The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Official announcement Options

[Thomas Kaira]

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/vga-10-e...708369?type=flv

Projected release: 11/11/11

It's coooommmming!

And with dragons at last!

This post has been edited by Thomas Kaira: Dec 13 2010, 01:40 AM

[Thomas Kaira]

Let's talk weapons.

I'm seeing increased speculation on the official Skyrim board that melee weapon skills are being changed from "Blade, Blunt" to "One hand, Two hand." I must say that this is probably one of the stupidest ideas I've ever seen, and will be surely angered if this is actually true.

Does anyone at Bethesda have any idea that wielding a sword is world apart from wielding a hafted weapon? Swords are designed for precision, whereas the hafted (axes, maces, etc) are more akin to brute-force application. This is what makes a knight different from a barbarian. Further combining of the weapon skills as this "One Hand, Two Hand" tosh is an affront to fantasy RPGs in general. I don't want a master-of-all-trades character, I want him to have actual skills and weaknesses! If he can wield a short blade and a war axe with equal skill simply because they require one hand to use... where the hell is the logic to that?! It's like saying that my mastery of the art of watching movies also gives me the skills needed to make one. That is not true at all!

Why can't Bethesda get it through their heads... too much streamlining is BAD. Oblivion is a case-in-point example of this, they removed or "streamlined" too much and resulted in a game that felt watered down. Here's how I would streamline the weapon skills:

-Short Blade
-Long Blade
-Hafted, One Hand
-Hafted, Two Hand

Four skills that make logical sense and add a sense of variety to the creation of your character. This way, axes and spears would at least fit into the streamlined skills, since they are in fact hafted weapons. Morrowind did have a little too much in terms of weapon skills available to you, but Bethesda went way too far with trimming those down in Oblivion, which only had two melee weapon skills, one of which making no sense at all, and removing spears entirely.

By the way, BethSoft... if you are going to improve on mounted combat in Skyrim, BRING THE DAMN SPEARS BACK!!! The main purpose of long-hafted spears and pikes in the medieval battlefield was to defend against a cavalry charge. If we are expected to fight horses without the aid of one of those quintessential medieval weapons, that is going to be a flat-out immersion killer for me. No one in their right mind would try to take down a charging horse-and-rider with a puny long blade... they'd get trampled before they even landed a blow.

I do approve of their changes to Archery, though, so not everything is bad.