Well, here's a screenshot of my character. Skyrim is eating up a good chunk of my time but there will be some blogging to come. The events will obviously be somewhat behind what happens "live" in-game (otherwise, his first diary entry will cover exploring half the map, joining the College, becoming arch mage, slaying dragons with barely a scratch on him and so on) but I am taking plenty of screenshots for his artistic images and to remind myself of what happened.
The game is extremely awesome and it suffers from surprisingly little "consolitis", as I call it. Sure, some sorting could be nice, and in some cases a different menu layout, but it's a very well done port IMO. I did have to switch hands (left click defaults to right hand and right click defaults to left hand because you must always be right handed for some reason and because it's the natural PC scheme for attack/block) as well as switch Sneak for Sprint. The Favorite Menu also works well as long as you limit the contents a little bit: A quick tab of Q and you're in business.
The only thing that sometimes annoys me is the Bethesda classic where the dungeon is easy and the boss is ridiculous. I'm not going to spoil anything but the boss of the second-to-last College quest was far more than a level 15 mage with no potions could handle, even though the remaining 99% of the dungeon was a cakewalk. I did end up cheesing my way through it by exploiting some pillars, positioning bugs and magicka regen but I think the boss alone took me an hour to beat :P
My favorite thing so far, mechanically, has to be the magic: It finally works and it works very, very well. It works so well, in fact, that my guy is likely to reject the teachings of his father until a later point in the game. Most of the melee experience will be saved for my Paladin. I was also pleasently surprised that my favorite bit of Solitude related lore was in the game, in form of a quest, and all I could think was "no way" when I realised that it was definitely happening.
Finally, I can't stress how much more immersive than Oblivion this game is. The extra voice actors mean that even though you're likely to hear a few repeated ones every now and then, you hardly notice it because many people in the village or city has a different voice. This game is GOTY, all year, every year :P
Some sneak previews, though no spoilers:
I find magic to be damn unviable for a warrior/wizard now though. Weapon switching is annoying and it sucks that you can't block when you wield a sword and spell.
ReplyDeleteYou need to define "magic" :P
ReplyDeleteConjuration is excellent for a warrior, as you can summon an ally into a room ahead of you or on top of a ledge and I'm certain that applying protective spells work just as well. The reason you can't block is because you're dual wielding in that situation, which would be extremely overpowered once you get past Apprentice Destruction spells. Likewise, imagine spamming a sufficiently strong healing spell while being able to block with the other hand.
As for weapon switching, I have no problem with it whatsoever. Remember that there is an "S" key on your keyboard and that yes, it is in fact okay to run away like a little girl when you need to recover or change up :)
In fact, M'aiq has a few words of wisdom when it comes to your complaint :P