Skyrim: 30 Minutes of Gameplay Footage from QuakeCon

Bethesda showed off an extended bit of gameplay from The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at QuakeCon last week. As I'm sure you'd rather watch the video than read me go on and on about it, I'll get out of your way now. Enjoy!



QuakeCon 2011 - The Elder Scrolls 5 : Skyrim... by Xboxlivefr

Here are some of my observations:

First of all, it is simply beautiful. The environment, the player's movements, the fluidity of combat- all of it is gorgeous. The menu screen seems sleek, readily accessible, and pretty cool. I mean, you can look at all of your items, rotating them around and such, which is fun. And you can read books that'll look like books and the pages will turn and everything! Which is incredibly nerdy, I understand, but give me a break.




Speccing seems to work differently in Skyrim as well. Within the standard skill categories (One-handed, Block, etc.) there are what director Todd Howard termed "perks" that the player can choose. So it's sort of like a skill tree, which is cool since this gives you more freedom to change your character's playing style as you progress through the game.

The biggest and most impressive improvement, in my opinion, is in combat, which is so much more dynamic in Skyrim. You can dual wield different weapons (a staff and a sword, for instance) and different spells in each hand. There are now runes that operate like magical traps, activating when crossed by enemies. There are the cool dragon shouts that can do anything from slowing time to calling down lightning onto your enemies. That's badass.

I apologise for the ads and if your video messes up a bit at 25:00. Yours might not, but the audio and video got a little disjointed at that point for me. But hey, it's not an official release or anything, so I suppose we take what we can get.

Also, woolly mammoths and dragons. Dragons. Get excited.

Cheers!