So today I got to play Skyrim.
As you may or may not know, I had a ticket for the Eurogamer expo in London where I was expecting to be able to play most of the upcoming games for this and next year. But right there , sandwiched between BT broadband and Arkham City (which was also very cool) stood the tall Dovahkiin signs that housed the twenty-four Xbox 360s all running the fifth game in the Elder Scrolls series. I promptly bolted up the stairs towards it screaming and was told to shut up or get out by one of the security guards. Sufficiently cowed, I joined the back of the large queue.
I and the friend I was queuing with got talking to the people either side of us in line because we nerds are a friendly bunch. It goes to show the variety of people who play the game that these were a 14 year old kid from Northampton and a pair of UCL students, one of whom looked exactly like a ginger version of Gordon Freeman. Anyways, we chatted for a bit about past Elder Scrolls games, and the consensus was that Morrowind was the better when compared with Oblivion. Just then the other student, a sort of Gabe Newell-type fellow, wondered aloud if the sequel to ‘The Lusty Argonian Maid’ would be in the game, to which I replied that they should probably publish the full version first. One of the handlers was passing at that moment and joined the conversation, telling us that we’d probably be unlucky with that sort of thing since the version of Barenziah in Skyrim is the same as it is in Oblivion.
Curious to know more, I asked him about the other sorts of things that carried over from Oblivion. He didn’t really tell me anything new, I mean I could see on a screen behind him that someone was picking up cheese wheels and throwing them around the shop, but what was different was that the shopkeeper was simply yelling at him rather than calling the guards.
Eventually my turn came to play the game – more on the technical details later. I sat down at the character creation screen, picked Dark Elf and off I went. I spawned in a small dungeon with a few bits of equipment, so I equipped a full set of iron armour, which was four pieces: helmet, armour, greaves and boots, though I also had a full set of hide armour and mage’s robes, and trotted off out of the dungeon. This required loading, but no door. I simply walked towards the light until the loading screen appeared.
The loading screens are impressive in themselves. They have a black background with a sort of mist rising from the bottom, some text which switches between lore and gameplay hints, and a fun 3D object of some kind which you can spin and zoom with the right stick. This could be a character from each of the races and genders, a weapon, item, creature or world object like an altar. And let me tell you, do the Daedric weapons look badass.
When the loading completed I spawned looking across the same snowy valley that we saw in the E3 and Quakecon demos, so knowing what I was doing I headed right and trotted down to the path towards Riverwood, my direction confirmed by a very Morrowind-esque road sign about two hundred yards along.
I switched to third person view and checked out the animations, and wow. Gone are the days of running forwards yet moving diagonally. Bethesda is really using this Havok Behaviour to its fullest. My Dunmer Dovahkiin stomped across the land like a proper warrior and not a floaty ghost. When walking down slopes he planted his feet securely on each step, plonking down the hills rather than gliding down them. Jumping is really solid, for example when you jump while walking sideways on a slope you actually jump a little down the slope as well as forwards, as if you character was actually putting more weight on one leg. Fantastic.
When I stopped to check out my character I realised that when standing still with no weapons drawn you can rotate the camera around your character without holding any buttons down. The iron armour I was wearing was the armour of Dovahkiin from the first trailer.
Unfortunately while I was occupied with admiring myself a ‘thief’ appeared in front of me and demanded a very familiar 100 gold. He was wearing hide armour, which is a bit like fur from Oblivion. There were four dialogue options, and the only one I remember was ‘Walk away. Now.’ He replied ‘I don’t think so!’ and proceeded to attack me.
I pulled my axe out – the axe was actually held in a small leather sheath on my character’s right thigh rather than just sort of floating next to his left – and proceeded to beat on him.
Combat is different. Very different. While it’s still got a lot of the hack ‘n’ slash of older Elder Scrolls games, it’s much, much more difficult. I was playing on easy and this guy took nearly a quarter of my health and four hits to kill. I noticed that when blocking I could press the right trigger to bash him with my shield, causing him to stumble. The weapons connect with satisfying thumps and smashes, and the camera shakes a lot more when doing anything, making the overall experience much more kinetic. Blocking is also less effective if you just hold a shield up and wait, so you have to time it to really block, which is good.
