I'm at level 35, and I'm still just dillydallying, completing the quests I think seem interesting halfhazzardly.

I actually came upon an encounter I couldn't beat...an arch conjurer shot me with lightning bolts for terrible, terrible damage.

He wasn't part of a dungeon run, fortunately, and as soon as I smith myself some lightning resist (or brew some potions), it shouldn't be so horrible.

Getting pretty good with my bow, its up to 70 now. I use a legendary daedric soulstealer bow and glass arrows when I'm in tough encounters.

I've also been using a sword and shield when I've had to, because of the added defense and resistance, but now I'm all bow all the time. I've started to play around with not pulling the arrow all the way back on the bow. It lets me mark more targets for soul stealing and it seems to do less damage, but with a higher firering rate...which I think may actually help level it faster, although I can't be sure.

Generally, a lot of the levelling is a bit too simplistic. Forging stuff should (ideally) be a question of the value of what you're forging, rather than just an increase for each item. Same thing with enchantment...more powerful enchantments oughta be more worthwhile. And rather than level your armor and weapons on a per-hit basis (as I _think_ things are right now), it should relate to the amount of damage you do.

As it is, there are too many incentives for weird behaviour.

I also wish the crafting skills could be put to use filling orders, to create a structure to it. For instance, if the Jarl of whiterun wanted to equip his soldiers with full sets of armor, wanted specific potions for them, and wanted specific enchantments on specific weapons, that would make it feel like you're helping to forge arms for a reason.

It's not a giant problem, because apparently theres a lot of demand for daggers in Skyrim, and you're still doing more or less the same thing as if there were better in-fiction incentives...but I do feel like it's a missed opportunity.

You can't expect that type of interactivity from Bethesda. Hell, i've only had 2 or 3 persuade options so far and maybe one intimidation one.

If Obsidian did this, they would be all over the place. If there was blacksmith that needed something done, you can bet your ass there would be a dialog option, related to your smithing skill.

Is there any word on the Skyrim CS yet? I'm pretty sure a mod to 'fulfill weapons order' would be pretty easily created in the Morrowind or Oblivion CSes

In fact, when I first came into Whiterun, the blacksmith at the gate had a discussion with someone (can't remember who) about a huge weapons order for the guard. She said she couldn't possibly fulfill the order on her own, but she would do her best. Good opportunity for a side quest, that right there!

Yesterday I was on a mission and I play a sneaky character. I managed to sneak behind a guy and pulled off a stealth kill, quickly slicing his throat, but I haven't be able to do again. Does anyone know how to do stealth kills every time?

If I hit someone with my sword in stealth I get a x3 bonus to damage. Presumably your weapon damage x 3 needs to be > enemy health? Although it seems randomly I get a 'finishing move' where I run my sword straight though someone and they die instantly. I have not found any logical relation between the finishing move and any buttons I press though.

Like all cinematic killing blows its largely random, depending on if the engine thinks theres room for the camera and such. Its just a slightly more involved version of the killcam fro FO3

Jaedar's right, the scenes are just played out at random times to give it a cinematic feel. It would be overpowered if they ocured all the time, not to mention rather boring too.

Ahh yes that might be it, the other guys I tried to stealth kill were a lot tougher so it didn't work and perhaps the randomness of the kill cam kicked in too. Though it's good news there's a stealth kill animation, hopefully the modders will add a proper stealth kill feature!

You can and you should. About half the things in Skyrim, I wouldn't have expected from Bethesda based on Oblivion and Fallout 3. They've made huge progress from Fallout 3 to Skyrim, and I see no reason why we should expect further progress from them in the future.

On an anecdotal note, I've had way more persuade or intimidate options than that. They're usually in the small quests though, try joining the Thieves' Guild or the Companions and doing some of the randomly generated quests.


The way you can tell if you're doing a sneak attack is that it prints it in the top left corner: "6x sneak attack damage" for example. There's a sound effect associated too, which thanks to skinnerian conditioning you will come to really enjoy the sound of after a while. The actual takedown animations aren't always played, it's a bit random but I've noticed it only ever plays them when you're killing the last enemy in the area.

Personally I wish they'd stuck to the first-person animations, because they're fucking awesome. They remind me of Dark Messiah, in fact the whole combat system in Skyrim including bows reminds me of Dark Messiah. The third-person animations are all right, I guess, but they lack the immediacy and the in-your-face brutality of the first-person takedowns.

I'm not saying "oh my god, bethesda has dissapointed me!"

I'm saying yo dawg, I like it when I get narrative reasons for doing gameplay things, so if you could put that in my game I could craft while I story.

And yes, EER, my thoughts exactly.

Yes, it seems inspired by it.

A shame it lacks all the physics that made it as awesome as it was. There was an oomph to the blows in DM that skyrim unfortunately lacks. It's a shame too, cause an open world Dark Messiah would be one of the best things ever.

Fallout 3 had some nice skill checks, and what you get in Skyrim is indeed far better than anything you'd get in Oblivion. But it still seems to pale on comparison to waht Obsidian would have done. There were so many instances where I thought "If Chris Avellone wrote this, I would get a skill check for X,Y and Z".

See, not long ago I would've agreed with you on that, but I recently went back and played through the first bunch of levels in Dark Messiah again, and it really isn't as powerful as I remembered it. Not sure why it seemed more kinetic back then than it does now, but I invite you to go back and play it again, I suspect like me you'll find it surprisingly floaty and disconnected. Still lots better than melee in most first-person games, but I think Skyrim is easily as good.


Yeah but then it does a bunch of other things that Obsidian wouldn't have done. You lose some, you gain some.

I play it quite often. One of my favorite games, and I still think skyrim is more floaty and disconnected.

Oh. Why? I'm wondering if we can quantify it somehow. Game feel is pretty hard to quantify, I kinda failed in my thesis (here's hoping my censor won't find this). It'd be interesting to try and figure out though, because I think Skyrim is more tactile than Dark Messiah in many ways.