The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Details

After spending a substantial but by no means sufficient amount of time with The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim at Eurogamer Expo, Bethesda forum user ‘SammiiDoogles’ posted their impressions on the official forums (and there’s enough to fill more than one preview) which paint a mixed picture of the open-world title – especially on the technical side – though it’s worth noting that we’re talking about a non-final build. Here are some higlights:

‘¢ Nords have something called Battlecry which makes enemies flee.
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‘¢ Argonians have something called ____ Hist King (Sorry, terrible with names – it was something about the Hist King, it’s a racial power like the Nords Battlecry) – it allows them to regenerate health quickly.
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‘¢ When standing on a high up rock, I noticed that models in the distance are very low poly and the ground had very noticable repeated textures.
‘¢ Some screen tearing present.
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‘¢ Demo was running at 1080p according one Beth staff member.
‘¢ Some very random framerate drops, saw one player walking for like 20 seconds at what looked like 5fps.
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‘¢ Caves are a lot more complex, with multiple levels and paths. One I found had several bridges lowered with levers and the whole place was being patrolled by Bandits, perfectly set up for stealth or archery.
‘¢ Stealth is actually a lot better than seen in the demo when the NPC’s are given a couple seconds to react. Two Bandits in a cave, one walking down the same pathway as me, facing away, and another walking along an adjacent catwalk above but further back. Shot at the one on the first floor, missed – the eye opened slightly, #1 shouted what was that, then #2 shouted down asking what the problem was? #2 ran down and #1 ran up, so they met eachother halfway and then stuck together, checking the place out and investigating the area the arrow came from with weapons drawn, the eye opening slightly.
‘¢ Mountains, sadly, DO guide the player. On my first play, I tried to turn around and head back past the start point and head North East – hit a bunch of unclimbable rocks and tried pushing around them. Before I knew it, I was entering Riverwood from the back on accident; totally unintentionally.
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‘¢ Stamina runs out very fast when sprintng, slow to regenerate. It was quite annoying at first, but I guess it’s why it needs to be levelled. I think Stamina is going to be a LOT more important this time around for those who want to travel on foot.
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‘¢ Lockpicking works exactly like in Fallout 3, but is more difficult at lower levels. You can attempt any level lock at any level as in Oblivion, but it will be nigh on impossible. I tried an expert lock with a lockpicking skill of 1, even the slightest pressure snapped the pick so it was pretty impossible to find that ‘sweet spot’ unlike FO which gives you a lot of lenience to find the spot. Clearly this is a way of giving lower level players the option to try it, but making it hard enough that they’ll still need to level the skill up – unlike oblivion where you could just be good at the minigame and cruise by.
‘¢ Relatively generous when you fall from height. Jumped from some rocks that would kill you in Oblivion, but did no damage here.
‘¢ Some pretty bad pop-in – saw the water wheel in Riverwood load in completely when I stood next to it. Also shows that water isn’t dynamic, it’s animated around the wheel.