Debate of the Day: Who Will You Be in Skyrim?

Today’s debate comes courtesy of reader Guy Incognito who suggested that we might have an open debate about Skyrim, which is released tomorrow. From posts I’ve written the past few days, it’s become apparent that a large number of you are anxiously awaiting the game, and so a discussion about day one might be worthwhile.

I fully expect to spend about two hours in the character creator. One hour getting my face just right, only to be wearing a helmet/playing in first person for 99% of the rest of the game. The other hour will be spent stressing out about which class I’ll be, and what my specialties should encompass.

Badass mohawk archer elf for the win!

In Oblivion, I had two characters. One was a male brawler who bludgeoned his way through the game. The second was a magic elf girl who ended up being by most powerful character of all, because magic was so damn easy to level up as you just had to spam the button over and over. I could sprint through entire dungeons completely invisible, grab the treasure, and get out. Not sure if that was more fun, but it was more useful.

I’ll probably have more than one Skyrim character eventually, but now I’m definitely only going to have time for one. Even though I do this in EVERY game like this, I think I’m still going to have to start with my typical Barbarian class, with little to no magic involved. I wish I could have it all, and perhaps I could be some sort of battle mage, but I usually like going all the way in one direction or the other.

What about you? Which race will you pick? What type of warrior will you be?

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24 Comments

  1. My thinking at this point is a Wood Elf Thief/Rogue-like since my favourite quest-line in Oblivion was the Thieves’ Guild. Haven’t decided on male or female, it’ll take a lot of messing around in the creator to decide. In oblivion I found it hard to make cool looking Elves but that screenshot is testament to the fact that’s no longer the case.

    I found archery was really difficult to use effectively in Oblivion but some of the perks seem like they’ll remedy that so that will be my primary walking around weapon. I’ll try to kill things from stealth with my bow but when they get close switch to dual daggers or something. I also noticed that there’s a perk for 15x dagger damage from sneak which just sounds awesome. I’m going to try out Alchemy for my healing needs.

    Later in the game I will probably try to add some magic to the arsenal but I don’t know which yet. Maybe alteration, I’ve never really used that before. Absolutely loving that you won’t have to add skill points and leveling is based entirely on how you’re playing.

  2. I’m already playing it 🙂 it’s the 11th already here in Australia.

    Definitely thought it would be better.. I literally can’t see a graphical difference between Skyrim and Oblivion.

    Game play is exactly the same, voice acting is pretty poor, the game engine is outdated looking, loads of sprites being used instead of modeling a few things.

    Just not up to par to me. 🙁

  3. Definitely Nord warrior! It might seem uncreative, but its my favourite race and I’ve been a nord in both Morrowind and Oblivion. And I’m not a huge fan of magick, so that makes the choice easy for me. I’ll probably make another character sometime in the future, but I’ll figure that out when that time comes.

  4. @Juukbra

    That was my thinking, Kristoph is misremembering how Oblivion looked. Also the choice of system would make a difference. The PC version supposedly looks far superior to the consoles. Playing Oblivion on a PC with all the mods that significantly tweaked the visuals versus Skyrim on a console might not be as much of a jump as you would expect.

  5. @Juukbra

    I know those screenshots look pretty but that’s because they’re meant too.

    Those are the show off shots that we all get to see before the game gets to be played by us.

    I have it on PC and everything is on ultra but after personally playing it for several hours now personally I feel let down, especially after waiting for years. Who knows you guys might all love it for what it is.

    Heres a screenshot I took of a dead soldier

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/Parados/TESV2011-11-1101-17-22-59.jpg

    How is anything here any different to Oblivion?

    Outdoors is kind of pretty but nothing exciting.

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/Parados/TESV2011-11-1102-01-59-97.jpg

    And I don’t even know what the hell is happening here.

    http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v472/Parados/TESV2011-11-1101-45-57-98.jpg

    I absolutely loved Morrowind and I liked Oblivion a lot ( not as much ) but it seriously feels like they didn’t care as much about the latest one.

    In Oblivion you get thrown around a fair bit in sword fights and it kind of actually feels like you’re apart of the action. That violent camera movement is pretty much gone now, most things have been replaced by sprites, the animals run underwater and a just whole lot of other silly things.

    I think I went in the wrong order, I came from Battlefield 3 with the most crazy gameplay, the most crisp ground shaking sounds and it’s holy crap close to real looking visuals – to a poorly textured room with some antlers.

    I’ll still play it though.

  6. @Guy Incognitus

    Yeah, and any game can have less-than-flattering scenes, even a game like Skyrim. In balance, however, there is overwhelming evidence that Bethesda did a very nice job with the visuals.

  7. @Kristoph

    Thanks for your thoughts. I also love the Elder Scrolls universe, I go back to Arena which I installed with *gasp* 3.5″ floppy disks. o_O

    I guess I don’t see the negatives quite as much as you do (maybe that soldier is impaled on an invisible pike). 😉

    Good stuff, though, I always like to hear candid feedback. On the screen shots, sure, I know there are the marketing fluff choice shots…but I’ve seen hundreds of other shots and the vast majority of those look pretty impressive.

  8. the game does not have a class system. how ever you choose to play is your class.

    looking forward to it myself. i will probably end up with a one handed sword / magic guy…..unless i play evil then i will be a female (i do not know why i make all my evil characters female)

  9. Khajiit all the way. The 15x damage with daggers, 3x with bows sounds too awesome to try something other than stealth (which is what I am in almost every rpg I play). However, I’m at least going to dabble in some magic – destruction, smithing, and enchanting are too alluring to pass up.

    Also, @Kristoph, if you play TES games for the combat or the graphics, you’re playing them for the wrong reason. I don’t care if the swordfights feel like you’re floating around in null space, swiping at the air (pretty much how Oblivion felt) – I just want that scale and variety that Bethesda is known for. And by all accounts, the game exceeds those expectations.

  10. From the images I’ve seen, the Orcs look badass. So I might run an orc warrior through it for the first time. Although I do prefer to play as a rogue in most games, so I probably run through it as a rogue of some type. And much like matt, I will be involved with the Dark Brotherhood.

  11. I’ve always wanted to try Khajiit so I think that’s the way I’m going to go. I tend to prefer being a stealthy bow wielding magic user. Maybe dual wield daggers for up close fighting.

    I’m also really looking forward to seeing what they do with the Dark Brotherhood in this one.

  12. I’m going Argonian. They don’t seem very popular and perhaps that’s because most gamers would prefer to be something that reflects human features and also prefer the skills they come with.
    I personally just love reptiles and was always a fan of lizardmen in warhammer. The look of the Argonian’s has also really improved and I’m interested to see how they speak and interact with armour in particular. Worried a helmet might make them look goofy.

    Not actually sure why I’ve always been attracted to characters that aren’t human – but then that is the point of fantasy games right?

    But yeah…guess I’ll be the poor friendless lizard boy sulking in a river somewhere. 😛

    P.S. I get what you mean about the character creator, I’ll be fretting for ages trying to perfect my ‘masterpiece’.

  13. After playing a couple hours I must apologize to Kristoff. I too am playing with all settings on Ultra and I find it is nowhere near the leap forward graphically that I was expecting. While people look fantastic, and distant mountains with the clouds in them are spectacular, up close the textures are low-res and and plants just look horrible. The do appear to be 2D sprites, very pixellated ones at that.

    This game probably does look better on consoles when you factor in how you’re sitting 10 feet back from the screen and the screen blurs a bunch of it. My hope is that the high-res textures we were promised for PC aren’t in the game (as the very small install size would indicate) and are coming in a patch or something.

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