Skyrim, Skyrim, Skyrim (Updated! Twice, now!)
Akalaupdate: Skyrim has indeed exceeded all expectations. Its two-day sales total was 3.4 million units shipped, and its opening week total has since crept north of 7 million units. Might that just make it the best-selling open world RPG of all time?
There are already a number of enhancement and other mods available, including one that essentially adds a Google Street View-like function to the game.
Seriously, it’s awesome:
I can see my house from here!
Oh, and does anyone remember the…rather unique offer from Bethesda concerning how to get all their games free, for the rest of your life? Yeah…someone claimed that prize:
Megan and Eric Kellermeyer must really be into their Skyrim. Well, one of them at least. They’ve named their child Dovahkiin Tom Kellermeyer. That’s Skyrim speak for Dragonborn Tom Kellermeyer. He was born on Skyrim’s release date – 11.11.11.
Presumably, the young lad will go through life by his middle name, and have a swank — if mysterious — first initial?
Original Post: First, ample (if late) warning:
Now that that’s out of the way…Skyrim! It’s finally here, and has been all weekend. How many of you are only now emerging from the depths of your computer rooms (or living rooms), worn out after forty, fifty, or eighty hours of slaying dragons and frying things with your breath voice?
I haven’t picked up the game yet, and so haven’t played it. The reviews seem almost universally positive. Gamespot and Joystiq loved it, praising its story, gameplay, and massive world. PC Gamer and RPS loved it, and I would argue that these two later reviews are the key ones to read, since they focus on the world simulation aspects of the game in some detail. And (as Infinitron Dragon pointed out to me in an email) it’s perched atop the Steam “most played” charts, with a massive lead over the game in the #2 slot.
Actually, Infinitron also pointed out that Skyrim has broken Steam’s records for most single-day concurrent players. It did that when it hit about 270,000 players in one day. Today, it had over 287,000.
And it sounds, Ultima fans, as though Bethesda nailed it out of the park in terms of world simulation. I think I would have been impressed if the Radiant system had proven capable of even half the things described between the two articles; that it is capable of all of them and (presumably) much, much more is a thought that, frankly, floors me.
The graphics are pretty impressive, too. Image by PC Gamer.
No word yet on the toolkit, though, so…if any of you have had a chance to mess around with the Skyrim tools (if they are even available yet), do chime in with your thoughts.
The First Age of Update: It should also come as no surprise that both Skyrim and Bethesda have garnered a few key nominations at the upcoming VGAs.
There’s not much I can say that hasn’t already been said. This game is absolutely stunning, hope you get to see it for yourself soon.
There is certainly a lot to love. I have only had time to play a few hours so far but it is definitely some of the best world simulation I’ve seen in an RPG to date. There are just so many little details put in there, it’s quite astonishing.
Of course, it’s really very buggy at the moment and the inventory/menus are really not very well designed for the PC at all (I’ve given up on trying to use the mouse at all) but these things will hopefully improve with patching/modding.
The toolkit is not yet released but Bethesda have said they are trying to release it as soon as possible.
Pots on heads to hide stealing from sight. Makes perfect sense if smacking a heavy object into one’s face is normal and forgivable.
http://vimeo.com/32001208
That’s an electromagnetic field.
Even if you don’t like Skyrim, the game still has value. The publishers and the suits are looking at that 270,000 concurrent players stat as we speak, and you can bet that they’re salivating. There’s nothing managers like more than a clear-cut metric, directly measuring a product’s success.
Until now, they thought the only way to achieve that was to make linear, corridor-shooting, 15-hour campaign, Call of Duty-esque games. Now they can see without doubt that they were wrong.
This means more funding for developers that want to make bigger, deeper games. Including, hopefully, at least a few which will provide a more cerebral experience than Bethesda. Let a thousand New Vegases bloom!
The whole pot on head thing is awesome, it’s the same kind of crazy stuff we used to try in Ultima.
