kthompsen

They're definitely not dropping single player. People need to relax. They're not EA. In fact, they just made fun of EA in a vid recently, when EA canceled that Star Wars game and said no one wanted single player. What EA fails to realize is that people don't want THEIR games. Not ALL single player games.

Like I said, Lorkhan is Man's first and foremost "god". He came up with the plan of Creation and got the other gods to go along... But little did they know that it'd drain their life power and kill them. When they found out, they killed him too... but the damage had been done and the plan was set. But this is why the elven and human pantheons mainly differ: They have a different outlook on Lorkhan. Kynareth is considered Lorkhan's companion and was more forgiving of him. In the Nordic pantheon she is Kyne and his wife. So to Nords, she's another of their main gods. :D edit: One way to put it is that Lorkhan is kind of like Prometheus, giving power to man by giving the gift of fire. Zeus and the other gods resented it and punished Prometheus. But humankind still remembers and honors Prometheus themselves. The Nords especially do, and have given him the name Shor. He's akin to Thor or something in the Nordic mindset. A heroic, warrior god. On the other hand, from an elven perspective, Lorkhan is no hero like Prometheus. He's a trickster and bastard, like Loki (hence the name Lorkhan...which resembles it). From different perspectives, the same exact god is both Thor and Loki, depending on who you ask. This also brings me to Talos and the plotline underlying Skyrim. Talos is an avatar of Shor/Lorkhan. The elves know fully well that if they can get rid of Talos, they can diminish Lorkhan's influence in the world again, and they'll be one bigger step ever closer to Un-Making the World and all that Lorkhan represents. Talos - by virtue of being an avatar of Shor and by his own life, represents the Power of Man. Only the Nords and the Thalmor truly know the extent that his status actually EFFECTS the world. He MAKES Lorkhan ALIVE again. With Talos, Lorkhan's influence over this world is reborn and his vision of Creation endures. This is why the Imperials are fools in the Nord's eyes.. because by giving up Talos, they'll eventually give up their own existence. This is also why I think you, the Last Dragonborn, have come into the scene. The belief in Talos is dying, yet here Shor is again.. coming in the form of your character.. shaking the world up. I'm fairly convinced that our own character may very well be a new form of Talos, and will restore his place among the gods.. just by virtue of "mantling" Talos ourselves. The Greybeards say it themselves - "You are Ysmir now. The Dragon of the North. Hearken to it." The Greybeards originally said this to Talos himself. Shor is Ysmir is Talos is you in Skyrim (wrap your head around that!). The short answer to your question is yes, the gods matter to humans in this world. Most especially Lorkhan. Then again, I could be wrong. We'll know the next game, I suppose.

Not sure why they'd do High Rock, when we already have Daggerfall. I would hope it's somewhere new.

It's a bit different than education leading them down the wrong path. Some of these original spirits that the elves came from actually existed: The Elfoney. You even see some in Oblivion... spirits that had been trapped. Here's an elemental elfhoney, a guardian of water: http://en.uesp.net/wiki/File:ON-npc-Guardian_of_the_Water.jpg These spirits manifested in various ways, but the elves come from a distinct branch who settled in the form we see now. It's not a stretch to say they may be telling the truth, since other types of these spirits have been known to others in Tamriel. In any case, the elves believe the highest spirit of their kind also lived among them once - Auriel. Who knows? We do see his bow in the games, so maybe it's true. Auriel is said to be a shard of Anu-iel, the primordial Time God. Much like Alduin is a shard (funnily, both want to undo Creation. Remember Alduin is also called the World Eater.. These are both aspects of the Time God, with Alduin manifesting in a more apocalyptic way). There are other aspects of the Time God, but you could say that these two represent the Past and the Future. The thing is, we can actually SEE Alduin in Skyrim. He actually exists, so the Elves may be telling the truth about Auriel too. -- You could say the whole setting first and foremost starts with the forces of Order and Chaos. The Two Primordial Forces are Anu and Padomay. These two eventually birthed what we now know as Time and Space. This isn't really about good or evil...at least at first. But an interplay between the abstract elements of the universe and the struggle to stabilize them. Time and Space gave rise to even more elements, which eventually led to the universe. But some see this universe as too expansive and dynamic and it sacrificed too much of what came before. Now they want to go back to a more static state of things. The spirits who taught this were all resentful representatives of "Time"/Anu-iel. To them, Space had stretched too far and made a mess. The elves are remnants (or children if you will) of the spirits who thought this way.

