Report: Skyrim – What we know so far…

By Alex Johnson
Article E3 2011 Featured PC Playstation 3 Xbox 360 Xtreme
349 days ago
1287722011-06-04+12%3A59%3A01Alex+Johnson

Skyrim is going to be big. The Elder Scrolls is one of the industries longest lived series and is much loved by all types of gamers as it blends the RPG and action genres in such a way that people who don’t normally enjoy RPG’s can have fun whilst hardcore RPGers aren’t losing out on their stats and dungeon crawling. From what we’ve seen so far Skyrim won’t be breaking this tried and tested ideal. The only problem is; we all want to know everything we can about Skyrim. The information is out there of course, scattered across the four corners of the internet but it’ll take forever to find out everything that’s been reported, so I’ve done it for you.

This is my report on everything we know about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at this moment in time. When more news comes out this report will get updated and you’ll get to check out what’s new without having to trawl the internet. (So bookmark this page).

I figured the easiest way to do this would be bullet points, I mean who wants to read whopping great blocks of text when you’re looking for something in particular? I’m just going to put together a few headers and list what we know.

You’re welcome.

Story:

You’re a prisoner – shock horror. As ever in The Elder Scrolls series you’re a prisoner but you haven’t been told what you’ve done. This time however you’re being led to your execution when you find out you’re the last remaining Dragonborn (well done, you!). This Dragonborn chap is the only hope the world has to fend off Skyrim’s big bad.
Skyrim is set 200 years after Oblivion and everyone hates each other. Now that the Septim lineage has died out no one could keep the Dragonfires lit so all the dragons came back – not good. On top of that the elves have taken the empire, the Blades have vanished, the Nords hate everyone (including each other), the entire continent is on the brink of civil war and the REALLY bad guys, the Aludin, that the Elder Scrolls prophesised are on their way too.
The “Radiant Storytelling System” is a cool feature that changes the story depending on what’s happened in the world of Skyrim. If you’ve killed a quest giver then they obviously can’t give you the quest so someone like their sister might give you the quest (it’s not yet clear if she’ll be pissed off at you). Other actions affect the storytelling system and the Radiant AI will subtly adjust the story to suit your gameplay style and give you the best possible experience Skyrim has to offer.
The main story line clocks around 20 hours, but the sidequests (where the best RPG action is) can take you into hundreds of hours. Now that is what we wanted to hear!

Graphics:

Facial expressions and animations have been hugely upgraded.
Books and texts will make a triumphant return as 3D models you can study as opposed to the flat texts of previous Elder Scrolls.
The inventory menu has been overhauled, you can know rotate every item you have to get a closer look – this apparently will be the basis of some puzzles.
PS3, Xbox 360 and PC versions will all be as good as each other, except the PC which will enjoy higher resolution and anti-aliasing.
Everything has a shadow and textures are sharper and more detailed
Draw distances have been greatly improved.
The world spans all sorts of environments including frozen tundra to sheer mountains and the entire landscape has been carefully hand-crafted and detailed to ensure no two areas are the same.

Engine:

There’s been an addition of a HUDless first person view.
The third person camera is improved to actually work as opposed to Oblivion where it felt horribly disjointed.
There are more than four voice actors (Oblivion fans rejoice). The NPC conversations are more realistic and once you’ve finished talking to someone they’ll go back to what they were doing.
Towns seem livelier with NPC’s being seen to farm, mine, cut wood, cook, and sweep alongside other activities.
Character creation lets you choose from ten races – and you can have beards.
The conversation system has been turned on its head and now works. Instead of getting right up in the face of an NPC, they’ll be freely moving as you chat with them, making it feel more real and immersive.
Snow will be dynamic. It’ll accumulate over time and you’ll be able to see it pile up on rocks and the like.
Random encounters will be featured. One we’ve been guaranteed is a pack of wolves taking on a mammoth.
Instead of every guard ever knowing if you pickpocketed a man in his bedroom on the other side of the continent, guards has been divided into regions. You can be a massive thiefy bastard in one area, but in another they might have no idea.
Each city in Skyrim has its own unique economy which you can (if you so wish) sabotage beyond repair.
Horses now feel like horses, whereas in Oblivion they felt unnatural and too heavy Skyrim's new engine means that horses feel more realistic in terms of handling - more like Red Dead Redemption.
Craig Lafferty (Skyrim's lead producer) has said that consoles were the lead SKU. This basically means they designed the game for consoles and port it to PC.
Random events are not quite random. To ensure your newborn adventurer isn't mobbed by a high level dragon as soon as you venture out the randon events are controlled by "sophisticated decision systems that use randomness as one part of the process". As the game progresses you'll get tougher random battles to deal with.
Radiant AI won't just cover quest givers, if you drop a valuable item then an NPC might come over and ask if you don't want it anymore, or two guys could even start scrapping over it. If you decide to kill an NPC off, a relative or a friend might hunt you down. "Radiant Story allows us to set up these story templates that respond to things the player does, but at the same type keep the reacting NPCs in character."

