Skyrim Firsthand Review of Hands On Demo (Eurogamer)

• While waiting I saw one player break into a house and on one of the counters was a book, when the player approached the book it had the option "Press A to forge business numbers" - part of a quest?
• Sometimes, the last kill in a group may trigger a slo-mo kill cam, similar to the kill cam in Fallout where the camera focuses on the dying enemy.
• Whiterun is gorgeous, lots of fountains and pools.
• Akatosh and Talos have these tiny shrines found around the provice, they appear to be portable shrines or something that followers carry around with them.
• Found some Thalmor Soldiers - clad in some very cool black armour.
• '40 bounty added to Falkreath' from attacking Imerial Solider, 1000 for killing him.
• Underwater is a lot like Fallout, but worse to be honest. You know how in Fallout you can rest the camer directly on water level and see everything clear as day underwater, but if you go under there's a green tint? Exactly like that in this; although the shift is actually more noticeable, that 'clear as day' thing is visible every single time you dive, looks incredibly ugly - I just hope thats one thing they're workig on still. On the surface the water looks good, but the ripples are the exact same as in Fallout. At one point I also saw the 'shimmering' from the sun pop in on the water, as though it's a texture.
• Saw a cool takedown where Dovahkiin shield bashes someone, which puts them on their back foot, then impales them with the sword (Third person).
• I watched one play walk up to a deer in the wilderness, the player got out his axe and hacked at it's face; the deer did absolutely nothing and stood there until it died. Similarly another player cast a flamethrower on a chicken in Riverwood which did nothing until it flopped down dead.
• Physics are similar to Oblivion, on player was shooting arrows at a cart full of cabbages and each one went flying with each shot, easily flying higher than the surrounding buildings (Riverwood).
• Nords have something called Battlecry which makes enemies flee.
• Sleeping in a bed gives you rested, sleeping in an owned bed gives you well rested.
• Argonians have something called ____ Hist King (Sorry, terrible with names - it was something about the Hist King, it's a racial power like the Nords Battlecry) - it allows them to regenerate health quickly.
• Double handed flamethrower is beyond awesome, easily the most powerful thing in the demo - wiped out a trio of bandits in seconds.
• Stumbled upon a small funeral ceremony going on in a tiny, isolated graveyard in the woods. Was being held by a Priest of Arkay.
• No Dragons in the demo. Bethesda staff said it's because they would totally destroy any unexperienced player, and the only reason Todd could handle it was because he had a really souped up character.
• Some NPC's are just generic race NPC's - found a few called just 'Imperial' etc.
• Fighting a Necromancer; he summoned a magical shield that covered his front - while this shield was up he was still able to cast magic and attack.
• Rotating pillar puzzle in a cave, similar to the one later on in Uncharted 2.
• Mentioned in one load screen are Penitus Oculatos; they are the organization protecting the emperor, the Blades have long been disbanded.
• The Oblivion crisis is mentioned on a load screen, when mentioning Mehrunes Dagon; Daedric Prince of Destruction.
• When standing on a high up rock, I noticed that models in the distance are very low poly and the ground had very noticable repeated textures.
• Some screen tearing present.
• The demo actually locked up on me once, I was attacking some people in an inn; as I turned to get out the door, I was stuck in an infinite load loop and a Bethesda staff member had to reset the console.
• Some very random framerate drops, saw one player walking for like 20 seconds at what looked like 5fps.
• Demo was running at 1080p according one Beth staff member.
• Found a small cottage belonging to an old woman living alone in the middle of nowhere, I killed her and was able to sleep in her bed. Waking up gave me 'rested', a golden aura swirled around Dovahkiin upon awaking, like a cross between absorbing a dragon soul and something out of Dragon Ball Z. Sparkles too.
• There's a Bosmer Archer in Riverwood who will train you in Archery.
• Caves are a lot more complex, with multiple levels and paths. One I found had several bridges lowered with levers and the whole place was being patrolled by Bandits, perfectly set up for stealth or archery.
• Stealth is actually a lot better than seen in the demo when the NPC's are given a couple seconds to react. Two Bandits in a cave, one walking down the same pathway as me, facing away, and another walking along an adjacent catwalk above but further back. Shot at the one on the first floor, missed - the eye opened slightly, #1 shouted what was that, then #2 shouted down asking what the problem was? #2 ran down and #1 ran up, so they met eachother halfway and then stuck together, checking the place out and investigating the area the arrow came from with weapons drawn, the eye opening slightly.
• Mountains, sadly, DO guide the player. On my first play, I tried to turn around and head back past the start point and head North East - hit a bunch of unclimbable rocks and tried pushing around them. Before I knew it, I was entering Riverwood from the back on accident; totally unintentionally.
• Magic is bought as 'Spell Tome' books; each has a different model/cover (each school does at least, didn't see enough to know for sure).
• Potions have different bottles; Red = Health, Blue = Magicka, Green = Stamina. Posions are the same, but with a tattered white label around them; eg. Poision of damage fatigue is green for example. Not sure about any other types outside of hurt health, magicka and stamina.
• Alchemy Stations, Forges, Anvils and workbenches all play a canned animation of Dovahkiin working while a menu overlays with what you can make and what you need to make it. The animation of Dovahkiin working plays even if you're not making anything/have no ingredients. Quite dissapointing.
• Wood mill; take a log from the pile (same animation for Dovahkiin as the dude seen doing it in the demo), when its on the track, pull the lever to the right and it moves down the track to the now moving saw, which slices it in half and it falls off the back onto a log pile; not sure what you do with it from there, there was a 'Press A: Activate' on the cut log, but pressing it told me there is no log in the mill.
• As mentioned before; doors do animate when you open them - nice touch, looks a lot better.
• The load screens are cool, but long. One cool one featured a very muscular Orc who had no upper body armour whatsoever and was covered in blood, screaming at the screen (looked like a battlecry or something).
• Daedric sword seen in a load screen is bad ass.
• Giants are relatively hard to kill, high HP.
• Group of mercinaries/soldiers attacking a Giant. They had a cool name but I don't remember it is (sorry, I'm terrible with names. I just know it wasn't storm cloak). Offered me to join when I helped them kill the giant, "we'll take our offer elsewhere then…" she said as I pressed B and walked off without answering.
• Quite a lot of people found that Black Hand door.
• Broken Tusk Keep is an abandoned fort, housing Bandits - seems like some sort of safehouse.
• Paying the fine to guards immediately throws you into a load screen and you then appear in "Dragon____" (Another name I forgot, Dragonclaw Hall? something along those lines) - it seemed like a courthouse or something, grand, high ceilings and big pillars. Didn't get to check it out though as this happened when I was told time was up.
• Death is like fallout, you fall down dead in 3rd person slomo.
• Horses are super hard to control, seemed like the left and right stick control the direction? I couldn't keep it straight at all. Maybe I just need to get used to it, but it's definitely not like RDR where you can hop on and you're used to it pretty easily. The sprint button is gallop for the horse.
• Menus can be tricky to navigate without learning them first. Pressing B brings up the '4 point menu' - pressing left takes you to Magic, if you want to go back you can't press B as that just closes the whole menu and puts you back in game. To go back you have to press left again (the menu pushes right, on the left side, so pressing left is like pushing it back if that makes sense). This sounds relatively simple, but it's then entirely flipped for the other side, so it can be a bit clunky to navigate.
• The Map goes very slightly darker when used at night, not by too much though. The local map is just like in Oblivion but it's now white on black.
• Nightime actually felt safer than daytime, less animal enemies.
• Killed a shopkeeper, went into a nearby inn (sword was still drawn), everyone inside attacked me - calling me a murderer. So I guess it was less about the drawn sword, and more about the murder they somehow know about from next door.
• Weight slider affects muscle, not fat. Empty makes you super skinny, and full makes you quite stocky but very muscular.
• Some awful, murky textures. Some slow texture load in the inventory, eg; bringing up a shield and it didn't have the fully loaded texture, the texture didn't load until it had been equipped and in gameplay for a couple seconds.
• Didn't really have time to memorize perk trees, saw some of Destruction though and it was mostly stuff like "25% more damage from fire attacks", same for ice etc.
• Bought summon zombie spell tome from a shopkeeper in Riverwood, didn't have enough Magic to use it though. He recommended I go to the College of Winterhold to learn some better spells; put the marker on my map.
• The Swimming animation is the same as Fallout it seems.
• 'Studded' armour type at forge, along with Iron, Fur, Hide and Leather.
• Most common races were easily Orcs and Nord. Encountered no Argonians or Dunmer.
• Stamina runs out very fast when sprintng, slow to regenerate. It was quite annoying at first, but I guess it's why it needs to be levelled. I think Stamina is going to be a LOT more important this time around for those who want to travel on foot.
• No light rays ('god rays') through trees or anything like that.
• Slight delay when navigating perk tree - it's as though you have to wait for the 'camera' to follow where you want to go and need to drag it along. Moving around close by perks is pretty slow, but if you hold it down and want to move to 3 or 4 trees away its pretty fast and smooth. Good for moving across trees quickly, just not so good at moving within one tree.
• Random Encounter: Young woman lost in the woods near Riverwood, asked me to help her find her way/escort her back to Riverwood. I was running out of time though so I just whacked her in the face with my sword, I predict it was likely an ambush though as there's a Bandit camp pretty close by.