The Thalmor are evil to most people's perspectives, but not from their own. They simply feel screwed - and see themselves as "fallen angels" of sorts.. and want to undo Creation and bring back the old gods at full power. All elven branches differ on how they cope with this. The High Elves have next to little coping mechanisms. They're embittered and want perfection again. Dark Elves and Orcs learn to live with it... in fact, they sort of believe that being under a curse is a blessing in disguise and a test.. that they will end up stronger because of it. They've both abandoned the original elven gods and worship Daedra now. Dark Elves believe Daedra like Azura will reward them if they endure their sojourn, along with Orcs who believe in following Malacath and adhering to his code of honor. Wood elves cope in their own way and have become one with Creation and nature. edit: Actually, there is a parallel with Dragon Age here. Solas pretty much thinks the same thing. The demise of his elven/spirit world created a seperation between the Fade and the material reality. The universe used to not have a Veil or a Fade - Life was all one thing, but it was disrupted, and elves lost their original spark and their gods are no more. Solas wants to undo all of that - no matter the millions he'll destroy in the process. From his perspective, he thinks he's simply taking back what was rightfully and originally the way the world was meant to be. But from everyone else's perspective, he's evil.

Your CPU is more than fine. You surely don't need a 8700k. And whether you want to play 4k or not is up to you. 2560 is more than fine. So is 1080.

The Thalmor are evil, but from their point of view, they're not evil at all. They are worse than most High Elves, but they share something all High Elves in general have: High Elves experience a distinct feeling of loss. Rather than taking joy in the world as it is, their whole mentality thinks Creation was a mistake and they think that they used to be something greater. They feel like people in exile. OTOH, this desire to hate the world also has some plus sides. You RARELY can please a High Elf/Altmer. They find fault with EVERYTHING. But this also drives them to improve upon it. Where someone else may see a masterly crafted sword, the High Elf will come along and thumb his nose in the air and say it sucks. They can't help but see the flaws of life... but this also drives them to craft and perfect their arts like nobody else. This is why their weapons might be so highly desired. Or why they have so much knowledge on the secrets of magic. Or might have awe-inspiring architecture compared to others. Some may be arrogant, but they can also be great friends who just want others to learn these things themselves. edit: You even see it in that High Elf in Rorikstead, if you ever talk to her. She's just a farmer, but she's arrogant about it... and insults you about how great she is planting cabbages. lol. There's something annoying, but also admirable about her at the same time, where she's devoted her life to perfect just "farming". The Thalmor take it a step futher though. Rather than "perfecting" this world, they're hellbent on finding a way to reverse Creation itself and destroy the world.. rewind and kill everything there ever was, and live in some Idealize Primordial State. It's frightening if you think about it.

This is how I'd do it too. Screw the idea of "just enough" power :P

Modern CPUs are ridiculous, man. Don't worry about that at least. Hardcore gamers still use i5's even.

So no wasted power? If you already have G-Sync, then 1080 all the way. You don't even need a Ti. If you plan on just sticking with 2560 res, even the 1070Ti will serve you well at that res. It'll probably drop to 50fps at some points, but don't hold me to that. You may want to investigate reviews further. Only prob is their new GPUs will probably be around the corner. edit: Ghz doesn't matter, depending on CPU. I have a Kaby Lake that handles any game I throw at it, even non-OC'ed or even non-Turbo (default Ghz is 4.2.. turbo is 4.5).

