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I've been using a wired 360 controller to play and the menus are very easily navigable. Marked upgrade over previous Elder Scrolls titles, if you ask me. That said, it's a shame that they don't translate well to kb&m.

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For anyone that wishes the graphics were a bit crisper, more PC'ish, there's a couple of files you can download here; http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=21 which have the desired effect. Just stick it in your Skyrim directory and away you go. The screenshot on that site makes it look more extreme than it is, and although sharpen filters are a bit artificial and far from ideal its really made the difference for me. My eyes don't feel like they are submerged in gunk. Worth a try at least.

I've been using a wired 360 controller to play and the menus are very easily navigable. Marked upgrade over previous Elder Scrolls titles, if you ask me. That said, it's a shame that they don't translate well to kb&m.
I actually don't really have a problem with the ui

Well it could have been better suited to a mouse & keyboard setup at the very least.

It's far from ideal and the fact you seemingly have to use the mouse to select some components (or reach over to the enter key) is very finicky for example. The inventory system works once you understand it but the menu system overall is just wrong for the PC. It takes you out of the game in my opinion, and you don't really get to enjoy any of the stuff you pick up because by christ you want out of the menu system asap (again, imo :D).

It's not a problem that kills the game or anything but you'd think they'd spend more time in the porting process. Imagine console users getting a PC interface to deal with in reverse. *says someone currently playing and enjoying the game*

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The whole "favourites" feature is really weird. I hate that I cant just set up weapon/spell sets and bind them, but instead, add them to a list, exit menu, enter different menu, then mess around for 5 minutes and hope that what I've done was actually bound.

And I keep having problems in stores where I try to click a category (and the word highlights) but I go slightly too far to the left and it exits the store entirely. Little thing, but frustrating the 10th time.

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I've also been playing with a 360 controller, after I had the same problems as some of you with the menus while using mouse and keyboard. It's not that they weren't navigable, they just felt way more optimised for a gamepad than PC controls. Turns out they are.

Going to try out that sharpening mod, see how I like it.

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I like the north euro accents going on for some of them(I'm guess those are nords?) but then their children all sound american... which I interpret as they are growing up in imperial run skyrim? But I dunno, seems more spotty then deliberate.

I just remember in morrowind they type of voices matched the races better.

And yeah I can see the menus would lend itself to a control better.

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Lalalala. I can't hear you.

As I live in Estonia, which by the ways is a part of EU, I can not purchase Skyrim, because Bethesda has geographically put us into the region where Russia belongs. All the rights for distribution for Bethesda games have been given to the hands of 1C.

Thus we won't have English retail versions in store as that's illegal now. What we will have, are 1C Russian copies that arrive probably 2-3 months later as they will be 100% localized to russian.

Fucking shit. [edit] That quote may be incorrect. Anyway, I'll wait for more info, maybe it's just delayed here.

[edit 2] Oh, from what I gather from various posts on Steam forums and what seems more likely than the above, is that 1C (a Russian company) has some time-limited exclusive distribution rights for the PC version in our region and the game will appear on Steam in a month. Hmm... if that's true, I might wait. Or I might get the PS3 version instead, which is already in stores here, I think. Or I might pirate the PC version, but I'm concerned if that could somehow fuck my steam account.

Edited by Erkki

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AeCjezECQAIGRZU.jpg

So I got the collectors edition after all. But I didn't pay 150 euros for it. Only 115 (excl shipping).

Damn that box is huge. Haven't messed with the plastic statue yet, but the artbook is quite great. It's not as awesome as Bioshock's book (the physical one) though. This book is mostly pictures with a bit of text, not a lot of dev cometary.

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So far I've run away from a dragon, picked some flowers, resolved a love triangle, and helped a blacksmith with his work.

I probably wont continue on this path right now, but it has made me very curious if a pacifistic character could work in the game.

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This new menu/inventory system requires some getting used to. The perks menu is very confusing.

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This new menu/inventory system requires some getting used to. The perks menu is very confusing.

I don't find the perks menu confusing but it is annoying to navigate, as trees that don't have right angles tend to be. Actually moving between perks can be a bit loose and the fact that it lets you go left or right while inside a tree to another tree was probably meant to be convenient but usually just results in mistakes.

Also, I tried that sharpening mod and didn't have great experiences. With FXAA on, it looked the same as the default game, with it off it looked like a jaggy mess.

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So far I've run away from a dragon, picked some flowers, resolved a love triangle, and helped a blacksmith with his work.

I probably wont continue on this path right now, but it has made me very curious if a pacifistic character could work in the game.

With all the crafting stuff in the game, you could probably just create a trader and have your companion do most of the fighting.

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Ah, a local store is saying that the PC game will be in stores on the 16th of November. Not too bad situation then.

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Who does the voice acting for the Jarl's wizard? Sounds like they left in developer placeholder voice.

Really enjoying myself, but I feel like my headphones aren't the optimal audio setup. Unless they've modified the audio to make it sound like i'm really wearing a helmet.

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Who does the voice acting for the Jarl's wizard? Sounds like they left in developer placeholder voice.

I was thinking the same thing, in fact in one of my original posts I thought he was from New Jersey, but after more conversations with him it's not quite that.

