[3] The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Dark Avalanche]

Per vedere la parte precedente di questo thread clicca qui: [2] The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Per vedere la parte precedente di questo thread clicca qui: [1]The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Per vedere la parte precedente di questo thread clicca qui: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/vg...scrolls/708369

Mi sto già fappando. Prepariamoci a orde barbariche nordiche e draghi.

Aggiornamenti:

• uscita prevista per l'11/11/11
• ambientato a Skyrim, patria dei Nord
• ci saranno i draghi
• multipiattaforma
• nuovo motore grafico

Altri dettagli pubblicati da Destructoid e tradotti in lingua nostrana su RPGItalia:

• Il gioco è ambientato 200 anni dopo Oblivion nel Regno montuoso di Skyrim, a nord di Cyrodil e durante una guerra civile, pare tra due fratelli che nel conflitto hanno causato la nascita del terribile drago Alduin;
• Il giocatore interpreta Dragonborne, un combattente capace di battersi contro i draghi e addestrato per essere l’ultimo “Blade”;
• 10 diverse razze giocabili;
• Combattimenti più dinamici con mosse finali, attacchi unici per arma e la possibilità di forgiare armi, forse anche attacchi a due armi;
• 18 abilità e diversi perk da conquistare e scegliere;
• Gli NPC saranno maggiormente reattivi, potranno muoversi durante una conversazione e reagiranno anche nei confronti degli oggetti lasciati dal giocatore (potranno aiutare a raccoglierli o lotteranno per prenderseli, ad esempio);
• Quest generate in maniera random e perfezionate in base allo stile e alle abilità del giocatore, calcolate raccogliendo i dati di gioco;
• 5 enormi città piene di attività da intraprendere come forgiare armi, coltivare la terra, allevare gli animali, raccogliere minerali, tagliare legna e cucinare, le città potrebbero anche subire gli attacchi devastanti dei draghi;
• 5 scuole diverse di magia: distruzione, alterazione, evocazione, cura e illusione;
• Il motore grafico su cui è basato il gioco è completamente nuovo e comporta molte evoluzioni all’ambientazione. Tra queste un comportamento dinamico della neve, delle ombre, degli alberi e dell’acqua, con effetti multipli come quello del vento su quest’ultima, ad esempio;
• Tra i nemici confermati ci sono zombie, scheletri, troll, giganti, mostri di ghiaccio, ragni giganti, draghi, lupi e felini di varia tipologia, per quanto riguarda le creature varie;
• Migliorata la visuale in terza persona;
• Le accelerazioni possono essere effettuate spendendo un po’ di stamina.

Altri dettagli:

• Il regno di Skyrim ha recentemente perso il suo re, ed infuria una guerra civile tra chi vuole la secessione dall’impero e chi invece vuole rimanerne parte.
• Un certo Esbern, una delle poche blades sopravvissute, sarà il mentore del nostro eroe. Ha studiato a fondo le profezie e sa che il mondo di Tamriel è in grave pericolo. Il personaggio sarà doppiato da nientepopòdimeno che Max Von Sydow!!!
• Inoltre si prospetta un grandissima vastità di dungeon, in quanto “Skyrim è piena di pericolanti rovine e antiche città”.

Qualcosina sul combattimento:

“Ogni arma e incantesimo potrà essere equipaggiato in ogni mano in qualunque momento, proponedo così pressochè illimitati stili di combattimento. Impugna due stesse armi, o una daga (pugnale) in una e una mazza nell’altra , combatti difensivamento con uno scudo nella mano sinistra e una scoppiettante palla di elettricità nella destra. Combina un incantesimo differente in ogni mano, o uno stesso incantesimo in entrambe, creando effetti devastanti. La scelta è tua”. Poi dice anche altre cose, ad esempio riguardo ad un nuovo “menù rapido per selezionare le tue armi/incantesimi/ecc. preferiti”. sembra poi non esserci alcuna classe , definita come una “restrinzione”. “Sei il modo in cui giochi”, detto dallo stesso Howard. Ma col tempo una classe si formerà in quanto “usa armi a una mano, e la tua abilità con esse aumenterà, lancia incantesimi di illusione e la tua abilità in quella scuola di magia aumenterà”. ” In Oblivion”, dice Howard,” giocavi per un po’ e poi il gioco ti chiedeva: quale sarà la tua classe? e quello era un modo efficace di dire:” quali skills sono importanti per me?”; e una volta passato quel punto quelle skills erano le uniche che condizionavano il livellamento” ma in Skyrim pare che ogni skill (anche le secondarie) daranno un aiuto al livellamento anche se “più la skill sarà di alto livello, più aiuterà il livellamento”. In questo seguito il “level cap” è 50, nel senso che sarà possibile avanzare ancora, ma molto lentamente.



Tradotta anche parte dell'’anteprima di Game Informer:


Si parla di Radiant AI e le sue nuove applicazioni:

“TES V ha un nuovo rimarcabile approccio nel modo di raccontare la storia in un rpg. In Oblivion, la tecnologia Radiant AI di Bethesda permetteva agli NPCs di avere una propria routine quotidiana. “Radiant story” applica lo stesso principio all’esperienza molto più ampia del personaggio che interagisce con con il mondo in ogni singolo momento. In breve, il “Radiant story” permette una totale reazione del mondo alle azioni del personaggio, dal piu piccolo dettaglio al punto più importante della quest…”

Menù e inventari:

” Raramente i menù sono divertenti, ma non hanno bisogno di essere ingombranti come lo erano in Oblivion. Per rispondere alla necessità di un miglioramento, il team è tornato alla lavagna per creare un interfaccia governabile con semplicità. Se faranno bene il loro lavoro, utilizzare i menù sarà facile, mentre sarà anche offerta abbondanza di contenuti per coloro che desiderano approfondire la loro comprensione del mondo di gioco.”In Itunes, quando guardi tutta la tua musica, la sfogli, e vedi tutte le cover e le informazioni. Diventa tangibile, anche pensando che è tutto virtuale. E’ questo quello che mi piace.” spiega Howard. ” Uno dei nostri obbiettivi era, ‘se Apple facesse un gioco fantasy, come sarebbe esteriormente?’ Sarebbe ottimo poter “scorrere” un sacco di dati velocemente, e su questo stiamo lavorando.” Premi il tasto appropriato, e un menu a quattro punti, stile bussola, apparirà davanti ai tuoi occhi. Skills, inventario, mappa e magie sono le 4 sottosezioni presenti. Premi su per le skill, e la visuale si sposterà sul cielo sopra di te, dove costellazioni e stelle brillano su Skyrim. “I cieli ti stanno mostrando cosa sei” dice Howard ” e diventa un divertente modo di guardare le tue skills.” Ogni costellazione è una di queste skills, divise tra aere del cielo che rappresentano combattimento, magia, e capacità furtive. Ogni “perk” che selezioni illumina un altra stella nella costellazione. Premi destra nel menu-bussola, e raggiungerai il tuo inventario. Armi e armature sono ben organizzate, e ognuna di esse puo essere selezionata come preferita per una selezione rapida. I libri appaiono come oggetti in tre dimensioni che apri per leggere. Tutti gli altri oggetti hanno uno spazio a loro destinato. Tutto nell’inventario ha una dettagliata, zoomabile immagine tridimensionale, che si apre quando selezioni l’oggetto, dandoti molte utili informazioni su cosa stai trasportando con te. Premi sinistra dal menu a bussola e aprirai la tua selezione di incantesimi sempre organizzati ecc. Come le armi anche gli incantesimi possono essere equipaggiati in entrambe le mani per creare potenti combinazioni.

Nuove notizie circa il personaggio che impersoneremo, un Dragonborn:

Il titolo di dragonborn ha un grande valore per il gameplay. Come forse ultimo dragonborn sopravvissuto, il tuo personaggio avrà la capacità di imparare e applicare il potere dei draghi tramite il mistico linguaggio in cui comunicano. Il personaggio potrà imparare delle abilità chiamate “dragon shouts” (urlo del drago, o qualcosa del genere ) durante il suo viaggio per il mondo. Assorbendo le anime dei draghi, la tua capacità di imparare nuovi “shouts” aumenterà. “Ci sono queste parole di potere, e se impari a pronunciarle in modo corretto, avranno un effetto potente” spiega Howard ” Ci sono altre persone nel mondo che possono usare i “dragon shouts”, ma sono molto rare. Sono come un’ antica conoscenza. Usate più nel passato. Ma la tua abilità di assorbire le anime dei draghi e “usare” gli “shouts” è antica.” Ci sono oltre 20 unici “shouts” nel gioco, e ogniuno è formato da tre parole di potere. Queste sono acquisite in molti modi, nel tuo viaggio per il mondo. Con ogni nuova parola, lo “shout” che produci crescerà di intensità e potere. “Sono tutti traducibili (dal draconic all’ Inglese ) come ‘potenti parole divine’” precisa Howard. Gli “shouts” hanno effetti molto vari: uno fa fuggire i nemici da te impauriti dalla potenza del tuo urlo, un altro rallenta il tempo… alcune parole di potere sono sussurrate, per aiutare un approccio stealth, come quello che ti manda istantaneamente da un posto ad un altro. Uno in particolare pronuncia il nome di un dragon vivente, e la bestia è costretta a venire in tuo aiuto e aiutarti combattendo al tuo fianco nelle battaglie.”

Una lunga descrizione del gioco ad opera dell’autore dell’anteprima:

Solo pochi momenti passati ad osservare TES V in azione, vi lasceranno senza fiato. Qualsiasi visuale stiate utilizzando,che sia la prima persona (HUD-free) o la migliorata terza persona, il mondo di Skyrim è meticolosamente dettagliato. Il nuovo rendering engine offre ineguagliabile fedeltà per un gdr-open world. Ogni oggetto nel mondo produce una perfetta ombra. Alberi e cespugli si muovono col vento, e l’acqua scorre in rapide correnti, dando un senso di energia e vita al mondo anche quando non ci sono creature vicine. Una incredibile distanza visiva permette al giocatore di guardare dalla cima di una montagna per una vastissima distanza, e tutto quello che puoi vedere – dalle basse valli alle alte e distanti montagni nevose – è attraversabile. La neve cade in modo naturale su pietre e cespugli, non come una texture, ma cadendo esattamente come sarebbe su tale oggetto data la sua forma e le sue dimensioni. L’ impostazione (ambientale) di Skyrim è un ambiente duro e selvaggio, che si estende a nord di Cyrodiil, la verdeggiante nazione centrale dove si svolgeva la storia di Oblivion. Dove Oblivion si concentrava su selve idilliache e città imperiali, Skyrim ha montagne innevate, maestose tundre e rovine cadenti. “E’ un ambiente veramente rude” spiega il game director Todd Howard. “E’ l’aspetto principale di Skyrim. E’ più brutale. E’ il luogo di nascita dei primi uomini che popolavano Tamriel. La culla degli uomini. Vedi queste città che sembrano davvero antiche, che sono lì da centinaia di anni. Per niente “rinascimento fatato” come era Oblivion. Sono un grande fan di Conan, quindi tutto ciò mi piace molto.” Terra di nascita dell’umanità, Skyrim è una imponente e potente nazione, con molti territori elevati da esplorare. “E’ qualcosa di buono per noi, specialmente dopo Fallout, fare qualcosa di veramente bello, con paesaggi e piante,” dice Howard ” La costa settentrionale è molto ghiacciata, e ci sono questi ghiacciai e molta neve, e poi c’è un area chiamata “the Reach” , che è rocciosa e scoscesa, a sud-ovest di Skyrim. C’è una tundra, con questa grande area aperta nel mezzo, da cui vedi anche le montagne marginali. All’ interno di questo posto ci sono sei o sette ambienti differenti.” Tigri dai denti a sciabola, pelosi mammuth, e alci vagano negli stessi territori selvaggi popolati da giganti, trolls del ghiaccio, e terrificanti spettri simili a serpenti che fluttuano seguendo le correnti di aria fredda. Cinque possenti città punteggiano il paesaggio, offrendo rifugio dall’aspro e duro ambiente. Persino le aree sotterranee sono piene di varianti, da cave ghiacciate a cripte dimenticate. “C’è un unicità nel territorio ottima per i tipi di giochi che ci piace fare.” ci dice Howard.

Vita ordinaria e interazioni con il mondo di gioco:

Villaggi e città sono importanti come lo sono sempre stati nel mondo di Elder Scrolls, ma in Skyrim Bethesda ha alterato il modo in cui i giocatori sperimenteranno l’interazione con gli NPCs e ha incrementato il numero di attività che possono essere “scoperte” in questi bastioni di civiltà. Per coloro che hanno giocato Oblivion o Fallout 3, le vostre più immediate preoccupazioni riguardo ai dialoghi con gli ncp possono essere sepolte. Le conversazioni non si svolgeranno in una parte zoomata della visuale in prima persona, e bethesda ha “reclutato” di gran lunga più attori. Avvicinati ad un npc, e una opzione di conversazione apparirà. Mentre loro ti parlano, l’ Ai che controlla il personaggio lo muoverà, a volte ti guarderà, per poi girarsi per continuare quello che stava facendo mentre sta ancora parlando, magari continuando a tagliare legna, o badando ad altro. Le conversazioni secondarie che puoi ascoltare ti forniranno anche informazioni senza bisogno di iniziare il dialogo. Potrebbero menzionare un oggetto perso, o una situazione inusuale, e questi dettagli verranno automaticamente annotati nel tuo diario, offrendo nuove strade di esplorazione, ad esemprio cercare di persuaderli. Il tuo eroe può anche compiere molte altre azioni in una città, che aiutano a far sembrare il mondo più genuino. Andare alla forgia e creare nuove armi dal rosso metallo rovente. Mescolare strane sostanze alchemiche per creare pozioni o veleni. Incantare oggetti con nuovi effetti magici. Oppure cimentarsi nell’estrazione mineraria, nel tagliare la legna, o persino nel cucinare. Le città sono piene di attività quando stai cercando una pausa dalle tue avventure a stretto contatto con la morte ).

[Dark_Angel83]

Il comparto grafico è rilevante allo stesso modo in moltissimi giochi, è ora di smetterla con questi luoghi comuni della "grafica che non conta niente" o "non conta in un gdr".

non è un luogo comune... se poi oblivion ti è piaciuto per la grafica allora è un altro discorso e è inutile stare a discutere

Magari ad un certo punto della trama salta fuori che il nostro PG è un parente dei Septim e che noi, come tali, avremo il dovere di respingere la minaccia di Alduin e riportare la pace e l'ordine su tutta Tamriel (in subbuglio dopo la dipartita del padre di Martin e quest'ultimo negli eventi di Oblivion)...
Magari potremo diventare anche il nuovo Imperatore di Tamriel...ma mi aspetto un'ampia gamma di scelte/conseguenze riguardo ciò nel finale...e se non ce le mettono mi incazzo...

è da quando è uscito il trailer che è lo sviluppo più probabile per me... quindi sicuramente se sarà così già so che la main quest sarà una pagliacciata peggiore di oblivion, ma spero vivamente di sbagliarmi

[Skree]

Ma veramente no. Io sto giocando in questi giorni a Knights of the Chalice, che è un gdr recente fatto con la grafica di Ultima 6, praticamente. Ed è un ottimo gdr.

UNo sparatutto o un gioco di corse d'auto fatto con quella grafica potrebbe andare dallo schifo a massimo il "carino", KOTC invece rapisce per ore e ore.

[Chronos]

La grafica è importante solo nel momento in cui avere un certo livello di grafica non sottrae nulla ai contenuti ed al gameplay.

I roguelike sono un esempio di questo fattore. Meglio un Dwarf Fortress con tutto quello che offre e la grafica ASCII, che un Dwarf Fortress con grafica 3D ultrapompata ma com molte caratteristiche in meno.

