Skyrim: PC, 360, PS3

Canelek · Post by **Canelek** » November 14, 2011, 1:23 pm

Bought 360 version. Looks great!

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 14, 2011, 1:52 pm

Kwonryu DragonFist wrote:Wait til ya meet Draugr Deathlords with the Disarm-Shout!

You'll be lookin on the ground for your weapons

Ran into one of those in this dungeon I found trying to find hags end. I am too low level for them still apparently (13), so I ran past him to the last part of the dungeon and a crazy ass boss that also one shotted me jumped out. I finally got away with my follower. I'll go back to kill those two mobs later.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 14, 2011, 2:32 pm

Sylvus wrote:Yeah, I don't have any wired 360 controllers, so I figured there had to be some sort of receiver for it that you connect to your PC. I wonder if my old piece-of-shit computer will even run Skyrim. Maybe I should just go with the console version.

I had to buy another wireless controller for the PC for 49.00 in order to get the included adapter. There used to be a cheap adapter but they quit selling it (only reason I can think of is greed)

You can get them at Best Buy. I think there's a cheaper Logitech controller as well.

It's that or buy a cheaper wired controller. It depends on what games you like but more and more PC games are designed to use the 360 controller so it could be thought of as an investment for future PC games. Or just go console if not concerned with mods and the graphics.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » November 14, 2011, 9:25 pm

Amazing clip here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTgUm8VE ... ata_player

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » November 15, 2011, 1:18 am

You can plug your Xbox 360 controller into your PC with the play and charge kit that sells for like $20 and by downloading the drivers off MS' website.

Bagar- · Post by **Bagar-** » November 15, 2011, 1:25 am

And I think someone mentioned this, but you can plug a wired one in without installing / downloading / buying anything, and you can probably get a used wired controller from Gamestop for about $20.

(that's what I did)

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » November 15, 2011, 1:58 am

kyoukan wrote:You can plug your Xbox 360 controller into your PC with the play and charge kit that sells for like $20 and by downloading the drivers off MS' website.

I tried that awhile ago, although didn't spend much effort on it, and couldn't get it working. I found it easier to just pick up a wired one for $25 or whatever it was on sale.

Unfortunately this won't work. The Play and Charge kit only connects up to the actual battery. The controller still connects over wireless.

You'd need either a wired Xbox 360 controller, or a Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver which will connect to your existing wireless controller.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » November 15, 2011, 5:10 am

uhh, I don't know what to tell you. my play and charge kit works fine. maybe its a special one?!

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » November 15, 2011, 1:18 pm

Finally finished Dark Souls so I started this game last night. My initial impression is, its a good game, but Dark Souls is much better. I will have fun with this game, though, I can see that already.

Aslanna · Post by **Aslanna** » November 15, 2011, 1:38 pm

kyoukan wrote:uhh, I don't know what to tell you. my play and charge kit works fine. maybe its a special one?!

Well you do live in Canada so anything is possible in that land of enchantment!

Like I said I didn't put much effort into it. I only tried getting it working with MAME. I installed the drivers and while it recognized the controller it didn't seem to actually function.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 15, 2011, 9:20 pm

The construction kit isn't out but there's a lot of mods already out for Skyrim:

http://www.skyrimnexus.com/index.php

yes yes, there's already a nude mod, but there are some useful mods as well even though it's early.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » November 16, 2011, 12:24 pm

I was hoping the character graphics would be better by a wider margin, but they are still pretty fugly. The UI is kind of a pain on the console, I can scarcely imagine how bad it is on the PC. Some aspects of the gameplay seem a litle clunky to me, especially compared to the last one, but the story is better so far.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 16, 2011, 12:40 pm

Jice Virago wrote:I was hoping the character graphics would be better by a wider margin, but they are still pretty fugly. The UI is kind of a pain on the console, I can scarcely imagine how bad it is on the PC. Some aspects of the gameplay seem a litle clunky to me, especially compared to the last one, but the story is better so far.

So far, I agree with everything you've said about skyrim.

I've ran into a few bugs now where I can't complete quests, and it irritates me. They Lso have a odd difficulty curve sometimes, I
Doing the Mage college quest line, the last quest I did was a bit challenging but not hard, then the next quest in the line I'm getting one shotted in the first room of the dungeon.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 16, 2011, 2:31 pm

I can live with the bugs. It's an outstanding game.

