Skyrim

[wholehole]

I fail to see how a lack of resistance to specific elements makes the game worse than it was before. That's just one pretty minor issue compared to all the stuff they've fixed

And the Dragon flying backwards? He's just showing off how bro he is. I'd fly backwards if I could

To be fair, I tend to have a higher tolerance to the bugs in Bethesda's games than usual. I guess I feel like there's bound to be bugs in a game of that size, considering all the variables and data it's throwing around and keeping track of.

[retroed]

I finally managed to bag me the official guide book for Skyrim! GAME have it in stock again online, £17.99.

[Sambob]

I fail to see how a lack of resistance to specific elements makes the game worse than it was before. That's just one pretty minor issue compared to all the stuff they've fixed

Its not a huge deal as far as your character goes, its more that stuff like frost golems and frost trolls etc are now easily damaged by frost type spells, same with fire and frost dragons and so on.

[Sly Reflex]

"Amaaaaaaaaazing" is how this is described in the thread title. While I wouldn't go that far, it is pretty good. The bugs are starting to get on my tits already though, 6 hours in and I've seen some awful shit already. It could become potentially game breaking. It does have the "One more thing" about it, I really wanted to finish up, but I kept going for one more turn in before throwing in the towel because I was tired.

[Sambob]

'pretty good'? And near game breaking bugs.... When you sleep, is it on a bed of spikes and wasp stings just in case you happen to get comfortable? Back under the bridge for you.

[Pikman]

Well I'm 33hrs in, lv21 or so (I reckon im making slow progress?) and LOVING it still. Sure there are some weird bugs (keep expecting them playing Zelda now too sadly) but I just walk on and enjoy the next event

Hopefully the next patch will sort out the dragon behaviour, that's the worst thing..

[Jimboxy]

I had a floating Mammoth, which was game breaking in the sense I couldn't stop laughing and had to but down the controller. Hoping to get back into this after I've finished up Assassins Creed 2.

[Sly Reflex]

'pretty good'? And near game breaking bugs.... When you sleep, is it on a bed of spikes and wasp stings just in case you happen to get comfortable? Back under the bridge for you.

In my 6 hours playing, I've already seen about 20 or so silly bugs, raging from crabs doing the geddan dance in the middle of the air, guys walking with invisible torches when they are meant to have them so you can see in the dark, I've seen salmon jumping out of the road when they should be jumping in the water in a few meters away, a pair of walking axes, several hangs where I've been rushed by bandits. Moments where people I've talked to aren't doing what they are supposed to do sometimes they ae obscured by walls or go invisible due to clipping issues, a fox walking under water like it aint no thing, I've taken stuff off rickshaws numerous times only for the thing to disappear or be flung 10 meters away. The game breakers have normally involved the AI, in follow me type missions I've seen it walk into corners and get trapped, stand in front of doors it's meant to go through for long durations, get interfered with by outside sources such as NPC's and enemies which cause it to fuck up. I've been in dungeons where a follower is meant to be with you to trigger a solution, but for some reason they've just locked up and I've had to trek back to unfreeze them. I've had NPC's say "Follow me" then instantly piss off without no warning or markers as to their where abouts. It's buggy as fuck and it detracts away from the whole thing, as soon as you get immersed something stupid happens and snaps you right out of it. When you've to stand about for 5 minutes hoping that the AI is going to do what it's programmed to do, I'd call that a near game breaker. I know Oblivion was fucking loaded with bugs, but they never seemed as frequent as what's happening here.

Maybe you're just easily pleased? There's a Nintendo DS game where you draw circles over and over, you should try that, it sounds right up your street.

[DANGERMAN]

maybe your 360 is on the way out

Sam is playing the pc version anyway so he wont see the same bugs. The PC version

[Sly Reflex]

I spent over an hour last night just walking around a city just talking to everyone. Of course, now my quest list is as long as my arm, but whatever. I'm trying to save up to buy the house next to Britney Spear so me and Lara Croft have somewhere to live. I'll finally have somewhere to drop all the fuckign dragon bones then, as Lara Croft must be really tired of holding them now.

Speaking of Lara, what's the deal with her getting hurt. I've seen her crawling around a few times, but one time she actually died and I couldn't actually be bothered to cart all the bones around so reverted to an older save where she was alive and well and in bone carrying shape.

Also, I went down to a place called Riften to kill some old lady and learnt it was the home of the thieves guild. People kept commenting that I should wear some clothes, so I puled the camera back to reveal that they'd actually stolen the armour off my back. Set of bastards.

