Dragonflies and salmon and birds, oh my!

One of the first things I noticed when I emerged into the open world of Skyrim was a fox running away through the forest. As I made my way down towards a river, I noticed a giant deer grazing peacefully on the other side. Once I got down to the river I got an even bigger surprise when I saw lots of tiny dragonflies skimming the surface. A bit further on I saw a low waterfall with salmon jumping upstream. Looking up, I could see a big hawklike bird soaring far overhead.

A bit more playing showed me more fish swimming in the river, butterflies, and some kind of huge firefly that I originally thought might be a fairy. At first I thought these were just graphic effects, but then I realized I could harvest the butterflies, which I actually felt bad about afterwards.

These are just tiny little touches, but really add to the feeling of a real world. I'm hoping there's more stuff like that out there waiting to be found. Anyone else found something small, possibly completely non-functional, that just adds to the immersion?

I'm really digging on those little touches too, I like the swirls of frosty air you see off in the distance, and children in the town! There was a mod for morrowind that added kids - I never got it to work but thought it was a good idea immersion-wise.

Originally Posted by badmofo
and children in the town!

Pity they all have the same face though.

As for the little touches, this, for example:


Or a bandit cave with a dead mammoth inside and a big spiky trap outside - a great way to tell some backstory via level design.

And yeah, being able to catch those little creatures is a neat feature.

I found a random blood trail in the woods around a trap and followed it for a good 500 feet to a dead moose. That was neat. Little touches like that are why Bethesda are the best at making virtual worlds.

And this time the game is good too!

An awesome thing I saw was snow blowing off a ridge above me as I climbed up. having seen that often enough in real life I was very impressed with how good it looked.

And in general there are a lot of really nice little touches all over the place.

Just running around gathering alchemical components is like a religious experience. It's so fun to see a butterfly and catch him for their wings, even if you do feel bad afterwords, but it's all in the name of science. Catching fish was also a lot of fun. I love the alchemy system in this game.

I think they stole catching butterflies from the Chronicles of Riddick.

Catching fish is new, though.

There are like a couple of 100ndred fishing games out there…… and you've been able to do that in ultima for example…..

Ultima 7 had it? I wondered about the fishing pole. Any other RPGs?

Ultima Underworld - both of them. You could construct a fishing pole and then do it. Arx Fatalis is another. It's nothing new.

Ultima Underworld.

… Fable.

All games I haven't played.

I saw something that looked like a big ball of sticks way up in a tree and wondered what it was. Shot an arrow at it and a bird flew out!

LOL! How about eggs?

Not sure about eggs, when someone produces a tree climbing mod I'll nick up and have a look.

There are bird eggs that you can find in buildings.

I have quite a few spider eggs.

Can you hatch eggs somehow? That would be cool!

Originally Posted by Pessimeister
Ultima Underworld - both of them. You could construct a fishing pole and then do it. Arx Fatalis is another. It's nothing new.

The Legend of Zelda series has featured fishing and bug collecting for a long time as well.

I love the way they did it in Arx Fatalis though..