It will be avaliable on steam and the TES website as far as I know, As well as in stores such and Gamestop, Walmart, Bestbuy, etc... (Gamestop has their own online digital download service (Walmart and bestbuy don't as far as I know))

If you need anymore info I can surely look it up for you guys.

Here's some yummy gameplay footage. It would have been nicer to see footage from the PC verision, but oh well.

http://www.firingsquad.com/news/newsart ... chid=24133

So, whats the verdict?

I've only played it for a short time, but so far it's awesome. WAAAAAAY better than Oblivion and even slightly better than Morrowind. Skyrim may not be as interesting a landscape as Vvardenfell (so far at least), but it's already way more interesting than Cyrodiil. Right from the get go the game just sucked me right in. Seems less buggy than previous Bethesda games too (Oblivion, I'm looking in your direction).

For those wondering, the game uses Steamworks so you do need Steam to run this game but you don't need to be always connected. You obviously need to log into Steam in Online Mode the first time to activate the game with the game key, but after that you can run Steam in Offline Mode and play the game. While I'm not a fan of DRM of any kind, I prefer Steamworks to SecuROM or StarForce.

I'd have to say I'm thoroughly enjoying my own romp through the landscape. It's got a lot of things that you would have expected from Oblivion that seem so naturally part of the game. For example: I haven't read any reviews or the manual, or any other documentation; a couple of days ago I was tooling along and came across a vein of silver! Just a short while before I had cracked a Minecraft joke to my girlfriend when I came across a pickaxe... little did I realize that I should have picked it up. >.> Unfortunately cutting wood is a litte more boring... you have to go to a specific spot (in/near a habitated area) and cut firewood... but it's still a nice touch to the crafting system... which in itself is a great addition to the game.

At another point, was chasing down an elk with my trusty bow (not an easy feat when you can't down one in a single shot), and after finally downing him I stopped to check out a mini waterfall. As I stood on the edge of a rock, I saw some salmon jumping up the fall to get upriver! How did I know they were salmon? I was able to catch one as it leapt upward! I'm having a lot of fun discovering the areas and mechanics of the game just by exploring.

Right before exiting the game yesterday, I had a great three-way battle that involved myself, a dragon, and a bandit camp/fort. I was heading towards an objective when I ran across this fort and suddenly a dragon swooped out of nowhere and started attacking it. Not realizing who occupied it, I ran in to lend a hand... only to be attacked by the fort's occupants as well! So while I fended off a Dunmer mage, I also was firing arrows at the dragon as he hovered over the fort and attacked the bandits. After killing the wizard, the dragon decided to find out who kept shooting him in the behind, and landed very close and started breathing frost at me. I thought I was a goner, but was able to use some outcroppings of rock to my advantage, and another mage attacked him from the rear. The mage and I were able to finish the dragon off, and then I finished off the mage with a single arrow.

There are some glaring/annoying bugs/features, however. You can't just pick up and manipulate any moveable object like you could in Oblivion... which makes the game feel more like a revamped Fallout game rather than a brand new engine. There appears to be some sort of trust/reputation system in place... for as you do quests for people, some of the items they own become available to take without being flagged as stolen. It's interesting, but seems a little off... I cleaned out almost half of some of the shops after completing just a couple of quests in Dragonsreach. There's a partucular "bug" that allows thieves to steal everything without being seen. I watched a giant hit an elk and it unnatrually flew several hundred feet straight up into the air. There's some pathing/AI issues that allows defeating larger creatures like Mammoths with relative ease. It seems like that the foliage does not affect an enemy's line of sight, even though it obviously affects yours. I'm not a huge fan of the leveling system... leveling up seems to occur very rapidly, but there's either not enough perk points or you can't advance in a particular skill without racking up a lot of skill points first, so it seems unbalanced.

Overall, however, the game is very enjoyable... and the graphics (with a few exceptions) look like Oblivion with one of the fan made high-rez texture packs. The sounds are great, the atmosphere is great, traversing through a snowstorm is great, the dragons are great, everything's great. I just hope it stays that way as I venture further outside of the first major city.

Yeah there are some bugs but overall this game seems nowhere near the mess that Oblivion was when it first came out. Usually when I come across an exploit that I find really unbalancing I try to avoid using it (that goes for all games) unless I get stuck somewhere to the point of frustration.

I'm playing a sexy female orc sneaky archer with a silver tongue (you know you can't resist natural orcish charm and beauty). I do a lot of extra role-playing in these types of games for my own amusement. For example whenever I enter a town I stop running and walk instead. It takes a lot longer to get anywhere, but I'm not a little kid and I have manners so I try to avoid running through the streets. I also remove my helmet in towns for that same reason, it just seems like the proper thing to do (also I don't want to hide my orcish beauty). Generally I try to be polite to people, but then when they're not looking *yoink* I swipe their cups and tankards. I have a pile of cups and tankards in one room in my house in Whiterun. I have Lydia clean them when I leave her behind at the house. My goal is to become Skyrim's foremost drinking vessel thief. Once everyone runs out of drinking vessels there will be a panic and the price of cups and tankards will go through the roof and I'll be sitting on a gold mine. PROFIT!

