Be Excellent To Each Other

We don't have a thread yet. Looks good, dunnit?

Here is a good preview for you to read and discuss:

http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/03/18/elder ... m-preview/

I never finished Oblivion but I certainly had my money's worth out of it, I expect the same will be true of this one.

I never played Oblivion, but I played a shed-load of Morrowind ( and also never finished it ). Most of my time was spent tootling about bumbling about, doing sub-quests, killing skelingtons and amassing vast piles of cliff racer tails.

Also, insert obligatory "Rimming" joke here.

I'm tentative about this. I just don't trust Bethesda to make good games. Great potential—inevitably unlocked by modders—sure, but as boxed products I've always got bored after a few hours. They're an ‘almost, but so far off’ company for me.

I still don't know what the hell they were thinking with the levelling system in Oblivion.

I played the opening hour or so of Morrowind about 15 times and couldn't decide what sort of character to go with. Still enjoyed it, though. As for Oblivion - I only played it for about an hour with the intention of continuing at some point, but then my brother sold his copy (which I was using), and I've never bothered since - mainly because Fallout 3/New Vegas came along. Still, very excited about Skyrim. New engine goodness!

The preview I linked to may interest you - they've made some alterations to the levelling system!

Also, I wonder if Bethesda will ever learn to animate people properly. They're fantastic at environments, but good lord, every character looks like Stallone.

Yeah, their faces are appalling.

That's largely what I did, but probably more like played the opening 5 hours over and over. I once tried to play a healer / alchemist and spent the entire time fleeing from bugs and crab-things, and then running out of magic when I tried to heal myself. That was no fun at all.

Okay, I've read that preview now. It sounds like they've learned an awful lot and taken the major criticisms onboard. I'm still not going to get my hopes up, but I'm slightly interested now.

I'm being significantly more cynical towards this one than Oblivion. I think last time around, Bethesda over-promised and under-delivered (I remember them constantly banging on about how wonderful "Radiant AI" was going to be, and in the end it basically meant that NPCs could, gasp, go into and out of buildings!!!1)
Anyway, it's an Elder Scrolls game (and a Bethesda RPG), so I'll end up buying it regardless. I just hope they're a little bit more, er, humble in the run-up to launch this time around.

I became the Champion of Cyrodiil.

I will become the Champion of Skyrim.

I hope you can take off the underpants in this one.

Couldn't get into Morrowind.

Loved Oblivion, it's one of the few open world games I've really enjoyed exploring.

Fallout 3 was as much fun as shoving things down my dickhole & no, I don't have a sounding fetish.

Hopefully Rimjob will be good fun, it's already got a daft name so my hopes are high

This will probably be neat. I preferred Fallout 3 to any of the Elder Scrolls games I have played though.

Same here!

Ditto.

Then Oblivion I got relatively far into, before getting bored and fucking around with mods more than actually playing the game. A lot about that game annoyed me.

Fallout 3 was dull as fuck.

New Vegas was Fallout 3.

I loved Arena so much.

LOL oldfogey ROFLMAO!

That's basically how I'm approaching it. I am encouraged that they've spoken a lot about most of their major mistakes in previous games, but mindful that they said the same with their last two as well and while there have been improvements, they still fell pretty damn short and even Fallout 3, while much better, needed modding to remain fun for long.

As for the healer thing in Morrowind, one of the many ways that Oblivion, for all its faults, was a vastly better game than Morrowind, was that your magic recharged over time, so you didn't have to constantly run back to town to find a bed, or constantly chug potions.

I wish they'd take away the potions almost entirely, to be honest. Too much of Obliv and Fallout was about how many health items each person had, rather than how well you could actually fight. And lots of other complaints, but we'll see.

I still think Oblivion was much better than Morrowind to actually play. Morrowind was a far more interesting place, though. Hopefully they'll combine the two well.

I can't stand potions in games at all, unless they trigger themselves automatically when you're about to die. In which case, what's the point? I certainly should never have to open a menu mid-combat to avoid dying.

Yeah, Mount & Blade was something of an eye-opener there. It made everything more intense when every hit would be a possible killer, and when your health got low, you had to decide carefully whether to take the risk of fihting on, leg it, or play defensively.

