LE to ride a dragon like a horse

[kenshin333]

its all skyrim misses i think!!! wud be pretty cool.

[Morbox]

There was a mod like this for Oblivion...so I guess it should be possible. I was kinda stumped that they made Ohdaviing just a fighting help. There's enough stuff for that! I really hope someone will do this. But I'm pretty sure someone will.

[Aluminumfoil]

Two words: quality assurance. Skyrim is not designed for a character that can fly. It is laid out to funnel you through certain areas to get to other areas; to make certain regions more likely to be reached first and others second. Furthermore, it is visually designed for a character who is contained to the places that an unaided person could go. A flying character might well discover regions with no close-up level of detail, invisible walls, holes in the world, etc, which simply don't matter because nobody could ever possibly get there without flying. Try noclipping over the wall into Whiterun, sometime, to see what I mean. Not to mention the graphical difficulties that Skyrim runs into rendering certain distant objects that are usually not seen by the player, unless the player climbs to a very high peak (and it happens to be a sunny day), and are therefore okay - most of the time, the distant objects you'll be seeing are mountains, and Bethesda took their time to make sure those mountains look fantastic.

 

It's okay for a mod to have these kinds of issues, because it's an optional feature with no expectations of publisher-ready quality, but Bethesda couldn't have done it and maintained the illusion of a large, seamless world in a worldspace. At least, not without dumping vastly more time and money into it.

[Shantih]

Riding a mammoth could be fun, especially a bright pink mammoth named Fluffy. :teehee:

[Morbox]

I actually had the same thought...or a mini-mammoth. But that should be pretty easy, I guess. Just slap the mammoth model on the horse values, scale it to a small enough size, so your legs don't stick in the broad back, up the speed a bit (size is connected to speed in the game) and you're done. Now all we need is the editor.

 

Considering Aluminiumfoil's answer: I guess you're right, but to me it still was quite a shock when there was no flying spell in Oblivion. Sure, there are some issues, like the impossibility to do linear dungeons in an interesting fashion. But concerning the extra-cell nature of the cities you talked about: Why? Villages are part of the outside world as well! Why do cities have to be separate cells? It's even more weird because it clearly creates problems for the programmers as well: Somehow, the dragons follow you into cities, probably without going through the town doors, cause that'd look stupid. So I guess they had to implement something that lets dragons follow you into cities through the sky. Concerning Dungeons: You could make it a point of levitation spells that they don't work in dungeons, as you are not in touch with the sky or something. Also, we're not talking dungeons here, we want to ride on dragons! they don't fit in dungeons anyway ;). I don't know about these Graphics issues you're talking about. At one point they even deliberately let you levitate about a hundred meters or more above ground (Meridia Shrine quest) and I had no issues there. So there can't be an inherent problem. And it doesn't seem to me soooo hard to get rid of some LoD stuff. This Oblivion mod, for instance, didn't work like "oh, it's a mod, so it's okay". It ran perfectly, apart from shoddy animations and, well, the cities. I guess that it's some engine limitation that prevents them from connecting the cities with the real exterior cells. Perhaps it has to do with the amount of action going on in a city. Too many actors and objects in one place, etc. But then again: Solitude is not really much smaller than the usual exterior cell, I think. Probably the real modders have more knowledge on this though.

Actually, I just googled a bit and it seems that level of detail is actually the reason, though I've also read that it wasn't actually necessary in Oblivion, except for the imperial city.

Anyway, sorry for the rant, but I'm just dumbfounded about how they could actually let the opportunity pass for one of the most awesome things they could've done in a game about dragons: Actually letting you ride one. I really miss that option as well, as walking sometimes is just too slow if you don't want to use quick travel all the time. And horses are too slow as well. Oh well, I'll just have to wait for some mod in this direction. Shouldn't take too long, I guess.

Edited December 9, 2011 by Morbox

[jimhsu]

But concerning the extra-cell nature of the cities you talked about: Why? Villages are part of the outside world as well! Why do cities have to be separate cells?

 

One word: Consoles. Yes, that's basically it. A PC version should be able to load Whiterun in an exterior just fine, and have enough threading to handle the AI. I expect a first Open Cities release in 6 months or so.

 

They even have most of the riding animations created (for the MQ), for heaven's sake. It's simply not OK to give a much desired feature, or possibly core feature (flying) to only one platform - rather, modders have to do that.

Edited December 9, 2011 by jimhsu

[Morbox]

GAAAAAAAAH!

Goddammit, you're right. Forgot about that. How could I? Why is the menu effed up like that? Consoles! Why is riding Dragons impossible? Consoles!

Though I should keep my mouth shut. If it weren't for the consoles, I might not be able to play at all, due to higher graphics. Although...they know that not everyone has a state-of-the-art gaming computer these days. Perhaps the graphics maximum would just have been higher. Oh, whatever. It's still a great game, can't really stay angry at Bethesda.