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[bigboss370]

does the sliding enemies bother anyone else? thats the only thing bothering me, and its bothering me alot

 

[MYE]

I had to mute that video

the fuck is wrong with that crowd lol

 

[Loomer]

As for resolution and scaling, you should go back and play Oblivion and Fallout 3. The UI does not scale based on your resolution, You still see the same amount of items in the list. Bethesda doesn't even bother reducing the text size in their PC versions.

I can't really blame them for that though, because it makes the UI still readable even if you're doing downsampling.

 

[sdornan]

Oh man, even more excited after watching that video. I couldn't help but feel sorry for Todd Howard though having to show off this incredibly detailed, nuanced game that he and his team have surely spent many late nights slaving over to a bunch of 12 year-olds yelling at him to "KILL!" everything.

 

[SamuraiX-]

Oh man, even more excited after watching that video. I couldn't help but feel sorry for Todd Howard though having to show off this incredibly detailed, nuanced game that he and his team have surely spent many late nights slaving over to a bunch of 12 year-olds yelling at him to "KILL!" everything.

Those guys were rather rambunctious, sure, but I have no idea how anyone would object to the majority of the crowd oohing and applauding at every little detail being demonstrated.

As it has been said, most game developers would probably kill for an audience like that. See Microsoft's E3 2011 Press Conference.

 

[ampere]

Damn, I'm just checking out little bits of it since I want things to be fresh, but it's looking so good.

 

[Wallach]

If they're using quick loot without even looking at the loot, they still wouldn't see the item names.

As for icon size, it's true that smaller icons are harder to distinguish. That's why the artists have to find a good compromise that allows for distinct and accurate representations of items without being overly large. If an icon looks like the item it represents, it's intuitive.

Another thing to consider is the length of RPGs. Even if an icon's appearance is not immediately intuitive, you will inevitably learn to recognize it simply because you see it so much over the course of 50+ hours. That's how it has always worked in games with tons of loot but not completely unique icons. In the short-term, a text-based inventory may be more intuitive if you don't look at items as you collect them but in the long-term, an icon-based inventory is faster and more efficient because you already know what all the icons represent.

There's no real reason to bother compromise, when the best solution is simply to use the name of the item. It's precisely why people almost never use the icon-based grid view of things like Steam once they start getting larger collections; it's simply faster to organize via a list view and separate things contextually, which is exactly what they do here in Skyrim. Using purely visual information like that is not a good way to present a large collection of information to a user because it lacks intuitive organization without text. You can do both, but the icons really only take up space and provide little benefit once the text is there.

Ultimately I think you're just overestimating the amount of work implied via scroll action versus moving the mouse cursor. They are very similar in the context of UI movement. In some cases mouse cursor work is significantly worse for the same task.

 

[MYE]

I miss crowds like this..... I wish more game shows were open to public. I miss being so hyped by crowds of fans

"TEABAG HIM, TEABAG HIM"

*everybody "Whooo HAHAHAHAhaha Whooo YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH woooo"

"TEABAG HIM"

"rape him"

"YEAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH woooo"



Yes, amazing crowd

 

[Xamdou]

X360 Version is $54.54 at Amazon right now and free shipping!

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004HYK956/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[sdornan]

Here's the same video with a guy doing a decent analysis, if the crowd annoys you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GS06jv9J-Q

 

[Jerykk]

There's no real reason to bother compromise, when the best solution is simply to use the name of the item. It's precisely why people almost never use the icon-based grid view of things like Steam once they start getting larger collections; it's simply faster to organize via a list view and separate things contextually, which is exactly what they do here in Skyrim. Using purely visual information like that is not a good way to present a large collection of information to a user because it lacks intuitive organization without text. You can do both, but the icons really only take up space and provide little benefit once the text is there.

Ultimately I think you're just overestimating the amount of work implied via scroll action versus moving the mouse cursor. They are very similar in the context of UI movement. In some cases mouse cursor work is significantly worse for the same task.

People don't use the icon view in Steam because it doesn't show them any details about the game. With the text list, you immediately see how many hours you've put into the game, how many achievements the game has, how many friends have played the game and any recent news pertaining to the game.

Your argument against icons could just as easily be used against text. Once you know what an icon represents, seeing its text becomes largely redundant. When I see an icon representing a large health potion, I don't need to see text saying "Large Health Potion." That's just a waste of horizontal space. Text lists also waste either vertical or horizontal space, whereas icon-based grids make full use of both.

