More Skyrim Details - Graphics, World, Dragons - News

by Nicholas Taylor , posted on 27 January 2011 / 5,006 Views

Todd Howard of Bethesda Softworks has detailed some more things for the upcoming The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim when speaking with the magazine Dutch Power Unlimited, which you can find below.

Graphics

Howard told them that they had very specific goals in mind for updating the series' graphics in Skyrim. “We primarily look at how we can improve facial expressions and animations, graphics-wise,” he said.

“We are working at pop-up issues, and we want to make sure that the graphics of the PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 are alike. All three will look just as good, aside from the higher resolution and the anti-aliasing of the PC of course.”

The inventory meny has also gotten some polish, with flash-based previews allowing you to rotate and examine every item in the game, from weapons and armour to accessories and ingredients. This feature will be used for puzzle-solving, occasionally. The series' famous collection of books and texts make a return, but this time as readable 3D models rather than the walls of text from the earlier games.

World, Story and Mechanics

The "low fantasy" world of Skyrim is said to be "approximately" the size of Oblivion's, and equipped with fast travel to previously visited locations, as well as containing 5 major cities and 130 dungeons, each featuring a greater variety of traps and puzzles.

Though there is no level cap, every dungeon will put a lock at the level you are when you first visit to prevent limitless easy grinding. Also, since perks are restricted, no one character will be able to obtain them all.

The main story will be around twenty hours of gameplay, while sidequests can provide hundreds of more hours. To prevent the feeling of guilt and distraction players may have felt from sidequesting before, the overall plot of the game will be less prominent than in Oblivion.

Also, dragons are not rare, and every dragon you take out will make your character more powerful by adding a piece of its soul to your own and unlocking further dragonborn abilities.

Miscellaneous

Todd Howard confirmed that the Xbox 360 version will not be supporting Kinect, and that the fan-favourite Dark Brotherhood will be making a return. Contrary to statements made in Game Informer, Howard denied the possibility of combining magical effects.

Pete Hines of Bethesda also confirmed that future Bethesda titles will be taking advantage of the advances in Skyrim's Creaton engine.

The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is set to be released on November 11th, 2011 for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

8 Comments

Rath (on 28 January 2011)

@Specops. I'm fairly sure it means that dungeons will be scaled to the level you were when you first entered them.

specialops787 (on 27 January 2011)

"every dungeon will put a lock at the level you are when you first visit to prevent limitless easy grinding"

i dont understand what this means. the dungeon will lock as soon as you gain a level? what is locking?

and if enemies scale (50 sword swings to kill a villager) i will not be getting this game.

*ZoMb!e* (on 27 January 2011)

Didn't we read these in another post?

reidlosdog (on 27 January 2011)

Hey, just to let you all know, GameInformer did not say there would be spell combining, but from Howards own words, your able to wield to spells at once.

Now, they did say how epically awesome combining spells would be, but that's it.

And they also said how cool riding a dragon would be. Which would be cool.

The_Botman (on 27 January 2011)

Mage's Guild > Dark Brotherhood

Zkuq (on 27 January 2011)

The PC version better have higher resolution textures as well... And smaller font. I'm usually closer to my monitor than my TV (which I don't have :P) so I can see text perfectly fine even if it's smaller. In fact, smaller text means more text fits on the screen at once so I can actually see more information at a time. I also don't have to scroll that much. I know mods can fix both of these problems but Bethesda should really do it themselves, to show they actually care about it.

Also, "Though there is no level cap, every dungeon will put a lock at the level you are when you first visit to prevent limitless easy grinding." Does it mean they're reasoning the decision to limit enemies' level by saying it would make player leveling easier? Because higher level enemies do give more XP but at the same time, they're much harder to kill. And much more exciting to fight as well. That's just an annoying way of saying people are spoiled and hate challenge.