Skyrim (Elder Scrolls V)

[linflas]

I guess most of you have already seen the trailer but have you heard about the Dragon alphabet (i.e. RUNES ) ?
How about having a look at this Skyrim language puzzle ? http://www.gameinformer.com/p/skyrimpuzzle.aspx



HQ game screens => http://www.elderscrolls.com.pl/galeria/ ... 95&start=0

[Bit]

what's with the necessary hardware?

[Sophia]

The runes say "Grynix ernum quey ki skebow rednim u os dey wefna enocarn aquantana," obviously.

[Ameena]

Wooooo...I'd heard about it over on the EQC forum, but hadn't seen the trailer yet. So, an ES game which finally brings Dragons into the mix, eh? Coool...
I think I recognise some of those words, Soph, though I'm not sure where from - "Skebow" and "Aquantana" seem familiar...maybe they came up in an earlier ES game or something?

[Sophia]

That's the scroll from CSB!
How can you not know that?! /ban

[linflas]

what's with the necessary hardware?

xbox 360, ps3 or a 2 years old pc like mine.

[Ameena]

Ahhhh, that wou oldbe why I recognised it then, lol. I don't remember every finding that scroll myself - as far as I can remember, I only know it from what I've read about it on here. I might be wrong and either me or my dad (or both f us( did actually find it in CSB at some point. But meh, it was ages ago .

[Joramun]

I bet it's about a guy who's lost his memory and beats the bad guys who want to destroy the world. Only now, the bad guys are bad, bad dragons.

I hope they work more on dialogs, consistency and humour because most Betheshda's games have been a letdown in terms of *role* playing.

They still rock regarding graphics though. (well, now they have bought ID software, so we might end up with a good RAGE ...)

[Jan]

the Dragon alphabet (i.e. RUNES ) ?

Runes? It looks like the "wedge" (Cuneiform) writing, not like runes.

[linflas]

I don't see the difference, DM runes are symbols meaning syllabs. So those are, aren't they ?

[Jan]

I meant that the symbols from your post look like wedge (cuneiform) writing (e.g., Babylonian), not like runes (e.g., Germanic). I mean visually. But it's just a detail. Forget it.

[zoom]

This is interesting, Jan.
Could you give us all a short summary of all main symbolic writings that there are out there?
(quick and dirty, really - the short& easy to understand version )

So there is cuneiform, germanic,.. what else? Would you distinguish majan or something like it , too? Is it complicated thing to ask?
Thanks

as a sidenote(not so much off topic!)

I doubt that the game will be as much fun without near hi end hardware. But this is open to some debate.
Guess if it runs rasonably and the story and everything is fine, then you do not need top notch visuals. WHo does?

[Ameena]

Hehe yeah, don't go complaining about games that have low-quality graphics on this forum, of all places .

[RAF68]

celui la je l’attend !

[Jan]

This is interesting, Jan.
Could you give us all a short summary of all main symbolic writings that there are out there?
(quick and dirty, really - the short& easy to understand version )

So there is cuneiform, germanic,.. what else? Would you distinguish majan or something like it , too? Is it complicated thing to ask?
Thanks

Ummm.. I hope you're not sarcastic, are you? 'Cause it sounds like a sarcasm criticising me bringing the thread off-topic again and me trying to look smart and educated.

Anyway, if you're really interested, perhaps visit Wikipedia. All I know is that the writing looks like cuneiform, not like runes, because when I was a kid, I read a lot of books on ancient history, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece, Rome, etc., and the alphabet and writing and language topics I found particularly interesting, so by a coincidence, I just happen to know how the wedge / cuneiform looks like. And it was a Czech scientist Bedřich Hrozný who deciphered the Hittite language, written in a specific Hittite cuneiform.

And now, you were sarcastic, weren't you? And I didn't get it again, did I? And I made a fool of myself again, didn't I? Oh, I think I should just shut up again, shouldn't I?

[Joramun]

@Jan: I don't think Zoom was sarcastic, Jan. But you're right, Wikipedia should answer his question.
And technically, you can talk or shut up, as long as you continue writing interesting stuff on the forum

Linflas: the Skyrim symbols aren't syllables. I've deciphered the text and they are just consonants or vowels, with a few double vowels like 'ii', 'aa' and 'ey'.

Real runes are an alphabet for germanic writing, like the the Roman alphabet is to latin writing, only their use has been mostly religious,
so they are not a syllabary like the Japanese Kana (e.g.) writing (neither are the Skyrim symbols - which do look like Cuneiform).

In that sense, DM runes are an offshoot of the D&D and rpg-book "error" that identifies "rune" with a "symbol/engraving having a pronunciation and (magical) meaning".

Anyway, we don't care, as long as FUL IR or FUL KATH does the job, don't we ?

[linflas]

all right all right ! that was just an original way of talking about the game

[raixel]

This thread makes me realize that people on this boards IQ's are too high for their own good.

While Im eagerly waiting for Skyrim to come out, im also wondering how many hours of my life its gonna suck away. Morrowind was always my favorite due to the art style and alien culture, but i clocked almost 300 hours in oblivion. Yeah, im a completionist. Sue me.

I really wish theyd do one in black marsh/elsweyr. Now THAT would be cool.

Fun fact: The world of Tamriel was one of the original designer's dnd campaign world in the late 80s.

[zoom]

@Jan: no I was not being sarcastic. This sounds very unspectacular, but it is the case
it was something new I did not know before thanks. will look at wikipedia!

back to topic
what are the chances that skyrim will be a good -or great?- game ?
somhow skyrim reminds me of skynet from terminator- dunno why!

[raixel]

Id say- good 95%, great 70%. THe problem with the elder scrolls games Ive found is that in the quest to make the game *huge and all encompassing* a lot gets left out. For instance, there are a LOT of bugs, some game breaking. Also, at least with Oblivion, I felt the plot suffered. You could beat the main storyline in 30 hours if you chose to do so. And all the other hundereds of hours was explorations and sidequests. And the sidequests IMHO seemed disconnected from the world, just there for the sake of being there to fill the expansive game world. While exploring the myriad locations is fun, I would say that the above reasons have prevented the games from becoming truly amazing.

[Ameena]

Isn't that sort of the point, though? I mean, having so many sidequests and stuff - yes, you could finish the Main Quest really quickly (I recall hearing about someone who completed the Morrowind Main Quest in about eight minutes by presumably running straight to the centre of Red Mountain and killing Dagoth Ur, taking advantage of the level-scaling thingy to not die instantly ), but then you'd be missing out on half the content in all the side quests and guild quests and all that. You don't need to be forced to do these things - the world should be interesting enough that you go looking for them, and when you find some really obscure quest from some random NPC out in the middle of nowhere, even if the reward isn't that good you still might feel some kind of satisfaction that you even found the quest NPC or something .
Then again, if you did none of the side quests in Divinity II (which I recently finished playing, about a week or so ago), none of which are compulsory, you migth find you didn't have enough exp (from quest rewards) to be of a high enough level to beat some of the boss fights and stuff. Well, I had that problem when I first played - only did a few of the quests and accidentally found myself in the place that was "onward" in the game before I'd fully cleared the previous region, got ganked repeatedly by a level 13 boss as I was only level 12 - he was literally one-shotting me most times and I reloaded about ten time and it kept happening. So I went away (you can backtrack via teleporter-waypoint thingys, at least for most of the game), finished all the quests I hadn't done yet, came back to the bastard as level 15 and kicked his arse first time .
I never played the first two Elder Scrolls games - I hadn't even heard/i] of the ES series till my dad first got Morrowind, which I still think is a fantastic game. Oblivion I was a bit less impressed with...I'm not entirely sure why...I think I just didn't enjoy some of the quests as much. You couldn't accidentally kill any NPC who was for an important quest, and the world was smaller than it was in Morrowind...though I've heard that even Morrowind was smaller than the second ES game, Daggerfall. So following in that pattern, will Skyrim be a dinky world with even less quests or something? Who knows? Let's wait and find out .

[Sphenx]

Or you could say that it is already truly amazing that elder scrolls games offer such large locations to explore. I like these games for the possibility to wander anywhere and being able to progress and improve the character without caring much of the plot. You can also make fun situation by attracting some demons in small villages and watch people fight.

Considering Skyrim, it does not look such a big step like it was between Morrowind and Oblivion. Maybe they could improve the magic system ... (not fun searching through thousands of spells during battle)

[Ameena]

I never had that many spells...I'd just buy a copy of a spell which had an effect I wanted (eg Soultrap), and then make my own spell/enchantment from it. I never really used magic to fight with, anyway...in Morrowind, a couple of certain enchantments on all my gear coupled with enough skill at my chosen weapon meant I could eventually gank anything that came my way without worrying about it killing me.
I could also cross half the map in about five or six hops .

