Ahahaha

No interview about Skyrim would be complete without this joke

id also ask, "if another console from microsoft or sony is released and is backwards compatible. Would you release the official texture pack for those consoles as a free patch for skyrim, and mabye make one for oblivion?"

Is there a technical reason, coding or scripting limitations, that allow you to make Followers able to carry your gear, but will not allow you to create a horse that can carry your gear, or is that a design choice?

You might as well forget another fan interview. It will either be "Watered Down" with softball questions OR it won't get done at all because Bethesda won't answer any hard hitting questions nor recognize that have made any mistakes.

Either way, the interview will be usless or not happen.

They actually already answered that one in an interview. I believe it's on Kotaku.

I'm not going to bet my life on this but I'm not going to give up without a try. What do we stand to loose?

Even if they accept, I'm not expecting every question will receive an answer. Magazines, talk shows, biographies... everything written is carefully screened before being allowed to go on record. That's hardly surprising.

Besides, these forums are full of people asking for this and for that. A coherent, organized effort is more likely to obtain some answers than opening another thread on the forum.

If they do accept, they won't answer any question that even remotely critisizes the game. They WILL NOT take responsibility for their mistakes. So it really doesn't matter if it happens or not, the questions answered won't be the ones that I'm interested in nor those who have legitiment complaints.

That is why I don't bother reading magazine articles once the game is released, all they do is kiss Bethesda's butt and do not ask the questions that need to be asked. This "Fan Interview" will be more of the same. So why even bother?

Yep. It's all a big conspiracy. Todd Howard is sitting in his white-gold tower, swimming in money and laughing like a child.

Weapons damage gets boosts from Smithing, Enchanting, Sneaking, Potions, Potions to enhance Smithing, plus they scale with the player and on top of all that there is poison which can add even more damage. You can literally 1-hit kill an Ancient Dragon with a dagger. Destruction Spells meanwhile have no passive boosts, they don't scale, they have no sneak bonus and since Spellmaking has been taken out spells have no counterpart to smithing.

Can you explain your view of balance when making decisions about weapons use and why it seems irreconcilable to the view of what is balanced when it comes to spells?

I think I know the answer to this one, at least in part. Skyrim bears the label "Games for Windows." In order to get that seal, the game must meet or exceed certain requirements. If I'm not mistaken, one of those requirements is that the game must be playable with an Xbox controller. Hence why the PC is stuck with the same interface. A more M&K geared interface would not be very controller friendly. Take games like Starcraft II, with it's more robust interface. Last I looked, it was not certified "Games for Windows." The fact that you would have a really hard time playing it with a controller probably has a lot to do with it.

So I guess the real question is, "Why did Bethesda feel the need to make Skyrim a "Games for WIndows" game?"

I'd suggest not calling it a post-mortem.

I want to know mire in detail why they felt the removal of spell creation and all of the older spell from Morrowind to Oblivion was removed, and would these two things be something to look forward to in a future patch or one of the expansion packs.

Added the most recent questions. Now we're at 20. I think some of them can be condensed into a single, more elaborate question (ie all those pertaining spell & gameplay balance/design). I will look into this later this day, maybe tomorrow.

Reorganized the questions into a more flowing, interview style.

Oh, and a little BUMP

I see some questions getting the "No Comment" or they will just completely ignore the question and talk about something else entirely different. Again, I don't see anyone on this dev team, Todd Howard in particular, admitting to any mistakes made.

I would LOVE to see these questions answered, but I wouldn't hold my breath too long.

Just curious though, have you talked to anyone with the dev team or anyone at Bethesda to even see if they will answer these questions or is this just a shot in the dark and we'll see what they do?

How often have you seen developers admitting mistakes months after launch? The game has to be unplayably broken for that to happen. ...Well Skyrim was (or is?) for PS3, but since it's not on all of them, the people who have problems are a "minority"

Bethesda generally admits when there are bugs. Or are you going to claim that patches never come out months after launch?

