The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim PS3

When I reminisce about previous Elder Scrolls games I think about the diverse spells along with the outstanding scenery; whether it is summoning a Dremora whilst being surrounded by stunning trees and ruins, or casting fire storms around dark crimson oblivion gates. In Skyrim there aren't any Oblivion gates but instead we get the inspired idea of dragons; that are a worthy addition to the Elder Scrolls universe.

Character customisation is much simpler this time around. There are 10 different races consisting of: Altmer, Bosmer, Dunmer, Argonian, Breton, Imperial, Khajiit, Orsimer, Redguard. Each race has different ratings for each skill, as well as 6 enhanced skills. For instance I chose an Argonian which started with Light Armor, Sneak, Pickpocket, Restoration and Alteration at 20, in addition to Lockpicking at 25. The skills menu is also straightforward in addition to this is the space background and stars which tie in with the mythological universe of Skyrim.

In Skyrim the main quest centres on the return of dragons; or Alduin to be more precise. Without giving too much away the quest consists of you learn new powers called ‘Shouts’ as well as using them to help defeat dragons. The worse part about the main quest was that it wasn't long enough; which was disappointing because I really feel it’s suppose to be a huge part of the game. New in Skyrim are Dragon Shouts which can become very handy when dealing with difficult enemies; or if you just want to have some fun by freezing, flaming as well as blowing enemies over.

There are many factions which help add to the extensive and longevity of the game. After completing all factions quests I can safely say that ‘The College of Winterhold’, ‘The Companions’, as well as the ‘Stormcloaks’ quests are the best. The College of Winterhold quests are useful for developing magic skills due to the amount of trainers in the college who can increase certain magic skills in turn for payment; also the rewards after completing all quests are great too. Without giving too much away the transformation taken during The Companions makes prowling around Skyrim at night fun. A lot of the Stormcloaks quests involving storming forts and killing Imperials which helped increasing my bow and arrow skills.

The game isn't without its flaws. The most notable one is the freezing and lagging, it gets worse as your save file gets larger; which is very worrying because the file gets large very quickly. I put 100+ hours into this game and it was verging on unplayable towards the end; although updates have been released they haven’t fully fixed the problem yet.
Combat in Skyrim is slightly improved from previous Elder Scrolls games, however it still isn't great and at times it feels like you’re randomly swinging a blade with no sense of skill. Even when you've mastered a skill it’s still a bit hack and slash. The redeeming feature is that every now and then you can dismember an enemy’s limb which causes streams of blood to splatter across the floor.

With Skyrim there is always something to do, whether it be clearing out a fort or slaying a dragon. I can go on this game and spend hours and still feel there is so much I have not accomplished, and it is that in short, is what makes this game so wonderful. Don’t get me wrong the lag problems are extremely frustrating, but if you can preserve past them you will see an extraordinary universe waiting to be explored.

I would give this game an 8/10

Skyrim is a fantastic game, the world, the story, the exploration. It's easy, very easy in fact to get immersed and rack up countless hours playing this game - sadly, those countless hours are the problem with the PS3 version. This version suffers from a bug whereby the larger your save file gets, the laggier the game gets. Simply put, the more you play, the more unplayable it becomes.

This bug is also present in the PS3 version of Fallout: New Vegas and apparently was never fixed either. So don't hold your breath for a fix to this problem. Get the 360 or PC version - if you have neither then just save your money, save yourself the grief.

As it currently stands 3 weeks after release and on the latest patch we have magical protection not working, dragons flying backwards, main missions incompletable and game crippling lag still present.

I paid £40 for this, I wish I'd waited a few months. I may have got a playable game for half the price.

I would steer well clear of this game until the bugs are fixed. If unsure check the bethesda site for a full list of game breaking bugs.

quite simply the best game i have ever played

Skyrim is finally here. This long awaited fantasy RPG is probably one of the most anticipated games of the year for some, it certainly was for me given that I can pin Oblivion, the last game in the series, down as the sole reason that I ended up owning an Xbox 360.

Elder Scrolls has always been a series close to my heart, mainly due to my fondness of all things fantasy. You can keep your M16 with laser sight and your rocket launchers, all I need is a large sword and a fireball spell to take on my enemies. Also who wants to play in a modern day setting when you can wander, chain-free, along some of the most beautiful and fantastical landscapes you have ever seen. War? Who needs it because I have Skyrim.

And what a game Skyrim is, it’s huge, everything about it, from the sprawling missions to the large scale battles, the enemies and the massive, utterly impressive landscapes. Lots of love and time has gone into this game and it doesn’t half show, even from the very beginning when you are first introduced to perhaps one of the most impressive aspects of all – the dragons.

Given that this review is going for the spoiler free approach I won’t go into the above too much, other than to say that at this point you will also be introduced to your character and the creation that goes along with him. There are numerous races to choose from, each with their own background and place of birth, you can of course also change the features of your character thanks to a pretty comprehensive creation system, allowing you to change their sex, looks, hair and eye colour and anything else you don’t like about them. Finally you are also asked to name your character and this, as they say, is when the adventure begins.

