First Impressions

[PrincessOfFlorin]

I've been playing for about 2 hours and decided to take a break to make myself some breakfast. Here are my thoughts so far:

 

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• The UI really is as bad as everyone says. I thought it might be exaggeration, but not. One thing though--the game defaults to xbox 360 controller, so if you turn that off, the lag decreases. But I'm having a really hard time with the mouse sensitivity. It's bouncy, which is giving me motion sickness. I don't think I'll ever be able to play longer than a couple of hours at a stretch, because it just makes me too ill. :(
  
• Everyone is really dirty and ugly. Heh. Well, at least it's realistic for a medieval world.
  
• So far, I have only been able to cast a spell once, and I'm not sure how I actually did it. I can't do it on purpose. Since I wanted to play a mage, this is seriously pissing me off. I'm sure it's something obvious, but if anyone wants to give me some spell casting tips, I'd greatly appreciate it.
  
• I also haven't been able to figure out how to change the camera to 3rd person. Because of the motion sickness problem the game is giving me, I really need to figure this out. Again, I'm sure it's obvious and I'll smack my forehead once someone explains it to me.
  
• I need lots of money to buy spells! The trader in Riverhold or whatever it's called has half a dozen that I'd like to have...but I'm broke.
  
• I decided to kill a chicken that was wandering in the street, to see if I would get some food from it's body. Nope! All I got was a 40 gp bounty! But the bounty was removed, because there were no witnesses. So be careful to always do your chicken killing in private. :D
  

[Esteris]

I summoned a familiar! After 2 failed tries. You choose the spell (it needs to be where your weapon is, so right hand) and then click and then either let go or click again. Generally I held the LMB for a moment and then clicked somewhere and it appeared. Try that :P

 

To change the perspective click F or scroll out. If that doesn't work, check in options - gameplay for something that allows to do it (though I think it was there by default?)

 

...I killed that chicken too. With a bow. So pro.

[nolgroth]

My first impressions are mostly favorable. I had watched the opening scene to just where the character enters the keep but before his bindings are cut. Seeing all PC-ified was amazing. Getting out to the other side of the intro dungeon was pretty epic. And then things went from great to better. Yes, there is a huge UI problem. I also have the problem of disappearing textures and objects. I hope those are fixed in the next patch or maybe by mods. Other than that, I felt like I was dropped into a vast cinematic world with my Argonian Centurian. Just the fact that I am having a blast with an Argonian is something to be amazed by.

 

High Points:

• The environments. I simply fell right into this world. Looking back, I daresay it was even easier than Oblivion.
  
• Combat and spellcasting. It took a couple of tries, but the two mouse button combo works pretty well. The actual "feel" of combat is just incredible.
  
• Crafting. I had a lot of fun building up my heavy Imperial armor at first and then my Steel armor. Working upwards from there.
  
• Music. I am going to get the soundtrack (4 discs) and consider the $30 a bargain. I cannot even describe how the music makes this game come to life.
  

 

Low Points:

• Weird UI. The mouse seems to be slightly off when clicking options in the dialog and inventory menus. Have to get used to the tab key being the "open and close" menu key.
  
• Graphical glitches. I am pretty well immersed in the game to the point were a few glitches are that big of a deal. On the other hand, I would love to not have semi-transparent doors.
  

 

Nitpicks:

• Underwater Adventures. I realize that there is a whole bunch of stuff on the dirt side, but I created an Argonian for the purpose of checking around the ocean for underwater sites to explore. I did get to see a couple of pretty icebergs though.
  
• Early Dragon Appearances. Look, I realize the creators are all excited about this game, but I would really have like to not have dragons flapping around while I am still trying to figure out the Favorites menu. :)
  
• Crafting Dragon Armor requires a Smithing skill of 100. Yeah, so we can somewhat use this skill roughly about the time our characters retire.
  

 

Well anyway, while I had some low points, so far the game has been amazing. I will post further impressions later.

[DyingAtheist]

Spell-casting is easy and dependant on the spell.

The reason you're likely confused (And what confused me at first) is that for a lot of spells you don't just click them to fire them, you have to hold down the relevant button until the spell casts and then keep holding it to do longer casts.

 

And to the person above who mentioned smithing...

Smithing is very easy to level from what I've seen. I stocked up on Iron Ingots and Leather Straps and just made like 40 Iron Daggers. My smithing's sitting at around 40 with pretty much no effort.

[Lifferds]

Mixed reactions here. Will need more face time to judge how the inner workings and quest generator work. Gameplay is what I would expect from the successor to earlier TES epics, superb. The graphics are beautiful, with the exception of the river at Riverview seeming to flow diagonal to the river path. Bethesda should have put a wee bit more effort into the water flow pattern. I like the way there is more interaction with NPCs. Will wait to see if their conversations become redundant as in TES IV.

