Each installment of The Elder Scrolls series is massive and with each release, players have learned to expect two things: a countless amount of gameplay hours and a countless amount of bugs/tweaks/patches/mods which define the experience after the game launches.
With Skyrim, the series reached a new high in what Bethesda can offer players, but it was still missing a lot of the little things needed to make the experience complete. Normally, this is where the community comes in now that the official Skyrim Creation Kit is available to download, but we can’t forget that the developers of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim are also a part of that community and want similar things from the game.
So, when Skyrim launched, Bethesda conducted a “Game Jam” where they had all of the staff who worked on the game create and work on whatever they want for a full week, as long as it was within Skyrim. They then met for big company meeting and showcased what came of the week and the results were rather impressive, while partially disappointing at the same time for the simple reason that this stuff wasn’t included in the game. They’ve now released a sizzle reel of some of the videos shown internally at the meeting, showcasing gameplay improvements and new features including:
New Gameplay Mechanics & Creatures
- Build a house.
- Goblins, outdoor Draugr, werebears, giant monster crabs.
- New Mounts: Dragons, flaming skeletal demon horses
- Kinect dragon shouts.
- Snow foot prints.
- Vampire feeding.
Environmental Improvements
- Seasonal Foliage.
- Flow-based Water Shader.
- Improved underwater visuals.
- Lights can be knocked out with water arrows.
- Hanging structures and moving platforms in dungeons.
- Strong water currents in dungeons.
- Fast-Travel waygates.
AI Improvements
- NPCs will re-light darkened areas with torches.
- Companion commands: set favorites, combat style, equipment, distance, training & more.
- Adopt NPC kids!
Combat Improvements
- The return of spears! (not been in the series since Morrowind)
- Kill cams for magic and ranged attacks.
- Paralysis ruins to trap enemies.
- Combo spells (mix two and create something new).
- Mounted combat
- Water, fire, ice arrows.
Now, take a look for yourself and see what creativity can result in:
A lot of these things seem simple and certainly make us wonder why they weren’t included at launch. Snow footprints, companion commands, mounted combat, spears, vampire feeding, etc. are basic gameplay features that other RPGs, and in some cases, even previous games in the series had. Things like Kinect dragon shouts and other commands have been implemented in the game by users in a far deeper and complex way already, so watching this video raises our expectations in what Bethesda should release in upcoming patches and/or DLC.
The end of the video reads:
“That was just a taste. It was one of the most productive, creative weeks we’ve had. What if we worked like that more often? What could we do?
Now, what if they spent an extra week or two doing this stuff before the game launched? What a twist! We love Skyrim and it’s easily one of our favorite games of 2011, but it was missing a lot of the smaller things and it did have too many bugs. So, for The Elder Scrolls VI, let’s slow it down and worry about polish more than a release date. Take advantage of the team’s creativity and definitely do more of these creative weeks more often. It would result in a better, more realized game.
What things from the video do you want added to Skyrim the most?
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Todd Howard does good work, but he is pretty disconnected from what the community wants, people want new content, and every game they make drops features it had in the last game, and invents new but worse concepts. Tt doesn’t make sense. ADD MORE! People want all of this stuff, it should of been there in the beginning, and or definitely should be free DLC/updates. There is THOUSANDS of mods out, and people use A LOT of them to improve/change their Skyrim experience, it’s obvious we want stuff like this. Add it!
fire and ice arrows would be awesome and some of the polish would be nice. I mean a game this big should have that and i am still surprised that for a “game that never ends” you level up and stop. they should release the cap for that so you can unlock all of the power up and become ultimately powerful. That is the point of a game right? To be more powerful than everyone else? Coz im lvl 81.5 and i still want to be a sword swinging magic elf not just a warrior or magic elf. Im just saying release a dlc for some polish and remove the cap.
The cap is only there because all of the skills max out at that point, so they can’t remove it without removing the skill caps which would require a complete overhaul of the skill system. That would mean months of dedicated work for balancing and bugfixes. Another reason is that the leveled enemies keep getting stronger, but after level 50 (the intended cap) you don’t get stronger, just more versatile (unless you stack potions and enchantments to become a god). Besides, it’s an RPG. You’re not meant to be all-powerful, you’re meant to be really good at a few things. I, personally, think the amount of perks you can get and skills you can max by level 45-50 are more than enough.
ok how about this… A way to reset your skill trees? Heck borderlands had that and it was great. Incase u want to balance out alittle more. Unless thats in there and i havent found it
Added combat cams is NOT an improvement. REMOVING them would be.