Before moving on, it’s worth mentioning that the beginning of the game also gives you the initial impression that all is not right in Skyrim. There is a rebellion going on between the Imperials and the Stormcloaks; the latter being those responsible for killing the King and hence causing the civil unrest that Skyrim finds itself in the middle of. Adding to these worries is that the end of the world has been foretold, although your adventures will soon lead you to finding out more about this.

Once the pleasantries are out of the way the world really does become your oyster. Of course, you do have a main path to follow in order to fulfil the destiny of your character, however there are so many distractions in the World of Skyrim that you would be forgiven for putting your destiny to one side for a while.

While it’s possible to complete the main mission without discovering the land to its full potential, it’s nice to get some experience under your belt. Especially, when exploring a land such as Skyrim which will provide you with not only countless hours of entertainment, but also some of the best moments in videogame history. A lot of these moments come from random encounters; such as fighting monsters you come across on your travels or agreeing to a mission from a stranger you have just met. Of course, all of this leads to experience, which in turn makes your character not only more knowledgeable but also a lot stronger.

The gaining of experience is probably one of Skyrim’s strongest assets. While it is true that gaining experience is generally achieved by adventuring and killing the enemy, there is so much more to it than that. As you will soon discover, just talking to NPC’s can improve certain stats while, reading, bargaining and persuading will also help you to grow stronger mentally. There is also the ability to improve your skills by using Alchemy Labs (used for creating potions), Blacksmith Forges (used for weapon improvement), Cooking Pots, Arcane Enchanters (used for weapon enchanting), Workbenches (used to improve armour) and more, all of which also provides a welcoming way to improve your character using a hands-on approach. The main secret to improving any stat is just to use that skill multiple times, therefore the skills you use the most will shape how your character turns out to be.

Once you have gained enough experience you will then level up, the first step here is to choose whether to increase your characters Magicka; which is used for casting spells, Health or Stamina. Once this choice has been made you must then decide which of the main skills you would like to spend your perk point on. Here you are presented with what can only be described as a sprawling menu of options for each of your skills, with each one branching out in different directions and allowing you the choice of deciding which way your characters skills will evolve. You can also save perk points, allowing you to spend them at a later time.

As mentioned, one of the easiest ways to gain experience is to talk to people and you will get plenty of chances to do that due to the vast areas and numerous towns and cities spread throughout the map. Finding cities is easy, given that you can fast travel between them (once located) and even if you haven’t located the main cities, you can even rent a carriage between them, which is ideal as this gives you a closer starting point to any missions you may have on the outskirts. You can, of course, travel anywhere on the map on foot or you can buy a horse. This is a great way to discover the numerous caves and ruins, which will no doubt lead you off on a different adventure from the one you were planning.

It’s no secret that you character is Dragonborn, so going on various adventures becomes essential given that as part of the main quest you will want to find and learn new words for the very important Shout ability. Shouts are essentially as they sound; your character will come across ancient words carved in Dragon tongue which they can instantly learn, this word will then give you new powers that can be used in addition to your magic. Some Shouts will be taught while others require that you find the word, kill a dragon and absorb its soul in order to activate it. Shouts range widely in nature from the very first known as Unrelenting Force, which sees you using your voice to push anything in your immediate path aside to others such as Fire Breath which essentially sees you breathing fire like a dragon. After you complete the main campaign Shouts become very powerful, although by then you have just about mastered the art.

As well as your Shouts, Magic also plays an important part of the game. There are many schools of magic available and although you are free to use all of them, the very nature of the game will see you use some more than others. Magic is split into four categories, Destruction; which houses combat-like spells such as Flames and Lightning Bolt, Restoration; which houses your healing spells, Alteration; which provides defensive spells and finally Illusion; which provides spells such as Clairvoyance as well as spells to distract and cause fear.

In addition to Shouts and Magic you also gain active effects, which come from enchanted items and from the ritual stones which are found spread throughout the land. Ritual Stones are basically a one-time blessing based on class such as Warrior, Thief or Mage. Once you activate the stone it will then allow you the ability to learn spells, combat or stealth moves faster. Enchanted items explain themselves obviously and can be found throughout the land. There are various effects which come from enchanted items such as increased magicka, stamina and more.

On top of the above, you also have enchanted weapons. These, of course, are the games lifeblood; given that these weapons will allow you to cut down the trolls, bandits, dragons and any other enemies which come your way. Enchanted weapons only have limited charge so you have to use them wisely, either that or make sure you have plenty of souls gems with you to recharge them on the go. Standard weapons can still be pretty powerful, so as long as you have the correct skills and some decent armour, you may still find yourself strong enough to get through most encounters.