[no1]

è la solita confusione tra il lato "tecnico" e quello "artistico"
il primo è abbastanza irrilevante
il secondo è (IMHO) fondamentale
poi sono il primo ad ammettere che possono esserci vg visivamente desolanti ma pieni di contenuti, ma, mancando di una componente fondamentale, resteranno sempre opere in qualche modo minori
come un libro con una splendida trama ma mal scritto

[Chronos]

è la solita confusione tra il lato "tecnico" e quello "artistico"
il primo è abbastanza irrilevante
il secondo è (IMHO) fondamentale
poi sono il primo ad ammettere che possono esserci vg visivamente desolanti ma pieni di contenuti, ma, mancando di una componente fondamentale, resteranno sempre opere in qualche modo minori
come un libro con una splendida trama ma mal scritto

Il problema è che, generalmente, succede l'esatto contrario. Massima esaltazione per il lato tecnico, e fottesega del lato "artistico". E le eccezioni sono poche, per un Minecraft o un Braid che si fanno notare in questo senso, c'è dietro l'angolo un Thief II che viene criticato per l'aspetto grafico.

[Anonimo Misterioso]

Chissà se ci saranno anche armi uniche fatte con ossa di drago, e armature fatte sia con le ossa di drago o pelle di drago...

[Sephiroth1984]

Posto il solito sunto di tutto ciò che abbiamo raccolto finora:


PARTE I

• First Elder Scrolls V Skyrim Details
• First Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Details Leaked
• Una delle prime video-anteprime

Altri dettagli da Destructoid:

Spoiler:

• Il gioco è ambientato 200 anni dopo Oblivion nel Regno montuoso di Skyrim, a nord di Cyrodil e durante una guerra civile, pare tra due fratelli che nel conflitto hanno causato la nascita del terribile drago Alduin;
• Il giocatore interpreta Dragonborne, un combattente capace di battersi contro i draghi e addestrato per essere l’ultimo “Blade”;
• 10 diverse razze giocabili;
• Combattimenti più dinamici con mosse finali, attacchi unici per arma e la possibilità di forgiare armi, forse anche attacchi a due armi;
• 18 abilità e diversi perk da conquistare e scegliere;
• Gli NPC saranno maggiormente reattivi, potranno muoversi durante una conversazione e reagiranno anche nei confronti degli oggetti lasciati dal giocatore (potranno aiutare a raccoglierli o lotteranno per prenderseli, ad esempio);
• Quest generate in maniera random e perfezionate in base allo stile e alle abilità del giocatore, calcolate raccogliendo i dati di gioco;
• 5 enormi città piene di attività da intraprendere come forgiare armi, coltivare la terra, allevare gli animali, raccogliere minerali, tagliare legna e cucinare, le città potrebbero anche subire gli attacchi devastanti dei draghi;
• 5 scuole diverse di magia: distruzione, alterazione, evocazione, cura e illusione;
• Il motore grafico su cui è basato il gioco è completamente nuovo e comporta molte evoluzioni all’ambientazione. Tra queste un comportamento dinamico della neve, delle ombre, degli alberi e dell’acqua, con effetti multipli come quello del vento su quest’ultima, ad esempio;
• Tra i nemici confermati ci sono zombie, scheletri, troll, giganti, mostri di ghiaccio, ragni giganti, draghi, lupi e felini di varia tipologia, per quanto riguarda le creature varie;
• Migliorata la visuale in terza persona;
• Le accelerazioni possono essere effettuate spendendo un po’ di stamina.

Altri dettagli:

• Il regno di Skyrim ha recentemente perso il suo re, ed infuria una guerra civile tra chi vuole la secessione dall’impero e chi invece vuole rimanerne parte.
• Un certo Esbern, una delle poche blades sopravvissute, sarà il mentore del nostro eroe. Ha studiato a fondo le profezie e sa che il mondo di Tamriel è in grave pericolo. Il personaggio sarà doppiato da nientepopòdimeno che Max Von Sydow!!!
• Inoltre si prospetta un grandissima vastità di dungeon, in quanto “Skyrim è piena di pericolanti rovine e antiche città”.

Qualcosina sul combattimento:

“Ogni arma e incantesimo potrà essere equipaggiato in ogni mano in qualunque momento, proponedo così pressochè illimitati stili di combattimento. Impugna due stesse armi, o una daga (pugnale) in una e una mazza nell’altra , combatti difensivamento con uno scudo nella mano sinistra e una scoppiettante palla di elettricità nella destra. Combina un incantesimo differente in ogni mano, o uno stesso incantesimo in entrambe, creando effetti devastanti. La scelta è tua”. Poi dice anche altre cose, ad esempio riguardo ad un nuovo “menù rapido per selezionare le tue armi/incantesimi/ecc. preferiti”. sembra poi non esserci alcuna classe , definita come una “restrinzione”. “Sei il modo in cui giochi”, detto dallo stesso Howard. Ma col tempo una classe si formerà in quanto “usa armi a una mano, e la tua abilità con esse aumenterà, lancia incantesimi di illusione e la tua abilità in quella scuola di magia aumenterà”. ” In Oblivion”, dice Howard,” giocavi per un po’ e poi il gioco ti chiedeva: quale sarà la tua classe? e quello era un modo efficace di dire:” quali skills sono importanti per me?”; e una volta passato quel punto quelle skills erano le uniche che condizionavano il livellamento” ma in Skyrim pare che ogni skill (anche le secondarie) daranno un aiuto al livellamento anche se “più la skill sarà di alto livello, più aiuterà il livellamento”. In questo seguito il “level cap” è 50, nel senso che sarà possibile avanzare ancora, ma molto lentamente.

Tradotta anche parte dell'’anteprima di Game Informer:

Si parla di Radiant AI e le sue nuove applicazioni:

“TES V ha un nuovo rimarcabile approccio nel modo di raccontare la storia in un rpg. In Oblivion, la tecnologia Radiant AI di Bethesda permetteva agli NPCs di avere una propria routine quotidiana. “Radiant story” applica lo stesso principio all’esperienza molto più ampia del personaggio che interagisce con con il mondo in ogni singolo momento. In breve, il “Radiant story” permette una totale reazione del mondo alle azioni del personaggio, dal piu piccolo dettaglio al punto più importante della quest…”

Menù e inventari:

” Raramente i menù sono divertenti, ma non hanno bisogno di essere ingombranti come lo erano in Oblivion. Per rispondere alla necessità di un miglioramento, il team è tornato alla lavagna per creare un interfaccia governabile con semplicità. Se faranno bene il loro lavoro, utilizzare i menù sarà facile, mentre sarà anche offerta abbondanza di contenuti per coloro che desiderano approfondire la loro comprensione del mondo di gioco.”In Itunes, quando guardi tutta la tua musica, la sfogli, e vedi tutte le cover e le informazioni. Diventa tangibile, anche pensando che è tutto virtuale. E’ questo quello che mi piace.” spiega Howard. ” Uno dei nostri obbiettivi era, ‘se Apple facesse un gioco fantasy, come sarebbe esteriormente?’ Sarebbe ottimo poter “scorrere” un sacco di dati velocemente, e su questo stiamo lavorando.” Premi il tasto appropriato, e un menu a quattro punti, stile bussola, apparirà davanti ai tuoi occhi. Skills, inventario, mappa e magie sono le 4 sottosezioni presenti. Premi su per le skill, e la visuale si sposterà sul cielo sopra di te, dove costellazioni e stelle brillano su Skyrim. “I cieli ti stanno mostrando cosa sei” dice Howard ” e diventa un divertente modo di guardare le tue skills.” Ogni costellazione è una di queste skills, divise tra aere del cielo che rappresentano combattimento, magia, e capacità furtive. Ogni “perk” che selezioni illumina un altra stella nella costellazione. Premi destra nel menu-bussola, e raggiungerai il tuo inventario. Armi e armature sono ben organizzate, e ognuna di esse puo essere selezionata come preferita per una selezione rapida. I libri appaiono come oggetti in tre dimensioni che apri per leggere. Tutti gli altri oggetti hanno uno spazio a loro destinato. Tutto nell’inventario ha una dettagliata, zoomabile immagine tridimensionale, che si apre quando selezioni l’oggetto, dandoti molte utili informazioni su cosa stai trasportando con te. Premi sinistra dal menu a bussola e aprirai la tua selezione di incantesimi sempre organizzati ecc. Come le armi anche gli incantesimi possono essere equipaggiati in entrambe le mani per creare potenti combinazioni.

Nuove notizie circa il personaggio che impersoneremo, un Dragonborn:

Il titolo di dragonborn ha un grande valore per il gameplay. Come forse ultimo dragonborn sopravvissuto, il tuo personaggio avrà la capacità di imparare e applicare il potere dei draghi tramite il mistico linguaggio in cui comunicano. Il personaggio potrà imparare delle abilità chiamate “dragon shouts” (urlo del drago, o qualcosa del genere ) durante il suo viaggio per il mondo. Assorbendo le anime dei draghi, la tua capacità di imparare nuovi “shouts” aumenterà. “Ci sono queste parole di potere, e se impari a pronunciarle in modo corretto, avranno un effetto potente” spiega Howard ” Ci sono altre persone nel mondo che possono usare i “dragon shouts”, ma sono molto rare. Sono come un’ antica conoscenza. Usate più nel passato. Ma la tua abilità di assorbire le anime dei draghi e “usare” gli “shouts” è antica.” Ci sono oltre 20 unici “shouts” nel gioco, e ogniuno è formato da tre parole di potere. Queste sono acquisite in molti modi, nel tuo viaggio per il mondo. Con ogni nuova parola, lo “shout” che produci crescerà di intensità e potere. “Sono tutti traducibili (dal draconic all’ Inglese ) come ‘potenti parole divine’” precisa Howard. Gli “shouts” hanno effetti molto vari: uno fa fuggire i nemici da te impauriti dalla potenza del tuo urlo, un altro rallenta il tempo… alcune parole di potere sono sussurrate, per aiutare un approccio stealth, come quello che ti manda istantaneamente da un posto ad un altro. Uno in particolare pronuncia il nome di un dragon vivente, e la bestia è costretta a venire in tuo aiuto e aiutarti combattendo al tuo fianco nelle battaglie.”

Una lunga descrizione del gioco ad opera dell’autore dell’anteprima:

Solo pochi momenti passati ad osservare TES V in azione, vi lasceranno senza fiato. Qualsiasi visuale stiate utilizzando,che sia la prima persona (HUD-free) o la migliorata terza persona, il mondo di Skyrim è meticolosamente dettagliato. Il nuovo rendering engine offre ineguagliabile fedeltà per un gdr-open world. Ogni oggetto nel mondo produce una perfetta ombra. Alberi e cespugli si muovono col vento, e l’acqua scorre in rapide correnti, dando un senso di energia e vita al mondo anche quando non ci sono creature vicine. Una incredibile distanza visiva permette al giocatore di guardare dalla cima di una montagna per una vastissima distanza, e tutto quello che puoi vedere – dalle basse valli alle alte e distanti montagni nevose – è attraversabile. La neve cade in modo naturale su pietre e cespugli, non come una texture, ma cadendo esattamente come sarebbe su tale oggetto data la sua forma e le sue dimensioni. L’ impostazione (ambientale) di Skyrim è un ambiente duro e selvaggio, che si estende a nord di Cyrodiil, la verdeggiante nazione centrale dove si svolgeva la storia di Oblivion. Dove Oblivion si concentrava su selve idilliache e città imperiali, Skyrim ha montagne innevate, maestose tundre e rovine cadenti. “E’ un ambiente veramente rude” spiega il game director Todd Howard. “E’ l’aspetto principale di Skyrim. E’ più brutale. E’ il luogo di nascita dei primi uomini che popolavano Tamriel. La culla degli uomini. Vedi queste città che sembrano davvero antiche, che sono lì da centinaia di anni. Per niente “rinascimento fatato” come era Oblivion. Sono un grande fan di Conan, quindi tutto ciò mi piace molto.” Terra di nascita dell’umanità, Skyrim è una imponente e potente nazione, con molti territori elevati da esplorare. “E’ qualcosa di buono per noi, specialmente dopo Fallout, fare qualcosa di veramente bello, con paesaggi e piante,” dice Howard ” La costa settentrionale è molto ghiacciata, e ci sono questi ghiacciai e molta neve, e poi c’è un area chiamata “the Reach” , che è rocciosa e scoscesa, a sud-ovest di Skyrim. C’è una tundra, con questa grande area aperta nel mezzo, da cui vedi anche le montagne marginali. All’ interno di questo posto ci sono sei o sette ambienti differenti.” Tigri dai denti a sciabola, pelosi mammuth, e alci vagano negli stessi territori selvaggi popolati da giganti, trolls del ghiaccio, e terrificanti spettri simili a serpenti che fluttuano seguendo le correnti di aria fredda. Cinque possenti città punteggiano il paesaggio, offrendo rifugio dall’aspro e duro ambiente. Persino le aree sotterranee sono piene di varianti, da cave ghiacciate a cripte dimenticate. “C’è un unicità nel territorio ottima per i tipi di giochi che ci piace fare.” ci dice Howard.

Vita ordinaria e interazioni con il mondo di gioco:

Villaggi e città sono importanti come lo sono sempre stati nel mondo di Elder Scrolls, ma in Skyrim Bethesda ha alterato il modo in cui i giocatori sperimenteranno l’interazione con gli NPCs e ha incrementato il numero di attività che possono essere “scoperte” in questi bastioni di civiltà. Per coloro che hanno giocato Oblivion o Fallout 3, le vostre più immediate preoccupazioni riguardo ai dialoghi con gli ncp possono essere sepolte. Le conversazioni non si svolgeranno in una parte zoomata della visuale in prima persona, e bethesda ha “reclutato” di gran lunga più attori. Avvicinati ad un npc, e una opzione di conversazione apparirà. Mentre loro ti parlano, l’ Ai che controlla il personaggio lo muoverà, a volte ti guarderà, per poi girarsi per continuare quello che stava facendo mentre sta ancora parlando, magari continuando a tagliare legna, o badando ad altro. Le conversazioni secondarie che puoi ascoltare ti forniranno anche informazioni senza bisogno di iniziare il dialogo. Potrebbero menzionare un oggetto perso, o una situazione inusuale, e questi dettagli verranno automaticamente annotati nel tuo diario, offrendo nuove strade di esplorazione, ad esemprio cercare di persuaderli. Il tuo eroe può anche compiere molte altre azioni in una città, che aiutano a far sembrare il mondo più genuino. Andare alla forgia e creare nuove armi dal rosso metallo rovente. Mescolare strane sostanze alchemiche per creare pozioni o veleni. Incantare oggetti con nuovi effetti magici. Oppure cimentarsi nell’estrazione mineraria, nel tagliare la legna, o persino nel cucinare. Le città sono piene di attività quando stai cercando una pausa dalle tue avventure a stretto contatto con la morte ).

Sito pieno di info interessanti e di un'ottima panoramica su quali potrebbero essere le zone di interesse sulla mappa:

http://www.thedragonborn.com/

Ecco la mappa basata sul quadro che hanno negli studios:

Spoiler:

Pezzo molto interessante sul livellamento:

Spoiler:

"Skyrim’s is similar to Fallout 3′s, not Oblivion’s”.

Similar to Fallout 3? Let’s take a look at what that means, exactly:

Sleign: All items have the same set stats, and all non-human enemies have the same HP and stats across all levels. Quest rewards are always the same… NPCs are scaled in their equipment.
Random spawns out in the world are scaled (stronger enemies appear at higher levels), but weak enemies aren’t written out of the system, just become less common. Unlike Oblivion where imps and boars become impossible to find at higher levels, a single spawn at lower levels can have enemies spawning in pairs at higher levels.
After you enter an enclosed area, all enemies will be set to your level there for the rest of the game. You can’t keep coming back to the same ruin to get better stuff as you level.
Stronger enemies exist in the world at the start of the game. You’re usually given enough warning if you don’t want to fight anything too strong. The Fallout system was created from Oblivion’s but Fallout was a testing ground for tweaking level-scaling from too easy from almost no level-scaling (Morrowind) to too much level-scaling (Oblivion).
I’ve played almost 100 hours of Fallout 3 and can confirm that the level scaling is excellent. You’ll feel challenged at low levels, at times challenged and at times powerful at mid-levels, and mostly powerful at high levels unless facing groups of tough enemies, like a gang of Enclave soldiers backed up by a Deathclaw. Unlike Oblivion where you often felt less powerful as you leveled up, Fallout 3 feels like a journey to greater power with every level. And isn’t that why we play RPGs?
I look forward to seeing how Bethesda improve on this already solid system in TES V: Skyrim.

