Skyrim - GameInformer Tease Translated

A lot of this info sounds great but I'm not so interested in the plot. Dragons. Come on. Why does it always have to be dragons?

That was my point criticizing the "revolutionary plot". It took them 30 seconds to come up with that hero tag line. As long as its interesting and fun I'm in regardless.

Lemonhead said:

Dragons. Come on. Why does it always have to be dragons?

Click to expand...

Dragons are a symbol of raw power. I once wrote I see them as a symbol for maleness.

Unicorns, on the other hand are not. They are rather a symbol of poets & women. No raw power at all.

Personally, I'd like to see this once reversed. I love WTF moments.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Dragons are a symbol of raw power. I once wrote I see them as a symbol for maleness.

Unicorns, on the other hand are not. They are rather a symbol of poets & women. No raw power at all.

Personally, I'd like to see this once reversed. I love WTF moments.

Click to expand...

Thanks- I now know what the first mod I make will be; replacing the dragon models with a variety of unicorns. IF the plot ends up being so so I think the prospect of fighting an army of flying evil fire-breathing unicorns the size of small buildings will help boost my enjoyment of the game. The great thing is that the more amateurish and awful my models look the more I'll crack up when I see one of them swoop down out of the sky to burninate the countryside.

Oh that gives me another mod idea - replace the dragons with Trogdor.

You would think that the devs. from Bioware, Obsidian and Bethesda and that German team that made Divine Divinity II had a sort of secret meeting on which they all agreed: Dragons. Let's make a game, eh, games, about dragons....

No, seriously - they all seem to be inspired by eahc other. The plot for Skyrim looks, smells and feels like the plot for Dragon Age: Origins...

And yes, why does it always have to be rats....-eh- dragons...I mean...

Anyway, if they correct some of Oblivion's faults....it will indeed be a better game...

Skyrim plot was planned 10 years ago, when they were doing Morrowind:
- They are rolling with stuff written by somebody (Micheal Kirkbride) who left Bethesda while Morrowind was still in development.
- Oblivion have a lot of foreshadowing for the game as well: Blade saying they are going back to wait for the next Dragonborn, Martin's speech at the end, etc.
- Also, dragons in the Elder Scrolls have been seen before (Reguard Adventure and Battlespire, in the 90s) and Alduin, what he look like and what is purpose is, was known since Morrowind.


@aries100, you forgot ArenaNet with Guild Wars 2 and that German Team is called Larian studio.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

Dragons are a symbol of raw power. I once wrote I see them as a symbol for maleness.

Unicorns, on the other hand are not. They are rather a symbol of poets & women. No raw power at all.

Personally, I'd like to see this once reversed. I love WTF moments.

Click to expand...

I'm all for more unicorns in games. Less dragons. This browser game is all about unicorns: http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

Btw, I'd rather be average joe than "dragon born". Chosen one plots seem a bit fantasy 101.

Lemonhead said:

I'm all for more unicorns in games. Less dragons. This browser game is all about unicorns: http://games.adultswim.com/robot-unicorn-attack-twitchy-online-game.html

Btw, I'd rather be average joe than "dragon born". Chosen one plots seem a bit fantasy 101.

Click to expand...

You were a chosen one of sorts in Morrowind - but it was was a little non-standard in a way. It was presented more as though the roll of Nevarine was pre-ordained and not the particular person who would fill it. You just happened to be the first person capable of fulfilling it. If I remember correctly, Amalexia explains that you're not the literal reincarnation of Neverar but that you filled the same role - so you were sort of a historical reincarnation in a sense. That fit with you not having any past-life memories or magical powers or anything odd like that.

I just hope they balance it so that it actually takes a significant amount of time and effort to become powerful. I don't want to feel like a god half-way through the game.

Dhruin said:

I'd rather play an "everyman" than Dragon-born but it sounds OK otherwise.

Click to expand...

Actually this is the only thing OB did best, you play as a regular inmate.

I guess dragonborn means that you can be king .

I'm reservedly optimistic about this game. They're saying some things that sounds good, but so did the things they said about Oblivion and that game sucked big time. I understand a few of you love that game to death, but I'm on team Morrowind .

I'll just have to wait and see if what they are saying matches up to what they release.

As far as dragons are concerned well I like them. The more dragons the better. I just wish we didn't have to play as a descendant of one that killed them. I would have chosen a descendant of one that helped them. Poor dragons always get the short end of the stick almost as much as rats. Stupid heroes always killing off the poor rats to get experience. We need some rats to kill off those dang heroes.

Here are some more concise summaries of some of the leaked details. They had time to actually read the article rather than borrow it from a friend and type up details from memory (sorry about that). They also touched on some things I did not.


