Skyrim - New Coverage @ Gametrailers

[Dhruin]

Gametrailers TV has new footage from Skyrim as they visit the Bethsoft office and talk with Todd Howard. I haven't watched the whole thing but the focus seems to be on dragons and apparently new Dragon Shouts are revealed.
Thanks, Jhwisner!
While we're talking Skyrim, CountChocula wrote in with what is probably a hoax at Ripten, with a father supposedly sending a note to school that his daughter would miss 11.11.11 (and possibly the week after) for the Skyrim release.
More information.

 

[jhwisner]

Yeah the new footage is in multiple segments and spliced in with some of the old. One of the definitely new scenes was someone using the raise zombie spell to perform a bizarre ritual on a dead chicken using a stone pedestal.

 

[Khalus]

The Dragon Shout to call a Dragon companion into battle...now that sounds awesome!

And it'll be even better once someone in the modding community makes them mountable.

 

[jhwisner]

The Dragon Shout to call a Dragon companion into battle…now that sounds awesome!

And it'll be even better once someone in the modding community makes them mountable.

Ah cool - yeah I only watched the segments at the middle and very end. I didn't realize there were 4 segments on skyrim peppered throughout the episode. I do like that it's a callable dragon which is an actual character rather than a summon generic generated dragon spell. It's amusing that you can use it in cities, towns, or wherever as long as its outdoors.

Shouts described and shown throughout the episode (not officialnames, just giving descpritions):

Summon dragon ally
Cone of cold (encased a cone of enemies in damaging and imobilizing ice)
"Be faster you stupid weapon!" - shout at your weapon to make it swing speed much faster
Become ethereal - makes you immune to damage but also unable to do damage for a short ammount of time. Can be used to jump off mountains.

The effect of the freeze-cone shout is actually kind of amusing at times. There's one scene shown briefly towards the end where the PC is chasing a fox past a wagon and freezes it - turning it into a foxcicle with some decent physics to how it keeps moving. Seeing these and some of the already-shown shouts (bullet-time, knock-back, fire, whirlwind-rush) does seem like some of them at least will add variety to combat as well as have a use or two outside of combat (the ethereal one most obviously).

I wonder if you can use the freeze shout and then the knock-back shout to blow groups of frozen enemies off of the edges of cliffs and mountains - or charge through them with the speed shout and damage them by bashing into them. Heck even using the shouts alongside some of the spells, weapons, and shield-perks have the potential for making this combat far better than previous entries in the series. That aspect of the game might (dare I hope) end up being "good" even not just relative to other Eldermine Scrollcraft games.

There's also a scene or two of some of the other towns (including a mossy one we haven't seen much of yet) as well as shots of an interesting looking volcanic hot-spring.

 

[sakichop]

So if your dragon friend dies can you call another dragon or is that it? Or can you mess up your friendship with him and never be able to call him? Already pre-ordered my copy.

 

[KapitanUnterhosen]

Aren't the dragon shouts going to make magic kind of redundant?

 

[vurt]

I wonder if things will catch fire (trees, houses etc) if the dragons breath fire onto it in a fight, i'm guessing it won't :/ Destructible environments in a RPG would be really nice, guess its not possible on the current generation of consoles..

sakichop: Its probably like in FO, it can get knocked out and will wake up after the fight.

 

[DR490N]

Aren't the dragon shouts going to make magic kind of redundant?

Kind of. But you can use them only once a day. And since you can't rest anytime anywhere, you also need usual magic as a mage-like character. So kind of not.

 

[Twotricks]

Aren't the dragon shouts going to make magic kind of redundant?

On long timer probably

 

[jhwisner]

On long timer probably

Yeah they haven't given too much details yet but one thing I noticed is that in the previews you never see them use dragon shouts one after the other or the same one repeatedly - there is always a cut in between shots of them being used. In one case where they did use multiple dragon shouts in what we know was the same battle there were at least several minutes and a cut in between uses; that was also a video in which Todd Howard stated he was cheating a little (with health.) This does suggest they are on some kind of decently long timer. Since they don't seem to use mana either this makes them very much complementary to spells and to physical combat rather than a replacement.

Compare this to many of the once daily racial or special abilities you could have in Oblivion. Some of them (some of the massive stat buff specials) could be rather useful but the daily timer often meant most players would forget to bother to use them. For that reason I think its reasonable for these not to be on a timer quite that long but yeah I do hope they're balanced enough not to make them a replacement for destruction magic once one is high level.

