Skyrim - Review Roundup # 3

I think they've learned the lesson - first by pushing to Oblivion with lasers, then outsourcing New Vegas, and so now we got New Vegas without lasers. ;)
We got a great game. It's what Oblivion could have been. Should have been.

And I don't agree that TW2 and DX:HR stand no chance vs Skyrim. Each ot them is great in a different way. If any of these three RPGs makes GOTY it will be well deserved. And I bet noone will object. Except some trolls bored with the life itself. ;)

Hah, on rpgcodex they think it is worse then oblivion in every way:)
 
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ok rat, thanks to you and this quote, for the first time I am actually interested in this game.

with Morrowind and Oblivion they forgot to make an interesting game. If we have something here that's actually enjoyable while you play it then it might be worth taking a look at.

Glad to be of service. :) I would highly recommend playing as a mage. The magic system is redone and duel wielding spells is a blast. It didn't sound that fun when reading about it, but I was wrong. I got so many different combos of spells I use that I need more hotkeys. Lots and lots of hotkeys!!!

My favorite combo for when I'm about to die is to have healing in one hand and flame in the other. I'll back away and hope I can kill it before I get killed. That doesn't always work though. I encountered a high level sabercat (I guess it was high level because the dang thing kept wiping the floor with me) on my way up to learn about the shouts. I had to get by him with of stealth, weakness to fire poison on my bow, flamedarts, ancestors trait (anything that comes near me burns) and summon familiar. I'd sneak as close as I could get to summon my familiar. It would take out my familiar in a few swings, but while it was busy with the familiar I'd shoot it with an arrow to make it weak against fire, summon another familiar, use ancestors trait and then blast the heck out with flamedart. That finally worked. I tried out different strategies before that and got killed every time. I tried shooting it with the bow first, but that just made him angry. I had to give him something other than me to take his aggression out on :)

That was the toughest fight I've had so far, including dragons. In that fight I didn't have my companion because she dropped off the face of the cliff or something (she always reappears later).

The companion is making the game a little too easy. She has a ton of health and hardly ever runs away. I know without her I wouldn't have been able to take on some trolls and would have had to come back to kill them later when I was more powerful. Right now I give her my best two handed weapon, but I'm thinking I should just give her a bow so that she stays out of melee and doesn't ruin the game for me. If I didn't need a packmule I would have gotten rid of her a long time ago.

The perk system is interesting as well and not as silly as I first thought. My leveling up has slowed way the heck down now that my skill levels are getting into the late 20s early 30s (with the exception of Destruction which is 39). I'm only level 16 and have played at least 24 hours. The cool thing is that I'm still encountering low level enemies as well as high leveled ones. Like that sabercat battle I just described well after that I just encountered a few wolves and a low level icetroll (I'm guessing he's lowlevel because I burnt him to a crisp relatively quickly).
 
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standing near something = zooming in? Zloth claimed snow isnt "detailed stuff", that was my point; comparing an undetailed snow/rock texture with detailed one.

I'm not sure if you're blind or if your just being complete fanbois (i'm hoping it's the latter because it usually goes away).
 
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I'm not sure if you're blind or if your just being complete fanbois (i'm hoping it's the latter because it usually goes away).

Now now, remember we're not all graphics nerds. Maybe I'll agree that the textures suck in 10 years but for now the pretty pictures on my computer monitor are blowing my little mind.
 
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standing near something = zooming in? Zloth claimed snow isnt "detailed stuff", that was my point; comparing an undetailed snow/rock texture with detailed one.

I'm not sure if you're blind or if your just being complete fanbois (i'm hoping it's the latter because it usually goes away).

But overall the game looks good...sure a few textures are low rez here and there, but maybe it's a bit toolish to grab those and say aha! look at this. As a whole it looks very good, which at the end of the day for us RPG "fans" is what we want.
 
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standing near something = zooming in? Zloth claimed snow isnt "detailed stuff", that was my point; comparing an undetailed snow/rock texture with detailed one.

I'm not sure if you're blind or if your just being complete fanbois (i'm hoping it's the latter because it usually goes away).

Standing close to the wall or ground and staring right at it is not normal gameplay. Beyond that the texture pic you linked is zoomed in and cropped, it doesn't show the whole scene or the in-game experience.

The game looks amazing overall. Have I noticed some funky textures here and there? Sure. Are they the norm? Nah. Is design more important? Yep. How's the design? Fucking awesome.
 
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That is a mighty weak texture. Hopefully the low rez stuff scattered around can get modded into something nicer by the time I start playing. Maybe it will even be Vurt that fixes it!