15 Things You Must Know About Elder Scrolls V

Anteprima di Dedicated to Gamers

Il Rilievo di Alduin

Spoiler:

Gameinformer have updated their Skyrim Hub with Alduin’s Wall, an interactive panorama of the sculpted stone wall seen in the game’s first trailer. Below is a transcript of the information on the wall followed by some brief reflections on what we’ve learned. It gives key details of the lead-up to Skyrim’s story.

Devastation



Thousands of years ago, lost in the uncounted centuries that came before recorded history, the dragons ravaged the countryside, waging war against humankind and driving them before their might. The humans could not stand against such a force. Some of these humans would come to worship the dragons, but all feared them. For the first of three times, we see depicted Alduin, the World Eater. This awesome and terrifying creature will one day return to devour Tamriel. That day has come.

Alduin's Defeat



This cryptic image tells of Alduin’s fall to humanity’s engenuity and bravery, but more than that is not known. This piece of the puzzle would be incredibly important to understand for someone new who might hope to defeat the dragons once again. Who are the individuals standing against Alduin? How did they expel the dreaded beast from the world? Perhaps the re-emergent Dragonborn will recover the answers.

Unfortunately, there is not much info on the Dragonborn to draw upon in TES Lore, except that it was a title mostly used in reference to Tiber Septim, a famous Nord general now worshipped as one of the Nine Divines. This thread suggests that Mankor Camoran may have been Dragonborn, due to his ability to wear the Amulet of Kings.

The Staff of Chaos (TES Arena)



The prophecy of Alduin’s Wall depicts several events that would preface the return of Alduin after his expulsion from the world. The first is the shattering of the Staff of Chaos, an event depicted in The Elder Scrolls: Arena. The Staff was an incredibly powerful relic that could open gateways to other worlds and obliterate living beings. Imperial Battlemage Jagar Tharn used the Staff of Chaos to imprison Emperor Uriel Septim VII within the realm of Oblivion, after which he broke the staff into pieces to assure the artifact could never be used against him. Arena’s hero reassembled those pieces and defeated Jagar Tharn.

Numidium (TES II Daggerfall)



The return of Numidium is another part of the prophecy heralding the return of Alduin. The massive brass golem called Numidium was reassembled during the events of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. The branching choices that determined who would control Numidium resulted in the Warp in the West, a strange occurrence that paradoxically allowed all choices to happen simultaneously, dramatically altering the world.

The Red Mountain (TES III Morrowind)



The mountain once known as Vvaardenfell served a central role in the events of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind. In that installment, the villain Dagoth Ur maintained his stronghold within, until the hero of that game infiltrated the Red Mountain and destroyed him.

The Oblivion Gates (TES IV Oblivion)



The death of Emperor Uriel Septim VII at the beginning of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion allowed Alduin’s return. A previously unknown heir named Martin Septim, along with the help of Oblivion’s hero, were able to shut the gates once again, but Martin was lost in the process. The end of the Septim dynasty of emperors also brought the end of Tamriel’s third era.

The Sons of Skyrim (TES V Skyrim)



With the Fourth Era begun, the sons of Skyrim “spill their own blood”, as described by the Blade named Esbern within the recent trailer. This final terrible event heralds Alduin’s ultimate arrival. As The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim begins, the high king of Skyrim has been murdered. Many within the northern country wish to secede from the crumbling empire, which has been on the decline for 200 years since the fall of the Septim Dynasty. Other Skyrim citizens insist the Empire is still worth fighting for. Conflict between the two sides seem inevitable.

The Throat of the World



A great mountain rises above the tundra and forests of Skyrim. The Throat of the World houses High Hrothgar, the home of the Greybeards, who will play a key part in the Dragonborn’s story. 7,000 steps must be climbed to reach the remote retreat. Here on Alduin’s Wall, we see the mountain cleft in two, symbolizing the way Skyrim is tearing itself apart as the game begins.

Hope



The prophecy depicted on Alduin’s Wall is dire, but it is not without hope. A single individual, gifted with the same incredible powers held by the dragons themselves, may rise to fight against Alduin and assure the world’s survival. The Akaviri armor worn by the Blades in this image originates from another continent beyond Tamriel. The Blades shown in the image bow before the Dragonborn. They’ve protected the line of the Dragonborn for generations in anticipation of this moment, when a Dragonborn would rise to face Alduin upon his return. 200 years ago with the closing of the Oblivion gates, the line of Dragonborn heirs was lost with the last of the Septims. As Skryim begins, a lone prisoner begins to learn that he may hold a similar power…

The Story Clues

The panel Alduin’s Defeat suggests that a chunk of Skyrim’s story will be dedicated to tracking how Alduin was defeated first time around, knowledge that has now been lost.

Who are the individuals standing against Alduin? How did they expel the dreaded beast from the world? Perhaps the re-emergent Dragonborn will recover the answers.

It’s also fascinating to see how key events in previous TES games have formed part of the prophecy of Alduin’s return: the shattering of the Staff of Chaos (Arena), the return of Numidium (Daggerfall), the death of Dagoth Ur (Morrowind), the death of Uriel Septim VII (Oblivion) and the “sons of Skyrim” spilling their own blood.

The game will be set against a backdrop of brewing civil war between Imperialists and Separatists. Once again, you’ll start your journey as a prisoner, a precedent also set by Arena, Morrowind and Oblivion
Do you see any story clues that I’ve missed? Also, let me know in the comments if you have a correction or addition for this post and it will be promptly updated.

Il Rilievo di Alduin (in italiano)

Approfondimento sul Lore di TES e sulla storia di Alduin per chi vuole capire meglio alcuni eventi pre-Skyrim:

• The Seven Fights of the Aldudagga
• Fight One: The Eating-birth of Dagon
• Fight Two: How Herkel the Fool Became a Clever Man
• The Five Songs of King Wulfarth

Intervista a Todd Howard divisa in in tre parti:

Road To Skyrim: The Todd Howard Interview

Spoiler:

• Video 1: Todd Howard tells the story of how he got into the industry, recalls his earliest gaming habits, and offers advice for those looking to follow in his footsteps.
• Video 2: Learn about the evolution of the Elder Scrolls series and the lessons of the past that led the team to the creation of Skyrim.
• Video 3: Todd Howard reveals his favorite games of this generation, his thoughts on current trends in the gaming industry, and his perception of the difference between eastern and western role-playing games. He also discusses his impressions of Kinect, Move, and 3D technology, and whether we'll ever see an Elder Scrolls game on mobile phones

.

Dettagli più interessanti che vengono fuori dall'intervista:

Spoiler:

• Dragons use dragon shouts to make fire, make ice, make wind, slow time, and so on. They do not ‘breathe fire’ like traditional dragons. This means that when fighting toe to toe with dragons, you are likely to be dueling dragon shouts.
• One of the cities in the game is built into the side of a mountain, created long ago by the Dwemer (Dwarves) and now inhabited by Skyrim’s modern-day citizens.
• Todd lists some of the games he’s been most impressed with recently as the Rockstar games (GTA and Red Dead Redemption), Portal and Heavy Rain.
• He says that the challenges for growth in the gaming industry are becoming less about graphics and more about making NPCs more human. This line of thought reflects the amount of effort Bethesda have put into what they’re calling ‘Radiant Story’, where NPCs react more dynamically to your character and your actions.
• Todd stated that he did not have any plans to try to ‘port’ Skyrim to devices like the iPhone or iPad because of a philosophy that you should not make things for one platform that could be better on another platform. He’s said that though they are investigating options for these kinds of platforms, they will create a gaming experience tailored to work best on that platform.

Anterpima di GameInformer che va dal motore grafico ai dettagli della Radiant IA/Story:

Spoiler:

The Technology Behind The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

The Xbox 360 launched in November 2005 with a handful of titles, but it wasn’t until The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion released in the following March that gamers truly understood the power of next-generation consoles. The vast and impressively detailed open world of Oblivion won over critics and gamers alike with cutting edge graphics, high dynamic range lighting, and the innovative Radiant AI technology that endowed non-player characters with decision-making abilities and daily routines. Taken in combination, these technologies created a fantasy setting that felt more alive and vibrant than any role-playing predecessor.

In the five years since Bethesda last visited Tamriel, the studio honed its chops with the post-apocalyptic hit Fallout 3. Many of Fallout's technological refinements carry over to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, but Bethesda Studios has also developed and contracted a suite of technological tools that allow the team to reach far beyond anything they've done before.

Creation Engine

Though Skyrim's Nordic setting is a more rugged environment than the Renaissance festival feel of Oblivion's Cyrodiil, the new setting isn't lacking in breathtaking views. To create a diverse country filled with steep mountain passes and dense forests, babbling brooks and violent waterfalls, glacier coastlines and snowy tundras, Bethesda went back to the drawing board and rewrote every major system powering the gameplay experience. The result is the newly dubbed Creation Engine and Kit.

“The big things for us were to draw a lot of stuff in the distance so we have a really sophisticated level of detail, more so than what we've had in the past for how things stream in and how detail gets added to them as they get closer to the camera,” explains Bethesda Studios creative director Todd Howard.

Draw distances are great for creating those postcard-worthy landscapes, but the players eyes aren't always fixed on the horizon. To give the immediate surrounding a more believable look and feel, Bethesda increased the emphasis on the play between light and shadow on the entire world.“Because our worlds are so big all of the lighting has to be dynamic,” Howard says. “That's something we had a little bit of in the past with shadowing, but not on everything. Now we have it on everything. It just makes the whole thing a lot more believable when you're there.”

A lot of the environments are dominated by the untamed wilderness, which look great thanks to Bethesda's overhauled foliage system. In previous games the team licensed the SpeedTree middleware to render the forests. For Skyrim, they've created their own platform that allows artists to build whatever kind of trees they want and to dictate how they animate. Artists can alter the weight of the branches to adjust how much they move in the wind, which is an effective way of, for instance, actualizing the danger of traversing steep mountain passes with howling winds violently shaking branches.

Given its northern location and extreme elevations, Skyrim's climate is more prone to snowfall than Cyrodiil. To create realistic precipitation effects, Bethesda originally tried to use shaders and adjust their opacity and rim lighting, but once the artists built the models and populated the world the snow appeared to fall too evenly. To work around this problem, they built a new precipitation system that allows artists to define how much snow will hit particular objects. The program scans the geography, then calculates where the snow should fall to make sure it accumulates properly on the trees, rocks, and bushes.

Bethesda has another ten months before Skyrim releases, but thanks to the Creation Engine the world already looks much more stunning than its predecessors. The non-player characters also seem to be more intelligent thanks to alterations the team made to the Radiant AI technology.

Radiant AI

The Radiant AI technology introduced in Oblivion went a long way toward making the NPCs act in realistic ways. If you followed a citizen through his daily activities, you would likely witness him or her eating breakfast, setting out to work the land, stopping by the pub for a pint after work, and then returning home to hit the sack.

In reality, the technology driving NPC behavior wasn't overly sophisticated. Bethesda could only assign five or six types of tasks to the townspeople, and there wasn't a lot of nuance to their actions. In Skyrim, the characters have much more defined individual personalities.

You won't find townspeople loitering aimlessly in town squares anymore. Each denizen performs tasks that make sense in their environment. To impart the towns and cities with a greater sense of life, Bethesda has populated them with mills, farms, and mines that give the NPCs believable tasks to occupy their day. In the forest village we visited during the demo, most of the citizens were hard at work chopping wood, running logs through the mill, and carrying goods through the town.

The improved Radiant AI technology is also more aware of how a citizen should react to your actions. As you perform tasks for them or terrorize them by ransacking their home, the NPCs develop feelings about you. If you're good friends with a particular NPC and barge into his house during the middle of the night, he may offer you lodging rather than demand you leave the premises. “Your friend would let you eat the apple in his house,” Howard says. If you swing your weapon near an NPC, knock items off their dinner table, or try to steal something of value, they'll react with an appropriate level of hostility given their prior relationship to you.

Havok Behavior

The expansive Oblivion and Fallout 3 settings created a wonderful sense of place, but the robotic and unrealistic character animations sometimes betrayed the sense of immersion the environments imparted. Aware of the disconnect, Bethesda has enlisted Havok's new Behavior technology to endow Skyrim's characters and creatures with a proper sense of movement.

“We looked at a bunch of [animation solutions], and this is about the tippy-top state-of-the-art stuff out there,” Howard says. “I think we're the first real big game to use it.”

Havok Behavior is a flexible animation tool that allows the developers to rapidly prototype and preview new animations and blend them together seamlessly with a few mouse clicks and minimal code support. Bethesda is using it to create more nuance in character and creature movement, govern special effects, and even to control how characters struggle to move when trapped in environmental hazards like spider webs. Characters now transition more realistically between walking, jogging, and running, and the increased nuance between animations has allowed Bethesda to better balance the combat in both first- and third-person perspective by adjusting the timing values for swings and blocks depending on your perspective. “We definitely have made a significant jump in how it plays [in third person perspective],” Howard proclaims.

The increased animation fidelity and diversity has enabled Bethesda to ditch the awkward dialogue camera perspective that paused the game and presented you with an extreme closeup of the person with whom you were speaking. Now camera stays in the same perspective used during combat and exploration, and players are free to look around while engaging in conversation. Rather than drop their activities to give you their undivided attention, the NPCs continue to go about their business while in discussion. For instance, a barkeep may continue to clean cups while talking, and even move from behind the counter to a seat. A mill worker chopping wood may engage in conversation without turning away from his duties, only occasionally glancing toward you during the exchange.

Perhaps the most impressive use of the Behavior technology is how Bethesda is using it to create the dragon animations. Bethesda has worked meticulously to make sure the beasts look powerful and menacing when banking, flapping their wings, gaining altitude before making another strafing run, and breathing fire on their hapless victims. None of the dragons' actions are scripted, and Behavior helps make the movements look non-mechanical, even when the dragons are speaking/shouting.

With all this technology at its fingertips, surely Bethesda could put players on the back of a woolly mammoth or a fire-breathing dragon, right? When we ask, for the first time during our visit Howard clams up. “We're not talking about mounts yet,” he says coyly.

Radiant Story

Before they started planning missions for Skyrim, Howard and his team reflected on what they liked about their older projects. They kept returning to the randomized encounters in Fallout 3 and Daggerfall. To build off the success of those models and improve the experience so the random encounters feel less forced or arbitrary, Bethesda undertook the ambitious task of constructing a new story management system dubbed Radiant Story. Many quests are still completely governed by Bethesda, but the Radiant Story system helps randomize and relate the side quests to players to make the experience as dynamic and reactive as possible. Rather than inundate you with a string of unrelated and mundane tasks, it tailors missions based on who your character is, where you're at, what you've done in the past, and what you're currently doing.

“Traditionally in an assassination quest, we would pick someone of interest and have you assassinate them,” Howard says. “Now there is a template for an assassination mission and the game can conditionalize all the roles – where it happens, under what conditions does it take place, who wants someone assassinated, and who they want assassinated. All this can be generated based on where the character is, who he's met. They can conditionalize that someone who you've done a quest for before wants someone assassinated, and the target could be someone with whom you've spent a lot of time before.”

The Radiant Story system also helps deal with untimely deaths. Predicting player behavior in an open world is tough, as many often stray from the main quests and get into trouble by murdering quest givers. In Skyrim, if you kill a shop owner who had a few quests to offer if you spend the time to get to know him, his sister may take over the shop and offer the quest that was formerly ascribed to him. The quest logic automatically picks up with pre-recorded voice work because Bethesda already assigned her that contingency role. Tread lightly though, because she's not oblivious to your dastardly actions. She will still recognize you killed her brother and perhaps even try to exact revenge later in the game.

Radiant Story is also smart enough to know which caves and dungeons you've already visited and thus conditionalize where, for instance, a kidnapped person is being held to direct you toward a specific place you haven't been to before, populated with a specific level of enemy. This helps Bethesda avoid repetition and usher the player into areas the team wants you to explore.

