The OFFICIAL Anandtech Forums TeS V: Skyrim Thread

[dennilfloss]

Just saw my first live-action Skyrim ad on TV. Dovahkiin looks badass! Would make an awesome Hallowe'en costume.

 

[RavenSEAL]

What difficulty level is everyone playing at?


Talk about dragons below, I don't think they're a spoiler, but if you do, look away...

I'm at Adept (middle - #3 of 5) and playing as a fighter. Most of the time my companion has aggro in encounters with dragons, and she's a fighter/tank. I only recall seeing her being knocked down once despite a dragon breathing cold/fire into her for a solid 30 seconds. The one time I had aggro against a fire dragon, I took a fairly serious amount of damage from its breath, and it never hit me with a melee attack. I think I'm up to 4 dead dragons now, and they were all pretty damn easy. Maybe it's the companion?

And if you're wondering why I haven't upped the difficulty - other bosses and specials are giving me enough trouble.

I play at 3/5 as well, I payed to enjoy, not get angry at pixels.

 

[Northern Lawn]

I'm getting this game, the question is for the 360 or my PC. Ideally I would like it for the PC, but I'm wondering if I would be able to play it at an acceptable framerate on decently high settings (the graphics would be one of the big differences from the 360 I would imagine). I have a Core i5 and a GTX 560 Ti 1Gb. Would that run it decently?

Also, from what I've read the 360 controls are better than the PC. If that is the case, does anyone know if there will be 360 controller support on the PC version?

Well I just got a 60 inch plasma a few days ago and decided to buy skyrim for an xbox 360 that has been collectiing dust for the last few years. The graphics on the Xbox, well my xbox anyway, were horrible. It looked more like Morrowind from 8 years ago or whenever, I was seriously disappointed my brother was here telling me it was one of the best looking games he's ever played but his is on the PC.

So I'm loading up the PC version right now, I'll edit to let you know the difference.

 

[Locut0s]

Well I just got a 60 inch plasma a few days ago and decided to buy skyrim for an xbox 360 that has been collectiing dust for the last few years. The graphics on the Xbox, well my xbox anyway, were horrible. It looked more like Morrowind from 8 years ago or whenever, I was seriously disappointed my brother was here telling me it was one of the best looking games he's ever played but his is on the PC.

So I'm loading up the PC version right now, I'll edit to let you know the difference.

Lawl. Even at 1080p you are talking about a resolution of 1920x1080. Push that onto a 60in screen and yeah don't expect it to look good. You don't do any gaming on a 60in screen expecting the resolution or textures to look good. You only game on something like that for the overwhelming sense of size, and you expect it to look bad! Anyway even on a PC Skyrim ISN'T the best looking game texture wise. It's all in the presentation and draw distance.

 

[gorcorps]

Lawl. Even at 1080p you are talking about a resolution of 1920x1080. Push that onto a 60in screen and yeah don't expect it to look good. You don't do any gaming on a 60in screen expecting the resolution or textures to look good. You only game on something like that for the overwhelming sense of size, and you expect it to look bad! Anyway even on a PC Skyrim ISN'T the best looking game texture wise. It's all in the presentation and draw distance.

No... A 60" TV won't look any worse than any other 1080p TV AS LONG AS you're sitting at the correct distance. Up close any display would look like garbage.

 

[Locut0s]

No... A 60" TV won't look any worse than any other 1080p TV AS LONG AS you're sitting at the correct distance. Up close any display would look like garbage.

True. But (1) People tend not to sit far enough back IMO from these larger screens and more importantly (2) at BEST this will only look as good as other HDTV screens, only larger. The pixel density still sucks on an HDTV vs a monitor. If you want it to look better, sit closer to a computer monitor at a higher resolution. Course the textures in the game aren't the best so I may be a bit of a moot point.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Just saw the XBOX 360 version, looks like yuck.

 

[Locut0s]

Just saw the XBOX 360 version, looks like yuck.