First Elder Scrols Skyrim Details (from Formerly Scrawl)

Gameplay Details Leaked (from The Escapist)

From the above articles:

On Level-Scaling

"more "like Fallout 3." Fallout 3's system only boosts the levels of enemies in critical areas when players first enter, and keeps them that way for the rest of the game."
- The Escapist

Dual Weilding

"Any weapon or spell can now be assigned to each hand. Want a shield in your left and a sword in your right? Go ahead. How about a dagger in your right and a fireball in your left? How about a shield in your right and a heal spell in your left, to bore enemies to death? Apparently, anything is possible."
- The Escapist

A Few Other New Features

"a weapon creation system, an NPC dueling system, improved graphics, better character creation options, finishing moves, the ability to sprint"
- The Escapist

On Character Models

"Faces are heavily improved. They don’t look like crap, anymore." (ED: Finally)
- Formerly Scrawl

On The Character System

"Every time a player levels, new perks (a la Fallout 3) are unlocked."
- Formerly Scrawl

Bethesda has nixed classes in favor of a system that is more open to allow for either specialization or a broad use of everything. There are 18 total skills, down from 21 in Oblivion. Using any skill levels both it and the player at the same rate. (ED: This is poorly worded -you do not select a set of preferred skills at the beginning which will increase more quickly than the others and any skill can contribute to your levelling process)
- The Escapist

The number of skills has been reduced again?

You do get perks though which would allow far more customization of your character then having 21 or 27 skills would allow and since there are over 50 levels that means you get to select over 50 perks to customize your character. Someone commented in the official forums about being so specialized in Fallout 3 that they were only effective in fighting with Shotguns because of perks.

aries100 said:

and that German team that made Divine Divinity II

Click to expand...

It's Belgium, Belgium, Belgium ! How often is it needed to hammer this into the heads of the people ?

JDR13 said:

The number of skills has been reduced again?

Click to expand...

The way I heard it was that they're using the perks to establish distinct characters more than skills.

For example there's supposedly a 1-handed weapons skill now (that's what I read, haven't seen anything official about it) that covers all those weapons, but you can use your perks to focus on improving your ability with a specific weapon type.

Whether that'll actually work out well or not will probably depend on the variety and amount of perks available. Hopefully it won't be possible to choose all the useful ones in a single character.

JDR13 said:

The number of skills has been reduced again?

Click to expand...

At least 4 skills were merged/replaced/removed that we know of.

• We got Enchanting back from Morrowind.
• Mysticism was removed, its 5-6 spell effects were given to other schools. Oblivion foretold that one, because the Absorb effects had already been moved to Restoration.
• Also there is a new skill that start by SMI, which most people think is Smiting (fit with the forging stuff and would replace Armorer from Oblivion).

For the lost, people mostly think of merging Athletics/Acrobatics and Speechcraft/Mercantile. Considering the way they were used in Oblivion, these would make sense. Also, I don't think hand-to-hand is coming back (my skill list actually stand at 17). Some also believe that the light armor and heavy armor skills are gone or replaced by one single skill (doesn't really make sense to me, unless you need to select a perk to be able to use heavy armor). Oh and some think that blade and blunt are not 1-handed and 2-handed weapons (from the way something is worded in the mag).

Perks are really where the thing change, but it really depends what they do with them. Right now, the skills screen seems to indicate that perks are actually trees (skills are constellation and the stars are the perks). So we could have a single "Armor" skill, but to wear heavy you will need to select the perks for it and after that you have more perks for the specific armor types. Weapons skills have specific perks per weapons, this one is confirmed, one example was: Dagger doing more damage while sneaking.

No idea if there is not-skill associated perks, considering there is apparently only the skills list for character screen, probably not, because there is no places to list these perk in it (although, I suspect GI is inaccurate, there is 85 spell effects in the game, not 85 spells. What else didn't they understand correctly?).

Also, big discussion about the existence of Attributes, they aren't mentioned in the mag so some thing they are gone. Nothing is confirmed about this one, but to me it make no sense. I can understand removing the control from the player by having them increase by using skills and not at level up (like the GCD and nGCD mods for Morrowind and Oblivion), but removing them entirely force them to rethink/remove: diseases, alchemy ingredients and a lots of spell effects. Also, this mean that monsters/NPCs have no attributes beside health and attack damage, reducing spells effect selection again. Yet, Skyrim have more spell effects then Oblivion (85 vs 81).

I just thought it amusing that Larian Studios in Belgium (sorry about calling them Germans ), Bethesda and Bioware all releases game with dragons in them. That's why I made the comment about these guys talking to each other - or at least being inspired by each other...

Screw the "perks" it will be a TES game , bring back climbing , medium armor & spears.

You are the dragonborn, the chosen one of legend, the only one who can prevent the apocalypse!

Now go pick pockets for the thieves' guild, toad.

Jokes aside the Morrowind formula had a lot of promise, improving on that would put it leagues ahead of what Bio is churning out. After oblivion and fo3 however I don't really hope for much as I expect bad writing, soul-less quests and setting and a much smaller game than its predecessors.