Another thing, holy smokes did they put some work into the books in this game. Like Morrowind and Oblivion there are a ton of books and some of them are like 25 pages long. I spent 2 hours in Dragonsreach yesterday just reading the books there and I don't think I read all of them.

Wouldn't you crap yourself if the price of tankards actually did go up lol

That would be ridiculously awesome or if I walked by a town crier and heard "Drinking vessel shortage reaches alarming levels. Imperials blame the shortage on Ulfric Stormcloak and his rebels." If either of these things happen I will proclaim Skyrim to be the greatest game ever made.

And you had better post it so i can die laughing

@Crazy Bernie - Actually you can pick up and move objects in Skyrim. Just press and hold "E" (or whatever you mapped the pick up/use key to) instead of pressing and releasing the key quickly (which puts the item in your inventory instead). You don't have to keep holding it, you just need to hold it for a second or two. Then move around with the object just like in Oblivion and press "E" again to let go of the object.

I'm doing a quest right now (I've been doing it on and off for a while) where I got into a drinking contest with this guy and well... I woke up in a temple in a town clear across the map. The priestess was quite mad at me because I made a mess. Apparently my drinking buddy and I did something with a staff and it involved a giant's toe and I stole somebody's prized goat and sold it to a giant and I guess I proposed to someone and ... well who knows what other mischief and debauchery I got myself into.

It reminds me of a similar quest in The Witcher 2, I think they're even called the same thing "A Night To Remember", I wonder if Bethesda was copying CDProjektRed, if they did it as an easter egg type reference, or if it's just a coincidence. In The Witcher 2 Geralt gets drunk with the Blue Stripes and wakes up nearly naked near the river bank in the fetal position. All sorts of crazy stuff went down in that quest too, not the least of which was Geralt trying to ride a whore's ass across the river and him getting a tattoo of a mermaid on his neck.

Anyway, copy or not, I don't care, I love these kinds of quests. In the end they still break down into fetch quests, but having a wacky story of trying to discover what kind of drunken mischief you got into makes them a lot more fun than most quests.

I'm aware of the hold "E" to move objects, but it only applies to objects that you can actually store in your inventory. In Oblivion, you can move just about anything that isn't nailed down (remember the chains at the very beginning that you can swing around?). In Skryim, I can't pick up and throw some of the skulls and bones, and other items. The physics engine seems to have taken two steps forward, but one step back, making it not quite as manipulative as I'd hoped.

Just a heads up: If you can help it, DO NOT LET STEAM UPDATE THIS GAME TO 1.2. Your mileage may vary, but this is what I got after updating:

* Fast travel is broken, if you click on a marker the map just closes.
* Favorites menu is broken, if you click on anything it just closes.
* Lock picking is broken, the "A" and "D" keys do nothing.
* Resistances are broken, that is there are none so elemental protection enchantments and potions are useless.
* Some dragons are on drugs, but not all of them. I encountered one that acted normal, then I encountered another one that must have smoked some crack because it was flying around backwards and going through mountains. Pretty hilarious actually.

I dub this patch the "Horse Armor" patch.

Seriously though, what the ****, Bethesda!?

There should be a patch that addresses the problems introduced to some people by the 1.2 patch next week, in the meantime there is a Skyrim - Interface.bsa floating around the net which fixes the interface breakage. So at least with the bsa file the game is fully playable again for myself and others that the patch broke the game for. Once again my sexy, sneaky female Orc archer is prowling the land for your drinking vessels. Between cups, goblets, flagons, and tankards I have about 500 stashed in my house in Whiterun. Here's a picture of my character in Riften, which is soon to have an unfortunate drinking vessel shortage:

I can't address most of the issues, but for me, Lockpick switched from the A/D keys to my arrow keys. If a key seems broken, try a key that you set the binding on. "R" no longer works for me because now it is using the key I actually bound that command to.
Since I have mostly been playing eschalon 2, I haven't noticed anything broken in skyrim since any updates.

As I stated in my last post, I addressed all the interface issues with a downloaded .bsa file. The only issues that remain are the resistance bug and the occasional dragon on drugs. Most of the dragons behave normally, in fact if anything the behavior is better now as they tend to land or fly down low and attack a lot more often making the fights faster and more exciting. A few dragons though are acting all messed up, flying backwards and through mountains. I figure it's got to be a specific type of dragon, but I don't know what kind since I can't get close enough to them or even put an arrow in them because their behavior is so erratic.

Anyway, game runs fine otherwise. Some people report the frame rate is better now. I haven't noticed a difference since I had no frame rate issues to begin with and never bothered putting up a FPS display. I can run the game with maxed setting (Minus anti-aliasing. AA makes my game highly unstable but without AA I can crank everything else, even turn on FXAA, and the game runs fine) at 1920x1200 and it runs buttery smooth everywhere, even with tons of mobs on the screen.