“What if we worked like that more often? What could we do?” Are you kidding me? I’ll you what you could have done: not given us this clearly half-a##ed game. If it really only took one week for them to do this, than they need to rethink strategy on making games or at least tell us that they don’t plan on producing games at their full potential. The fact that they may not add these features at all is even more frustrating. They basically took our money and said, “And by the way, this is what Skyrim could have been…”.
Seriously the giant mudcrab needs heaps more work in it, spell weaving looks like an awesome installment should definitely put that in, skill trees for vampirism and lycanthrope give more meaning towards being them instead of a small change in your attributes and also the transformation for the vampire could turn out really well, I think that there should be weapons that you should be able to forge out of the dragon scales and or dragon bones.
About the dragon weapons.. Yes, this would be cool. But practically speaking, you can’t really shape dragon material into a blade per se.. Perhaps a mace but even that would be a stretch. I think that’s why the developers left out dragon weapons in the first place.
This is just awesome. Sadly I am seeing alot of hate comments out there, one being “a Half-assed game”, thank you Scott for being an idiot. After completing the game they were given the chance to tweak it and add some extra stuff. This was after the majority of the game was made. You amke it sound like making a video game like this is easy. Well guess what Scott it takes a long time to make one up, on the other hand once they have it done it is easy to tweak or add somethings. Stop hating.
Back to the awesome part. Every sngle idea I saw was pretty epic even the small enhancements to foliage. Making the game look better is always nice. Giant mudcrab, scares me but still awesome. Lycan skill tree would be very useful. Being able to become a “vampire lord” would make people actually want to become a vampire. Dragon Mounts and new mounts, as well as mounted combat that is almost a given. I can sorta see why dragon mounts wouldn’t be included but mounts besides horse and being able to fight that not so much. But Bethesda made a great game, so I can’t complain. These new little ideas are awesome, would love to see some added in but Skyrim is still epic without them.
And guys don’t be greedy, learn to be content with what you have.
oh dont get these people started with their hatecraft. one person you need to steer clear away from is Jwalka. that man hates everything.
im surprised he hasnt voiced his hatred yet. must have finally smarted off to the wrong person in real life.
mounted combat was one thing that has been SORELY needed in every TES game. its borderline pointless to give us a horse and then we have to jump off the horse to engage into combat.
spears would be kinda nice, but only if they could be thrown.
adopt an npc child. hm…. how about give us more CHILDREN in the first bloody place instead of every child being a Nord? oh and uh marriable Khajiits….please.
build a house….ehhhh….not really interesting to me.
vampire feeding? you guys need to fix the vampire mechanics first and give us back the hunters sight spell (the ONLY thing that ever made being a vampire worthwhile in Oblivion) before you talk about that.
all in all nice ideas, though some just sound a little too much like flaming skeletal horse mounts.
HOLY F**KING SH*T! GIGANTIC F**KING MUD CRAB!!!!!! MUST HAVE!!!!!!!!!
That giant mudcrap would make dragons look like pussies
When I heard about combining spells (before Skyrim was released) I had assumed you could use two different spells to make something new. And hearing that they canned Mysticism made me think you had to create spells to make up for them. Seeing that you could only combine two of the same spell when the game launched bummed me out, but hey it’s still a great game. Mounted combat would’ve been great too, considering it wasn’t in Oblivion, and I was hoping they’d take just about every aspect from the other games and make them better. Skyrim is still awesome either way. And there’s always DLC.
O__O
where’s squid-bear?
iDancethroughshadoWs, mounted combat was in Daggerfall sir. Just outed yourself as a new age TES fan. Go play the second game, kill some stuff on horseback, and don’t you come back till you do mister. You’re e-grounded.
What! Darn! And I thought I was the only one who thought about adding Lycan Tree Perk when I found out about werewolves included in the game back on 11/11/11.
But the things they show here are actually good addition. Just want more hairstyles, options to make the game more challenging(If a Vamp or Lycan you have other specific needs, character’s needs if neither, more challenging enemies, and more), and the things they showed on the video.
They REALLY need to add these to the game but the mudcrab its sounds like just a lame thing if its a one time boss battle with rare items it might worth but the werebear is a must have ability and i cant wait for dawnguard to release on ps3