Combat is a major part of Skyrim and there is no getting away from it. One of the greatest strengths of Skyrim is that no encounter is the same; therefore a tactic which worked in your previous fight may not be enough in the next. The thing is, you will lose health and a lot of it. A good tactic is to have a healing spell in one hand and a sword in the other, although sometimes even this is not enough, especially when you are outnumbered. Thanks to the sheer variety of skills you possess there is always a way to win a fight, its just a case of finding the correct combination.

Skyrim is of course a massive game so it would be impossible to cover every single aspect, it would be criminal however, not to go into detail about just how wonderful this game looks. Straight from the off you will notice the vast landscapes and snowy mountains, although it’s not until you start exploring that you realise just how much detail there is in this game. Be it the highly detailed cities with their cobbled stone pavements and aged buildings or the moment where you climb to the throat of the world and the snow is coming down so thick and fast that you can’t see an inch in front of you. There is only one word to describe the presentation and dynamic weather system; stunning!

Skyrim does have a few teething issues as you would expect, sometimes NPC’s won’t acknowledge you, for example: I had a mission where I had to speak to someone but he wouldn’t give me the time of day and then just as I was leaving his comrade was speaking to me as if the person I was just trying to talk to had accepted my offer. Another issue is that sometimes NPCs don’t react to a situation, for example: I had just completed the main campaign and went to a certain city to see someone very important, expecting high praise, however he failed to even acknowledge what I had just done. In addition to this there are also occasional screen tearing issues and the odd bit of invisible scenery. It has to be said though that in a world as massive as Skyrim, issues such as these are probably to be expected. In general NPCs are fantastic, reacting when you draw a weapon, asking you to put them away or just mentioning in passing that they have heard of your accomplishments. Every detail has been thought of and then… perfected. So a few minor flaws certainly don’t take away from this.

Some say that single player games have had their day, making way for the ability to jump online and take it to your friends. Thankfully, Skyrim has not forgotten its roots, offering a single player adventure which is just as epic in scale as it is in nature. The lone adventurer can rest easy, because there is no better way to spend time on your own than to spend it with Skyrim.

This is not only one of the finest games of the year, it’s one of the finest games ever made.

After watching the many videos of this game, it looks such an improvement over Elder Scrolls which I still deem the best game on PS3 so far, although it looks dated.
I just hope that it plays as good as it looks, and they support the game with plenty of DLC, as New Vegas DLC was very poor.
Previous comments......WOW copy and paste is amazing!

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/podcasts/archive/2011/02/03/toddhowardse.aspx

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.”

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.”

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.

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.

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.

There has only been a very small amount of information released about the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series, but it seems like we will be very pleased with the result. Here is what we know so far.

The Terrain of Skyrim

Skyrim will feature many different terrain types, so those who were afraid of being constantly bombarded by snow with absolutely no respite from the dreary white can rest easy. There will be forests and mountains and many other beautiful scenes for the eye to see.

The Cities

Scattered across a rugged landscape are 5 massive cities. I would imagine that these cities would be the size of the Imperial city or Skingrad in Oblivion. This is not including the minor cities that are sure to be littered across the land. Hopefully having less "huge" cities will give Skyrim a more natural feel than Oblivion, which did seem kind of cramped.

Within these cities you will be able to talk to the townspeople. While this isn't groundbreaking news in itself, the way you have talked to them has changed. No longer will you be plagued with the dreaded zoom in effect when talking to an NPC. They will continue their task and talk to you at the same time, much like a person would in real life. The cities will also offer you the chance to indulge in the menial laborious tasks of the townsfolk. You can cut wood, cook, or even mine. What these actions will bring has not been released, though I'm sure there will be some sort of reward for it.

Combat
Most notably, combat has changed. Combat will be more interactive and visceral than Oblivion and Morrowind were. You won't see the same death scene over and over again as you slaughter your enemies. Now every enemy has a specific death for each of the weapons in the game. This reminds me of Assassin's Creed in a way, but it would need to be more vast than in Assassin's Creed, since there will be more enemy types. You will also be able to dual wield. Whether you decide to equip a weapon in both hands, two spells, or a weapon and a shield it's up to you. The way the developers were talking about it, it seems like you might even be able to wield two shields.

Magic

Magic has changed. In Oblivion you only needed to push a button and your spell was cast. In Skyrim you will need a free hand, or two free hands, to cast certain spells. In addition to magic, there are dragon shouts. This is the special language of the dragons that you can learn words from. These words are very powerful and can have devastating effects on your surroundings. You can learn 60 of these words to complete over20 complete dragon shouts. You learn the words by defeating the many dragons in the game, and absorbing their souls.

Skills

Bethesda has reduced the number of skills to 18 from 21. In doing this they have actually added a blacksmithing skill and brought enchanting back. You won't have mysticism anymore though. As to the other skills that are left out, we will have to wait and see.

Children

The game will also feature children. If you have been a fan of previous Elder Scrolls games you might have noticed there never were any children, so the inclusion of kids might come as a major shocker. But it's a nice one.