Skyrim - Unlocks Midnight

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
my vacation is planned, and I expect to be fully immersed when this game is out.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
Like Dart, I've got vacation set aside for Skyrim. I work Friday, 11-11, but I'm off the whole following week. Should be able to get a hundred hours in if I play my cards right.

I want to thank you guys in advance for being my own personal Beta testers.

Just wish I could have been an alpha tester too. W00t!

I'm looking forward to it. But I'm probably going to wait a little bit post-release. I tend to play games AFTER the hype is over, anyway. I may find some time around Christmas.

Unlock Shmunlock. Gimme Pre Load.

Damn, this Skyrim love is contagious.

I guess I'll spend the $50 Gamespot GC on a Skyrim pre-order. Beta-testing for only $10 isn't too bad….

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Damn, this Skyrim love is contagious.

I guess I'll spend the $50 Gamespot GC on a Skyrim pre-order. Beta-testing for only $10 isn't too bad….

Hah I wonder how much Gamestop's Deus Ex OnLive debacle will end up boosting Skyrim sales in the end. Almost everyone I know who got the giftcard out of that has told me they'll be buying Skyrim with it; a few of them weren't going to buy it at launch before.

I had told myself (and others here) that it would be one or the other, not both.

Then Gamestop, ah, Gamestop. What did I do to deserve you?

Originally Posted by RampantCoyote
I'm looking forward to it. But I'm probably going to wait a little bit post-release. I tend to play games AFTER the hype is over, anyway. I may find some time around Christmas.

Hey, you don't have time to play any games, you have a sequel to make!!

Meh, I am waiting for price to go down, patches and mods to be released and post first impressions to be posted. I'm not so psyched for this game as everyone else and, in fact, am rather suspicious so I can wait.

On the plus side, in spite of (or because of?) the hype, my expectations are pretty low so I will probably be pleased with it when I finally get it. Basically, I'm just hoping for something that's at least a little better and a lot less tedious than Oblivion so I imagine it will deliver.

Originally Posted by spiraling69
you are certainly entitled to your own opinion, but you guys are joking, right? I just don't see how it will be so bad that it would warrant a pass. If you are a true RPG fan then it should be an easy decision, and you would have pre-ordered it already.

waiting for a review from the peeps here before buying are for games like Legend of Grimrock and other indie games. Holding off on Skyrim? Really?

Nothing wrong with holding off on Skyrim.

Oblivion bored me to tears and installing all the mods with the mod managers was a bitch. To many conflicts and second party programs just to use them.

Hopefully they learned from fallout 3 and NV to make a better game.

I imagine anyone who truly hated Oblivion because of the combat or graphics is probably going to be disappointed with Skyrim.

The NPC interaction, art direction, MQ story, branching path quests, faction questlines, crafting system, etc., all seem to have been significantly improved, however.

Personally, excluding turn based strategy games, my all-time favorites are probably Oblivion and Fallout New Vegas. Considering the devs took Oblivion as their starting point and made a list of all the things they wanted to improve, I'm not expecting much more than "Oblivion taken to the next level." Which is just fine by me.

People are going to play this game on release….actually I mean beta test it?

It will be a MUCH better game in 6 months.

only about 3 million of us. The other 2-3 million will wait a while.

Originally Posted by Saxon1974
People are going to play this game on release….actually I mean beta test it?

It will be a MUCH better game in 6 months.

I've been waiting a long time for this game and come hell or high water, I'm starting my playthrough at 12:01am on release date.

In fact, if I were given an opportunity to play a horribly bug ridden version back in February, I would have leaped at the chance. It's going to be a massively fun game, regardless of bugs.

I think for people playing on Xbox or PS3, bugs can be very problematic, but for anyone playing on PC, if some cosmetic glitch makes you stuck in the terrain or something similar, you can use console command to get out of it.

That was my experience with Fallout New Vegas. I had a fantastic time with it and no crashes or anything serious; however, some PS3/Xbox gamers had to restart their game due to cosmetic glitches.

Hell, I've played Oblivion for several hundred hours with hundreds of mods installed and the game still crashes on me after all these years. It certainly can't be worse than that.

It's funny, years after it's release Oblivion has become the worst game ever. I spent many hours on that game, as well as the older TES games, if I get over 20 hours in a game (oblivion was close to 100 hours) I think I get my monies worth.

Skyrim will be great, really looking forward to this.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
Hell, I've played Oblivion for several hundred hours with hundreds of mods installed and the game still crashes on me after all these years. It certainly can't be worse than that.

And you're really surprised that you're still getting crashes?

Originally Posted by JDR13
And you're really surprised that you're still getting crashes?

No my point was that it obviously doesn't bother me that much as I'm still playing the game.

And I imagine the vanilla version of Skyrim will be a lot more stable than Oblivion modded into "Oblivion" - regardless of bugs.

It's simply not possible to QA test such a massive open world RPG the same way you can test Call of Duty, for example. Bethesda could have a team of 100 testing the game for 2 years and still not find everything.

It's one thing to thoroughly test a 5-10 hour game thousands of times, but it's something else entirely to do the same for a 300+ hour game. I'm sure they do as thorough of a job as they can, and certainly they have learned from previous games, so they are paying close attention to avoid things like the Oblivion A-Bomb bug, etc.

However, at some point you just have to put the game out there or you will never make your money back.

You just watch and see the hypocrisy in action when the reviews start coming out for this game. All the major gamesites will give this a 10 or a 9 at least. They will barely comment on the bugs that will definitely be in there. They'll say it's the best RPG EVAR!!!

Take the same kind of bugs for any other game and they'll rip it to pieces.

I do love me some good old double standards.

I know this game will be buggy. I accept that like I accept any RPG worth a damn is buggy on release. It's more complicated to make our kinds of games. It's just annoying to know how bought the gaming media is. The only opinions I care about are the ones from this website and a few select others.

Agreed skavenhorde, it's bound to happen. I'm surprised the hype isn't more extreme already.

Anyway, I'll be getting it as soon as possible, and I'll probably play through the main quest + major factions in about a week.

As with Oblivion, I most likely won't hunt down every side quest - TES quests just aren't that unique, and generally offer nothing to high level characters.

Hopefully, Skyrim has decent replay value, in which case it should be my main game until SW: TOR is out.

Well, they are pretty good when it comes to bugs. I've never had a Bethsoft game be so bad on release that I couldnt play and enjoy it. That's why theyre one of the only to escape my blanket "never again" mandate when it comes to pre-order. Them and Blizzard.