Hellshade

Werewolf footage leaked showing a player character transforming into a werewolf in 3rd person and then going on a ramage. Not sure how long before it's deleted, but here it is for the time being. Looks awesome and at points quite brutal. http://pc.gamespy.co.../1211758p1.html Hellshade

I found the full review. Read at your own risk. They warn of possible spoilers and that it may have been rushed. Of note, the graphics were rated the lowest point of the game at 92%, while gamplay was rated the highest at 97%. Sound came in at an even 95%. If the graphics are the lowest point in the game, it ought to do quite well. http://www.platformnation.com/2011/11/06/skyrims-first-review-leaked/ Hellshade

No pay, unfortunately. It's just the same level of enthusiasm that cranked out well over 100 P3 1080HD videos. Can't wait to start making some P4 videos either! Gamebanshee says the first 4 page review was done in an Australian site and provides some quotes. However when you go to the site, there is no review there. Probably pulled because I believe Bethesda has a gag order on reviews until Nov 10th. At any rate, the reviewer gave it a 95% overall and addresses Olhams concerns about bugs in the last paragraph. Essentially say what I did. There are bugs. They are few and far between and not game breaking. You will hardly notice them since everything else is so epic in nature. http://gamebanshee.c...rim-review.html Hellshade

Hasse Wind is correct. Skyrim is designed to play from first person perspective, however they have improved the 3rd person view so now the game is completely playable from 3rd person view as well. The choice is yours. It will occassionally switch to 3rd person view on it's own for slow motion "kill cam" where you perform a stunning finishing move on your opponents. Then it switches immediately back to first person for you. It's definately nothing like the other three you mentioned. Hellshade

Gamesradar has a nice 3 hour preview detailing just one of hundreds of incidental side quests and how many suprises are in the land of Skyrim. A very good read. http://www.gamesradar.com/skyrim-preview-secret-of-pinewatch-sanctuary/?page=1 Hellshade

I guess we will soon find out. A game about a world this big, that's completely open for the player to do whatever they want and with so many possible options is bound to have bugs somewhere. The good news is that Todd Howard says they have a far better method of tracking the bugs down automatically now. They would run some program overnight that would simulate things a player would do and then parse the log in the morning looking for anything that broke. This way they can test hundreds, if not thousands of things every night. Fairly impressive. I might not have too much faith in their new bug tracking app, however they also completely overhauled and re-wrote code for the weather (including wind effects on leaves, water, snow, etc), facial textures and emotions, blended animation systems, draw distance, inventory, the menu system, melee, archery and spell combat, questing systems, AI behavior, perks, skill advancement, automatic and manual game save options, etc, etc, etc. That's part of the reason they renamed it the Creation engine. Because it's been re-written from the ground up. From the video interviews, 3 hour game journalist previews and gameplay footage I've seen, it all seems very solid. In my personal opinion, it won't be perfection. There will be bugs. However it'll be so far advanced from the previous Elder Scrolls and Fallout series that the few bugs that show up are hardly going to be game breakers. And I have no doubts they'll patch it up nicely. I expect after all of the effort they put into the Creation engine, it's not only going to be used for this one game. It'll likely be used on at least the next Fallout game they do as well, so they are going to be highly motivated to make everything work as best as possible so things go even smoother for their next title or two. Whatever they might miss, I'm guessing an army of modders will be more than happy to fix. Or I could be completely wrong and it'll be a big steaming pile of ----. But I doubt it. I already fully pre-paid for my copy and I expect to be completely immersed in Skyrim for quite some time. In fact probably until P4 comes out. If you don't hear from me for awhile, don't take it personally. Hellshade

A tiny sampling of the faces you can create for your character in Skyrim. I'm going to lose an hour just making a face. /sigh http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_FiC6yrVetE&feature=related Hellshade

He should have his own "Hit or Miss" channel. Damn fine save there!

Multiplayer on Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear was probably among the best FPS PvP I've ever experienced. Graphics are of course dated now, but the gameplay was top notch. I played so many Bunkers matches with just pistols and Frags it's insane. I can still hear the theme song in my head. It always got me so pumped to play! Hellshade

That looks excellent, actually. Sometimes little indies are just what's needed. In other news, Skyrim has officially gone gold today. 3 years of hard work finally finished (for now). Soon enough will come patching and DLC. Congrats to the Bethesda team. http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/11/04/golden-mead-for-a-golden-game/ Hellshade

Whoot! I remember Dungeon Master for the Amiga. It was awesome! Thanks for sharing this indie clone, VP. I'll keep an eye out for it. Sure brings back memories. Hellshade