Canelek · Post by **Canelek** » November 16, 2011, 6:20 pm

Found a bug where my companion (starter companion Lydia) had some sort of staff and locked in to roasting a corpse with her fire staff thing. Couldn't fix it so will have to go back a few save points to get her back.

Complaints: only 1 --> The facial designs are fucking awful, just like Oblivion. With all the wonderful textures and graphics (including mobs so far), the NPC faces are tremendously craptastic. WTF elves? Look like molepeople.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 16, 2011, 6:55 pm

Humans look ok, the rest of the races are bad.

The original Oblivion faces were so dog ugly and i complained about them on VV so I figured I'd give them the benefit of the doubt with Skyrim. I blocked the other races out of my mind and focused on humans which are the best of the bunch.

There are some mods out if you have the PC version to get rid the blockyness and if you really care that much, it looks like some nerds plan to completely redesign races, etc. Check out the mod website I linked above. It's very easy to drop a mod into your Skyrim folder, easily deleted if you don't like.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 17, 2011, 1:21 am

There aren't many things I wouldn't do for a PDF of the strategy guide for this. I don't want/need it for most things, but for things like finding all the mask locations it would be nice. Especially considering it seems like most quests get bugged if you find a item for them before you have the quest.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 17, 2011, 10:39 am

I've used my physical copy a lot to look up stats on companions for their preferred weapon types, location of stores in cities, info on some of the crafting skills, etc. I try to use the guide as little as possible for actual dungeon crawling, etc. Besides being 652 pages, the type in the guide is small and the images small so there's a shit ton of information in the guide. It's very well indexed. I do prefer the PDF/iPad route for guides. For this monster, I like the index for quickly getting to info. If the hacked PDF guide isn't indexed/linked, you're going to spend a lot of time finding info.

I'm avoiding exploiting the game. It's very easy to cheat in the game but that completely ruins the fun. After I've completed the main story and tired of side questing, I'll start playing around with the mods, etc. I'm looking forward to the more detailed mods after the creation kit is released.

The PC version has a console mode built right in. You just hit the ~ key and you can type hundreds of commands. For example, if you wanted to open any locked chest of door, you hit ~, target and select the door or chest, and then type "Unlock" and it unlocks it. God mode, walk through walls, adding skills, etc are all there with simple ~ commands. I could see someone who hates lockpicking or some other aspect of the game but likes everything else, using the console to make the game more fun though.

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » November 17, 2011, 12:44 pm

Fair wrote:I don't mean this to be condescending, but do you ever have friends over to your home? I have friends at my house, like 3-4 days a week. We play games a lot, and not always co op. I will play and they will sit and shoot the shit the entire time. When I die, they get the next turn. We look up info on the net about whatever game we're playing. We're all gamers. Sitting at a PC is very anti social. I only play games there when I am alone. This includes after the family has gone to bed.

[Show]

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » November 17, 2011, 1:11 pm

So far the only real skill in this game seems to be managing the UI. God, what a cluster fuck, especially if you are going heavy into magic. I hate to say it, but dragon age had a better system for hotkeying magic. Speaking of Magic, if I can straffe rape giants at level one with the short range fire spell, I am guessing its a little overpowered. Stealth is pretty retarded, too. The only reason I ever pull out my weapon is because its so easy to one punch crunch things from behind, before they are aware of you. Maybe playing Dark Souls and Demon Souls non stop for two weeks spoiled me, but the game seems a bit lacking at the moment.

Kaldaur · Post by **Kaldaur** » November 17, 2011, 1:40 pm

What difficulty are you playing at? The Elder Scroll games are notorious for being very easy at the 'easy' and 'normal' levels.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 17, 2011, 2:17 pm

Like I said before, the range of difficulty is retarded. I'll go through an entire dungeon and1 or2 shot everything, then run into a draugr deathlord or a boss and it's health barely moves no matter what I use on it, and it one shots me.

Thing is though, there is always a way to trivialize shit like this by kiting, or getting the mob stuck on something.

Morokei was a total bullshit fight.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 17, 2011, 3:05 pm

Jice Virago wrote: Maybe playing Dark Souls and Demon Souls non stop for two weeks spoiled me, but the game seems a bit lacking at the moment.