Well, I know I don't mind.. and I know I have unpopular ideas myself. It doesn't bother me if people want to heavily criticize it. But at the same time, I understand why sites do this. They'd rather not have any potential drama. It's easier to just remove the opportunity. I don't drama either, and would rather have everyone just intelligently speak.. but we all know it isn't realistic to expect that to always happen on the internet.

You don't need a 5Ghz CPU. SE is better at the CPU intensive stuff anyhow (NPCs, scripting), and you can be fine with much less than that. And you certainly don't need to overclock a 1080Ti. Skyrim and Fallout are meant to run at 60fps. Trying to push it further creates all kind of problems with the physics. A 1080Ti and Vega 64 are already great at reaching 60fps out of the box. However, if you're 4k gaming, the Vega is just on the edge of this and won't always hit 60fps, depending on the game.. It's what I have. 1080Ti is the more solid 4k gpu.

Ah I stand corrected then. If it can be done in Fallout, it can be done in Skyrim. I never have seen anyone make use of it though.

I'm not sure what you mean.. like a TV object that plays embedded videos? I don't think it's possible.. but I could be very wrong. I never heard of anyone embedded video playback within a mod like that.

3dtrees does look pretty cool. I'm still undecided on trees in general though. I guess my favorite to this point is Enhanced Vanilla Trees, but I'm not currently using it.

I'm still trying to get a grip on tweaking the settings for Landscape LOD with SSELODGen. Getting the textures the right shade and the land mesh to look right still elude me. Tree and Object LOD are a breeze with this utility, though. Took a bit of time to learn how to set up custom billboards though. You're learning a lot more than I ever did then. All I ever wanted out of it is less tree pop in. Nothing custom per se. I'd like to take a crack at DynDoLOD though. As I mentioned, Arthmoor makes Open Cities which is awesome.. but takes some tweaking to work with DynDoLOD. One thing it does better than SSELodgen ever did is it's effect on cities (like city lights at night) and animations in the distance (waterfalls, etc). These things seem so cool it may be worth it.

My main problem with using LE now has nothing to do with graphics, but just the benefit on cpu load and scripts in SE. I can run multiple script heavy things and a lot of NPCs and never crash. You could have a battlefield of soldiers with Wet n Cold, Footprints, gore, and whatever and not even think about it causing harm. And this is all I want to do at the end of the day: To stop thinking about the damn game and just play it. lol. With LE, it eventually felt like a flimsy house of cards after a certain point.

I know it's confusing with multiple posts, but I just gave you a brief above about Men. Nords and Imperials are the SAME race. They were both originally from Atmora. Both eventually migrated out of Atmora - one further South and one in what is now called Skyrim. The only thing that makes Imperials different now is mostly just appearance and culture developing differently over thousands of years. The Imperials have generally been more cosmopolitan and tried to blend and live with others. It's only natural, since they resided in the center of Tamriel. But Nords were more isolated and kept up their rivalry with elves. This is the biggest - and the only truly meaningful difference between them. And the only reason why there's a Civil War now. One wants to play the Middle Road and compromise, one has no tolerance for compromise with the Thalmor. And it's always been this way, going back to Wulfharth and Alessia clashing over things. It's why they even call their gods slightly different names: Because Alessia tried to eventually make peace with Elves and incorporated their pantheon of gods. While Nords and Wulfharth maintained a hatred for Elven gods... especially Auriel. It's why in the Nordic mind, Auriel is actually Alduin. Not the benevolent dragon Akatosh. Redguards are from another dimension, but are basically the Nords of their own world. They're the closest natural allies and have had the same conflicts with Elves as strongly as Nords historically have... Bretons are HALF-Elves, as a result of mixed breeding. The Men of the South became either the Imperials as we know them now or ended up as the Bretons who eventually mated with Elves. The Capitals of Skyrim really mean nothing. They've changed a lot of times over the years. Sometimes it's been Windhelm, sometimes Solitude. There is no more pure "Mer" race, but Altmer consider themselves the purest variation. It's kind of a misnomer to call them a "race" per se anyhow - they were remnants of the old "original spirits" before Creation, the Et Ada. When the world was created, it was catastrophic for the Et Ada. Many died, many lost their former nature. This latter group that became mortal eventually became manifested in many forms - one of which was the Mer. They begrudgingly settled in the Summerset Isles. But over time, some ventured away and developed their own cultures. Mer who moved into Morrowind became the Chimer. Mer who moved North became Falmer. Mer who moved to the woods became Bosmer. The Orsimer were simply cursed.... and rejected by their own kind for being cursed. They've been homeless ever since, in conflict with Men and Elves who don't like them. The Chimer in Morrowind eventually became cursed themselves and are now the Dunmer… the Dark Elves. Bosmer lost touch as well and became more primitive and even cannibalistic. Only the Altmer consider themselves to truly live up to the original ideal now.

