TES V: Skyrim *'*'BEARDS CONFIRMED'*'*

[Spoo]

agreed, dude. dragons are a staple of almost every fantasy game around these days. while i think they're cool and all, i believe the improvements on npcs will be a much better addition.

you obviously didnt watch the g4 hands-on demo. dragons are their own category because they have their own ai coding that makes them unlike pretty much anything else in the game.

The fact that the dragons have great AI makes the dragons special. As I said, any game can add in awesome scripted dragon events, but it takes good AI to make them special. I mean, the replay value of this game will be excellent just because of the unexpectedness of dragon encounters.

 

[Jason]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9eGtyqz4gY

 

[Fusty]

Ahahaha, that was pretty much my reaction when I found out about the game.

 

[Fusty]

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1207390-skyrim-fan-interview/

Answers to some of the questions that the fans have asked.
I'm surprised they added romances, but it could be fun if it's done well. (Apparently you can start a family, let them move in with you etc.)

 

[Venetia]

actually that was totally something i had been hoping they'd add! it was like, i could have tons of houses, but they'd be all empty and shit unless i forced one of my random fanboys/lackies/henchmen to stay put inside it.

 

[Fusty]

Yeah I was hoping for it too, I just thought they'd never add it, I was so happy when I found out you could get a servant for your house in Skingrad in Oblivion. :P
I just hope your spouse will have some interesting dialogue or a few random quests, just a few things to keep the characters interesting.
And pets, I WANT A PET

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Romance, that's interesting? I usually don't pursue romance in WRPGs, unless I can be with a girl... as a girl. I feel odd pursuing a dood when I have Star next to me... Plus, the guys are never cute in my opinion. o.o Of course, that can allllll change in this game!

Still looking forward to it!

 

[flowerthief]

Wow, romance too? Cool! This just keeps sounding better and better. It's already the most anticipated game I've ever anticipated :D

Are there really players who only play in 1st person or who only play in 3rd person? I just don't understand that. In a game like this (in fact, in most 3D games, if you ask me) you really do need both. 3rd person is better suited for character movement while 1st person is better suited for ranged combat and examination of the environment. Freely allowing the player to switch between views as needed is a hugely important feature.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

What? I play in 1st person only because it's more immersive that way. Going to third person breaks the 4th wall. I don't know how you think 3rd person is better for movement. I can't stand, and generally won't play, any games where you have to move in 3rd person. In fact, the ONLY reason I ever use the 3rd person view is to see how my character looks.

Also there's some bad news. Armor is being simplified so that the top (IE, cuirass) is being merged with the bottom part (greaves) so you can't mix and match armor types and you have less slots for enchantment :[

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

I don't like armor, so I don't really care. I do care if I can wear heavy armor as a girl, and still keep my girlish figure. ^^

I hope they change that. I wanna look like a woman! :D

P.S. I love 3rd person view for staring my cute self and wondering around, and 1st person for fighting. But I hate first person, because games are scarier that way. D=

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

I hate first person, because games are scarier that way. D=

That would be because it's more immersive, no? :P IE, it puts you closer to what's happening in the game and makes it more "real"

 

[Daxis]

meh, i get headaches playing anything first person for too long. Generally, 3rd person is cooler, since I can actually see myself and shit. Immersion doesn't really have any affect on me, i guess.

God, when I first played first person games I was like.... wtf. This sucks.

 

[Venetia]

I don't like armor, so I don't really care. I do care if I can wear heavy armor as a girl, and still keep my girlish figure. ^^
I hope they change that. I wanna look like a woman! :D

Haha I feel so silly but yeah i agree w/ you.
Like it's less realistic for heavy armor to still make a chick look like a chick (and even LESS realistic for it to be "sexy")
but yeah i tend to stray from it too purely b/c it looks bad on femchars lol
(also b/c i always play assassin/marksmen etc)

 

[StrawberrySmiles]

Yay! I always thought I was strange. Like, when I play as a girl (which is always, haha), I never wear helmets or heavy armor. I dunno, I just like having a girlish figure and feeling feminine. O_oa

 

[flowerthief]

I don't know how you think 3rd person is better for movement. I can't stand, and generally won't play, any games where you have to move in 3rd person.

