The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Hints

*** Warnings to Oblivion Veterans ***

• Those of you who've played both Morrowind and Oblivion will remember that Oblivion's gameplay was a "screwed down tight" version of Morrowind's gameplay, meaning that a lot of cool artifacts, options, and exploits that existed in Morrowind were gone from Oblivion. Well, Skyrim continues that tradition in a big way, so be warned! Below, I list the differences between Oblivion and Skyrim that were the most noticeable to me during my early playthrus. (Don't get the wrong idea, though. Skyrim is still a huge, mega-fun Bethesda RPG once you get used to its way of doing things.)
  
  * One of the most surprising omissions in Skyrim is that you don't have any attributes (or stats, as many people call them). That's right! No Strength, Agility, Luck, or any of that sort of thing. What the heck kind of RPG doesn't have attributes? That completely removes a *major* aspect of character development. They did make a limited attempt to cover for it by doing things like having your Stamina increase your carry weight (like Strength used to), but it's just not the same. I did always say that skills and equipment were much more important than attributes when developing a character in Oblivion, but I didn't want them eliminated altogether!
  
  * There's also no such thing as character classes or birthsigns anymore. That means no class-specific bonuses to skills, no differentiation between major and minor skills, and no way to choose which special birthsign power you get. You do sort of get the same thing as a birthsign and class-specific bonuses when you choose a race, since each one has its own special power and skill bonuses, but that forces you to choose whichever race has the power or skill bonuses you want most. It was nice to be able to choose a birthsign and a class independently of race in Oblivion.
  
  * The leveling-up system is still based on practicing skills rather than getting generic XP, but instead of resting in a bed when you want to level up, you simply bring up the Skills menu. That sounds more convenient, but it isn't if you want to practice skills a lot and not level up until later. It's especially bad since you have to take all pending level-ups in a row whenever you bring up the Skills menu, instead of being able to do just one level-up and save the others for later. That can really interfere with the old "you can only buy skill training up to five times between level-ups" routine, which is still present in Skyrim.
  
  * On a related note, many skills are now harder to practice. For instance, practicing Sneak by sneak-running continuously into a corner while near someone who can't see you sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Even if you're moving your character around instead of auto-running into a corner, you still may not get any Sneak practice credit. Other examples are that you can't practice Restoration by casting a healing spell on yourself unless your health is less than max, and you can't practice Conjuration by summoning a bound weapon over and over (you have to attack someone with it). There are new practice techniques for those skills that work pretty well, but it'll still take some getting used to for Oblivion veterans.
  
  * There's no way to create new spells. You can only cast the pre-defined spells that you get, mainly from spell tomes. This annoying simplification will put a major damper on the usefulness of spellcasting, especially for those who (like me) made a whole bunch of super-useful utility spells in Oblivion that you'd never want to be without. To make things worse, all of the offensive combat spells, even the master-level ones, are extremely weak against leveled enemies once you're fairly high-level.
  
  * You can still enchant items, and the perks for the Enchanting skill make things interesting, but you'll need to go to a lot of trouble to practice that skill up and spend several level-up perk points on it before you can make really good enchanted items. Also, you can't enchant items with the effects of spells that you know, but only with the effects that you get by "disenchanting" (and thereby destroying) pre-enchanted items that you find or buy. Worse yet, there's no way to do certain favorite old enchantments, including Reflect Damage, Reflect Spell, Spell Absorption, Chameleon, and Night-Eye. There aren't even any pre-enchanted items with those effects on them, so you can forget about ever having them. (Except that you can get Spell Absorption effects from a Breton's racial power and a certain standing stone.)
  
  * Your health will always regenerate automatically (though slowly) over time. Not exactly something to complain about, but it's one of the most common features of the scaled-down, "streamlined," over-simplified game design mindset that I've been seeing in many recent RPGs. I'm disappointed in the Bethesda Boys for buying into it to the extent that they have with Skyrim, though they at least still made the game huge and fun, unlike certain other overly streamlined games I could mention. (Yes, Dragon Age II, I'm referring to you!)
  
  * Your equipment doesn't have condition values, and therefore never needs repair. Again, not something to complain about, but it's all part of the over-simplified gameplay thing. Oh, well. No need to carry bunches of heavy repair hammers around, eh?
  

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