Once again, street dates have been broken and I have obtained a copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360! Having put like 14 hours into the game over 2 days I can with some authority say:

This shit is awesome.

Let me get something negative out of the way first: If you install this game to the hard drive, some textures will look messed up. So, just a word of warning, you might want to put up with the horrible disc noises. It's not game-breaking, but it's definitely ugly in spots.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the good stuff. First and foremost, you should know this is a sequel to Oblivion. Didn't care for that game? You probably won't like Skyrim, either. Combat isn't radically different, though there are many, many options at your disposal. I find myself using one-handed weapons, sometimes dual wielding, and a lot of magic. Didn't care for magic in Oblivion, but it's too much fun not to use here. Conjuration and Destruction are my schools of choice, which lets me summon an elemental (Flame Atronach) to help me out or resurrect fallen enemies as temporary allies. Also, I can conjure up a magic sword out of thin air, which is awesome. And of course I can throw fireballs, shoot ice or zap enemies with lightning. There are some new melee finishing move that seemingly trigger at random, but be warned: enemies can also finish you off when your health is low, even when it seemed like I could've taken several more hits. If you want to play it safe, wear heavy armor and/or use shields, I guess. I'm mostly wearing light armor or robes for sneaking and more effective magic use, respectively.

The coolest new feature by far, at least for me, is the new leveling system. Gone are stats like strength and dexterity and all that other stuff. Before you cry "OMG DUMBED DOWN!", hear me out. Every time you level up, you can improve either HP, MP or Stamina, which governs sprinting, heavy attacks and carry limit. Additionally, every level you'll earn a perk point to invest in the skill tree of your choosing, and this is where the depth comes in. There are a staggering 18 skill trees. There's one for one-handed weapons, for big two-handerd, for blocking, for each school of magic, for sneaking, for archery, for lockpicking, for pickpocketing, for crafting, for enchanting, for just about anything. It lets you pick the skills that would be useful to your playing style.

The game is just bursting with content. There are so many quests to do, factions to join and dungeons to explore it can be overwhelming. It's very easy to get sidetracked. I hadn't even touched any story quests for the first 5 hours or so, past the introductory section. I can easily see this being a hundred-hour game, if not moreso. I have no idea how long it would take if you stick to the story stuff, but why would you want to? The dungeons are now all unique and no longer suffer from Oblivion's repetitive templates.

Oh, and a word of warning: Don't mess with the giants. Seriously.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Once again, street dates have been broken and I have obtained a copy of Skyrim for the Xbox 360! Having put like 14 hours into the game over 2 days I can with some authority say:

This shit is awesome.

Let me get something negative out of the way first: If you install this game to the hard drive, some textures will look messed up. So, just a word of warning, you might want to put up with the horrible disc noises. It's not game-breaking, but it's definitely ugly in spots.

With that out of the way, let's talk about the good stuff. First and foremost, you should know this is a sequel to Oblivion. Didn't care for that game? You probably won't like Skyrim, either. Combat isn't radically different, though there are many, many options at your disposal. I find myself using one-handed weapons, sometimes dual wielding, and a lot of magic. Didn't care for magic in Oblivion, but it's too much fun not to use here. Conjuration and Destruction are my schools of choice, which lets me summon an elemental (Flame Atronach) to help me out or resurrect fallen enemies as temporary allies. Also, I can conjure up a magic sword out of thin air, which is awesome. And of course I can throw fireballs, shoot ice or zap enemies with lightning. There are some new melee finishing move that seemingly trigger at random, but be warned: enemies can also finish you off when your health is low, even when it seemed like I could've taken several more hits. If you want to play it safe, wear heavy armor and/or use shields, I guess. I'm mostly wearing light armor or robes for sneaking and more effective magic use, respectively.

The coolest new feature by far, at least for me, is the new leveling system. Gone are stats like strength and dexterity and all that other stuff. Before you cry "OMG DUMBED DOWN!", hear me out. Every time you level up, you can improve either HP, MP or Stamina, which governs sprinting, heavy attacks and carry limit. Additionally, every level you'll earn a perk point to invest in the skill tree of your choosing, and this is where the depth comes in. There are a staggering 18 skill trees. There's one for one-handed weapons, for big two-handerd, for blocking, for each school of magic, for sneaking, for archery, for lockpicking, for pickpocketing, for crafting, for enchanting, for just about anything. It lets you pick the skills that would be useful to your playing style.

The game is just bursting with content. There are so many quests to do, factions to join and dungeons to explore it can be overwhelming. It's very easy to get sidetracked. I hadn't even touched any story quests for the first 5 hours or so, past the introductory section. I can easily see this being a hundred-hour game, if not moreso. I have no idea how long it would take if you stick to the story stuff, but why would you want to? The dungeons are now all unique and no longer suffer from Oblivion's repetitive templates.