Suddenly a pack of wolves came running up to me and I leapt into action. Literally. Power attacks do a lot more damage and concordantly use a lot more stamina than before, almost half of it in this case. Using one here, I charged towards the first wolf – then picked it up by the neck, smashed its head in with my axe and threw it aside, raising a small cheer from the people behind me. Switching to the flame spell from the new and improved menus – which I’ll explain about later – I quickly roasted the other two.
The rest of my journey into Riverwood was uneventful, as I paused only to try and score a shot on an elk that I could see in the distance, though with my meagre archery skill my arrows went far wide. In Riverwood I tried out the new dialogue system. While you can’t actually move around when talking, because the left stick is used for selecting the options, you can look around with the right stick, and the world continues on in the background while you speak. When I pressed B to exit the conversation, it didn’t end. Rather, the blacksmith continued to the end of his sentence then called out a goodbye as I left. It felt far more natural than in Oblivion.
Here I tried it on with the residents of Riverwood, and promptly got completely owned by a biiiig guy with a warhammer. I respawned outside the cave.
This time I turned right and found a pack of foxes that ran away from me as I approached. I didn’t follow, because at the end of the path I could see a blue light shining from an alcove. I sprinted up to it – sprinting is not unbalanced by the way because it uses a lot of stamina very quickly, and the stamina is slow to recharge. I was happy – and found it was an apprentice conjurer practising next to an altar. She growled at me to back off, and when I didn’t move she turned on me, summoning a spectral wolf to maul me from behind while I bashed her with an axe. She took a surprising number of hits to go down, but I didn’t have time to reflect on this – I only had seven minutes of demo time left.
I ran up a snowy hill at the end of the path and came across a map marker location which was a mountain pass. I don’t remember the name, but when I ascended the hill the view took my breath away. When people were posting that Skyrim would probably be more like Morrowind and they were sad that there might not be any great vistas? Think again people, because from here I could see for miles across a flat, open green valley with a river running down the middle and a fort at the other end. Though it was miles away, I could make it out clearly. The view distance is seriously impressive. I descended into the valley, the mountains looming up behind me.
Ahead I noticed a guard crossing a bridge over the river in front of a nobleman riding a horse. Seeing this as an opportunity, I gunned them both down with magic and axe, the guard taking some time to fall. And he didn’t spout any ridiculous lines about mudcrabs. The combat is much more serious, with the characters too breathless to really shout anything. I took his armour and weapons, which were labelled ‘Imperial’. The sword looked like a worn Fine Steel Longsword from Oblivion, and the shield was similar in shape and colour to the Crusader’s Shield from KotN. I stole his horse and rode away across the valley. Five minutes left.
Horse control is much improved – think RDR – but unfortunately there’s no option for first person view while riding. You can gallop with the sprint key. While I was riding along I noticed a brown blob ahead of me, and as I approached I noticed that the blob was in fact a woolly mammoth, and I turned to look up the side of the valley to see at least five more mammoths lumbering down, their feet shaking the ground with each hefty stomp. Their giant guardians lumbered along as well, and one noticed me. It came over to have a look, and surveyed me suspiciously, so I rode on. Further along the valley was a single giant and mammoth, so feeling confident I dismounted and sliced the giant across the back with my axe doing almost no damage.
He stopped as if surprised, turned to look at me, pulled his warhammer from his back and in one smooth movement swung it at me, killing me instantly from full health and sending me crashing into a tree. Good news for level-scaling haters then, because it looks like giants are TOUGH. I was informed by an amused handler that the mammoths were even tougher. With one minute left, I decided not to go back that way.
I instead found some butterflies – well, one butterfly, anyway, and torched it with my flamethrower spell. It fell to the ground and I picked it up. There was an option to eat it, but I didn’t get to do this as my time was up, and I had to go.
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An hour or so later I queued up to have another go, because I wanted to. It was worth waiting another hour just to play for twenty minutes.
This time I picked a Redguard, whose default model looked suspiciously like Reggie Yates, and bolted out into the countryside, same as before. I headed down the valley towards Riverwood, but was distracted by a couple of elk who noticed my approach and bolted, heading down another path towards somewhere called Falkreath. I sprinted after them, sword drawn, but they were too fast for my bulky Redguard and I soon ran out of stamina and had to stop, which is what you tend to do when you’re tired.