 

[Khalus]

Kind of. But you can use them only once a day. And since you can't rest anytime anywhere.

If this is true, then I'll be eagerly awaiting one of the modders to fix this. Being able to use each shout only once per game day is kinda dumb and debilitating.

Being able to use them infinitely has its appeal too, but I'd rather see each one, based on their type/power, have a select number of uses{per day} or a regenerative meter in the shout menu when you can use each again. And each one could regen faster or slower based on say movement speed, or by killing different mobs, swimming, eating different foods, etc…

{I've been keeping myself oblivious to most Skyrim details on purpose, cause I like to discover and be surprised by them through playing!}

 

[Zloth]

I'm waiting for a modder to replace all the shouts with classic nerdom shouts.

 

[jhwisner]

If this is true, then I'll be eagerly awaiting one of the modders to fix this. Being able to use each shout only once per game day is kinda dumb and debilitating.

[/I]

They've shown demonstration battles where they used multiple shouts over the course of the battle. They've also used the same shout more than once in what appeared to be the same game-day in the long form versions of the developer demonstration. Right now we don't know what kind of delay or timer is on these abilities.

 

[skavenhorde]

I would have preferred if it was once per day with the shout being extremely powerful. Otherwise what's the point? It'll just be another magic trait my wizard could use. Big whoop.

Will have to wait for a mod I guess.

 

[CountChocula]

Yeah they haven't given too much details yet but one thing I noticed is that in the previews you never see them use dragon shouts one after the other or the same one repeatedly - there is always a cut in between shots of them being used. In one case where they did use multiple dragon shouts in what we know was the same battle there were at least several minutes and a cut in between uses; that was also a video in which Todd Howard stated he was cheating a little (with health.) This does suggest they are on some kind of decently long timer. Since they don't seem to use mana either this makes them very much complementary to spells and to physical combat rather than a replacement.

Compare this to many of the once daily racial or special abilities you could have in Oblivion. Some of them (some of the massive stat buff specials) could be rather useful but the daily timer often meant most players would forget to bother to use them. For that reason I think its reasonable for these not to be on a timer quite that long but yeah I do hope they're balanced enough not to make them a replacement for destruction magic once one is high level.

They've shown demonstration battles where they used multiple shouts over the course of the battle. They've also used the same shout more than once in what appeared to be the same game-day in the long form versions of the developer demonstration. Right now we don't know what kind of delay or timer is on these abilities.

Each dragon shout has three different cooldown periods corresponding to the three different levels (how many words of the shout you use is determined by how long you "charge" the shout button before releasing).

For example, Iiz Slen Nus (Ice Form Shout) has 60, 90 and 120 second cooldowns, while Strun Bah Ao (Storm Call Shout) has 180, 240 and 300 second cooldowns. These cooldown periods are explained in the UI menu page that describes each shout.

In much of the gameplay footage we have seen, the cooldowns are disabled, in order to demonstrate the shouts more easily.

 

[Khalus]

^Well that sounds great then, cause its near exactly what I was trying to describe liking more.


Still though, it'll be interesting to see what the modders do. Especially for new shouts as well as many other things that are or appear unique to Skyrim.

 

[jhwisner]

I would have preferred if it was once per day with the shout being extremely powerful. Otherwise what's the point? It'll just be another magic trait my wizard could use. Big whoop.

Will have to wait for a mod I guess.

Most of them would be disappointing and pointless if it was once per day. You think once per day fire-breath is less pointless than say once per minute or once per five?

 

[Tragos]

in the displayed shout the guy says "he is a douche " ?
resourect chicken spell looks like a must.

 

[jhwisner]

in the displayed shout the guy says "he is a douche " ?
resourect chicken spell looks like a must.

Yeah I do like how they do the new zombie spell - zombifies most slain creatures for you.

 

[CountChocula]

in the displayed shout the guy says "he is a douche " ?
resourect chicken spell looks like a must.

LOL it does sound that way.

He's saying "Iiz Slen Nus" (means "Ice Flesh Statue")

Yeah I do like how they do the new zombie spell - zombifies most slain creatures for you.

yep, I think it's a lot more cool than conjuring creatures from the daedric planes, not only because of the lore of studying necromancy spells, but also there is a bit of a tactical challenge involved because you have to kill the creature you want to animate.