The story manager is always watching you, which can leads to strange random encounters as well. If you drop a sword in the middle of town, someone may pick it up and return it to you, or two guys may get into a fight over who gets to take it. If you're really good at a particular skill, like one-handed weapons or destruction spells, a stranger who knows of your reputation may ask for training, challenge you to a duel, or beg you for a favor that will require you to show off your skill.

Skyrim also tracks your friendships and grudges to generate missions. Do a small favor for a farmer and it may eventually lead to a larger quest. Some NPCs will even agree to be your companion to help you out in specific situations.

Radiant Story doesn't limit these new missions to encounters in towns. Like in Fallout 3 and Red Dead Redemption, a lot of random events occur while you're exploring the wilderness as well. "There are a wide variety of these random encounters," says design director Bruce Nesmith. "Many of them are things the player can interact with, some are not. You might save a priest who then tells you about a dungeon where there are people trapped that need saving. You might run across mammoth beset by a pack of wolves."

Some open world games go overboard with these side activities and stray too far from the main storyline. Bethesda is aware of this pitfall and is actively engaged in preventing the feeling of being overwhelmed by the Radiant Story missions.

Skyrim still has several months of development left, but after seeing the technology in action it looks like Bethesda's on track to set a new high bar for open world role-playing games.

La Tecnologia di Skyrim

Nuove info da GameInformer su come i Draghi useranno gli "Shouts":

Spoiler:

Skyrim’s Dragon Shouts



Many aspects of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim will feel familiar to longtime fans. The exploration of a vast open world, first-person combat, and interacting systems of melee, magic, and stealth are all tent pole ideas within the franchise. However, Skyrim introduces something new into the gameplay mix: dragon shouts. This special new set of powers stand apart from the existing magic system, offering a broad range of powerful effects. The ability to attain these abilities is unique to your hero in the world, and the path to attaining them is a quest in itself within the larger tale that unfolds over the course of the game. Dragon shouts give the player the same overwhelming might that drives the resurgent dragon population, and the same source of power that launched the last line of emperors.

“It’s in the lore,” declares game director Todd Howard. “It was like the classic barbarian battle cry. I’m not sure if it showed up in a book in Daggerfall, but it’s definitely mentioned in this pocket guide to the empire that we did for Redguard. It was the idea that the Nords had these battle cries, and they would shout at their enemies.” As the team at Bethesda began to design The Elder Scrolls V, they latched onto this little piece of mythology, and the way it could tie back to the dragons – powerful creatures that had been absent from the world for thousands of years.

Quickly, elements of the fiction began to fall into place around the dragon shouts, much of which was already firmly entrenched from previous games. The dragonborn are a unique group of mortals, gifted by the gods with the same power as the dragons. To be trained in the art of the dragon shouts, also called the Voice, dragonborn individuals travel to Skyrim in order to climb a great mountain called the Throat of the World. At its peak they reach High Hrothgar, where an ancient sect of powerful Voice users named the Greybeards train them in their art.

“In the lore, Tiber Septim was the first main emperor. He could shout. His way of the Voice was unmatched,” Howard explains. “He is the original guy who walks the seven thousand steps and talks to the Greybeards. And the idea is, at that time, that they were so powerful they had to have all the villages flee for miles. This little kid is walking up this snowy mountain, and all these people are packed up and they’re walking down and away. Because they know the kid is going up to talk to these guys, and when they talk there’s going to be avalanches.”

The ability to use the dragon language already exists in the fiction, called “Thu’um.” The concept roughly translates as “The Voice.”

Tiber Septim would use the dragon shouts to lead his troops into battle and unite Tamriel under one empire. Hundreds of years later, the Septim line has died out, and no other dragonborn have been seen for many years. That is, until the hero of Skyrim arrives on the scene. “There are other people in the world who can use the dragon shouts, but it’s very rare. It’s like arcane knowledge. It used to be done more in the past,” Howard explains. “The Greybeards know it. But your ability to absorb the dragon souls and do the shouts on the level that you can is beyond them.”

In the game, players will guide their hero to learn ever more powerful dragon shouts, and then use these arcane powers to supplement other combat and magic skills. Upon defeating a dragon, Skyrim’s hero absorbs the soul of the fallen creature, which fuels his ability to learn a new shout. Later, players can search out long lost walls covered in dragon script. Upon these walls, individual runes stand out to the hero because he or she is dragonborn. “There are these words of power, and if you learn how to say them right, they have a powerful effect,” Howard says.

Over time, players will build a vast arsenal of shouts: over 20 complete shouts in all, each with multiple words that must be gathered from different places around the world. “There are three words for each shout, and there are three levels to them. The amount of time you hold down the shout button is how many words come out,” Howard continues. “It becomes a bit of a collection mechanic – to collect all the words.”


Creating the language behind the dragon shouts

Bethesda games have always had a strong internal consistency. Dragonborn and the shouts they employ stand at the center of the Skyrim game experience, so there needed to be a rich background to make the system feel authentic. The answer lay in the creation of a language – the ancient tongue spoken and written by the dragons. The mammoth task of tackling such a project fell largely on senior designer Emil Pagliarulo.

“The first thing I worked on when I came to Bethesda was the Bloodmoon expansion to Morrowind,” Pagliarulo tells us. “And back then, I started really entrenching myself in all this Viking culture stuff. One of the things I listened to back then that I was able to find again recently was a reading of Beowulf in Old English. That was always my inspiration. What would an epic sound like? So I knew what I wanted it to sound like.”

But where to start? In the case of Skyrim, Pagliarulo had a distinct goal in mind. He knew there would be these scattered walls across Skyrim from which the dragonborn would learn the shouts. Here was a chance to create a whole new branch of mythology and legend for the world of Tamriel, writ large upon the ancient ruins of the land for players to discover. The team also wanted to have the language work into other elements of the game, including as a song that could be integrated into the main Elder Scrolls musical theme – the music that gamers would eventually hear in Skyrim’s teaser trailer.

“It had to rhyme in English and the dragon language. It had to tell this epic story,” Pagliarulo explains about the challenge of creating the stanzas that would populate the Skyrim theme. “But I also knew we wanted to use it for the game. It was sort of interesting, because we knew we wanted to have this language as a game device, because we have these gameplay mechanics built around it. So, you’re not developing it as an actual language. It’s much more word based or hieroglyphic based.”

Almost immediately, the challenges of creating a new language began to appear. How do you handle past, present, and future tense? Do verbs conjugate? What is the alphabet like? All of these were issues that needed to be addressed if the language was going to be useable in the game. “We started off making specific rules for the way words would work together,” Pagliarulo says. “So the way you would do ‘king’ would be the word for ‘son’ and the word for ‘leader,’ except you take off this one letter. And then we realized that it had started to collapse under its own weight. The more rules we wanted to keep track of, and the more complex it became, we knew the more complicated it would be for the designers to use, and the more mistakes we would make. So we really tried to keep it much more simple.”

The language concept that emerged abandoned tense, conjugation, and even upper and lower case letters, preferring that the context imply those ideas. For instance, in the translation of Game Informer’s back cover, the word “fundein” translates to “unfurled,” but it could mean either unfurl or unfurled, depending on where the word is used. Similarly, the word “prodah” could mean either foretell or foretold.

“Once we established the baseline, and the designers started using it, I was glad we kept it simple,” Pagliarulo says. “Because, boy, can it get out from under you. You’ll be like, ‘I need a word for “thunder,” I’ll do this.’ And you’ll realize you already have a word for that, and it was spelled differently. Then you have to go back through and fix all those instances. It’s a remarkable lesson in why the word ‘dear’ [or ‘deer’] means so many things in English.”

Not everything had to be such a tremendous challenge. Because Bethesda was designing the dragon language from scratch, they could shape the way it sounded to the vibe they wanted to express in the game. “You can choose the words for a concept that sound the best. The ones that feel more epic. The ones that roll together well,” Pagliarulo declares. “Like the word ‘dovahkiin.’ ‘Dova’ means dragon. ‘Kiin’ means child. So we did a lot of that. We played with the words. How did it all flow together?”

The sound of the dragon language when you hear it spoken or sung has a vaguely Germanic or Scandinavian sound to it. It’s a harsh but oddly beautiful sound that feels right at home in the rugged landscape of Skyrim. And you’ll hear it in plenty of places. Not only do the dragons and the Greybeards recall this long-dead language, but many other creatures in the world do as well. Included among them are the undead draugr, ancient Nord warriors who will call out in dragon language from their skeletal frames, threatening to pull you down to join them.


The secret to the written language of the dragons, and some of the specific dragon shouts that will appear in the final game

Beyond crafting the spoken language of the dragons, Pagliarulo and the rest of the developers at Bethesda needed one final important element to make their new language shine: a written alphabet.

“The idea was, how would the dragons write or scratch this language in the stone or on the ground? Everything is done with the three talons. You’ll always see combinations of one to three scratches, and sometimes the dot, which is like the dewclaw,” Todd Howard explains. With that concept in mind, someone had to make the idea into a reality: concept artist Adam Adamowicz. “One of our concept artists [Adamowicz] had the task of making a font. Make unique symbols for these letters that sound like this, using this scheme. He was literally like, ‘What?’ I think he sat there and stared at his monitor for an hour. And we came back, and he’d say, ‘I still don’t…say it again?’” Howard laughs.

Working together with Adamowicz, a final runic alphabet emerged. “It doesn’t coincide directly with the alphabet we use in English. There are 34 unique characters within the language,” Pagliarulo says. Some Roman alphabet letters don’t exist, like the letter "c". In other instances, a single runic character represents multiple Roman letters, including many double vowels like “aa” or “ei.” For ease of use in implementing the language into the game, the final font was designed to work in word processors like Microsoft Word. Many of the number keys on a traditional keyboard are co-opted within the font to include the additional dragon characters.



Take a look at the individual runes in the written dragon language. Can you see how each character could be written by a creature with three front talons and a dewclaw? Even the shape of the letters echoes claw marks.

After months of work, the dragon language began to take shape and be implemented into the game. Even now, the designers at Bethesda continue to add new words to support the in-game existence of the dragonborn and dragon shouts. An entire internal wiki at Bethesda contains an evolving vocabulary list of words and phrases used in the game – any new uses of the dragon language have to be checked back against this list for consistency.

In the game, the final result of all the hard work is exhilarating, and even more so when you know how deep the rabbit hole goes. Every ancient wall you encounter carries an ancient legend. Every creature that cries out in dragon is saying an actual translatable thing to you. And perhaps most importantly, every dragon shout you acquire carries real meaning behind it. One power used in the game acts like a sort of invisible push of staggering power. Spoken in the game, your hero will intone the three words for the full shout: “Fus, Ro, Dah!” Translated into English, “Fus” means force, “Ro” means balance, and “Dah” means push.

After collecting more than 60 individual words that form up into over 20 complete shouts, Skyrim’s hero will be a force to be reckoned with, especially considering that these dragon-based abilities will be layered on top of his normal leveled-up abilities in combat, traditional magic, and stealth. He’ll be able to slow down time around him with one shout, or use a special whispered dragon shout to stealthily move close to an enemy in a mere instant. And while they’re cagey about the details, Bethesda says that one shout will let a player summon an actual dragon, calling him by name to fight.

The new dragon shout system, and the language that supports it prove one thing without a doubt. Bethesda is crafting one of the most intricate video game worlds ever made. Layered on top of over 15 years of previous Elder Scrolls games, the land of Tamriel has a depth of fiction you’d be hard-pressed to find anywhere else but in the most elaborate and well-loved fantasy novels. Many players may dive into the world of Skyrim this coming November and perceive the magic of the dragons and their shouts as a mere afterthought. You know better.

Do you want to learn more about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim? Visit our game hub to tour Bethesda Game Studios, learn the history of the Elder Scrolls series, explore the new game engine’s capabilities, and more. Just click on the banner image below.

I Dragon Shouts (tradotto in Italiano)

Uno dei primi brani ufficiali composti da Soule per Skyrim

Skyrim sarà supportato da un Toolset

L'intero Podcast di GameInformer con Todd Howard:

Spoiler:

TODD HOWARD Game Informer Podcast:

4:30 Are there going to be spears in the game?

"There are not spears in the classic spear sense. I am sorry. There currently are not."

"Something like spears is really cool, but with where we're putting our time with the other weapons, it just didn't make the cut."

5:00 Are there any other kind of hints you can give us about the directions of like the types of weapons people are going to be able to play with?

"The main thing that I can say is that, they go back to, we had X weapon types in Daggerfall, then X weapon types in Morrowind, and Oblivion had its own, and Skyrim had its own. And any time there's something that we stop doing whether that's spears, having a skill for that, or crossbows and things like that, we tend to each time start over. And we want to find weapon types with this game that really yield gameplay. So those skills are separate.

There's a two-handed weapon skill, there's a one-handed weapon skill, and there's an archery skill. Because those really are playstyles. I'm going to use a one handed weapon and then either cast magic with my other hand, or I'm going to use a shield, or I'm going to use a two-handed weapon, where it's going to fill both those slots, obviously (two-handed.)

Within each of these skills, there are perks. They're perks, but they're not like Fallout, in that each skill has its own perk tree.

Take one handed for instance. You have a one handed skill, and then you can perk that. There's a skill tree underneath one handed. And within that there are separate perk areas for maces, and then axes, and then swords. So as opposed to having say an axe skill, that is a part of the perk tree within one handed. It gives us a better balance. You can say "Well I like one handed stuff," and then you can start specializing as you raise that skill."

8:40 Are you able to be a werewolf in Skyrim?

"We're fans of that stuff as well, and we're currently messing with all that. I don't want to commit to, 'here are the things you can change into and what they're like right now.' Not because we're not doing it, or not attempting to. I just don't know honestly where that's going to end up and how deep we're going to get into that.

We will try things, and if we don't feel it's helping the game, there are other areas we'd like to spend our time on in the game."

10:38 People are curious about mounts. Are we going to see a return to mounts?

"Something we're messing with, and we don't know where it's going to end up. There were things with the Oblivion horses. We liked having them. They weren't the greatest implementation of horses. And now you see things come out like Red Dead. There are more horses in games, and we feel like just the basic implementation we did in Oblivion isn't going to be good enough. We are currently attempting things with that, and I don't know where it's going to end up."

10:45 When you were looking at the Oblivion mounts, What were the things that stood out as being kind of problems for you that you wouldn't put into Skyrim unless you could fix?

"Mostly I would say controls and the feel that you are not in some sort of battlefield jeep. You are riding an animal. Just the feeling of doing it. But a world without them feels a little weird. We definitely want to have them. We don't know yet what you're going to be able to do with them and to what level."

12:55 Are you going to be able to craft spells, potions, and other items?

"We do have crafting within each discipline now. We do have smithing, enchanting is back as a skill, and then alchemy we're sort of treating as - it doesn't matter that much anymore (stealth/magic/combat categories) - but it's sort of in our stealth category now. We have a blended skill list, so alchemy is sort of the most magical of the stealth skills. And then we have lots of other things that are NOT skill based that you can craft, like cooking and things like that.

There is a lot of that, and more emphasis on it this time around."

13:50 One thing that when I was down to see you guys at the studio was stuff related to how spells would interact with each other and that kind of thing. And I would suspect that the results of your experimentation on that would have an affect on whether you have anything like spellcrafting, right?

"Yeah, spellcrafting is a real wildcard. Something that we've done a lot. And there are pluses and minuses to it. We'd like to find... we have some ideas that we really like on how to solve that, and I don't know where that's going to go. But the thing that we DON'T like about the previous systems that we've done, is it becomes very "spread-sheety." It takes the magic out of magic. You got to see the game, but your listeners haven't. There's a bigger emphasis on how the magic physically acts. Just a spell like fire; there are different spells for how the fire moves. Like putting down a rune that explodes when you walk over it. Or fire you can spray that lingers on the ground, like you're spraying a wall, and you can spray the ceiling. Or fire that travels like a flamethrower out of your hands. Or a fireball that you charge up and throw and it explodes at a distance. So our main goal is to make magic feel like this arcane powerful thing. And once it goes into a spreadsheet in the game where you can just say I want something at this distance and this power, it removes the illusion of like how this stuff actually works. So we have some ideas of ways around that, but we don't know where those are going to go yet. We do have the benefit of, we're really, really happy with how the magic plays in the game, both visually and mechanically. And then being able to do it with both hands. There are opportunities there for combinations and things you can do without getting into the spreadsheet aspect of it. Which I do know some people like, but it does take away from the impact of the spells that you're finding and mechanically how they work."