I'm not estimating anything either. The more items you have, the longer you have to scroll in a text-based inventory system. With an icon-based inventory, you can drastically reduce the amount of scrolling required, letting you click on your desired item far more quickly. This is a fact. I've been playing CRPGs for years and have extensive experience with both icon-based grid inventories and text-based list inventories. Based on experience, I can definitively say that the icon-based inventory is faster and more efficient in the long-term.

 

[Omikron]

I'm not estimating anything either. The more items you have, the longer you have to scroll in a text-based inventory system. With an icon-based inventory, you can drastically reduce the amount of scrolling required, letting you click on your desired item far more quickly. This is a fact. I've been playing CRPGs for years and have extensive experience with both icon-based grid inventories and text-based list inventories. Based on experience, I can definitively say that the icon-based inventory is faster and more efficient in the long-term.

This.

List based inventories in general are a pain in the backside to scroll through to find the item you want. Sure you have a scroll wheel, but I would prefer a way to show in a grid and I am happy getting used to iconography used in a game so that overall the interface works more efficiently to my taste.

 

[MYE]

The menus look elegant and all but it is basically white text, shades of dark grey and white/grey lines. I can see it becoming boring pretty quickly.

That and it looks a bit too modern looking.
The constelation one is awesome though

 

[Wallach]

People don't use the icon view in Steam because it doesn't show them any details about the game. With the text list, you immediately see how many hours you've put into the game, how many achievements the game has, how many friends have played the game and any recent news pertaining to the game.

Your argument against icons could just as easily be used against text. Once you know what an icon represents, seeing its text becomes largely redundant. When I see an icon representing a large health potion, I don't need to see text saying "Large Health Potion." That's just a waste of horizontal space. Text lists also waste either vertical or horizontal space, whereas icon-based grids make full use of both.

I'm not estimating anything either. The more items you have, the longer you have to scroll in a text-based inventory system. With an icon-based inventory, you can drastically reduce the amount of scrolling required, letting you click on your desired item far more quickly. This is a fact. I've been playing CRPGs for years and have extensive experience with both icon-based grid inventories and text-based list inventories. Based on experience, I can definitively say that the icon-based inventory is faster and more efficient in the long-term.

Well, they also don't use it because it's simply not a good way to organize a large collection of stuff unless a compromise needs to be made in terms of screen space. It's quite good for cramped areas where it isn't feasible to write out names of items, but in this case they've got plenty of room to work with. To waste that on icon art that doesn't provide as much useful information to the user would be silly. The amount of extra work that might go into scrolling more is quite trivial compared to how much faster a user will be able to navigate through a list because it will always be more intuitively organized (assuming it is always sorted alphabetically anyway).

 

[lowhighkang_LHK]

does the sliding enemies bother anyone else? thats the only thing bothering me, and its bothering me alot

Honestly, the overall gameplay is bothering me a lot. It's falling into the same trappings as Oblivion. And I don't think atmosphere alone can propel like it did with Oblivion.

Combat seems braindead. Enemies seem braindead. Like I said before, approaching combat in this game is the equivalent of a dudebro FPS with swords. See it - kill it - no thinking required. (But I've ranted on this a few pages ago, so I'll stop).

But also really gets me is the interface. The whole pause while you switch spells or weapons really makes 'pre-planning' and the element of "thinking ahead" a mute point.

 

[Saige]

The amount of extra work that might go into scrolling more is quite trivial compared to how much faster a user will be able to navigate through a list because it will always be more intuitively organized (assuming it is always sorted alphabetically anyway).

I like being able to organize my own inventory, and an icon based one that lets you move items around to specific slots in the grid will always be better for me then an alphabetical list. This lets me save even more time since I’ll separate my items into useful areas. I’ll keep potions, items I’m not using but don’t want to sell, or quest items in groups away from where newly picked up items will appear. Then when I go to manage my inventory I’ll just have to look at the grouping of new items and deal with them instead of shifting through all my older items.

Now with Skyrim’s encumbrance based system there may not be a set number of grid slots, but with other games, like the original Witcher or Baldurs Gate, this helped a lot. It’s a pain in Oblivion or Fallout when I pick up an item I didn’t mean to but with their inventories I have a much harder time finding them since they are just inserted into a long list and not just to a location that I already know of.

 

[Wallach]

I like being able to organize my own inventory, and an icon based one that lets you move items around to specific slots in the grid will always be better for me then an alphabetical list. This lets me save even more time since I’ll separate my items into useful areas. I’ll keep potions, items I’m not using but don’t want to sell, or quest items in groups away from where newly picked up items will appear. Then when I go to manage my inventory I’ll just have to look at the grouping of new items and deal with them instead of shifting through all my older items.

