Skyrim: A tourist’s guide
Skyrim is vast, and while there’s interesting stuff everywhere, there are some sights you can’t miss. When you’re done with the next leg of your current quest, or fancy a break from the frantic bandit murder, look up one or two of these and sigh in happy appreciation.
No plot spoilers here, but there are shots of the lovely scenes.
The Elder Scrolls V: Sykrim video walks the length of the world map
Skyrim unlocks at midnight tonight. If you really, really can’t wait that long to get into Skyrim’s world, or fancy seeing more of its gorgeous, mountainous geography we’ve got half an hour of footage below. It shows one man walking from one side of Skyrim to the other, fending off wolf attacks and admiring the sights.
There’s no questing, just wandering, but as so much of Skyrim is about exploring it’s a little bit spoilery. Still, if you’ve read our Skyrim review and want to see what got us so excited, you can watch the entire video below.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim has infinite quests, says Howard
Game director Todd Howard has already mentioned that Skyrim will have unlimited dragons, now he’s said to Wired that there will be infinite quests, too.
There’s a series of scripted quest lines, of course, which will follow the main plot and a number of subplots like those belonging to Skyrim’s various guilds and The Dark Brotherhood, but once you’ve completed these, Howard says that the Radiant storytelling system will continue to generate tasks. These can involve stealing gems for the thieves guild, or assassinating NPCs for the Dark Brotherhood.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim available to pre-load now, day one patch to fix bugs
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is now available to pre-load on Steam and Direct2Drive, letting you grab 99% of the files needed to run Skyrim. That should be about 6 gigabytes according to the system specs. Then the vital de-encryption data that will turn these files into Tamriel will be shunted to everyone at launch on Friday. Then the game will unlock and we’ll all be able to finally play it … almost.
Once Skyrim is decrypted, you’ll then have to wait for another download before playing. Bethesda say that “All platforms going to 1.1 by 11/11/11″ with a day one patch that “fixes some minor stability and quest progression issues.” Skyrim’s going to have a pretty huge world map, and there’s bound to still be a few bugs lurking in there somewhere. Oblivion and Fallout 3 had problems with AI getting stuck in doors, objects floating mysteriously and other bizarre anomolies. It wouldn’t be a Bethesda launch without a few of those hitting YouTube.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim trailer tours the world
We haven’t seen Tom Francis for a while. Oddly enough, his disappearance happened around the time we gave him that Skyrim review code. Where on Earth could he be? He’s probably running a marathon somewhere, or studying renaissance literature and generally improving himself. Hopefully he doesn’t overdo all that culture and exercise, we need him to turn in his Skyrim review before it gets released later this week.
Oh wait, I’ve just been informed that Tom’s location IS known, and that during the first 48 hours in possession of Skyrim review code, he’s spent more than 24 hours playing Skyrim review code, and in the interim, he dreamed about Skyrim review code. Our Skyrim review is likely to be quite thorough, but there may be a delay while we translate it all out of dragon tongue.
The Elder Scrolls: V Skyrim has gone gold, “sweet golden mead” quaffed in celebration
A post on the Bethblog on Friday announced that The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is done. “We’re pleased to announce that after more than three years of hard work, the team at Bethesda Game Studios has completed over 20 versions of Skyrim — across multiple platforms, languages, and countries. That’s right, Skyrim is officially gold!” cheers the announcement.
The team celebrated with a drop or two of golden mead, which has already played its part in Skyrim’s development.
Beyond the excitement of the fact that one of the biggest games of the year is finished and on its way into shops, it’s worth noting that Bethesda are cutting this rather fine. Typically games go gold several weeks before release to give the freshly printed discs time to leave the factories and make their way to stores. Skyrim is out this Friday, apparently just seven days after being finished.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim trailer shows dragons fighting dragons! Also a bear
The latest “behind the wall” Skyrim trailer gives us a behind the scenes look at the behind the scenes video that will come with the Collector’s Edition. But never mind all that, there’s a moment towards the end that shows two dragons fighting each other. And there’s some beautiful shots of the townships and fortresses tucked into Skyrim’s vast, snowy crevices. There are 315 individual areas according to one of the devs in the video. We can’t wait to loot all of them. And then loot them all again as a different character. And then bring up each object in Skyrim’s 3D object viewer and slowly rotate them going “oooh!” Skyrim is out next Friday.
Todd Howard on Skyrim’s toughest monsters: “the more of the main quest you do, the more dragons you’ll run into”
We’ve been speaking to Bethesda game director, Todd Howard about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. So far we’ve covered small matters concerning crime reporting chickens, a disastrous marriage night and the lessons Bethesda have learned from Fallout 3, but it was only a matter of time before the conversation turned to the creatures that Bethesda have shown the most in this year’s Skyrim demos, dragons! When will they appear, and how often will we fight them?
