Skyrim - Hunting the Dark Brotherhood @ IGN

IGN is Hunting Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood in a spoiler-ladden articl about joining the underground faction in Bethsoft's upcoming game. There's a bold, "major spoilers" warning on the article itself, so I've only read this first paragraph:

Nightime. Alone. Snow crunching underboot, winter gnashing its teeth in swells through the thick air. I'm not hunting dragons or chasing butterflies, I'm tracking a guild of killers - Skyrim's Dark Brotherhood - across a continent.

Heading up through a set of frozen peaks, I smell blood. I pause the game for a moment and turn on The Sword's "Gods of the Earth". Much better.

Thanks, jhwisner!
More information.

The gist of it is that joining/tracking down the Dark Brotherhood has the potential to be a heck of a lot more satisfying and involved than merely committing what the game decides is murder. If that is too spoilery, say so and I'll add spoiler tags.

No, that's fine. And that sounds good. Getting a bit excited for Skyrim…

Originally Posted by Dhruin
No, that's fine. And that sounds good. Getting a bit excited for Skyrim…

How are you planning to buy it Dhruin? Steam are charging $90, and I'm not sure I'm willing to pay that.

Originally Posted by Badesumofu
How are you planning to buy it Dhruin? Steam are charging $90, and I'm not sure I'm willing to pay that.

I take it you are in Australia?

I would be cautious about imports of the PC version, considering the game will use Steamworks, which may or may not be region locked in some way.

I'm in Oz too and have decided to just dive in and pay the 90 bucks for the Steam version. I can't remember the last time I paid that much for a game but I think I've already gotten my money's worth after watching a few preview movies…

Wow that regional pricing is insane. Does direct2drive.com work for Australia? They have Skyrim on preorder for a reasonable price here (£34.95). The lowest ive seen it is on amazon.co.uk for £28.

D2D usually doesn't work for Oz.

Yeah, I'm in Australia. $90 is pretty crazy. I would expect there's a good chance JB Hi Fi will have it for less. Otherwise I might wait for a Steam sale, or look into whether importing would work. Bethesda gouging us like this almost makes me consider pirating it. Almost, but not quite.

you could get it from amazon for $75 to $85 depending on how long you want to wait to have it shipped. also you'd get the physical copy of the map that way. also this is the 2nd game i've ordered from amazon that gave $10 pre-ordered bonuses to console versions of the game but not the pc version. which considering there all $60 makes the pc version the most expensive? regardless, just like with Rage which was the other game, i emailed them explaining this "problem" and although they said i didn't qualify they "made an exception" and gave me the $10 promotional credit straightaway. other folks may want to try this as well if you were planing on getting the physical version as this makes it the cheapest and here in the US you can get $1.00 release day shipping—sweet.

What's silly is that I see a bunch of Australian websites offering UK/EU import copies for 55-60 AUD. I wonder if it will actually work or if they're just screwing people.

Was curious so I asked both Bethesda and Steam customer service "if the copy I pre-ordered in the UK will be able to be activated when I'm at university abroad in Australia" a few hours ago. I'll post whatever they say if/when I hear back from them.

Those aussies can afford it, their economy is booming.

If you can wait until late December, there will probably be a pretty amazing Quakecon package deal on Steam including Skyrim, RAGE, Fallout New Vegas + all DLC, Oblivion GOTY, Morrowind GOTY, and about 20 other games from id and Bethesda

i would imagine a quakecon package would be probably be during quakecon which is usually in the summer
not to mention there is no way you're going to see skyrim for anywhere under $35 to $40 even during a steam sale this year. it took new vegas close to 6 months before it broke the $30 price range i believe…

Originally Posted by CountChocula
If you can wait until late December, there will probably be a pretty amazing Quakecon package deal on Steam including Skyrim, RAGE, Fallout New Vegas + all DLC, Oblivion GOTY, Morrowind GOTY, and about 20 other games from id and Bethesda

Originally Posted by curious
i would imagine a quakecon package would be probably be during quakecon which is usually in the summer
not to mention there is no way you're going to see skyrim for anywhere under $35 to $40 even during a steam sale this year. it took new vegas close to 6 months before it broke the $30 price range i believe…

Scratch what I said previously - apparently I fail at reading. They did already do a quakecon package deal this year and there was a tie-in with Skyrim ($20 off the package if you purchased Skyrim or Rage). So yeah every Bethsoft/iD game on steam, including New Vegas, for 55.99 if you ordered it with a Skyrim pre-order. Wouldn't have saved you any money on Skyrim, but that would be a good deal for people who didn't already own a lot of those games.

Unfortunately it looks like that was just August 4th-8th.

http://store.steampowered.com/news/5990/

http://finalbossfight.co.uk/index.ph…ontent-a49-99/

Originally Posted by Badesumofu
How are you planning to buy it Dhruin? Steam are charging $90, and I'm not sure I'm willing to pay that.

I preordered from Steam a while back, anyway. I use Steam a lot but I don't usually support regional pricing. Anyway, I hadn't bought anything for a while, so I decided to treat myself.

I'd understand not buying from Steam but I prefer it and it's a Steamworks title, so what the hell…

If you don't mind waiting, check out Dungeon Crawl, who sell imports.

http://www.dungeoncrawl.com.au/p-359…skyrim-pc.aspx

Yeah, I shelled out $90 for Dark Souls as treat for myself. I don't mind that, especially because I've easily gotten more than twice the value from that game that I would from most of the $40/$50 games I buy. Played nearly 70 hours so far, and still enjoying it more halfway into my new game + than I enjoy most games on the first play-through. Sorry to bring that game into this thread, but I am completely in love with it.

I expect I'd get a lot of hours out of Skyrim, but I can't help worry that it will be a let down in the ways Oblivion was. Fallout 3 restored my belief in Beth, but this is the sequel to Oblivion, not Fallout. I'm somewhat inclined to wait for impressions from places like here and QT3. It's a fait accompli that the reviews will be all 9s and 10s, although I'm sure they will all refer to the big problems with Oblivion, that they were oblivious to when they reviewed it.

If I see it for $80 in JB, I'll likely buy it. Or I might just get it on Steam. I am very pro-Steam for the most part, but it seems like more and more we are getting regional pricing.

I've found they sometimes (not in this case) don't set the regional pricing immediately - especially if no final release date has been set. A recent example is Batman: AC - they put it on at $49.95 and then it suddenly jumped to $89.95. If I see something I know I'm going to buy, I often jump in early just in case they screw with pricing.

I think Skyrim is a pretty safe bet. Even with the flaws, I enjoyed the Grey Fox and Dark Brotherhood story lines enough to make it worthwhile and with a few mods, it was pretty enjoyable for 40 hours or so for me.

I also they think (hope?) they learned a lot from Fallout 3. We'll see soon.

The Dark Brotherhood ??? Sega's Sonic The Hedgehog is suddenly within Skyrim ???

I'm hoping for some kind of necromantic guild this time around. They've hinted enough about it in the past. How about making it an official guild sorta like the Dark Brotherhood?

Out of curiosity, just how many guilds are there? It's been awhile since I played Oblivion, but I know about fighters, mages, dark brotherhood and there seemed to be one more…..There were the houses in Morrowind and the clerical guild, but did they have anything like that in Oblivion?