I stopped to pick some lavender, which I promptly forgot about because my compass was showing some kind of hut off to the east, and I headed that way with a lack of other things to do. It turned out to be a small hunter’s rest, albeit with its own map marker, and a couple of hunters asleep inside. On the table were all sorts of meats – rabbit, deer, beef, and hanging from the ceiling were pelts from wolves, foxes and bears. I left the hunters to their rest. Time was ticking on, and I wanted to check out the mine that had just appeared on my compass.
On the way I encountered a small water mill where a High Elf woman informed me as I approached that if I was looking for work I should grab an axe and bring her as much wood as I could chop. I never figured out how to do this however, because I noticed her house was locked and I wanted to try out lockpicking. Turns out that the minigame is exactly the same as it is in Fallout 3 and New Vegas, which I was by turns happy about and disappointed with, though it’s still more satisfying than Oblivion’s method.
Inside the house was the usual fare of food, drink and books, as well as a couple of weapons – I took an Iron Greatsword which is the equivalent of a claymore - and letters which I picked up and read. It’s not much different to Oblivion, except that there’s an animation for picking up and putting down the note rather than it just appearing. By the way, reading books is awesome. I’m sure you can picture what it’s like, so I won’t go into detail on that.
As I left I noticed that loading screen doors now open slightly before the loading screen appears, so that’s good. I continued on down the path as it began to rain. Rain in Skyrim is very nice. The sky darkens and a few drops fall before the storm begins in earnest, and the view distance drops with a sort of mist that shows the storm is reaching off into the distance. I reached the cave, ignoring the Nord hunter standing outside who tried to attract my attention by calling ‘Hey, Redguard, come here!’ and wandered inside. Again, no door, just a transition to a loading screen.
Inside was a thin rock passage leading to a small open area with a light shining from a hole in the ceiling through which I could see the sky. I noticed a green glowing thing just behind a small column of stone and the staff member who was watching my screen said ‘Ah, a Spriggan. Good luck’. He patted my shoulder and walked away. I charged at the Spriggan with my greatsword, and as I expected she summoned a bear to maul me from behind. Suddenly it reared up and clawed me, taking three-quarters of my health. Shocked, I quickly drank a healing potion and maneuvered myself so that the Spriggan was between me and the bear.
The model is much the same as it is in Oblivion, but with a higher poly count, and more glowing green particles that swarmed around her with a noise like bees buzzing. Hacking away, I managed to get her health down to very little before she curled up on the floor and regenerated almost all her health. I was swearing quite loudly by now, and the people behind were laughing. Luckily she only regenerated once, and since the bear was stuck behind her, refusing to strike presumably not wanting to hit his master.
This time the Spriggan went down, her buzzing green things swirling off into nothing, and I searched her body. There was one taproot inside, and I twirled it around in the inventory screen for a bit admiring the swirly green pattern.
Then I exited the menu, and the first thing I noticed was that the bear hadn’t despawned when the Spriggan died and it promptly mauled my face, killing me in one hit from about two-thirds of full health. Again, good news for level scaling haters, but not happy times for me. I respawned just inside the entrance to the cave, but immediately exited again as I only had one minute left.
Lack of time meant that I had one final act to commit. Instead of talking to the hunter I had heard earlier, I stomped up to him and held the attack button down to power charge him. It switched to third-person view, and I watched as my character ran him through with the greatsword, lifted the man limply off his feet and shook him a bit, making sure the sword did as much damage as possible, then let him slide off. His body fell into the river behind and was carried downstream by the current.
I stared in awe at the screen as I watched the corpse float away, the new improved view distance meaning he didn’t fade, while I heard a smattering of applause from behind. Then the handlers came round and said I had to leave, and so ended my adventures in Skyrim. Till November!
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Here's a list of things I didn't get to see, with apologies.
- Persuasion
- Woodcutting/smithing
- Fast travel/carriages
- Fishing
TL; DR? Why, screw you. Here's the entire thing in list form.
Graphics
- The water looks just like it does in the screenshots. Rivers look much better than in the first trailer, with realistic foam and actually flow downstream. The ripples you get when swimming are much like Oblivion's and there's still the problem where if you hold the camera just under the surface there's no water fog.
