Skyrim

[brisk]

*surprise

[brisk]

[xer0s]

Apparently if you install to HDD on XBox 360 you're getting crappy textures:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digit ... n-xbox-360

Just a FYI for those playing it on XBox

Damn, installed it cause I thought it'd make the loading faster. Looks like I may need to uninstall. Any word on an update coming for this?

[Eraser]

Word is that Bethesda's making real good progress here: they went from "this problem doesn't exist" to "ok, there may be a problem here"

[MKJ]

actually, the word is that theyre working on a fix;
http://kotaku.com/5858743/bethesda-work ... alling-yet

[xer0s]

Uninstalling won't destroy my character or progress?

[Κracus]

Find out where teh save file is stored. probably in your user profile somewhere and just make a copy, "should" be fine but I'd google it if I was you.

[MKJ]

no, uninstalling 360 games never fucks up any savegames or preferences. its just another file in the memory tab, prolly called Skyrim with "Game" as description.
tip: it's the file thats about 5 gigs big

[Tormentius]

Bethesda improved on Oblivion in every way and really raised the bar for the RPG genre. Even though I'm really early into the story Skyrim is quickly becoming one of my favourite games.

I just started the Stormcloak quest chain after spending a ton of time exploring and looting random caves and bandit hideouts. The dragon fights are a good challenge and make for entertaining fights but giants are absolutely brutal.

Did anyone else go the werewolf route? It makes clearing out caves or bandit forts much easier. They balanced the power by making you watch where you change since normal citizens and/or allies will attack you on sight when shapeshifted.

[Tormentius]

are you fuckers thieving, pillaging and raping at every opportunity?
It seems that an honest day of work doesn't get you all that much, in this land.

Just loot bandit forts and caves then sell, sell, sell. I haven't stolen anything yet and have managed to do a lot of skill training, buy and furnish the house in Windrun, and have a bunch of cash kicking around waiting for some decent armour upgrades.

[xer0s]

What is y'all opinion on going Stormcloak or Imperial Legion? I am leaning toward Legion, but I also remember something along the lines of "Forget the list, off with his head!".....

[Don Carlos]

OK I am sold....I need this game in my life. Payday Friday, it will be mine...

[fKd]

both the legion and the stormcloaks have their good and bad traits, its a tough call.

[Eraser]

Gabe wrote this at Penny Arcade about his experience with Skyrim:

In the end it comes down to the same problem I have with all these sorts of open world games. I find them sort of paralyzing. When I meet a group of people in Skyrim and they want me to join their cult or whatever I just freeze up. If I do join it, will I miss out on some cool thing later? If I don’t join it, are they going to have some rad adventure without me? No matter what I choose I feel like I missed out on something awesome. I’m not picking a direction to go, I’m deciding not to go a hundred other directions. Obviously I’m a crazy person but that’s just how these games make me feel. I need a much more directed game experience to have a good time.

At the risk of people using this as the be-all-end-all argument against me for liking Rage, I'll come clean and say I often feel the same with these kinds of games. I see you peeps talking about Stormcloaks and Legion. Being forced to choose between the two would make me feel like I'm missing out on all the content I'd experience when I would've made the other choice.

[MKJ]

its basically the epitome of replayability, innit?

[Eraser]

Replayability on a game that'll take 50 hours to run through once? I dunno, it's a bit excessive.

[MKJ]

exactly. tackle the world as a thief once, try your luck as a mage the other. it will be a totally different game set in the same world.
beats replaying a game to get all collectables, imo

[Foo]

Replayability on a game that'll take 50 hours to run through once? I dunno, it's a bit excessive.

oh no there is too much game!

[Eraser]

Well, too little time tbh

You know, it's an interesting discussion. People are often complaining that games are too short, but statistics have on more than one occasion shown that most people never finish games they start playing. My personal complaint with extremely long games is that there's too much to play these days. This season, I want to play Rage, Gears of War 3, Batman: Arkham City, Assassin's Creed, wrap up LA Noire and pour some time into From Dust. To be able to do that, with the time I have, I'm going to have to skip Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3 and Skyrim. All games I would love to play but just decided not to (at least, not yet) because I simply don't have the time.

So if I am forced to either play both Rage and Gears of War 3 or make the choice to do Skyrim then I'd choose Rage and Gears because it's more variety and allows to me reminisce and talk about two games rather than one. Personally, I'd rather have 3 short games than one really long game.

In the past when I still was a student this issue wasn't really there because I had both oceans of time I could spend on gaming and there just weren't as many games that I really wanted to play.

[brisk]

There isn't a strict time frame to finish these games in you know. You can buy Skyrim and still enjoy it, even if it took a year to complete. It;s about the journey afterall, not the ending (which usually sucks in video games anyway)

I've played 10 hours of it now, usually in the early hours after I finish work and it's the kind of game that is better spent taking your time anyway. There is so much to do/explore that even if you do marathon sessions with it, you'd still only scrape the surface... and besides, that's an easy way to exhaust yourself and lose interest in it anyway.

I'd still rather have a long game that took me a year to finish than spend £40 on a 5 hour game that I forget about the moment it's over.

[o'dium]

Stick me in the "too little time" cat as well Everytime I sit down and try and play, I just keep getting reminded how fucking EPIC this thing is, and I get a little side tracked. Its so big I keep thinking "God, do I REALLY have the time...?" so I just mess around... I spent a good half hour the other night looking at the detail they put into the skeleton models lol, although thats because I'm trying to make one atm... But yeah...

Amazing game is, simply, amazing. But these days I just can't sit and game for 12 hours straight... When did real life have to become so boring

[Eraser]

There isn't a strict time frame to finish these games in you know. You can buy Skyrim and still enjoy it, even if it took a year to complete. It;s about the journey afterall, not the ending (which usually sucks in video games anyway)

This is true, but also a good way of having games pile up on me.
You know, what I said earlier about being afraid to miss out on content in a game that's so open as Skyrim also counts cross-game I guess.

If I made the decision to play Skyrim, then I know I'm not going to play any other game any time soon. That by itself is already a problem, because I'd probably get bored with the game after 2 months, but if I'd sit through it then by the time I'm done with Skyrim, there will be other games I want to play as well. I'd play those games because they're "current" and I would end up completely skipping Batman.

So there's really a time management issue coming into play and because of the limited time I have, I'd sooner pick up a game that is relatively short because I know I'll be able to finish it and enjoy another game I want to play as well.

Also, in my own experience I take a lot longer to finish games in absolute playtime. For example, Rage was said to be 8 hours or so. I think I took nearly double that amount of time to play all the way through it.

[Eraser]

Stick me in the "too little time" cat as well

Yeah right, mr "100%-ed it"

[brisk]

You need not worry about missing content though decisions you make, simply due to the sheer amount of missions available. It was the same in Oblivion and the Fallout games. For me, there is always a kind of a cut-off switch that occured around the 50 hour mark where I felt I had experienced everything I needed from the game and would just finished the main mission to complete the storyline. In each of these games, i'd estimate that there was at least another 50 hours or so of side missions that I probably missed, but I never felt like I was missing out just because I didn't play them.

It's nice to have choice in your games, where actions have genuine consequences. It let's you play a game your way and you have to deal with the fallout (if you pardon the pun). I have noticed though that by the end of Bethesda's games, you can still usually choose to side with a particular faction, even if you've been an arsehole to them all game, so you never really need to worry about burning all your bridges for the most part.

And lol @ odium

[Κracus]

Well I'm playing this now. Pretty fucking neat so far. I find myself completely at a loss to pick a class though, I just want to do everything... not sure about choosing night elf either...