Storm Atronachs!

I've been asking around about these! I love Atronachs and we've already seen the gorgeous fire atronachs, scorching us with their fiery hotness - And also the brute ice atronachs, bashing us around more than Bane did Batman at their first encounter.

Finally, the trio is complete and I can rest (as if.) With the little picture of a Storm atronach, which I have so neatly acquired (stolen,) I can happily conclude that they all make it and making a slave of each kind of them will be my foremost priority, after acquiring a spoon, of course.

Flame Atronach!

Hahahaha!!! I laugh at the poor design of Oblivion's flame atronach, which by the by, I hated! That was the enemy we got the least response from when we hit and it ruined the image of an epic battle for Kvatch that I had in my head, time and time again.

But let the complaining stop (for now) and the epicness begin! The Frost Atronach were among the first revealed enemies, leaving the question: Will there be more atronachs? Uummm... Yeah, there will! I've taken the liberty of acquiring some recently released footage and there was a flame atronach and... Yeah, well just look at the pretty pictures.


So far it is going a little like this:

Cool Frost Atronach ---> Awesome Frost Atronach
Crappy Flame Atronach ---> Rad Flame Atronach
Storm Atronach ---> ?

Atronachs!

Most creative enemy in Oblivion? Atronachs!

Naturally, they will see a return. They're like the "elementals" of the Elder Scrolls universe. If you played Oblivion, you'll remember 3: Fire, Frost and Storm Atronachs.

In a demo from E3, we saw one of these inglorious bastards: The Frost Atronach.

A Dragon Priest rises from his grave and summons one and from the looks of it, they're bigger, badder and has more abilities, which'll prove to make combat a lot more exciting.

So far it is unknown whether we'll only see them as summonable creatures, or if they are hanging around dungeons as well, like in Oblivion.

Will we be able to summon one ourselves? To that I can only say: Hey! It's Bethesda! Of course we can!

Combat!

Frost Troll

Combat is one of the most important aspects of The Elder Scrolls, and as you might have expected, it'll also be so for Skyrim.

We've always enjoyed picking up a big weapon and go smashing and hacking our adversaries to bits, whilst we scream evil slurs at our screen. At least that's what I think.

So have we evolved from the Hack'n'Slash experiences we had with the previous titles? We have moved forward, but not too far.

First of all, magic will now be equipped just like any other piece of equipment. It is no longer a different system from melee combat, which means that you'll have to prepare your spells beforehand, which means that being a mage will be so much more engaging.

You have two triggers - Left & Right. You can assign any weapon or spell to each hand, you can even dual-wield. Should you dual-wield the same spell and use both hands simultaneously, you will create a much more powerful version of that spell, be that healing or fireball or whatever...

Surrounded by Draugr

Defending, so you don't die, and attacking, so your adversary does. It's always been pretty simple, but the Bethesda game Studios has been looking to improve on that, and making it more challenging and less dull. How did they do this? Well, they made sure that you can't just hold down the block-button by adding something called "shield bash," which is activated if you do just that. You need to perfect your timing to block. It is so far unclear how you block when not wearing a shield.

Unfortunately, apart from that (and the awesome new blood effects) there is not anymore new additions to melee combat on your side. The Draugr, which are undead who rise from the graves to make you join them down there, have been shown to use tactical movement, where they adjust their position according to each other, and not the mindless, independent movement from the previous games.

After beating up your opponent, you will get the opportunity to perform a finishing move, unique for each weapon and creature, meaning that there will be A LOT.

The magic combat has seen more improvement. First of all, spells feel more like this ancient, powerful arcane power that you possess, which is actually a weapon that you choose to yield, instead of a supplement to use when there is a small distance between you and your enemies.

Di-heal

The spells look at lot more authentic, the fireball looks deadly and wielding it will definitely be a great compensation for having a small you-know-what (penis.) Magic battle will also be more engaging. Your shield spells need the same kind of timing that your physical shield does, and you also need to fire at the right time, should the soon-to-be-dead guy battling you also be using a shield spell.

Using an AoE fire spell

Ranged combat will be a little different. You can no longer run backwards as quickly as in Oblivion, which means that you'll have to turn around and sprint away in order to get some air between you and whatever might be trying to kill you. There are different kinds of Bows (no crossbows, I hear) in form of low-end and high-end bows. The low-end (as seen in the demo in the bottom of this site) are strung more quickly, the high-end a little slower. You prepare your arrows for penetrating the heads of your opponents a lot slower overall, in Skyrim, which means that you'll also do good in preparing some poison.

To wrap it all up, I need to say that combat with various creatures in Skyrim, will be more interesting, giving that they now all have more than just one melee and or ranged attack, like they had in Oblivion (which most can relate to.) The Frost Atronach was shown to possess several abilities. The creatures who doesn't possess several abilities, like wolves, make it for it by attacking strategically in groups.

Frost Atronach in Skyrim

Skyrim has seen some improvements, granted that it's few, I do believe that they will be quite enjoyable.