The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Madame Adequate]

So do you have it? Are you playing it RIGHT NOW? First impressions go!

My first impression is that this looks pretty solid. I'm already confident in saying it's better than Oblivion. Whether I will match Alec Meer's statement on RPS that it's better than Morrowind I don't yet know - but I can at least see it as a feasibility, and that says something in itself.

420 dual wield magic erry day

[Loony BoB]

Going out for drinks after work but will play it after that. Looking forward to it. From what I'm hearing, there are pretty clunky controls and the menus aren't always clickable - what seems to be the influence of being a console port? I'm really hoping, however, that the modding community will fix all these things.

Is it true that the graphics "aren't much better than Oblivion's"? I'm hearing that a lot but going by the gameplay trailers I just can't imagine how that could be possible. Even with OOO and Natural Environments etc, Oblivion didn't look anything remotely close to how good the trailers looked. Is that just them playing on a console or an overpowered PC? Hopefully my PC runs it in high graphics without too much trouble... we'll see when I get home, anyways.

[Slothy]

Is it true that the graphics "aren't much better than Oblivion's"? I'm hearing that a lot but going by the gameplay trailers I just can't imagine how that could be possible.

From what I've seen of the trailers, screenshots, and now a stream that I'm watching at the moment, it looks better in terms of character models, textures, shaders, draw distance, and all of the sort of technical jazz. But from those same videos, the animation and physics look as terrible/unnatural as ever, which when you see it in motion makes it look a lot worse than the quality of everything else would indicate. In that sense I'd say it certainly doesn't look any better than Oblivion, but certainly not overall.

[Madame Adequate]

Animations are significantly improved. Still Bethesda, but you can at least stand to watch yourself in 3rd person view for a minute.

Overall the grafics are better than Obv. but not by a tremendous amount.

[Shattered Dreamer]

Buying it on Tuesday, I was going to wait until the DLC comes out & an inevitable game of the year edition but after watching the gameplay trailer I decided screw it I'm buying it now!

[Fuzakeru]

I didn't get it but my boyfriend, friends, and brother are all playing it. I sent this to my boyfriend as he plays this morning -

[NeoCracker]

Penny Arcade - Their Name Means Big

[Paro]

I had to take a break. Been playing for the last 5 hours straight. I was doing the quest to see the Greybeards and almost got to their location when a ****ing Troll killed me. A wee bit discouraging. I'll play later.

[Jiro]

I almost out and bought it but decided I would just have to wait for the GOTY edition.

[Pike]

I'm trying to decide whether or not I should buy this and then hijack my brother's 360 for a while (as I don't have one of my own, and I don't think the PC version would run on my computer).

Cons: Would distract me from NaNo; would also distract me from everything else; would use money I could otherwise put into savings for a visit with Hux

Pros: SKYRIM

I can't decide

[Loony BoB]

Played it for some time now and the verdict so far is...

Graphics? Better.
Dialogue? Better.
Dragons? Better than Oblivion Gates.
Scenery? Far, far more varied - and, for me, that means better.
Fighting? Better, marginally.
Things to do? More than in Oblivion - ie, Oblivion + Crafting. No repairing, though, which I actually enjoyed in Oblivion for some reason.
Exploration? Far more interesting.

And now the worse stuff.

Menus/UI? Terrible. For some reason they have thought it best to simply display names and only detail weight/worth/etc. when you hover over them. When picking skills, moving around the constellations is a nightmare.

Dragon battles? Supposedly the enemies of yourself are meant to suddenly become allies when you fight dragons. So far, this has not been the case. While attacking a dragon, I have been obliterated by bears and trolls so far, and a bandit has been shooting at me with his bow. All while a dragon is attacking. Kinda sucks.

System integrity? Okay, this is my first use of Steam in forever and I honestly don't know if it's Steam or the game, but I am consantly being 'pulled out' of the game when it's windowed. On full-screen, it'll crash. I'm unsure if I should lower the settings because it runs smoothly enough and my RAM isn't being overused, nor is my CPU. It's genuinely frustrating.

[Vincent, Thunder God]

I'm going to buy it for Christmas. I've been replaying Oblivion (actually transferred my saves from 360 to PC because my 360 is crashing), just got into the Dark Brotherhood quests and they're awesome! I'm really looking forward to diving into Skyrim. I actually can't maintain interest playing Morrowind anymore, and I thought I was done with Oblivion, but I'm still really enjoying it. I always look forward to seeing what Bethesda will do next. It sounds like they're incorporating perks similar to Fallout 3, which should be pretty cool. I also heard that they're using many more voice actors for variety, including Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow. Just bought an Alienware PC recently but I think I'll buy the PS3 version. Just wondering - which version do you think will be superior? I've found Oblivion on the PC much better than the 360, but you guys are saying the menus and UI are poor. Which version would have better menus?

[Slothy]

System integrity? Okay, this is my first use of Steam in forever and I honestly don't know if it's Steam or the game, but I am consantly being 'pulled out' of the game when it's windowed. On full-screen, it'll crash. I'm unsure if I should lower the settings because it runs smoothly enough and my RAM isn't being overused, nor is my CPU. It's genuinely frustrating.

While Steam has certainly had it's share of bugs and other issues over the years, my first instinct when encountering problems with a Bethesda game, especially a few days after release, is to blame Bethesda. Because honestly, they can't program worth a damn and I often wonder if they even employ any QA testers.

That said, you might be better off bringing the issue up on the Steam forums if they're back up now. They should have a Skyrim specific sub-forum that would be better equipped for helping with issues relating to both.

[Loony BoB]

I'm going to buy it for Christmas. I've been replaying Oblivion (actually transferred my saves from 360 to PC because my 360 is crashing), just got into the Dark Brotherhood quests and they're awesome! I'm really looking forward to diving into Skyrim. I actually can't maintain interest playing Morrowind anymore, and I thought I was done with Oblivion, but I'm still really enjoying it. I always look forward to seeing what Bethesda will do next. It sounds like they're incorporating perks similar to Fallout 3, which should be pretty cool. I also heard that they're using many more voice actors for variety, including Christopher Plummer and Max von Sydow. Just bought an Alienware PC recently but I think I'll buy the PS3 version. Just wondering - which version do you think will be superior? I've found Oblivion on the PC much better than the 360, but you guys are saying the menus and UI are poor. Which version would have better menus?

I got it for the PC despite having a 360 & PS3. For me, Elder Scrolls is two thirds about the vanilla game and one third about the mods that the community comes up with.

[Marky Tee]

i am thinking of buying this game kinda soonish
but ass my experience with rpgs is pretty much only final fantasy do you guys think i will enjoy it?