Who's Excited For Skyrim?

[warty goblin]

Not really. I mean, I suppose I still haven't really given the Elder Scrolls series a fair try, since all I've played is a brief couple of hours with a rented copy of Morrowind, but I wasn't really impressed with that, and if my experience with Fallout 3 and Prototype is any indication I'm finding that I really just don't like sandbox-style games in general.

There's also the whole first-person viewpoint thing, which I don't like at all, especially for melee combat. The clunky way melee is made to work using that perspective just isn't enjoyable for me. Is Skyrim still using that? I suppose I could at least give it a try if it's going to be a third-person game, but I'd really be disinclined to bother if it's still first-person.

Zevox

You'll be able to switch between first and third, just like Oblivion. Of course playing in third forces one to watch what Bethesda considers animation. From what I've seen of Skyrim, this looks just about as painful as Oblivion.

Unless hell has frozen over however I don't think they'll be going back to the invi-dice of Morrowind for determining if an attack hit. Oblivion's combat might have been pretty clunky, but it did do actual hit detection. It was also a lot better than Fallout 3's, although I'd hardly call it great. For that I'd need full body awareness, better locational damage and faster weapon animations. Ideally we'd also get directional blocking to match the power attacks, but that's a pretty hardcore sort of thing and very unlikely to show up - even Dark Messiah didn't go that far.

I've not played Prototype, but my experience is that TES games are rather different than the usual open world action game. The plethora of quests is the big one, but there's a lot more emphasis on making a somewhat believable world as well. A lot of the time in open world games I get the feeling there's no more content than a linear action game, but instead of loading screens I get walking animations and filler combat. Exploring is actually fun in Oblivion. Not Fallout 3 because the world is relentlessly boring, but liberated from the hideously dull FO setting again I've actually got hopes for Skyrim.