Arg, this is killing me. I pre-ordered it. It’s here. But I simply won’t have a chance to play until December due to moving and hosting Thanksgiving. The pain!
I’m not too far into the game, but I gotta say I’m impressed by the dungeon design.
The first dungeon I did, had a couple of puzzle which were really smart in that they involved looking around the room to find hints to solve ’em – no texts, no dialogues… just well thought out visual cues.
It also has some very cool traps like handing blades and while some would say tis is arcadish, I think this is very fitting.
And one of my favorite at this point; there was at one point a barely visible pressure plate leading a rolling grate with spike to roll around the corridor which hurt so you carefully move around it. But a short while later in the dungeon here I was faced with a group of undeads and that fight was getting too dangerous for me… so I moved back the corridor, leading the undeads to follow me, circled around the plate… and waited out of reach of the trap. As I expected the dumb undeads walked on the plate and blam: all dead, squashed by the trap.
Awesome game design.
Now of course knowing Bethesda’s game I suspect I’ll see a lot of similar or even identical stuff in other dungeons, but offering such variety and possibilities is just awesome. That was part of what made Oblivoin great, and this is true here as well.
I’m pretty amazed at the level of detail in the game. The world is truly stunning and very interactive. One thing is missing, social interation. I can now see where Garriot wants to go. Steam is awful. We need some sort of cross platform social manager to handle PC, Xbox and PS3.
I do like the map that came with the basic version.
It’s definately an awesome thing that the most in-depth, interactive RPG at the moment is making sales like this. Other companies can’t ignore it. I don’t think any other company could jump straight in to creating a game like Skyrim though. It has been several games in the making. I am amazed at how much stuff they’ve put in it this time. Mining. Smithing. Alchemy. Item Enchanting. I mean, you can even put books into “bookshelf” containers and it lines them all up for you. It is like they looked at all the mods for Oblivion and their other games and thought “We should just include all that stuff this time”. It’s awesome.
As for modding tools, there aren’t really any yet. So basic texture replacers are all that are happening at the moment.
The modding tools are probably being primed for release in order to breathe new life into sales of the game once it starts to taper off by some arbitrary number.
Two sine curves, overlapping by 50% maybe?
I doubt the toolset will bring a lot of people who haven’t bought the game to buy it honestly.
Don’t underestimate it. I wouldn’t buy these games if there wasn’t the degree of customisability that the Creation Kit brings.
If nothing else, the toolkit means people will still be buying it 5-10 years from now.
Greetings, I’m the creator of a small mod called “Alternate Weye Home” for Oblivion. The first thing I looked at when I booted up Skyrim is if the possibility of modding an alternate start would even be possible, they have changed core mechanics of the game and how it works in sync with the player character. Oddly enough assuming they do release a toolset something tells me modding will either be extremely challenging or extremely limited compared to their previous titles. A butt load of assumptions at this point lets hope they give us something to work with. Honestly though I would rather they plug those thousands of bugs before they give us modding tools. As it stands the game is unbearable unless they plan to let the modders fix their mistakes.
I’m not sure why the Toolset would be more limited considering the game is more complex than Oblivion. Besides since the creation engine is built from the Gamebryo engine I suspect the Toolset might just be an evolution of the Oblivion one.
As for bugs frankly after 30 hours I’ve yet to come upon any major issues – certainly nothing that makes it unbearable, so… *shrugs*
I think he might be referring to game mechanics rather than the abilities (or any potential lack) of the toolkit.
The Creation Kit should be fine (pretty much the same as previous games). I actually expect a little more freedom with it than previous games based on what differences I’ve been seeing ingame. The intro is a perfect example… Control of the character through scripting is something that has not been easy in the past (an alternate start is definately possible).
As for bugs, my wife has run into a few big ones… I haven’t run into any apart from the occasional crash (though I haven’t crashed since using the 4GB launcher). The UI is a pain, but that is about it.