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How does that actually work? Pretty much all of the quest I played required me to traverse a dungeon or equivalent filled with enemies that are hard to ignore. Plus, some of the baddies have items that you need to be able to continue (though I suppose, you could pickpocket them or something).

Anyway, that doesn't sound a very enjoyable way to play Skyrim to me, but I'm interested to hear how it turns out.

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Dunno if you're playing the PC version, but I remember reading about this mod for pacifist characters. Essentially, it's a bunch of minor tweaks that make more quests completable without killing anyone, usually by making NPCs pickpocket-able or turning some doors that required a key lock-pickable, etc.

I haven't tried it myself, but I imagine it would do it's job well.

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Most quests probably have boss monsters that you have to kill in order to finish them. :(

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It's definitely going to be a challenge, but that's why it's fascinating to me.

This thought initially struck me once I got out of the tutorial dungeon when I first started the game. I ended up wandering off and picking flowers for a while. Then I came to the first town and went around talking through a small love triangle. This got me wondering if I could actually enjoy myself in the game doing just this.

For the most part, Skyrim seems like a fully realized world, and Todd Howard was bragging at previews about the towns having their own economy. But can you actually live as a peaceful, regular citizen of Skyrim?

I'm gonna try to stick as close to the original game as possible, without mod tweaks.

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Fighting is a big part of the game... in dungeons at least, and in various storylines. In the wild you get attacked pretty regularly. However, the simulations running in towns are such that you could roleplay just living there and going about your business. Alternatively, hire mercenaries to deal with the fighting.

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Maybe work on your coujouring? I'm not sure of the ethics of hiring mercenaries and summoning demons to hack your enemies to pieces thouhg. Sounds like a fantasy mob boss:P

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Considering the beta patch adds a german suplex finishing move, I think peace is overrated and you should go suplex everything ever.

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I hope it includes an option to turn it off

I've figured it out El Muerte. You're anti-fun.

Presumably also anti-bone-murder.

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I've figured it out El Muerte. You're anti-fun.

Presumably also anti-bone-murder.

No, I just think the slow motion kill cam gets quite annoying after a while. It's fine for when it's the finishing move in a large battle. But when I'm just passing through some foes it's annoying.

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I really, really find the executions to be an annoyance, but these do at least look miles better than the ones already in the game.

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Has anyone else tried the horse combat yet? It's not very good, is it? I tried to use my bow and arrow on horseback and discovered I could only aim in a tiny cone in front of my horse. So if an enemy manages to get behind you, you're screwed. (Especially considering how awkward it is to control a horse in Skyrim)

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It's not really meant for mounted archery yet. That'll be a large part of Dawnguard, for now it's just basically watered down Mount and Blade horse melee combat. Let me point out that if you're playing unmodded Skyrim on the PC by this point you're doing it wrong.

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Has anyone been playing Dawnguard? I didn't look at it at all really since I've only ever put a couple hours into Skyrim (I tried it out, but like all Bethesda games I put it back on the shelf to wait for good mods and haven't gone back yet). How big is it, I've heard people say it has more content than SI did in Oblivion, which would make sense since it costs 20$.

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I haven't played it myself, twenty bucks is a little more than i want to spend on an add-on at the momment, but i really would like to check it out.

If it's bigger than Shivering Isles, that's quite an enormous piece of content.

Shivering Isles was itself larger than most full-priced games.

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Dawnguard has not been able to enthuse me yet. That may be because it doesn't appreciably tie into big Elder Scrolls lore moments (Shivering Isles obviously did this right).

Looking back at my 130 hours of Skyrim, a few things come to mind:

- The best fun I had was in the many, many hours I roamed the country without using the map. I had deliberately chosen not to even look at the map, ever, so that I had to use visual orientation and create a map in my own mind to get around. This made the world feel so mysterious and huge. In latter hours I fell into the trap of Wanting To Do Everything, so I started using the map to teleport around to mop up quests. Much less fun. It's rewarding to restrain yourself.

- There were no stand-out moments. I can't recall any one moment that defined the game for me. There were plenty of cool things; Daedric princes, questlines, dragon fights, running o'er the heath, but it all blurs together in one giant, vague 'Skyrim' memory. Because of this, the 130 hours haven't left a strong impression, but I recall being very entertained and excited throughout.

- The level skills were a definite improvement over the weird and gamey system of yore. Having said that, I had expected it to branch out into much crazier stuff. Much, much crazier, so that you could choose to become super specialized in interesting ways.

- The shouts were very cool, and I loved getting them, but in practice I only ever used a set of three: sprinting, fireball and the weakness shout. All the others, meh. Either they didn't seem viable or I was never adequately explained what they were good for.

- Perhaps the typical Elder Scrolls game has become a bit predictable. The whole main quest - guild quests - Daedra statues structure has become too easy to see through. The most fascinating moments in Skyrim were when I found things I didn't know anything about. The weird dragon priest masks, or the glove with rings under the mage guild. Does TES need a thorough restructuring?

- I think there may have been more mileage to the fascist elven dictatorship than Skyrim used. At the end of the civil war they barely make a story impact, whereas they were so super important and interesting earlier on. It almost feels like Skyrim took place during a weird interbellum where nothing of note happened. Sure yeah, the civil war in Skyrim itself, but on the larger scale...

Aww, this sounds all sour, whereas I did really enjoy myself very much for countless hours! Whatever its flaws, Skyrim offers a wonderful sense of exploration and meandering.