Combat:

There are two different types of magic, spells and Dragon Shouts. Spells are gained the usual ways such as purchasing them or levelling up, but Dragon Shouts are something much cooler than that. Dragons have souls and when you kill a dragon and steal its soul you can read runes scattered across the land. Once you’ve been able to decipher these runes you will learn specific Dragon Shouts such as slowing down time or calling a dragon to lend a hand in a fight.
Magic will see 85 spells spread across the five schools of destruction, restoration, illusion, alteration and conjuration (mysticism has been removed as it’s “redundant”).
Spells can be used in a host of different ways, a simple fireball spell can be used as a fireball, as a flamethrower or as a proximity mine – you can dual wield spells to do more damage.
Attack spells now do secondary effects. Fire does much more damage, lighting depletes enemy magicka and frost slows a bad guy down.
Archery has been made similar to an Oblivion mod that the developers saw as an improvement to their game. Arrows take longer to string and fire, but if you land a shot you’ll do massive damage. But as they’ve been made more powerful they’re a more precious commodity.
You can zoom in on an enemy to do more damage with an arrow, the longer you zoom in, the more damage you’ll do.
Stealth has been changed too, if you’re seen the enemies in the area will become more alert unless you can slip out of sight for a while.
Daggers in close combat have been boosted aswell, at one stage in development a backstab would do ten times the normal damage, but it’s not clear if that’s still the case. Todd Howard said “I don’t know if we’re going to keep that, but you feel like you should be killing the guy if you’ve gotten that close and you have a dagger”
The animation system is using Havok physics, this means you can swing to knock someone off balance and follow up with a killing blow.
Whilst there isn’t a level cap dungeons will lock at the level of your first visit (to stop level grinding) – so save some for later!
Bethesda have specifically said a big thing for them was improving the combat to make it more “dynamic and tactical”, weapons will feel a whole lot more like they should and we’ll be seeing finishing moves to top it all off.
These finishing moves will take down a foe in different ways depending on the weapon you’re using and the baddy you’re dispatching.
You can specialise in weapons to get certain perks, for example; an axe can be used with a perk to make a bad guy bleed out, or a mace can crush through armour bonuses.
Blocking has been overhauled so you can’t turtle behind a shield, now it’s timing based and you can also use shields on the offensive.
You can’t backpedal away at the same speed as you can run forward so the Oblivion tactic of retreating and firing arrows is gone.
Dual-wielding has been explained after the community demanded to know more. Combinations for dual wielding are:
- Two weapons
- A weapon and a shield
- A weapon and a torch
- A spell and a weapon
- Two spells
- A two-handed weapon
Hand to hand combat is gone. If you want to kill something by punching it to death, we're sorry.
Your torch can be used as a weapons (probably only in the offhand, though).
Dragons will be randomly generated events (and permanently waiting in certain set pieces/quests) and if you can injure them just right, they won’t be able to fly so you can take them on at ground level.
Skyrim's lead designer, Bruce Nesmith outlined dragons attacks saying they're the "coolest enermy" and that "the variety of things they can do makes them one of the most fun encounters in the game". Dragons will be able to:
- Use their breath weapon to do bombing runs
- Land almost anywhere and chase you
- Use their tail attack to knock you back

Quests:

Side quests may be offered to you depending on your abilities and previous actions in the world. For example, if you’ve been working on becoming a wicked cool warrior then people won’t offer you quests for mages unless you toughen up your magic powers.
The Radiant AI is more likely to put a dungeon quest somewhere you haven’t been than a dungeon you stumbled across and wandered through.
The infamous Dark Brotherhood is making a return in this venture alongside other confirmed guilds such as the thieves guild, the fighter’s guild and the mage’s guild.

Other gameplay features:

The attribute, skill and levelling systems have all been completely ripped out and started from scratch Oblivion fans will be pleased to hear. At the Utah showcase Todd Howard had this to say regarding the attribute system: “In Oblivion you have your 8 attributes and then you have 21 skills.” “Now you have 18 skills and the 3 main attributes.” Now, instead of having to mess about improving, say, intelligence so it boosts your Magicka, you can just level up Magicka. Todd Howard said the reasoning behind this was that “They all trickled down to something else so we just got rid of that”.

The levelling system also has been fixed. Instead of picking some skills to affect your level your overall level is affected by all your skills. “You’re raising your skills which are pushing you towards levelling up” “Then when you level up you get to pick a perk in those trees; and it’s like a standard skill tree, but they have requirements. Not just the one below it, but needing a skill value that’s high enough. What you tend to do is, you see a perk you like and then you say, I’m going to start using my sword more because I want that perk... but I know I need to get my skill up to pick it. That’s one reason that you level up faster.” It might seem like once you’re locked into a skill path you can’t turn back, but in reality the exact opposite is true as “You can spread yourself on all of those skills, but what happens is all of those perk trees have skill requirements, so it’s not like just picking this one. You have to have a skill of about 30 or 40, so if you want the better stuff, you’re going to have to put your time into those skills”. So instead of being locked to whatever you choose at the start, like in Oblivion, if you decide to switch gameplay style at any point then you can just start training those skills up – basically we’ll have all the freedom we could want!

Fast-travel has been rejigged so whist you can fast-travel anywhere you’ve discovered you have to find places first. Don’t worry though, you can get a carriage to major settlements in the game you haven’t discovered to make travelling a bit quicker. It hasn’t been announced if anything can happen to spice this journey up (such as highwaymen).
With over 150 dungeons to explore it’ll be a while before you’ve seen it all. Not only that but dungeons will be hugely varied as Skyrim has eight dungeon designers whereas Oblivion had one or two.
You'll be able to mine ore and then craft it into things. We know there's 13 types of ore for crafting so that would suggest there's 13 types of ore available to mine.

Miscellaneous:

No Kinect support.
Skyrim’s engine will be used in future Bethesda titles.
Skyrim will have a Creation Kit so the community can get modding.
There are around 60,000 lines of recorded dialogue.
When lead designer Bruce Nesmith was asked whether Easter Eggs would feature and what we would see, he said "Why spoil the fun? It's not much of an Easter Egg if we reveal it before the game is even released."
A pre-order bonus of a physical map of Skyrim has been announced. If you pre-order Skyrim you'll bag yourself a "premium quality world map". We don't know specifics, but if it's an actual cloth map I'd keep it forever.
Does anyone else remember when games came with maps regardless of when you purchased?

Sources: PC Gamer, IGN, VG247, Eurogamer, Xbox360 Achievements.