[Sly Reflex]

I played this for 10 hours today. It felt like I'd been playing about 3 hours, this game just creates a serious time vacuum.

[illdog]

Lydia and me killed our first dragon last night. I mean this was the third one thats fallen whilst ive been involved but this particular dragon fronted on me and my hoe whist we were out in the wilderness and we had to show the motherfucker what time it was, nawhaimsayin? It was fucking epic too, both of us shooting arrows from distance, Lydia going ape shit when the dragon touched terra firma, me healing her with my magic, then sending 1.21 gigawatts of electric shit up his winged ass untill BRAPPABRAPP, he's toast. Bones and scales in Lydias D&G clutch purse and then sex in a bush to celebrate. It was night time too.

Nag said:everytime i try to make my way to a destination something will catch my attention and i'll bugger off and do that instead.

Me too, i cant walk ten foot without thinking 'ooh, whats over here', then im 20 miles from where i first started out and ive done two quests that interupted the one that interupted the one before. Fabulous shit though, i cant get enough at the moment.

It did stop autosaving for a while and i lost two hours when i died (i'd got too involved to remember to manual save - lesson learned) and i cant get a dude (Alik'r?) out of jail despite paying his bounty but otherwise its all gravy. Epic gravy.

[Sly Reflex]

Man, The Dark Brotherhood quest line is great. I was trying to explain to Hendo at the time, but there were people in the party who intended to play the game so I didn't want to spoil it for them. The story of the quest line makes sense on it's own, but when you pair it up with the previous game, it's exemplary.

Overview ahead. I'll spoiler it just in case any cunt has yet to play one of the best earlier current gen titles.

After murdering someone in Cyrodiil, you are contacted by Lucien, who just seems to be some guy that sneaks into your room to perv on you while you sleep. He offers you a mission to kill some guy at an inn that in the middle of nowhere. Once you have done this, you are initiated into The Brotherhood and given contracts on peoples lives. The Brotherhood has something called the Black Hand, which is like a ranking system within the organisation. Each finger represents a band of assassins operating under Speakers, while the thumb is the Listener. It appears at the time that the Listener is listening through the grape vines for people performing the Black Sacrament while passing this skill off as talking to the Night Mother. The Black Sacrament calling for The Dark Brotherhood to come and take the contract the caller wants.

As you do jobs for Lucien from various drop boxes he has left about, it appears that someone is praying on members of The Dark Brotherhood and bumping them off. Eventually, it's all traced back to Lucien and he is killed for betraying The Dark Brotherhood. It is only then that you learn that it is you as a player that has been killing off the members of The Dark Brotherhood because someone was tampering with the drop boxes containing orders from Lucien. From there on you quest your way through and find out that it is the Listener that has infiltrated The Dark Brotherhood and is crippling the organisation from the inside with the hopes of destroying it forever. In a culmination of events, you find out the Listener is an unsuspecting man that prays at a fountain in one of the capital cities which harbours the tomb of the mysterious Night Mother underneath it. The Listener opens the tomb with the intention of killing the Night Mother, but you confront him and kill him. You then become the Listener. It is then you become aware that people perform the Black Sacrament, the Night Mother hears the ritual and passes it onto the Listener, who then passes it further down the chain of command to be carried out.

Now Skyrim spoilers.

The quest line opens with a young boy who had escaped an orphanage and wanted the owner of it dead. You investigate it and sure enough, all the Balck Sacramant is all over the floor and the kid begs you top murder this woman. You go find this woman and of course she's a massive cunt. You rub her and think nothing more of it. Eventually you get a letter telling you that "We know". After having a sleep, you are kidnapped and introduced to the leader of The Dark Brotherhood. It turns out that you stole the contract that they were going to fill, and so not to bring dishonour on yourself, must kill another contract. All 3 of them are cunts, so I did them all in. You are then invited to join The Dark Brotherhood. Upon arriving at the hideout, it turns out that there are only a few brothers left and they are run under the leadership of a dictatorial leader who does not believe in the Night Mother and just relies on word of mouth of people performing the Black Sacrament to find out victims. It is basically a glorified assassins guild. A few missions in and it turns out that the Night Mother is in danger of being desecrated so they move her to the current hideout. There is no Listener and there hasn't been one for nigh on 200 years, so most members just decree the story as complete fable and ignore it. Eventually the leader suspects that one of the Brothers is talking about overthrowing the leader. You are tasked with finding out whom these so called traitors are, and to do this you must hide. The only problem is you must hide in the coffin of the Night Mother. When hidden, you learn that this traitor isn't actually talking to anyone but the coffin in the vain hope that the Night Mother will talk back. She does. But not to the lunatic outside, she does it to you whilst you are sharing the coffin with her.

