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The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (Also Elder Scrolls General)

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« on: October 23, 2011, 06:53:18 am »

]I was finally picking up my copy of Oblivion to install it into my HDD, and while I was waiting for it to install, I figured I'd whittle away the time by making a topic on the soon-to-be newest game in the INCREDIBLE Elder Scrolls series. I had this game pre-ordered literally the day GameStop announced preorders for it.

TAKEN FROM THE ELDER SCROLLS V WIKI PAGE AND EDITED HEAVILY

"The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a role-playing video game being developed by Bethesda Game Studios and published by Bethesda Softworks. It is the fifth installment in The Elder Scrolls action role-playing video game series, following The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. It is scheduled to be released on November 11, 2011 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Skyrim's main story revolves around the player character's efforts to defeat a dragon god who is prophesied to destroy the world. Set two hundred years after Oblivion, the game takes place in the land of Skyrim in the midst of a civil war after the assassination of the king. The open world gameplay of the Elder Scrolls series is continued in Skyrim, as the player character can explore the land at will and ignore or postpone the main quest indefinitely.

Gameplay

The nonlinear gameplay traditional in the Elder Scrolls series is incorporated in Skyrim. The player can explore the open world of Skyrim on-foot or on horseback, and fast-travel to cities, towns and dungeons after they have been discovered. Quests are given to the player by non-player characters (NPCs) in the world, and through the Radiant Story system, the quests can be dynamically altered to accommodate for player actions which may influence the quest's characters and objectives. The Radiant Story system further directs the player's interaction with the world by setting unexplored dungeons as quest locations. When not completing quests, the player can interact with NPCs through conversation, and they may request favors or training in skills from the player. Some NPCs can become companions to the player to aid in combat, and some companions can be married. The player may choose to join factions, which are organized groups of NPCs such as the Dark Brotherhood, a band of assassins. Each of the factions have a headquarters, and they have their own quest paths which the player can progress through. The economy of cities and towns can be stimulated by completing jobs such as farming and mining, or harmed by sabotaging industrial buildings.

Character development is a primary element of Skyrim. At the beginning of the game, the player selects one of many human or anthropomorphic races, each of which has different natural abilities, and customizes their character's appearance. A perpetual objective for the player is to improve their character's skills, which are numerical representations of their ability in certain areas. There are eighteen skills divided evenly between the three schools of combat, magic and stealth, and training ten times in these skills results in the player's character leveling-up. Previous Elder Scrolls games made use of a class system to determine which skills would contribute to the character's leveling, but its removal in Skyrim allows for a preferred play-style to be developed naturally. When their character levels, the player may choose to select a skill-specific ability called a perk, or store perks for later use. Upon leveling fifty times, the player character can continue to level and earn perks, but the rate of leveling is slowed significantly. Bethesda developed the Creation Engine for Skyrim. It allows for dynamic snowfall, and the integration of dragons in gameplay.

The player's effectiveness in combat relies on the use of weapons and armor, which may be bought or created at forges, and magic, which may also be bought or unlocked. Weapons and magic are assigned to each hand, allowing for dual-wielding, and can be swapped out through a quick-access menu of favorite items. Shields can be used either to fend off enemy attacks and reduce the damage intake, or offensively through bashing attacks. Blunt, bladed and hacking weapons can be used in close combat and each have specific advantages and roles; as an example, the player can perform different finishing moves with each weapon. Magic can be used in the form of spells; each of the eighty-five spells have different functions, such as the regeneration of health, or the depleting of enemy health and stamina through frost spells.

The inclusion of dragons in Skyrim affords a major influence on both story and gameplay. During the game's development, a team was set aside to work on dragons and their interactions with the world. In the world, a variety of different dragons are encountered either alone or in small groups. They are randomly-generated, meaning their numbers are infinite, and they can attack cities and towns at any time. Not every dragon is hostile, and the player can interact with non-hostile dragons. Early in the game, the player character learns that they are Dragonborn, which allows the player to use powerful spells called dragon shouts. Twenty different dragon shouts can be discovered by visiting "dragon walls" in dungeons, and they are unlocked for use by absorbing the souls of slain dragons. A regeneration period limits the player's use of shouts in gameplay.

