Skyrim World Map and Game Manual "Leaked"
A printed world map and the Xbox 360's manual for Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim have been scanned/photographed and uploaded.
Monday brought reports that a printed map pulled from the Russian Collector's Edition of Bethesda's upcoming The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim RPG was scanned and published online by members of a Russian fan forum. There wasn't any question in regards to its authenticity, as the scan itself was huge and featured numerous folds as if pulled from a game box.
Turns out that the map wasn't exactly "leaked," but rather handed out to attendees of the Igromir gaming show in Moscow. Either way, the virtual landscape looks massive enough to rival an MMORPG (ok, that's an exaggeration), and the map even reveals the nine major cities as previously reported, defined by their own coat of arms.
Now it seems that the Skyrim manual for the Xbox 360 version has been obtained, photographed and uploaded to imgur. There are 38 images in all covering details like cooking, the items menu, increasing skills and leveling up, the main game screen broken down into ten components, skills, traveling, quests, bartering, sneaking, pickpocketing and lockpicking, crime and punishment, and more.
Unfortunately, because the manual was photographed instead of scanned, some of the text is blurry, making the details hard to read. Still, there's plenty to read and in-game imagery to drool over until the game lands on store shelves next month.
Was this a leak? Look at it this way: what better way to create buzz over your product than to "accidentally" release in-game footage, prototypes or other materials? The appearance of a map and a manual back-to-back just doesn't seem coincidental.
Bethesda is set to launch The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim in exactly one month, on November 11, for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC.


1. fast travel - discourages exploration
2. quest arrow - also discourages exploration (game was designed around fast travel and the quest arrow so turning them off via mods makes the game unplayable)
3. leveled NPCs and loot - bandits with Mithril armor and glass maces trying to shake you down for 50 septims
4. uninspiring enemies - daedra are basically mindless monsters in the game
5. closing Oblivion gates was boooring
What I know I won't like about Skyrim:
1. no weapon maintenance
2. reduced number of attributes
3. graphics suited for current gen consoles (not much better than Fallout 3)
4. world map is same size as in Oblivion
5. fast travel, quest arrow and leveled NPCs and loot
Oh well, still better than MMO crap...
wow... you have no idea what was taken out of oblivion for the engine run on the consoles do you?
youtube some early pre e3 ai demos, and how the game worked.
play a bit of morrowind, and than complain about
fast travel... while i can admit was poorly done, you also have to remember the only way to fast travle is to have BEEN TO THAT AREA ONCE, it didn't discourage exploration. now on towns, im not sure, i didn't discover fast travel till i already visited all the main citys.
enemy leveling was lame, what i would love is a more demon souls feal but we all know that will never happen.
ai was SEVERELY dumbed down for the consoles. blame them not the game itself.
after playing/seeing rage, it will be hard for skyrim to be impressive ai wise.
and graphics... i go into that enough for people to know i care far more about game/gameplay than what the game looks like.
I truly hope this game is optimized for PC. When Oblivion came out, it clearly was not well optimized for PC(still love the game though). I am a little nervous after the Rage PC fiasco. I pretty much updated my system just to play this game though.
Please Bethesda don't let us down with another bad console port. I have faith this one will be great!
And the dialogue you heard when you happened to pass by some gossiping folks was just terrible. "I ran into some mud crabs the other day"..."I've fought mud crabs tougher than you". My god, it was so bland but hilarious. Fkin MUD CRABS!!! I hope they pick up the dialogue a bit in Skyrim.
So Skyrim is NOT the same as Oblivion as far as auto-scaling NPCs
Yeah, it's an improvement (and NPC leveling was solved with mods in Oblivion), but the reasoning behind NPC leveling with the player is stupid in my opinion and I'm worried that the same reasoning will ruin some part of Skyrim.
Well, sure, but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of NOT leveling up like people would do on purpose in Oblivion. If areas have a set level limit, that still means they scale to a point... and if you enter the area at a really low level, the monsters will also be low level.
This kind of system stinks. There need to be areas like Morrowind or Daggerfall that intentially kick your tail for being too weak to even be there... or even like The Bards Tale. If you went into Harkyn's Castle at level 5... Oh wait, I mean... TRIED to go into it--as there was an ominous Grey Dragon guarding the door... well, your whole party would die (to the tune of 296 points of damage or so) from his dragon's breath.
IF you managed to get into the Castle, you'd still face the 99, 99, 99, 99 Berserkers behind door #3...
So, no, having a level limit doesn't fix it. The only thing that fixes it is having set minimums and maximums but more appropriately, just having fixed levels and making some areas pure suicide to even attempt at low level. Maybe adding in that other Bard's Tale feature of... permadeath would help also (that is, unless you could afford to pay a temple to heal your character)...
What other genres are there?
I don't want to find a full set of glass on some random bandit, that isn't a boss or really really hidden in some dungeon.
The other option would be no scaling which puts the whole game on tracks and encourages exploitative and suicidal play to get high level loot early in the game.