Oh, and a word of warning: Don't mess with the giants. Seriously.

If you have any other questions, feel free to ask.

Thank you so much for not posting spoilers :D

I've got to wait 'til Friday to play but I keep looking for new Skyrim content, your writeup is awesome.

So questions:

• Have you headbutted anyone, or seen any headbutting?
• Have you jumped off of any great heights yet?
• Are there dragons?

@Ravenlight:

I have not seen heads butting of any kind, though I did get punched to death once, and then I killed him and found gloves that increase punch damage on the dude's corpse.

Jumping off a great height is a pretty good way to die, so I try not to!

Damn son, there be dragons all up in this bitch.

So it's true about the texture problem when running from the HDD. I wonder if the day one patch will fix that?

@Claude: There was already a patch when I first booted the game, so I assume that's the day one patch, unless there are two day one patches, which would be bananas.

Thanks for this. I do think the new leveling system makes more sense.

I want to hear about the PS3 version, maybe thinking about getting that, but I will wait to see what happens. Since it is not a MP game, I will take it on whatever platform it performs best on. Of course 360 is desirable because I like the controls better there.

@Oni said:

Oh, and a word of warning: Don't mess with the giants. Seriously.

Oh, I've messed with the giants alright. Just stood on top of the rocks and started shooting arrows at their asses. Demon's Souls/Dark Souls you have taught me well...

@Oni said:

@Ravenlight:

I have not seen heads butting of any kind, though I did get punched to death once, and then I killed him and found gloves that increase punch damage on the dude's corpse.

Jumping off a great height is a pretty good way to die, so I try not to!

Damn son, there be dragons all up in this bitch.

That's all I need to know. GOTFY.

@OllyOxenFree said:

@Oni said:

Oh, and a word of warning: Don't mess with the giants. Seriously.

Oh, I've messed with the giants alright. Just stood on top of the rocks and started shooting arrows at their asses. Demon's Souls/Dark Souls you have taught me well...

Can you snipe a dragon's tail for an ridiculously overpowerd sword in Skyrim? If not, Dark Souls 1: Skyrim 0

Actually, I do have a relevant question: can you dodge/roll in Skyrim? Or are all your defensive options based on pure stats (like every Elder Scrolls game up to this point) ?

Do enemies scale ?

@McFly said:

Actually, I do have a relevant question: can you dodge/roll in Skyrim? Or are all your defensive options based on pure stats (like every Elder Scrolls game up to this point) ?

No dodging except a stealth perk that lets you roll when crouching. I haven't gotten yet so don't know how it works in practice. Yeah I got the game early to, and yes it's great.

Didn't know that the HDD install was causing the textures issues, debating whether to uninstall it now. The loading times seemed a lot faster after I installed.

@Mageman: I think how it works is when you first enter an indoor area/dungeon, the enemies there will be appropriate to your level. If you leave and come back later, I believe they will still be at the level you were at the first time you got there. Enemies in the overworld don't seem to scale. Wolves will always be weak, there are strong bandits but also weak ones, giants will fuck you up early on etc. I definitely haven't seen anything like bandits rolling around in glass armor. It all feels pretty natural. If you're getting your ass kicked in a particular place, just come back later.

@McFly: There is a roll move in the light armor tree that I've seen, haven't unlocked it yet though. Mostly, defense is based around the armor you're wearing and if you're using a shield or not. You can't block with one-handed weapons, or when dual-wielding, but you can with two-handers. There are also defense-buffing spells, as well as a magic shield type spell that drains mana like a motherfucker.

Thanks for the write up! I can't wait.

@Oni said:

Let me get something negative out of the way first: If you install this game to the hard drive, some textures will look messed up. So, just a word of warning, you might want to put up with the horrible disc noises. It's not game-breaking, but it's definitely ugly in spots.

I am so happy you posted that issue. The first thing I was going to do when arriving home with Skyrim was install it to my HDD in hopes of faster loading times. I'll hold off on it for now.

Very solid post in general though. Great news.

@Sackmanjones: Nope! I've been chugging a lot of potions in tough fights.

@Oni:

Have you seen any Skooma or Nirnroot yet?

@Bamsen: I met a Skooma peddler out on the road, he was all like "hey wanna buy some Skooma bro? Keep it on the DL." And I was all like, "get out of my face with that shit," then I killed him and looted his Skooma. Also I found Nirnroot but haven't been able to succesfully concoct a potion with it yet. What should I combine it with?

The first giant I ran into hit me once and I flew up about 200+ feet into the air. It was awesome.

I guess that explains why the textures looked so bad in the videos I've seen of the 360 version then, it was some serious Wii level shit.

Hope the PC version includes decent texture work.

woahhhhh... one hour and 53 minutes till launch (aus) :D