TES V: Skyrim

[Frank]

First impression (just out of the dungeon):
- The UI is extremely bad, to the point where beating the head of the designer against the wall, repeatedly, might be warranted. I have to read the manual to figure some things out.
- It looks quite acceptable on "Ultra", except for the distractingly bad shadow effects and artefacts.
- Why do you (the to-be-saviour) always start out as a deported criminal? Really.
- I think I'm going to enjoy it anyway, but mods are needed, of course.

Edit: and the water in the first river is visible up to where it abruptly stops and becomes invisible.

- Auto-regeneration...

 

[swaaye]

I had a spider floating in the air during the intro tutorial.

 

[homerdog]

I had a spider floating in the air during the intro tutorial.

It's a magic spider. Duh.

 

[Frank]

The look-and-feel is pretty much like Gothic 3, in a good way. The crafting interface is mostly a copy. But I don't understand why I would need a steel ingot to be able to sharpen my sword on a whetstone.

Oh, and Alt-Tab is mostly broken: getting out of the game is easy, but getting back in requires fiddling.

 

[Bludd]

The look-and-feel is pretty much like Gothic 3, in a good way. The crafting interface is mostly a copy. But I don't understand why I would need a steel ingot to be able to sharpen my sword on a whetstone.

Oh, and Alt-Tab is mostly broken: getting out of the game is easy, but getting back in requires fiddling.

Alt-tab out and to get in you need to alt-tab twice.

 

[Albuquerque]

Whoever mentioned SSAA working -- thank you! My 5850 has enough left in it (after 900//1150 clocks) to play at forced 2xSSAA with FXAA enabled in-game. Sooooooo very nice, minus a bit of texture blur that I can overlook. Actually, due to the texture blur, I dropped a bit of Aniso and dropped shadows from Ultra to Medium (on someone else's suggestion) and I'm rockin'.

Performance has been excellent on my "old" hardware, given what a few others have suggested or implied. Also, I've yet to have any floating NPCs / monsters, or falling through geometry while trying to climb to places I shouldn't be. Texture resolution, in my opinion, is "on par" with a lot of other games. There are better examples to be sure, but there are also worse examples. I also feel that characters look a LOT better than any prior Bethesda attempt, which means they're not top-of-the-line perfect, but they're quite far from abysmal.

The UI is pretty terrible, but it helped me to discover that WASD functions in the menu -- the point and click was getting seriously irritating. Also, I also stumbled onto the numeric key assignment to favorites and that pretty much keeps my out of the UI minus a few map checks and some inventory stuff. The hard-coded keys for looting is also quite ridiculous, but that's about all I have left for gripes about the UI.

If only shadows weren't so ridiculously low quality, I'd be happy with damned near everything. That's really the only remaining piece that truly drags me out of the immersion.

 

[KKRT]

Some of my tests regardless uGrid tweak
http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32630335&postcount=1280

Tweak tutorial is here http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=32627380&postcount=1198

Ps. If somebody doesnt know uGrid force to load more geometry on distant grids as comparison shows.

 

[xatnys]

The settings in this game are awesome. The shadows were really annoying at first, but after playing for a bit my attention was almost entirely on the landscape and its sheer variety. I feel this is Bethesda's best by far with regard to art direction.

 

[swaaye]

The settings in this game are awesome. The shadows were really annoying at first, but after playing for a bit my attention was almost entirely on the landscape and its sheer variety. I feel this is Bethesda's best by far with regard to art direction.

From what I've seen so far I totally agree. It is a gigantic improvement over Oblivion not only in scene detail but also in art style / character. I also like how the races have their pre-Oblivion appearances back.

Whoever mentioned SSAA working -- thank you!

Twas I! Yeah SSAA rocks. It adds such a nice consistent quality to a rendered image.

 

[RenegadeRocks]

This bothers me far more than muddy graphics.

Instead of seeming wrong , it seems right to me. Fine they don't react to placing pots on their heads, but atleast they don't have God Eyes. It feels natural that they couldn't see him stealing. Infact, this feels good to me, wouldn't have expected that at all.

 

[Malo]

Game performs really well even on my aging hardware (e6750 + 5770) with almost everything maxed w/2x MSAA + FXAA. Textures may not be anything special most of the time but it is a fantastic looking game. Great environmental effects, the scenery is just awe inspiring. The couple of dungeons I've been in have great detail and are quite lengthy.

 

[fellix]

Driver-forced SSAO really adds to the scene depth perception. Surely, it's not the best solution and I would much prefer a native implementation in the game's engine, but it's definitely better than nothing.

 

[micron]

My daughter, 8yo now, insisted on helping me create a female breton named Sosanna. Probably spent 30 minutes tweaking her appearance, thanks to the concerns of a 2nd grader that every detail be duly considered.

Holy crap is she 8 years old already!?!

 

[Silent_Buddha]

This bothers me far more than muddy graphics.

Wow, that is beyond horrible.

Instantly takes me out of any immersion I may have in the game. Sure it's great that people can't catch you stealing if they can't SEE you stealing. But seriously the simple fact that having a pot or bucket on placed on their head doesn't make them react, at all, just makes me go WTF?

And hearing you stuffing your pockets with all that stuff should make them react and look to see if anything is going on, but no, nothing. Horrible.

Hopefully rumors of non-leveling enemies and gear is true. If so I may consider getting the GOTY version of this whenever it comes out.

Regards,
SB

 

[Albuquerque]

Wow, that is beyond horrible.

Instantly takes me out of any immersion I may have in the game.

Of all the legit things you and others could be complaining about this game, you chose THIS to be horrible? Because it would take you out of the, what, immersion of a world where you're putting buckets on people's heads? What part of your immersion in this world involved dropping buckets on people's heads?