That would be a very bad choice. Because once 11.11.11 hits I'm going to have almost no interaction with the outside world for at least 5 days (vacation time specifically to game!) except perhaps to order the occassional pizza. After that, we'll see. I doubt I'll even be able to tear myself away long enough to write up a proper review here for any other RPG fans. But really that won't be necessary anyways. Pretty much anyone who's a fantasy RPG fan is aware of it anyway. Skyrim, for me personally, will be the 'holy grail' of fantasy RPG gaming that I have been waiting my whole life for. I'm quite sure there will be bugs and I'm fine with that. Every game has them and the larger and more open the world is, the harder it is to find them all. But between official patches and a huge modding community for the Elder Scrolls series, I have a strong belief all will be made well soon enough. Besides, this time they have a 'bug finding' program that they apparently run overnight every night where it run through various quests and tries a bunch of crazy stuff and gives them a log in the morning that tells them what broke. I think Skyrim could possibly have less bugs in it than the previous ES series releases have had even though there's an "order of magnitude more content" in Skyrim - according to Todd Howard. And yes, my wife knows she's about to become a Skyrim widow for at least a few days. She's okay with that. She's still happy with her Color Nook for reading books. Hellshade

Article on Skyrims complete menu overhaul. They used Apple's interface as inspiration for getting maximum use out of menus while still keeping it elegant and streamlined. http://www.gameinformer.com/games/the_elder_scrolls_v_skyrim/b/xbox360/archive/2011/01/28/skyrim-menu-system-overhaul.aspx Hellshade

Looks like they just posted a 'Sounds of Skyrim' trailer showing how they came up with and produced the musical score and the 70+ voice actors they employed to do around 110 roles in the game. Max von Sydow, Linda Carter and some others are some of the more famous ones. It's truly amazing the amount of work that goes into each aspect of a game. http://www.gameinformer.com/b/news/archive/2011/11/03/take-a-look-behind-the-scenes-at-the-sounds-of-skyrim.aspx Hellshade

Speaking of classic games, Bethesda is allowing anyone who wants to download the full version of the 1996 classic Elder Scrolls II : Daggerfall directly from their website. Alot of folks say it was the best of the series in terms of being a huge, open world. Now is your chance to play it all for free. I do believe you'll need DOSBox to run it. http://www.elderscrolls.com/daggerfall/

Here goes. I'll present 3 screenies (if possible) of a flight sim showing my cockpit view, the enemy plane view and the external view of my plane of a mid-air close call or collision. You vote if you think I Hit them in a mid air collision or Missed them and flew by safely. The next night, I'll post a very short video showing what actually happened. Here's the first 'event'. What do you think? Was it a HIT or MISS?

Hit or Miss Vol 5 "Out of the Clouds" video answer Scary stuff but lady luck had the Hun roll his wings in just the right way. Hellshade

We're back with a new edition of Hellshades "Hit or Miss?" This time, I spot a hun above in the clouds and pull up to attack. He spots me at the same time and dives through the clouds directly at me. We open fire but is it a game of chicken that nobody wins? What happens when Huns dive from "Out of the Clouds"? Vol 5

Are you trying your best to do what you think is right? Well then who can do better than that? Kids don't come with manuals and they don't all learn and respond the same way. A hard hand on one kid brings them in line. For another it just breeds rebellion. As a parent, the best you can do is try to go with your gut instinct for what needs to be done and then watch closely to see the effect that is has. If it doesn't work and you've tried it repeatedly, it's probably time to change 'teaching strategies'. Feeling bad about having to take a tough line with them just shows that you really care. It's when you walk away unconcerned with the effect your behavior has on your kid that you need to start worrying, because that's when it's no longer about teaching the kid right from wrong. It's just about you taking out frustrations on them. That's when your making things worse, not better. More often than not, your kid can feel the difference between the two. Didn't you when you were a kid and your dad punished you? Hellshade

Actually I buy them. I have kids and when I have to sit in the park while they play or in the waiting room at the doctors office, etc, I like to whip out the Strat Guides just I can have something to read that's interesting. Brief "Behind the Scenes - Making of Skyrim" video that shows a few new scenes...including decapitations and Kill Cams. Yep. Can't wait. http://www.bethblog.com/index.php/2011/11/01/behind-the-wall-the-making-of-skyrim-trailer/

Alot of new scenes in the second half of this preview. Definately big world with stunning details. http://www.g4tv.com/videos/55960/the-elder-scrolls-5-skyrim-video-preview/?quality=hd Found out the Strat Guide is 300 pages. Collectors hard cover Strat Guide is like 592. Insane. Hellshade

You mean there's something deeper than Facebook games and Angry Birds? Hellshade

They already did. Bethesda looked at some of the more popular mods of Oblivion and incorporated the ones they liked into Skyrim. Archery, for instance, takes longer to draw the bowstring back but also does a lot more damage so no need to fire off 20 arrows to kill one monster. I hear arrows are a bit more rare now too. Daggers can now be used with a sneak attack for 10x damage, making them useful for thief / assassin types.

