Gaming Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Preview

There's a fair bit of truth to this in a lot of ways. I mean Oblivion and the last two Fallout games have all used this engine and it has got some systemic flaws. The biggest of these is combat, be it hand to hand or with guns in the Fallout games it has never felt that sharp. Even New Vegas, the best of the lot to date, feels pretty clunky compared to even old school shooters. So I'm not expecting something with much finesse in the combat to be honest.

That said I don't play Elder Scrolls/Fallout games for the combat. Not to say I'm some sort of pacifist in those games, but the combat is always a means to an end for me in rather than the end in itself. It's about the exploration, dealing with the quests (by hook or by crook) and so on and so forth. I mean far be it for me to do some sort of time and motion study, but I'm fairly sure I spend very little time in Oblivion or other games on that engine actually fighting and I'd be surprised if most people playing them did. Compared to say Mass Effect which is extremely combat heavy I almost prefer it this way.

 

Oh God, it's not the terrible Fallout engine is it? I was under the impression it was something fresh?

Edit: "Creation engine" I think it was called? This wasn't what was used in the Fallout series? =S

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My understanding is that it's an improved version of it, but it's still the same sort of thing as underpinning those other games. I think it's a brilliant engine in general though, right up until you get into a bit of ultraviolence.

The main improvements that I've heard about have been to the animations and so on though, and this would address a lot of the problems. For example I have seen Skyrim has proper stealth kills now, where you actually grab the victim and give them a proper grotting, rather than just hitting them while stealthed.

To be honest it's not like they would ever be able to roll out a revolutionary new engine on this generation of consoles anyway. Oblivion was taxing on the X360 already and it was a launch title, so whatever they do is going to be achieved by optimisation of the original elements as well as layering on new features, it's not like on a PC where they can just pile on new stuff and let the hardware grow to handle it. It's gotten to the point now where, relative to a PC, a console is a really meagre system, so expectations shouldn't be too high from a technological standpoint.

Will have to see what the modders do with it to enable PC users to get the most of the extra hardware potency. It's a given that there'll be a texture pack, there's always a texture pack, and given that the engine hasn't changed a lot of the nifty tweaks from Oblivion and Fallout can probably be fairly quickly converted.

 

I must confess I'm one of the people who's pant-wettingly excited about this release. I honestly don't care if it's a bit buggy to start off with (as long as it's nothing game-changing), I just cannot wait to load up and explore a brand new massive landscape. I think I clocked up over 500 hours.

 

I think I'll steer clear of this one. Bethesda is a quite schizophrenic company, when it comes to their RPGs.
Morrowind was great. I have played it though it least 4 times and countless times where I just ended up starting a new character.
Oblivion, on the other hand, was horrible. Animations were awful, there were 3 (at least it seemed that way) voice actors for all of the NPCs, the quests were boring and repetitive, but it's worst qualities were the god-awful scaling- and random item systems.
There was no point leveling up, because all the characters around leveled up with you and got gear according to their level. Doing quests was hit-and-miss, since you could find a powerful item in a random goblin-cave and a broom and a hat in a high-level necromancer's lair.
Fallout 3 was back in form. It still used the random item and scaling system as Oblivion, but not to the same extent and it made for a much better game.
Skyrim has a chance of being good, but I think it's going to be a flashback to Oblivion.
And to top off all this, all the games have shared problems. Tons of bugs on release, a heavy reliance on the modding community to not only fix their game, but to add contents as well. Most of Bethesda's games are little more than a graphics engine with a token campaign to show off what the engine is capable of and then a big sign saying:" You'll have to provide the contents yourself or get others to do it."

 

It's not the same again at all, it's all new according to Bethesda.

 

I really hope it doesn't have the levelled-world design of Oblivion. That was horrible.

I have a love/hate relationship with Oblivion. The game was a step backwards from Morrowind in so many ways and a major disappointment with regard to atmosphere and depth in comparison (reams of written dialogue replaced with a few badly-spoken lines here and there, simplified mechanics, clunky interface, wonky animations, idiotic AI, etc.); but it also got lots of things right and was a lot of fun with the right mods to rebalance it and fix Bethesda's stupid design decisions and ridiculous bugs.

As others have said, I'm expecting Skyrim to be a buggy mess upon release and slowly get better as the community gathers around it; but it's starting to get a bit irritating when Bethesda's games are released like some sort of "Great game DIY kit" with 4/5 of the pieces already together in the box and the remaining fifth being left to the gamers to sort out for themselves.
Do they really deserve our release-day money when they do that? (On top of suing Mojang over Scrolls.. they're not in my good books these days!)
Also, they can go **** themselves if they try to sell horse armour again.

I'm moderately excited about Skyrim. I have no doubt that I'll enjoy it at some point, but it's hard to say when that point will be - Regardless of the game's release date.

 

I hope its a new engine altogether! Ive purposly been trying not to read too much into the game so I dont actually know!

 

I just used time in Morrowind to find someone's pants...

 

Actually, they have gone on the record and said that it is the old engine, but they changed so much and added so much they feel it is worth calling it a new engine. This sounds fine in theory, but if it has the same issues as the old games with the engine, then there is going to be an uproar.

@Max; One thing that always bugged me and my friends was the lack of a proper diagonal running animation in 3rd person. It just looked like you were running almost in the right direction, and then gliding as well. Is this fixed in Skyrim?

It's not the same again at all, it's all new according to Bethesda.

 

@Skiddywinks Happy to report that the diagonal weirdness is gone, as I said though, jumping still looks mental

 

Is the Steam version of Oblivion buggy? I'm asking because I want to download and play it before I play Skyrim.

 

The Steam version of Oblivion is as buggy as the retail version. The various mods and community patches sort it out, but be prepared for at least an hour of fiddling.

 

Thanks Bede. I was hoping they might have fixed the issues. I have work on the Weekdays and on the weekends I just want to Play. I can't be bothered fiddling with the game.

 

They could be in for the same complaints as id have suffered with RAGE. Afaik this is DX9 only and the emphasis has been on console development , the price usually being low res textures and poor lighting solutions.

 

I'm more concerned by the pastries in the corner that after three hours ended up as pasties...

 

The pasties were a test. You passed.

 

I don't often play RPGs, but when I do it's skyrim

 

I'm not one to play things like Oblivion and Fallout usually. Fallout especially bored the hell out of me.

But i'll try Skyrim, if only to gawp at how amazing it looks then be rid of it if it is as dull as the others. xD

 

Typo.

"traversing the countryside actually looks quite good in third-person mode, and not so much like the weird ice-skating mannequins of Oblivion and Morrorwind."