Skyrim: First Impressions

I haven't had Sven. I may pick him up just to see why he is so unwelcome.

Vilja is unbleivable. Emma has expanded her to be not just a follower but a true companion. She can now walk by your side and has a mind of her own. I hope it will not be too much of a problem to rescript her to fit the new engine.

I am still mostly wandering around, clearing out caves and ruins.

Added: A link to this appeared int Skyrim Blog. :
Tips for Tweaking your game

I didn't like Sven because he wanted me to trick Camilla Valerius into liking him. Faendal wanted the same thing, but the quest wouldn't allow me to tell Camilla that both guys were up to no good, so I ended up with Sven for a while. I dropped him rather quickly, though.

Spoiler:

Ah, yes, actually I did trick her but never took him as a companion. That was when I was trying to make my character more a callous, criminal type. Something went wrong and Now I am headed for the Bards College.

Look out for the bard with the American accent. I'd never trust a bard with an American accent.

Oi, Marquis de Carabas. I think most of the actors, especially the men, are American. The accents don't sound quite right to me. It is my opinion that the Nord accent is wrong. Otherwise except for a few glitches I love the game and the dialogue is better than Oblivion that's for sure.

The Nords sound a bit phony and the Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation was fun but it's getting old.

I think I may have been spoiled by humans in Dragon Age Origins. It's a personal bias but I prefer when supposedly medieval characters speak like Brits.

I had a look at the imdb page for Skyrim and some of the voice actors have worked on Dragon Age and Fallout New Vegas -Keith Szarabajka in particular, he did the VA for Joshua Graham in FNV and he is responsible for the Dunmer voice in Skyrim (I knew I had heard that voice before). He is also a really good actor and not just a VA. I think he has done a great job voicing Dunmers.

Even if many voice actors are indeed Americans some of the big names aren't. I've checked and some of the "leads" are actually Canadians.

I've been a fan of Keith Szarabajka since he played the vampire hunter, Holtz, in the TV series, Angel. However, I feel the accent he does for the Dunmer is pretty patchy, and seems to shift between his natural American accent to something vaguely British mid-sentence. He's got a great voice for a dark elf, though.

I don't mind American accents in fantasy... it's inconsistency that bothers me. Bethesda has always been inconsistent with accents. Look at Oblivion... Imperial men spoke with an American accent, and Imperial women spoke with a British one. Conversely, male elves spoke with a British accent and female elves spoke with an American accent. No rhyme or reason to it.

I really don't know what the Schwarzenegger accents were in aid of.

I quite liked what DAO did with accents, where they were used to differentiate nationality. Fereldans spoke with English accents, Orlesians spoke with French accents, Antivans spoke with Spanish accents, and Dwarves and Elves spoke with American accents. The accents might not all have been perfectly delivered, but they were at least consistent in-universe. In DAII, the Dalish were given Celtic accents (mixture of Irish and Welsh) to differentiate them further from the city elves. I found that gives a lot more flavor to the game world.

Whether they like it or not Canadians are Americans but that is another subject the use of American to mean residents of the USA and a bone that irks me.

Don't thing there is much difference between so called standard Canadian and so called standard American. Accents vary through out the North American continent.

I like variety in my game accents. Especially one with all the variety that TES games provide.

@Nakia: I didn't mean to rile you up. Sorry. I guess it depends on the definition of Americans. Like most people I tend to use it to refer to people from the USA and not people from the American continent.

Kana wrote:

I quite liked what DAO did with accents, where they were used to differentiate nationality. Fereldans spoke with English accents, Orlesians spoke with French accents, Antivans spoke with Spanish accents, and Dwarves and Elves spoke with American accents. The accents might not all have been perfectly delivered, but they were at least consistent in-universe. In DAII, the Dalish were given Celtic accents (mixture of Irish and Welsh) to differentiate them further from the city elves. I found that gives a lot more flavor to the game world.

I really like that in DAO. It makes sense and it is consistent. You hear a guy with a British accent and you know right away that the man is a human from Ferelden. Besides the fake French accent that Orlesians use always cracks me up. Marjolaine's in particular sounds exactly like a caricature by an English speaker. It is so contrived it becomes hilarious. Leliana however is perfect (but then the VA is French and has managed to retain a French accent).

Skyrim is very inconsistent. It's nothing game breaking but it can be really annoying at times. The problem with the different accents in Skyrim is that there is no reason why they should vary that much especially when you start noticing that some male Nords speak like Arnold Schwarzenegger and female Nords have that weird Scottish accent.

