Skyrim's Menu System
Unlike previous menus, Skyrim’s won’t take you back to the page you were on the last time you looked on the menu. Instead, it will bring you to a compass, where you choose which page to go. If you were to press on the right arrow, then it would take you to the inventory, which separates items by type. You can also view every item in 3D. If you were to press the left arrow, then it would take you to your spells, complete with how each works (for example, shock spells drain magicka as well as health). Pressing the up arrow would cause you to look up to the sky, where the three major constellations will be shown: The Warrior, The Thief, and The Mage. Each has six constellations inside, all of them representing a skill, which means a total of 18 skills. Each skill level-up will go towards a new level. Every time your level goes up, you can choose a supplementary perk for one of your skills. If you use heavy armor a lot, then you’d want to choose one that is related to heavy armor. Like in the Fallout series, some perks can be chosen more than once to be "leveled up".
Finally, pressing the down arrow will make the screen zoom out to reveal a map of Skyrim, which is fully interactive. You can move across the map and examine the mountains, the caves, or the cities, similar to the 3D item viewing. You can manage markers, plan where you’re going to go, or fast-travel (yep, its still there!). When outside the compass screen and in the game world, you will be able to hit a button and it will pause everything and bring you to your favorites screen. This screen is very similar to hot-keys in Oblivion, except that the slots are unlimited, and you can assign anything to them. In theory, you could put everything in your inventory on this screen. You can’t determine the order the favorites are in, however; they will be listed alphabetically.
That’s all for now, thanks for reading and keep watching the TESNexus news for more information on Skyrim!
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A moderator has closed this comment topic for the time beingreasonable idea - I'd like to add that stuff like clams shouldn't be able to hold swords.
yeah definitely one of the best new additions. anything to make npcs more lifelike is a plus.
There basically already is 3 slots in Oblivion. You just can't choose which hand holds what.
HOWEVER, I want there to be 4 slots: 2 magic slots. On the 360 controller the left bumper could be used for casting an additional spell (instead of grab). The options menu can allow you to switch the left button between grab and spell #2 because there really isn't room on the controller to put grab somewhere else. Grab isn't that important anyways.
Melee combat does need a bit of tweaking. I don't see a way to add criticals unless they happen somewhat randomly during a power attack (depending on level and what not). And if you are in sneak mode there should be a chance of a critical assassination move when you try to do a power move from behind.
The only other way I can think of to make melee combat better is to have roll dodges and being able to see over the shield better. Maybe it only gets raised higher on the screen right at the moment you take a hit. Enemies should have patterns that allow you to guess when to attack, block or get out of the way just like Super Punch-Out.
And as for your suggestion about equipping spells, you just suggested making it like it was in Oblivion - you equipped your spell separately. The reason you have to equip spells in one of your hands is because you use your hands when using magic (as you can see in Oblivion), and making it more tactical. (i.e you have to decide if you want to try and be offensive by using a weapon and a spell, or if you want to be defensive with a shield and a weapon.)
what beth really needs to add is action bars... yeah, action bars. they're around for a reason. ideally you could have a variable number of action bars, as well as item sets to put in them. i'd use those.
dragon shouts. meh; they seem to be just glorified spells to me. it doesn't seem like an intrusive feature so i'm not worried, but they could probably put their time into other areas.
as for the other things of making the world more immersive, like giving npcs jobs, i'm excited. it's one of the most immersion-breaking things for me.
unless people's bodies just rot in the streets for days like in oblivion. then there's no point.
as for the "equipping spells" thing. why not just have 3 slots, spell, right hand, left hand? but it seems like it works ok.
overall, excited for skyrim.
Edit:
the real problem with oblivion's combat is that it's too simplistic; you can either block or atack. There are no "criticals" which 1-hit enemies or other special moves, which are the bread and butter of cinematic combat. This is also why people run backwards so much, because no matter how many times they stab their foe in the chest, they'll never hit the heart, and they have to run back. simply slowing down backpedalling doesn't solve the issue.
But honestly, it would be nice to have it, I just wanted to clarify the definition of a hotkey.^^
I have a hotkey for opening my mail client - that doesn't mean that that hotkey opens my desired mail as well, but it's still a hotkey. Same for this - It's a hotkey to open a menu of your favorite items/spells, from where you choose which to use.
Just because hotkeys in Oblivion was like you explained doesn't mean that's the definition of a hotkey.
What is the definition of hotkeys however;
"A hot key is a key or a combination of keys on a computer keyboard that, when pressed at one time, performs a task more quickly than by using a mouse or other input device."
I don't mean to be rude here, but it isn't the same as hotkeys by any stretch. Hotkey = you click one button or hit one key and your spell or weapon is equipped. No pause in the action, no menu to look through, no scrolling, no further clicks. One button.
How is that the same thing as hit a key and the game pauses, bringing up a menu from which you scroll through to choose what you want, then unpause the game and continue?
It's not only not the same thing, it's not even close to being remotely similar. The entire issue here is that I don't want to pause the game and look through a menu, even if that menu is only three items. If I wanted to pause and scroll, I'd just... bring up the regular menu. What I want is no pause in the action, and no menu to choose from. Just hit a key, and your (whatever) is equipped. That's a hotkey. Anything involving pausing the game = not a hotkey.
All that said, it's not like a crap menu system would cause me to not buy the game. I'm still hopeful that there's a different menu for PC, that hotkeys will be involved, and even if neither of those turns out to be true, I'm certain that there'll be a hotkey mod available within about 11 hours after 11.11.11. Hotkeys are too integral to too many players. If Beth won't give us what we want, we'll mod it in ourselves. Always have.
I'm just complaining because it really lowers my faith overall that nobody at Beth thinks hotkeys are important. Because if they got this one so very wrong, what else did they mess up that might not be so easy to fix with a mod?