Well... no. It was the 360 version. My brother was borrowing it from someone. We have dial-up at my parent's house, so we don't have Xbox Live and we couldn't update it from the base version on the disc. I played that for about two weeks on and off, mostly doing the main quest and whatever side quests I happened to come across before we had to give it back. I got the PC version for my birthday a few weeks later (though I couldn't play that until I got to college because of the stupid Steam validation thing, and Steam never works when I'm on dial-up... :facepalm)

Point being, I haven't had any experience with the PS3 version, but the 360 version, while it had its problems, never had any game-breaking bugs for me, and the fully-updated PC version (plus mods) is excellent.

Anyway. Skyrim. My brother won't shut up about it. I don't think he remembers clearly how much Oblivion was hyped up, and how much of a letdown (at least compared to the hype) it turned out to be. As such I'm withholding my full judgment until it comes out... but I have to admit, it does look pretty enticing. My expectations are higher than they were when this was first announced.

 

Twitter, various questions are being answered.

And the video, no new footage apparently, but it's a new video:

Part one Part two Part three

Edit for my take on the video: Honestly, it's pretty much the same as the E3 video. In fact, it is the E3 video, with a couple bits we didn't see before thrown in. Nothing that special, really, though I wasn't expecting much.

 

"That detail render distance is horrible. *notices it's a console version* Oh thank God"

I'm liking the minimal HUD and map, hope its not just one huge unchangeable render.

 

It's a console port? How lame. I hope it's not a big screw-up that Dungeon Siege 3 was. I more than likely won't buy it, seeing as it's a console port over, and usually that means "We're lazy".

 

It's a port in the same way that Oblivion was.

 

Well, I can see why certain items in Oblivion looked all ugly then. But I guess that's more due to it being released in 2005 or '06. It's still laziness in my honest opinion.

 

I don't like it either, but I wouldn't rule out the game as a total loss quite yet. Honestly, I'm move concerned about other changes they've made then it being a port. No birthsigns, no classes, no greaves, no spellmaking, generically generated quests...

Edit: Also, only 85 spells. They level with you, but still.

 

Wow. That really stinks.

 

I said it before, and since I'm currently on a heavily modded playthrough of Oblivion, I'll say it again. There will be plenty of mods that fix a lot of those issues. Given the number of 'alternate start' mods, I'm sure that there will be at least one that reintroduces classes, birthsigns, etc. Same for spellmaking and better quests - there are tons of quests available as mods for Oblivion. Spellmaking is an option through the CS, so it's fairly easy to put an in-game GUI to it. Greaves, I'm not so sure about, I don't know the capabilities of the construction set too well, so I don't know if they can change the game to that extent. But yeah, the game may look crappy initially, but after at least a few months or so there will be enough mod development to make it quite an enjoyable playthrough.

Heh, I'm sure there will even be mods to let you ride dragons :awesome

 

You're right, though a lot of it will depend on how much is hardcoded, how the new CS works, and how long it'll take for someone to make a script extender. That said, I'm expecting a fair bit of awesomeness in the first couple of months. And despite the general bullshit of some of the announcements, I'm willing to give bethesda the benefit of the doubt for some of it.

 

On greaves, from my limited knowledge of the oblivion CS its not going to be easy to add them.

 

I can appreciate a well-created mod as much as the next guy(as I have used mods for various games, after thoroughly enjoying the core version), but personally I prefer a solid original product in the first place...

It's always a little disheartening to hear the words "you will be able to download mods to fix all of those problems," when the so-called problems shouldn't be there to begin with.

 

To be honest, I'm quite glad there aren't any classes. I think it's a good step forward. I like the sound of the new levelling system, I just hope it lives up to my expectations. The one thing I have a problem with at the moment is with the lack of ability to block when you are duel wielding. It just seems ridiculous that you can't do it, It would be so easy to make it work, yet as far as I know they haven't. I really don't get why.

 

As far as I can figure out, they ran out of buttons on the Xbox 360 gamepad.
Of course, they could put it on PC, but why bother when you can just do a quick port?

 

I'm in full agreement on the classes thing, and my favorite Oblivion mod basically makes it a Skyrim-style levelling system. On the dual wielding blocking thing, frankly if you're carrying two axes blocking would probably be your last priority. I'm going to do my best not to be influenced by shit before I even touch the game.

 

Probably already posted, but here's a full 20 minute gameplay video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSL-r9AIEEU

Of course, it's on Xbox 360, which sucks, but at least we can (hopefully) expect graphics at least as good as these.

What would really tick me off would be if they forced those third person killing moves.

 

Pete Hines has confirmed that there will be decapitation in the game on twitter:

"Yeah, it's part of a one-handed perk you can pick that there's a small chance you can decap. Honestly, it was news to me too."

Initially thought he was joking but it seems legit. Also, the game is rated M and in the reasons why it was stated there was one sequence which was a drinking competition that led to slurred, drunken dialogue.

Sounds fun.

What the ESRB Said

 

And of course for those inevitable nudity mods.

 

M rating won't stop 12 year olds from begging their parents to buy them the game.

Same thing happened with Bulletstorm, as far as I remember.

 

True, but how is this relevant? Why does that matter?