Blackreach has got to be the most beautiful game location I've ever seen. I have 80+ hours of game play and I still did about 1/3 of the main quest.
I was interested to see the actual main story quest is only like 15 chapters. That's pretty damn short considering the vast amount of side content. Why not make the main story longer?
Did you know there's a dragon in Blackreach? He comes flying out of the ceiling if you hit the glowing orb in the falmer town with unrelenting force on a side note, the game seems to run a heck of a lot smoother with the 1.4 patch I'm also excited about the impending release of the CK and the workshop
I'm surprised to see how weak dragons are in this game compared to, say, giants. A battle with a dragon takes a while, and their fire doesn't really do quick unrecoverable damage. One hit from a giant's club and I'm flung 500 feet in the air (a beautiful view from up that high of the area I'm in, BTW), followed by sudden deceleration syndrome. Cool game, but sometimes surprisingly unbalanced.
I think there's a mod that makes the dragons more vicious on the one hand I think it's silly that Bethesda seems to have released a game with a ton of bugs, even though it is a masterpiece of a game on the other hand I don't really mind all the bugs, because Bethesda has such a great dialog with the fans and for all their major releases (morrowind, oblivion, fallout 3, etc) they've released a version of the tools used to create the game itself sure, it seems like "get the game out on time, don't worry about the bugs, the fans will fix 'em" but I think it's great that we can have such control over the games . . . it makes me feel like it's my game . . . not just a game I like playing, but a game I helped make . . .
I'm not crazy about buggy releases, because I'm not on XBox Live so I can't download these patches and updates. I only had that problem a few times with Fallout New Vegas, apparently that one was REALLY bad.
The Elder Scrolls franchise has never really been about "the main story". Its more about being part of a larger world, which is why the side quests play such a big role. Seeing as how I've got over 100 hours in the game and I've BARELY touched the main story line, I feel as if there really isn't much to be critical about as far as content is concerned.
^^^ Agreed - and I'm with Mr. Light when he was curious about how they fit all this on one disc, when games like LA Noir - no where near as involved - span multiple discs. They definitely strove for efficiency with this one, seemingly without sacrificing much in the way of quality.
Exactly. The sidequests, if they can be called that in this respect, help to add to other aspects of the game in ways that the main quest can't. They paint a picture and help us understand the state of the world of Tamriel.
I came across a cool scene today. I was walking through a river plain and I saw a dragon in the distance attacking something. As I approached, I saw it was using a freeze breath on wooly mammoths. Then I saw it attacking something over and over, flying off between hits. Turns out it was a giant troll right next to a wooly mammoth! Was the troll protecting the mammoths? I snuck up and killed the dragon from behind, ready to run from the troll, but he just stood there and left me alone. So, when you "level up" an individual ability, is it becoming better, or is it only earning points towards leveling it up in the upgrade screen?
Yes, abilities do become better when they level up. The damage on weapons will increase, potions will get stronger, etc.
Are the enemies leveled to whatever level you're at? Because sometimes I wander into a dungeon or bandit camp and get my ass totally kicked, while other things can barely damage me.
I don't think it's a giant troll, but a giant. They seem to keep mammoths as pets and they only attack you if you encroach on their territory (or attack their pets), but sometimes back-off once you move far enough away. I find them massively more dangerous than dragons. One hit and you're done. Mammoths themselves are no push-over - and sometimes I think they're smarter than the giants that keep them. They can trample and gore you if you attack them. If you succeed in killing the giant, you may be rewarded with a "giant toe" which is a useful alchemy ingredient when making potions. Earning points which you have to allocate on the upgrade screen. You can update any one of your three primary attributes first, Magic, Strength or Stamina; then you choose which skill you want to boost. Your character gets "better" by doing those two things after a level-up. Yes, your enemies do seem to be generally comparable to your level (otherwise, what would be the fun? ) and swarming enemies are almost always more dangerous than individual ones. I recommend you concentrate on improving your archery skill and snipe at them individually while hidden. They'll search for you, but remain patient, and pick each of them off one at a time until their number becomes manageable for hand-to-hand or magic use. However, if you have a companion like Faendal, who has a tendency to blow your cover and run off into an attack, you may have to tell him to hold position far enough away from an area-of-operation (A.O.) so he doesn't force an engagement. He's a useful carrier of heavy objects and he sticks to you, as opposed to Lydia, who can't even seem to figure out how to walk around a rock, but he's a hot head and will run into battle like a Klingon whose pet targ was bitten by a tribble. I can't tell you how many times he botched an op I patiently set up. I've taken to saving the game before every combat, just in case.
To a degree, although it isn't as ridiculous as Oblivion, where you had bandits running around in glass and daedric armor at high levels. I maxed out my level via the console (as I always do in Bethesda games) and encountered draugr deathlords fairly often in dungeons for instance, although the wimpier stuff is still mixed in.
Yeah, I came across that too. As a matter of fact, I had been walking minding my own business when the game decided I needed to see a fight between them and dropped them from the sky right in front of me. It was pretty cool. Giant won, though he was upset when I tried to get the dragon soul as I was getting too close to him. My main criticisms with the game are the compass, map and marker systems. With the map being 3D, it's often frustrating when you want to make a custom marker, as it will mark the absolute location rather than locking onto a location icon. The location will drift away as you move the map around making it almost impossible to be accurate in placing your marker. Would have preferred if they'd also have a static map that you could switch between, like 3D, Static and Local.
There are some mods you can download to improve the map. I use this one, myself in combination with the no clouds add-on to make the map easier to read. You can also tweak it to look directly down on the ground, instead of the angle it has by default.
Wow. You're easy to please. Bethesda loves people like you. My main criticisms with the games are that it has the worst character levelling system I've ever encountered. Walk everywhere in a crouch. Boom. Sneak at 100%. Cast Muffle and Iron Skin every 3-5 minutes. Boom. Illusion and Alteration at 100%. Kill every critter you seen, tan their hides and smith leather boots and bracers. Boom. Smithing at 100%. Etc, etc, etc. And even on Master level difficulty the game is a breeze. It's too easy to make yourself a god with smithing and enchanting without even resorting to the fortify restoration potion cheats. The only combat difficulty comes from the occasional ancient dragon. For a challenge, I run around in boots, braces and a helm with no armour. Then, I at least have a chance of taking some damage. I'm not even going to touch the piss poor writing and the fact that this is just one more hack and slash pretending to be an rpg.
Walk around crouching all the time, you say....? Interesting. Another random dragon encounter. It happened right next to a town so I ran to the town wall, and the guards actually killed it for me!
While I agree with the concept of levelling in the game, that the more you use the skill, the better it gets, the execution makes it far too easy. I did two playthroughs of the game and in my second, I hit the same level in half the time by just doing what I described in my above post.
For someone like me, who doesn't really care about grinding for XP to level up and just wants to enjoy the game, a simple leveling system like Bethesda's is a godsend.