13-Jun-2011 How Bethesda stole the show with The Elder Scrolls V
Matthew Pellett saw Bethesda's next Elder Scrolls title at E3 in Los Angeles last week, and it impressed him so much he exploded into 17 conscientiously subtitled pieces. Here's the lot, plus the pick of our Skyrim assets to hammer the point home.
The Creation Engine
If we didn't know better, the visual and technical gap between The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim could only be explained away by a leap in console generation. But despite the gulf in world fidelity, both games run on the Xbox 360. The rise in quality is down to the Creation Engine: a technical piece of wizardry so impressive Bethesda could probably make a squazillion dollars - give or take a couple - by licensing it out to studios wanting develop with the best technology available.
The World
Huge and visually arresting, Skyrim is a land any gamer could happily lose 200 hours of their life in and still feel like there was more too see. Dungeons, towns, cities, forests, mountains, fields and everything else have gone into one of the finest looking environments conceived in a videogame. Even the was world map has been incorporated is special: check the map and the camera will swing skyward for a Google Earth-like overview of the land. Once you're done browsing the world from the birds-eye view, closing the map brings the camera swooping back down and into your character's face.
The Xbox 360
Most multi-platform titles are demoed on high-end PCs with processors so new they've barely entered production and graphics cards that can only be acquired by taking out a mortgage. The Skyrim presentations, on the other hand, took place only on the Xbox 360 and still manage to wipe the floor with everything else, proving our console of choice still has considerable mileage under its curvy exterior yet.
The User Interface
The new user interface is so clean and crisp we were momentarily puzzled by the lack of an Apple logo. Straight edges and clutter-free screens make for a much smoother transition between menus, with the ability to swap out your equipped weapons and spells directly from a quick mini-menu being a particularly nice addition.
Radiant Storytelling
Hands up who spent hours in Oblivion poking around in the darkest recesses of the deepest cave systems in search of treasure, only to be later sent right back to the very same location on side-quests to battle people/retrieve items spawned in minutes earlier. Skyrim's solution to this frustration is a dynamic questing system that takes a close look at where you've explored and sets missions in never-seen-before locations. By the 'end' of the game you should have had ample opportunity to discover most of Skyrim's standout locations.
Woolly Mammoths
And their giant herders too. Leave them alone and they'll barely cast a glance in your direction, but start a fight and you'll have a tough task on your hands. Unless, that is, a fire-breathing dragon swoops in and makes the save by grabbing the creatures and flinging them away as happened in our E3 demo.
Third person view
We didn't use third person view in Oblivion and we won't be doing so in Skyrim either. However, the viewpoint doesn't just have its fans: for some it's the only way they want to play RPGs. This time around the game both works and looks great with the out-of-body framing, ensuring an equally exceptional experience for all.
The combat framework
It's a contentious point and deep down inside it still feels a little dirty to be excited for a fighting system so removed from Oblivion's, but Skyrim's Bioshock-esque combat mechanics are a brave experiment for Bethesda. It's not so much that combat options and techniques have been dumbed down: rather, they've been made more accessible by adopting a modal dual-hand system similar (but ultimately much more flexible than) Bioshock's plasmid/weapon pairings. LT controls the left hand, RT the right hand and if you choose to place fire spells in each, pulling both triggers simultaneously unleashes an extra powerful blast. The potential for mixing and matching styles is huge.
The little things
The attention to detail in Skyrim embarrasses other games. Wander along a river until you encounter a small waterfall and you'll see migrating salmon jumping upriver. Kill an enemy and its blood will stay smeared on your blade until it's sheathed. Climb a mountain and the force of a snowstorm will be relative to your height up the slope. But these are small touches compared with the man hours poured into fleshing out the inventory screen images. Every weapon, item and other knick-knacks and odds-and-ends have a corresponding 3D model to be viewed, twisted and turned to your heart's desire. Some models even contain hidden details crucial to solving puzzles - during the demo we saw a locked door puzzle that could only be solved by reading a code off the relevant key in the inventory item viewer.
The library
As any Elder Scrolls fan will know, the series isn't short on in-game books to collect and read at your leisure. Skyrim has over 300 tomes just begging to be absorbed.
Your voice
Imagine shouting with enough force to blast your foes out of their tower windows, over a cliff edge and down onto jagged rocks below. Or maybe yelling a chant that charges the air with energy and draws forth the biggest storm you've ever witness. Dragon Shouts bring an entire new series of abilities into play - speed bursts for boosting past traps, slo-mo effects for making fast enemies sluggish and so on - that change the was we play The Elder Scrolls.
The economy system
All areas in the realm of Skyrim have individual zones of economic activity that can be manipulated by your actions. In the town of Riverwood, for instance, you encounter a lumber mill. Mess with its day-to-day operations and the area's economic growth will shrivel and eventually collapse. Take a job and the industry might flourish instead.
Its dungeons
There are around 150 of them in all and each dungeon has been meticulously hand crafted to deliver the best possible experience each and every time you head underground. No more wondering whether you're exploring areas randomly spat out of a computer one day - these have been pieced together by some of the best world creators in the business.
The kill-moves
"The kill-moves!" a thousand Elder Scrolls fans shout in disgust, fearing Skyrim's total abandonment of its roots. Again, it's an odd addition but one that makes sense when you see the game running. Kill moves aren't used for every creature but there's nothing more satisfying than, say, hacking through a pack of hungry wolves and then being rewarded with a brutal execution animation when you take out the biggest and deadliest of them all.
The actors
Skyrim has 70 voice actors to Oblivion's 14, and between them they've recorded over 47,000 lines of dialogue. No more walking into a pub and conversing with five people who look and sound the same: now you'll find entire towns where every single person is completely unique.
The freedom
Do what you want. Go where you want. Play how you want. Kill who you want. Unparalleled freedom means Skyrim is destined to be the 360's open world of choice.
The guilds
Dark Brotherhood is officially back - a note with nothing but a black hand and 'We Know' scrawled underneath was visible during the E3 presentation - and because Bethesda's keenly aware of how much people enjoyed it in Oblivion they've seen fit to make changes to the other guilds. That's why the fighters' and mages' guilds won't be returning in their classic forms.
