad as in Morrowind at times.

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Well, thats Obsidian for ya, horrible developers! Every franchise they touch gets ruined...

vurt said:

Yes the LOD is really bad in Oblivion and especially in FO:NV where parts of the mountains is often flickering really bad until you get up close. It seems like almost everything got worse with FO:NV, in FO3 i didn't notice the cell loading at all, in FO:NV it's almost as bad as in Morrowind at times.

"but the team has assured that all three consoles will be as graphically similar as possible"

"I can assure you the PC version looks even way better." - Todd @ Quakecon.. and i didnt know PC is a "console".. Overall a quite sloppy written article imo..

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About the flickering distant textures, this is partially due to the decreased "fneardistance" setting in the .ini files.

I accidentally noticed Oblivion showing the exact same behaviour if I messed with that setting. It has to do with what the camera renders based on the center of the player character. In Oblivion, the default is "10" - and I suppose it's similar in Fallout 3. In New Vegas it's "5". Not sure why, but I think it has to do with the rendering of "Gun Sights" and stuff like that.

I find that if you set it to "9", it's the optimal compromise between texture flickering and the correct drawing of models.

It won't go away entirely, but it's much better with that setting. If you go beyond 9 - you can improve it - but then things like the Pip-Boy model won't draw correctly.

I searched the net forever for a fix, and I've yet to find one. So I had to go and figure this out myself.

I'm hoping Skyrim will behave in a better way.

As for FO:NV - I find the environment very bland, and after ~30-40 hours of playing and exploring - I've found only very few interesting and stimulating locations.

FO3 had a much more interesting atmosphere and was pretty full of unique stuff in comparison. Too bad about the writing and the pushover difficulty setting.

Obsidian seem almost incompetent when it comes to basic polish and coding.

I'm not sure why FO:NV is so praised compared to FO3, but I assume it has to do with C&C - which seems to be what most RPG fans find one of the most important aspects of any RPG. Personally, I think it's great with strong C&C - but I'll take an interesting and immersive world in a technically stable title instead any day of the week - so long as the basic gameplay works well. The writing is much stronger too, that's for sure, but the actual story and its characters are, so far, not very engaging.

Maybe it gets better after reaching New Vegas?

DArtagnan, that's really helpful, thanks. I messed around in the .ini for a really long time looking to solve that problem.. I'll try changing the fneardistance value to 9.

I agree that the environment is bland.. i created this mod to make the landscape look a bit more varied and interesting.

I think i played through FO3 in like a week, played it constantly.. i have a much harder time finishing FO:NV i have to say, could be that it's more of the same, but i've also felt an urge to reinstall FO3 instead heh

vurt said:

DArtagnan, that's really helpful, thanks. I messed around in the .ini for a really long time looking to solve that problem.. I'll try changing the fneardistance value to 9.

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It's one of the .ini files in the documents… folder. Better to change them all, to be sure.

I agree that the environment is bland.. i created this mod to make the landscape look a bit more varied and interesting.

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I'm already using that with "Fertile Wasteland" - and it really does make a significant difference. Thanks for making it

The size of the trees/vegetation does make for some severe pop-in at times, but it's a compromise I'm glad to make.

Talking about technical improvemenets I wonder in which Elder Srcolls game we will be able to see into buildings through windows and vice versa

Khalus said:

Well, thats Obsidian for ya, horrible developers! Every franchise they touch gets ruined…

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Hum, you're talking about Bethesda mate.

There are mods for Oblivion that let you see in and out of the windows of buildings.

EDIT: Actually I'm not sure about the looking into the buildings but there are 2 mods that let you look outside from in a building.

Morbus: Obsidian developed Fallout: New Vegas.

I have not played many game developed by Obsidian but from what I heave been hearing, it seems that they are good at RPG side of the games but not good at the technical programming side.

lostforever said:

I have not played many game developed by Obsidian but from what I heave been hearing, it seems that they are good at RPG side of the games but not good at the technical programming side.

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Its about 50/50 you never know what your going to get but its not as bad as some exaggerate.

DArtagnan said:

FO3 had a much more interesting atmosphere and was pretty full of unique stuff in comparison. Too bad about the writing and the pushover difficulty setting.

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Yes. Good news is that there are mods that fix its lack of difficulty and add in more RPG. FO3 is full of atmosphere and rich in exploration. I also recently had the urge to reinstall it and am enjoying it much more this time with fook2, mmm, weather mods, etc..

I'll try Vurt's NV mod next time. For me, NV was bland and even poorly executed at times. They needed another year or two to polish it or something.

edit: for me, it looks like Skyrim is a day1 purchase for me. Can't see how I can go wrong doing that. I just wish Bethesda was better about ongoing patch support. They abandon their games.

Don't know if this has been posted.. 3 part demo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xwboyafbwc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7WohnlLEQo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kt7IeycKJKQ

edit: rain still has no collision it seems since it rains through roofs (like in Morrowind and Oblivion). Couldnt see any proof of that dynamic snow they've been talking about, really interested in how that looks, if it's even in..

vurt said:

edit: rain still has no collision it seems since it rains through roofs (like in Morrowind and Oblivion). Couldnt see any proof of that dynamic snow they've been talking about, really interested in how that looks, if it's even in..

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Good catch.

I always hated that in the other games, and I'm surprised they haven't fixed it yet.

Beyond that though, to be fair, that demo is the most visually impressive thing I've seen on the Xbox 360. By far.

Then again, Bethesda (and especially Howard) were always masters of hype and they excel at showing only the very best things from their games. It's almost like they have the hype-buildup down to a science.

They did it with Morrowind and Oblivion as well, including the infamous "dynamic shadows" thing in Oblivion.

It will be interesting to see how the real game compares to these demonstrations.

That said, gotta say that I loved that little puzzle bit in the video, and I'm kinda pissed it was spoiled

It's exactly the kind of thing the dungeons of Morrowind/Oblivion needed to make them interesting to explore.

Well, it was the code from the early alpha shown at E3. It could be that they've addressed the rain issue in the last few months. Let's hope. More exciting dungeons is always a good thing. The cynic in me says that the puzzle shown in the demo will be the only puzzle in the whole game

DArtagnan said:

I always hated that in the other games, and I'm surprised they haven't fixed it yet.

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Indeed. I will be quite disappointed if they have rain go through roofs in Skyrim. I'm kind of fussy about these things.

Beyond that though, to be fair, that demo is the most visually impressive thing I've seen on the Xbox 360. By far.

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What, really? I really like how it looks, but other people have called it crap. Hah, goes to show that you can't argue with taste. But I don't know if I agree with the best graphics EVARR comment. Mass Effect 2 and Final Fantasy XIII don't count? L.A. Noire looked kind of good...

Then again, Bethesda (and especially Howard) were always masters of hype and they excel at showing only the very best things from their games. It's almost like they have the hype-buildup down to a science.

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Because it is a science. Every company worth its salt has its people. You are being played! Yes, even you. They know about people like you that think they have it under control and pretend not to follow the hype. They have your number, too. They have us all under control.