First off let me just say I did not want to watch it. but I gave in. Like a weak fly in the devils web. However, I cannot go back. So I would like to give you my break down of what I thought in the least spoilerific way possible.

The beginning started off almost axactly how i pictured it in my head. However I envisioned an enclosed wagon, with prisoners shackled to the floor. I was surprised to see that the characters were only bound by ropes and could very easily escape the carriage if they tried.

The scenery was truely stunning, the mountains look great.

Im on the fence with the new voice acting. there was somewhat of an Arabic/scottish accent to one of the prisoners, the other man's (the panicky one) voice seemed a little too modern IMO.

The strange thing was the scenario at hand.
I liked how the man with the list acknowleges you with the race you choose, makes it more real.

Then theres that (Censored) Imperial woman barking cheesy remarks and commands. (Call me sixist but i hate it when the female is in charge)

What follows next is what i am really worried about. The Npc movement and positioning seemed really poor. characters sliding and walking into other people, Bad dialogue cut offs. Basically this game looks like its running on Gamebryo.


Magic spells looked great. Weapon combat looked better than Oblivion but not much improvement which is sad.


Overall I think my hype meter was just wayy too high. I expected too much from an engine running on 2005 hardware. Skyrim still looks to be amazing and im sure it will be a great game nonetheless.

I also forgot to mention the auto save, which freeezes the game for a good 3-4 seconds. I hope there is a patch for that on day one

HAH! The animation were way better then Morrowinds and Obs! Plus the detail of everything is stunning!

True, but I expected a little more polish from the Main Quest atleast.

Actually the main quest is shapeing up to be sort of like Game of thrones! Conspiracy, Rebellion,Itriuge,. All in all It seem WAY Better then Obs. Favourite part was one the captain was screaming "THROW EVERYTHING WE GOT" And then the mages were shooting Fire balss at6 the dragon AND THE [censored] DRAGON SHOUTED OUT COMETS!

Don't know about you, but my hype shot through the roof, and then some when I saw it.

as for your spoiler

This is almost exactly like the Vault 101 Escape! quest but with a Dragon instead of radroaches.

scottish accent? That was Scandinavian. Not necessarily a REAL Scandinavian accent but that was the point of it. The Nords are based off of the Norse.

I played FO3 but dont' really get what your trying to say...no comparison imo.

it was great

I kept looking for the video, but they all got removed by Zen...

I got rid of your spoiler tags since this is a spoiler forum. My answer is no it shouldn't be a big deal for the following reasons.

1.) Maybe he was tried and was sent there for execution. He was captured before you got on board. His name was on a list.
2.) It's a rebellion. They don't want to make a martyr out of him. Snuff him out and don't blow it out of proportion or his rebellion and it won't spread further.
3.) How would they show it if they did ship him to the capital?

I thought the intro was brilliant.

I agree with most of those observations. Ulfric's execution should be a bigger deal, but then again, I doubt this engine can handle much in the way of crowds, at least not when running on the 360 or PS3.

The lack of animations when your NPC companion unbinds your wrists or opens doors also stands out. They're things that we as TES fans can look past, but to someone coming off playing Uncharted or another similar game, things like that just make the game appear unpolished.

And then there are some of the textures (see 10:56 in part 1 or 7:16 in part 2)... Some of those scenes look drastically worse than anything in the officially released footage. Hopefully the less-than-stellar video quality is contributing (a lot).

Overall, I still hate the whole idea of tutorial dungeons, and this does nothing to change that. Morrowind did it right, wasting no time in dumping you into the world. This is definitely a step up from OB, but still totally unnecessary. Better to just weed out the short-attention-span people than try and cater to them.

why? it would be an insult to make him die like a common thief and they probably don't want his death glorified

i disagreed a tutorial dungeon is important to learn the new mechanics and to new people playing the franchise for the first time. a lot of people that did not like Morrowind was because they did not knew what to do.

The thing is, there's nothing in the intro to suggest that the Imperials are worried about his death being glorified or him being seen as a martyr. It's just forum users ascribing those intentions onto the Imperials. If Beth wanted us to think that, the narrative would indicate as much. That's how good story telling works.

In both Roman and Medieval times, public executions of infamous criminals or political enemies was commonplace. It was symbolic, and also a means of placating the populace with some bloody entertainment.

Most likely, the lack of a big public execution with large crowds has more to do with technical limitations and/or narrative corner-cutting (you don't want the dragon attack to happen in a big city, and so you shoehorn the story around a different setting, etc.).

Eh, if I was directing a game, I wouldn't consider it a success unless stupid people hated it. If you're always chasing the lowest common denominator, the only direction is down...

Your game will fail, along with the 401k of everyone else who spend hundreds of hours to put the game together.

Yep, just like Morrowind failed and put Bethesda out of business...

In trying to make games accessible, developers all too often underestimate their customers. Children are smarter than they get credit for. They want to be challenged, not to have their hands held. Less is more when it comes to tutorials.

It's about branching out. The fact is: the world is full of stupid people. Mass majority of it in fact, you and I included- we're just stupid in our own special ways. Morrowind was not as successful as Oblivion, and I can promise you Skyrim will be more successful than previous games. Because Bethesda IS reaching out to the general public and not keeping w/ RPG fans.

It makes me think of the Lord of The Rings franchise. The books alone slowly gained popularity. When they first came out- They weren't overly popular. When the 1970's hit: The hippies popularized it. Then came D & D; inspired heavily by LoTR. LoTR was, then cornered and popularized by a specific group of persons which the general public would label "Nerd.". And then the films came out in 2001. The fantasy genre as a whole faced a flood of new fans. It was not longer a 'nerdy' thing. It became the 'popular' thing for EVERYONE. The fantasy genre became a VERY lucrative business once those films were released.


WHY is that? The films made fantasy an accessable/understanding genre for all. It was the 'tutorial' for all fantasy-based forms of entertainment.

Nice info, as I had no chance to watch those videos, thanks.

As for "Turorial Dungeons/Phases", I think that they are necessary, but there should be a way out, if someone wants to skip them.

The way out can be a bit subtle/hidden so that the at first we go trough the course, but after a few tries we can find that way out and be happy ever after.

Or the way out can be obvious, but give us a chance to return to the course, if we like it, and give us enough warning, if we are to pass a phase that there would be no coming back to the tutorial after that.

I'm quite certain that there will be an autosave at the exit to Skyrim that will enable you to skip the tutorial section.

Exactly what I think...

SPEAKING OF: the clock time** with in regards to the 23minute video released watch between 15:10 and 15:30 ... Do i have to spell it out??? why the reviewer's bad at the game??
anyone get my meaning?

Agreed 100% with the OP.

I'm still very excited about the game and I can't say I'm disappointed. Since the first screenshot was released we knew it was going to be Oblivion in a new dress. Those who were fooled by the Radiant AI demo back when Oblivion was announced already learned to take the media hype with a grain of salt.

Seeing the intro put some fears aside: For the first time it's not a Bethesda employee playing on carefully planned tracks, so we get to see the good, the bad and the ugly. And despite the imevitable technical shortcomings, it still appears to be very enjoyable. Not groundbreaking, as we would no doubt have loved, but definetly a TES game we'll play for many many hours.

I think the animations when you are unbound are good enough? He reaches forward with a knife and your own hands are a doing a small animation as well. It's way better than previous games.
Yeah, that door thing was a little strange :/ I thought Bethesda said that NPCs would reach forward to open doors.

Anyways, Skyrim looks like it will be the best TES game ever!