The combat in general still needs work. Some mods for Obliv improved it a lot (and it was still 50 times better than Morrowind's), but Fallout's melee combat was shite. I hope for Cloudlick they've done more than just DUAL WIELD OMG

I also would like them to bring back the requirements for membership of things, and add a load of different factions to join. Oblivion had like three factions (plus a few meaningless extra ones you could join by accident that had no effect on anything and were basically just long-winded single quests), and no reason not to join all of them, as the only thing they affected was whether or not you could buy stuff in those buildings.

But! Trying to be positive.

I'm liking the look of potentially "BioShock style" magic/weapon combat, presumably using the left and right triggers. But yeah, I hope the sword play is up to scratch.

If I buy this at all, it'll be on the PC. I'll still use a 360 pad, mind.

I still prefer that to fuck off & hide round the corner until your health recovers. Health bars FTW!

True, but I think something more like M&B would work wonders - no healing potions, but after a fight, if you find somewhere quiet and hunker down for a bit, you can patch yourself up.

It'd be a good use of the restoration skill, for one thing. I get that it's a magical world, so M&B isn't a fair comparison, but having to leave and concentrate on healing could make the fights more interesting, and far less tedious and abstract than wearily pausing and clicking on another potion between every fifth spell.

Will I be able to carry over my house full of fucking nirnroot?

You will, and you can invite all of the identically campy elves round, too. One of them might pretend to be an ultra-tough, evil mercenary for a bit, but everyone will laugh so hard that it'll be impossible to take him seriously.

The screenshots look like WoW's northrend on steroids. Do Want.

Is that your lizard Decca? What is it? My girlfriend got a Bearded Dragon last week - He's ace!

He's a Egyptian Uromastyx, only sub adult right now - he's going to grow to 2-3 ft when he's an adult. Went for him over a Dragon because he's a herbivore so none of that live food malarkey.

Awesome reptile is awesome.

Is it your new avatar pic? Can't see it for some reason.

Good choice on the herbivore front... Crickets ain't nice!

Destructoid's preview sounds pant-wettingly good. Which is, of course, the whole point of previews, so reader beware. Bloody game isn't out until November though.

Edit -- an embargo must have timed out, Eurogamer have a preview too: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2011- ... im-preview

Yeah, embargoes just went up, expect Brink, Skyrim, Prey 2 and RAGE coverage everywhere.

So is anyone else getting this?

Hopefully mine will be waiting for me when I get home tomorrow night.

Mine has been despatched as of this morning, so may be on my mat tomorrow after work.

I ordered the 360 version, despite always going for the PC one with these types of games. I'm praying they've learned enough from Oblivion so I don't have to fix their awful game design myself with mods.

I'll get it when it is £20. Been waiting so long, another 10 days won't hurt.

There's too many good games!

I'm getting it for Christmas probably since i'll be a slave to mw3 'til then. Looking forward to it though, I'm expecting good things

I was well up for this before Dark Souls. Now I'm happy to wait a bit. Still got Dark Souls to polish off anyway, plus a load of other games to finish! Definitely still excited about this though. I have no doubts that it'll be excellent.

I might ask Santa for it, not in any rush to get it at launch.

It's just Fallout with swords.

Likewise.

Anyhow it doesn't come out for a year or so. I'll wait for the full release and save myself the agony of pondering whether or not I want the dlc.

Dark Souls and then Zelda will be enough for me.

After having watched the tralier and various bits and bobs on Gamespot, I very much want this, so Mrs K is getting it for me for my birthday in 3 weeks.

My only slight worry is the wandering boss fights with the dragons. They look awesome in the trailers, but I suspect they may be utterly fucking irritating.

Is that going to give me enough time to play and complete Oblivion? I have it on the PC but haven't yet got past that first town of hellness in several years of owning it.

The dragon bits from the trailer do look to be somewhat crap, granted. but i'm prepared to overlook that.

Fuck all the other "good"[1] games -- I'm getting this.

[1] as I don't like CoD or BF, the herd was somewhat thinned for me. Although I might get BF3 in time if it has staying power.

Heh. Given my lack of Live at the moment, and the fact that by the time I buy it the bezzies will have moved on, I wasn't going to bother with BF. And I'm bored with CoD games. The only other "new" game that I was likely to get was Deus Ex, and I'll just wait til Chrimble for that.