Plot

Skyrim is not a direct sequel to Oblivion, but a new chapter in the Elder Scrolls series, set 200 years after the events of Oblivion. In the preamble to Skyrim, the Empire began ceding territory to the Elven nations it once ruled, because there was no heir to the Emperor's throne. The Blades had no one to defend, and gradually died, were murdered, or secluded themselves from the rest of the world. After the king of Skyrim was assassinated, a civil war broke out amongst the native Nord race – the majority being those who wished for Skyrim to secede from the Empire, and the rest being those who wished for Skyrim to stay in the Empire.

As with previous Elder Scrolls games, Skyrim begins with the player character as an unknown prisoner, on the way to their own execution. The player eventually learns that Skyrim's civil war is last in a sequence of prophetic events foretold by the Elder Scrolls, which also foretell of the return of Alduin, the Nordic god of destruction. Taking the form of a gigantic dragon, Alduin is prophesied to consume the world with his servants, the Jills (a race of black dragons). The player character is the last Dovahkiin (Dragonborn), a dragon hunter anointed by the gods to help fend off the threat Alduin poses to Skyrim and Tamriel. Aiding the player is Esbern (voiced by Max von Sydow), one of the last Blades.

Development

Skyrim was conceptualized shortly after the release of Oblivion in 2006. To the team, it is considered a spiritual successor to their previous project Fallout 3, which was released in 2008, and Skyrim did not begin full production until after Fallout 3's release. The team of sixty people who worked on Oblivion grew to about one-hundred people by the time Skyrim entered full production. The game was directed by Todd Howard, who joined the studio in 1994 after the release of The Elder Scrolls: Arena, and who led the production of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, Oblivion and Fallout 3. When development for Skyrim commenced, the team wanted to start over and build their own technology for the game. The resulting game engine was dubbed the Creation Engine, which was based on the Gamebryo engine used for Oblivion and Fallout 3, and will be utilized in the production of at least one of Bethesda's projects beyond Skyrim. After Fallout 3's release, the team devised numerous design objectives to meet for Skyrim, and as Howard described, the team "got all those done and kept going". Had the team not have been able to meet their design goals with current hardware, they would have waited for the next generation and released Skyrim then, but, as Howard felt, the current technology did not hold the team back at all. The Creation Engine allowed for numerous improvements in graphical fidelity over Bethesda's previous efforts. For example, the draw distance renders farther than in previous Elder Scrolls games; Howard furnished an example where the player could stare at a small object such as a fork in detail, and then look up at a mountain and run to the top of it. Dynamic lighting affords shadows to be created by any structure or item in the game world, and while Bethesda utilized SpeedTree to produce flora in previous games, the Creation Engine was utilized for Skyrim and allowed for greater detail than what had been allowed for by SpeedTree. For example, with Bethesda's own technology, the team were able to give weight to the branches of trees which affected how the tree blew in wind; in addition, the technology afforded wind to affect the flow of water in channels such as rivers and streams. Because of the large presence of snow in Skyrim's game world, the technological upgrades were applied to weather effects and allowed for dynamical snow fall upon the terrain, instead of snow that was rendered as a textural effect in previous games.

The team made use of Havok's Behavior toolset for character animation, which allowed for a greater fluidity between the character's movements of walking, running and sprinting, and also increased the efficiency of the third-person camera option which had been criticized in Oblivion. The toolset allowed interactions between the player and NPCs to take place in real-time; in Oblivion, when the player went to interact with an NPC, time would freeze and the camera would zoom in on the NPC's face. In Skyrim, NPCs can move around and make body gestures while conversing with the player. Children are present in the game, and their presence is handled similarly as in Fallout 3 in that they cannot be harmed by the player in any way; depictions of violence involving children in video games is a controversial and largely-debated issue. Skyrim makes use of the Radiant AI artificial intelligence system that was created for Oblivion, and it has been updated to allow NPCs to "do what they want under extra parameters". The updated system allows for greater interaction between NPCs and their environments; NPCs can perform tasks such as farming, milling and mining in the game world, and will react with each other, such as by fighting over loot that the player has dropped. Within Skyrim's universe is the use of 'dragon language'. The alphabet was constructed to look aesthetically dragon-like, hence the use of claw-like markings.

