Does anyone have this?
I need to request a game for Christmas, and have been trying to decide between Battlefield 3 or MW3. While I was looking in the shop I had a look at Skyrim and thought to myself that it would probably be more my cup o tea.

I will have a read up and find out more about it, but wondered what peoples thoughts were.

Is it basically single player like oblivion, or is it MMO?
Im not sure i would do an MMO justice...

urgh - I just googled 'is skyrim an mmo', and it seems like lots of people are (were) debating the fact.

I think though, that it is a single player game. Without getting bogged down in semantics I will say that No, it isnt an MMo in the way WoW is an MMO

Sooooo, anyone playing it?

I've got it. It's definitely single player. It's very much like the last one for me and I got bored of that after a week or so as I kept getting lost and forgetting to do quests. This one isn't too bad but I expect it to go the same way for me at least. My son loves watching me die and even hurls abuse at the killers for me but he talks all the way through so I've no idea what the story is all I know is that I've killed a couple of dragons and pretty much everyone I speak to is in some kind of group that has a grudge against another group and don't really care about anything other than the people they hold a grudge against for example Bob hates Bill and vice versa. Fred hates Tim and vice versa, Fred knows Bob an Bill but hasn't picked a side because he doesn't care yet I have to pick a side for some reason.

There's probably a bunch of replay value by choosing different paths etc as I appear to be a dual welding warrior rather than a mage or rogue and I'm sure I'd probably enjoy being a mage. Performance wise it runs well on my laptop on high so it's not too intensive.

I'm Enjoying Skyrim.. But then i've not play'd a decent game since i have no idea.. DA:2..

It is the usual Elder scrolls style, a lots been added to help more easy mode just point me at the quest I don't want to find it people.
(mods available to remove that though )

If you like ES:IV then you'll get along with it fine, world is huge, loads of quests, stoarys an depth if you want that.
An yeah replay value if you do that as Beans says lots of sides and different choices to make.

loads of random encounters if you can force yourself not to just fast travel all the time. (dragon flying up over some trees after just having killed 2 giants)

Battlefield 3 i'll be getting that (or maybe MW3) for X-mas if i can find many people with it not on Xbox so i probably wont get it lol..

I love the Elder Scrolls games. Skyrim is pretty and, as Beans said, runs well on high settings, even for slightly older machines. Massive game world. Yes, single player only. Loads of character advancement/level up shenanigans based on the skills you use most. So if you use your sword all the time, your sword skill advances quicker. If you use restoration/healing magic in off hand then that goes up too. Your character is shaped by what you do most. The main storyline is good, if a little predictable. Loads and loads of quests: main story line, sub quests, miscellaneous objectives (mini quests). My only criticism is that it does get very samey quite quickly: go here, kill this, come back; deliver this here, come back but that's unavoidable really and probably because I am focussing on the hundreds of side quests and never quite making it back tot he main storyline.

If you like single player, medieval, fantasy, rpg type games then this is a future classic.

Thanks peeps. I think I will put it on my Christmas list.
Its going to be on the xbox, so hopefully I will be able to keep the thing hidden from my son!
Like Beans my offspring seems to think anything audiovisual was crafted for their exclusive use. Despite us (or perhaps because of us) keeping quite a tight control on his TV hours, he absolutely loves DVDs. He calls them deebee deebies but we know what he means.

He has a bucket and he walks around with 3 or 4 of his favourites in the bucket at all times.

I dare say if he knew an xbox existed in our house he would make our lives miserable with constant demands to play it. We have that to look forward to

The plan is for me to play at night once the Mrs and the Son have gone to bed, but I can see the jostling for tv rights between me and the wife being interesting.

Maybe i can connect the xbox to my pc monitor?...

Yes you can. Either using youyr monitors HDMI input if you have one or there used to be a cable that ran from the XBOX to the standard Dsub connector.

sweet got all the cables and what not to play the xbox on the monitor with my pc speakers.

Been looking at the Skyrim races, and cant decide which to choose!

Looking at Bosmer for the archery, but no idsea how much difference it all makes! People on forums have basically said it doesnt relaly make a whole lot of difference.

What ya reckon?

I went wood elf for archery but it's only like a 5 point head start in skill (which goes up to 100). Bloody ugly though!

and do you miss being good at other things? like being hit?

am i making this too much like wow in my head?

I went Argonian for the underwater breathing.

tbh it doesnt seem to make much difference what you choose.
My only advice is to level BS and Enchanting to 100 in amongst dotting some over points around what you think are relevant to you. For BS take the shortest perk point route to Dragonscale and Enchanting youll need to fill all perks.
Once i did this and crafted myself a set of Light Dragonscale armour that had more arour value than anything youll loot and even the Daedric Heavy each piece had 2 enchants on so i went bow / 1 handed damage where i could. Along with 2 crafted daedric swords that again both had 2 enchants 1 utility and 1 damage hitting for 230 each.
Have to say though it did make the game kinda dull after that. I could 3 hit dragons and anything that used to give a good fight went down quicker than a whores knickers.

Still a damn good game though. My only gripe is the issues than can arise for completing certain quests in a certain order that made later quests almost impossible to complete.

I am a dual welding cat. I went with all my points in 1 handed weapons and heavy armour and pretty much had the same result, dragons drop like flies, I only kill them as I don't want them to kill my horse. I've even taken to wondering around in light armour with a 2 handed weapon to make it a bit more interesting. It's a bit dull now though as I can use a good 2 handed weapon that has 29 damage total or 2 1 handed swords that have 79 damage each and hit a hell of a lot faster. I think once I've got all my house carls kitted out in Daedric armour I'll be giving it a break as the only thing I have left to do is become leader of the thieves.

