V The Elder Scrolls

[elmuerte]

afaik fast travel was always there, it's just that you need to have visited the location first before you can fast travel to it.

[Irishjohn]

It was definitely a big Oblivion thing, but was it in Morrowind?

Questioning innocently; I STILL have yet to play Morrowind. I need to play Morrowind. It's sitting right there on my hard drive, right now.

Currently playing Dark Souls in large part because I was attracted to the sense of exploration and the vibe. I know Skyrim will be very different of course but I'm looking forward to that element.

[Erkki]

Yeah, Mojang's Elder Scrolls games have all had some kind of fast travel.

[JonCole]

Morrowind didn't have the Oblivion/Fallout 3 kind of fast travel, it actually had four ways by conventional means and a couple with spells:

- There were land ferries on big bugs (Silt Striders, fwiw) that took you between cities

- You could also take boats between coastal cities

- There are gondolas between districts in the biggest city (vivec)

- You could use the Mages Guild to teleport between Guilds in cities

Spells:

- You could use Mark/Recall to mark a spot where you can always teleport back to. Great resource for setting up a home base and returning there at any time

- There were a couple spells where you could teleport to the nearest imperial/tribunal shine, forgot what they were called

As you can see, these made a little more sense than the fast travel in other games within a narrative context. In Oblivion/FO3, the game would simply assume you were traveling by foot with no interruption (as far as game time goes) while traveling from one place to another place you've been to before.

[elmuerte]

that sounds correct... but I do recall some more free form of fast traveling in Morrowind. Maybe I installed a mod.

[JonCole]

You could also equip the Boots of Blinding Speed and enchant something to permanently cast levitate on you... which basically means you can fly anywhere super fast.

[Orv]

- There were a couple spells where you could teleport to the nearest imperial/tribunal shine, forgot what they were called

Almsavi (sivi?) Intervention and Divine Intervention. Tribunal/Imperial respectively. Both readily available from any Trader and their respective temples. In fact, the quickest (albeit most expensive) way to get to Caius Cosades at the beginning of the game is to walk into Ariele's and buy a scroll of Almsivi Intervention and pop it. You're about 300 feet from his house then.

The higher the magnitude of a leviation spell the faster you move. There is a really nice levitation spell granted by the shrine in Vivec for a Potion of Rising Force, infinitely reusable.

Boots of Blinding Speed are always fun, but take a bit of enchanting work to make feasible.

There is, of course, the Offical Plugin for the Indexes, that teleported you from Stronghold to Stronghold. Useful, if a bit out of the way.

Mark and Recall are available from various Mages Guild spell sellers, naturally. You can also get both of them at once a short ways into the Telvanni quests. Which is, in fact, the best way to get them if you don't want to join Hlaalu or Redoran, being that the first three quest givers of Telvanni are nothing but fetch quests.

The Mages Guild seller with Recall is available the moment you join the Guild (for the nominal fee of Guild teleportation to get there) but Mark is unavailable until something like rank 3 or 4. I believe Wizard, which is 3, but don't quote me on it.

Edited October 15, 2011 by Orvidos

[toblix]

Jesus.

[Orv]

Jesus.

Yeaaaaaaaaaah.

[Sno]

Jon Cole forgot the propylon indices, which... Granted... you would have to play a fucking lot of Morrowind to figure that system of teleports out. (Oh, hey. Orvidos touched on it, never mind. It's worth noting that it was actually a part of the game prior to that official plug-in, but since it was so obscured and nobody knew it was there, they made it into a side quest to bring it to the attention of more players.)

Morrowind was actually the only mainline TES without an integrated "go-anywhere" fast-travel. (I don't remember how Battlespire or Redguard approached the issue, though.)

In Daggerfall and Arena, the fast-travel was really just necessary to be able to cope with the ridiculous scale of those games. For the others, I've always been of the opinion that the fast-travel kind of cheapens the carefully made worlds of Fallout 3 and Oblivion, and I prefer how Morrowind did it. Once you had a good understanding of the systems there, you could get anywhere really quickly, but you had to actually learn the layout of the gameworld to get to that point.

[JonCole]

I didn't include the Propylon Indexes because I honestly thought it'd be a pain in the ass to explain how to actually access them. For all intents and purposes, they might as well not exist to a majority of players.