The team set the game in the province of Skyrim, designing it by hand. While similar in size to Oblivion's game world Cyrodiil, the mountainous topography of the world inflates the game space and makes it more difficult to traverse than the relatively-flatter Cyrodiil. In designing Skyrim's world, the team opted for a different approach to what was taken with Oblivion; art director Matt Carofano considered the more surrealistic approach of Skyrim's world design as a departure from Oblivion's atypical representation of classic European fantasy lore. Howard expressed the team's desire to re-encapsulate the "wonder of discovery" of Morrowind's game world in Skyrim, as the return to the classic fantasy of Arena and The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall in Oblivion meant sacrificing a world with a unique culture. However, instead of placing the player in an alien world like Morrowind's, the team opted to "walk the line" between Morrowind's and Oblivion's art directions by juxtaposing a familiar fantasy setting of forests and mountains against a world with an unfamiliar culture. As a way of creating diversity in the world, the team divided the world into eight sectors, known as holds, and attempted to make each hold feel topographically unique from another; in addition, the team wanted to reflect the socioeconomic background of the NPCs by making some of the world's locations elaborate and wealthy and others poorer and lower-tech. Focus was put into making of each the game's ten races feel unique; Howard considered that the player's choosing of a race and gender at the beginning of the game was a more important decision than it had been in previous Elder Scrolls games because the culture of Skyrim's world was rooted in racism and sexism. However, he iterated that the player's decisions on race and gender did not have major game-affecting consequences as it simply added "flavor" in different NPCs dispositions towards the player, and was not meant as a way of locking players out of particular quests. Efforts to making Skyrim's world feel hand-crafted extended to the team abandoning the use of generated landscapes as they had done in Oblivion. While one team member was charged with designing dungeons in Oblivion, Skyrim's 150 dungeons were designed by a small team of eight people."


All in all, it looks like an amazing game, and I cannot wait for it. Discuss.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2013, 10:05:02 am by Steel » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2013, 10:24:16 pm »

Quite a bump, I know, but I also know that a few other members on the site play this now.

I've been thinking of reinstalling, since my current mod install is quite a mess and outdated.  But I just can't bear to lose my character.  I mean, he was the original incarnation for Korbis ;_;
« Last Edit: November 10, 2013, 12:56:33 am by Korbis » Report Spam   Logged

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« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2013, 04:58:38 am »

Can this be an Elder Scrolls General so I can discuss Morrowind?
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« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2013, 05:30:42 am »

Can this be an Elder Scrolls General so I can discuss Morrowind?
I'm fine with that, as I would also like to discuss Oblivion Tongue
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« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2013, 05:41:59 am »

I'm fine with that, as I would also like to discuss Oblivion Tongue
Morrowind introduced me to the series, changed the way I saw games because of it (mind you, crappy computer and was younger so didn't understand it as much), Oblivion really hit the nail on the head, absolutely loved the crap out of oblivion, then skyrim came and it was new, great graphics, new quests etc., but it was a lot more stale compared to oblivion, found the dungeons to be repetitive and quests to be way to similar, wasn't as much to do then in oblivion (imo) (as in variation of quests in oblivion was better, I think anyway). I enjoyed the dark brotherhood and thieves guild and what not a lot better then in skyrim, in skyrim it was, kill these 3 people, k done. In oblivion it was like kill this one person, which you'd stalk the person for a while, learn there routine, and plan an attack, even had sick attacks for it, you could knock the boar off the wall ontop of the person sitting on it and what not.

Just my two sense on the series from what I played.
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« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2013, 06:45:46 am »

Honestly, because of how Leveling up works in Oblivion, I can't stand to play it. It was my first Elder Scrolls game, but I just can't stomach it anymore just because I don't wanna have to deal with having to run away from everything I encounter and cast spells at them desperately just to survive.
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« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2013, 10:06:12 am »

Honestly, because of how Leveling up works in Oblivion, I can't stand to play it. It was my first Elder Scrolls game, but I just can't stomach it anymore just because I don't wanna have to deal with having to run away from everything I encounter and cast spells at them desperately just to survive.
I feel that way about Morrowind.
Everything is too different for me to play. The no voice acting is the worst, I hate reading paragraphs, ruins the immersion.

I played oblivion so much that I love it. I love the skill sets and stuff. I feel like skyrim it's too easy to be good at everything.