The Souls games are much harder than everything else. I'm not surprised Skyrim seems like a breeze. It is compared to those games. There are mods to make the game harder such as removing the red enemy dots from the radar. If hard mode isn't hard enough, wait a few weeks for a few of the mods (if you have PC version)

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » November 17, 2011, 4:49 pm

I am on the PS3. The last thing I want is the red dots gone, given the lack of target lock and shitty UI. What would be better is if the pathing and/or AI is better so that I can't just circle straffe giants at level one. But really, the difficulty is not an issue because thats not why I play RPGs. I play for things like story, game mechanics, and atmosphere. The mechanics and atmosphere seem to be off a little here. Being able to kite or snipe a giant from complete safety at level one sort of breaks the immersion factor for me. Also, I know bugs are par for the course in Bethesda games, but christ are there some problems with the quest scripting in this game. Dark Souls might have had glitches, but you could go through the entire game and never encounter them unless you were looking for them.

I guess what I really meant is that the combat and UI in the Souls games seemed so much more engaging and fluid, with player input making or breaking a fight. This game boils down to either kiting shit or (on lower difficulties) slapping on the heaviest armor and playing the attrition war. Funk is also right about the difficulty curve being all over the place. The boss mobs in this game just tend to be a reskinned trash mob with the stat dials turned up to 11. These are areas where the Souls games spoils you, along with truely unique and varied environments, instead re-using the same fucking objects and textures a billion times, like they had a mudular dungeon builder company come in and build the entire place. I know the scope prevents a lot of that, but it seems like aside from showing off their new water effects in their game engine, there was just too much cut and paste on the part of the designers.

Again, this is a good game and I will most certainly play the hell out of it. I am just not as impressed as the hype machine says I should be, after playing the Souls games. At least the enemy scaling seems to have gone away and the skill tree system is a good step towards stopping the whole "I am a god at everything" issue the last game had. But, damn, the interface is such a huge step backwards.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 17, 2011, 5:48 pm

Agree again.

Another issue I have is probably 1 out of 5 times I have to open my favorites menu like 6 times before it will actually let me scroll through the shit on it.

This is really annoying but can cost me a death during a close call in a fight, which is even worse.

Lynks · Post by **Lynks** » November 17, 2011, 11:36 pm

I keep killing everyone around me, even my stupid horse that always wants to jump in. I just like swinging my 2 handed axe blindly.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 18, 2011, 12:17 am

Went to buy the strategy guide for this at Best Buy just now, but they were sold out of it. Checked Demonoid again and saw that there is a pdf of it up there now, as a fyi. It's split into three pdf's (maps, walkthrough, extras, I think). I'll comment on the quality of it after I've used it a bit.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 18, 2011, 11:37 am

Funkmasterr wrote:Went to buy the strategy guide for this at Best Buy just now, but they were sold out of it. Checked Demonoid again and saw that there is a pdf of it up there now, as a fyi. It's split into three pdf's (maps, walkthrough, extras, I think). I'll comment on the quality of it after I've used it a bit.

Cool. Hopefully it's contents are linked or they scanned it with OCR so you can do searches.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 18, 2011, 2:31 pm

You can do searches, but the content isn't linked. I'm finding that makes it a hassle to use since the table of contents doesn't give page numbers (stupid).

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 18, 2011, 3:42 pm

Just got a dwarven sword of winnowing. It sucks.

miir · Post by **miir** » November 18, 2011, 4:21 pm

Can you troll things to death with it?

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 18, 2011, 6:13 pm

Funkmasterr wrote:You can do searches, but the content isn't linked. I'm finding that makes it a hassle to use since the table of contents doesn't give page numbers (stupid).

Doesn't sound like the real mccoy as that has page numbers!

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 19, 2011, 6:10 pm

Here's an improved guide:

http://beta.demonoid.me/files/details/2784377/

This one is much better. Everything is hyperlinked.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 19, 2011, 6:43 pm

I'll have to check it out, domo.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 20, 2011, 5:45 pm

Finished the dark brotherhood quest line last night. I'd say it's the best of the guilds do far, but I haven't done the thieves guild yet. You also get 20k gold at the end that you're supposed to use on the guild hideout, but you don't have to

Maxed Smithing out and made myself a set of light dragon armor. Highest armor rating I've found for light armor and cool looking, but I'm missing the effects from the dark brotherhood set.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 20, 2011, 8:23 pm

Funkmasterr wrote:Finished the dark brotherhood quest line last night. I'd say it's the best of the guilds do far, but I haven't done the thieves guild yet. You also get 20k gold at the end that you're supposed to use on the guild hideout, but you don't have to

Maxed Smithing out and made myself a set of light dragon armor. Highest armor rating I've found for light armor and cool looking, but I'm missing the effects from the dark brotherhood set.