This exchange kicks off a massive quest chain where you go on an execution spree to return The Dark Brotherhood to its former glory. It's truly superb, best part of the game so far for me. It's full of twists and turns and self made 'set pieces'. I played the College Guild though (which is the mages part of the game this time around) and it was nowhere near as this interesting. It's always the underside of these games that proves to be the most interesting. I'm hoping the thieves guild plot line is just as good, as so far this has been fantastic.

[Jimboxy]

I am one of those cunts, but thanks for filling me in.

[Sly Reflex]

I finished the Dark Brotherhood stuff last night. It was nothing short of excellent. I managed to bag myself another follower too, although he's annoying as fuck and I doubt I'll take him along for anything. I spent all my earnings restoring the place back to what it should be, I wasn't sure if it actually cost me more than I earned, but it doesn't matter, I'll be using that as my base of operation from now on. One of the main reasons is that I have a high bounty on my head in a few places now, I think it's up to about 5000 gold in the province of Solitude. Those fucking guards need to started getting paid danger money the instance I tread across onto their borders. There was one awesome part that couldn't have gone better if they had hard scripted it into the game

After bumping off the fake emperor, I'm confronted by the leader of the guards saying he's basically double crossed the Brotherhood. I fight my way out and jump off a ledge hoping that I land in the water for an easy getaway (I'm playing as an Argonian). Unfortunately I fuck up and drop down where there were about 5 guards wating for me, but just as I drew my sword, Shadowmare ran in and knocked them all flying and picking me up, We start running through the docks avoiding arrows and all sorts of shit, it was basically a riot where everyone was after my blood. I hot foot it back to to the Sanctuary and it starts to rain really heavily, culminating in me arriving to witness the leaders men burning my hideout to the ground. By then the rain was pouring and there was fork lightning happening, every backstab or finisher seemed to be accompanied by a loud bang and a flash of light.

Interestingly the Dark Brotherhood stuff carries on after you finish it, to the point where the contracts are eating into quests given to me by the mark. I think I'll hold off rubbing these marks until I know I can wring out every last bit of XP.

Ended up with some bugs on show. At one point the frame rate decided to slow to single figures for no fucking reason at all. On my journey an enemy decided to attack me, but it's area of effect spell managed to clip a farmer. For some reason I ended up with the bounty put on my head. I had 2 or 3 freezes where I had to reset the console. A dragon managed to fuck itself up by perching itself in a building, making it impossible to damage it. The weirdest one I've found is that I can duel wield a sword I only have 1 of, and that its magic never ever goes down. I'm not going to complain too much about that one though, it's going to come very handy.

[Sly Reflex]

I started the Thieves Guild stuff. It's pretty good for getting gold, but by god is it fucking boring. I think the plot revolves around those strange shapes I've been seeing on some buildings (they look like PlayStation face buttons), although I could be wrong. I didn't look at the note I got, but I'm pretty sure I've seen buildings with these markings on them.

[hinn888]

The thieves guild has fucked me over, you need at least hold one part of the original armour they give you otherwise you can't complete the questline, I sold it ages ago but apparently the shop keeper holds onto it, no idea where mine is

[Sly Reflex]

I'm wearing mine. It's fucking rubbish for any combat, but it boosts all the thief type attributes up quite a bit.

[Chinzon]

A while back I stopped following Rab Florence (whose work I love, for the most part) on twitter, because he was banging on and on about how much he hates Skyrim (cool, I guess it's his opinion and all that) and he actually started blocking people when they called him up on it (not cool). What a wankbag.

[illdog]

What a wankbag.

Anyways, this game is thuper awethum. I think im actually in love with Lydia, i like her scent and the way she walks. She picked up an ice staff (off a mage i killed) all by herself and now she fucks people up frost style whenever she wants. She's my queen and i will never let her die.

Im doing the College of Winterhold stuff at them moment, quite enjoying it too. Its the first set of quests ive actally dedicated myself too, i spent the first 8 hours just wondering around cooing at all the pretty things, talking to everyone and 7 trillion quests. Im a High Elf so im pretty good with Magika from the start and ive been beefing up my Destruction and Restoration. Im also maintaining speech and lockpicking.

I havent yet played a a session untill i was bored, ive always turned it off because of stupid RL.

By the by, i cant seem to sell my Dragon Bones/Scales anywhere, am i being stupid?