I find skyrim overall to be hilariously easy without mods.
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« Reply #7 on: November 10, 2013, 03:52:44 pm »

Morrowind with the Overhaul mod is very nice graphically and it sounds great, but the interface and combat is still ancient as hell...
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« Reply #8 on: November 10, 2013, 03:53:13 pm »

Morrowind with the Overhaul mod is very nice graphically and it sounds great, but the interface and combat is still ancient as hell...
^ exactly why I can't bare to play it.

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« Reply #9 on: November 10, 2013, 03:55:00 pm »

Morrowind with the Overhaul mod is very nice graphically and it sounds great, but the interface and combat is still ancient as hell...
I really liked the menu interface, but felt that it did need a fair bit of tweaking.

Also, casting spells is so complex and everyone is OP Dx
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8:32 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: it is though, in 1994 Chinda invited 20 western car companies to make a small family car for china
8:32 PM - Korbis: Chinda
8:32 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: yeah
8:32 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: chinda
8:33 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: they renamed it china in 2010 tho
8:33 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: after it got a vasectomey, it lost the d
8:33 PM - Korbis: XD



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« Reply #10 on: November 10, 2013, 04:00:15 pm »

Morrowind with the Overhaul mod is very nice graphically and it sounds great, but the interface and combat is still ancient as hell...
^ exactly why I can't bare to play it.
I really liked the menu interface, but felt that it did need a fair bit of tweaking.

Also, casting spells is so complex and everyone is OP Dx

All reasons why I hate it. D;
But the world is so vast and nice...
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« Reply #11 on: November 10, 2013, 06:07:31 pm »

My favorite thing about Morrowind is the Blood Moon DLC. Purely because you build Raven Rock by hand essentially. And then when you revisit it in Dragonborn in Skyrim and see what it's become. It's a nice thing.

That having been said, I honestly love Skyrim the most. It is easy to do everything, yes, but all that means is that you can mix it up for entertainment. Ever try being an unarmed Kajhit? How about limiting yourself to no proper armor? It's got just enough going for it where I keep going back. And I've never played the same exact character twice.
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« Reply #12 on: November 10, 2013, 06:10:50 pm »

My favorite thing about Morrowind is the Blood Moon DLC. Purely because you build Raven Rock by hand essentially. And then when you revisit it in Dragonborn in Skyrim and see what it's become. It's a nice thing.

That having been said, I honestly love Skyrim the most. It is easy to do everything, yes, but all that means is that you can mix it up for entertainment. Ever try being an unarmed Kajhit? How about limiting yourself to no proper armor? It's got just enough going for it where I keep going back. And I've never played the same exact character twice.
Was a bit disappointed in the fact that Dragonborn only had like 5 werewolves in it, and they were all in the same spot.

You could do that in Oblivion, though.  And it was more in depth since you got to build your own class.  I've had countless characters in Oblivion with various back stories, almost as many as I did in Fallout New Vegas xP
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8:32 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: it is though, in 1994 Chinda invited 20 western car companies to make a small family car for china
8:32 PM - Korbis: Chinda
8:32 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: yeah
8:32 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: chinda
8:33 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: they renamed it china in 2010 tho
8:33 PM - LIBERTY PRIME: after it got a vasectomey, it lost the d
8:33 PM - Korbis: XD



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« Reply #13 on: November 10, 2013, 06:13:43 pm »

Was a bit disappointed in the fact that Dragonborn only had like 5 werewolves in it, and they were all in the same spot.

You could do that in Oblivion, though.  And it was more in depth since you got to build your own class.  I've had countless characters in Oblivion with various back stories, almost as many as I did in Fallout New Vegas xP
Think you're thinking of Dawnstar. Dragonborn had Warebears.

I never understood how to make a working class in Oblivion.

Maybe if I were on PC and could use mods to make leveling up make more sense, I'd prefer Oblivion, but modless and DLCless on Console, I prefer Skyrim.
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« Reply #14 on: November 10, 2013, 06:16:46 pm »

Think you're thinking of Dawnstar. Dragonborn had Warebears.

I never understood how to make a working class in Oblivion.

Maybe if I were on PC and could use mods to make leveling up make more sense, I'd prefer Oblivion, but modless and DLCless on Console, I prefer Skyrim.
even then, I preferred Oblivion.

I usually focus on stealth classes, rarely ever using Magic.
 
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