• Lockpicking works exactly like in Fallout 3, but is more difficult at lower levels. You can attempt any level lock at any level as in Oblivion, but it will be nigh on impossible. I tried an expert lock with a lockpicking skill of 1, even the slightest pressure snapped the pick so it was pretty impossible to find that 'sweet spot' unlike FO which gives you a lot of lenience to find the spot. Clearly this is a way of giving lower level players the option to try it, but making it hard enough that they'll still need to level the skill up - unlike oblivion where you could just be good at the minigame and cruise by.
• Boots of Quickfoot in the inventory
• Dogs can be 'talked to', they just bark and paint.
• Kids are just like Fallout, couldn't find any beast kids - only found the 2 Nord kids in Riverwood.
• People sometimes flee when you draw your sword.
• Some similar racial effects as past games, Nords resist frost for example. Argonians no longer have water breathing it seems though, which is explained by this next point…
• From what I could tell, there's no oxygen meter underwater. I was playing a Nord and was exporing underwater for a while (1 minute+) and suddenly realized there was no meter on screen and nothing had depleted (ie health, stamina). Dovahkiin gasped loudly when returning to the surface.
• Spriggans are cool now, they have these tree like roots growing all over them, forming some sort of armour - very weak to fire.
• Necromancers have some cool spells; one had something that looked like ice bullets and fired pretty rapidly, another had some red/blue/purple lighting attack.
• Relatively generous when you fall from height. Jumped from some rocks that would kill you in Oblivion, but did no damage here.
• Strange animal AI - saw someone attack an elk and it just fled and ran into the sea.
• Food all had weight so I guess this was a relatively recent build.
• The majority of finishing moves that I saw remain in first person.
• Khajiit and Argonians run/move exactly the same as human race. Great body models though, look great in person. The people queueing loved them, heard a lot of people commenting on how good they look.
• Could not enter Whiterun when in combat with the guards outside. Needed a key. I assume you can enter on peaceful terms and come and go as you please. or kill a guard for the key if not. Sort of like the Vegas strip in NV, except you don't need to pay for the peaceful option.
• Load screens mention the Oblivion crisis, lyrics to the song of the night mother, the emporor and the baldes and general lore and tidbits - not many gameplay tips.
• Compass is pretty bad, cluttered and unclear to use - icons are way too big.
• Quest journal is now in the pause menu, no longer in the menu accessed by O/B/Tab.
• Not sure how to check stats like bounty, days passed, people killed etc - or if you even can do so.
• Console can remap buttons as usual.
• Encountered a bug where every button made me dismount the horse.
• You can still climb by just tapping jump.
• Hold the shield up then press the attack button to shield bash.
• The button for the empty hand (with sword in the other) blocks with the sword.
• Third person was actually the preffered view for a lot of people - it's very easy to use and probably the best improvement of the game so far.
• Speech still locks you in, just not the whole zoomed up to their face thing from before. Press B and you 'unlock' - they continue to speak and you can move freely but you don't have any speech options on screen anymore, press on them again before they finish speaking and you lock back on and your options come back on screen.
• Player walks around with their hands cuffed in front of them in the prison.
• You level fast: Saw someone get 3/4 of the way through level 3 during the 15 min demo.
• Saw 3 different wood mills across peoples playthroughs, all looked identical.
• Feels more like Oblivion than Morrowind, but more 'weighty'
• Saw a really cool helmet on a load screen, made from either varying sized tusks, varying sized fangs/teeth or sharpened bone. I'm guessing 'bone helm' or something. It had one 'tusk' running down the centre, guarding the nose, then two tusks either side of the face, running along the cheek/jawline. The back of the helm was then made up from the tusks laid next to eachother. Coolest helm so far.
• Money can be found as single coins or as coin purses which you pick up (as opposed to searching them) - saw them come in variants of 10, 15, 20 and 25 septims.
• Tried rolling, don't think it's possible unless there's a perk I missed.
• Hanging Moss, Lavender and thistle are alchemy ingredients I found - works just like fallout, press on them, hear a 'picking' sound and the flowers are gone from the world and added to your inventory.
• Elven bow looks gorgeous.
• Found something classed as a ruin - was a dusty hollow dome like structure, looked like something you'd find in Vvardenfell - forest had grown around it and overgrown it entirely - inhabited by a dead adventurer a lone Spriggan.
• Saw a cool sword on a loading screen, looked like some sort of Scimitar.
• NPCs converse a lot more naturally now, with full animations and gestures.
• Some pretty bad pop-in - saw the water wheel in Riverwood load in completely when I stood next to it. Also shows that water isn't dynamic, it's animated around the wheel.