[Sphenx]

(I recall hearing about someone who completed the Morrowind Main Quest in about eight minutes by presumably running straight to the centre of Red Mountain and killing Dagoth Ur, taking advantage of the level-scaling thingy to not die instantly )

There:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1IRxTN-_kU

[Joramun]

The Elder Scrolls:
1 - Arena, don't know much, but descriptions of it are not very appealing, it's more like an alpha for daggerfall
2 - Daggerfall :
a) huge world ! Don't know the exact surface, but walking it from west to east takes... so much time I don't think anyone has tried. It's really hundreds of km wide.
b) many game possibilities (some only imaginary) : thief, murderer, merchant, warrior etc. with a (non-functional) reputation system,
turning into a vampire, werewolf or werebear, getting hunted by bounty hunters, buying a house, a boat, a horse, doing your own magic,
several ending, random dungeons (yay !),
c) BUGS: crashes, random dungeons could crash or make the game unfinishable (the most infamous was one of the final dungeon, containing a necessary object to finish the game, that would on occasion be so complicated that the exit was almost impossible to find), many things not working,
d) Imagination: you could roam the world forever and imagine it as alive and working. You could put a lead-ball on the forward key and wander the countryside
In a few words: I'm waiting for Dagger XL eagerly !

Now, in Morrowind and Oblivion, the level of detail is so high, that imagination has little place to wander.
The world is smaller than in Daggerfall, and the combat system, being so much more polished, let the bad things become obvious:
Morrowind and Oblivion are totally imbalanced regarding skill use, combat, magic etc.
The dialogues are not polished as they could be in Fallout for example.

I think the main problem is that while running after "graphical perfection", true content, that is plot and world interaction, is not developed much.
This tendency will only stop when games have reached the state in which they're virtually indiscernible from reality. Which is not so far away, looking at some games...

While waiting, I play Conflux III.5

[raixel]

Daggerfall- All I gotta say is VEEEEENNNGANCEEEEEEEE! I remember freaking out and running around the room as a kid the first time I heard/saw that. Well, I wasnt even a kid I was like 12. Hell, it still freaks me out, and im like 30. (I cant believe I just put taht on the net)

I still have daggerfall and arena on my current comp, running under DOSBox. (BTW watch out if you get the Daggerfall expansion Eye of Argonia off the net, a lot of them are infected with the Banker trojan.)

I didnt mean to say that I didnt like the ES games, just that because they are so huge they suffer from a lack of polish. I LOVE them. I have probably spent a thousand hours of my life on the entire elder scrolls series over the years.
But as Joramun said, I am kinda afraid of the direction the games are taking. IMHO, Morrowind is the most perfect ES game made, as far as graphically. The bizarre landscape and creatures are amazing, and the NPCs all look like some sort of crazy Babylonian painting. It *really* looks alien. Even the humans. But Oblivion, with all the plain Imperials running around, and the mideval Europe atmosphere. It just was missing something as far as immersion, something its predecessors had.

[Ameena]

Yeah, and the voices (or lack thereof) were a bit pants in Oblivion too - it seemed like they had only about four different voices for the whole thing so one person would say a line in one voice and then completely change when they said something else (it was usually the random comments you'd get as you walked past someone in a town or whatever). At least in Morrowind you could usually tell which race was addressing you by the sound of the voice - certainly races like Khajiit and the three elven races were distinguishable. And probably Argonians too, though I can't picture what they sound like off the top of my head right now.

[raixel]

LOL yeah. That ALWAYS cracked me up. Especially the beggars in Black Marsh, I think it was. One min theyre all *old man wheezy* and the next min they sound like an Imperial guard.
Stop! You have violated the law! Pay the court a fine or serve your sentence! All your stolen goods are now forfeit!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r_2Jduxc2P8 <------- Tghe Imperial Guard Song. Dont blame me if it gets stuck in your head. Also see the one thats the same song to Fallout 3 videos. (and now theres a new vegas one)

[Ameena]

Black Marsh? That must have been in one of the first two games - Morrowind takes place in...well, Morrowind, and Oblivion takes place in umm...can't remember its name actualy but it's the heart of the Imperial lands. It's not Tamriel, is it, 'cause that's the name of the whole world. I do know that the Black Marsh is where there Argonians come from, though (and it's also where you find the Forgotten Tower where the Countess lives with a big treasure chest full of...ohh no wait, wrong game ). I think the Khajiit come from Elsewyr or however you spell it, and I gather it to be a desert from the way Khajiit sometimes greet/acknowledge you with "May you walk on warm sands, friend".
But yeah, the voicing in Oblivion was silly . I think if they hadn't made so many little changes like that from Morrowind, I'd've enjoyed it more. It was a bit boring seeing pretty much only Imperials wandering around - I think there may have been more Imperials in Oblivion than there were Dunmer in Morrowind. And Imperials are boring .

[Sphenx]

But yeah, the voicing in Oblivion was silly .

And a bit tired ... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FlRClpa ... re=related

They should use speech synthesis for the next episodes, so that they could have plenty of voices ...