Ten Days to Skyrim

On 11/11/11, The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim will finally be released to the public, much to the enjoyment of RPG, action and exploration fans who want to sink hours into the deep and well-constructed environment Bethesda has put into the market. With only ten days to go, what are fans most likely to be curious about?

1) Dragon Shouts.

They’re without a doubt the most tantalising aspect of the game, given that it’s a system of three combined words to generate an effect – launching a huge fireball, starting a thunderstorm where lightning strikes your foes – far more powerful than anything you could do normally. Problem is you’ll be tempted to shout them out loud outside the game, too. Too sunny for a day on the PartyPoker site? “[dragon shouts]!” Perfect.

2) The main questline.

In Oblivion, the side quests were the real meat of the game, with the main quest fairly repetitive and over quite quickly if you chose to hit the Oblivion Gates after gearing and levelling up while exploring the world and completing the guild and brotherhood questlines. This time around, with a questline that developers can speed-run in an hour or two, it might be more of the same, but it’s hard to tell without spending hours digging into it. Release the game already!

3) Animation.

What’s been shown so far is good, and given how bizarrely rigid and rubber-faced people were in Oblivion, Skyrim didn’t have much to beat. But it’s triumphed with better animation in the opening areas, and whether this extends to combat and your third-person view (which it has somewhat, from what we’ve seen thus far) is yet to be seen. Such is the danger of giving people first and third-person view options.

It’s not long now, and everyone’s as excited as can be. So gear up, and keep an eye out for random dragons. It’s Skyrim time.

The contents of this article have been written by a guest author