Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

You are a prisoner. You can't expect a prisoner to be good-looking in medieval times right?

Otherwise they would have just used their charm to get acquitted.

You misunderstand.... even the *royalty* looks ugly in Oblivion

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Vexx

You misunderstand.... even the *royalty* looks ugly in Oblivion

See, it is just their intentional design choice. Because as we know, it is popular now to portray elves as supermodels. But TES Elves are anything but.
Bethesda just decided they are not going to populate the world with beautiful people like you see on TV shows and movies. One would say their ratio of ordinary faces vs beauty is very close to the real world. Of course it is slightly annoying that you might not find anyone you want to marry in game, but that's why Bethesda let you mod; if you want high fantasy where everyone's gorgeous, you are free to put it in.

[Irenicus]

Originally Posted by Vallen Chaos Valiant

See, it is just their intentional design choice. Because as we know, it is popular now to portray elves as supermodels. But TES Elves are anything but.
Bethesda just decided they are not going to populate the world with beautiful people like you see on TV shows and movies. One would say their ratio of ordinary faces vs beauty is very close to the real world. Of course it is slightly annoying that you might not find anyone you want to marry in game, but that's why Bethesda let you mod; if you want high fantasy where everyone's gorgeous, you are free to put it in.

No, literally *everybody* is ugly in Oblivion. They look...bloated. It's not an intentional artistic choice, it's face modeling algorithm failure on an epic proportion. Morrowind at least had the excuse of being 2002, though that still gives one pause given that goddesses like Azura and Almalexia, figures who are canonically supposed to be rather intoxicating, are still ugly (thank Almsivi for the Almalexia/Azura replacers, lol). Thank goodness Azura only has a statue in Oblivion; if she's subjected to Oblivion's face modeler she'd look like a drowned corpse like the rest of Cyrodiil.

Skyrim is a drastic improvement, though not exactly Bioware good. Everybody's kinda rough instead. But that's fine since they're going for the rough and tumble Viking-and-Dragons theme. I wouldn't date any of them but, well, I can't date any of them anyway (Fable marriages don't count, sorry).

However a mod to prettify my avatar is absolutely essential. The Elder Scrolls are lonely games anyway: the world revolves around you, and you don't make connections to *characters* so much as you do with the world. If I'm going to be the center of my own little world, I might as well walk around being a total goddess. :/

[Vexx]

What Irenicus says ... just bad modeling. These aren't "average people" being depicted, these are immersion-breaking bad art jobs.
Skyrim *is* a dramatic improvement for Bethesda on the human side .. though the non-human races still welcome a tinker assist. Well.. I was able to extract a decent looking dark elf and high elf out of the unmodded build but it took me about 30 minutes of tinkering.

Point is, PC players can employ mods to get around such immersion-breaking and enjoy the gameplay and story.

[Vena]

With Christmas Break over and my return to my powerful-Skyrim running desktop, I finally realized the Zombie Apocalypse on Whiterun... and boy was it fun and brutal.

I spent the better part of the day dragging corpses (permanent world ones, like "Nord" and "Breton" and "Corpse") from all over the world with Twin Souls + Dead Thrall, and pilling them up in my house. Killed countless Bandit Chiefs, Conjurers, Pyromancers, Storm Wizards, Cryomancers, Dremora, and a few random passers-by who were under the stupid LVL 40 cap (since I was 50 at the time, Imperials, Storm Cloaks, Guard, all were "too powerful" for Dead Thrall), and put them in my house too. In the end, I think I piled up (by cap) 15 of the latter since respawning bodies can only be stored at 15 per cell before the game deletes them all (I did this once by accident, had to rehunt down a bunch of Bandit Chiefs) and close to 40 world corpses and a few named bosses that also never reset. So in the end there were close to 60 bodies piled up in my house, in the Alchemy room, in Breezehome. I equipped all of them with smithed and enchanted gear (needed to level enchanting) where applicable and where the Thralls would accept the upgraded gear (mages do not accept upgraded gear, the little pricks, but I did pimp out a few Bandit Chiefs with Daedra Weapons and Twin-Enchanted Steel Armor).

The final component was the Ritual Stone.

Used that in my Alchemy room, watched 60~some corpses come back to life, stepped out side, shot a guard, and lolled as 60+ zombies annihilate every guard and citizen in a matter of seconds (while also conjuring/raising a small additional army of Atronarchs and Zombies (had some necros and a couple of Master Vampires)).

Best part of it? Game glitched and that army is still alive and it seems that all of them are considered Dead Thralls. (Though if I fast travel anywhere all but two disappear, so I have to walk everywhere with my army in tow.)
Makes the game fairly boring, honestly... but hilarious.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Vexx

You misunderstand.... even the *royalty* looks ugly in Oblivion

Royalty are ALWAYS ugly. Other than the new Bhutan king who looks like Chow Yun Fat.

