Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim ( a Todd Howard joint)

[Ludwig]

That's indeed a nice feature, Skyrim is full of them actually. 40h within 10 days isn't so much, especially when considering that i didn't had anything else to do; i played both, Fallout and Oblivion much more than Skyrim. Not quite sure why, especially as i can only partially blame it on the UI and graphics, but it's a solid game for most parts. Well, i leave it for now, it will be there when i feel like it.

By the way: Skyrim got the same Metascore as Portal2. I know many agree, but i have mixed feeling towards this.

[Malon_Forever]

From what I've played, Skyrim is much better then Oblivion, but in many small and minor ways.

[Trumpman]

Skyrim is awesome. I only wish I'd have had more time to play it thus far. I love Bethesda's games, and like the guys at Giant Bomb said, this seems to be the game where they've finally perfected their craft. I've only seen two cities —*it took me an HOUR to get to the second one — and I still have more quests than I can count. (There are nine cities in total...how could anyone ever finish this game?) I'm one of those people who never actually completed the main quest in Oblivion but still loved it, and it seems like I may be heading in that direction again in Skyrim, although I've heard good things about Skyrim's main quest.

The only bad thing is that I have to play on 360. My PC cannot handle Skyrim and I can't afford a new one right now. It's too bad because the mods for Bethesda games are just as good as the games themselves.

[YoshiM]

Out of curiosity-how much of a beasty PC does one need to run this decently? I recently downloaded Oblivion and when it does a hardware scan it puts it to the lowest settings for my Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz system with 3GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD5700 series card with 700MHz and a gig of RAM running Vista (hush-it works). Bump it up to my LCD's native resolution (1440x900) with halfway decent texturing and it's chugging. Then I fire up Crysis and that thing runs smooth as butter with all the settings on high.

With that in mind, do I need something with more oomph or do I have to sacrifice a chicken over my keyboard to get Skyrim to run decent or would the console be the way to go?

[Ludwig]

snip

I play it on ultra on my old socksprok too, and mine is even a little worse than yours, but mildly OCed, but i also play in a higher resolution. If you have issues turn down the antialiasing a little.

People give it to much credit, especially in terms of looks. Yes it's a good look, like WoW or Starcraft2 still looks good, it's just nicely done, but still old, it's a symbol for wasted potential. If i wouldn't know better, i would say they just updated their Gamebryo a little and called it done.

If people would finally stop optimizing everything for age-old consoles, everything would look a lot nicer by now. What happened to the "let's make it a good as we can" thought? As a PC gamer i'm very frustrated by now.

[NayusDante]

Out of curiosity-how much of a beasty PC does one need to run this decently? I recently downloaded Oblivion and when it does a hardware scan it puts it to the lowest settings for my Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz system with 3GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD5700 series card with 700MHz and a gig of RAM running Vista (hush-it works). Bump it up to my LCD's native resolution (1440x900) with halfway decent texturing and it's chugging. Then I fire up Crysis and that thing runs smooth as butter with all the settings on high.

With that in mind, do I need something with more oomph or do I have to sacrifice a chicken over my keyboard to get Skyrim to run decent or would the console be the way to go?

Something's definitely wrong there, you should be able to max out Oblivion at 1440x900 on that hardware. I played it on a Core 2 Duo 2.4 with 2Gb DDR2 and a Radeon 4850. Update your Catalyst driver...

Skyrim is on my Christmas list. I've been replaying Oblivion off and on, and it's starting to feel a little archaic. As many times as I've played it, though, I still find new stuff to do. Makes me look forward to actually playing Skyrim more and more...

[Gamevet]

Something's definitely wrong there, you should be able to max out Oblivion at 1440x900 on that hardware. I played it on a Core 2 Duo 2.4 with 2Gb DDR2 and a Radeon 4850. Update your Catalyst driver...

Skyrim is on my Christmas list. I've been replaying Oblivion off and on, and it's starting to feel a little archaic. As many times as I've played it, though, I still find new stuff to do. Makes me look forward to actually playing Skyrim more and more...

Yeah, I'm guessing it's the RAM. 3gig sounds like an odd number for DDR2 and it's most like not running in dual-channel, because he's missing a stick of RAM. I'd pull out one of those 1 gig memory sticks to see if the game runs smoother. He has to make sure he's keeping the other 2 gig paired.

I ran Oblivion with a Dual-Core Pentium E6300 (2.83 GHZ), 8 gigs of DDR2 RAM and a GTS 250 with 512MB.

[G-Boobie]

Out of curiosity-how much of a beasty PC does one need to run this decently? I recently downloaded Oblivion and when it does a hardware scan it puts it to the lowest settings for my Intel Core 2 Quad 2.4GHz system with 3GB of RAM and an ATI Radeon HD5700 series card with 700MHz and a gig of RAM running Vista (hush-it works). Bump it up to my LCD's native resolution (1440x900) with halfway decent texturing and it's chugging. Then I fire up Crysis and that thing runs smooth as butter with all the settings on high.