Remember the hardware it has to run on

 

[Imp]

Holy crap. You can 'sprint' in this game... I just found this out and am 17 hours in. I got the Steam version, and never bothered to look at the key bindings. Fail.

Also, how useful is it to upgrade stamina? I've only put a few points in so far, and I run out really early in a fight all the time, so I don't see the value versus health.

 

[Northern Lawn]

Xbox can't handle skirim apparently, even the ps3 is twice as good.

http://www.product-reviews.net/2011...ox-360-shock-as-ps3-wins-in-video-comparison/

For what it's worth, I just loaded up the pc version and it's 10x better looking then what my xbox made the game look like and no freezing like it did in the xbox.

 

[Locut0s]

Holy crap. You can 'sprint' in this game... I just found this out and am 17 hours in. I got the Steam version, and never bothered to look at the key bindings. Fail.

Also, how useful is it to upgrade stamina? I've only put a few points in so far, and I run out really early in a fight all the time, so I don't see the value versus health.

If you run out of it really early and can't sprint wouldn't it almost by definition require a few more points then? Yeah I've noticed how quickly it runs down.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Remember the hardware it has to run on

Yeah, I know :sneaky:

 

[dennilfloss]

Wondering how many people experiencing CTD are overclocking their CPU and/or video card. In the past, Bethesda games did not like overclocking and maybe this is still the case.

 

[IGemini]

Just shy of 32 hours now. Definitely gonna get some serious mileage out of this game. People who are bashing the graphics expecting BF3 or Witcher 2 need to get over it...graphically this game looks far from bad, but it's made for gameplay, not bleeding-edge graphics. Considering how lean the game is on PC (~5.5GB on Steam), it actually does pretty well with texture compression.

Started playing on Adept (3/5) but bumped it to Expert (4/5) a few hours in, gives me enough of a challenge. The experience has been relatively bug-thin. I only had one desktop crash, and one massive framerate drop fighting a dragon that required a game restart. Haven't been seeing a lot of the other bugs mentioned. CPU is overclocked, GPU is not. The "R key" glitch I had earlier was a result of mapping it to a mouse button. Switching back got rid of the problem.

My character, Meraxes. Breton, good character @ level 15, primarily Destruction/Conjuration/Restoration w/One-Bladed but I have some fun with archery and sneak. My second character, Ghiscar, will be more armor- and melee-oriented. I strive for completionist so I'm all over the place, all solo work so far. I probably have 30+ quests/tasks pending.
(props if you know the name references without googling )

And by popular request, since people have been wanting screenshots, I posted my own gallery, 1920x1200 pictures.

Click for slideshow gallery
Some shots of Whiterun, Winterhold College, and some dragon battles. Best pics are probably the travel to High Hrothgar by night. Some nice aurora borealis effects going on.

 

[Locut0s]

Wondering how many people experiencing CTD are overclocking their CPU and/or video card. In the past, Bethesda games did not like overclocking and maybe this is still the case.

Yup OCing here. Though closing the background apps that I did seems to have made it stable for now.

 

[Locut0s]

Just shy of 32 hours now. Definitely gonna get some serious mileage out of this game. People who are bashing the graphics expecting BF3 or Witcher 2 need to get over it...graphically this game looks far from bad, but it's made for gameplay, not bleeding-edge graphics. Considering how lean the game is on PC (~5.5GB on Steam), it actually does pretty well with texture compression.

Started playing on Adept (3/5) but bumped it to Expert (4/5) a few hours in, gives me enough of a challenge. The experience has been relatively bug-thin. I only had one desktop crash, and one massive framerate drop fighting a dragon that required a game restart. Haven't been seeing a lot of the other bugs mentioned. CPU is overclocked, GPU is not. The "R key" glitch I had earlier was a result of mapping it to a mouse button. Switching back got rid of the problem.

