Alcrin

I have to wonder... why, in all of these PAX videos, does nobody ever record shots of the menus we haven't yet seen? I wanna see how much damage Flames is doing per second...

Okay: With a restoration skill of 20, the spell Healing does 10 points per second. What did the spell do at QuakeCon? I don't think we saw Healing there... Dammit, why must this issue be so elusive!?

Well, I meant, he's not one of the developers for the game, right? So his knowledge of the project is second-hand at best. That could explain the mix-up.

Well, if the devs had to deal with upgrades changing the appearance of items, the lead artist would be the one to know... Pete Hines is just a PR guy, right? I know one: Lazy re-use of design.

Matt Carofano.

To be honest I'm a little happy the filesize is gonna be manageable. I want to have it preloaded so I can play it at midnight on launch day if I can.

No. An in-game day is 48 minutes real time. The longest shout cooldown we've seen so far is only 4 minutes long, and most of them aren't anywhere near that long.

Dragon shouts have cooldowns. Holding down the button longer will do more powerful shouts but the more powerful ones also have longer cooldowns.

Personally I value quality over quantity. I'd rather have 5-6 options where all of them are really deep, well-developed characters than have hundreds of options where each choice has one unique line at most.

I strongly doubt it'll be anything more than absolutely trivial to get an NPC's disposition maxed out, do the fetch quest, or whatever romance requirement there is to getting married to someone. What matters is there are hundreds of options. It's pretty unlikely there won't be anyone you can tolerate enough to have around the house and bring with you on adventures from time to time.

You can cook food and eat it but you don't have to eat to live, and there's no "hardcore mode" to make this a requirement. So yes, it will have to be a mod. Luckily for you, they're doing this Fable-style: You can marry pretty much anyone who isn't already taken.

Seeing the perk trees for pickpocket/smithing makes me wonder about the other perk possibilities... Specifically, enchant. Now I'm really afraid all the Enchant perks are gonna be "Now you can enchant Steel items." "Now you can enchant Orcish items." That would be really, really, lame...

Don't get excited. It will definitely be retconned.

I wonder how this works. Do you just cast the spell twice, or does the spell now summon two of whatever creature instead of just one? If you cast twice, then how do you dispel summoned creatures? :D Check out that last pickpocket perk. You can literally steal the shirt off of someone's back without them noticing! Epic pickpocket. That list of armor types you can make with smithing sounds kinda small... I hope they actually meant it when they said fusing the armor pieces let them make a lot more armors, because it sounds exactly the same as Oblivion's armor types (with dragon bone armor added). Hopefully the perks are only required to work with these special materials, and others can be worked on without perks. Wonderful way to dodge the friggin question. So the actual romance is Fable-style after all :/ What happened to "whatever NPCs can do, you can do"?

I'm... not so sure about that. They've known from the beginning the system limitations they're working with. They aren't going to be making 20 GB of content then quickly have to cut most of it out to get it on the disc like what happened with Oblivion.

I don't own any modern consoles: How would a multiple disc-game on a 360 work?

An idea for an extension to that mod: A penalty for carrying mixed spell schools with you. For example, you'll be more effective carrying only healing spells than if you try to have both healing and fireballs. For balance, I'd say 3 schools of magic should be the vanilla level of spell effectiveness (not counting the earlier-described spell capacity penalty of course), with more specialization giving bonuses and more generalness giving a penalty.

Hmm, a vampire thrall? Strange it would be called that. Pure speculation, but maybe Skyrim has Unholy Darkness-esque thralls that vampires can make? Can the player make these too?

A dragon, obviously. Failing that, an Orc.

I hope they're essential. Given the inevitable poor AI, if anyone should be essential it's them...

Here's an idea I have: Spell management. You can't just cast any spell you know at any time, you have to choose the spells you keep on you carefully. At home (or somewhere else you can keep it) you have a Grimoire. You can potentially move it if you choose to do so, but you can only use it when it's appropriately placed on a bookshelf or on a desk of some kind. You can't use it in the middle of a dungeon. The grimoire contains all of your spells. Activating it lets you change which spells you're currently holding. There's no limit to the number of spells you can have on you at once, however carrying more than some limit (let's say, 10) makes your spells less effective. Carrying less than the limit, however, will make you more effective. So you can have great potency, or great versatility, but not both. (Btw, spell tomes and bought spells are added to your grimoire instead of going into your current spellcasting inventory.)

Well, there are only specific NPCs you can romance in Skyrim so I hope there's at least something different between each partner you can have.

And, the WORST way I could see it working out is this: In one city there's the "Hall of Love." In the hall of love is a bunch of amulets you can just pick up for free. Wearing that person's corresponding amulet means you're married to that person. Get tired of them, then just switch out amulets to another.

The best way I could see the amulet thing working out is if it's just a reward for romancing someone: Each possible partner gives you a different amulet with a unique effect.

Comments: [When asked about romance] "You put on a little amulet that shows you're interested and it's just a little bonus." ...What? He wasn't terribly clear on this, but it also sounds like you can sell stolen goods to people other than Thieves' Guild fences. You just can't sell it within the same district that you stole it from: So if you steal something from someone in Winterhold, you'll have to go to Solitude to sell it off or something.