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Game News Todd Howard explains Skyrim

VentilatorOfDoom

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Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

<p>Too much time at your hand? Then you might want to <a href="http://www.gameinformer.com/b/podcasts/archive/2011/02/03/toddhowardse.aspx" target="_blank">listen to this podcast</a> over at Gameinformer and let Todd Howard himself eh... inform you about the intricacies of the <strong>Elder Scrolls: Skyrim</strong>.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Game Informer's web coverage of our The Elder Scroll V: Skyrim cover story has proven to be popular with Bethesda's legion of devoted RPG fans. Today, we're pleased to present a special edition of the Game Informer Show, in which Bethesda's Todd Howard answers questions we solicited from our community of online users. It's nearly an hour of freewheeling discussion, we put your queries to Howard, who gives some revealing responses -- while still leaving more than a bit of mystery surrounding the game. Some of the topics covered include the game's combat system, spells, factions, and the powerful dragons that reign terror over the world of Skyrim.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I think everyone here understands that I don't have the time to listen to an hour of discussion, however freewheeling it might be, so feel free to post any new bits of info you were able to gather from this podcast in the comments thread.</p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>News brought to you by FaChoi.</em></p>
 

Mister Arkham

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Fuck finding out anything about the game. I just want to know which of you losers will be desperate enough to have something to complain about that you'll actually listen to this thing.
 
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-No spears
-One handed/Two Handed/Archery skills
-Each one of those skills gets its own feat/perk tree depending on the type of weapon you use(swords/axes maces)
-Werewolves still being considered
-Won't put horses in if they still feel like "battlefield jeeps" as in oblivion
-No horse armor dlc
-Some crafting will be skill based: smithing, enchanting, alchemy
-Cooking and "things like that" will not be skill based
-More emphasis on crafting this time around
-spellcrafting still being considered, has to fit into the overhauled magic system so it doesn't turn spells into a spreadsheet.
-Destruction skill also gets its own perk trees, for instance fire perk tree
-Mysticism spells go into other skills
-Adding more skills instead of the current system would have been easier for the designers, but less interesting for the player
-Skill number value less interesting than the perks you get
-Character Creation jut pick race/aspect, races have different skill increases and spells and racial abilities
-No class
-Less control upon face creation, called oblivion's random button the ugly button
-Fewer slides for different parts of the face, it's more about picking pre-crafted parts
- Dragons meant to be boss fights, like between big daddies and helis in hl2
-Dragons can divebomb, breathe fire streaks, get on the ground, march around, go anywhere, they can be random encounters, can have multiple dragons in a scene.
-Multiple types of dragons
-Don't expect to ride dragons
-The companions are more "dynamic", more people to choose from, sacrifice depth for the number of companions
-Radiant story could have allowed you to make anyone a companion(but won't)
-Radiant story is the tool they use to make quests, they can make it all handcrafted or they can take the roles in a quest and "conditionalize" them
-They can take parts of a quest and "conditionalize" it without having to handscript it
- Regular handcrafted quest "You walk into town and someone comes up to you saying his child was kidnapped and is in a specific dungeon" Radiant story quest "You walk into town and a random npc you've already met with a good disposition towards you says his child was kidnapped and is in a randomly selected dungeon nearby you haven't visited yet, dificulty and reward is scaled to level or to what they think you might "need"/want to face or to "things you've done before""
- Some quests have no "dynamic" elements, others have more, being balanced
-They want to avoid it feeling like it's a random thing over and over
-Factions are in, they'll be done differently from revious games
-Some are returning factions from previous games
-Very confident about skyrim release date, they delivered fo3 on time
-Reasons for why you started in a prison in previous game: 1-tradition, 2- not knowing why you're in prison makes you start telling the story to yourself of why you're in prison(encourages larping?)
-If you really didn't like oblivion(nor perhaps morrowind) but liked FO3, skyrim might still not switch you over
-oblivion looked like very classic/traditional fantasy, looked like everything in a given town was built the same day, not a lot of uniquess, skyrim has it, more flavor
-passes on question about game endings and c&c affecting endings, too soon
-landmass the size of oblivion, is very mountainous, can't walk across mountains, world feels bigger, has 5-6 different regions with unique looks
-pineforest, fallforest, tundra, volcanic tundra, snowy mountain, glacier areas and stuff like that
-they never aim for a specific esrb rating, assume it will be M
-combat is more violent than oblivion but not over the top like fallout
-there is a hud, article that said game was hud-less was mistaken, comes and goes as need
-small compass bar at top for direction that right now is always there
-magicka/health/stamina/other come up when they need to
-walking around the world at full health your health bar won't be visible
-wanted to keep it hudless as much as possible
-as soon as your health drops, the health bar shows up, once it's full for a period of time it goes away
-beth background is pc games, they play the game on the pc
- they want all platforms to have a high level of fidelity
-todd plays a lot on the xbox, it tends to be his preferred platform
-a lot of the graphics development is first done on the xbox as it's "smoother"
-they want to support as much pc hardware stuff as possible but that stuff is done late into the process
-pc version can run high res
-pc version should have higher res textures by default
-says most people wouldn't notice a difference between pc and console texture res because you sit much further from the screen when playing on a console
-there are uniquenesses to how they handle the interface in the pc
-they love achievements
-thinks the mix between specific quests, leveling up collection achievements and in fallout 3 was pretty good
-mix will be done differently in skyrim because there are a lot more quests
-doesn't think a kinect/move version is gonna happen, the chance is there, but he'd be surprised
-you don't know you're dragonborn when you start
-you discover it in an event that involves a dragon, at this point it doesn't matter much because they assume the player knows they'll be playing a dragonborn
-the greybeards call/shout for you to come
-he will make sure there are 7k steps to the mountain
-no maximum level coded in, only limited by your skills
-you level faster
- ob/fo3 was balanced 1 to 25-30
-this one is balanced 1 to 50
-theoretical maximum level might be 75
-says levelling faster and getting perks more often is more fun
-says gameplay footage is not too far off