[Ithekro]

Originally Posted by SaintessHeart

Royalty are ALWAYS ugly. Other than the new Bhutan king who looks like Chow Yun Fat.

Okay...even the servants of the royality are ugly. Even the ugly royals in life get pretty maids, because power gets you the pretty ones to play with. It is considered one of the perks. Also lets you sneak away from your ugly royal wife, if all royals are ugly. Or you have your designated royal concubine, which would traditionally be pretty.

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Vena

With Christmas Break over and my return to my powerful-Skyrim running desktop, I finally realized the Zombie Apocalypse on Whiterun... and boy was it fun and brutal.

I spent the better part of the day dragging corpses (permanent world ones, like "Nord" and "Breton" and "Corpse") from all over the world with Twin Souls + Dead Thrall, and pilling them up in my house. Killed countless Bandit Chiefs, Conjurers, Pyromancers, Storm Wizards, Cryomancers, Dremora, and a few random passers-by who were under the stupid LVL 40 cap (since I was 50 at the time, Imperials, Storm Cloaks, Guard, all were "too powerful" for Dead Thrall), and put them in my house too. In the end, I think I piled up (by cap) 15 of the latter since respawning bodies can only be stored at 15 per cell before the game deletes them all (I did this once by accident, had to rehunt down a bunch of Bandit Chiefs) and close to 40 world corpses and a few named bosses that also never reset. So in the end there were close to 60 bodies piled up in my house, in the Alchemy room, in Breezehome. I equipped all of them with smithed and enchanted gear (needed to level enchanting) where applicable and where the Thralls would accept the upgraded gear (mages do not accept upgraded gear, the little pricks, but I did pimp out a few Bandit Chiefs with Daedra Weapons and Twin-Enchanted Steel Armor).

The final component was the Ritual Stone.

Used that in my Alchemy room, watched 60~some corpses come back to life, stepped out side, shot a guard, and lolled as 60+ zombies annihilate every guard and citizen in a matter of seconds (while also conjuring/raising a small additional army of Atronarchs and Zombies (had some necros and a couple of Master Vampires)).

Best part of it? Game glitched and that army is still alive and it seems that all of them are considered Dead Thralls. (Though if I fast travel anywhere all but two disappear, so I have to walk everywhere with my army in tow.)
Makes the game fairly boring, honestly... but hilarious.

This made me quite amused

[SOGESNAKE]

Need someone to clear this up for me....


I've heard that the PS3 version of this game is the..... "glitchiest" of the 3. Is this true? I was thinking of getting this for someone for their PS3, but if that's soooo.... might not~

[RWBladewing]

Originally Posted by SOGESNAKE

Need someone to clear this up for me....


I've heard that the PS3 version of this game is the..... "glitchiest" of the 3. Is this true? I was thinking of getting this for someone for their PS3, but if that's soooo.... might not~

It's not necessarily unplayable like some people are saying but I definitely have had issues. I logged around 200 hours and was still able to load save games and play mostly normally but load times and chance of randomly freezing definitely went up the further I got. Most annoying though was that there seemed to be a chance every time I used fast travel that the game would suddenly become extremely laggy or even become a literal slideshow. This could be cleared up by restarting the system but was still irritating.

If you can get any other version, get that instead, though I still think the game is good enough that it's still worth it even if they only have a PS3. They should hopefully fix those issues sometime in the near future anyway.

[Vallen Chaos Valiant]

Originally Posted by Vexx

What Irenicus says ... just bad modeling. These aren't "average people" being depicted, these are immersion-breaking bad art jobs.
Skyrim *is* a dramatic improvement for Bethesda on the human side .. though the non-human races still welcome a tinker assist. Well.. I was able to extract a decent looking dark elf and high elf out of the unmodded build but it took me about 30 minutes of tinkering.

Point is, PC players can employ mods to get around such immersion-breaking and enjoy the gameplay and story.

Immersion-breaking isn't the right word for it.

We had to deal with bad polygon faces for as long as polygons existed in gaming. Immersion has nothing to do with having beautiful people. If we can deal with Princess Peach being 16 pixels tall, we can deal with Skyrim faces.

As I say, Bethesda simply have different view of beauty, and they are sticking to it. You are free to disagree, and free to mod. Much like how there was arguments on how Argonians are suppose to look in Oblivion. People have never been happy enough with default TES faces, and never will.

[Urzu 7]

Originally Posted by Vexx

...

All of Bethesda's games are prone to what fans gently poke at with the term "ugly stick" --- the character designs are ugly, they look like they've been beaten with "ugly sticks". Not just plain but "no I wouldn't date him or her if my life depended on it"

So usually the very first mods to come out are "de-uglification" mods.

I figured that was the case behind the term. In Oblivion, there are hardly any nice looking females. And it was hard to make a lot of your characters look attractive. Default Nord women in Oblivion are ugly.