(Though that picture is of snow bordering on a path, not just a snow field. Fresh snow-pack is pretty straight-up white.)
 
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The game looks amazing overall. Have I noticed some funky textures here and there? Sure. Are they the norm? Nah. Is design more important? Yep. How's the design? Fucking awesome.

^This!

I've seen those textures up close and couldn't care any less. When not staring right at it everything looks be-ee-aa-uuutiful.
 
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Standing close to the wall or ground and staring right at it is not normal gameplay. Beyond that the texture pic you linked is zoomed in and cropped, it doesn't show the whole scene or the in-game experience.

In his defense I will say that I noticed the fugly snow-on-wooden-planks textures. I recall the last time I noticed something like it was because either the normal or parallax mapping was overdone and that's what you got close-up.
 
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It's the best game of the year. But still suffers from some needless simplification (classes,attributes) and the UI. It also seems quite a bit smaller than Oblivion which is largely offset by the attention to detail, I know it's foolish but I'll keep on wishing for both.

Setting (see title) is great, hoping for Black Marsh next though. As for factions, will have to play more to get a good grip but the mage college storyline is, again, piss poor.
 
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Setting (see title) is great, hoping for Black Marsh next though. As for factions, will have to play more to get a good grip but the mage college storyline is, again, piss poor.

Really early to be talking about this but I would like Summerset Isle. I thought they were setting that up in Oblivion with all the talk about rebellions and such in Summerset. Ends up they were setting up the whole splitting from the empire thing. It would be really neat to have the next game there with the empire invading again trying to reunite the provinces.

Also it should look fairly alien, like Morrowind did.
 
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This game is so huge...I go do some quest, and on a way to it I get another 10 quests..while doing those I get another 20....
 
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Standing close to the wall or ground and staring right at it is not normal gameplay. Beyond that the texture pic you linked is zoomed in and cropped, it doesn't show the whole scene or the in-game experience.

The game looks amazing overall. Have I noticed some funky textures here and there? Sure. Are they the norm? Nah. Is design more important? Yep. How's the design? Fucking awesome.

The texture is not zoomed in at all, the picture is cropped though. I agree that the design itself is great, but would be a lot better with higher resolution, and you dont need to be nose to the wall to appreciate that.

I've found a few of the snow textures but not the one i showed in the screen which is the worst of the bunch.. Maybe we'll see that dynamic snow afterall because the snow is alpha layers on top of the cliffs etc, they must have made it like that beause of that feature. So maybe in a patch.
 
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I enjoyed both the Witcher2 and DX but Skyrim with its open world and variation just tapped into something those game did not.My game of the year.
 
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Another GoTY vote here too. Loved Deus Ex and Witcher 2 but the scope of this game is so vast that I can see myself playing this for many months. I honestly haven't had this much fun with a game in ages. Playing as a sniping ranger/rogue type is a joy and there's now some fun (and coin) to be had in just going "off-road" and hunting bear and deer.
 
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I've put in about 40 hours so far (unlocked early on Thursday via Aussie VPN) and it's easily my GOTY. When Skyrim was first announced I thought that TW2 and Deus Ex would be strong competition but after playing Skyrim there is no doubt about it. Don't get me wrong, TW2 and Deus Ex are both awesome games it's just that, for me, Skyrim is on another level entirely. But I'm a sucker for huge open world games that reward exploration.

I've had a couple of epic dragon battles high up in the mountains during blizzard/white-out conditions that will probably remain as some of my favorite gaming moments for quite some time. Nothing like fighting a giant blood dragon when you can't see the damn thing flying overhead due to the blowing snow.

Brilliant game.
 
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The falling snow is really nice, and the winds. Phenomenal. The actual snow and ice textures though, wow, those looks like 128x128 textures or something, really awful.

Has anyone seen that procedural / dynamic snow they were talking about, which was supposed to melt and actually attach to the surroundings?

I always thought it sounded exaggerated when they bragged about that feature + the fact they never showed it. Havent really been in the snowy areas much yet and when i've been in those areas i havent seen it.

I think I saw it in one place and it looked, well, off. I live in a snowy place and the snow on the ground looked just weird. It was snowing and the ground looked like it had some sort of crusty white thing floating on it. Hard to describe.

The pre-done snowy places look OK and the snow blowing off the cliffs and such looks awesome.
 
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Now, with Skyrim being played by so many people I wonder how people might look back at Oblivion with having Skyrim as the "new standard in TES games".
 
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