***

WEll that giant bomb video at least answers the question of "Is this supposed to happen when a giant hits"

I was out looking for a mammoth tusk and started to go back home because there is no way I am killing one of those at my level. Just then a dead one fell out of the sky and landed right in front of me... I guess he got too close to the nearby giants.

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I wonder why nobody's done dragons the way this game does. They're always portrayed as deep dark dungeon bosses, that you approach with purpose, or scripted set pieces as they attack a town. In Skyrim, you're subject to drive-by dragon attacks, and it feels like their most natural setting.

I had a great moment this morning when I was attacked by some giant tiger bear thing, and then all of a sudden DRAGON! My horse ran off only to return being chased by wolves, who ate a flame breath from the dragon which caused my horse to run off again.

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I had a good middle of the two styles you're talking about experience tonight. I was on my way to a dungeon with a companion and my fire atronach, when I saw a dragon fly overhead. As of yet it either hadn't spotted me or just didn't give a crap, so once I cleared the enemies out that were guarding the dungeon I then continued to climb the mountain, looking to get closer to the dragon. Once I was close enough it swooped in and started doing frost breath (first time I've seen that) and the three of us fought and killed it in glorious combat.

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Man, this game. I've only been available to squeeze in two hours so far (grading papers unfortunately), and I basically went on a long walk, headed to Solitude and talked to some bards. Yet to do anything for the main storyline yet. I might just get a wood cutter's axe first.

Nice cartoon, Subbes. It makes my inner nerd and outer teacher sad/happy.

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Good old Bethesda game. It already crashed twice. Last time I had to redo the whole first dragon fight.

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It makes me sad that I don't have the money to buy this game despite being really excited for it. Oh well, shall wait a while and pick it up some time, in the meanwhile I'm still reading your guys' stories and gaining much enjoyment from them without having to fully understand the context, that's one of the things that I loved most of Oblivion, I could tell stories to my friends of in-game events that had happened in an either comical or atmospherically cool way and they'd still understand everything that I was saying without having to have ever played the game.

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I'm pretty sure I've already put at least six hours into this and I've barely gone anywhere.

I don't really know how to feel about that.

On the other hand, I can (early shout power spoiler)

breathe fire

you guys.

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Good old Bethesda game. It already crashed twice. Last time I had to redo the whole first dragon fight.

It's completely swallowed my life and I've played nearly 18 hours without a single crash. :P

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Twenty hours in, no crashes, seen some quirky behavior out of some things, but nothing detrimental. Of course, twenty hours into a game that demands hundreds isn't exactly a comprehensive picture of how fucked up or not fucked up the game is. So at least right now, it seems solid. Runs smooth, loads fast, looks pretty.

I think there's been a fairly linear trend of Bethesda improving their QA from game to game. Going from the days of their games being "tortuously buggy", to Morrowind and Oblivion being mostly playable, and now to this.

Anyways, some random unformulated thoughts about the game so far -

I wish the frequency of the NPC random chatter was turned down a whooole bunch. It was annoying in Oblivion, and it can be even worse here. Walking down a street and having three or four NPC's try to start a conversation with you, all of them talking over eachother, is completely ridiculous. Spend enough time in a town and they all run through their dialogue options really quickly.

On the whole though, the towns are awesome. Bethesda makes kickass, believable RPG towns. I've probably spent most of my time so far just slowly exploring a few of the towns.

Dragons are pretty awesome. I had one circle over head for a few minutes, booming and yelling at me, before just moving on having never attacked. I thought that was pretty tense and cool, not knowing if it's actually going to engage you.

I am terrified by the perks system, there's just so much shit going on there, there's hundreds of perks to sort out before can figure out what your build should be. Very glad they don't force you to spend your perks on a level-up, you can keep them for later. (I believe i had heard that there are 250 perks? The theoretical level cap for the game would have you top out around 70-80 perks.)

I miss item degradation, but i'm probably alone in that.

The new and changed crafting mechanics are cool. I like the changes to alchemy, not sure how i feel about the changes to enchanting. Smithing is neat and there's a lot to it, but seems like it will be hard to level. It also more or less requires a significant investment of perks to be particularly useful. Cooking is super nifty, kind of an early-game stand-in for alchemy.

Pick-pocketing seems like a weird skill to add to the line-up when so many other skills that would still be applicable to this game have been dropped. Oblivion lock-picking, which was terrible, has been replaced with FO3 lock-picking, which was great. I like that the AI has a search routine now for stealth, they don't just instantly aggro on you. That is a huge improvement. Archery seems potent and actually useful for the first time ever.

I completely love the overhauled magic system, but the hard level limits on illusion spells have been making those spells pretty useless. Still, a pure mage build would probably be a hell of a lot of fun in this.

The melee feels fine to me, and maybe about the same as Oblivion, but perhaps a bit more... tactile is maybe the word? It's not as floaty, hits have more weight. It also probably seems poorer than it really is for having come out a few weeks after a game that significantly raised the expectations for this kind of bashy dudes-in-armor fantasy melee. The combat here isn't especially deep by itself, but throw in all the other mechanics, there's still a lot going on.

A lot of other things about the game will really only become evident with time, like how their revised leveled-enemies/loot scheme feels.

Anyways, just a bunch of random thoughts about a game i suspect i will be playing for a very, very long time.

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