16:12 Within the one-handed skill tree you've got these different perks for maces, and axes, and swords and so on. Within the magic system is it kind of similar, is it by school that you're perking up, or is it individually like I've got fire spells, and I'm going to perk fire spells?

"Well there's the school Destruction, so that covers like a category of spells, and then within Destruction there are perks for fire based spells. So people see we've removed Mysticism, but that's just a label right? Those spells go into other skills. And then it gets deeper within those skills. The easy thing for us is to just add more skills. That's actually easier. Because in the old games there was just a skill and a number, there wasn't really a progression. We really want you to feel that you're getting better in this particular skill. And perks are the main way we do that now. And I think the game right now has like 280 perks if you include the ranks. So even a character that raises all their skills to 100, and they're playing and they're level 50, they've only gotten to pick 50 perks. They're very different characters. And a lot of the power is in the perks as opposed to the raw number of the skill. There's still some power in the raw number of the skill, just not as much as there used to be. All that stuff has been moved into the perks."

17:53 How are races different from one another?

"So the main decision you make in the beginning is what race you're going to be. You no longer pick class. You basically pick what you're going to look like, and obviously the race is a big part of that. And that comes with certain skill increases. So certain races have certain skills that are higher to start with, and then they also have either spells - depending on what race you pick - and/or racial abilities."

19:15 On the lack of class and the new leveling system:

"You just play, and your skills go up as you play, and the higher the skill the more it affects your leveling. It's a really, really nice, elegant system that sort of balances itself. People would play and the general pattern would be, they played for like three hours and then, 'oh, I picked the wrong skills, I'm going to start over.' They weren't necessarily upset about that, but to us it's 'is there a way we can solve that? Is there a way we can make this better' And we think this is it."

20:36 Facial creation:

"There's an all new face system we did. On the one hand you have less control than you had in Oblivion, but what you're doing looks cool. Our joke was Oblivion would have been better if the Random button was renamed the Ugly button on the face creator. So we've redone that completely with really, really nice results. Something simple like a nose, we have a lot of prebuilt shapes you can pick from, and then you can adjust the size and position of that, as opposed to lots of fiddly sliders. It lets us hand craft a lot of options that you can mess with. If you just start messing around, you're not going to end up with something that looks bad."

21:49 What are the dragons going to be like in the game?

"If you're a fan of fantasy you see a lot with dragons. They've been a part of classic fantasy that we've never done. So we wanted to do them in a way that they were part of the world, and put them on screen, and fight them in a way that you conjure up in your head when you read fantasy that you haven't really seen in a game. And that's what we're trying to pull off, that they are these fierce beasts. They do become these kinds of boss fights, like a mix between a Big Daddy and a Helicopter in half life 2. These things that you see coming and you're like, 'Oh. Oh NO.' They are really difficult to kill."

23:15 Are they the enemies you end up fearing the most?

"Definitely. Oh yeah."

"We had a lot of back up plans for them when we were developing the game. Because when you deal with a creature that big and its AI and how powerful it is. You know, how much can it fly, can it land, will it be able to do this? We made a little team of people to work on dragons and put some of our best people on it. They worked on it for two years. They really came out like... We got to go past the list we had and then more. We're ecstatic with how they came out. They can dive bomb and breathe fire down a street. They can get on the ground and march around now. They can pretty much go anywhere. So we can call them and do random encounters. When they come, they generally now just work. We can throw multiples of them in a scene. They just, you know you just... like... when I get bored in the game I just summon dragons now and they can terrorize the town. It's always cool.

There are multiple types of them. As far as riding them, I would not expect that. It's not something I see happening. It's kind of not how we're approaching them, first of all."

24:42 Jumping up on one of their backs might not get the best results.

"No."

25:10 Companion characters. That was a really fun and really cool part in Fallout. What's going on with that?

"We are approaching it in a different way. I would not expect the deep personalities and uniqueness with a low number of companions. We are aiming for a much, much higher number of companions that you can hire or they become your friends and they come with you. The general direction is to make it a bit more dynamic, and have more people that you can decide to have come with you. And in that we sacrifice them having a lot of depth or personality or individual stories. And there still will be some like that. But that's kind of the direction we're headed right now. We don't know the exact number of NPCs in the world that could become your companion, but we're hoping it's a big number."

27:15 Radiant Story:

"We want to be careful to not oversell it. It's a tool that we use to make quests. We started the game by making them all very, very random/dynamic. You do see the holes in that. It doesn't tell a good story. Good stories are still told by good writers and we do most of our quests that way. Radiant Tool is the tool you use to make any quest. And you can make all of the roles in that quest, you can hand craft all of those roles, or you can take any part of the quest and conditionalize it. So what it allows us to do is to take parts of a quest or an activity, and conditionalize it, without having to hand script conditions.

Example: You come to town and there's a guy who has a child that's been kidnaped, and they're in a dungeon nearby. We can write that as a quest template, fill out the roles saying it's a guy in town who likes you, who has a child, and then the role for the location is a dungeon that fits this. We can pick a dungeon that you haven't been to for some reason that's nearby. You walk into town and the game just says 'Oh, there's a guy in town who likes you. We're going to kidnap his kid who you might have met, and put him in this dungeon for some reason you didn't go to. And that dungeon happens to be a higher level dungeon and so we think you could use a challenge right now. And the reward is going to be this other thing that your character can use.' Doing that before was impossible. But we have that opportunity right now, and so tend to be using it. The more dynamic quests tend to be like little favor things that people ask you to do, not full blown quests. But if you were to play a quest, it's very hard for you to tell. It's going to seem very hand-written. You'd really have to compare notes with friends to figure out the parts that that particular quest decided to make dynamic. Because some quests have no dynamic elements, and some quests have more."

"When we're going to send you to do something, we can tailor that, a bit to the things you've done."

30:43 Will we see factions?

"We're doing factions. That's definitely something we're going to be talking about later. Not because we don't know, but because we decided that's a good thing to talk about later."

"Different than what we've done before in what they are. But definitely we're going to have them."

31:25 Are there some that are returning, or it's all new ones?

"There are some that are returning, yes."

31:35 11.11.11. How committed are you to this number?

"We actually tend not to announce release dates until later in the process. We're very confident about it. There's still a lot to do in the game. But we wouldn't have announced it if we weren't really confident."

32:42 Why do characters always start as a prisoner?

"It started that way in arena. We did it again in Morrowind, then Oblivion. It's sort of become a tradition. We like this idea that there's a little bit of conflict in the beginning with you being a prisoner, and we never say why. So you immediately in your head tell a story of why you're in prison to yourself. I kind of like that about it. It's part tradition, and part it lets you in your head tell a quick little story to yourself."

34:10 What aspects of Skyrim are going to appeal to a gamer who wasn't a fan of previous TES games but was a fan of Fallout?

"If you really, really don't like Oblivion, I don't know that this is suddenly going to switch you over. One of the things that Fallout 3 does well is there's a certain tone of the world, there's a certain uniqueness to it, it has style. Oblivion, for what it is, can be very kind of classic, traditional fantasy. There's not a lot of unique style to the world. Whereas Skyrim I definitely think has a unique style. We got better at that, and we push it, like what is the culture of these people? So it has its own flavor. It's definitely grittier. It's lower tech. The world's lived in. The ruins feel ancient and thousands of years old. We're also careful in Skyrim of the various ages of, 'when was this built?' Where Oblivion everything can feel like everything in this town was built on the same day. There's a more unique and a better flavor to the province of Skyrim and the game Skyrim than we had in Oblivion and Cyrodiil."

36:18 Is Skyrim going to have multiple endings?

"I don't really want to answer the ending of the game questions, yet. So I'm going to pass on that question."

37:07 How expansive will Skyrim be? Is Skyrim sort of a comparable geography to Oblivion?

"As far as actual landmass, it's ABOUT the size of Oblivion. It's different in that a good portion of it is mountainous. And mountains you can't just walk across. So they kind of inflate your game space. If you have this large mountain, getting up and through that and around that, and then the dungeons that are on mountains, you spend more time there. When you're walking around it, to us it feels a bit bigger because of the mountains. We were really pushing to have it not just be this big snowy mountain game, so that we do have a lot of different regions. They all have a really unique look while still being a part of that province."

38:33 Is there any particular ESRB rating that you guys are aiming for.

"We never aim for a specific rating. I'm sure it'll be M. But we never aim for a specific rating. I would be surprised if we did not get an M. Our assumption is we're getting an M, so we are doing the content that we think is appropriate for Skyrim. There is more violence to the combat just in how it looks. Not like Fallout violence where it gets really over the top. It's more a realistic level of violence for what it is with guys with swords and axes and those sorts of things."

39:38 Is there a HUD, and if not how will the health system work?

"There is a HUD. It comes and goes as needed. There is a small compass bar at the top that right now is always there for direction. Your magicka, your health, and your stamina, or other things, come up when they need to. If you're just walking around the world and you're full health, your health bar isn't on the screen. As soon as someone hits you and your health drops, it pops up."

41:02 Will there be an X64 version for PC players? High resolution textures (will they have to be modded in?) Do you have a dedicated group for the PC version?

"We work on it together. The main thing for people to know is our background is PC games. The game is authored here on PCs. That's what we work on. A lot of the team is playing the game on PC all day. We do want the platforms to each have a really, really high level of fidelity. I personally play a lot on the Xbox. It tends to be my preferred platform. We do a lot of graphics development still FIRST on the Xbox, just because it's smoother. And then a lot of that stuff does go over to the PC. We tend to do as much as we can as the project goes on, because we want to support as wide a range as possible. We also tend to do that stuff late, because right now we want to work on the main game and how it plays and getting the graphics fast everywhere, and then as the project gets closer to release we start supporting all those other things. You'll definitely be able to run the PC on a much higher resolution. All of our games that we've done so far - Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout - the PC versions have higher res textures they ship with by default. A lot of times you don't notice that, because when you play a console game you're sitting six to ten feet away from the screen. Whereas on the PC, you're sitting a foot, two feet away from the screen. Those kinds of differences in texture resolution, you don't notice unless you're looking at two screenshots on a computer and flipping between them. We are gonna support that stuff. I can't say how far. But the same thing with the interface. We do a lot of PC interface stuff. There are uniquenesses [sic] to how we handle it on the PC."

43:45 Your philosophy towards achievements and trophies. What do you think about those systems and how do you want them to work in Skyrim?

"We love them. We definitely do them with all of our games. Our general approach is to have a mix. If you look at the mix in Fallout 3 between specific quests, and leveling or collection, that kind of balance was pretty good. We have to do it differently this time because we have a lot more quests. We like to have a balance of specific quests that are important, or quest lines, and then just general gameplay stuff."

44:52 Is there any chance that you guys are gonna do Kinect support, Move support, 3D, etc.?

"I don't think that's gonna happen. 3D I would be surprised. Both Kinect and Move. They're fairly new systems as of last year. There might be something that we end up doing that we think fits, but at this point it would surprise me, because we do want to keep our focus on the main game."

46:02 MAJOR spoiler (But one that is incredibly cool imo. Wish I hadn't heard it. But since I did... it is awesome imo.)

Spoiler:

When you start off with your character he doesn't know that he's dragonborn.

"Correct."

"He does find out. There's an event that happens with a dragon, where you find out you're dragonborn. I think for anybody listening, it won't matter, 'cause they know."

"The greybeards, the guys who live up on the throat of the world, who are the masters of the voice, they find out about this fairly quickly, and they shout your name. They shout Dovahkiin to the wind, and it kind of rumbles through the world. The mountains shake when they call you. And you think 'what was that,' and someone says 'that was the greybeards calling you. To walk the 7,000 steps up the throat of the world to meet them.'"

"I have been promised 7,000 steps, and I am going to count them. Our world artists are amazing. We have just an amazing team, and they put so much detail in the world, so they didn't blink when I said 'it MUST HAVE 7,000 steps. When you look at all the stuff we have in the world, 7,000 steps obviously is not that hard."

49:14 Explain how the leveling system works, particularly in relation to the maximum level. What your philosophy is toward that, how long can you level in the game, when does it become basically impossible to level, etc.

"We don't code in a maximum level. There is a theoretical maximum depending on what your skills are. The one change we've made is that you level faster. We've sort of balanced Oblivion and Fallout 3 in some respects to like a 1 - 35, 1 - 30, so if people play for a long time that's the kind of high level with creatures and whatever. This one is balanced like 1 - 50, but that isn't longer in gameplay. You do level faster, a lot faster, especially in the beginning of the game. Because of the power in the perks, we wanted to be giving them out at a higher rate. The actual maximum depending on your particular character how it works out might be 75. I don't really know. I'm just saying we don't code in the maximum level. It will end up whatever it ends up."

"(Perks being more fun) It's the thing you're always shooting for. Even 1 - 50 it slows down a lot as you play. If you assume there's 200 hours of content, you can sort of figure out, 'how often do I get to level?' We think we can balance that with the perks. That's what happened. We did the perks, and we figured out quickly, 'oh, to make these work, we need to be leveling faster.' And it is more fun."

Il Podcast di Todd Howard (tradotto in italiano)

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Dettagli sul Sistema di Combattimento:

Spoiler:

Skyrim: Building Better Combat



In game development, the visual improvements, non-player character AI tweaks, and new storytelling philosophies are all for naught if the base activity the player performs the most frequently is uninteresting or unrefined. In the case of an action role-playing game like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, those activities are swinging swords, shooting arrows, or casting spells at the myriad bloodthirsty enemies rushing toward you in foreboding dungeons of Tamriel. Aware of the combat shortcomings and exploits players used in Oblivion, the developers at Bethesda Studios went back to the drawing board to forge a new direction for Skyrim.

“We wanted to make it more tactile in your hands,” game director Todd Howard says. “I think if you look at our previous stuff I sometimes equate it to fighting with chopsticks – you sit there and swing them in front of yourself.”

Bethesda’s solution is a new two-handed combat system that allows players to equip any weapon or spell to either one of their character’s free hands. This flexible platform opens up countless play styles – dual wielding, two-handed weapons, the classic sword and shield combo, ranged weapons, or even equipping two different spells. Switching between loadouts on the fly is made easier thanks to a new quick-select menu that allows you to “bookmark” all of your favorite spells, shouts, and weapons for easy access.

Taking Up The Blade

Repetition can be a game developer's worst enemy. As players move through the world slashing at enemies thousands of times, the gravity of the action dissipates to the point where it becomes as thoughtless an exercise as flipping a light switch. With Skyrim's combat system, Bethesda wants to restore the visceral nature of hand-to-hand combat. The first step? Changing the pace of the close quarters battles.

In the early stages of development, Bethesda watched fighting videos to study how people react during melee battles. The team found that most encounters featured more jostling and staggering than was present in past Elder Scrolls titles. Using the Havok Behavior animation system, the team is more accurately mimicking the imbalance prevalent in melee combat by adding staggering affects and camera shake. Don't expect button-mashing marathons where the attacker with a bigger life pool wins the war of attrition. If you're not careful on defense you may get knocked around, losing your balance and leaving yourself exposed for a damaging blow that can turn the tide of the battle. Knowing when to block, when to strike, and when to stand your ground is key to prevailing in combat.

“There's a brutality to [the combat] both in the flavor of the world, and one of you is going to die,” Howard explains. “I think you get very used the idea that enemies are all there for you to mow through, but it doesn't seem like someone's life is going to end. We're trying to get that across.”

Nothing drives this brutality home more than the introduction of special kill animations. Depending on your weapon, the enemy, and the fight conditions, your hero may execute a devastating finishing move that extinguishes enemies with a stylistic flourish. “You end up doing it a lot in the game, and there has to be an energy and a joy to it,” Howard says.

As with Oblivion, players have several options for melee combat. Your warrior can equip swords, shields, maces, axes, or two-handed weapons. Specializing in a particular weapon is the best way to go, as it gives you the opportunity to improve your attacking skills with special perks. For instance, the sword perk increases your chances of landing a critical strike, the axe perk punishes enemies with residual bleeding damage after each blow, and the mace perk ignores armor on your enemies to land more powerful strikes.