Thanks all. Will probably forget all that advice between now and Christmas, but I know where it is if I need reminding

My cat has a horse that can't die (honest, it tanks whatever attacks us). It wiped out an entire camp of Forsworn on its own (I just stayed invisible and watched the thing).

It's an okay game. It suffers from some of the things Oblivion suffered from, and fixes some of the issues from Oblivion. It also introduces a whole heap of fun glitches and bugs that make the game nearly unplayable at times. Oh how I've cursed Esbern.

My main problem with it is that you can't be *evil*. Sure, you can join the Dark Brotherhood and be an 'assassin' (or, more like it, 'errand boy'), but that's as far as it goes. Even the thieves' guild is more evil than the brotherhood (if only because the guild steals from normal people and the assassins are well.. meh). Everything in the wilderness (with the exception of very few things) are either evil or wild. See a camp? Chances are you'll be attacked. A fortress? Chances are you'll be attacked. Even if you turn into a vampire other vampires will attack you (there's no real downside to being a vampire, imo). You can't join any bandits to rape and pillage your way around Skyrim, and you definitely can't join the 'villain' or any other *fun* side. There are a few exceptions to this general rule: specific daedra quests in particular, but other than that it holds true.

The voice acting is horrible. Jesus christ but they get annoying after a while. Or at least did, until I took an arrow in the knee and after that I couldn't hear them any more.

As with Oblivion, you can join various factions: Dark Brotherhood, Mages College, Companions (aka 'Fighters' Guild'), Thieves' Guild... And as with Oblivion you can rise pretty high in the ranks of these factions. But once you do __nothing changes__. There's no investment in being the leader of ALL FACTIONS AT THE SAME TIME. There's no responsibility. You can champion the cause of several gods at the same time and they don't care at all.

Combat is shit. Or, rather, melee combat is shit. They've made it better than it was in Oblivion, but it's still not good. Magic got better, but is pretty bland.

The world is *amazing*, and I can really appreciate the level of detail that's gone into it. But if you look beneath the surface you see that the game lacks edge. There's nothing to the quests -- all quests are, really, only variations of "go to this place and --", replace '--' with "kill everything" whatever have you.

As always, certain characters are immune to death: ANY important quest giver, for instance. Believe me, there are some of them that I'd like to very much kill, but they're immune to death. They cannot be killed. Also, kids can't be killed (I smashed a daedric mace in one kid's face, all I got was a bounty on my head for 40 gold, didn't even scratch the kid).

As for enchanting and smithing... Meh. Sure, you can get the best armour there is by smithing, but who cares? The game isn't difficult enough to warrant the investment. Enchanting is such a chore to level up, too (much like smithing!).

All this said, I did waste a week or so on the game. There are some locations in the game that are really, really amazing, but that only makes the lacklustre quests stand out even more. I have to say that the best quests have been the Daedra ones. The main quest isn't even very engaging.

meh meh meh. I need another game to play, I think. Might be that Skyrim gets better once the modding community starts churning out interesting stuff.

cat-vampire-companion-assassin-mage-thief-thane-etc-etc-etc.

edit:


Sounds like you've missed the Dark Brotherhood questline.

Nope I'm the Listener. I've got the glowing eyed beast but I've had it die a few times. Mostly by falling off cliffs so I hit the F9 but if I forgot to save recently then it's a pain.

Ah.. Because other than falling to its death it's pretty much invulnerable.

Just a quick question on this if i may?

Im playing when i get a chance, and its good fun. Taking me a while to get used to various aspects of it, and trying to stop comparing it to wow!!

One thing i miss when playing it on a console is being able to tab out to a browser to do a bit of research if needed.

I can use my laptop for that if I have to, which brings me to my question - Is there a generally accepted 'best' website to use?

There are so many wiki's out there and I dont know which I should be looking at for the best info.

Any suggestions appreciated

Most of the game is fairly straight forward mate, but http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Skyrim should provide you with any answers you are looking for, alternately you can do a quick google on a specific item or info you're after.

Yeah its all pretty basic stuff im after - mainly locations of things!! Im sure once i have played a bit more I will remember where it all is.
Was after an enchanter the other night and spent ages running around looking!

Not sure if the one you linked is the same one as i found earlier today, but the google suggestion is pretty straightforward


One other quick question - do you get to upgrade all the talent perks eventually, or do you have to leave some unlearned? How important is the choice of perks?

Max level is between 70-80 approx, you should have finished the main story by then, and most of the rest too. So no you can't get em all, but should be able to get the ones you want if you concentrate on one melee wepon, ranged wepon/spell school, armor set. Level slows down alot when you get up to the 50s. Try to make your character a class type, roguey, warrior, ranger, or mage. Concentrate in the skills they need, then diversify.

TBH, perks don't make a huge difference when you have smithed your armor and enchanted it, you'll be turning the difficulty up to get a challenge. Also if you get speech up at the front desk of black briar meadery (a repeatable conversation for 25-100) then money will flow in.

Smith daggers, or hone wepons for smith skilling,
Buy petty souls, and enchant junk for skilling,
Muffle spell for illusion 0-100 quick skilling,
Just be careful how quickly you level though, leveling too fast can put you way behind mobs you are fighting if you don't have the gear to cope.

I'd also recomend getting to the lover stone first, and doing Azura/Black star, Spell Breaker as soon as possible

Ironbind Barrow has the best enchant in the game (Firey soul trap, 10 fire, 1 second soul trap, and 4k charges) on an axe you can dis-enchant