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

http://romain-hugault.blogspot.com/ Hellshade

Long ago, before Call of Duty, there was a tactical shooter called Rainbox 6 about a counter terrorist team. My favorite way Rainbow 6: Rogue Spear. At any rate, it's apparently back in production and slated for 2013. Enjoy the shocking footage of team Rainbow in a brutal new world. http://www.ign.com/videos/2011/11/04/rainbow-6-patriots-gameplay-target-trailer?objectid=121861 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/

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.

5 Reasons Skyrim Will Change Gaming 1. You Are What You Do. In real life, you become what you do most often. If you want to be a musician, then you need to practice hard at it and for a long time. Simply saying "I'm a musician" doesn't make you one. In Skyrim, things are much the same way. You are what you do. If you want to be a sword wielding badass who shoots gouts of flames out of the other hand, then you start with a crappy sword and a low level fire spell and you practice it on every badguy (or goodguy) that you happen to meet. You don't choose to be a "spellsword" from a menu selection of pre-determined classes and then only get better in what that narrow class definition allows. Skyrim brings the possibility that at any moment, we can begin to change who we are. If we choose to become a musician in real life and work at it every day, it doesn't preclude us from also becoming pilot someday. In Skyrim, if I suddenly wish to branch out from being a fireball slinging, sword swinging hero, I can begin to focus on other areas and add that to my skill set. For instance I could decide that since I have a sword in one hand and use a fire spell in my other hand, I don't have enough protection during combat. I could start wearing light or heavy armors to absorb the incoming blows or I could focus on increasing my skill in Conjuration magic so that I can summon an ally to my side to help take down enemies faster. It opens the possibility that I might not have the skills I need to successfully deal with every encounter I might have, but I have the option of teaching myself new tricks so that I can always come back later and kick ass using my new abilities. With Skyrim, the days of "I'm a mage so I can only learn, do and use certain things" are over. If I want to shoot lighting bolts from behind a shield while my undead minions charge my opponents, I can teach myself to do that. And if later on I want to learn how to sneak and shoot a bow so I can assassinate people and creatures from a distance without using up my magic, I can do that to. It's all about what I want to spend my time learning instead of being about one uninformed choice that I make at the start of the game that limits my potential. Skyrims "you are what you do" system means I have nearly unlimited options on how I react to the world around me. If I see an NPC sneak up on someone and assassinate them with a dagger, I can teach myself to do that, even though I'm currently a plate armor, battleaxe wielding warrior. I don't have to start a whole new character. Make no mistake: "You are what you do" is the next evolution in player advancement systems for RPGs. 2. Less is More. Bruce Lee once famously said "Becoming a better fighter is about learning the basics and then stripping away all of the non-essentials." In other words, how do you reduce every movement to only exactly the minimum you need to do in order to accomplish your goal of winning. That way you save time and energy on your strikes and defenses. Skyrim has adopted this approach by making Less is More in at least two very important areas. The first area where Less is More is in the statistics system. Instead of having Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, etc..Skyrim trims it down to only the essentials. Why even have an Intelligence score if the only purpose for it really is to raise the amount of Magicka (Mana) that your character has? It's redundant. Just raise the Magicka score directly and be done with it. It means less stats for the players to look at and more time spent actually in the game playing. What a concept. The second area where Less is More in Skyrim is in the User Interface. Bethesda (that's the company that makes the Elder Scrolls series of which Skyrim is the latest installment) has figured out a genius idea. What's the point of creating a beautiful world if it's going to be covered up by a huge, intrustive, immersion breaking interface? So now your health, stamina and magicka bars will only show up if they aren't full. In other words, at the start of a fresh fight or whenever you are just walking around, you won't have three huge red, green and blue colored lines on your screen at all times, distracting you from your view of the world. Until you get hit, your health bar is invisible. It only shows up when you actually need it...meaning when you've taken damage. If you don't see it, then you must be full health. The same with stamin and magicka. Until the resources start being depleted, there is no reason for them to be displayed on your screen, distracting you from the incredible world vistas before you. The User Interface improvements also extend to the inventory system, where you can store "Favorites" of items you switch between regularly without having to open your inventory every time to find and equipmen them and also to looting objects and corpses where if they don't have anything inside, it tells you they are 'empty' rather than making you waste your time searching them. The net result of all of this is more time spent in the game world and less time spent playing "the menu game". Less interface is More playtime. Awesome. 