A good offense must be accompanied by a good defense. To make defending a less passive activity, Bethesda has switched to a timing based blocking system that requires players to actively raise their shields to take the brunt of the attack. If you hold down the block button, your character will attempt to execute a bash move. If you catch a bandit off guard with the bash while he's attacking, it knocks him back and exposes him to a counter or power attack. Players can block and bash with two-handed weapons as well, but it isn't as effective as the shield. Warriors who prefer the sword-and-shield approach can increase their defensive capabilities with shield perks that give them elemental protection from spells.

Bethesda also smartly changed the pace at which characters backpedal, which removes the strike-and-flee tactic frequently employed in Oblivion. In Skyrim you can't bob and weave like a medieval Muhammad Ali as you could in Oblivion. Players can still dodge attacks from slower enemies like frost trolls, but don’t expect to backpedal out of harms way against charging enemies. If you want to flee, you must turn your back to the enemy and hit the sprint button, leaving you exposed to an attack as you high tail it to safety.

Conjuring Better Spell Casting

Keeping in line with the philosophy of making the combat more tactile, Bethesda took inspiration for its spell casting from an unlikely source in Irrational Games' BioShock. Fighting his way through the city of Rapture, Howard was impressed with how Ken Levine's team visualized the power of the plasmids in your hands. They're adopting a similar approach for Skyrim.

“Before when we had magic, it never felt to us like you were actually doing it,” Howard admits. “It was a separate button, it flew out of your fist, and you could have a shield in your hand or a two handed-weapon – you could do it with anything.”

In Oblivion spells were cast with a face button, which allowed you to equip traditional weapons for melee combat and deftly cast spells between swings. By forcing players to equip a spell with one of their hands, players must make more of a commitment to learning the arcane arts. The ability to equip two different spells on your left and right hand raises the question – can you combine more than one spell? “We're not talking about that,” Howard says with a smile. “We're not sure. We'd like to; it'd be awesome.”

Even if you can't combine spells, magicka students will have no shortage of options, with over 85 spells divided into five schools of magic – destruction, restoration, illusion, alteration, and conjuration. Longtime Elder Scrolls fans may notice that the school of mysticism is absent. That's an intentional move on Bethesda's part. “It always felt like the magical school of mysticism – isn't that redundant?” Howard says. The spells formerly housed under the domain of mysticism have been moved to other schools of magic.

One of the more alluring changes to the spellcasting in Skyrim is how you can employ spells in different ways. For instance, you could blast enemies with a flame ball from afar, hold the button down to wield the spell like a flame thrower, place a rune on the ground to create an environmental trap that spontaneously combusts when an enemy steps on it, or equip the spell with both hands to deliver high damage fireball attacks that drain your magicka reserves quickly. The shock and frost spells give players an equal amount of flexibility.

The Havok Behavior technology gives the spells more visual flair than we've seen in past Elder Scrolls games as well. If you cast a frost spell, you'll see the effects on the enemy's skin. If you're wielding the flame spell like a flame thrower, the environment will catch fire for a short while and burn anything that comes into contact with it.

More so than in Oblivion, Skyrim’s new magic system also gives players legitimate benefits to using one attacking spell over the other. Fire deals the highest amount of damage, lighting drains the enemy’s magicka, and frost drains stamina and slows down enemies physically. This gives players more incentive to use particular spells against specific enemies. Why shoot fireballs at a wizard when you can simultaneously drain his heath and magicka with a shock spell? “There’s a gaminess to it that we didn’t really have before,” Howard says.

If you come face to face with another wizard, you’ll want to keep an attacking spell in one hand and improve your defense by equipping a ward spell in the other. Suddenly, magic duels become much more interesting, as you must attack at the opportune time, use the ward as a shield when your opponent is casting spells your way, and manage your magicka level by consuming potions.

Dealing Damage From The Shadows

Magicians and warriors aren’t the only play styles enjoying the benefit of combat enhancements. If you prefer to do your killing from afar with a bow and arrow or assassinating enemies from the shadows, Bethesda has some improvements in store for you as well.

Ranged weapons could be effective in Oblivion once you improved your skill level, but you had to pierce enemies with several arrows to take them down. After playing an Oblivion mod that turned the bow and arrow into a formidable weapon capable of one-hit kills, Bethesda decided to adopt that approach. It now takes a lot longer to get off a shot, but the arrows are much more powerful than before.

As in Oblivion, you can zoom to aim, and the longer you keep the bow drawn the more powerful your shot will be. Unlike Oblivion, the arrows now violently impact enemies with a satisfying thud. To keep players from coasting through the world plucking enemies from afar, Bethesda has significantly altered the arrow economy to make them a valuable but limited option. You won't be rolling into combat stacked with 50 Daedric arrows anymore. Though you don't have much defense when using the bow and arrow, if an enemy gets too close for comfort you can still execute a bash move, which knocks your foe off balance and gives you time to create distance between you and your target.

Stealth basically works the same as it did in Oblivion, but Bethesda has slightly altered what happens once enemies detect your presence. Now when NPCs think they see or heard something, they go into an alert state. Characters with a higher sneak skill will have more time to duck back around the corner or find sanctuary in the shadows. This new system eliminates the sudden attacks that sometimes caught players off guard in Oblivion.

Once you successfully sneak up behind an unsuspecting victim, you can unleash a deadly blow with the dagger, an almost useless weapon in previous Elder Scrolls games that is receiving a major boost in Skyrim. “Now when you sneak up behind guys, the dagger does something like 10x damage,” Howard says. “I don’t know if we’re going to keep that, but you feel like you should be killing the guy if you’ve gotten that close and you have a dagger.”

Though the dagger is still considered a one-handed weapon skill, the perks for the weapon are housed under the stealth banner.

The Dragonborn Prophecy Fulfilled

As the Dragonborn, players can wield the dangerous dragon shouts during battle as well. The shouts may have magical properties, like the ability to slow time or call a dragon to your aid, but they are different than magic in that every character can employ them regardless of their spell casting skills. If you want to learn more about this supplemental power, read our in-depth discussion here.

Binding all of these improvement together into a cohesive system, Bethesda's reinvigorated Elder Scrolls combat looks to be taking a large step forward.

Dettagli sul Sistema di Combattimento (tradotto in italiano)

The Art Of Skyrim

Un utente francese ci riassume le info lette in un'anteprima su una rivista francese:

Spoiler:

Hi everbody,
Just bought the last Playstation Official Mag in France (although I'm a PC player), gonna try to give you all the new elements I could gather from it :

• dynamic shadows
• if a weapon and a shield or two weapons are equiped, you cannot cast any spell (quite logical indeed)
• it seems that smithing can only be done in forges (you cannot repair your equipment everywhere like in morrowind or oblivion)
  
• incredible level of detail such as : blood vessels on skin, modelling, animations, clothings (not sure what "clothing" means here))
• meteorological effects : clouds are gathering in real time around mountain peaks (sounds pretty cool), snow affects textures (so again pretty much confirmed that this isn't 3d accumulating snow but I'm fine with that anyway).
• a major inspiration for snowy landscapes seems to be artists like Brom and Frazetta.

• Matthew Carofano (artistic director of Skyrim) : Dwemer ruins (we know that already) and a Dunmer city!!! (yeah you heard me : Dunmer :celebration: ) ;

• Again from M. Carifano : "after Oblivion where every place looked alike, in Skyrim you'll find once agin the excentricity of Vvardenfell. Here every Nord Clan has its own colors, its own identity."

• For consoles : the "block" action is performed by pressing both trigger buttons at the same time. Each separatly correspond to the action of what you equipped in one hand or the other.

• 80 spells among which some are entirely new (the journalist might have picked a rounded off number since I remember GI said 85 or so?)
• spells confirmed : Detect Life, Fury (force ennemies to fight between them), Circle of Protection (hurl ennemies outside a magic circle), Snow trap (triggers only when an ennemy walks on it), Lightnings, Fireballs.
• Concerning finishing moves we'll see stuffs like : Axe blade planted in the neck, dagger in the chest.
• Concerning skills : Athletics (they surely meant Acrobatics) doesn't exist anymore (to prevent the player boosting this only by jumping on stand)
• AI : NPCs have day and night activities like cooking and brushing the ground in front of their houses.
• dialogues : most "inimportant" NPC like simple villagers won't have any dialogue tree (instead they'll directly comment on rumors or on what they're doing) ; only important NPCs will actually exchange dialogue with you, you can cut short the dialogue only by walking away.
• Every city and town is bound to some particular resources meaning if you burn their mill or mine, you affect their economy and they'll be forced to buy flour or mineral somewhere else and when you'll want to buy these resources here again it will be more expensive. (good thing for evil characters and maybe desctructible environnement?)
• the Dragon Shout key on PS3 is R3 (don't ask me more since I'm a PC player)
• archery : when aiming at something, you can hold your breath (consuming stamina) and the action is slowed.
• Dark Brotherhood mentionned as might be in (the reason beeing that the devs had a lot of fun developping it in Oblivion)
• Dragons can be unpredictible in their behaviour, they will fly in the air, crawl on the land, they can crash when wounded.
• On the favorite menu: "Cliking on a key, the screen freeze and a list of weapons or 'favorite' spells is shown next to each hand".

• Todd Howard Interview : "a cause-consequence tree for each mission", each mission will be a bit different from the same mission played by another player who has done other quests. Also can be different depending on which mission you did before.
• If you meet a Giant on the road he might totally not attack you unless you attack him.
• it seems he says that when most NPCs give you a quest, they'll give you precise directions or accompany you to the road showing you which direction to take to go on on you quest.
• the player should be excited when discovering a new place, or overhearing rumors spoken by NPCs between them.
• the testers mark the most beautiful landscape, so they should have things like temples, stuff that will entice the player to go and check by himself.
• in Oblivion there was only 1 guy working on the dungeons, this time for Skyrim, 8 devs are working on them.
• 120 dungeons (again might be another round off number, cause we already heard 130+)
• Speaking of jobs : woodcutting, weaponsmithing, sells stuffs you made to the forge or to the mill...
• he insists on the importance of activities they thought apparently useless before Skyrim, but they found that was surprinsingly important for immersion after implementing them into Skyrim.

Overall, the journalists seem pretty enthusiast and optimistic with the game and they can't wait to play it in November.
Personnaly I'm very excited with most news about Skyrim, except the fact we don't get much news on the UI for the PC version (I'm a bit scared if it's the same Apple thingy), and I hate the fact w'ell get Oblivion style fast-travel again (here also hoping they'll include travel services as well to please everybody). Anyway, I'm not here to start another war and on the other side I'm so releaved that the magic quest markers seem to be gone once and for all (at least according to what I read in the french mag).
Let's discuss the news now!

L'Interfaccia di Skyrim

[Sephiroth1984]

PARTE II


Il Primo Trailer Ufficiale:

Spoiler:

Versione del Trailer in HD: Download

Riassunto delle info nell'Anteprima di GMC di Febbraio:

Spoiler:

