The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Interviews

Along with the many Skyrim previews we’ve reported about, there’s a fistful of interviews with Bethesda’s Todd Howard and Pete Hines we’d like to bring to your attention.

First up is NowGamer with a five-page summary of what they learned during their interview with Todd:

The world is about the same size as Oblivion but the difference is because we have mountains they channel us in different ways. They create less space but they take more time to get across because you can’t just cut across them so it ends up feeling bigger.

As far as the environments, it’s really varied. We have our pine forest and our mountains as well as a big grassy tundra, a fall forest, a volcanic tundra and a big glacier area. There’s about six or seven unique areas and they’re very different. With Oblivion and Fallout 3 there are differences, but they’re more subtle.

Next we stop by GamesIndustry.biz for a “Sign of the Hines” Q&A that covers quite a bit more than just The Elder Scrolls:

Q: How has company culture changed since you were just dedicated to smaller projects like Morrowind and now you’ve got all these big projects going on?

Pete Hines: Honestly, I still feel like we’re the same company. We may be doing more games, more often but it still feels like the same company because we haven’t changed our philosophy about how we talk to consumers, how we market, doing things for the right reasons, holding a product if it’s not ready, not throwing in features just for features’ sake. I think continue to be smart about the way that we do it, and as a result we continue to be successful, and hopefully that will continue.

Then we head to Xbox360Achievements.org for a chat with Mr. Howard about engine advancements and skill streamlining:

(You have the skills and then you have the three main stats, which is magika, health and stamina,) stated Howard as he gave some background to the new system itself. (In Oblivion you have your 8 attributes and then you have 21 skills… Now you have 18 skills and the 3 main attributes.)

(What we found is that all of those attributes actually did something else, so a fan might say, (You removed my 8 attributes!) and my answer is (Which ones did you want?) (I’ve got to have intelligence because it affects my magika!) (Well now we just have magika.) They all trickled down to something else so we just got rid of that. Now when you level up you can just raise your magika. In Oblivion you had to raise your intelligence, knowing that your intelligence raises your magika to cast more spells. We found that they all trickled down to some other stat.)

And, finally, there are two video interviews with Todd Howard over at IGN and G4.