Now with Skyrim’s encumbrance based system there may not be a set number of grid slots, but with other games, like the original Witcher or Baldurs Gate, this helped a lot. It’s a pain in Oblivion or Fallout when I pick up an item I didn’t mean to but with their inventories I have a much harder time finding them since they are just inserted into a long list and not just to a location that I already know of.

Well, in a system like this where items are already grouped via context, you can solve that easily enough just by adding new items to their own grouping. It doesn't have to be inserted into the entire list if it is done correctly.

 

[Jerykk]

Well, they also don't use it because it's simply not a good way to organize a large collection of stuff unless a compromise needs to be made in terms of screen space. It's quite good for cramped areas where it isn't feasible to write out names of items, but in this case they've got plenty of room to work with. To waste that on icon art that doesn't provide as much useful information to the user would be silly. The amount of extra work that might go into scrolling more is quite trivial compared to how much faster a user will be able to navigate through a list because it will always be more intuitively organized (assuming it is always sorted alphabetically anyway).

It doesn't matter how intuitive a text list is if you have to spend 5 seconds scrolling before you can even see the item you want to select. For example, if I 20 weapons in my inventory and I want to select a sword called Zerthimon's Dire Blade of Infernal Banishment +2, I'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of my weapon list. Conversely, if I had an icon-based grid inventory, I wouldn't need to spend any time scrolling because the icon would already be visible and instantly accessible.

Your whole argument relies on the assumption that icons are inherently unintuitive and that people have extremely short term memory (to the point where they can't remember icons they saw moments ago). Let me ask you this: why does your desktop use icons? Why does your browser's HUD use icons? Why do game HUDs use icons? Why do traffic signs use icons? Why do bathroom signs use icons? Why do hotbars use icons? Why does your task bar use icons? The answer to all these things is that icons use less space and are more easily identifiable once you know what they represent. Discovering what an icon represents is a one-time requirement, not something you have to do every time you look at said icon. It takes a person less time to look at and recognize an icon than it does to look at and read a line of text. This is because the appearance of an icon is more distinct than the appearance of text. Text has to be read to be understood, whereas icons convey information through shape, size and color.

Like Saige mentioned, the positioning that icon-based grid inventories allows is also very helpful. Once you know the general area where an icon should be, it takes you even less time to find it. For example, when I want to launch Firefox, the first thing I do is remember where I last saw the icon. Once my eyes move to that area, I look for an orange and blue icon. The whole process takes less than a second. Conversely, launching Firefox through my Start menu takes significantly longer because I have to look through a long list of text that conveys no information until I read it. And this is with the Programs menu expanding horizontally. If I had it scroll vertically like Skyrim does, it would take me even longer.

 

[Saige]

Well, in a system like this where items are already grouped via context, you can solve that easily enough just by adding new items to their own grouping. It doesn't have to be inserted into the entire list if it is done correctly.

My grouping lists in fallout, aside from maybe weapons, still got longer then I would like to have to scroll through every time I wanted to find a particular item. And that doesn’t really fix the issue of when I accidentally pick up an item. In that case I often times didn’t even see what I picked up, so I don’t know what group it was put into, causing me to look through all of them in order to find it.

These types of inventories just simply have some inherent disadvantages to a grid-icon based one. I agree that they look great in Skyrim, but it just seems like it could become a bit of a pain to use for hundreds of hours.

 

[Dr. Acid Avatar]

The music sent goosepimples up my arm in the beginning when Todd was explaining detail on the log and the ability to go explore up in the mountains.

Jeremy Soule still does it for me.

 

[Wallach]

It doesn't matter how intuitive a text list is if you have to spend 5 seconds scrolling before you can even see the item you want to select. For example, if I 20 weapons in my inventory and I want to select a sword called Zerthimon's Dire Blade of Infernal Banishment +2, I'll have to scroll all the way to the bottom of my weapon list. Conversely, if I had an icon-based grid inventory, I wouldn't need to spend any time scrolling because the icon would already be visible and instantly accessible.

Your whole argument relies on the assumption that icons are inherently unintuitive and that people have extremely short term memory (to the point where they can't remember icons they saw moments ago). Let me ask you this: why does your desktop use icons? Why does your browser's HUD use icons? Why do game HUDs use icons? Why do traffic signs use icons? Why do bathroom signs use icons? Why do hotbars use icons? Why does your task bar use icons? The answer to all these things is that icons use less space and are more easily identifiable once you know what they represent. Discovering what an icon represents is a one-time requirement, not something you have to do every time you look at said icon. It takes a person less time to look at and recognize an icon than it does to look at and read a line of text. This is because the appearance of an icon is more distinct than the appearance of text. Text has to be read to be understood, whereas icons convey information through shape, size and color.

These things all use icons because they are trying to represent relatively complex ideas in very small spaces - and often times are still accompanied by text to give them proper context. They're easily identifiable in isolation, but become harder to identify when they are grouped with other icons. The larger the grouping becomes, the less useful that kind of visual information becomes. It has nothing to do with peoples' memory; I have no doubt that people remember what an icon looks like after they've seen it, and especially so once they've seen it more than once. The problem is when you give someone a collection of 100+ items, a person is going to be able to pick something out of such a collection easier if those items are displayed in plain text.

Moreover, those kinds of icons work because they can vary in appearance and still convey a similar meaning; for example even if two different web browsers use a different "home" looking icon, no user is going to be confused about what the button does, because it's still a home and they can assume that in this context it will return them to their home page. In an inventory system, this concept fails when the user has to collect a bunch of crap that works off the same basic shape. An RPG like this is very much about collecting hundreds of baubles that will often share very similar appearances. I don't have that luxury of knowing that, say, a sword is the sword I'm looking for, because maybe there's twenty of them and they're all very swordy-looking as swords often are.

I don't necessarily think icons are unintuitive, I think they're simply a poor choice on their own when you are trying to represent a big collection of stuff. The larger that collection of stuff is, and as more things that share a visual resemblance to other stuff already in that collection pile up, the worse they become at helping the user discover them. In a game where your inventory is fairly confined and you can guarantee the user doesn't ever accumulate that kind of collection to begin with, icons can be very useful. I don't think this is one of those cases.

My grouping lists in fallout, aside from maybe weapons, still got longer then I would like to have to scroll through every time I wanted to find a particular item. And that doesn’t really fix the issue of when I accidentally pick up an item. In that case I often times didn’t even see what I picked up, so I don’t know what group it was put into, causing me to look through all of them in order to find it.

These types of inventories just simply have some inherent disadvantages to a grid-icon based one. I agree that they look great in Skyrim, but it just seems like it could become a bit of a pain to use for hundreds of hours.

What I meant is, if the highlighting of new items was a different color, or those items simply had the word "NEW" next to them because you recently picked them up they'd be easy to discover. Or if there was a tap hotkey that only showed recently picked items. It's not really an inherent disadvantage to this kind of inventory as it is just one that wasn't thought through so well.

 

[Jerykk]

These things all use icons because they are trying to represent relatively complex ideas in very small spaces - and often times are still accompanied by text to give them proper context. They're easily identifiable in isolation, but become harder to identify when they are grouped with other icons. The larger the grouping becomes, the less useful that kind of visual information becomes. It has nothing to do with peoples' memory; I have no doubt that people remember what an icon looks like after they've seen it, and especially so once they've seen it more than once. The problem is when you give someone a collection of 100+ items, a person is going to be able to pick something out of such a collection easier if those items are displayed in plain text.

Moreover, those kinds of icons work because they can vary in appearance and still convey a similar meaning; for example even if two different web browsers use a different "home" looking icon, no user is going to be confused about what the button does, because it's still a home and they can assume that in this context it will return them to their home page. In an inventory system, this concept fails when the user has to collect a bunch of crap that works off the same basic shape. An RPG like this is very much about collecting hundreds of baubles that will often share very similar appearances. I don't have that luxury of knowing that, say, a sword is the sword I'm looking for, because maybe there's twenty of them and they're all very swordy-looking as swords often are.

I don't necessarily think icons are unintuitive, I think they're simply a poor choice on their own when you are trying to represent a big collection of stuff. The larger that collection of stuff is, and as more things that share a visual resemblance to other stuff already in that collection pile up, the worse they become at helping the user discover them. In a game where your inventory is fairly confined and you can guarantee the user doesn't ever accumulate that kind of collection to begin with, icons can be very useful. I don't think this is one of those cases.

Distinguishing an icon out of many icons is easier than distinguishing one line of text out of many. As I mentioned before, you can identify an icon based on several different properties like color, size, shape and position. Text requires reading, which takes longer. And while it's true that you typically collect many items of the same basic type in an RPG, as long as the icons are unique, finding the icon you want is not an issue. For example, if I'm looking for an obsidian daikatana with green runes etched into it, that will be much easier to find from of page of 100 icons than from a list of 100 lines of text. Again, it's up to the artist to ensure that every item (and their corresponding icon) looks unique. Generic and unintuitive icons are an art issue, not a flaw inherent to icon-based inventory systems.

 

[Deleted member 10571]

I'm pretty sure you can easier distinguish a set of Icons of a few colored sword, dagger and axe presets with small numbers like "+1", "+2" on it and maybe a flame symbol etc than a list that goes

Blue magical sword of enhanced medium power
Blue magical dagger of enhanced medium power
Green magical sword of enhanced medium power
Blue magical sword of lesser medium power
Green magical sword of enhanced fire power
Blue magical axe of medium fire power
Green magical dagger of lesser great power
Green magical dagger of enhanced medium power
Green magical dagger of enhanced fire power
Blue magical dagger of enhanced fire power
Green magical dagger of bigger fire power
Blue non-magical dagger of lesser great power
Green magical axe of medium fire power
Blue non-magical sword of enhanced fire power
Green magical sword of lesser medium power
Blue magical dagger of bigger fire power

Details are what tooltips are for.

 

[Ledsen]

I don't know about you but I had little problem with Oblivion in the near-400 hours I've spent with it (without mods even). I'm not going to slam a game I enjoyed so much because someone managed to make it look better years later irrespective of system resources. It's fucking sad that so many PC gamers love shitting on things in hindsight.

I hated Oblivion and its identical copy/paste environments even on release, so no hindsight here.

does the sliding enemies bother anyone else? thats the only thing bothering me, and its bothering me alot

My face went from to ;( when I saw that.

 

[Wallach]

I'm pretty sure you can easier distinguish a set of Icons of a few colored sword, dagger and axe presets with small numbers like "+1", "+2" on it and maybe a flame symbol etc than a list that goes

Blue magical sword of enhanced medium power
Blue magical dagger of enhanced medium power
Green magical sword of enhanced medium power
Blue magical sword of lesser medium power
Green magical sword of enhanced fire power
Blue magical axe of medium fire power
Green magical dagger of lesser great power
Green magical dagger of enhanced medium power
Green magical dagger of enhanced fire power
Blue magical dagger of enhanced fire power
Green magical dagger of bigger fire power
Blue non-magical dagger of lesser great power
Green magical axe of medium fire power
Blue non-magical sword of enhanced fire power
Green magical sword of lesser medium power
Blue magical dagger of bigger fire power

Details are what tooltips are for.

I'm sure if my sorting had no logic whatsoever and the items all had silly names, yes it might be quite difficult to locate something. I mean if all the axes in the game used the same icon, it would be pretty lame to try and pick one out of a group.

Icons can be different colors and shapes, just as text can be different colors and types (bold, italics, caps, font, etc). The details of each item should be taking up the same amount of space regardless of which method you use, since that space is reserved on the screen separately.

Icons are informative enough to handle more unique items. After all a black katana with green glowing runes is going to be hard to mistake for another sword. But even if you remember what that random mushroom looked like and not the name, finding it in a group of fungi icons is probably still going to require you to examine the tooltips or use an in-game reference to help you find what you're looking for, especially the first time you went looking for it in your inventory. Reverse that situation - I know what it's called but not what it looks like - and I'll still immediately know where to find it if things are simply listed in text. What about books, or scrolls? A text-based system is still pretty intuitive from the mundane to the unique; when you mix large quantities of these things together it's hard to beat the organization of an alphabetically sorted list with intelligent grouping.

 

[polyh3dron]

That video in a nutshell:

 

[Jerykk]

I'm sure if my sorting had no logic whatsoever and the items all had silly names, yes it might be quite difficult to locate something. I mean if all the axes in the game used the same icon, it would be pretty lame to try and pick one out of a group.

Icons can be different colors and shapes, just as text can be different colors and types (bold, italics, caps, font, etc). The details of each item should be taking up the same amount of space regardless of which method you use, since that space is reserved on the screen separately.

Icons are informative enough to handle more unique items. After all a black katana with green glowing runes is going to be hard to mistake for another sword. But even if you remember what that random mushroom looked like and not the name, finding it in a group of fungi icons is probably still going to require you to examine the tooltips or use an in-game reference to help you find what you're looking for, especially the first time you went looking for it in your inventory. Reverse that situation - I know what it's called but not what it looks like - and I'll still immediately know where to find it if things are simply listed in text. What about books, or scrolls? A text-based system is still pretty intuitive from the mundane to the unique; when you mix large quantities of these things together it's hard to beat the organization of an alphabetically sorted list with intelligent grouping.

I can't say that I've ever played an RPG where I had problems distinguishing ingredients like mushrooms. The icons tend to be even more distinct than those of weapons and armor.

It really comes down to this: Yes, text lists are usually sorted alphabetically and yes, they are usually split up into categories (though the same can apply to icon-based inventories). However, none of that helps you select the item you want when you have a lot of items in that category and the item you're looking for starts with a letter near the end of the alphabet. A text list is also pretty useless when you don't know what an item is called. Icon-based inventories can have alphabetical sorting as well or they can be sorted by type (iron swords, steel swords, silver swords, etc). There are many ways to organize both text-based and icon-based inventory systems but the fact remains that the human brain can more quickly recognize and identify an icon than a line of text. The fact also remains that icons take up less horizontal space than text and that you can line up a bunch of icons horizontally without making them any less distinct, whereas the same can't be done with text (resulting in long vertical lists with lots of scrolling).

 

[Wallach]

It really comes down to this: Yes, text lists are usually sorted alphabetically and yes, they are usually split up into categories (though the same can apply to icon-based inventories). However, none of that helps you select the item you want when you have a lot of items in that category and the item you're looking for starts with a letter near the end of the alphabet. A text list is also pretty useless when you don't know what an item is called. Icon-based inventories can have alphabetical sorting as well or they can be sorted by type (iron swords, steel swords, silver swords, etc). There are many ways to organize both text-based and icon-based inventory systems but the fact remains that the human brain can more quickly recognize and identify an icon than a line of text. The fact also remains that icons take up less horizontal space than text and that you can line up a bunch of icons horizontally without making them any less distinct, whereas the same can't be done with text (resulting in long vertical lists with lots of scrolling).

There's usually a means to skip to the end of a list, or wrap from the top of a list to the bottom. The farthest point a user should have to scroll to on a properly designed list is the middle.

I was never arguing that text takes up less horizontal space on the screen, my point was that putting more icons on the same screen space doesn't necessarily make it easier for me to find what I'm looking for, even if I already know what that item is. That's assuming that each and every icon is unique; in the case of a game like this with as many items as it will have, I don't really think that is feasible.

 

[Effect]

Hmm. I was just looking at the prices on Amazon.com and I noticed the Xbox 360 version was about $5 less then the PS3 and PC versions. Anyone know why this might be? I've noticed this in the past on other games as well that go for $60.

This has pretty much caused me to hold off on pre-ordering the game. Don't want to spend more then I need to if price is going to drop to something more reasonable and like all first person games I rather play with a keyboard and mouse when given the option and ability to run the game. Also this isn't something I want to download considering how large it will be. Over DSL it would simply take to long even with overnight and all day downloading while I'm gone.

 

[bengraven]

I have a feeling the majority of people there weren't TES fans, but FPS fans period and this was their first look at the series.

Either that, or a LOT of Something Awful goons.

 

[JoeBoy101]

I have a feeling the majority of people there weren't TES fans, but FPS fans period and this was their first look at the series.

Either that, or a LOT of Something Awful goons.

Concur. Can't imagine Quakecon has a ton of TES fans usually.

But who knows? People can surprise you at times. I like a vocal crowd, but these guys got embarrassing and their antics old after a few minutes in.

 

[Kikarian]

Here's the same video with a guy doing a decent analysis, if the crowd annoys you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GS06jv9J-Q

Thanks.

I was looking for a detailed analysis, because I have looked through the video numerous times. To find out more stuff about Skyrim, but I gave up 10 mins in. xD

 

[Hyphen]

Thanks.

I was looking for a detailed analysis, because I have looked through the video numerous times. To find out more stuff about Skyrim, but I gave up 10 mins in. xD

You might enjoy the game more the less you know of it beforehand.

 

[Like2Drive]

This game needs more icons.

 

[Leckan]

When the player does those special finishing moves, I wonder if it always will toggle to third-person mode or not. Would be a bit of a shame if so.

 

[bigboss370]

My face went from to ;( when I saw that.

i have a really bad feeling that it won't be fixed by the time the game is done, and it just really ruins the experience. the enemies should not be sliding like that, and they do it alot

is it possible for mods to fix something like that?

 

[Confidence Man]

Looks pretty average to be honest. Streamlined for the sake of preventing players from making bad choices, obtuse and inefficient where it should be streamlined; like menus, which seem to be based on "cool" gimmicks rather than functionality. The majority of screenspace in inventory taken up by a 3D view of the item, painfully slow navigation through skills just for the sake of aesthetics, doesn't look like you can zoom out all that far on the map either, and all relying on scrolling through lists which will get longer and longer the more you play. Unless the PC menus are completely redesigned this is going to be a major sore point, of course I'm sure sites like IGN will love it and it will get nothing but praise.

 

[fabricated backlash]

i have a really bad feeling that it won't be fixed by the time the game is done, and it just really ruins the experience. the enemies should not be sliding like that, and they do it alot

is it possible for mods to fix something like that?

It's a Bethesda game. How someone could expect a semi working game at release is beyond me. I give it 3 patches before the game is actually playable and/or enjoyable.

 

[SPEA]

It's a Bethesda game. How someone could expect a semi working game at release is beyond me. I give it 3 patches before the game is actually playable and/or enjoyable.

I may be really fucking weird, but, I honestly like that Bethesda games are kind of janky. Haha. I'm not really sure why, I think it gives them some charm. I'm strange I know.

 

[ii Stryker]

It's a Bethesda game. How someone could expect a semi working game at release is beyond me. I give it 3 patches before the game is actually playable and/or enjoyable.

For the most part (x360)Oblivion played fine for me at launch. Considering they only had final dev kits 6 months before launch there was only one game crashing bug I encountered in one of the side quests (Daedric Statue when you returned the dog statuette). Fallout 3 ran with out incident for me as well.

Given the scope of their games bugs are to be expected though.

Does anyone know if the dragon shouts are attainable outside of completing the main story quests? Can I play the other faction quest lines and still gain shouts?

 

[Seanspeed]

Looks pretty average to be honest. Streamlined for the sake of preventing players from making bad choices, obtuse and inefficient where it should be streamlined; like menus, which seem to be based on "cool" gimmicks rather than functionality. The majority of screenspace in inventory taken up by a 3D view of the item, painfully slow navigation through skills just for the sake of aesthetics, doesn't look like you can zoom out all that far on the map either, and all relying on scrolling through lists which will get longer and longer the more you play. Unless the PC menus are completely redesigned this is going to be a major sore point, of course I'm sure sites like IGN will love it and it will get nothing but praise.

Is it just me or does the menu system/interface not look obtuse and inefficient at all?

The 3D view of the item is pretty large, but they manage to have that luxury because of how nice and organized they've structured the categories on the left, so you dont need an entire screenful of menu to be able to look for something. And having things organized better also means LESS time scrolling down through menu screens, especially with the magic.

The skills being slow to nagivate through is fine with me. Its not that slow and its a process I like to generally take my time with. And for what its worth, as good as it looks, why would you be in any hurry anyways?

Overall, I'd say its a large improvement over Oblivion's menu system efficiency-wise, and its a mother-flippin mountain-sized improvement, aesthetically.

 

[johntown]

For the most part (x360)Oblivion played fine for me at launch. Considering they only had final dev kits 6 months before launch there was only one game crashing bug I encountered in one of the side quests (Daedric Statue when you returned the dog statuette). Fallout 3 ran with out incident for me as well.

Given the scope of their games bugs are to be expected though.

Does anyone know if the dragon shouts are attainable outside of completing the main story quests? Can I play the other faction quest lines and still gain shouts?

Oblivion on the PS3 played almost flawless for me except for the Vampire issue and an occasional freeze while loading an area.

Fallout 3 for the PS3 (which people said was really buggy) did not really give me any issues except for an occasional freeze after playing for marathon sessions and I was not able to talk to Scribe Rothchild during part of the main quest.......that bug was game breaking but there was a way around it.

Generally, I expect an occasional bug and a freeze or two in these games. It really does not bother me because IMO their games are so great they are well worth enduring a trivial freeze or bug here and there.

 

[Derrick01]

It's a Bethesda game. How someone could expect a semi working game at release is beyond me. I give it 3 patches before the game is actually playable and/or enjoyable.

Oblivion and Fallout 3 worked perfect for me on consoles, had maybe a couple crashes in the hundreds of hours I put into them.

For some reason they crash seemingly every other minute on PC though. So I expect a pretty smooth game if I were to buy it on 360, which sadly I'm not.

 

[MrBig]

Oblivion and Fallout 3 worked perfect for me on consoles, had maybe a couple crashes in the hundreds of hours I put into them.

For some reason they crash seemingly every other minute on PC though. So I expect a pretty smooth game if I were to buy it on 360, which sadly I'm not.

This is going to be first Bethesda game in which I buy it on PC first. Getting it on there because of mod support, but if there is too much wrong with it at first I'll just keep playing BF3 until I can play it well.

 

[Evolved1]

Oblivion on the PS3 played almost flawless for me except for the Vampire issue and an occasional freeze while loading an area.

Fallout 3 for the PS3 (which people said was really buggy) did not really give me any issues except for an occasional freeze after playing for marathon sessions and I was not able to talk to Scribe Rothchild during part of the main quest.......that bug was game breaking but there was a way around it.

Generally, I expect an occasional bug and a freeze or two in these games. It really does not bother me because IMO their games are so great they are well worth enduring a trivial freeze or bug here and there.

The pop-in on PS3 Fallout 3 was nearly game-ruining (for me, broke all sense of immersion)... I've never seen a comparison PS3/360 on that particular issue. But it's my biggest concern for the PS3 version of Skyrim. These 360 demos look like they have it sorted on that console, but we haven't seen the PS3 version.

I'm also a bit worried what we're seeing on the 360 might be a mix of smoke and mirrors. I'm still somewhat distrustful of Before-Retail-Bethesda.

 

[watership]

Daily motion copy is gone, so is the commentary youtube one. Anyone got another working link?

nevermind found one.
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xkeqvf_the-elder-scrolls-skyrim-quakecon_videogames

 

[AwRy108]

Oblivion on the PS3 played almost flawless for me except for the Vampire issue and an occasional freeze while loading an area.

Oblivion on the PS3--the version I, too, played--came out many months after the game's initial release on PC/360.

Fallout 3 for the PS3 (which people said was really buggy) did not really give me any issues except for an occasional freeze after playing for marathon sessions and I was not able to talk to Scribe Rothchild during part of the main quest.......that bug was game breaking but there was a way around it.

...and this is acceptable to you? Man, gamers have really lowered their standards.

Generally, I expect an occasional bug and a freeze or two in these games. It really does not bother me because IMO their games are so great they are well worth enduring a trivial freeze or bug here and there.

I loved Oblivion and Fallout 3 (didn't experience any of the bugs with either of them), but New Vegas was such a trainwreck at launch that I sold my copy after the first week. I blame Obsidian more than Bethesda, but, either way, it's still not excusable.

I'm so very excited for Skyrim; but I'm also so very skeptical that the console versions will truly run great and be bug-free at launch.

 

[Jerykk]

There's usually a means to skip to the end of a list, or wrap from the top of a list to the bottom. The farthest point a user should have to scroll to on a properly designed list is the middle.

I was never arguing that text takes up less horizontal space on the screen, my point was that putting more icons on the same screen space doesn't necessarily make it easier for me to find what I'm looking for, even if I already know what that item is. That's assuming that each and every icon is unique; in the case of a game like this with as many items as it will have, I don't really think that is feasible.

Which games let you skip to the end of a text inventory list? In the many that I've played, the only way to get to the end is to scroll.

And yeah, creating unique icons for every item in Skyrim would be tough but not impossible. Even if the icons weren't completely unique, there are ways to better distinguish them than what Bethesda did in Morrowind. For example, in Morrowind, all enchanted items had the same blue swirl background. However, they could have gone a step further and changed the color of the background based on the specific school of magic the enchantment belonged to. So, if I had 3 enchanted Steel Daggers but only one of them was enchanted with a freeze spell, that would make it easy to notice.

 

[Confidence Man]

Is it just me or does the menu system/interface not look obtuse and inefficient at all?

The 3D view of the item is pretty large, but they manage to have that luxury because of how nice and organized they've structured the categories on the left, so you dont need an entire screenful of menu to be able to look for something. And having things organized better also means LESS time scrolling down through menu screens, especially with the magic.

The skills being slow to nagivate through is fine with me. Its not that slow and its a process I like to generally take my time with. And for what its worth, as good as it looks, why would you be in any hurry anyways?

Overall, I'd say its a large improvement over Oblivion's menu system efficiency-wise, and its a mother-flippin mountain-sized improvement, aesthetically.

It's organized but only in the most rudimentary way possible - you still have to scroll through multiple lists to get to what you want. Maybe that's as good as it gets for consoles with their analog sticks (some kind of radial solution would probably be better), but I demand better for PC.

There's a difference between it not being inefficient and you not caring that it's inefficient.

 

[Einbroch]

Anyone know how the PS3 version will perform?