• Il motto di base per lo sviluppo di Skyrim è stato: "You are what you play" (qui si fa pericolosamente intendere che dovremo fare MOLTO "metagioco" per interpretare un ruolo)
• Il protagonista inizia in una prigione, durante la sua "esecuzione" (decapitazione) ma arriverà di colpo un ex membro delle Blades e ci salverà, svelandoci che noi siamo realmente dei Dragonborn (ovvero persone con tracce di sangue di drago nelle vene) e spiegandoci un pò la situazione del ritorno dei Draghi
• L'ambientazione predominante è quella innevata (colori tendenti al bianco e verde), in pratica una tundra piena di vegetazione con 3 lati pieni di catene montuose e quello più a nord che sbocca su un mare gelido
• Estensione simile a quella di Oblivion, con 5 grandi città, 20 centri abitati e 50 dungeon (che arrivano a più di 100 con lo "spawnamento" di quest random del sistema "Radiant Story")
• Poca presenta di Elfi, quindi niente più copia-incolla di rovine Elayd (o come si chiamavano loro) sparse per tutta la mappa
• L'architettura si basa sulle costrizioni del vecchio popolo dei Nani
• Motore grafico riscritto da zero ("Abbiamo tenuto solo il file system!" [cit. Howard])
• Vegetazione molto dettagliata e scomparsa della sensazione di ciclicità nella ripetizione di gruppi di alberi come accadeva in Oblivion
• Interfaccia di esplorazione/combattimento che prevede solo il minimo indispensabile (3 barre e la bussola)
• Combattimento che premia l'uso della parata con scudo e contrattacco e primo nemico umano affrontato (barbaro vagabondo con armatura di pelle) che va giù con pochi colpi (danni realistici?) dopo essere stato rallentato nei movimenti con un raggio congelatore
• L'uso di un'arma fa riempire la barra specifica della skill e quando è piena compare il solito messaggio che ci dice "la tua abilità X è migliorata"
• Interfaccia non ingame (Inventario, Magia, Skill e Mappa) minimale, con sidebar che contengono elenchi di oggetti/skills/magie ed evidenziando una voce avremo la possibilità di osservarne il contenuto in 3D (cosa che verrà sfruttata per scoprire come risolvere alcuni enigmi) e di leggere tutte le info classiche (peso, statistiche, valore ecc)
• Incantesimi divisi in 5 scuole (Alteration, Illusion, Destruction, Conjuration e Restoration) e selezionandone uno dall'elenco lo "prepareremo" in una delle due mani
• Non possiamo avere 2 incantesimi diversi "preparati", ma solo uno ed al massimo possiamo averne 2 uguali su ambo le mani (cosa che porta a lanciare una versione "potenziata" di tale incantesimo)
• Se avremo entrambe le mani occupate da oggetti/armi non potremo "preparare" incantesimi
• La schermata delle Skill avrà come sfondo un cielo stellato (Blu per le Skills da Mago, Rosso per le Skills da Guerriero e Verde per le Skills da Ladro) con delle costellazioni, e mano mano che saliremo di livello avremo dei punti da spendere per sbloccare determinate "ramificazioni" (qui credo si riferisse alle perks ma non lo specifica)
• Non esistono classi, ma solo 3 macroinsiemi "Mago-Guerriero-Ladro" che noi personalizzeremo con l'uso frequente di determinate skill (sale solo ciò che usi realmente)
• Secondo Howard anche giocando più di 100 ore non si potrà "eccellere" in ogni skill
• Mappa in stile Total War, completamente in 3D e che si riempirà di luoghi mano mano che li scopriremo
• Il Fast Travel funziona solo sui luoghi già visitati una volta, ma abusandone avremo meno opportunità di incappare in "Random Encounter" e "Quest Dinamiche"
• In un villaggio di nome Riverwood vedremo gli abitanti seguire normali routine simulative e parlare un pò tutti nervosi tra loro riguardo la presenza di un drago che si aggira nei paraggi
• Volti degli NPC non proprio ben curati, animazioni migliorate
• Ogni paese ha un "sistema economico" e quello di Riverwood si basa sulla presenza e lo sfruttamento del fiume
• Potremo "sabotare" l'economia di un villaggio (non viene spiegato come però)
• A Riverwood ci sono circa una dozzina di abitazione ed altrettante botteghe
• Interagendo con un NPC parte un dialogo dove non c'è più lo "zoom sul volto" ma possiamo girare come vogliamo la telecamera e gli NPC continueranno a seguire determinate routine simulative
• I dialoghi sono sempre ramificati (non vi è alcun rimando ad eventuale presenza di "rami speciali" o "stat check" però)
• Un NPC parla di un "Artiglio di Drago" da recuperare in un Dungeon vicino e sbloccherà una quest
• Howard spiega il sistema "Radiant Story": c'è un "motore" che crea in tempo reale delle quest "dinamiche" come accadeva in parte nel vecchio Daggerfall
• Ognuna di queste quest "dinamiche" (saranno il 75% del totale mentre il restante 25% saranno quest "fatte a mano" e quindi "fisse") prevede un "canovaccio" che in base al luogo, alla situazione ed al nostro modo di giocare/agire ci metterà a disposizione un qualcosa da portare a termine
• Una quest "dinamica" non sarà mai uguale ad un'altra di una partita successiva/passata (ne potrà seguire le finalità, ma cambieranno variabili tipo "Luogo", "Oggetto da trovare", "mostro da uccidere", "NPC da convincere", "Ricompensa" ecc)
• Questo aspetto terrorizza anche Paglianti, che pensa subito alle quest "fotocopia" di Daggerfall (e terrotizza ANCHE ME! )
• Bruce Nesmith (Design Director) garantisce (segnatevi il nome di sto tizio che se mente lo andiamo a prendere a mazzate a casa sua! ) che "quando affronterete una missione generata casualmente non noterete alcuna differenza, dato che tutto è fatto a mano, dai dungeon ai dialoghi" (sta cosa non l'ho sinceramente capita...se le disegni a mano perchè non le piazzi in determinati luoghi dove ha senso che vi sia quella specifica quest? Boooohhh....non mi fa ben sperare per nulla sta cosa)
• Proseguendo con la missione, seguiamo un NPC che ci accompagna vicino alla strada da seguire per raggiungere il Dungeon (ottimo per evitare subito l'abuso di Fast Travel)
• Incontrando un Gigante ma questo non ci attacca e continua a seguire il suo pattern (ma provocandolo probabilmente avrebbe attaccato)
• La Neve comincerà a scendere in alcune occasioni e sarà tutta calcolata in tempo reale: in pratica non ci saranno texture "roccia innevata" che sostituiranno altre texture "roccia non innevata" ma la neve poggerà direttamente sulla superficie, adattandosi anche alla sua irregolarità
• Altro combattimento con un Troll che viene abbattuto facilmente con incantesimi a base di fuoco (ma non viene descritto nel dettaglio come si svolge il tutto o se le fiamme realmente cambiano la conformazione della pelle del Troll come annunciato in altre news)
• Altri due loschi figuri in una torre avvistata in lontananza (con "Detect Life" che ci mostra le sagome viola) vengono abbattuti con arco e frecce (le frecce restano nei corpi ma non viene descritto come sfruttano la fisica o il fattore "mira")
• Arrivati all'entrata della torre (che poi è il dungeon dove si svolgerà la missione) appare nel cielo un Drago (probabilmente quello di cui parlavano gli NPC a Riverwood?) e comincia un difficile combattimento (che però non viene descritto nel dettaglio...)
• Howard specifica che i pattern che seguono i draghi (soprattutto in volo) sono gestiti in tempo reale da complessi calcoli della IA (teoricamente questo li porterebbe a svolazzare per l'intera mappa senza sapere dove, come e quando ci attaccheranno)
• La presenza dei Draghi è molto più frequente del solito clichè in cui nei GDR vengono visti come "Boss Rari" quindi avremo un bel pò di loro visite a sorpresa
• Purtroppo abbattuto il drago non viene fatta alcuna menzione sull'assorbimento della sua anima (cosa che mi preoccupa)
• Il Dungeon è molto curato, pieno di dettagli e vario nella sua conformazione sotterranea
• Durante l'esplorazione troviamo un portone chiueso ed azionando una leva invece di aprirlo scatterà una trappola con dei dardi lanciati verso di noi
• Osservando notiamo che ci sono dei simboli sul portone che vanno messi in ordine, e che l'ordine possiamo scoprirlo guardando in alto sotto a delle statue (piccolo enigma)
• Scendendo in un pozzo si affrontano dei topi giganti la cui coda può essere usata per avvelenare le armi da taglio
• Continuando c'è una stanza piena di ragnatele e dal soffitto compare un ragno gigante e diversi altri più piccoli
• Sonfitti scopriamo che in una delle ragnatele è imprigionato un NPC e parlandoci ci svela che ha lui l'Artiglio del Drago e che ce lo consegnerà a parro di liberarlo
• Liberandolo ci tradisce e fugge via, costringendoci a fermarlo con la forza e prenderci il bottino
• Dal cadavere cospriamo anche un Diario che racconta i suoi giorni trascorsi prima di finire nella ragnatela
• Ogni libro che collezioniamo è "sfogliabile in 3D"
• Proseguendo potremo sfruttare alcune trappole per impalare degli Zombie Nordici, oppure rompere una lanterna che incendierà l'olio formando una pozzanghera infuocata (fonte di luce o arma per bruciare i restanti Zombie)
• Alcune stanze avranno delle lame che fuoriescono dai muri in stile PoP e che dovremo evitare (nessuna menzione al rallentamento del tempo però)
• Alcuni incantesimi vanno studiati su Tomi Magici che troveremo in giro mentre alcuni bastoni conterranno un tot di cariche di un determinato incantesimo
• Arrivati in una grossa sala con sculture di draghi e guerrieri c'è una porta con una combinazione da inserire per aprirla, e scopriamo che la combinazione è incisa dietro all'Artiglio di Drago che abbiamo da poco ritrovato (ecco lo sfruttamento intelligente, e si spera non solo in questo caso, dell'inventario in 3D)
• Scopriamo una stanza piena di vegetazione, con un altare al centro su cui sono incisi dei segni che scopriremo essere parole del linguaggio dei Draghi che dovremo "imparare" per sfruttare gli "Shouts"
• Compare un Dragon Priest Non Morto e comincia uno scontro difficile (lui evoca un Atronach ed usa in una mano uno scudo e nell'altra un incantesimo di Gelo)
• Abbattuto anche con l'ausilio di uno "Shouts" (ma non viene specificato quale e nemmeno come lo si è ottenuto purtroppo) si esce dal Dungeon e compare di colpo un altro Drago...e qui finisce la demo...

Altre info dai trafiletti:

• I lavori per Skyrim sono cominciati non appena è stato terminato Oblivion
• Mouse e Tastiera sono stati il formato di riferimento principale (anche se il design dell'interfaccia dice espressamente il contrario) ma sarà comunque comodo giocare anche col pad
• Sarà possibile salvare in qualsiasi momento, anche durante i combattimenti
• Presente una mappa locale per ogni luogo scoperto sulla mappa generale in 3D
• Più di 100 quest disponibili (numero che può aumentare per via della presenza del sistema "dinamico")
• Quest principale della durata di 20 ore e si potrà continuare anche dopo averla terminata
• Di Oblivion, tecnicamente, è rimasto solo il file system, tutto il resto è stato riscritto da zero
• Non hanno usato il motore di rage perchè non lo vedevano adatto a ciò che avevano intenzione di creare
• Non si sa ancora se ci saranno gli Achievements del LIVE, ma annunciano che a loro piace molto Steam ed il suo sistema di Autopatch, e che sono rimasti un pò delusi dal funzionamento del LIVE
• Delle fazioni non vogliono ancora parlare, anche se confermano che ce ne saranno
• Non è più possibile creare incantesimi
• Lo Scudo Magico bloccherà alcuni attacchi magici e lo Scudo bloccherà alcuni attacchi fisici ma non potranno essere usati in combinazione
• Potremo comprate più di una casa
• Tutti e 120 i Dungeons previsti finora sono stati disegnati "a mano" e quindi riempiti di trappole ed enigmi da risolvere (non tutti però, ma la maggior parte)
• Presenti 60 muri con sopra incise "Parole di Potere" da imparare per combinarle a 3 a 3 e sferrare Shouts specifici
• Le quest dinamiche sembreranno dei "Random Encounter", quindi alcune compariranno solo in alcuni luoghi, altre solo dopo il raggiungiemento di un certo livello, altre solo dopo aver risolto particolari quest ecc...(sempre più confuso su come cazzo funzioneranno realmente )
• Lasciando a terra un oggetto un NPC avrà la possibilità di scegliere se tenerselo o rintracciarci e restutuircelo (questo porterà anche a contenderselo con altri NPC)
• Il sistema quindi combina sezioni scriptate con casualità (sono molto preoccupato )
• Uccidendo alcuni NPC chiave in un villaggio, i loro "parenti" potranno rimpiazzarli (tipo nelle botteghe) ma saranno influenzati dal nostro agire (in modo negativo o positivo) ed alcuni potranno anche covare vendetta
• Ci saranno pochissimi NPC "immortali" collegati a quest vitali per la trama
• il Livellamento non sarà come in Oblivion o in parte come in Fallout 3: ci sarà un "range" di livello per ogni nemico incontrato e la prima volta che incontreremo un Troll è probabile che non riusciremo ad essere alla sua altezza, mentre ritornando dopo esser saliti di 5 livelli le cose potrebbero volgere a nostro favore (quindi probabilmente ci sarà il lock del livello di un mostro incontrato la prima volta, ma il "range" volgerà sempre a loro favore garantendo quindi sempre un minimo di "sfida"...teoricamente...)
• Non si è ancora capito se l'equipaggiamento sarà adattato al "range" dei nemici o meno
• La maggior parte dell'esperienze di gioco si svolgerà nei dungeon
• Niente componente Multyplayer

Se non vi fidate del mio riassunto dell'anteprima c'è quello di RPGItalia

Info da una rivista UK:

Spoiler:

Info

There is a perk that will lower the sound of your footsteps.
Perk for Axe that enables deeper cuts, which means prolonged bleeding. You can hit someone once and they will eventually bleed out.
Eventual perk upgrade for Maces that will allow you to hit for full damage, ignoring armor stats.
The article mentions placing runes on the floor (that we know already) but in particular talks about 'lob a frost rune down and if an enemy wanders over it, shards of ice will be launched through its body'
Telekinesis is an available spell.
'No more agility to build up so don't have to keep jumping around to level up' (I assume they mean no longer skills like acrobatics and athletes but they use the word agility)
When you kill a dragon you're able to absorb its soul which will make you learn a new dragon shout.
There is a dragon shout called 'Unrelenting Force' which pushes anything standing directly in front of you backwards.
Dragon shouts have cooldown periods after each shout performed. Individual shouts will have their own cooldown time.
In the northern parts of Solitude is the Bard's College. The city is a busy port and there's event similar to bonfire night that has the burning of an effigy of King Olaf.
Windhelm is the largest city. It has a palace that should look spectacular. This is also apparently the hangout for the Imperial Guards who monitor the path to Morrowind.
Bleak Falls Barrows is a dungeon, with ancient Nord catacombs which features rivers, tree roots coming through the ceiling and light coming through odd cracks.
120 Dungeons and they claim that 'no two areas will be alike'.
Just to re-confirm this fact straight from Todd Howard. Oblivion had 1 dungeon designer with artists doing the rest. Skyrim has 8 dungeon designers.
Whole world is hand-crafted. Oblivion had some generated landscapes and there is NONE of that anymore used in Skyrim.
The Shivering isles expansion inspired the team that unique, hand-crafted cities, where no two buildings look the same, was the way to go.
Example of a 'Radiant Story'. OXM UK recieved a quest to go to Bleak Falls Barrow and retrieve a golden dragon claw antique and take it back to shopkeeper Lucan. If you killed Lucan, the quest would change to his friend Camilla instead.
The Snow. Has been a lot of confusion about this. OXM UK says that snowfall is dynamic. Instead of a texture with a bit of white added, landscapes realistically get dusted with snow landing in appropiate nooks and crannies.
There are one-off puzzles in certain dungeons.
Example of new AI: 'Wolves have a den. Few times a day they go out and do a patrol and hunt in a pack. If they kill something then they'll hang out there. If you go outside and they're on patrol they will come after you. If they've killed something they will guard that and not chase you down as they want to look after it.

Dragon Shouts

The fact about the 'absorb soul of dragons to learn new shouts' has caused a little bit of confusion.

The dragon shout phases, of up to three words, can be found inscribed on the walls of ancient Nord dungeons. When uttered by the Dragonborn (the player) the words invoke powerful magic powers. For many of the shouts you can learn more phases which in turn will allow you to unleash a lengthier or more powerful version of the shout by holding the shout button down.
This appears to be the main way of learning shouts, by finding the word inscriptions. However the OXM article also mentions that you can learn new shouts in the process of absorbing dragon souls. The article doesn't mention anything else about this, maybe not all dragons give shouts, we don't know yet.

Key Map Locations visible on page 34

Solitude
Markarth
Dawnstar
Winter Hold
Windhelm
Whiterun
Riften
Falkreath

edit - These map locations may very well be outdated as OXM have used the old skyrim map with a new colour scheme.

Confirmed Skills

Alchemy
Illusion
Conjuration
Destruction
Restoration
Alteration
Enchanting

New Screenshots

Page 31 - We see a dragon on top of snow covered ruins. There is a huge backdrop behind it showing off mountains, new clouds and fog. Draw distance looks great.
Page 34 - There is a picture of the skyrim worldmap which lists the locations listed above. On 2nd look they've used the same map as the one on the UESP wiki, so it may be outdated.
Page 38 - A player appears to be wearing Elven armor and dualwielding a sword and staff. The staff is able to cast light along a corrider. (Was in gameinformer but bigger shot here and addition info)
Page 39 - 2 new screenshots here, we see a hooded stealth character performing a stealth execution (Assassin's Creed style, blade to the chest up close). We see a new dungeon called the 'Hall of Stories' which features a locked door and a puzzle to open it. Stonework looks fantastic with spider webbing across the walls.

Primi Screens ufficiali:

Spoiler:

Altra carrellata di immagini:

Spoiler:

Elenco di ogni dichiarazione/promessa pre-release fatta ai tempi di Oblivion (per ironizzare un pò):

Spoiler:

[Kathode] "All screenshots we've released are 100% in game showing stuff we've already got implemented. We haven't done any special poses or anything like that, with the exception of magazine covers."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "I'm sorry, but what part of "without losing our hardcore rpg fans" don't you understand?"

[Slateman] "Each of the faction lines in this game have plots and quests to much greater depth over MW. Quality, not quantity."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "I know you don't want to hear it, but you're just going to have to trust us that the dialogue is better than Morrowind's."

[Todd] "As you play, you start to figure out what you can do with these NPCs, and how you can influence their behavior, and when doing a quest, it really comes into play. A simple 'get the diamond from that guy...' quest can be done in hundreds of ways now."

[VSXX] "We have everything from mice to moles to crickets. The most fearsome you have ever seen even! You thought sleeping at night with a singing cricket outside your window was bad. You wait till you meet the one that plays a 14 piece drum set outside your window."

[Pete] "Honestly, and this is just my opinion, I think the hardcore RPG guys are going to love what we have in store for them in Oblivion. The depth, the level of polish...it crushes Morrowind. That doesn't mean that other people won't want to buy it and play it because it's a beautiful game that has fun combat and cool quests. We'll make enough copies for everyone."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "You'll be reading LOTS of stuff. All of the quest lines are much more in depth, challenging and interesting. And there's a heck of a lot more to the game than just the guilds and the main quest. Lots and lots of other things to do that haven't been mentioned. Stats play a huge, huge role. Class actually has meaning this time. The game is better balanced. You have more rewards for advancement besides just getting better at things. The dungeons are better designed, the NPCs are more interesting, the dialogue is better written.

If you think this is a simple, dumbed down hack & slash, you couldn't be more wrong."

[BlueDev] "For Oblivion, there's a very concious effort to avoid too much random information spewing by NPCs. Fear not--there's still the same amount of info to be found in the game. In fact, the NPCs probably have more than ever to say; it just makes more sense for them to say it."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "Oblivion is infinitely superior to Morrowind in every conceivable way."

[MattRyan] "So for all of you thinking that it would be neat to steal something, and then take off on your horse....guess what? An NPC can do the same dirty trick to you as well. "

[Todd] "The clothing you wear does affect certain NPC's, but not in a big way, it’s subtle."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "Broken shields and weapons are automatically dropped and they clatter to the ground using Havok physics. Broken armor stays on, but is ineffective and you'll know if you're wearing broken armor or not."

[Slateman] "While I cannot go into detail, rest assured that even players who max out a bunch of skills will discover challenges in this game. We didn't leave you guys out "

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "Just because you can attempt to bribe someone does not mean they'll automatically accept it."

[MattRyan] "We are gamers. We have given tons of time toward the balance of gameplay. Asside from the designers, artists, programmers, and producers.... our staff of QA testers are extremely good at exploiting our game systems and looking for loopholes in gameplay, or shortfalls in fun vs. realism.