- Shadows are higher resolution than in the videos.
- Faces are definitely more expressive. I could tell which elves were which and the blacksmith looked genuinely happy to see a new person in town. I watched the face of one elf as he spoke. He greeted me happily, look questioningly when asking me if I'd spoken to someone, then frowned as he warned me to stay away. Very impressive.
- Animations. Let's just say that combat doesn't feel so mechanical. People don't slide back when you hit them, and they strafe much more fluidly, and not just side to side, they're liable to fall back and let someone else strike before rushing again. I may well play in third person!
- Trees look OK. They're better than SpeedTrees but I didn't get to see them blowing in the wind, so they looked a bit static and sparse. But otherwise good. The grass and other foliage is surprisingly bushy.
- Caves. I love the caves. The two I went in and some others that I saw were all entirely different, yet they say that they were still made out of segments? I wouldn't have thought so.
- The soundtrack. I have no words. I actually heard that remastered version of the song from Morrowind, but only for a few seconds before I was killed by the giant.
- Combat sounds. Clangs, bangs, and slices all sound much more satisfying, and some of the killing move sounds are really quite unnervingly squishy.
- Waterfall sounds. I wandered past the small waterfall that was in the Quakecon demo and the rumbling really impressed me. It sounded almost too real.
- Black and misty. You get a 3D object to 'play' with, like a character or item. You can zoom and rotate it with the right stick. I saw - a steel axe, a Dunmer wielding two Daedric daggers with an icepick grip, a Daedric warhammer, a Necromancer's altar, a Bosmer lady with a bow, the Golden Claw and most importantly of all, a Falmer.
- All sixteen Daedric princes still exist at least. I expect most of them probably have shrine quests.
- Eight of the divines have shrines across Skyrim - but worship of Talos is banned by the empire!
- Red Mountain! It said that Red Mountain is the largest volcano in Tamriel. Notice the use of the present tense there?
- Falmer. When this dude came up I jumped. Think the vampires from 'I Am Legend' only a bit more bat-like and spindly. The text informed me that years of living underground have rendered the Falmer blind.
- The Dark Brotherhood. But you knew that already.
- When sheathing an equipped bow, any nocked arrows will be returned to the inventory'.
- An excerpt from the 'Pocket Guide to the Empire'.
- Sprinting uses a LOT of stamina, as do power attacks, and it recharges quite slowly so isn't unbalanced. I hope there's a spell to restore stamina, but I've only seen potions so far.
- Scrolls make an appearance as one-use spells. You learn new spells via Spell Tomes.
- Combat feels weightier. You can bash with shields and punch with bows and one-handed weapons.
- Running backwards is slower, so you can't just backpedal away. To escape you have to turn and sprint.
- Witnesses to crimes can be killed to absolve you of your bounty. I had a 1000 gold bounty in Winterhold when I was killed, but another guy managed to slaughter an entire town so that nobody could report who did it.
- You can't run with a bow drawn.
- In dialogue, you can look around with the right stick. When exiting, characters finish their sentences first and then wish you goodbye, unless you move away while they are talking.
- NPCs are more responsive than before. When I ran to steal the noble's horse, he yelled 'Get away from her, you thief!' When I talked to an NPC with a fire spell equipped, she squealed 'Careful! I hope you know what you're doing with that fire spell!' and an old woman said 'You'd better be ready to use that axe, mister.' I watched someone trash a shop with the grab function, and the owner yelled at him to stop.
- The menus are so streamlined. You've seen them in the videos but it has to be used to be believed. A little up arrow will appear next to the best item of each type that you have, like armour or shields, and it conveniently shows you how your stats will be affected if you were to equip each item with a red or green number next to your current stats.
- When you level up you can put points into Magicka, Health or Stamina and you pick a perk.
- Imperial guards showed up. Their armour appeared more like the armour of Roman legionaries than in Oblivion and was covered with some sort of fur for warmth.
- Mudcrabs act like rocks until you get close, when they spring up and attack.
And that's it! If I think of anything else I've forgotten, I'll add it to the bottom of this post! But until then, I hoped you enjoyed reading my adventures in Skyrim! I can't wait to play it for real!
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