*content removed*

thanks for teh list, I'm glad your negatives aren't too bad.

what type of character did the player use? maybe he wasn't good at magic because he didn't have a high skill with it.

Yeah thanks for the info; just makes me want it more!

Nice report! Makes me want to play even more, I don't even consider those spoilers.

I love reports like these! Can't wait!

Pretty big spoilers in this:

I saw most of the footage as well, I definitely agree that the people playing the game were the worst part of it. Other than that, everything is fantastic. Only thing that gets me at all is one of the voice actors, who has kind of an over-done russian accent. It just doesn't feel right to me, but then again you are probably right when you say it just takes some getting used to. One thing I was blown away by was the dragon battle at night, it felt so intense and epic; almost frightening. (Water also looks considerably better than I thought it did before. Better than almost any game I've seen. Excluding super mario sunshine of course.)

I think i was watching the same thing but i forced myself to switch off when he was going up the throat of the world - want to keep stuff like that a surprise

I've been watching.. this stuff too. Possibly the same vids.
It sure was a pain to watch these guys play; "Too bad that I can't sprint, it'd be very useful!" And the lack of using favorites.. Ugh, I'll get over it some day.
Someone asked about their characters (too bored to check, but it can't hurt to mention them?):
1. Just basic Nord, didn't change appearance in any way.
2. Argonian, male. Hard to tell more, since he had a hood on and I didnt see the beginning. Tried desperately to kill a Frost Troll with shock damage..

The most random funny part was when this Nord guy struckled whether to kill or not to kill a chicken in the middle of Riverwood. Finally he slayed the innocent thing and everyone is town went on a rampage. He ended up escaping them by jumping across a river.

I don't believe the beginning Dragon is Alduin


The Dragon may have been saying something about Alduin

In the official videos magic seemed much more powerful this time. It will be a big disappointment if it turns out it's barely better than Oblivion

From what I gather this is good as it seems one of the main reasons to specialize in magic school is because spells cost/drain much more magicka. So someone using a shield spell who isn't very magic oriented and has no specialization in Alteration will have their magicka drained very quickly, while someone who has the right mastery perks (like novice and so on) will get 50% reduced magicka cost so they could maintain it much longer. Plus it seems all mage robes have a natural magicka regeneration boost and rather than having conjuration robes have +15 to conjuration or whatever, it would be a % reduced magicka cost instead.

Thanks for the list of stuff though, sounds awesome. Wish I could find these streams =[

I saw this guy trying to climb the Throat, but he was insisting on trying to climb the mountain with a horse (on the unwalkable areas), and that didn't quite work. Later after he arrived, he attacked the greybeards and got screwed instantly by various shouts. They are really powerful.

Still, I disagree on magic, I think it looks amazing. Yesterday he got a spell called "Summon Familiar" which summoned a cool ghostly wolf. I get surprised at a new thing at every minute when watching this. I quickly forgot of most of the issues I had previously with the game by watching this guy play. It's just amazing.

Also, you can request bards to sing, and the voices are incredible. That's right, they don't only play, they sing too. Although at some requests the bard denied claiming that "only a true imperial would request that song". I'm not sure on what hey meant with that. But the bards who said this seemed to be quite Imperial aligned.

There was also a preacher of Talos in the streets of Whiterun. He shared the whole story of Talos with the player. I don't know how the guards didn't get him, because I'm pretty sure that Whiterun is aligned with the Empire. There was some guy being executed (there as well, I think), for something about "opening the gates to Ulfric Stormcloak". Too bad the guy playing didn't give a damn. My character would somehow rush in and help the poor soul.

The player began the Companion's storyline as well. His first given quest, given by a guy named Falkar(?) was a different one from another video. That's right, the same guy gave different quests under the same circumstances, and they seemed pretty complete to me. Could this be the new quest generation system in action? I found it pretty nice.

And as a little bonus, NPCs will react if you walk around naked. When the player was naked in the village, some woman muttered: "Some people have no shame." Some other guy said something about it too, but I can't recall.

Magic is awesome from what I saw. Very powerful and the guy was playing on normal difficulty. He went into about 2-3 dungeons and cleared them all with relative ease. Although magic didn't do very much to a dragon he fought.... But then again its a dragon.

Also saw a guy using a finishing move in 1st person.

It's funny how everyone draws a bow and starts shooting the dragon even if the player never used one before. It seems to be the easier way to fight them. They're pretty deadly.

Magic:
From the footage that I have seen all of the players didn't even invest in magicka at level up and they were also choosing non-magical perks. It would svck if you could be very proficient with magic without investing decent amount of perks on those skills.
Still, the magic seemed quite potent in those gameplays ( excluding situations when they used fire spells agains fire atronachs and wondered why those spells don't do damage ).
Things to remember are :
- creature resistances ( if he was using fire then maybe they were resistant to it, that is why we have different magic types )
- dungeon leveling ( you can go to dungeons that are much higher than your level )
- when you look at perk trees it is obvious that those perks will introduce huge difference in efficiency of magic schools ( and other skills as well )
- magicka bonuses from items ( Black Mage Robe, found quite near the beginning and very cheap ( about 150 gold pieces ) giving 50% boost to magicka regen ) or some stew that you can cook giving 100 bonus to magicka pool + 25% regen for 12 minutes, enchanting any item with 2 effects. All of those shows that you can get huge bonuses from proper equipement ( very good thing as it makes choosing your gear meaningful )

Okay, that is just a little bit epic... I was hoping for cooking related buffs like this but never thought we would get something as powerful as that stew.

So then have I been thinking incorrectly about magicka and armor? Robes actually boost it, rather than armor restricting it?

I really like this. I hardly noticed the magic efficiency loss in Oblivion but it seems that +50% magicka regen robes offer is going to be much more noticeable, especially when playing heavily with magic with the stronger more magicka intensive spells.

Sounds like I saw some of the same footage as you.
And I agree, the guy playing was just terrible at the game. I think magic seemed so weak because the guy had no idea how to use it correctly.
How come all the leaked footage is played by people who seem like they have never played a TES game before?

The name of that dish is : Elsweyr Founde ( Ale, Moons Sugar, Eidar Cheese Wheel )
Maybe the moon sugar is very rare in Skyrim

Another : Venison Stew ( Leek, Potato, Salt Pile, Venison ) Resotre 1 Health and 1 Stamina for 12 minutes

Other dishes were quite common

Looks like finding those crafty drug dealers could be very helpful

Yeah, I imagine the Elsweyr Founde is going to be too expensive for constant use. Moons Sugar is, more or less, an illegal substance with pretty potent narcotic effects so I imagine it could be hard to come by. Based on a little quick research, it is actually the substance Skooma is made from...

I am not sure to what extent armors affect spellcasting, but yeah, robes boost it pretty well. Perks also make it absurdly better. It would almost be a sin not to pick the perks if you intend to use it frequently.

It has nothing to do with innate attributes of robes/armor. Those are enchantments ( like boost magicka regen, boost magicka pool ) and you can do those yourself with Enchanting skill ( so you may as well add them to armor ).
All the robes that I saw had such enchantments added to them ( but there was also some light armor with magic boosting enchantments ). That does not mean there are no modifiers for using armor ( maybe it reduces regen ). I just couldn't get confirmation for that anywhere.