I already do it this way myself. I generally put environmental and texture stuff on the bottom (loading last), cities and architecture before that, weapons, gameplay on top, then nuts n bolts and patches type of stuff loaded the earliest, like where Master files are loaded.

If one finds DynDOLOD confusing, seriously... just TES5Lodgen will help a lot. It's so easy. Download Vanilla Skyrim Boards at the same Nexus page for Lodgen, download Lodgen and unzip to a folder (call it "Bethesda Tools" or something) and just fire up the Lodgen executable. You literally don't have to do anything but press a series of "OK" buttons. DynDOLOD is tricker. Custom LODs are trickier. This isn't anything. edit: Rather, since we're talking SE, get SELODGen. But you still use the same Vanilla boards from the original Lodgen page.

Imperials and Nords aren't really that different racial wise. They both came from "Nedes". The Nedes all came from Atmora (where they think they originated after Lorkhan created Tamriel). Some Nedes eventually migrated South and settled in Cyrodil, while the Northmen eventually moved out of Atmora themselves later and became the men of Skyrim. The Nords. The men of the South didn't have good luck when they settled, as they eventually became overpowered and enslaved by the Elves there (the Ayleids). Tiber Septim didn't start the Empire. He started the THIRD empire WAAAAY after this. The first was started by Alessia, who was a slave girl, that eventually sparked a rebellion. She also got help from Wulfharth and the Nords in Skyrim. They were all just "human"/Nede and the same race. What really sealed the deal for Alessia is that a mysterious psychopathic terminator named Pelinal appeared in her time and became her Champion as well. He commited mass genocide on all elves and eventually Alessia established an Empire, which reigned for eons. After that died off, the process repeated and another empire was started by Reman Cyrodil -- from here we get the name of the region as Cyrodil. HE himself was seen as a god, like Alessia before.. but his empire died off eventually too. And then Tiber Septim came along and pretty much repeated the process. And now his empire has died off... and we're possibly seeing the beginnings of a new one. This idea that Nords and Imperials are at odds is a very small issue. It's supposed to happen this way.. The moment that Men reach a compromising attitude towards Elves, their Empire generally falls apart. And the Tale of Creation seems to reset itself, where some new form of Lorkhan reignites everything and builds a bulwark against Auriel/Aldmeri/Thalmor/etc..

RIP. He lived a long life, and got to see what games became. That's pretty amazing if you think about it.. to see so much evolution in one lifetime.