What gaming sites do you read VP? I'm always looking for good quality sites. IGN isn't what they used to be. I think you make all fair points, except the part that they are not free to do what they want. Yes, they have bosses to answer to, unlike OBD. But when you can pass on a franchise as hot as "Game of Thrones" which is a hit book series and HBO series, they must have a lot of faith in you...because that was a lot of cash to pass up. I think Todd Howard and crew get to choose to do what they love. At least I hope so. I won't mind eating crow if I'm wrong. I just don't know where I'll get my fantasy RPG fix from if that turns out to be the case. Right now it's Lord of the Rings Online but I'm pretty MMOed out. The repetition doesn't really do it for me anymore. Hellshade

It's easy to get caught up in the hype machine, especially of a AAA title. And very often they are over-hyped and over rated. But if you're going to basically say "the best of gaming is behind us because the world we live in won't allow for great new classics" then I guess you are entitled to that opinion and I respect it, but I also respectfully disagree. Todd Howard and crew at Bethesda make the games they do for the same reason OBD is working on OFF P4. Because they love what they do. My personal belief is that as long as you have a team of people who are passionate about whatever they are into, there will still be new things introduced that change the way everyone looks at that field in terms of what is possible. I fully expect P4 to set new standards in terms of what is possible in a flight sim. Maybe it won't get the press that it deserves because they aren't a big company, but to me that doesn't matter. What matters is do they love what they do so much that they find ways to bring new and improved features that raises the expectations of those who play it for everything that follows. When another new WWI flight sim comes out after P4, if I play it...I'm probably going to be asking myself how well it stacks up to P4 in terms of features. If I am, it must mean P4 set new standards and has changed my expectations of what I want in a game (sorry Olham, flight sim). I think Skyrim will do that for alot of other games for these reasons: Boss Monsters that seek you out anywhere in the open world and then fight with their own custom AI that reacts to the situation around is new. I don't know of any other game that does that. To me, that's a new standard. Changing what you are capable of doing by adding new skills without sacrificing old ones - at any time - is something new. It's not about "respeccing". It's about adding entirely different skills while retaining what you already have. I've never see a completely open ended system where you don't choose a class or skills. You just do what you want and get better. No restrictions. To me, that is a new standard. Reducing the UI to virtually nothing and only displaying information when it's relevant or you ask for it is also something new as far as I know. At least for a deep single RPG. Hell, even action RPGs like Diablo keep health and mana on screen at all times. You could say they took that idea from flight sims and I'd agree with that. But nobody has ever applied that idea before in a single player RPG, so it sets a new standard for that genre. Getting the UI out of the way of a huge, open world so you can stay more immersed in it is something that sure looks like a new standard to me. Again, maybe someone else has done it in a deep single player RPG, but I haven't seen or heard about it. Reducing stats to only what's absolutely needed and getting rid of D&D style stat tree to focus on on what really matter looks new to me too. Big worlds. There's a few. This heavily detailed? I haven't seen it. To me that's raising the bar of not just volume of space to explore but quality of content that fills every step of it. I could be wrong about all of it. It could suck big time. I'll eat crow if I'm wrong. Hell, I thought IL Cliffs of Dover was going to be awesome and look what a terrible mess the launch for that was. I still havent' bough it! But I haven't read a pre-viewer yet who isn't blown away by all the details in Skyrim and how it plays. Maybe the multi-platform thing will be bad, but as long as a company loves what they do, I believe they have a good shot at creating a new classic. I think if I couldn't believe that, I'd just stop gaming or go back to my old C-64. IGN got advanced copies of Skyrim for the 360 yesterday and will release a full review on 11.10.11. Not that their word is "gold" about anything but it'll be interesting to see what they have to say about it. In the meantime, they say they will have a lot more tid bits being released as they play. As an interesting side note: I read an interview where Todd Howard said Bethesda was contacted by the author of Game of Thrones series of books, asking them to make the official game for it. While everyone there at bethesda said they really enjoy the books alot, in the end they decided to pass because they felt more passionate about the games they were already working on. No doubt they passed up a nice chunk of cash there considering how popular the books are. That's the passion I look for in a game company that keeps them on my radar when it comes to changing what's possible in a virtual world. Nothing will ever be perfect, but if playing it means I can't go back to Oblivion because the features in Skyrim are so superior....well..that says something. And lets face it, not every sequel in a trilogy is able to move the bar higher. Just ask Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Newer definately doesn't guarantee it to be better.