Launch of new Skyrim site

The only thing that I find quite irritating is the blood splatter on screen. They did this with Fallout 3 and FNV and quite frankly it's annoying and makes very little sense.

I'm not convinced by the third person view either but being able to use either hands for spells is cool.

Nice finishing moves, let's hope they get a decent dialogue system.

Carabas wrote:

The only thing that I find quite irritating is the blood splatter on screen. They did this with Fallout 3 and FNV and quite frankly it's annoying and makes very little sense.

I wonder if there will be an option to turn it off from the options menu. I hope so - it kinda looks cool, but I think it will get annoying after a while.

Or maybe someone could make a simple mod that removes it?

Paul71 wrote:

Carabas wrote:

The only thing that I find quite irritating is the blood splatter on screen. They did this with Fallout 3 and FNV and quite frankly it's annoying and makes very little sense.

I wonder if there will be an option to turn it off from the options menu. I hope so - it kinda looks cool, but I think it will get annoying after a while.

Or maybe someone could make a simple mod that removes it?

If we can't turn it off I am sure one of our talented modders will fix that quickly. I do love having my enemies turn into torches or fly apart with a critical hit but I too think the blood spatters on screen will get annoying.

Well I've used and tweaked a mod in order to do this with Fallout New Vegas but I couldn't get rid of all the blood and I couldn't disable it (although I've tried). I got rid of the most annoying effect but judging by the video alone it looks like they went overboard with this blood splatter in Skyrim.

It's silly because it breaks immersion since it means that the screen is like a camera and the blood splatters all over the lens... Whereas the game puts you in your character's place in subjective view. That doesn't seem to make sense to me but perhaps I've overlooked something.

It doesn't make sense to me unless they mostly used third person view when developing and didn't think of what it looks like in subjective view. I prefer subjective view for combat., third person or bird's eye view for exploring.

Something I didn't like in Oblivion was that you could be wearing a full suit of steel armour but end up looking like a pincushion when hit by arrows. Arrows would not go through steel armour unless they were spelled and the scenes I am thinking of the arrows were often iron. An expert marksman might hit a joining and cause serious damage but not the breast plate for instance. In fact some of the arrows went through the bidt abd iyt tge itger sude, Tiy sgiykd gave beeb dead ir at keast dusabked,

Oh well, this is fantasy and a game so we have to suspend some disbelief. As long as it is fun that is what counts.

I'm only concerned about the bits that matter: story, dialogue and stuff. A game may look good it has to offer more than eye candy to be great.

Also the man in the video presentation talked about pine forests, I hope he meant fir trees because it would be weird to get cone trees that way north.

We had barking wolves in Oblivion. Drove me crazy. We could easily end up with pine trees in Skyrim. Some things just don't get properly checked out.

Speaking of wolves I hope they run in packs mostly at least three or four. Wolves are pack animals which is what makes the Lone Wolf a unique character. Just like Carabas who is very unique.

There's now a new poll on the blog for people to vote and comment on what they thought of the gameplay demo

Voted and posted a comment. Justthe blood spatter as major dislike and fir trees as minor but it does bother me that Bethesda doen't check have some kind of check on what may seem minor details but can be very annoying to some people.

The barking wolves in Oblivion drove me bonkers.

Updated blog with two new gameplay videos from E3 today

It's the same footage as yesterday but interspersed with a whole lot more - about 12 minutes in all.

You'll see the UI, the menus, the Dragon Wall, conversations, crafting and lots more that we didn't see before. Wow!

One interesting update from E3 today is that they used 70 voice actors in Skyrim compared to only 14 in Oblivion.

Obviously its going to make for a more diverse experience instead of every single Nord (or whatever) having EXACTLY the same voice

I posted the video of the interview that reveals this (and a few other things) on my blog

The voices are great news. Good for Bethesda, they got the message that it isn't the name that counts but the voice.

Thank you for the news and the update.

Paul, I have a question. I posted this in "The Word of the Day" thread not only here but on Dragon Captions.

mundify \MUHN-duh-fahy\ , verb;

1. To purge or purify.
Origin: Mundify is built from two Latin roots, mundi-, "to clean,"

Nowena noticed the similarity to the name given to The Elder Scrolls world, Mundus. We wonder if the name is intentional, a world of cleansing, a world to be purified or to be purified in. Are you aware of any references to the meaning of the world name?

Ran across a reference that says tha 'Mundus' is latin for 'world'. I guess that is the simple answer. Too bad mundify or mundi would be much more interesting.

Yes, I believe it is the latter, ans simpler, answer

Too bad, I think the first is much more interesting.

Hope you had a good time on your vacation. Your Blog is doing nicely with people commenting even when you aren't there. I like being able to reply to a specific comment too.

That guest feature is also a nice touch. I hope you continue it. Not frequently but occasionally to add a little extra spice. I would like to see if I can come up withsomething . My time is a bit limited right now due to a family death but it also might be a good distraction for me to try.

Congrats to Paul for reaching 50,000 hits on his blog!

I haven't posted much myself but I appreciate the work you've done and so do some of my real life friends (the ones that don't find English too challenging).

Keep up the good work Paul.

Congratulations, Paul.

Thanks folks

I genuinely continue to be astonished not only by the numbers, but by their exponential increase. It's not at all impossible that it might get to 100K by the time the game is released, which is kinda scary.

Scary in a good way.

I think that it is entirely possible since people all around the world are going to be more interested in the following months.

100K doesn't seem impossible.

Well done sweetie

According to TESNEXUS it has been confirmed that Skyrim will use Steamworks.

I'm not surprised. The problem with Steam is that you have to run a third party program to be able to play a game. The other thing is that you have to remain off line if you don't want Steam to update your game and patch it without notice which can sometimes screw your game if you're running mods. The only good thing is that you don't have to worry about your DVDs anymore. I'm not a big fan of social networks and I can't understand the appeal of having such networks for games -especially when you're playing a single player game and just want to be left alone.

When I first heard about it I liked the idea because it gave developers a chance to put out games without having millions to spend on advertisement. Gave the little fellow a chance I thought. I don't like it that the big developers are going that direction and forcing players to use it. I like having a disk and don't mind using it. how man disks did we have for the BG series?