However, in Skyrim, I think that there are a good number of good looking female NPCs, and it was very easy to make an attractive Nord woman for my character. I think that the human type of NPC women can look good (depending on the character), and that you can make a good looking human female character easily. I think that the elves look kind of bad. I liked how they looked much like humans in Oblivion.

Does the fountain of youth mod apply to NPCs? Or just your own characters?

[Vexx]

Originally Posted by Urzu 7

I figured that was the case behind the term. In Oblivion, there are hardly any nice looking females. And it was hard to make a lot of your characters look attractive. Default Nord women in Oblivion are ugly.

However, in Skyrim, I think that there are a good number of good looking female NPCs, and it was very easy to make an attractive Nord woman for my character. I think that the human type of NPC women can look good (depending on the character), and that you can make a good looking human female character easily. I think that the elves look kind of bad. I liked how they looked much like humans in Oblivion.

Does the fountain of youth mod apply to NPCs? Or just your own characters?

Skyrim is a big improvement over Oblivion in terms of average people looking average rather than like someone in character design failed their anatomy classes. That's the point here that I and several other posters have made -- that the designs were fundamentally flawed, not just that people look plain. Skyrim's improved designs lessens the need for mods (unless you want a hairstyle they're not offering, etc.)

The mods generally improve everyone's looks. Like I said earlier, its possible to get pretty good results with Skyrim's existing components with humans but I just liked the mods to make it easier to work with the other species/races.

[SaintessHeart]

Originally Posted by Ithekro

Okay...even the servants of the royality are ugly. Even the ugly royals in life get pretty maids, because power gets you the pretty ones to play with. It is considered one of the perks. Also lets you sneak away from your ugly royal wife, if all royals are ugly. Or you have your designated royal concubine, which would traditionally be pretty.

I thought the reason why royal concubines are pretty is due to the fact that they are mostly lolis.

[Urzu 7]

Originally Posted by SOGESNAKE

Need someone to clear this up for me....


I've heard that the PS3 version of this game is the..... "glitchiest" of the 3. Is this true? I was thinking of getting this for someone for their PS3, but if that's soooo.... might not~

In addition to what RWBladewing said, the bad framerates that can sometimes be found in Skyrim for PS3 (sometimes bringing the framerate down to very low numbers) happens after a long time of playing due to big file sizes for the saves. What ended up happening is that the game isn't optimized for the PS3 (made first for XBox 360, and then PC, and then PS3 kind of was the system with the least optimization), so due to less optimization and PS3s 256 MB of RAM, big save files result in slowdown problems.

If you have an XBox 360 or a PC that can run it well, get one of those versions. If you want it on PC, I recommend getting a wired XBox 360 controller to play it with. The game was made with controllers in mind, and I hear that clicking things with the mouse is wonky in the PC version (including picking up things).

[Who]

Clicking IS wonky. Very wonky. The left mouse button doesn't activate often when attacking for me. But I still don't see myself picking up a 360 controller for it. Well, I have. Too awkward for me.

[Myssa Rei]

Currently thinking of investing in some mods now that my first character is already maxed out, and I'm already in the groove with my second character (female Nord Destruction mage wearing Heavy Armor). I'm thinking of Weapons of the Third Age, but maybe I'll get some of the visual tweak mods that Vexx listed.

Any word on the Creation Kit yet? That'll really open the options to more comprehensive mods.

[Stiletto]

Originally Posted by SOGESNAKE

Need someone to clear this up for me....


I've heard that the PS3 version of this game is the..... "glitchiest" of the 3. Is this true? I was thinking of getting this for someone for their PS3, but if that's soooo.... might not~

It ranges from laggy to massive framerate drop to completely unplayable. Do. Not. Bother. With the PS3 version. You can get much better graphics and entertainment in the other two versions. Though this might be negative bias because I completely feel like I've wasted 60$ on a game I can't play for more then twenty hours before the savefile is up to eleven MBs and everything is juttering and sturtling.

Personal experience by the way. Just to clarify that.

[Tong]

Originally Posted by Stiletto

It ranges from laggy to massive framerate drop to completely unplayable. Do. Not. Bother. With the PS3 version. You can get much better graphics and entertainment in the other two versions. Though this might be negative bias because I completely feel like I've wasted 60$ on a game I can't play for more then twenty hours before the savefile is up to eleven MBs and everything is juttering and sturtling.

Personal experience by the way. Just to clarify that.

This is true, this engine doesn't handle well consoles (or the other way round).
Same thing happens in Fallout 3/New Vegas.

Well Stiletto, one more reason to speedrun Skyrim

[Stiletto]

Originally Posted by Tong

Well Stiletto, one more reason to speedrun Skyrim

Time to hit the skooma bottles like a boss.