It's funny because I have the exact opposite sentiment. I can't stand and generally won't play any games where you have to move in 1st person. (action games anyway; slower-paced adventure games are fine in 1st person)

I don't know how you can think 1st person is better for movement. In 3rd person you can see your character in relation to the environment. You can readily see what's to the left of you, what's to the right of you, sometimes a little of what's in back of you. Being able to see the environment from the vantage of 3rd person allows you to accurately maneuver your character so that you're not running your shoulder into a wall, or stepping off the edge of a ledge you couldn't see, or wondering if you're standing over that item you're trying to pick up, or wondering if that big blackness in front of you is a wall or a tunnel, or having trouble gauging when to press the jump button for a running jump (1st person is horrendous for platforming), etc.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

See, everything you said are things that apply to you, and not me :P I can always tell where my character's feet are, I can do just fine in first person for platforming, I don't want to always see what's left, right or behind me because I couldn't in real life. The way I tell where I am and what's around me in the game is the same way I would in real life, I turn and look at it :P

 

[flowerthief]

Well, you might just be used to it, or more used to it than you are to 3rd person view. 3rd person view, I believe, is generally recognized as better facilitating movement, platforming, interaction with the environment. It's not just my opinion. I can dig up some links to gaming articles or whatnot that support that if anyone cares. I mean, that (what I'm talking about) is THE big advantage of 3rd person view.

edit: revised my thoughts below

As to why this is so...well, this is my guess: I think maybe the reason 1st person view is more cumbersome is because a game can't simulate the act of turning and looking at things as naturally as we do in real life. You said that the way you tell what's around you in 1st person view is the same as in real life, you turn and look at it. In real life we turn and look at things all the time, constantly, rapidly, accurately, even while moving, and without hardly being conscious of it. I think that an action game has trouble simulating this in such a way that allows the player to meet the demands of the game. 3rd person view solves the problem by simply backing the camera off so that the player can immediately see a bit more of what they need to see in order to maneuver accurately. That is, without having to manually turn and look.

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

Yes, but third person view is seeing rather than sensing where you are. In real life, there's a sense called the kinesthetic sense, and that's how you can know where your feet, your arms etc. are without seeing them. In a first person game, you can get a similar effect with spatial reasoning.

You've probably seen spatial reasoning as being the ability to take a flattened out shape and fold it along the lines to make a cube, and keeping track of where you are in a game is essentially the same thing. In both, you keep track of the movement of objects without actually watching the objects move. In the case of the familiar test, you have to keep track of how movements of individual panels change the shape of the whole object, and how moving one panel moves the panels that are attached to it. In the case of the game, you have to keep track of where the rest of your "body" moves based on how your "head" moves in the world.

There was a study a few years ago that also showed that first person shooters increased spatial reasoning skills more than Ballance. Ballance is a 3D puzzle game, it's one of those ball on a maze games where you have to move the ball through the maze without hitting obstacles or falling off http://www.gamespot.com/pc/puzzle/balla ... v_button=1

Anyway tl;dr as you "get used to" playing first person games, it's actually an important thing, because it's your spatial reasoning getting better, and if you can rely on your spatial reasoning, it frees up your other senses to pay more attention to what's around you rather than trying to figure out where you are. No matter how much you play a third person game, you can never look up and down at the same time, whereas if you get better with spatial reasoning, you can not have to look down.

 

[flowerthief]

But in a 3rd person game, you don't have to look up and down quite that much, and when you do it can be accomplished with relatively slight tilts of the camera.

It seems to me like you've taken the fact that something about a game is more difficult than it has to be and said about it, "but that's a skill you can get better at". Well, I suppose. And I suppose one could say the same about any number of difficult things found in games that players often complain about:

About a fighting game where the button inputs are overly complicated. One could say that you can get used to pushing lots of buttons in a small amount of time. There may even be some benefit to such a skill outside of gaming.

About a game where the player character's movement speed is extremely fast so as to be annoying to control. One could say that it trains precision.

About a game with a large repetitive and confusing maze with no mini-map. One could say it trains your memory.

Those observations wouldn't necessarily be false, and there may very well be a subset of gamers who prefer a game to be hard in those ways. But I think that for most gamers who are first and foremost playing a game to have fun, not to train their spatial reasoning or what have you, these kind of arguments turn what normally counts for good game design on its head.

I could also take some of the established advantages of 1st person view and turn those around. 1st person view is better for precise aiming, right? Then 3rd person view teaches you to "shoot from the hip" accurately, which frees up your senses to deal with other demands of the game. Or maybe it teaches you to deal with in-game conflicts without aiming a weapon at all, such as running from an enemy or subduing him by other means. I could say that but it would be rather silly to not acknowledge that 1st person view IS better for aiming.

What is wrong with just acknowledging that 1st person view and 3rd person view each have their strengths and weaknesses?

 

[DeM0nFiRe]

No you misunderstood, not as in "It's a skill that you can get better at" as in "It's a skill that can make you better" It's like mouse and keyboard vs control stick. A mouse is closer to moving your head to look around than using a control stick (Because with a mouse, like with your eyes, you "point" to where you want to look, whereas with a controller you have to "push" the view. With a controller you don't tell it where to move you tell it when to move and how fast) so a mouse might be harder to get used to at first, but as you get better you will inherently be better than you could possibly be with a control stick because it gives you better control. In the case of spatial reasoning, if you use it instead of your eyes, your eyes can be doing other things. Plus you will be able to make decisions based on your position better. You won't have to look at where you are to make a decision, you will already know.