Translation of the article from pc.ign.com
Since there’s a bug with images preventing Surt from posting materials temporarily, I stepped in to help. So, here it is - a translation by Surt of a recently published article about Skyrim on the popular site pc.ign.com:
“The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim” is Magnificent
How to Get Lost in a Massive Fantasy
04.18.2011
Charles Onyett.
To take down the thick-skinned fire-breathing winged beast, you'll need to put in some serious effort. Dragons in “Skyrim” appear randomly and, if they spot your figure on a snowy slope, they swoop down, land, and earnestly try to incinerate you. They will slash, soar up, and spit fireballs from the sky before diving again. Even in towns, you won’t be safe from dragons.
Often, the best choice is to run and hide in a house or bash through the nearest door into a dungeon. Sometimes it’s better to try to kill a dragon, as it will let you absorb its soul for your benefit. It seems encounters with dragons in “Skyrim” will be quite frequent since “Bethesda” doesn’t impose a limit on them. They shouldn’t be easy; dragons serve as optional bosses that you can flee from if you don’t want to fight. If you want to measure your strengths against them, you’ll need to approach the character creation, completing quests for certain rewards, clearing dungeons, and much more in the upcoming epic role-playing game from “Bethesda Game Studios” wisely.
Everything begins with character creation, which has been somewhat trimmed compared to earlier games in the series. You still choose from ten races, customize your character’s appearance and gender, but immediately after that, the game begins. Eight attributes from the previous game, “Oblivion,” have disappeared. Now you’ll only need to keep track of mana used for spells, health, and stamina, which limits your character's ability to withstand axe or mace strikes.
Much of the leveling system you are used to has been overhauled. In “Skyrim,” every skill increase fills an overall experience bar, just like experience points in most role-playing games. So, if you constantly use one-handed swords, your skill with them will grow and grow, finally filling the experience bar, thus granting you a level and the ability to choose additional abilities—talents, like in “Fallout”—from each skill tree.
If you’ve started dreaming about cheating by jumping all around Skyrim to increase acrobatics, I must disappoint you—it, along with athletics and a few other skills, has been removed from the game. Instead, now you can speed up, and the talents you unlock slightly modify existing skills. For example, talents can add time slowdown and boost when you aim your bow at an unsuspecting bandit’s head.
The interface in “Skyrim” has also been changed to be more interactive. All items, including weapons, shields, key items, and plants, can be examined and explored directly on the inventory screen. Firstly, this allows you to marvel at the level of detail on each piece of armor. Secondly, players can literally open and read various books found in the game or investigate key items to use the information gained to solve puzzles in dungeons. At the same time, the skills screen has turned from a list into a vibrant, colorful constellation map, where each star serves as a key node for talents. The overall map has also been improved; it has become a three-dimensional depiction of Skyrim, similar to maps in strategy games like “Civilization V” and “Total War: Shogun 2.”
In the intervals between dragon battles, it won't be hard to get lost in the world and simply enjoy its beauty. Compared to “Oblivion,” “Skyrim” on the “Xbox 360,” the only platform it has been shown on so far, has greatly improved. You can spot detailed snowy mountain slopes while running through muddy paths surrounded by stone boulders and streams. By the way, “Skyrim” encourages world exploration since amidst all this beauty, there are surely dungeons and treasures.
Dragons also roam among these hills, sometimes sitting in solitude on stones in the snowstorm. Sometimes they fly over the quaint villages nestled between the misty slopes, like Topolya, a quiet settlement on a hill where the residents mostly mind their own business. Some chop wood in grassy clearings, some work in forges sawing logs, while others run dusty shops dimly lit by candles in empty horns, while everyone else roams the streets chatting. The game no longer stops when a conversation begins, the persuasion mini-game has been removed, and dialog options take up minimal space. As players pass by talking NPCs, they can overhear interesting information leading to new quests, whose conditions depend on which NPCs are still alive, as well as many other factors tracked by the game, such as how much time has passed since your last battle with a dragon.
If a lot of time has passed, a dynamic quest line might bring you face-to-face with one of these creatures. In this situation, it’s best to use your best armor, magic, and your favorite weapon, whether it’s a dwarven axe or a glass sword, along with dragon shouts—magical abilities that do not rely on mana. Instead, they have a separate “cooldown” time. Each shout is divided into three levels. The first level of the shout recharges quickly, but using the third-level version of a powerful shout will incapacitate you from shouting for a long time.
“Bethesda” hints that closer to the end of the game, dragon shouts will be very powerful, but even the demonstrated weaker versions command respect. One of the shouts, “Unrelenting Force,” unleashes a shockwave from the character, while another slows down time around him, making attacking and dodging much easier—which will come in handy when a dragon goes berserk and starts breathing fire. Shouts are activated by holding a button, and the longer you hold it, the stronger the attack will be.
The number of shouts available to learn and their levels isn’t predetermined initially and depends on your desire to explore all (about one hundred twenty) dungeons in “Skyrim.” In some of these, you will find walls with words, huge stone slabs engraved with symbols of the dragon language that you can translate and add to your repertoire of dragon shouts. However, in such places, you need to keep your ears perked up because, as is often the case with “treasures in dungeons” and “fantasy,” mighty creatures will try to stop you. These could be ice trolls, spellcasting skeleton priests capable of summoning ice atronachs, or, say, draugr, zombified Nords (Skyrim natives), and enormous spiders.
With dragons and especially dangerous draugr, you should be cautious since they can also use dragon shouts. In this case, you’ll hear dragons croak out words of their own language before an attack, and some of them will even speak in human tongues. In this situation, it’s best to fully utilize the new spell system, allowing you to hold ready two attacking spells. You can choose different weapon sets, or take a weapon and a spell, or have a spell in each hand. All of this is visually represented; magical spells change the appearance of the character's hands, similar to plasmids in “BioShock.”
If you’re getting knocked down by a particularly tough dragon and want to be absolutely sure you won’t die—grab a healing spell in each hand and use them one after another. Or, if you need urgent help, you can use them both simultaneously to achieve a compounded effect. The healing energy from both hands will merge into a sphere at the center of the screen and explode, healing the character more powerfully. The same applies to attacking spells: you can combine two lightning spells to unleash a ball lightning capable of throwing a careless draugr all the way to the cave ceiling.
To simplify managing all these abilities, “Bethesda” has introduced a new system where the player can call up a small menu to switch between them. Calling it up will immediately pause the game and display a list of everything you’ve marked in the main menu. So, if you want to switch from “Detect Life” and “Fireball” to “Chain Lightning,” it can be done with minimal time lost fiddling with the interface.
It’s evident that “Bethesda” has put in a lot of work on animations in the new “Creation” engine—swinging swords and striking maces look much more natural. Bandits make lunge attacks and dodge your strikes while the screen and your equipment tremble during battle. Notifications about skill increases have also become stylish: you see the skill icon and how much it has filled the experience bar, and hear several lines indicating that something important has occurred. But perhaps the best moments are when the corpse of the dragon you’ve slain slowly burns away, and magical orbs fly into your character. They emphasize that your skills were sufficient to destroy something that seemed invulnerable.
It’s already clear that “The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim,” magnificent as all the games in the series, will bring a lot of new features. Judging from what we’ve seen so far, it looks like the realization of a role-playing fan's dream and one of the most beautiful fantasy games in the world.
Translation: Surt
Editing: Soth