Impressions of TES V?

[Hayashi]

Just wondering. I enjoyed Morrowind, but I didn't play Oblivion.
BTW Morrowind is the only game I've played in the TES series.

[Aelia Jusa]

Played about 10hrs so far - love it. Absolutely beautiful, intuitive controls, already I can see it will be HUGE. Better than Oblivion esp. the level scaling which I hated in Oblivion and ended up just never levelling up which was lame. Strongly recommend. You need pretty powerful hardware though. It was worth the expense of my ginormous video card though to have it tell me it would be running on "ultra high" graphics quality. And it so is.

[Firestormalpha]

I'm probably gonna go console on this one, in the next few months. So, PS3 or Xbox360? I'm also thinking of picking up Rune Factory (ps3), but I still want to get into Bioshock (360 only?) And Fallout 3 GOTY which can go either way. Anywho, my first impressions of the game in question is: Graphically beautiful, but I'll miss the user-mods.

[Kakero]

Gosh, didn't even know this was out already.

System Requirement Lab says that my computer can run this game at minimum. Good enough for me if I wanna play it.

[Jorath Calar]

I'ts awesome, much better than Oblivion, the people look human (okey most of the women look like supermodels but whatever ), the stupid presuade system is gone (thank god!), the story is great and fighting dragons is awesome

Oh and if you are playing and see the guy called Heimskr preaching about Talos, remember that Heimskur is Icelandic for stupid...

[Sever]

My own system (bought primarily to run Oblivion on high) is barely capable of running Skyrim. Still, it's playable. Too early to form an overall opinion, but first impressions are mostly good. I especially like the new character models and voice acting. No uncanny valley, no hamming it up. For the most part, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was made with an adult audience in mind, rather than an audience who plays the game inbetween episodes of Power Rangers.

The interface sucks, but no big surprise considering it was made for console users. (interestingly, even the consolers are complaining due to the fonts being too small to easily read).

The scaled levelling system is just as stupid an idea now as it was for Oblivion.

Further dumbing down of game mechanics and stats for dumbass xboxers tickles an angry nerve, as does the perk system.

True to form, Beth has again forgotten about a major playing style while designing the game. This time it's magic users who get the blunt end. You can be whatever you want to be, but if you want to excel, you gotta be primarily melee.

I'm sure i'll come up with many more as i keep playing...

(Edit: Yeah, whatever was wrong with item durability? Gone completely. Grr)

[Sever]

Fighting dragons is so cool! I love the way they crouch down and sit still so you can hit them until they die! It seems like such a dragony thing to do!

[Aelia Jusa]

Originally Posted by Sever Fighting dragons is so cool! I love the way they crouch down and sit still so you can hit them until they die! It seems like such a dragony thing to do!

LOL. To be fair, they usually fly about and breathe fire for a little while before settling down to be killed.

I'm still enjoying it a lot. It is buggy - occasionally walls disappear and people appear to be wearing lurid purple spacesuits. Also get the crash-to-desktop semi-regularly. Fortunately I am a compulsive saver so have never missed too much. I'm still finding the huge amount of quests overwhelming - you do one but get three more in the meantime. I am loathe to talk to people in case they give me more quests. Also I feel like I should be working on enchanting and smithery and such but don't have time because there are too many quests to do.

[Raistlin Majere]

Aelia: How much RAM does your system have? If you have 4GB+, consider getting the "Skyrim 4GB". It's not necessarily a mod, rather a fixed exe of sorts that allows Skyrim to utilize more of the RAM on your system. By default, it is limited to using 2GB(and 4GB is the max it can use, since it uses 32-bit libraries, or so I understood). I can't explain to you exactly why this helps, since I'm not that much of a techy, but it stopped my random crashes(which could happen multiple times /hour) completely. Haven't had a single one since.

I got it from TES Nexus, where all the mods are, as I recall. I just saved the files into a folder on my desktop, and when I play skyrim, I start up Steam client, and then run the Skyrim 4GB exe instead of booting it through Steam. If you don't use Steam, I guess that step is unnecessary.

Regarding Skyrim itself, I have 2 issues with it so far:

1. Lack of scalability in magic. Sure, being able to make your own spells makes it possible to create some pretty munchkin magic on casters, but I dislike the fact that at level 30 I am still more or less utilizing the same spells as I did at level 10...just takes longer for the enemies to fall, since they start having more HP.

2. Dragons. Don't get me wrong, I think they are very cool enemies, and overall well done(even though they seem a bit buggy at times, with flying patterns simulating going down a drain). However, considering that dragons are supposed to be the ultimate badasses of the monster world, I find them far too EASY. Snow bears pummel me casually while joyfully galloping past me. Dragons can roast me for indefinite times, and even with default 100 HP, it just makes me a tad bit toasty.

Otherwise, I have to say I'm loving it! Looking forward to finishing with my mage though..pure mage is just not as fun in this one as the previous games. I find restoration and destruction advance far too slowly compared to conjuration and illusion. I find myself resurrecting dead enemies just to use my weakest destruction spells on the zombies as a sort of training method, just to help keep up my destruction skill, yet still it is only around 50 at level 30~.

Melee on the other hand is very interesting by the looks of it! I still miss the variety of weaponry from Morrowind, but the ability to dual wield, the control of shielding, etc..its just very well done in my opinion! Marksmanship is a bit overpowered, but I guess in reality an arrow to the head would hurt alot as well I have not really experimented too much with a thief-like character, but I understand with daggers you are able to get some hardcore critical damage..looking forward to trying it out with an all out Khajiit assassin

I've also felt the frustration of the amount of quests, as Aelia mentioned..seems everyone needs something done! But I like the fact that even quests that seem trivial may turn out to be quite interesting, and vaster than one would guess initially!

[Sever]

@Raistlin - How's that "put your weapon away to cast" thing treating you as a mage? I ran out of healing potions at the end of a dungeon and was forced to use some of the scrolls i'd picked up to get through the boss fight. First time i'd had anything to do with magic and i gotta say i'm really not looking forward to playing as a mage (which is traditionally the character i do the major play through as). No weapon while casting means no defence and when your spell fails, no offense. Oblivion actually got something right and they go and change it in Skyrim! Not that that was the major problem in this little escapade though...

I couldn't aim left or right after the scroll had charged, so i couldn't hit the bugger i was aiming at anyway because by then he was 3 feet to the side and coming fast! Further to that, what's with the overly zealous head movements while charging a spell! The view goes all over the place in 1st person, meaning that even if the bugger was standing still, by the time i've finished charging, i'm no longer aiming at what i was originally aiming at! The only way i was able to hit the boss with any spell i actually wanted to hit him with was by getting him to chase me back to a long, narrow corridor so i could land a quick shot with a fear spell and then following him around until he dead ended and stood completely still for 5 seconds so i could fire off a charged, ranged spell at point blank just so it couldn't ■■■■■■■ miss! And all that only knocked just enough health off him to be able to barely finish the job in melee with the one health potion i had!

Perhaps it's something to do with scrolls being tied to skills which are still very low with this character, or perhaps it's general teething problems getting used to the magic system after jumping in at the deep end instead of at the very start of a new magic oriented character, but i can't help but think that they've stuffed this up completely.