Primele Detalii

http://news.tgn.tv/the-elder-scrolls-v-skyrim-first-details/

Gameinformer mag hit the fan, and here’s what the paper ribbons said.

Story
Obiously the game will be set in the Nord homeland of Skyrim, around two centuries after TES IV: Oblivion. It’s about time that the Dragons return, which means lots of death and destruction, unless some Dragonborn hero does something about it, that’s where you come in, you are said Dragonborn and your mentor is one of the last remaining Blades. It has been said that the world will feature five massive cities, many little towns and a lot more variations to it’s dungeons.

Engine
Bye bye Gamebryo, hello Awesome! Dynamic snow, shadows, lighting, tree and branch movement, wind, oh my!

Conversations
No more IN-YA-FACE zooming. And it seems that they are finally taking notes from Bio, because NPCs will actually be doing stuff while talking with you, and just glance at you here and there, unless it’s something really important. Faces have also been improved to not look like asses this time around. It’s starting to look like Skyrim will be the Mass Effect 2 to Oblivion’s Mass Effect 1.

Skills
Morrowing had 27, Oblivion had 21, Skyrim will have 18. This is not necessarily a bad thing, seeing as the system is getting more and more refined, not dumbed down. Mysticism is gone, because it was useless. They are aiming to get a system in which you can still specialize in any role you like, but still allow some leeway for a Rogue Mage type build and so on.

Leveling
1-50, that’s how it’ll be. Well 50 is a soft-cap, you will still advance in level, just really goddamn s-l-o-w-l-y. Each time you level up, you will get a health increase and you can pick to increase one of the following: even more health, magicka or stamina. Each level allows you to select/level up a perk, much like in the Fallout games.

Since people are asking, wanted to briefly touch on level scaling. All our games have had some amount of randomness/leveling based on player level. Skyrim’s is similar to Fallout 3’s, not Oblivion’s.

Also there is not class selection at the start of the game, you just level up. Level scalling is back, though it seems to be done much more tastefully:

The game eventually logs a huge storehouse of knowledge about how you’ve played, and subsequently tailors content to your capabilities and experiences. Entering a city, a young woman might approach you and beg you to save her daughter from kidnappers. The game will look at the nearby dungeons you’ve explored, automatically set the mission in a place you’ve never visited, and designate opponents that are appropriately matched to your strengths and weaknesses.

Questage
As I quoted right above, sidequests will be dynamic as fudge, depending on how you develop your character and where you go, you’ll be getting different sidequests. Say a Rogue walking into a town might be approached by a random Argonian with a quest about stealing/murdering something/someone, while a Mage wouldn’t ever have that NPC talk to him at all.

Misc.
My favorite category, the miscellaneous stuff. Ok let’s get down to it. Third person view has been improved, no more stilted animations, you can remove the HUD if you so desire, Dragons can attack towns, which seems to indicate that civilized places are no longer 100% safe from the wild, just imagine a pack of wolves slaughtering a village. If you drop an item on the ground, dynamicness will happen again, say a boy might pick it up and say “Hey, douchebag, you dropped your crap” or a group of men might find it and start fist-fighting about who gets to keep it, and much more. Dual wielding is in, finally. You can smith weapons, smith. Also characters are finally more human like in the way the look.

Oh and let me be the first to put the new phrase out there, not that I agree, just sayin’ Fallout with swords.