Finished
 

Xor

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And here I was looking forward to reading some facepalm-worthy quotes from Todd.
 

JarlFrank

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Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
No spears in the province that is supposed to be Viking-inspired?

How am I going to play a Valkyrie without a spear ffs
 

Bluebottle

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Race/appearance only char gen customisation options (no choosing/creating a class).
You level faster than Oblivion/FO3.

:retarded:
 

waywardOne

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-Adding more skills instead of the current system would have been easier for the designers, but less interesting for the player

so (balance + variety + uniqueness) would have been easier for the devs?

he's lying so bad.
 

Luzur

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why is it so hard for Bethesda to do spears? did they lose the knowledge on how to code spears?
 

Jaesun

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This game could have nude hot naked men and hot sexy man cards and I STILL will never play it.
 
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While I liked hearing him criticize at least a couple of things about oblivion such as the environment art or horses, the simple fact that they're still considering things like horses after they've already determined the gameworld's size means they're still fairly blind to some basic design stuff.

Things like radiant story can only be implemented by having a single person voice 99% of the npcs for a given race/gender.
 

commie

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DraQ said:
Nael said:
DraQ said:
Skyrim will suck - who could expect? :roll:

You'll probably still buy it and secretly love it.
Nope.
:smug:

DraQ will pirate it and secretly love it instead.

;)

Actually he'll wait for the DLC where you can turn into or ride a dragon.


Luzur said:
why is it so hard for Bethesda to do spears? did they lose the knowledge on how to code spears?

It's too hard to make good spear combat animations as spear combat is totally different from sword/axe etc. where you can sort of get away with the same generic animation. To be honest, Bethesda isn't the only one that cannot do spear combat. I'm racking my brain trying to remember a real-time game which did it reasonably correctly. Maybe Severance? Though I think that also had you swinging a spear.
 

markec

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Bluebottle said:
Race/appearance only char gen customisation options (no choosing/creating a class).
You level faster than Oblivion/FO3.

