The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Previews

Bethesda hasn’t greenlit any real coverage of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim just yet, so you’ll have to chalk up these two articles as simple appetizers before the coming storm.

OXM covers some of what they’d like to see in the sequel:

As great as Oblivion is, Morrowind will always remain close to our heart as the best of the Elder Scrolls series. That theme tune, for starters. Perhaps it’s nostalgia talking, but it’s one of the grandest pieces of videogame music ever composed and the game hasn’t even begun when you hear it. We can expect a remixed version to be present in Skyrim but will it hit all the right notes, or fall a bit flat as Oblivion’s version did?

Morrowind’s world also felt a bit more alive than Oblivion’s did. Stepping off a boat into that small fishing village is certainly a less action packed opening than escaping a castle prison, but it lent itself far more to the more mysterious atmosphere of the game. Morrowind’s environment felt far more imposing and alien from the outset than Oblivion’s immediately lush green fields.

While Cheat Code Central sorts through what we know so far:

Although Bethesda won’t be revealing anything more about the game until early next year, this majestic cinematic suggests a number of directions the fifth Elder Scrolls title could conceivably go. Most obviously, the mention of the Skyrim (as well as the announcement by Bethesda’s Todd Howard on last week’s VGA Awards) implies that core to the story will be the arctic, viking-like region of the Nords. This rich, mountainous land could provide ample opportunities for amazing adventuring as well as the possibility of throwing back a few tankards of Nordic Whiskey at a local tavern. We might find ourselves employed by Jsashe, the Witch Queen of Whiterun, or the nobility of the rival cities of Solitude and Winterhold. We might be advancing our studies among scholars at the Ysmir Collective or be called upon by settlements to fend off marauding frost trolls. And that’s just what we might be doing in our off time. As far as the main storyline goes, if the trailer is any indication, it looks like the Oblivion Crisis may not be as over as we’d hoped it to be.

Regardless of what happens in the story though, what it seems we can expect from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are better graphics (fingers crossed for better looking character models!) as Bethesda’s indicated that we’ll see an upgrade from the company’s Gamebroy engine, the engine used previously for both Oblivion and Fallout 3. Community manager Nick Breckton recently supported that assertion on Twitter by briefly mentioning a complete technical overhaul.”It’s a new graphics/gameplay engine built internally. We’ll have more details down the road.” Todd Howard, Game Director of Skyrim added to that in the company’s official press release saying, “It’s exciting finally to announce the game. We’ve been working for many years on Skyrim and the technology behind it. A new Elder Scrolls game has been a long time coming, and we can’t wait to show it off.”