 

Like almost everyone else I hate the UI. What happened to hotkeys? Switching from bow to sword in Favs requires: Q,up/down,E,Tab? Gimme a break, here. If I am missing something, help me out.

 

I am also getting a several second freeze in game play from time to time, so far not in combat. Perhaps I need to upgrade my graphics card?

 

All in all, this looks as good as prior chapters and am anxiously awaiting the release of mods, so I can start troubleshooting conflicts. :biggrin:

[Usief]

Installing as i type, waiting with exitment building. The Installation proces isn't likable, i miss the windowed installer types, with game art displayed in the background. With this it seems to be a static kinda landscape backdrop inside the tiny steam installer window :) That aside it is very easy going and gave me time to check up on others findings and some of the mods already available. I'm gonna go for a purely vanilla experience to begin with, before i even look at the game guide. Game were doin it for half price with the purchse of the game itself. Seems it's all ready to go, so I'm off :)

[Warhawk137]

Yeah, the UI needs serious work.

 

For what it's worth, the format is outstanding, and the three-dimensional models are nice. I also like the relatively minimalistic design. In terms of visuals, the only thing that feels missing is your character model.

 

But in terms of functionality, it's borked to all hell. Although I'm actually getting used to the favorites menu.

 

Pretty much everything else is awesome. A few graphics glitches here and there. Had to reload in Bleak Falls Barrow because I couldn't get through a door for some reason (turns out there were spider-webs over the door, but due to some glitch they didn't show up, so it looked like an invisible wall, and I didn't think to try to whack my way through). Nothing terribly huge to complain about though.

[Kerghan]

The Good:

*There definitely is a lot to see and do in the game.

*Combat is much better than in previous Elder Scrolls games.

*Third person camera works well.

*The music is great.

*The game looks stunning in certain locations when the weather is just right.

*Voice acting is a lot more varied than it was in Oblivion.

*Characters look chiseled and grizzled, which in my opinion is an improvement over the puffy balloon faces of Oblivion.

*The leveling system is simple and fluid this time around, while still offering a wide variety of different options for your character through perks.

*Being able to see at a glance if an item is an upgrade or a downgrade is a huge plus.

*The random melee executions are a nice touch.

*The way in which the world and the story are presented feels a lot more mature and fully realized than in Oblivion.

*Sprinting is a nice feature.

*Some of the creatures I've encountered have actually been fairly challenging thus far (playing on Adept difficulty).

*The autosave system is nice.

*The things bandits scream at me during combat generally don't sound like a 10 year old wrote them.

*Imperials got their roman themed armor back!

 

The Bad:

*The UI is consolized to the max. I'm playing with a 360 controller so it doesn't bother me so much, but man, if I were using a mouse/keyboard I think I'd be extremely frustrated.

*Managing your bows, melee weapons, and spells can be pretty clunky.

*Even on High settings (rather than Ultra) with anti-aliasing bumped down to 2x, the game simply doesn't run well on my computer in outdoor locations. I get frequent fps dips. My computer is pretty powerful (i7 920, gtx580, 6gb ddr3 ram), I was hoping it would handle the game maxed out at a steady 60 fps @ 1920/1080.

*The first person FOV seems really zoomed in. I would guess its at 60 or 70.

*The game doesn't minimize all that well. I have to alt-tab to it twice to get it to pop back up, and even then it might decide it doesn't want to maximize, or it may simply decide to crash.

*Enemy AI isn't significantly improved over Oblivion's.

 

The Ugly:

*Textures tile badly and look very low res. It's not noticeable when the lighting is perfect.

*The lighting is rarely perfect.

*Some surfaces have pretty lackluster normal map detail.

*LOD geometry acts pretty weird sometimes.

*NPCs still seem a bit stiff.

*Animations, while much improved over Oblivion's, can still be kind of jittery.

*I've been experiencing nasty crackling noise in some of the ambient noises and voices. It's not so bad that it makes the game unplayable, but it is noticeable, and it's obviously not intentional.

*The outdoor environments simply do not look very good sometimes. The terrain often gets this dull, washed out appearance, which I'm blaming it on the certain types of weather. Although, it could just the way my monitor displays the image.

 

Final Thoughts:

It's a fixer upper. A Bethesda game through and through.

Edited November 11, 2011 by Kerghan

[raatorotta]

I was suprised game runs pretty well on high settings with dual-core! Well, i already ordered new processor 2 days ago so it will remove that little freeze that occurs every now and then. Game looks so good compared to oblivion. Inventory menu is bit weird, but i think i get used to that fast. Map looks great, i like it more than flat cyrodiil map. Shaders are great. Haven't really found anything bad yet, but i haven't played long either. For first impression, THIS GAME ROCKS! :thumbsup:

[vortmak5]

Tried playing a dark elf it would have been nice to have the age changed I know its supose to be primitive and but you dont have to look butt ugly :facepalm: maybe I just need to try harder but a little more control on charater creation would have been nice. One of these days I going to learn how to mod :tongue: