Hmmm, I don't think gender specific hairstyles are a bad thing. I think it's reasonable to expect that some users who choose a male character are going to want more masculine styles (by which of course I mean adhering to cultural archetypes of masculinity, whether they are a good thing or not is a separate debate) and one who choses a female character may well want to look 'feminine'.

Of course you can say it seems like more work to not include all styles for both genders than to do so. But I dunno, maybe the models are significantly different or it's an animation problem or something.

Stereotypical RPG is kinda... I mean, RPG is stereotypical. It's a genre which relies on stereotypes for its language. An RPG which strayed too far from stereotypes wouldn't make a lot of sense in the same way that a crime drama with no crime wouldn't.

Having said that, I think you'd be a bit surprised, the styles are far less stereotypical RPGey than Oblivion for example. There are a lot of the styles from Fallout 3 in there too (or similar ones at least). Angular and asymmetrical and rough ones and stuff.

But yeah, if you'd like unrestricted customisation you'd love Saints Row 2. You can make monsters in that one. Probably the same in SR3, I've not yet played it.

Oblivion did have a hair length slider which is missing this time, though. I guess it's just much simpler to provide stock styles. Anyway, I certainly didn't feel restricted in choice and that's what matters. And there are beards! I'd really rather Bethesda concentrated their efforts on the game itself and leave fleshing out this sort of thing to the modders, which they undoubtedly will do.

As a default/common choice there's nothing really to disagree with there. But limiting choices, especially to a narrow set of archetypes, is a different matter. I probably wouldn't object if there was a checkbox that said "enable (opposite of current gender) hairstyles" or whatever.


RPGs are better when they're a bit different whilst remaining internally cohesive. They don't need grumpy dwarfs and mechanical gnomes and so on to make sense, and there's no reason it can't break out of certain other clichés too, (when doing so makes sense).


Saints Row is some gangstery thing? Don't know that I'd enjoy that, and I'm not going to look into it because I should already be asleep by now and you keep distracting me! :@

Aye you're right about the hair.



Skyrim is definitely that. It's more like Morrowind was in that sense and far far less like Oblivion. Thank fuck.

I meant arrowing. Which is much more fun than narrowing.

With my somewhat tired Geforce 8800GTS I was getting significant slowdown in busy (especially foliate) scenes on a tweaked 'high' setting, so I imagine a room full of hippy NPCs with complex flowing girlieman locks would slow the game down to a crawl on all but the most ninja PC.

Given that Skyrim water is still just a bunch of tricks lashed together, albeit pretty effectively, I have to agree with Xen that the processing overhead that fine wafty hair would demand means its still a looooong way away yet. Jeez, I'm still grateful that Eidos got Lara's tits to jiggle.

I attach a photo of my current coiffure in order that you might not take needless offence should I make a pass at you in a public lavatory at some time in the near future.

Did you attack him? I met one and stood in his way and he just stopped and looked at me with what I took to be existential ennui.

They will attack you if you trespass into their (poorly defined) camps. Well, they and the mammoths will kinda gesture at you angrily and grunt for a bit, and then they'll attack.

Annnnd ... Not 1 but 2 DLC packs announced already.

Really now, announcing DLC for a game as large as Skyrim the day after it's release? COD:MW, sure why not, most people will have that licked in 5~6 hours, but this... uhh, yeah.

Also, it has to be said. I'm really hating what the games industry has become in the last few years with the blatant holding back of content that previously would have made it into the game. Damn you Microsoft (and Sony) for inventing points / console downloads.

I'll still buy them though :$

I kinda don't care. Bethesda DLC is always shit. I will just play the game (for many many hours) and ignore all the DLC.

I'm not sure it's accurate to say they're holding back content, though it's arguable either way. I suspect this content would never have got made if they didn't know they could subsequently make money from it. Bioware DLC on the other hand...

Before the Xbox 360 and PS3, it would only have existed on the PC of course and either made it into the game or have been released as a more substantial add-on 6-9 months from now.

But these days we get horse armour.

Aye. At least Valve still do it right (usually).

Ok, another entire waking day spent playing this. Excellent. Goodnight.

My picture of the day:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/132841/TESV%202011-11-12%2009-19-36-76.jpg

quote:

How far do you have to get into the main quest before dragons start turning up?

Well, the one i fought last night wasn't very far in. I'd been doing other various bits and bobs in the mean time but as far as the main quest goes it's escape from that first town with some solder dude, go to little village to see Soldier dude's blaksmith friend, go to nearest proper town to request aid from the Jarl, earn Jarls trust by going to a dungeon and kicking fuck, OMFG THE DRAGON'S BACK KILL IT KILL IT KILL IT.

Whether dragons start turning up randomly after that or if you have to go a bit further in don't know


That's my problem right there, i'm just no good at that sort of play style. I know how to do it, it's just that i personally aren't quick and nilble enough with my keyboard and mouse to avoid getting twatted in the face with a hammer. I think i will restart with an Orc and come back to my Redguard at a later date.

I'm still going to keep using destruction magic though, as the dual spells thing is fucking awesome.

There are specific hairstyles for the Orc. All but two of them have ponytails.

Sinky the black Nord* woman, just like real life.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8436858/ScreenShot5.jpg

It's a very pretty game
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8436858/ScreenShot3.jpg


^{*Or Breton? Can't remember what I picked}

I'm just going to torrent the DLC, that's what i did last time. (with the exception of Shivering Isles and Kinights of the Nine, which i got other people to buy me as presents)

You look very glam.

I love the salmon thing. I saw them doing that in mine, so I jumped in and tried to join in :Y

I have a question, how many hours before I would get to grips with this? I can maybe afford to spend 4 or 5 hours a week playing it, do is require a marathon of effort for it to be a good game? It sounds ace.

A story about dragons.

I went off to the city of Windhelm to see what i get get up to. I spoke to the Jarl's steward and he gave me a quest to kill a dragon. This was in the "miscellaneous" quest page, so basically a generic 'go to this location and KILL' quest, but with a dragon.

Very well, i thought, and off i went. On my way to the quest dragon, a random dragon turned up and started attacking some farm. There were a couple of gaurds around the farm who launced a few arrows at it, i hit it with a bit of magic, but it wasn't really taking much damage and it wasn't landing so i couldn't get my sword in to play. Then, all of a sudden the dragon veered off and landed a fair distance away. I ran to catch up and saw that the dragon had apparently been distracted by agiant and had swooped down the burn the fucker. The giant proceed to twat the dragon on the head with his hammer. The dragon then died.

I then went off the kill the dragon i was being paid to kill, which was too easy and actually a bit boring. It was the first dragon i'd actually had to take on by myself and i thought it'd be more complicated. I thought i'd have to wekan it with ranged magic or somehow force it to land before i could start chacking away at it, but instead he very kindly landed right next to me almost immediately and allowed me to hit him with my sword.

Admittedly i did have to run away and heal a couple of times but at no point did i feel in any real danger. Not like when i was fighting a bear about half an hour ago, which actually killed me three times before i took him down.

MrTrent is officially disapointed in the dragons. Except when they get killed by giants.

4-5 hours a week would not be enough. Maybe if you just wanted to work through the quests one after the other you could get quite a bit done in 4 hours, but that would be to miss the whole point.