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The combat system is where this game really shines out from the rest of the RPG crowd. At least this way you do almost feel like you’re making a conscious difference to the way another character feels about your own. The persuasion system works differently this time round as well – in mini-game form – and while it’s less than believable, it certainly is more fun and involving than just picking an action from a menu and hoping it does the trick. While the characters in the game often converse with each other you’ll often hear the same conversation several times in the space of an hour, and this aspect of the game is fraught with little problems listening to an actor having a conversation with himself in the same voice is incredibly funny, but not "comedy easter egg" funny, more "how the hell did this game pass quality control?" funny. NPCs are meant to live their own “lives” moving around as they please, but standing in the middle of town for several hours and then sitting down in the local tavern is hardly a convincing life. In fact the artificial intelligence is one of the most disappointing aspects of the game. This sometimes leaves taking a trip on foot as the slightly more favourable option.īethesda made quite a point in flagging up their new “Radiant” AI prior to the game's release release, and while it works in theory, in practice it’s not so impressive. Riding a horse drops the framerate considerably too. You can use the Fast Travel option right from the outset (which transports you instantly from one place to another) but it kind of leaves you wondering what you might have missed out on if you’d bothered to make the long trip yourself. A horse can do this pretty well, but any enemies you encounter will invariably try to kill the horse rather than you – even after you dismount, and if you don’t want to carry on the rest of your journey on foot, you’re pretty much forced to ride past and outrun them the faster enemies will follow you for quite some time. The fact that the map is so huge can actually be detrimental to the gameplay you’re constantly asked to travel back and forth from one place to another and back again, all in the space of about ten minutes, sometimes several square miles apart and although exploring the countryside is sometimes one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game, once you realize that fighting bears and trolls can be a little repetitive you start seeking out quicker ways to get from A to B.
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This emptiness is only made more evident when you try (out of plain old curiosity) to walk to the edge of the map, only to be greeted by a nonchalant "You cannot go that way, turn back". The problem with Cyrodiil is that it feels completely deserted - empty - except for your own character and a handful of bumbling townsfolk. These things make you believe Cyrodiil is a living, breathing world… or it would. You start your adventure by creating your own character - choosing your sex and race, then on to a level of visual facial customisation that is so detailed that you're likely to skip it altogether. Even with a standard definition TV, the graphics are good enough to convince you that this is one of the world’s most beautiful games. Trees sway in the wind, butterflies flutter convincingly around you and mountains reflect perfectly in the water. Without the in-game map you’d almost definitely lose your bearings as soon as you so much as changed direction and your jaw is very liable to fall of at the first sight of the environment from the very moment you find the exit to the sewers, where the story starts mountains, forests and lakes – all in the same vista. The first thing that strikes you when you start this game up is that it’s a pretty big one.