:retarded:

Well there is no level cap and you cant keep players waiting to get every single perk.
 

commie

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markec said:
Bluebottle said:
Race/appearance only char gen customisation options (no choosing/creating a class).
You level faster than Oblivion/FO3.

:retarded:

Well there is no level cap and you cant keep players waiting to get every single perk.

Funny thing is that in Bethesda games I don't mind being able to do everything and gain everything in one playthrough because one playthrough is all I ever have the patience for with their games.
 

Mangoose

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It's too hard to make good spear combat animations as spear combat is totally different from sword/axe etc. where you can sort of get away with the same generic animation. To be honest, Bethesda isn't the only one that cannot do spear combat. I'm racking my brain trying to remember a real-time game which did it reasonably correctly. Maybe Severance? Though I think that also had you swinging a spear.
Morrowind. :lol:

Edit: It's not like Bethesda tries to do realistic animation, anyway. When's the last time you saw a sword animation that came out of a medieval swordfighting manual?
 

DraQ

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commie said:
DraQ said:
Nael said:
DraQ said:
Skyrim will suck - who could expect? :roll:

You'll probably still buy it and secretly love it.
Nope.
:smug:

DraQ will pirate it and secretly love it instead.

;)
No, but I may reluctantly pirate it so that I will be able to hate it more.
:rpgcodex:

Actually he'll wait for the DLC where you can turn into or ride a dragon.
I hope that Todd doesn't go this far out of his way to erode my codex credibility.

It's too hard to make good spear combat animations as spear combat is totally different from sword/axe etc. where you can sort of get away with the same generic animation.
Bethesda cannot into animations in general, much less realistic animations, but spears were implemented in Morrowind and the best way to use them was thrusting.
 

adure

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from a german magazin
google translate

(Spoiler included)

- The player is Dovahkiin.
- As in Oblivion it is equipped at the beginning of the game rather flimsy.
- Your first quests you will do in a small and surrounded by mountains settlement called "Wood River".
- At the beginning of your first quest is a dealer named "hatches" a gold necklace in the form of a dragon claw stolen. Your job is to find this gem again.
- There has to be undead and better delivery spiders.
- Your quest givers will no longer marked, but mentioned in a conversation.
- The world looks uncannily realistic
- An association which is called "Grey Beards" familiar with the dragon language very well.
- If Dovahkiin defeated a dragon, he can take his soul.
- Each hand is controlled separately. That is, with a game pad the left and right joystick and a mouse, the left and right buttons.
- There will be a sighting.
- The difficulty level is set at the first visit of a unique environment.
- Objects in the inventory can be rotated and thus examined from all sides.
- Items include Hinnweise on quests.
- Wind gusts are stirring up snow and move the plants.
- There are no landscapes created by the computer. They were created by eight level designers by hand.
- If the player has missed a major event, such a management system ensures that he is made aware.
- The behavior of the creatures in Skyrim is not predefined.
 

commie

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Mangoose said:
It's too hard to make good spear combat animations as spear combat is totally different from sword/axe etc. where you can sort of get away with the same generic animation. To be honest, Bethesda isn't the only one that cannot do spear combat. I'm racking my brain trying to remember a real-time game which did it reasonably correctly. Maybe Severance? Though I think that also had you swinging a spear.
Morrowind. :lol:

Edit: It's not like Bethesda tries to do realistic animation, anyway. When's the last time you saw a sword animation that came out of a medieval swordfighting manual?

Morrowind just had you one hand a spear like you were poking at something, rather than gripping it one or two handed, over or under arm. Hardly realistic. Though as you say other animations suck as well.

I could accept non-realistic animations if they felt robust, like as if you really were tearing into your foe(like the mentioned Severance or Die By the Sword, Gothic, Risen and Witcher) instead of the fairy tap, unresponsive and awkward animations that Bethesda make.
 

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