[LordPomposity]

I now spam way too much AoE to make having a companion in any way a good idea.

[QuantumDelta]

Most of the time no problem.
When a shuper shcary monster is coming for you and if you don't get through the doorway you're dead, almost game breakingly annoying

Also; Frost Storm/Fire Ball FTW
Destruction spell school reduction % on items at 100% FTW

[Scotty]

If there's combat going on, your companion, unless you specifically ordered them to stand in the doorway, should be fighting, not standing in the doorway.

[QuantumDelta]

You get a choice as a mage;
Have a melee companion who runs in and gets shot in the ass or makes you hold fire until you can reposition; difficult in narrow corridors.
Have a ranged companion who hopefully stays behind you and shoots over your head as you remain crouched.

[LordPomposity]

If there's combat going on, your companion, unless you specifically ordered them to stand in the doorway, should be fighting, not standing in the doorway.

I think we all agree that's what should be happening.

[Fury]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Skyrim-Morrowind-Oblivion-Elder-Scrolls-Steam,14068.html#xtor=RSS-181

hurr durr

[Darius]

The one-liner blurb is a little ambiguous. Does it mean no third-party mods at all, or just no LAA executable?

[phatosealpha]

No tampering with the executable.  Data based mods are completely unaffected.

[LordMelvin]

The one-liner blurb is a little ambiguous. Does it mean no third-party mods at all, or just no LAA executable?

The only _released_ mod that this blocks is the LAA executable, but there're people already working on de-consolitising the graphics engine, and updating the UI engine on a reverse-engineered decompiled-binary level (the bethsoft forum thread is being led by DarN, of the bestest Oblivion UI mod ever. They've had some help from the guy who did the actual UI). Anything like that - graphics extender, script extender, etc. is going to be moderately boned.

[LordPomposity]

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/Skyrim-Morrowind-Oblivion-Elder-Scrolls-Steam,14068.html#xtor=RSS-181

hurr durr

Oh, FFS. WTF do they think they're accomplishing? Has there ever been any DRM that prevented a cracked copy of a game from hitting the torrents within 24 hours of release, if not before release?

[The E]

What they are probably trying to do is limit the possibility of some "modder" embedding malware in a new executable that promises to do some wonderful stuff.

Let's face it, if you have a community of people willing and capable to inject code into your engine to mess with its memory management, sooner or later someone will take advantage of that to try and spread some bad ****.

[Scooby_Doo]

BAD MOVE

This of course will probably limit the script extenders which opens up a whole lot that Beth's stupid scripts can't do.

Edit: Actually it looks like SKSE is already in the works. 

[Ravenholme]

What they are probably trying to do is limit the possibility of some "modder" embedding malware in a new executable that promises to do some wonderful stuff.

Let's face it, if you have a community of people willing and capable to inject code into your engine to mess with its memory management, sooner or later someone will take advantage of that to try and spread some bad ****.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/11/22/skyrim-patched-for-the-worse/ Workaround linked in this.

[Scotty]

Started this random quest waaaay in middle of the north ice fields (almost due north of Winterhold), and it took me to a Dwemer Ruin.  An hour an a half later, I'm still exploring the ridiculously huge underground cavern it led me to.  Finding all sorts of awesome things like Crimson Nirnroot, geode veins for mining, Dwarven Centurions everywhere.

Exploring this is probably the most fun I've had in Skyrim in the last 10 or so hours of gameplay.

[JCDNWarrior]

Oh wow, that's one heck of a beautiful cave indeed. I should go up north and north-east soon, I've been remaining in the tundra and non-ice areas a lot (kinda by accident by getting happily lost in this huge world) but I'll definitely look forward to explore that place!

[QuantumDelta]

Finished... think I got most of the side quests, actually only finished it because there was a side-quest-ish-type-thing that I couldn't do until I'd gone to the penultimate area.
I don't really wanna do the few side quests I have left... Spent too long on this game already.
All the masks, all the main quest lines, all the daedric quest lines, all the faction questlines, probably 80% of the map covered, only one skill quest done though.. level 39.

Ending was kinda anticlimactic..

[Pred the Penguin]

Exactly how much time did you spend on it? O_o

[QuantumDelta]

......A lot :<

[Pred the Penguin]

Well, that's informative.

Any opinions? How much of that gameplay was good experience, how does it compare to other open world RPGs, etc...

[QuantumDelta]

Well, the first two days it came out I played it for about 30 hours in total, as I had them off work coincidentally, and I was ill this week and put another ~30-40 hours in, while playing it whenever I got the chance otherwise.

Overall the games pretty good, I spent a while just exploring, bumped into a bunch of dragon priests almost straight away, between them and the archmage robes which I got very early on as well, I never bothered with smithing or enchanting really.
Most of my 'wasted' time was spent on inventory management (sigh, fecking hate), though at level 39 my character has something like ~120k gold and two fully furnished properties and it wasn't farmed/ground/craftwhored.
The most enjoyable part was probably hunting dragon priests and words of power - faction quests (stormcloak) and the destruction skill quest. While trying to avoid plot spoiling, I quite liked the daedric quests too because of how they tended to trick you into doing things (though some were blatant and less amusing).

If you are going to do some hardcore crafting I suggest you do the star of azula quest early as well, it's so useful for enchanting.

Things that annoyed me;
Vendors never having enough gold to buy certain items without the speech perk.
Despite not carrying around much in excess, constantly needing to return to white run to put stuff in my house or sell it, mostly because of potions ...
The end.
The way that almost everyone is a bad guy, pretty much regardless of what paths you choose.
A fair few of the assassins guild quests (though this may be because I'm relatively impatient and therefore probably suck as an assassin).
The fact that certain 'quest' items can never, ever, be removed from your inventory (

Spoiler:

As soon as you pick up the elder scroll, it's stuck in your inventory forever, same for some of the bard quest items (EVEN after you had them in!) and some other stuff

)
Blackreach (despite being pretty and kinda cool for the first 10 minutes, it quickly becomes an annoying area you can't use a map on or fast travel around).
Companions (they really are more of a nuisance to me when I notice them, when they're not around I feel somewhat overwhelmed with enemies at times too).
Being oneshot (as a mage some better mage armour would be nice, by the end of the game pretty much anything killed me immediately if it ever actually managed to get in melee with me, which I'll admit didn't happen much but was annoying when it did, happened occasionally via arrows as well).
Brawling becomes very VERY boring late game.
Did I mention the fact that pots weigh way too much?
The crappiness of the alchemy system.
Dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dragons dovah, dovah, dov, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons, dragons. - annoying to read? good, this is how many times I had to fight them, not including the world eater, it gets boring.

Pretty comparable to FO3.
Oh and I loved the 'power' reward from the assassins guild, though that may be because I didn't overuse him, cuz I can quickly see the novelty of his sound bytes becoming annoying.
I quite liked the mage guild quests too.