And the major PS3 problems were/are being experienced by a minority of players. It's a large number, but still a small percentage of every Skyrim player on PS3. Unless you have hard data to contradict the multiple statements by Bethesda (the only people who would really have access to the hard data) that only a small percentage of players were affected, you can't just keep repeating that Bethesda is lying.

I think a lot of the "mistakes" people want Bethesda to admit to are design choices that players don't agree with. But no matter how often it's pointed out, there's a specific group of people who are so arrogant that they truly believe their opinion is an actual substitute for objective fact. They believe that anyone who doesn't agree with them (no matter how unpopular their opinion is) are of a lower intelligence level. And any lack of acknowledgment from Bethesda that this was a horrible mistake will only result in them crying, "Cover up!".

I've never once questioned anyones intelligence and I don't think the majority of others who have problems with the game has either. However, for you to make that statement you would also have to admit the majority of people who are calling those who have problems "Whiners", "Trolls" and worse.

I'm going to assume that you love the way the journal works in Skyrim and that it is far superior to anything we have had in the past? Are you really telling me that the journal in Skyrim is not an extremely poor design compared to past journals?

If you think that, than fine it's your opinion. I just don't see how you can actually defend the disgrace of a journal we have in Skyrim.

I am actually saying that from actual experience with users here literally saying that they are more intelligent players than the people who have the audacity to disagree with them. Glad to see that doesn't include you.

As for the journal: is it the best journal ever? Not for me. I could use some more details. That said, I don't want a return to Morrowind's journal system, which many people found incredibly hard to navigate.

That said, do I think that the journal was a mistake the developers made? No. I think that it's a design decision that I may have wanted to see done a little differently. But calling it a "mistake" or a "flaw" implies that the developers had some objective standard they were supposed to reach, and that they failed to do that. If you want them to use the word "mistake", it has to be in relation to something that's actually a mistake, like a bug. I'm not at all surprised that developers don't answer obviously pointed questions that are half-insult half-statement. All it does is inflate the ego of the person who posed the "question" when they can't provide an answer that they find satisfactory.

Guys, the point of a 'post mortem' diary, interview or commentary is to give to the people involved free voice. The "game jam" video was also a sort of "post mortem" done in front of a public of experts and colleagues so it has already set a precedent.

By now Skyrim has probably reached and exceeded 90% of the total sale volume for its shelf life. Now that the dust has settled I think it's the most appropriate time to ask Bethesda a few 'spicy' questions because by answering to them, they're no longer in danger of jeopardizing the marketing PR machine. If anything, they will show commitment to the user base and greatly boost the confidence of people towards expansions and the like. Add to this that Bethesda is not a public company so, in a certain way, they're more free to manage their public image the way they see fit.

Not talking about bugs, i'm talking about design desicions. Bethesda themselves admitted that the level scaling of Oblivion was a mistake, but to not very soon after launch

We'll see before the launch of TES VI what was in their opinion wrong with Skyrim

Strange, I can't see any interviews or press releases where they say that Oblivion's level scaling model was a "mistake". I see plenty of quotes that say Skyrim will be closer to Fallout 3, but nothing saying that level scaling in Oblivion didn't work as intended.

Pretty sure i saw something to during the pre-release hype. Just as well as long as they keep fixing them, though. (PS. Skyrim's loot level scaling needs more fixing )

A satisfactory answer to the question about the Journal would be "Yes, it was a mistake. We didn't do as good a job on that as we should. This is something we'll work on for future games". With that answer they have done 1) admitted they did actually make a mistake 2) give us reason to believe that they will correct that mistake in the future. If they don't admit to any mistakes they won't have any reason to believe that they need to do anything different.

The journal design is a flaw because it does not meet anything close to a standard that they have been known for in previous TES games. The patched journal in Morrowind and in Oblivion were far superior to Skyrim. They could have even taken some cues from the modded journals in Morrowind and Oblivion and used that to create a new journal for Skyrim.

A poor design choice is just as much a mistake as is a bug in the game.

Have you ever tried to speak to the public? I do not blame them at all. The public is rude, obnoxious and 99% of the time pointless to speak with.