No, no.. the gods are everywhere. The Aedra and Daedra play a constant part and have influence in the world. Only the Aedra don't manifest themselves, because they DIED in the creation of the world.. and kind of make up the "bones" of the universe. So they have an indirect influence.. in a sort of celestial and elemental way. But Daedra were the gods who didn't take part in the creation of the world, so they remain separate from it and can manifest in it. The last game Oblivion is literally a Daedra (Mehrunes Dagon) trying to establish his kingdom on this landscape. While in this game, you're the freakin Dragonborn and possibly an avatar of Shor/Lorkhan. This character has both Akatosh and Lorkhan nudging his destiny. As for Elves, they call themselves Mer, as humans are "Man". Mer and Man. There's Atlmer, Dunmer, Orsimer, Falmer, etc.. Altmer are just one branch of the Mer, but consider themselves the purest. All of these elves came from the Aldmer (Ald--- with a D instead of T). The Aldmer as a people knew them are long gone, but the Altmer are reviving it in their own way. The Mer are actually "gods" themselves in a way. Or rather, part of the original group that got tricked into creating the world. Many died in the process (the most powerful being the Aedra I mentioned above), but a lot of the smaller ones lost their vitality and became something less than they were. They decided to live with their fate, but always resented it. Over the generations though, their original nature was a thing of the past and we have the Elves today. The Elves that are the most resentful are the Altmer…. they seek to undo Creation and get things back to the state it once was. To them, Creation is a mistake. All of it. They specifically blamed the god Lorkhan for originally tricking the other gods into making Creation and killed him.. but the damage was already done. No one truly knows where Men came from, but Men themselves believe they came into existence BECAUSE of Creation, and therefore consider Lorkhan their Creator and highest god. So this creates an endless conflict between Men and Mer. One side sees a Father and the other sees a Betrayer. What may seem like mundane conflicts between mortals has something far larger underpinning them. And it keeps happening over and over again. There's an outside lore book written by one of the Bethesda writers (Michael Kirkbride) that really sums it up, just with the title alone: "Shor Son of Shor". You don't even need to read it to understand the implications. It's like Groundhog Day.. where Shor (Lorkhan) is constantly at War against Auriel (Akatosh), reliving the conflict of Creation over and over and over and over again. Every age seems to have it's Shor coming out and building his empire.. only for Auriel to come out and try to kill him off. Whether it was Alessia and Pelinal who founded the first Empire and defeated the Elves.. Or Tiber Septim fighting the Aldmeri Dominion. And now it's playing out again with Skyrim in Rebellion, an appearance of a Dragonborn and a looming threat of the Thalmor. As for Imperial and Nord conflict - that's a very small issue. The Nords just hate that the Imperials try to "play the middle". The Nords share one thing with the Altmer in a way.. They're both very black and white and prefer clearer enemies. They hate the Thalmor and the Thalmor hate them. Other races of Men are not so clear cut. Imperials have always had a history of cosmopolitanism and coexistence. The Bretons are literally Half-Elves and not fully Men (hence the stronger affinity with magic). While the Redguards don't even come from this planet. I hate to confuse you more, but they're a product of alternate dimensions and time travel. lol. But they're the closest allies to Nords. In the world they came from, they sort of WERE the Nords of that land and had their own conflict with Elves (the Sinistral Elves). I think the story goes that they finally killed these elves off, but the last few elves caused a castrophic event that shifted time itself and accidental shoved the Redguards in our dimension. Now the Redguards can't go back home, but they still remember things from their culture. They have completely different myths and gods.. but some of it has parallels to Tamriel's gods. And they have a bad history with Elves like Nords do.

Zarik Zhakaron's or ShoddyCast's lore series are another way to get in touch with most lore (on Youtube). ShoddyCast is more basic, if you want to keep it simple. Zarik is full on lore nerd, but great.

I think Skyrim was still pretty great even when I first played, on Vanilla. Although I obviously think mods make it so much better. But just recall what it was like when first playing. Or perhaps what it was like playing the older TES games first. And I still see players who were new to the series adopt it on PS4 or something. Sure, they'll get tired of it and want to mod eventually.. but there's an essential game design here that people fall in love with. Sometimes we forget this, because we're so spoiled with enhancing our game.. but it's great even without that.