While we're at it, let's go ahead and complain that the game lets you break people's sentences instead of having to listen to their diatribe. Hell, let's complain that your immersion gets broken when you die and have to reload, and everyone is none the wiser. Oh gee, I've taken this quest from you three times now, but you don't remember that, do you Mr NPC? Of course not, because I died and reloaded! That's entirely REAL WORLD.

And earlier we had someone bitching about how realistic the HAIR was?

There are a hundred other things that are far more worth your bitching than what happens if you drop a bucket on someone's head. Howabout the fact that a merchant actually knows if something was stolen, even if it was stolen four towns away from someone that is now dead? Howabout the wildlife that immediately wants to kill you, no matter what? Or the bandits who do the same?

These are things you can't avoid, which should be far more reason for immersion-breaking concern rather than dragging and dropping a bucket on someone's head so you can steal stuff -- because, yeah, you obviously do that in ALL the games you play -- err, all the games that you play that allow such a mechanic to even exist. Oh wait, how many games is that again? And you do it how often?

J. F. C.

As for me, I don't let bucket-head mechanics get in the way of my immersion. The kludgy UI for looting and the always-attacking wildlife are my two biggest gripes for now. The 2xSSAA + FXAA + medium-rez shadows + ultra everything else is buttery smooth at 1680x1050 on my 5850 and Q9550. I have racked up a big pile of screenshots that I'll post in the ridonkulous thread tomorrow, and I'm WAY out on the west side of the map now looking for a sword of some sort.

The leveling of enemies (and loot) does NOT appear to happen, as I've had my ass handed to me multiple times by some serious enemies in places where I am far out of my league. But I've pressed on, and picked up some pretty bitchin' loot by sticking it out.

For those who wanted something better than Oblivion and the Fallout 3's, this is absolutely it. For those who wanted to nitpick about inane things like bucket heads and hair styles, please don't waste your hard earned money or well deserved time. Give that time to your family, and the money to a more charitable cause

 

[Colourless]

Wow, that is beyond horrible.

Instantly takes me out of any immersion I may have in the game. Sure it's great that people can't catch you stealing if they can't SEE you stealing. But seriously the simple fact that having a pot or bucket on placed on their head doesn't make them react, at all, just makes me go WTF?

And hearing you stuffing your pockets with all that stuff should make them react and look to see if anything is going on, but no, nothing. Horrible.

Hopefully rumors of non-leveling enemies and gear is true. If so I may consider getting the GOTY version of this whenever it comes out.

Regards,
SB

Something the developers never intended of expected. The game probably does a raycast from around the NPCs eyes to the item being stolen/the player. Something like a bucket will cause the raycast to end at the inner edge of bucket. Apparently this works in Fallout too. .

 

[gamervivek]

Wow, that is beyond horrible.

Instantly takes me out of any immersion I may have in the game. Sure it's great that people can't catch you stealing if they can't SEE you stealing. But seriously the simple fact that having a pot or bucket on placed on their head doesn't make them react, at all, just makes me go WTF?

And hearing you stuffing your pockets with all that stuff should make them react and look to see if anything is going on, but no, nothing. Horrible.

Hopefully rumors of non-leveling enemies and gear is true. If so I may consider getting the GOTY version of this whenever it comes out.

Regards,
SB

hahaha, oh wow

 

[poopypoo]

Cool your jets, yall, it's an ES game, time for celebration! I really see both sides when it comes to bethesda apologists. On one hand, they have zero competition and that's the end of the story. if PB could ever have finished a game and CDPR weren't off chasing biowhore drama, then maybe then we could do something besides grovel at bethesda's feet. otoh, i wont pretend they're flawless or anything but MANIC LIARS on the pr side. They come in second only to Molyneux in that regard, only because he makes a "new" game every other damn year. Bsoft needs to seriously kill that facial design team. license some tech, whatever, it's losing them sales to have a game that's half talking to ppl, when the ppl look literally retarded all the time. the thieving stuff i can get over. it's sad to think thievery will never be as fun as my first thief in morrowwind. but there arent a lotta good solutions to the gameplay issues. Bethesda is once again without peer or even competition in this area. gotta celebrate...!

 

[KimB]

it's sad to think thievery will never be as fun as my first thief in morrowwind.

Honestly, I felt that Oblivion did a far better job with thieving than Morrowind. The game mechanics for thieving were more or less identical for both games, but Oblivion did two things that were significant improvements: it told you when you were at risk of thieving, and it had a much better quest line for the Thieves' Guild. I generally thought that the Thieves' Guild quest line was the best in the game, and far better than anything Morrowind had to offer.

But I definitely hear you on the faces. They really need to step up the art there. Right now I'm re-playing some Oblivion (Skyrim will arrive when I'm off at a meeting for most of next week, unfortunately), and I'm playing with a mod that has some actually decent-looking faces and hair styles. Unfortunately, the mod doesn't change any of the character faces in the world, but at least my character looks pretty good.

 

[Sxotty]

First impression (just out of the dungeon):
- The UI is extremely bad, to the point where beating the head of the designer against the wall, repeatedly, might be warranted. I have to read the manual to figure some things out.
- It looks quite acceptable on "Ultra", except for the distractingly bad shadow effects and artefacts.
- Why do you (the to-be-saviour) always start out as a deported criminal? Really.
- I think I'm going to enjoy it anyway, but mods are needed, of course.

Edit: and the water in the first river is visible up to where it abruptly stops and becomes invisible.

- Auto-regeneration...

I agree about the UI holy crap it is annoying. When I leveled the first time it randomly decided to change the perk I wanted. Anyway I ended up just quitting after that. Physics are crap as expected. You bump into a cart and it goes flying like it is made of balsawood with antigravity plating. I have already been hurt a couple times by debris deciding to fly into the air and smash me as I walked near it.