Dialogue in Skyrim has improved a lot over Oblivion but is still a weak spot in TES. At least we don't need to listen to the same voice over and over again. I find the voices rather bland none stand out in my mind.

I think that Beth did a better job with the women this time. I suspect some modder will come in and wreck them because he wants women with teen sex goddes voices, same thing with looks. Someone else with turn all the women into models. I like the look Beth came up with and as far as I am concerned the only face/body mod I would want is one that enhances, add more detail to the faces.

You know how it is. Put female nudity in your mod and it will skyrocket and become the new file of the month. That's the way the world goes.

I like female nudity as much as the next guy but I don't like the idea of Skyrim becoming a world with only beauty queens in it and I won't use any mod that changes the game this way.

As far as I'm concerned with some of the existing mods that remove some of the wrinkles from female characters (vanilla Bretons look really old) I'm already changing the game quite a bit.

Is it just me or is it hard to make a female character who doesn't look like she's either 15 or 50?

I enjoyed Skyrim, but I think I'm done with it for the time being. I've now done all the questlines.

I started up a Nord just to do the civil war quest from the Stormcloak perspective, then went back to my first character and did it from the other side. The two sides play more or less identically, making the illusion of choice quite artificial. Some of the battles were quite fun, especially with my Battlemage

Spoiler:

, but the epic feeling was somewhat ruined by the enemy pop-in. Enemy reinforcements just appear out of thin air, often right in front of your eyes. This is obviously a bit of optimization they had to do to get the game to run on consoles.

So, I think I'll be shelving this game until January when the Creation Kit is finally released. I could still go back and play through the main quest with my Nord warrior or my Khajiit thief, but I don't feel particularly motivated. While I definitely think Skyrim is a huge leap in quality over Oblivion, I don't feel like it has as much replay value as I was expecting.

The engine can't handle many NPCs at the same time and that it a really huge drawback when you want to make an epic battle and end up with skirmishes (pretty much the same thing with both Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas).

It's always the same problem with these games, they lose some of their charm when you start to get bored with the sightseeing. Then the novelty starts wearing off and it's generally the right time to take a break.

I think mods will provide the replay value. I'm currently playing my third character and I still find things to do but I don't really feel like replaying through some of the quests I've completed with my other characters.

I've decided that curiosity would be what motivates my character but I've also been toying with the idea of starting over and even of going back to playing Fallout New Vegas.

I miss not having a toolset to customize my character's appearance and gear. I've probably enjoyed making new characters and combining outfits for FNV more than actually playing the game.

Not long before the toolkit comes out. In the mean time Bethesda is patching things.

Found a link to a really good metal version of the Skyrim theme:

Spoiler:

Now that would put anyone in a dragon killing mood.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BHKLVr_Cxw&feature=player_embedded#!Ran across this on YouTube. Ienjoyed it and hope you will too..

This is really good Nakia. I like it a lot especially when the song starts picking up. Thank you.

I couldn't follow the link directly so I searched youtube and I'm posting a new link here:

Spoiler:

Thank you, Cara. Good you found that link. This song was a surprise to me. Starts quietly then goes up beat and then back to a quietoer mopd. The more I listen to it the more I like it. The video is also nice to watch as you listen.

Well I think the music is much better in Skyrim than in Oblivion. I feel it is less intrusive and less in your face which is exactly what a soundtrack should be about. After all if what makes a good movie soundtrack applies to videogames then we should be able to judge on the same principles.

Music in a game (or a movie) should be complementing the action on the screen and not take precedence over it. At times I felt that Oblivion was a bit too conspicuous whereas in Skyrim I only notice it when the Morrowind theme kicks in -which isn't that bad when you think about it.

Nothing wrong with some Morrowind nostalgia.

On an unrelated note I like the idea of Sovngarde, a bit like Valhalla and it's a nice touch. Playing a warrior is definitely rewarding when you get that "viking" vibe in the game.

I agree with you. I turned the music in Oblivion way down and finally completely off. I have the Skyrim music set at 550% and am not tired of it yet.

We should change the title of this threadit isn't first impressions anymore. I have fallento temptation and restarted the game. Same character but will concentrate more on thievery skills as I intended with the first start. Have a better idea how to do it.

Just didn't care for the way the was going. Will stay away from teh Mage guild this time. Try to ick up some restoration, destruction and enchantment skill from court mages or who ever I run across. Do things a little different. Had too many open quests especially those miscellaneous objective ones. I am in no rush I have the feel of the game. Love the secnery. Right now I am playing on medium graphics because I want to do videos. Keep forgetting to put the video capture on though.

Seems like you're having a great time Nakia!

As far as renaming the thread maybe it would be better to start a new one.