3. Big World. Tiny Details. Bethesda has always created huge open worlds in their Elder Scrolls and now Fallout series of games. Also, MMOs have been creating huge open worlds for a few decades now. But the problem has always been the larger the world, the harder it is to fill it all with intricate, unique details. For those who've ever played Worlds of Warcraft, it's a huge world to explore. But did you ever notice that every single Inn is the same exact model? It's a big world (and a fun one) but the "bigness" comes at the expense of being filled with more of the same. Skyrim has over 150 hand crafted dungeons when it ships and multiple mountains to explore. But what's exciting about that is it's filled with tons of tiny details that make every area you explore truly different. They have modeled every item in the world in full 3D so that you can pick it up, rotate it around and look at it from every angle. That includes the food and other mundane things, not just "cool" stuff like weapons and armor. Every plant and animal is finely detailed. Every NPC face changes expression depending on if you are flirting with them or they are pissed about about to club you with a huge mace. Check out the picture of the Orc wielding the two handed weapon at the begining of this thread. Doesn't he look pissed? And the details aren't all in the graphics. The AI has been crafted to provide details that add to the realism as well. Foxes and wolves will hunt small game. Every character has his own morality code that deeply influences their behavior. Even the monsters have little touches added that give them personality. In one preview video, I saw an undead warrior shaking it's axe in anger at the player as his fellow undead were being roasted alive by a flame spell. He didn't just charge blindly forward and attack. He paused a moment to vent out his hatred in gestures and, I presume, threats or curses. There's another scene where some three eyed yeti like creature meets a player on a small bridge. The creature jumps up and down beating it's chest as if pumping itself up for a fight and bellowing out a challenge to the player. Tiny details like that, adding what I call "attitude to the monsters" fills the big world with a more immersive experience. Big worlds have been done. This big and this detailed in every nook and cranny of the world? No, Skyrim is a game changer here in terms of what will be expected in the future. 4. The Boss Fights Come to You and then They Think about How to Kill You. In traditional gaming, all the way back to the Atari days, you fought your way through the entire level and then at the end of each level was the boss fight. Then at the end of the game, the final boss fight and all of them were scripted or patterned. Even in one of the most popular games on the market today, World of Warcraft, it's the same formula. You fight your way through the dungeon and Boss mobs are at or near the end of each level. When you get to them, you and your guild basically engage in what I call synchronized swimming behaviors where everybody has to do exactly certain moves at specific times in order to beat the bosses pre-programmed - phase 1, phase 2, phase 3 - AI. Skyrim throws that very tired formula out the window with it's dragons. Todd Howard, Lead Creative Designer for Bethesda says dragons in Skyrim are huge boss fights that basically can show up at any time in the open world and attack you. In fact, if the Radient AI story system decides you haven't fought a dragon in awhile, it'll send one to find you. Even if you are in the middle of a town. You don't have to go looking for the boss, they come looking for you. What a unique and totally realistic concept for a game. Why should super powerful beings in a fantasy world coup themselves up inside one tiny room in one dungeon and wait for adventurers to come and find them? The best defense is a good offense. In Skyrim these creatures roam the world freely and if they find something that they don't like or that looks tasty (you qualify on both counts), they attack you no matter if you are prepared or not. And what about when they do find you? Do they run through a script where battling them is the same routine every time? Nope. Dragons have their own hand crafted AI where they will fight to the best of their abilities and react to the situation around them. In one preview scene, a dragon is walking on the ground towards the player, and then the players allied dragon (did you know later in the game you can learn to summon a dragon to your aid....yeah) swoops over it and lets out a scortching blast of flames. The one attacking the player stops, quickly turns it's head lets out a retalatory blast of fire onto your ally. It changed targets on the fly because it saw the other dragon as a real danger or, at the very least, pissed him off enough to make him want to do something about it. No more "phase 1, phase 2, phase 3" mindless bosses. Now the bosses roam the world freely, looking for you and then use their own intelligence to determine the best way to kill you. This includes staying airborn and engulfing you in their dragon breath until you can do enough damage to them to make them fall out of the sky and continue the fight on the ground. If you have very poor ranged fighting capabilities, they aren't going to help you kill them by landing and fighting toe to toe. That's your problem. They are in the fight to win. Eat your heart out Donkey Kong jr. 5. A Sandbox World with Endless Sand. It's true Bethesda has released construction sets with their other open world games. However Skyrim takes this to a new level because the sandbox world you get to mod is already so complete, most of what's going to be added is new content. Bethesda has created a huge world filled with tiny details and players can use the toolset to create new races, weapons, magic items, NPCs, buildings, castles, dungeons, quests and even whole new continents. Not to mention the DLC and possible official expansions that will likely come. Oblivion has, literally, tens of thousands of mods than have been developed for it over the past 6 years. I think that will likely be a drop in the bucket compared to what enthusiastic modders are going to make for Skyrim. If you love the world of Skyrim, mods will make sure you never run out of things to do and if there's anything that you don't like, there will probably be a mod to change it. Skyrim will be the sandox world with endless amounts of sand. When looking at replayability, every game will have to be judged against Skyrim as the new standard. Hellshade

Skyrim character creation facial screenshots of all the races. If you're curious what the basic 10 races can look like, here ya go:

I read Oblivion had 14 voice actors. Skyrim has 70. They also got rid of the random conversations and now have much more directed ones. Hellshade