You level fast: Saw someone get 3/4 of the way through level 3 during the 15 min demo.

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JDR13 said:

Sounds mostly positive, and he was playing the Xbox 360 version.

Looks like I'll be using an XP reducing mod again. Why does Bethesda insist on making it so easy to level in their games?

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Fluent said:

Good information, thanks for posting.

I'm in a constant ebb and flow on my excitement for Skyrim. One part of me thinks they will have learned from all their mistakes with Oblivion and the game will feel closer to Morrowind, but another part of me thinks it's going to be Oblivion with snow. Oh well. I'm still excited for it and will be picking it up day one. These little bits of info get me excited again.

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VincentMcCool said:

Like the really rather great sammuthegreat, I spent my time at Eurogamer finding out all the juicy details about Skyrim I could, forsaking actually playing around with the game. Unlike sammuthegreat I completely ignored the gameplay elements and tried to see how much lore I could soak up in one day's worth of queuing and playing. Actually most of this information is from queuing, as the best source of info by far turns out to be the game's gorgeous loading screens, which each allow to you look at a 3D item, often a statue, with a tidbit of info to read.
My technique for trying to get a different Skyrim perspective was to get as far away from bloody Riverwood as possible, by sprinting to the horse carriage at nearby Windhelm, and fast traveling from city to city from there (a technique I heartily recommend if anyone gets the chance). Being a player mainly interested in the story and gameworld, I spent my time trying to investigate these two things. All info is as best I can remember it, much was only glimpsed from another's screen.If anyone else whose played Skyrim has any more lore they noticed, please post and I'll add it to the list. I'll clean up this list and add to it as I remember more information!