Nice. I've only done the Companions set of sidequests (werewolf) so far, besides the main storyline and random other sidequests, and they've been fun. I imagine they're easy if you didn't do them when first in Whiterun and start them now. Gives you access to all the Companions as followers.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 20, 2011, 9:13 pm

I haven't totally finished that quest line yet cause I was trying to decide if I was going to stay a werewolf or not. I think I'll cure it.

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » November 21, 2011, 5:18 am

I tried doing the companions sidequests but Tosari kept screaming for evacs every time I fought a dragon.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 21, 2011, 12:10 pm

In one of the first Companions quests I'm supposed to prove my worth by recovering a trinket from bandits or something. On the way, with my follower/companion sent to monitor me, we randomly run into a dragon attacking Mammoths. I jump into the fray, eventually killing the frost breathing dragon. My companion seemed unimpressed with that. Dude, I just killed a frost breathing dragon and you want me to get some little trinket from some bandits to prove my worth?

My favorite thing to do in Skyrim is find a banquet table with lots of food and items on it and then blast them all over the place using my dragon shout. I also blast people if they're in my way, watching them get all flustered but they don't consider it an attack. One time a guard did come up to me asking me to stop shouting at people. he said there's no laws about shouting but that it was disturbing the peace or something.

Jice Virago · Post by **Jice Virago** » November 22, 2011, 1:33 pm

This game is also highly built around being a sneaky douche. Lots of the interlinked quest lines basically require high sneak and pickpocketting to pull off. Not sure if I like that, given how overpowered the sneak backstab mechanic already is in this game series. Destruction skill leveling slow is seriously annoying, too. I mean, I burn through three mana bars dropping dragons and I get nothing, but two chops on Derp the Bandit and I get a point every time in 2h? WTF?

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 22, 2011, 3:16 pm

Yeah, destruction skill leveling is a joke. I'm damn near 90 with one handed and light armor and maybe at 60 or so for destruction.

Canelek · Post by **Canelek** » November 22, 2011, 3:43 pm

I started over to try and concentrate on rogue-ish stuff.

Is this like Oblivion where you want to ignore certain stats in order to suppress leveling in order to be OP mad stats? That was a pretty shitty concept in Oblivion.

Funkmasterr · Post by **Funkmasterr** » November 22, 2011, 4:03 pm

I don't think so, because although weapon/armor stats scale when you level, enemies don't.

I think the way to get OP, even more so than Oblivion, is to go to jail for long periods of time to degrade your skills so you can level up more.

Canelek · Post by **Canelek** » November 22, 2011, 4:16 pm

Interesting. Makes me feel a bit better about further engaging in the game.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 22, 2011, 8:06 pm

This is cool. A simple walk through walls console entry and you can walk explore the entire land masses of their Oblivion and Morrowind.

You might have thought the world of Skyrim was big, but we can guarantee that, until now, you had absolutely no idea. As discovered by a Finnish blogger, Bethesda not only modeled the Nordic playground of Skyrim for the game, but much of the Elder Scrolls world of Tamriel. Why is it all in there? Your guess is as good as ours.

Here on PPSh-41, you'll see that the scale is a bit off, and some details are awry, but the lands of Morrowind and Cyrodiil are right there available to those willing to do a little no-clip exploration. Your guide, 19-year-old Jesse, assumes that the other major landmasses are in there too, but he lacked the patience to check for himself.

Fast forward a minute or so and this video shows all the old areas from the previous games:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PlbA2qiXsf0

Should be cool when the mod'ers take advantage of it later.

Fairweather Pure · Post by **Fairweather Pure** » November 23, 2011, 11:17 am

Leonaerd · Post by **Leonaerd** » November 23, 2011, 11:57 am

Lmao. What joke is referenced? More!!

kyoukan · Post by **kyoukan** » November 23, 2011, 2:54 pm

It's always good to see that I got someone so butthurt that they went to that length to show it.

Winnow · Post by **Winnow** » November 23, 2011, 2:59 pm

It looks like some sort of mad libs fill in the blank thing.

miir · Post by **miir** » November 23, 2011, 3:05 pm

kyoukan wrote:It's always good to see that I got someone so butthurt that they went to that length to show it.

I read your comment and at the time I laughed but I did not feel compelled to make a post about it.