“You have to do a little bit of the main quest – just the initial stuff – for the Dragons to really start appearing, because it sits in with the story,” says Howard. “After that point, the more of the main quest you do, the more Dragons you’ll run into. But it’s hard to quantify it, they appear every once in a while. Not at a rate that is annoying… it still feels special.”
Todd Howard on the lessons Skyrim has learned from Fallout 3
We’ve been speaking to game director Todd Howard about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Previously, he told us about Bethesda’s problem with vigilante chickens reporting crimes, but he also discussed the changes that Bethesda have made since Oblivion, and many of them are inspired by Bethesda’s work on Fallout 3.
Lesson one, Oblivion’s progressions system, which had creatures levelling at the same rate as the player, has been overhauled. “[Skyrim]’s a lot more like Fallout 3, where as you level up you are going to see harder things, but the easier things stay around as well.” says Howard.
There will still be combat where it’s tougher, but these battles will be against a new or uniquely named enemy, putting an end to the boring battle-churn that dominated the later levels of Oblivion. “You’ll still run into the weaker stuff and you’ll just decimate it,” says Howard. Bad luck, mud crabs.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim system requirements released, render giant spiders on 2GB RAM
Skyrim is just three weeks away, and excitement is running high in the office, especially in the part of the office occupied by Tom Francis, who has booked holiday from a job that involves playing games to play even more games at home. And by games, I mean nothing but basic sustenance and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Read about the first three hours or so he recently spent with the game in our Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim preview.
With less than a month to go, though, now is the perfect time to upgrade your rig. Thankfully, it looks as though you probably won’t need many extras. Bethblog have released PC system specstem specs. If you’ve got a DirectX 9 card with 512MB on-board RAM, 2GB of system RAM and a dual core processor, you should be good to go. You’ll also need “internet access for Steam activation.”
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim voice cast includes Academy Award nominees and Wonder Woman
Bethesda have announced the voice cast behind The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The man who voices the big bad from Pixar’s Up, Christopher Plummer will voice an elder Greybeard philosopher monk called Arngeir who lives “in silent isolation atop Skyrim’s largest mountain.” That’s right. One of the lead voice star in Skyrim plays a man who lives lives in lonely silence several thousand feet above the ground. Hopefully we’ll hear from him at some point. Read on for the rest of the impressive cast.
Mojang vs. Bethesda: Scrolls battle heading to court
Mojang’s fight to retain the name for their upcoming fantasy card trading game will go to court. It’s the result of a legal challenge made by Bethesda earlier this year claiming that the word “Scrolls” infringes on their The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim trademark. Notch cheerily announced the news earlier on Twitter.
“The Scrolls case is going to court! Weee! :D”
Notch’s first assumption that “this is hopefully just lawyers being lawyers” doesn’t seem entirely true in the light of a looming court case. It seems that Bethesda are very serious about getting Mojang to change the name of their new game. It could set a worrying precedent, and certainly screw over the scribe-sim I’m currently working on, The Elder Elders: Scroll of Scrolls (V). If only this lawsuit could somehow all be settled with a game of Quake 3.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim perks and racial skills revealed. Be a Dark Elf, set yourself on fire
Elder Scrolls fans had a chance to get some hands on time with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim recently at the Eurogamer Expo, and have collated a big old list of information on most of Skyrim’s Perks over on The Elder Scrolls Skyrim fan site. These extra abilities can boost your major skills. One will cause your lightning bolt spell to outright evaporate your enemy if their health is low enough. Another will make items cheaper when you buy from the opposite sex you charming rogue, you.
There will be more pronounced racial differences in Skyrim, too. A scaly Argonian will have different baseline stats to a sturdy Orc. They’re more adept at picking locks, but can’t take a punch quite as well. As with Oblivion, each race will start with a racial ability of which the most impressive is surely the Dark Elf’s Ancestor’s Wrath, which surround him in wreaths of flame. In Oblivion, these abilities could often only be used once every 24 hours. A bit of Ancestor’s Wrath after breakfast would be a great way to start the day, don’t you think? Read on for the full list of perks discovered so far.
Notch on the Bethesda lawsuit, in court and in Quake 3: “I will fight this for as long as it takes”
Recently, Minecraft creator Notch challenged Bethesda to settle their legal dispute over the name of Mojang’s next game, Scrolls with a game of Quake 3. He’s since spoken to Wired about his chances, with reference in particular to the fact that Bethesda own id, and therefore Quake, and are likely to have some quite good Quake 3 players on staff.
“In retrospect, Quake 3 might have been a poor choice,” says Notch.