In conclusion, to completely cut out any adjustment to difficulty in enemies would not be fun, just as making all creatures off-set to your level would not be fun."

[Slateman] "Yep. To second MSFD, we don't auto-level exactly to your level. We have all sorts of adjustments available. If we didn't the game would be boring "

[MattRyan] "If everything was leveled then you'd have no fear of anything in the game ('I can beat everything!') We plan on scaring the heck out of the player by higher level creatures."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "You're walking through a seedy part of a town in Western Cyrodiil. People mill about, some engaged in conversation, others minding their own business, out on their own errands. Suddenly, an ugly man decides he doesn't like you. Maybe he's drunk, maybe he's just a bully, maybe he's just showing off in front of his friends -- but for whatever reason, he has taken your measure and decided he can best you.

He comes charging at you, with a nasty looking mace in his hand and a look of hatred on his face. Onlookers move back to make room for what should be an entertaining fight.

Quickly drawing your sword and shield, you wheel around to face him. He's upon you pretty quickly though, and you barely have time to raise your shield (hold right mouse button) before his first blow thunders down upon you.

But you block well, and as he recoils from the collision, you quickly perform left & right slashes with your sword (left click, pause, left click). The bully realizes this isn't going to be easy.

He backs off a bit, and starts dodging around you. First to the left, then to the right. You maneuver to keep him in view, looking for an opening. Suddenly he steps back, raises his mace in both hands, and steps forward, bringing the mace towards your head in a crushing blow!

But you're quick -- you step to the side as he attacks. As he passes by, you execute a spinning maneuver and slash him in the side (hold left mouse button and left maneuver key). The hit is solid, and your foe staggers from the blow.

But it's not over yet. The bully swings his mace wildly -- his first swing misses, but the next one connects for a blow that sends you staggering. Pressing his advantage, the bully bears down on you with a power attack of his own. OUCH. This isn't going well. You take a glance at your health meter, it's getting a bit low. You quickly back up out of the bully's reach and raise your shield (hold right mouse button).

He's hurting, too. You circle each other for a time, looking for an opening, trying to recover some fatigue. Finally the bully charges forward with a devastating overhead blow, perhaps hoping to break your shield. But the shield holds and the recoil send him staggering back. This is your chance! You perform a mighty forward power attack (hold the left mouse button, press forward) and connect solidly. The blow staggers your foe once again, and you perform 3 slashing attacks in rapid succession (left mouse button, pause, left mouse button, pause, left mouse button), and finally the bully collapses to the ground, defeated.

The crowd disperses, going back to their own business."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "We happen to think that console gamers are smarter than that, and the success of Morrowind on Xbox proves that console gamers actually ARE interested in games with MORE depth and complexity than some people seem to think they are."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "I absolutely guarantee that they'll be able to make mods that will completely blow away anything we saw for Morrowind, using the new Construction Set."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "You can only use the map-based fast travel to go to places you've already been. So you'll HAVE to walk to each possible location AT LEAST once."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "We could make traditional creatures that looked like every other depiction of those creatures you've seen in books, movies, or other games, but then where's the originality in that?"

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "NPCs would have to be told to go into your house via Radiant AI. And even if they WERE, you could always lock your door..."

[Slateman] "Trust me, you're going to get lost if you wander in these forests and don't use the compass or map."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "you can enter every interior."

[Pete] "There isn't a magazine on the planet that hasn't gotten information if they've asked for it."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "Resurrected NPCs are not themselves. They're basically mindless automata who will follow you around and fight for you."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "Oblivion is an extremely rich, complex game with a tremendous amount of depth, compelling quest lines, interesting NPC characters, a huge variety of player character types and intricate character progression set in a huge, varied game world. Combat, magic, and AI have all been dramatically improved to enhance gameplay while still providing a balance between player skill and character skill, because after all, Oblivion is a role playing game. Yes, some things that were present in Morrowind are not in Oblivion -- but a lot more has been added than removed, and the goal has always been to make a game that is both more accessible to first-time RPG players, and is also challenging and rewarding for more experienced players."

[Pete] "We will continue to support the mod community as best we can and let them do the great things they do, just as we did with Morrowind."

[Sentinel] "The sad fact is that many development studios can't afford to bankroll their own game development. So they rely on publishers to give them the money to create these games. The problem with this is that the publisher then feels they should have input into the game since they are spending the money. Hence Atari and EA have such a big influence on a game they publish.

Just glad here at Bethesda we are our own publisher and developer and have free reign to make what we want."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "We're NOT going to slap in features that don't work well just to say we have them."

[Pete] "Holidays this year"

[Pete] "You know if you have a 360 it will look as good as it can possibly look. If you have the latest, greatest PC with the best video card, etc., it will probably look the same as the Xbox 360 version."

[MrSmileyFaceDude] "The compass, the quest marker and compass icons, are NOT the hand-holding, dumbing down babysitter some folks paint them out to be."

[Hayt] "We're around on a daily basis, and we're reading. When we're ready to comment on things, you'll all know."

*All of the Dev quotes cited above have been archived at http://www.waiting4oblivion.com/developer_quotes.html

• Divertente Video sull' Hype
• A Closer Look at The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

Nuove info da una rivista francese:

Spoiler:

• 'Magnetism' is used to prevent friendly fire in combat, by slightly 'pulling' your attacks towards enemies
• Some, apparently unique, enchanted weapons will have "concealed" effects. You won't know what those are until you try the weapon.
• You cannot block if you have a sword in one hand, and a spell in another. Only players wielding two-handed blades or sword and shield can use block.
• The Spell Shield effect returns.
• Taverns will play a large role in the game. You will be able to overhear people's conversations, start quests, acquire information, and much more.
• They mention breaking and entering to find out more about people, but I'm not sure as to what extent - "Because of the open world set up you can even progress by snooping around - following people, looking out for strange behaviour and even some light breaking and entering".
• Quest givers can give you more or less information about their quest depending on their disposition towards you.
• One dungeon is called 'Bleak Falls Barrow', and it is inhabited by the Draugr (the undead Nord warriors we first met in Bloodmoon). As you proceed through the dungeon, you'll eventually encounter a 'ghostly dragon priest', and eventually the dungeon boss, a giant 'Frostbite Spider'. It is said the dungeon is 'terryfing'.
• The quest to Bleak Falls Barrow is given to you by a shopkeeper called Lucan, whose priceless Draconic family heirloom (a golden claw) was stolen recently.
• Several new spell effects, including "Ice Trap" (only triggered when an enemy walks over it), "Circle of Protection" (push the enemies in your vicinity away), "Fury" (make enemies fight each other), and so on.
• One of the finishing moves involves "plunging your sword into your enemy's chest", coupled with gurgling death noises.
• The 'free-form' activities you can perform include cooking, woodcutting, mining and metalwork.
• A Dragon Shout that slows down time (a la Bullet Time) is mentioned.
• Some Dragon Shouts are found in dungeons.
• There's a city called Riverwood. It is described as 'A smattering of timber buildings, including a sawmill'.
• Radiant Story is in part inspired by the random encounters in Fallout 3.
• The game apparently looks amazing in motion, with great environment effects such as the wind making the water swirl and making waves.
• It is possible to raise all skills to 100 but not possible to get all perks.
• The death of the King of Skyrim has sparked a civil war in the country.
• Dragon encounters aren't scripted. If one comes across a town in its travels, it might decide to attack it without warning. This may or may not involve setting it ablaze.
• It talks about the improvement of NPC's and Radiant AI.
• Every big settlement is unique. The city of Markarth Side, for example, is set into "dramatic stone cliffs, with buildings teetering on the end of sheer drops."
• Haarfingar is said to be home to the largest trading port in Skyrim.
• The game apparently includes 'meteorogical effects': clouds gathering around mountaintops, etcetera.
• The glorious return of the Dwemer ruins is once again confirmed.
• One of the cities in Skyrim will apparently be heavily inspired by the Dunmer (Dark Elves), and may even be a full-fledged Dunmer settlement.
• They're trying to go back to the "eccentricity" of Vvardenfell. Every Nord faction will have their own customs, colors, and so on.
• The economy of the game is better developed than in Oblivion. If you destroy a city's means of income (for instance, their crops) they'll need to buy crops from another nearby city, and prices in the city will go up.
• Archers can 'hold their breath' while aiming. This consumes stamina, but gives the archer a better chance of hitting the enemy.
• A wounded dragon has a chance of crashing into the ground.
• You can cut dialogue short by walking away from the NPC.
• Dragon Shouts are assigned to the R3-button on the PS3 gamepad.
• Not every NPC will have a complete set of dialogue like in Oblivion. It'll be more like in Fallout 3, where only the 'important' NPC's have anything substantial to say.

An interview with Todd Howard in the same magazine gives us some more info (some of this may be badly translated, so don't immediately believe everything you see here).

• Quests can influence each other. Quest A may be changed for you because you completed Quest B beforehand.
• Quest givers now give more detailed instructions, in a style that's apparently akin to Morrowind. They might even escort you to the road, to show you where to go.
• The game has 120 unique dungeons, worked on by 8 designers.

Some non-magazine news:

• A week or so ago, Pete Hines remarked a trailer "may or may not be around a month away". A trailer at the GDC? It seems possible.
• A site redesign is coming soon as well, probably to coincide with the trailer reveal.

Stand fast, sons of Skyrim. We'll be feasting in Sovngarde soon.

OXM UK inside xbox interview with Todd Howard: New info on dialog system!

Spoiler:

Altre info lurkate da una rivista:

Spoiler:

- Your character will learn the acient language of the dragons. The phrases can include up to three words and are mostly found inscribed on dungeon walls. The phrases will allow you to do certain things such as slow down time, knock back foes, and more.

- The phrases are mapped to the right bumper/R1 and you'll learn one word at a time for each phrase. Learning more words within the phrase will allow the spell to be either more powerful or longer.

- Finishing moves will be available for your characters in battle. The article describes a finishing move where you plunge "your saber through a foe's chest".

- Telekinesis will be an available spell, allowing those of you who are rather lazy the ability to pick up items or objects to launch at your enemies.

- Runes can be cast and used as traps. The article describes a situation where you can throw a frost rune to the ground, and if an enemy walks across it, pieces of ice will impale them.

- A perk is available that gives your enemies deeper cuts. A strategy talked about is simply hitting your opponent with a solid strike, then hiding as they slowly bleed to death.

- Around 80 different spells will be featured in the game.

- If you find yourself below average at using weapons, you should still be able to survive in combat using offensive and defensive magic.'

- The two handed mechanic Bethesda introduces in Skyrim for fighting will remind a ton of gamers of the BioShock series.

- If you happen to scale one of the many peaks in Skyrim, all of the snow you see is totally dynamic.

- All of the established Elder Scrolls races will return in Skyrim.

- The race you pick in the beginning will only effect your baseline stats, as what you actually do in the world with your combat, magic, and stealth will help shape your character instead.

- The "perks" system will still allow you to make more direct changes to your character as well. As opposed to Fallout, perks in Skyrim are on a much smaller scale.

- Graphics engine for Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is "all but written from scratch".

- Cities in Skyrim will all be unique, shying away from the reusing of assets we popularly saw in Oblivion.

- There are 120 dungeons, with each one typically having its own feel. Far more traps and puzzles are featured in them too.

- While you may be able to avoid them at some points in your journey, you're going to have to take dragons down at some point, and it won't be an easy task.

- Dragons aren't scripted, they'll cruise the entire world and occassionally land on different objects or areas. Make one mad and it'll swoop down to take you on.

- New to Skyrim also is the "Radiant Story system". An example listed in the article is, "If you discard a weapon on the ground to free up inventory space, you might find that a nearby character approaches you. If they like you, they might offer the sword back to you in case you dropped it by accident; if they're neutral toward you, they might ask if they can have it; and if they dislike you, they might simply nab the weapon and take off. Kill that character and the Radiant Story system will search for his or her relatives, and may even send one of them in pursuit of you to avenge the murder."

Skyrim Main Theme - Solo Piano:

Spoiler:

Skyrim Trailer Analysis - IGN Rewind Theater:

Spoiler:

RPGItalia: Il Trailer Analizzato Fotogramma per Fotogramma

CVG: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - What we want to see
Intervista a Todd Howard sulla saga di TES: Exclusive: Inside the Elder Scrolls

Intervista e nuovi dettagli su PlanetElderScrolls: Exclusive interview with Matt Grandstaff: Community and Skyrim

ANTEPRIME:

Cheat Code Central: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Preview

[Noldor]

Ma la grafica conta tanto quanto peso ci diamo noi. Molti non giocano a DF perchè non ha grafica. Io me ne sbatto i coglioni e gioco ad uno dei giochi più belli mai fatti.

Una grafica migliore non guasta mai. MA non è che avere una grafica vecchia o sparatana debba pregiudicare la bellezza di un gioco.

[Noldor]

è la solita confusione tra il lato "tecnico" e quello "artistico"
il primo è abbastanza irrilevante
il secondo è (IMHO) fondamentale
poi sono il primo ad ammettere che possono esserci vg visivamente desolanti ma pieni di contenuti, ma, mancando di una componente fondamentale, resteranno sempre opere in qualche modo minori
come un libro con una splendida trama ma mal scritto

Peccato che un Dwarf Fortress calpesti senza problemi la sua sorellina Minecraft. Che poi Minecraft sia più accessibile ok. Che abbia contenuti sufficienti proprio no.


@Nestor Diego: Tu sei me

[Daedalus]

Secondo me la grafica è importante in TUTTI i giochi, però do molto più peso alla "direzione artistica" rispetto all'aspetto puramente tecnico (risoluzione delle ombre, numero di luci dinamiche, ecc. ).
Non mi faccio problemi a giocare a giochi vecchi con la grafica pixelosa, però mi fa storcere il naso quando vedo un gioco odierno con la grafica non all'altezza. Specialmente se il gioco viene sviluppato da una casa multimilionaria che ci ha dedicato anni e anni di sviluppo (ogni riferimento a Dragon Age è puramente casuale ). Anche in questi casi non è che non ci gioco, però è una cosa che critico.
Un direzione artistica non di qualità, invece, la critico sempre.

Una cosa che mi piacerebbe vedere al giorno d'oggi è un gioco con visuale isometrica stile Torment, bidimensionale, ma con risoluzione, animazioni ed effetti possibili con l'hardware odierno. Provate a immaginarvelo Torment in cui fondale, personaggi e tutto il resto siano veramente super definiti (vedi Braid).

[Dark_Angel83]

per favore non cominciamo con la sandbox war...

[no1]

Secondo me la grafica è importante in TUTTI i giochi, però do molto più peso alla "direzione artistica" rispetto all'aspetto puramente tecnico (risoluzione delle ombre, numero di luci dinamiche, ecc. ).
Non mi faccio problemi a giocare a giochi vecchi con la grafica pixelosa, però mi fa storcere il naso quando vedo un gioco odierno con la grafica non all'altezza. Specialmente se il gioco viene sviluppato da una casa multimilionaria che ci ha dedicato anni e anni di sviluppo (ogni riferimento a Dragon Age è puramente casuale ). Anche in questi casi non è che non ci gioco, però è una cosa che critico.
Un direzione artistica non di qualità, invece, la critico sempre.

Una cosa che mi piacerebbe vedere al giorno d'oggi è un gioco con visuale isometrica stile Torment, bidimensionale, ma con risoluzione, animazioni ed effetti possibili con l'hardware odierno. Provate a immaginarvelo Torment in cui fondale, personaggi e tutto il resto siano veramente super definiti (vedi Braid).

TW con l'F2

[Nectas]

Ragazzi....mi viene in mente un dubbio su queste "quest dinamiche".....
....incollo dal primo post: "saranno il 75% del totale mentre il restante 25% saranno quest "fatte a mano" e quindi "fisse".....

MA.......c'è un ma!!!
.....se c'è effettivamente un sistema che seleziona le quest in base al mio stile di gioco, mi chiedo quante quest di questo 75% si adatteranno al mio stile e personaggio!!

Di sicuro una percentuale molto più bassa se consideriamo che il 75% comprende tutte le quest per TUTTI i vari stili e personaggi.....spero di "essermi stato" spiegato!!