Skyrim - Dragon Born and 7 Minutes of Footage @ IGN

Irian said:

I remember the Radiant AI hype… Wow, THAT was a disappointment.

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im waiting for "it was causing too much unexpected behaviour so we had to tone it down"

spiraling69 said:

It didn't look like they moved from what I saw in the various vids, but maybe it's because of an early build…

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I wonder how much early this build and how many features are already frozen.

They added a new level of awareness in their AI, ("must be some rats") when NPCs face unusual situations with limited information on possible causes, allowing the PC to draw advantage from this cheap warning to improve their stealth.

At displayed build time, this leads to bizarre situations as NPCs have no discrimination over causes.

In footage, it shows an archer sniping a group of two NPCs. With one shot, the second raises to the"must be rats" level of awareness, allowing the PC to snipe it quietly.

So far, NPCs are not yet able to discriminate between critical alert signs like a dead arrow shot NPC before their eyes and some distant, unidentified sound in the background.

I show no concern about graphics, whether the game looks good or not as it is something the modding communauty can improve.

But these features will be trickier for a communauty to correct as it operates on a different level of implementation if the developper does not come with the needed associated AI additional packages.

Agreed with the others on the writing. Populating the word with colorful npcs that have unique and interesting things to say has always been an area where Bethesda drops the ball and goes the generic cookie cutter route instead.

I thought the overall stories in Daggerfall and Morrowind were somewhat interesting, I found the one in Oblivion to be exceedingly weak. I've literally played 8 bit NES games with better stories. The quests associated with it were also some of the absolute most dull and repetitive that I have ever played. How many times did we really need to hop through an Oblivion gate with a similar barren landscape and fight the same generic demons?

It's funny because much of the background lore and many of the in game books are witty, funny, interesting, full of intrigue etc. If only they could apply that level of writing to the actual game. Sadly, that has yet to happen and I don't have high hopes for it here either. I think it will be the usual Bethesda beautiful facade with no substance behind it.

I will remain optymisticly cautious, even if i might like what i saw, the experience from past few years has teached me one thing ... Dont overHype your self or you will end with another DA 2 on the shelf

Thou i will admit i always wanted Beth guys to put some Freaking effort into the main plot ... atleast once ... hope Skyrim will be the one

I'd say that writing was it hasn't been one of Bethesda's strengths for a while, if it ever even was. That was never what I personally found attractive with their games anyway. I'd be perfectly happy with a rich and detailed 'hiking simulation' as some call Morrowind.

I'll just hope that things like that spell that draws a path of light to your next objective is a feature added for when we feel impatient, because if it's a sign that the world is more of a random mess than Oblivion was that even a compass pointing to that objective's general direction doesn't work, then I'm probably not going to get what I wish at all.

holeraw said:

I'll just hope that things like that spell that draws a path of light to your next objective is a feature added for when we feel impatient, because if it's a sign that the world is more of a random mess than Oblivion was that even a compass pointing to that objective's general direction doesn't work, then I'm probably not going to get what I wish at all.

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Daggerfall had random quests. They actually made a big point with Morrowind how all the quests were unique and individually created by a person, not generated by a computer. It'd be interesting if they reversed on that and went back to random but I have my doubts that they could pull it off and not have it feel completely generic like it did in Daggerfall.

I would not hold my breath on them improving their writing.
Never been a priority either for them or their core audience it seems...

Personally I would be satisfied with Morrowind level of writing (serviceable
to decent) if the rest of the experience is as fun as it was back then.

There are other games with a strong story focus to satisfy me out there...

You gotta wonder though what could a company with their resources do
if they actually gave a toss for that aspect of their games...

That video raises my level of interest!

I wonder if the log over the path would have knocked the rider off his horse? Stuff like that would impress me, because the strength is the world design, and allowing for better physics simulation would leverage the game's strength. Although the dropped giant looked rather wooden.

Really like being to cast spells with one hand, while having a weapon in the other.

The menus look nice, but even Morrowind had inventory filters. The window looked awfully limited in scope. Worried about tedious scrolls through long menus, without fast coarse scrolls.

its sad really,
in the end you don't remember how fun it was to play, you only have that ending feeling given by the writing, with ups and downs, twists and turns all in an intelligent and intricate mess. I never recommend games with gameplay alone to any of my friends (that is if i dont consider the writing in some a turn off)

I wonder, why doesn't any of those videos show dialogs? Shopping? Making of decisions? Character development (beyond "learning shouts")?
Etcetera etcetera. Am I first to say this? From the looks of it, this is no much of an RPG.

How hard is it actually to have a decent story? All you need to do is replace the one man who made up the story with somone who has atleast basic skills required for it?

Daddy32 said:

I wonder, why doesn't any of those videos show dialogs? Shopping? Making of decisions? Character development (beyond "learning shouts")?
Etcetera etcetera. Am I first to say this? From the looks of it, this is no much of an RPG.

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Thats secondary in ES. The series is mainly a medieval shooter. The impression I got from playing through the first game was fantasy doom in sandbox with som stuff like dialogs and shopping thrown in as fluff. And i dont think it has changed much after that.

I'm surprised to see so much complaining about the writing, and not one word about the voice acting.

The voice acting was beyond terrible in Oblivion, and even worse in Fallout 3. It completely broke the immersion for me in some instances. More so than the writing ever did.

Daddy32 said:

I wonder, why doesn't any of those videos show dialogs? Shopping? Making of decisions? Character development (beyond "learning shouts")?
Etcetera etcetera. Am I first to say this? From the looks of it, this is no much of an RPG.

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There is a big of dialogs in one of the other video preview, that video also show the skill window and a couple of perks.

Story is very important, especially when all the excitment from battles and magic wears of. I did not play Fallout 3, but Obsidian did an excellent job in Fallout: New Vegas which I am enjoying. The story, factions, and options in New Vegas coupled with the excellent and detailed engine of Fallout 3 produced wonderful results. So maybe later Obsidian can take the Skyrim engine and produce a nice game.

JDR13 said:

I'm surprised to see so much complaining about the writing, and not one word about the voice acting.

The voice acting was beyond terrible in Oblivion, and even worse in Fallout 3. It completely broke the immersion for me in some instances. More so than the writing ever did.

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For me, voice acting can be important, but the overall writing takes far greater precedence. Take, for example, the introduction and epilogues in Fallout 3: they were so badly written that I cycled between boredom and annoyance. How many times can you seriously repeat "war, war never changes" and not consider it cliche'? Even the voice acting talent of Ron Perlman couldn't salvage that writing from the annals of the mundane.

looks interesting - hopefully the PC graphics will be better, this environments look a bit dull. I also hope that more gameplay/mechanics details wil be forthcoming, rather than just eye candy. I still have high hopes for this, despite the streamlining.