My character, Meraxes. Breton, good character @ level 15, primarily Destruction/Conjuration/Restoration w/One-Bladed but I have some fun with archery and sneak. My second character, Ghiscar, will be more armor- and melee-oriented. I strive for completionist so I'm all over the place, all solo work so far. I probably have 30+ quests/tasks pending.
(props if you know the name references without googling )

And by popular request, since people have been wanting screenshots, I posted my own gallery, 1920x1200 pictures.

Click for slideshow gallery
Some shots of Whiterun, Winterhold College, and some dragon battles. Best pics are probably the travel to High Hrothgar by night. Some nice aurora borealis effects going on.

Sweet Gallery! It's like you're trying to tell a tale

 

[magomago]

I'm overwhelmed in this game. Not sure what to do. I'm used to final fantasy where I can literally exhaust everything I see. A town may taken me 30 minutes but I can speak to everyone multiple tmes over. In this game....30 minutes is nothing for a town!

I'm glad I got it, but I'm more glad that I waited for initial bug reports to show its relatively playable

 

[Locut0s]

I'm overwhelmed in this game. Not sure what to do. I'm used to final fantasy where I can literally exhaust everything I see. A town may taken me 30 minutes but I can speak to everyone multiple tmes over. In this game....30 minutes is nothing for a town!

I'm glad I got it, but I'm more glad that I waited for initial bug reports to show its relatively playable

Yeah it's easy to get overwhelmed. Here's some advice.

DON'T talk to everyone and anyone. Not at first. Concentrate instead of 4 or 5 quests at a time. Use your map and compass to track down where to go neat on each quest and make sure you have the quest highlighted so that the markers show up on your map and compass. I find for a lot of the Misc quests you have to go into your journal and click on them as the game will not automatically highlight these for you. Once you've completed 10 or 20 such quests you'll get a feel for the game better. Try not to build up a crazy number of quests though. Meaning don't talk to every single person you meet right away. You will get to everyone eventually. Otherwise you will have hundreds of quests and will never remember what each quest was for and it will just seem like a To-Do list and less like an adventure. Try to keep your active quests to something like 5 to 10 at a time.

 

[RavenSEAL]

My favorite screenshots so far, the colors are stunning.

Rest are here:
http://s1142.photobucket.com/albums/n615/RavenSEAL/Skyrim Favorites/?albumview=slideshow

This is at 1080p, but the game reduces the screenshot size

Now for my character, named after myself, the missis and the children.

I haven't been able to put many hours into him yet. Here is a run down.

Wood Elf
Hunter/1hand Melee/Heavy armor Hybrid
Level 11
4 Dragons killed
Likes long walks on the beach, listening to women and killing stuff.

I'm loving the game so far, can't wait to have more time to jump in deeper!

 

[IGemini]

This is at 1080p, but the game reduces the screenshot size

That's weird. You sure that's the size of the actual screenshots or is it photobucket resizing the pictures? Mine's set to best possible quality <1MB on PB but it might default to something smaller.

Great color, though. :thumbsup:

 

[Locut0s]

We are so spoiled graphically nowadays. I mean BF3 and other games look jaw droppingly amazing but I can remember when your jaw would drop seeing just about any well implemented 3D environment. Skyrim looks amazing by these standards. I really can't wait to see where things go graphically in the next 5 years or so. We should see some insanely beautiful worlds in a few years.

 

[Locut0s]

BTW I love how they managed to secretly get Arnold Schwarzenegger to do 1/2 the voice overs

 

[dennilfloss]

Just found the lair entrance to a coven of witches. Creepy as heck but I'm going in at level 5. Dispatched the one witch outside with relative ease. I was able to summon my atronach before she zapped me with electricity to sap my magicka.

 

[kyrax12]

I am a pure mage ftw!

Nothing beats magic here.

 

[dennilfloss]

OK, Drusilla cleared the witches coven. That was my first foray underground and I must say the atmosphere in that cavern was creepy to the max, what with the mist and lighting, the skulls and sounds. Shivers... D:

Up to level 6 now. Not sure I like leveling this fast.