Hehe .

Thanks for sharing those. Here are some of my thoughts after a bit more than 5 hours with the game (again, no spoilers):

I wasn't initially 'blown away.' The intro (no spoilers) is fairly lacklustre in my opinion -- not all that dissimilar, I suppose, to the intro sequence in Oblivion -- and technically, the game is not among the most impressive of contemporary releases.

Buuuut, what the game lacks in technical prowess is easily compensated for by what you start to notice as you wander around and explore: the insane amount of love and detail that has been put into everything in the environment, and all the incidental effects that contribute to immersion (rolling banks of fog, jets of water spray from rivers carried by the wind, flocks of birds wheeling overhead, the way every plant, coin, item of food, etc. has been fully modeled and textured, etc. It's also incredibly gratifying for lore-hounds to see just how the lore established over (and inbetween) the series informs every aspect of the game. The hand-crafted nature of the world shows in everything.

The other thing that starts to get you after awhile is just how much the combat is improved, both in terms of balancing, visceral impact, and challenge. On the harder settings, you will die... a lot and you have to be incredibly resourceful just to scraqe through a lot of encounters.

Ugh, I could go on, but I don't want to write a mini-review. Suffice it to say, when you're innocently tending to your business in town, and a dragon drops in out of the clear blue sky and starts torching the joint in a non-scripted event, it's hard not to fall in love

I also love that in the era of 'streamlining' (less euphemistically, 'dumbing down') they actually went bigger and deeper with this one. Bravo Bethesda

Two first Skyrim mods?
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=11
http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=12

Anyway, don't need to use.

Sorry for double post, but I just have to write about something you might like to hear about. Stealth and NPCs AI and "favourites" option. And just a little bit about magic.

About stealth and NPCs AI. It's great (of course!). Devs really improved the way you have to stealth, the way you can make fools of enemies and their reactions to any noise and stuff. It's realistical. You can feel like Sam Fisher from Splinter Cell. You can actually ESCAPE from enemy, and HIDE from him, even if he saw you before. Sometimes they have dogs who have good ears and smell. It's not like in Oblivion, when they see just your shadow and they are like "LET'S KILL HIM NO MATTER WHO IS HE!!!". First, they are like "What's there? I've heard something" they actually need to make sure everything is ok (then you can escape and hide somewhere) and if it's ok, they're back to their duties. It's fun to hear them, because they talk about interesting and fun things. That's really fun. Animations are climatic too. Never liked stealth before, but now I like .

Favourites option is definitely a thing that every RPG needs. You just TAB for menu -> items -> fav the item you like and in the game, you just Q to freeze the game and E (or something like that) to choose the favourited item. Everything is smooth by this way. Helpful!

Magic - used just a little. It's fun. Spells are interesting and you can learn them from books. Not a magician guy I am, but someone who uses magic often - will be really happy.


Oh, and if you take some ingredients from the ground, they "dissapear", like in a mod for Oblivion.

Skyrim is great.