With that in mind, do I need something with more oomph or do I have to sacrifice a chicken over my keyboard to get Skyrim to run decent or would the console be the way to go?

I think you might be surprised: Skyrim is pretty well optimized, whereas Oblivion was most certainly not.

It's great on 360 though: you're not losing anything playing it there

[Peonpiate]

I have it on PC and i can tell it is a great game just as Morrowind was. But I havnt played more than two hours so far...Reason being is the controls. You can remap them, but if you do it breaks the game. Changing a button such as F [i believe] will screw the game over - its the holy grail in Skyrim. You lose your ability to use favorites that way since the game wont offer you a way to re-re-map keys that do more than 1 thing in the game. I hope they fix that issue, is ridiculous to release a PC game with a issue like that.

Im glad Bethseda is making money though from their console version sales though, they deserve it since they make good rpg games [PC will be good in a few much needed patches]. In the future I hope they dont forget their PC players like they did this time, PC made them afterall.


-edit, spoke to soon. The PC release has a patch out now for the controls...ESC key now works for exiting windows among other key fixes. Its much needed but still shows how little testing they put into it.

[G-Boobie]

I have it on PC and i can tell it is a great game just as Morrowind was. But I havnt played more than two hours so far...Reason being is the controls. You can remap them, but if you do it breaks the game. Changing a button such as F [i believe] will screw the game over - its the holy grail in Skyrim. You lose your ability to use favorites that way since the game wont offer you a way to re-re-map keys that do more than 1 thing in the game. I hope they fix that issue, is ridiculous to release a PC game with a issue like that.

Im glad Bethseda is making money though from their console version sales though, they deserve it since they make good rpg games [PC will be good in a few much needed patches]. In the future I hope they dont forget their PC players like they did this time, PC made them afterall.


-edit, spoke to soon. THe PC release has a patch out now for the controls...ESC key now works for exiting windows among other key fixes. Its much needed but still shows how little testing they put into it.

Also, and this certainly doesn't excuse their shady PC control scheme, but the MODS THEY ARE A COMING.

[misfits859]

Just turned 130 hours played and still having a great time. Just finished the second quest in the Thieves Guild questline so I'll be foolin' around in the sewers for awhile. I've got my light armor/one handed weapon/block skills maxed out and now I'm focusing on sneaking/pickpocket. Great game.

Funny moment this morning; I was letting a giant slap me around a bit to finish off my block skill when a bear jumped in and attacked me. A moment later a dragon flew in, landed and blasted all three of us with fire.

[Richter Belmount]

i doubt im the first to mention but the only thing i dislike is the lack of classes.

[heybtbm]

i doubt im the first to mention but the only thing i dislike is the lack of classes.

What you do in Skyrim defines who you are. Your "class" is a culmination of the skills you've leveled up by using them throughout the game. I can't think of anything more engaging or true to the spirit of a role playing game.

Predefined classes are so limiting and would've wrecked the game IMO. Although I have ~150 hours sunk into Oblivion, I still lament being forced to pick all my class skills in the first few minutes of the game (when I was clueless to what each one actually did). Skyrim's system is perfect in that you're never "locked" into a particular path. This is essential as your character evolves. I used destruction magic a lot in the first 50 hours or so. As the game went on it just wasn't working on high level enemies so I ended up going all sneak/archery for the last 100 hours or so. Oblivion would've made me choose up front and then I'd be stuck with those skills (and never be able to level up). Screw that. I want the freedom to level up whatever skills are useful at that time.

[Emuaust]

What you do in Skyrim defines who you are. Your "class" is a culmination of the skills you've leveled up by using them throughout the game. I can't think of anything more engaging or true to the spirit of a role playing game.

Predefined classes are so limiting and would've wrecked the game IMO. Although I have ~150 hours sunk into Oblivion, I still lament being forced to pick all my class skills in the first few minutes of the game (when I was clueless to what each one actually did). Skyrim's system is perfect in that you're never "locked" into a particular path. This is essential as your character evolves. I used destruction magic a lot in the first 50 hours or so. As the game went on it just wasn't working on high level enemies so I ended up going all sneak/archery for the last 100 hours or so. Oblivion would've made me choose up front and then I'd be stuck with those skills (and never be able to level up). Screw that. I want the freedom to level up whatever skills are useful at that time.

This.

Im not sure if its the fact I have a short attention span or limited time for gaming these days but IMO Oblivion pretty much forces you to play the game through again, re-picking your skills at the start of the game to suit what you may need later on. Skyrim on the other hand you can play through once and feel like you haven't missed anything.

Skyrim is A+ and dependent on its DLC might go down as one of my favorite games of all time.