[miffy495]

I like having fast travel available, actually. The way I played Fallout 3, I didn't use it until the end when I was mopping up leftover sidequests, but at that point you don't want to be spending all of your time walking everywhere. If it weren't for fast travel, I wouldn't have finished most of the sidequests. Even more so when playing the DLC. I've already explored and completed the entire world, I just want to get to the new area I purchased and play the new content, so it was nice to be able to fast travel right next to it and just get under way.

[elmuerte]

They should add random encounters to fast travel. Of course these encounters should depend on the route taken, and distance. So, you would drop out of fast travel some where are the location you were traveling to. They should give you the option to fast travel on roads (i.e. safe but takes longer) or as fast as possible (with increased chance of encounters).

[Sno]

They should add random encounters to fast travel. Of course these encounters should depend on the route taken, and distance. So, you would drop out of fast travel some where are the location you were traveling to. They should give you the option to fast travel on roads (i.e. safe but takes longer) or as fast as possible (with increased chance of encounters).

Daggerfall totally did all of that.

Also, If you slept outside instead of somewhere safe like an inn, you ran the risk of being attacked in your sleep.

Daggerfall was fucking crazy.

[elmuerte]

The worst thing about Daggerfall was reaching the main city (i.e. Daggerfall) at night.

[Sno]

There were a lot of things that Daggerfall did that i wish would be revisited in a new TES game, like having a calender that actually matters, with seasons and holidays and everything.

[Orv]

KuHeTfy7gSY

https://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/131766993270472705


12 EST on 11/11 for release, meaning 9PM PST on 11/10.

[Erkki]

KuHeTfy7gSY

https://twitter.com/#!/DCDeacon/status/131766993270472705

12 EST on 11/11 for release, meaning 9PM PST on 11/10.

And that's 5 AM GMT on 11th of November for people who don't memorize irrelevant TLA-s.

[stewmull]

just to let everyone know, the Giantbomb guys hosting a 12 hour Skyrim live stream the day before the game comes out 8am till 8pm pacific time il be watching parts of it for sure cos i dont think my pc is up for killing it's self over skyrim haha

[Erkki]

just to let everyone know, the Giantbomb guys hosting a 12 hour Skyrim live stream the day before the game comes out 8am till 8pm pacific time il be watching parts of it for sure cos i dont think my pc is up for killing it's self over skyrim haha

I might watch it too. With Christmas coming up, there'll be some Steam sales, and maybe Skyrim will be cheaper too, so I might wait for then before I get it.

[Ben X]

Won't watching someone else play it for 12 hours ruin a lot of it for you if you're planning on buying it yourself, Erkki? Or have I misunderstood what the GB guys will be doing?

[pabosher]

Won't watching someone else play it for 12 hours ruin a lot of it for you if you're planning on buying it yourself, Erkki? Or have I misunderstood what the GB guys will be doing?

I think the idea is that, since Skyrim is so open and free and shit, the GB guys will be doing a lot of non-essential stuff.

[Murdoc]

12 hours of Skyrim on Giant Bomb? Thats not good for me... I've gotten into the habit of not playing games this year, but just watching people(particularly GB) play games.

I am looking forward too Skyrim, but already have reservations, but now I know I can watch someone play it for 12 hours, I think this might be game over to me.

Not to side track the thread, but has anyone fell into the gaming rut? I have before but it's usually with one game, but never not playing any games. The only one I've stuck with this year was civ5 and it wasn't anything crazy. I've had ico/sotc and gears of war 2 just sitting here and I never feel like playing them.

[elmuerte]

I'm a bit in a rut right now. I have a bunch of games I'm playing, but none of the games really captures me. I maybe play it for an hour max. But it's probably because I'm waiting for a bunch of games to be release, amongst which: Skyrim.

I'm going to sink a lot of hours into that one.

And the media blackout for this game has been working so far. I know very little about the game. So 12 hours of GB playing this game is absolutely not on my list.

[Irishjohn]

Not to side track the thread, but has anyone fell into the gaming rut? I have before but it's usually with one game, but never not playing any games. The only one I've stuck with this year was civ5 and it wasn't anything crazy. I've had ico/sotc and gears of war 2 just sitting here and I never feel like playing them.

I've been in ruts before. I was in one for a while recently, and am quite happy to be playing Deus Ex HR, though I have fitted in two sessions about eight days apart.

New job, getting married, trying to read more fiction (i.e. non-work reading) and it gets hard in a hurry. I'm already starting to think my transition back to PC gaming might be complete; really not sure I need game consoles anymore at this point. There's no time to play the games, and there's plenty of good games on PC to take up time I do have.