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- The best fun I had was in the many, many hours I roamed the country without using the map. I had deliberately chosen not to even look at the map, ever, so that I had to use visual orientation and create a map in my own mind to get around. This made the world feel so mysterious and huge. In latter hours I fell into the trap of Wanting To Do Everything, so I started using the map to teleport around to mop up quests. Much less fun. It's rewarding to restrain yourself.

I kind of secretly wish for a return to some of the things Morrowind did, the highly restricted fast travel and having to carefully follow road directions given to you by NPC's, all that good stuff. Of course, I don't think that would probably sit well with the bigger audience Bethesda is playing to, these days. (Hey, but maybe it totally would? Skyrim is hardly a game that has been dumbed down, despite the cries of some fans.)

- There were no stand-out moments. I can't recall any one moment that defined the game for me. There were plenty of cool things; Daedric princes, questlines, dragon fights, running o'er the heath, but it all blurs together in one giant, vague 'Skyrim' memory. Because of this, the 130 hours haven't left a strong impression, but I recall being very entertained and excited throughout.

I feel like this is probably a pretty accurate assessment. Skyrim probably didn't achieve the same heights that the best content in Oblivion did, but doesn't fumble other things as badly either, it's a much more consistent game. (Which is not something that should be dismissed, it's quite incredible that such a wide breadth of content is all pretty good.)

I will say though, remembering back on the game, a couple things do really stand out to me. First the incredible vistas of The Reach, and then the incredibly immense dwarven cavern, Blackreach. Oblivion was knocked for having boring locations, and Bethesda definitely made good on that.

- The level skills were a definite improvement over the weird and gamey system of yore. Having said that, I had expected it to branch out into much crazier stuff. Much, much crazier, so that you could choose to become super specialized in interesting ways.

The old character build system TES had kind of been running with since Daggerfall was always really obviously flawed and broken, and i think the changes introduced in Skyrim were ultimately very positive ones. Completely dumping classes, getting rid of the old attribute system that forced you to min-max to get anything out of it, and the phenomenally elaborate perks system that came in to fill out the details, all mostly positive changes. (I kind of wish there was a way to respec the perk trees, to be honest. I often went hours and hours without spending my skill points on anything because i was afraid to commit to a build i might end up not wanting to stick with.)

- The shouts were very cool, and I loved getting them, but in practice I only ever used a set of three: sprinting, fireball and the weakness shout. All the others, meh. Either they didn't seem viable or I was never adequately explained what they were good for.

It's been so long since i played, i can't remember which shouts i ran with. I don't think shouts ultimately had much of an impact on how i played.

- Perhaps the typical Elder Scrolls game has become a bit predictable. The whole main quest - guild quests - Daedra statues structure has become too easy to see through. The most fascinating moments in Skyrim were when I found things I didn't know anything about. The weird dragon priest masks, or the glove with rings under the mage guild. Does TES need a thorough restructuring?

Personally, i'd be completely giddy to see Bethesda go all in on another Daggerfall-style TES game, but that is probably going to never happen.

- I think there may have been more mileage to the fascist elven dictatorship than Skyrim used. At the end of the civil war they barely make a story impact, whereas they were so super important and interesting earlier on. It almost feels like Skyrim took place during a weird interbellum where nothing of note happened. Sure yeah, the civil war in Skyrim itself, but on the larger scale...

It felt to me like Skyrim was meant to be kind of a soft reboot for the series, moving the fiction forward a couple hundred years and re-establishing the major players, like they're setting the table for later games.

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I completely agree with Skyrim having few stand-out memories and being just 'pretty good' for 130 hours (around how much I've played). It can kind of make you regret having played so much of what isn't A+ material. Then again, going back and wandering through snowy mountain passes and wonderfully rendered forests and glens makes me realize what an accomplishment the game was just in world building alone. And blackreach still stands out as one of the most impressively defined - as far as depth - areas in an open world game.

In any case, I bought Dawnguard and plan to play it over the weekend. I did some preliminary stuff last night: got rid of my werewolfism in case I want to go vamp, cleared out most of my misc quests. I'm ready to embark on this new adventure! And it does seem like there's some elder scrolls lore going on here as one of the first characters you meet is carrying one.

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I think that's actually a strong point of Skyrim, that you're able to play and enjoy a game for 100+ hours even though nothing really stands out. The problem with stuff really standing out is that other parts of the game with be mediocre more quickly. I have the feeling a lot of people had completely different experiences while playing skyrim than I had. Even though you played the same thing for 100+ hours you experienced it quite differently. That's a huge :tup: in my book.

I haven't picked up Dawnguard yet, some backlog needs finishing. But given the fact that it's tacked on to the main world which I've beaten to death does give me the fear that it will be a more directed experience. Then again, the very linear Fallout 3 DLC.

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So far Dawnguard seems to be a set of quests all existing in the main world. There's a ton of new locations but it's not like many of the Fallout 3 DLCs which had you go through some kind of mcguffin to get to the DLC staging areas. Almost every location so far has been within the main Skyrim world. I have no clue if they added them to the map during the install, or they were always there in some kind of standby functionality (like a random mob cave turns into a quest related cave). Either way it all blends very seamlessly, maybe too seamlessly haha. There are new skill trees and more random vampire attacks in towns so it does augment the game in other ways. Mostly it's just a nice reason to come back to Skyrim and flesh out my character a bit more.

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So it's more Knights of the Nine, less Shivering Isles.

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