While the Dragons Still Sleep

Bethesda is releasing a game in a little over 2 months. Perhaps you've heard of it. It's called Skyrim. I know myself and many others are eagerly awaiting the release of the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series this November, and for good reason: as has been announced and shown off in the demos thus far, this will be the first time dragons are present in an Elder Scrolls game (not including mods, of course). Here's a look at some of the features I've heard about and my thoughts on them.

1. Dual-wielding: This can be done with swords, spells, axes, - you name it. This is by far one of the features I'm looking forward to the most, especially with spells (I tend to favor mage characters). The ability to charge up a 'mega' spell when two spells of the same type are equipped to different hands looks very promising, although I have to admit the ability to combine two different spells would really be exciting. And I don't mean in the sense that you can cast a fire and frost spell at the same time. I mean literally combining those two spells together into one super combination spell that produces a new effect. My guess is that this may be difficult to implement well from a development perspective, but I have heard rumors that it may be possible.

2. A dynamic economy and game world: In previous Elder Scrolls games, if you murdered Barry the shopkeeper and managed not to alert the guards, you could simply steal all his visible wares and then never visit his shop again because he was not alive to restock items. In Skyrim, Barry is still irrevocably dead (unless you load from your last save), but his death will have actual consequences in the world, such as ruining the economy of the town in which you killed him and thus resulting in lower quality items being offered in said town. This works in reverse too, so if you help local business, local business will help you. And, if you kill someone important to a specific quest, don't worry about a 'doomed world' scenario; someone else will come along and take their place.

3. Really, really durable equipment: For some hardcore RPG fans, the recent announcement that Skyrim will not include the repair component present in its predecessors may be disappointing. I, for one, welcome this change. As realistic as it may be to have your weapon and armor wear and tear and require polishing up every now and then, it honestly became a burdensome chore, filling my inventory space with hammers instead of rubies. Bethesda purportedly claims to have replaced this with a new system in which you can learn to improve your own gear by becoming a blacksmith. This process requires you to not only learn the skill, but also to go out into the world and mine the ores you need, refine them, and then find an appropriate place to apply them to your equipment. I believe this will be a much more fun and engaging experience than the current select hammer, repair items system.

4. Random dragon encounters: This one has been known for a while, but being one of the major elements behind the game's main story, I think it deserves mention here. The in-game dragons are supposedly going to be completely unscripted and infinite in number. They will swoop in on you anytime, anywhere, for as long as you play the game, even once the main quest line is complete. From what I understand, this means you could easily walk out of a shop after having purchased yourself some shiny, new (and indestructible!) gear, only to find a dragon rampaging through the streets of the town, burning and eating villagers indiscriminately and generally being a nuisance. This behavior may be accidentally helpful to you in the wild, as the E3 and other demos have shown, where a dragon actually picks up a creature attacking you and drops it from the sky, but most of the time you'll be too concerned with the fact that a large lizard just dropped out of the air to care.

Those are my impressions so far. All in all, I'm expecting an amazing game on 11.11.11, and I don't think I'll be disappointed. What do you think? Leave some comments discussing these or other features you may have heard of below.

-Arcthos