EDIT: Moved everything regarding the main quest to the spoiler'd quest section.


Lore/Politics

• There are Eight Divines again. Worship of Talos, the God of Man is now banned throughout the empire (!) I could hardly believe my eyes when I read this, is this confirmed elsewhere? The Divines are definitely Eight again now, regardless of the status of Talos.
• Akatosh is confirmed as being worshipped and usually depicted as a dragon The loading screen points out his dragon avatar is one he choose to use to at the end of the Oblivion Crisis
• The Empire only managed to end "The Great War" against the Aldmeri Dominion with the Concordat of White Gold
• Thalmor, agents of the Dominion are found throughout Skyrim. Some have been found with prisoners, one claims that they are merely there in peace, to help Skyrim through this period of transition (Possible foreshadowing of the main quest?)
• Windhelm now has a Dunmer population, who are looked down upon by some of its citizens
• All of the Daedric Princes seem to have returned, including Sheogorath. Some, such as Azura and Meridia are described as being not inherently evil.
• Bosmer are described as heralding from the eastern forests of Valenwood, suggesting they may have been pushed out of the Aldmeri Dominion, or at the very least there is some political divide in Valenwood.
• Each city in Skyrim has a cult of Arkay devoted to the respect of the dead
• Draugr are suggested to possibly have been Nords who betrayed mankind for the Dragons in a past war

Places

• Windhelm, the old capital of Skyrim mainly consists of ancient ruins, with newer buildings also present.
• The College of Winterhold is a huge castle that overlooks the town, resembling something between Sadrith Mora's Wolverine Hall and the Mage's tower from Dragon Age Origins. It has a strong university feel to it.
• Solitude, Skyrim's current capital is a large, regal castle town, something like a grander Ebonheart as seen in Morrowind. Below this level there is a port, and more buildings.
• Falkreath is made of similar buildings as found in Riverwood, and has no loading screens for entry. It is surrounded by deep forest.
• Dawnstar is, well, blizzardy. The weather was too much for me to be able to make out much, but it seemed to vaguely resemble a seaside Bruma.
• Whiterun I choose not to enter (as I knew enough others would), but from what I glimpsed over someone's shoulder it is somewhere between Bruma and a much prettier Chorol. It has a garden with channels of running water in it.
• The outskirts of Whiterun contains farms, a mill and a brewery, at least. It seems to flow more seamlessly into it's surroundings than any Oblivion city, actually looking like a fortified town.

Quests

Spoiler

• There is a spree of murders in Windhelm
• A guard is being publically executed for helping the Stormcloaks in Solitude
• The residents of Dawnstar are being plagued by bad dreams
• There is a rivarly between two female mages in the College of Winterhold
• A fellow called somethingorother Stormcloak (sic?) has killed the high-king of Skyrim right at the start of the game. This happens in Solitude, Skyrim's capital, and it appears he himself has a claim to the throne due to the ancient rights of the Nords.
• Some holds have already pledged their alliegence to the Stormcloaks. It is likely Windhelm will be their base of operations, Solitude that of the Imperials

Other Stuff

• Windmills now rotate the right way(!)
• Some cities, such as Solitude and Windhelm are walled, others such as Falkreath are not. Those that do seem to have more buildings outside their walls than in Oblivion.
• I received the impression that the stock accent for the Nords appears to be Scandinavian, though not all Nords have this accent. Wonder Woman is back.
• It seems the Thieves Guild is joined in the same way as in Oblivion.
• Some NPCs, such as Thalmor, are too powerful for a Level 1 player to take on.
• Mudcrabs are baaaaack, and offer Mudcrab Chitin when killed. Craftable Chitin Armour? Let's hope so.
• There is a Nord in Riverwood called Sven who I swear 50% of the players who saw him tried to kill. One guy spent his entire 15 minutes on this. Is he the new Fargoth or something?

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