My first steps in this mountain wilderness were purposefully very slow: I had to stop and take a moment to breathe everything in. There was so much artistic detail in front of me that I was absolutely overwhelmed.
Aesthetically, Skyrim is gorgeous. The snowy mountains captivated me, and I was compelled to simply wander the countryside, indulging in my obnoxious habit of picking every alchemical ingredient I could find (sidenote: I'll go into detail about the alchemical system later). After exploring a few paths, I noticed a town off in the distance, and decided to head towards it.
About this time, I decided to pull up my inventory. I hit [Tab], and was presented with this:
I wondered how easy it would be to navigate between each menu, so I played around for a while, and found that navigation is actually relatively fluid.
The item menu has been completely revamped: now, different classes of items with different purposes have been given their own section (i.e. scrolls have a scrolls section), everything is arranged alphabetically, and selection is much easier. On PC, the menus were a bit buggy - clicking, scrolling, and using WASD all interchangeably makes things a little confusing, and sometimes I use the wrong potion, but it's relatively easy to compensate for, and I'm sure it will be patched soon enough.
The magic menu is actually divided conveniently now: individual schools have been given their own tabs. Spells are easy to select, and their effects are defined clearly in the description provided.
Following the main path into town, I was notified: 'You have discovered Riverwood'. The first things I noticed about the village was the huge sawmill operating on river power, and the forge located outside the blacksmith's shop. I was startled when I could actually use the forge myself, and from the blacksmith, I received a few smithing tasks and became more familiar with that particular skill. Being a mage, I quickly became uninterested, and wandered aimlessly about (distracted by a few local chickens) until I found the general store. There, a quest was presented to me immediately: the store had recently been burgled, and the brother and sister running the store were arguing over whether the sister should go out to fight the bandits they suspected had committed the crime. Conveniently enough, I barged in at the end of this argument, and offered to take care of the job for them.
I then turned to the shopkeep to ask if he sold spells, and the new nature of NPC interaction caught me off guard. Rather than zooming in awkwardly on his face, the conversation proceeded naturally, and I was even allowed to look around while I was talking to him. After I asked what he sold, the bartering interface popped up, and I was impressed.
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| Yes, this character's name is Flub. He's an Orc. ^-^ |
As is clear, the previous method of dividing items has been preserved in trading, which makes item exchange much more convenient. With the new dynamic economy, merchants can actually run out of gold (just like Morrowind!), and will go on cycles of prosperity and near-poverty.
After purchasing my fill of spell tomes and selling the random junk I had collected throughout the tutorial, I decided to venture off into the wilderness and complete the task I'd been assigned by the brother and sister in the general store. Conveniently enough, my quest log had already selected that as my active quest, and I was guided by an arrow on the compass to the barrow in which the item was burgled was supposedly located. The sheer size of the dungeon took me off guard: it actually took about an hour to fully explore (I'm easily distracted), and I found it rather satisfying discovering all of its secrets. The ambient lighting in the dungeon took me off guard as well: just another gorgeous aspect of this game. I found myself using more magic than I ever conceived was possible in an Elder Scrolls game - it actually works now! - and so I'll be reviewing that system in my next blog.
Have fun, good gaming, and remember: don't feed the trolls.
-Toast
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