Bears!

I like bears - they speak to me (Not literally.) Therefore, I was very disappointed with the bears in Oblivion - and I was like 13 years back then; I had next to no standards. Why was the bears disappointing, you ask? They were puny! Bears are supposed to be large, threatening and majestic, causing you to cower in fear as they broaden their massive body in an attempt to frighten us, whilst they neatly extract their razor-sharp claws and bash us with their uncontrollably strong paws, breaking every bone in our relatively weak soon-to-be-crushed cranium.

They didn't do that.
They were small and laughable. Puny! PUNY! The puniness of the puny bears, was so puny that it was puny by puniness standards!

But never again! I've spotted bears twice now, as I've been covering Skyrim and the first time made me shiver in fear for them being puny again - I'm referring to the picture of a player with a "bound bow," about to blow a little brown bear to hell. It had me worried that that was all we were going to get, but after seeing a bear in the recent GTTV footage, I'm convinced that the bear from the picture is a fricken cub!

The GTTV bear is the fricken most dangerous thing I've ever seen! Finally the bears get the respect they deserve! It stand up on its two legs, showing off its brute and intimidating figure, and roars in rage. Da-da-da-da-daaaaam - I'm lovin' it!

Sabre Toothed Tigers!

I feel like a total douche, not having written this yet. Seriously. It's old stuff and I'm like: "I'll do it later - you know, in 3 months." Burn! Worse than the time, you know that big bummer, the time with McCain, who overdid Joe Plummer (Rhymes!!)

Anyway: Everybody loves cats! Especially when they are huge, with giant fang-teeth and an incredible urge to kill and eat you like the most pathetic piece of prey ever. They're just so cute!

Did my earlier remarks, as well as the title of this topic delude you? This topic is about the Sabre Toothed Tiger, which will be quite present in Skyrim. I'm guessing it's sort of an alternative to the Mountain Lion, which was more badass than Daedroth in Oblivion, which is sort of silly.

I kinda lack a picture, but enjoy this wonderful picture of a mountain lion from Oblivion:

Mammoths!

Why didn't i write this months ago? Let me tell you now, mammoths are in the game! Knew that already? Well, pretend that you did not, just like Bush pretends that he has done nothing wrong.


Better known as the elephant with tusks among everyone, the mammoths will be travelling the tundras of Skyrim. Given their awesomeness, they are often herded by Giants, whom take the time to carve symbols into their tusks.

Should you come upon these magnificent bastards and their giant masters, travelling the tundra together, you may get the urge to hurt them, you know, just to see what is up - Well, don't! The entire group will turn on you like the other students turn on Britta at Señor Chang's command! So you might want to think twice!

I do have a theory that you find mammoths wandering alone, since an example of the world ecology, depicts a pack of wolves working together as a team in order to take down one of them. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be quite strange if Giants had tamed all mammoths? Yes, yes it would.

Ice Trolls!

It's scary, I know - Different kinds of Trolls. Kinda like different kinds of Justin Bieber, only dangerous, not annoying. Unlike their cousins from Oblivion, these guys are actually dangerous and live in the snowy regions of mighty Skyrim.

Fry dat Ice Troll, mon!

As far as weaknesses go, my logical guess is that this one's weak point matches the Cave Troll's - Fire! Which is great, 'cause who doesn't like breaking out your flamethrower spell and frying themselves some troll meat? No one. None at all.

Equivalents of elementary school aside, in spite of seeing a sole Ice Troll in the released video footage, Todd Howard mentioned that we could run into an entire nest of them, suggesting that they might be pack animals. Not much more to say on this topic, other than we should all look forward to fight them, 'cause it seems exciting!

Cave Trolls!

According to me (don't call me Jim,) the most annoying enemy in Oblivion was the cave / forest troll. It was big and incredibly fast, not to mention hard to kill unless you had a firespell at the ready. I'm pretty sure that it was meant to be scary, but it was mostly annoying.

They do make a return in Skyrim, although seeing them now turns everything around - They're still fast, but not as in the annoying way in Oblivion; It is bigger; It will definitely be hard to kill, I'd say!
We've seen video footage of it's icy counterpart, and it is at least terrifying enough to make Hugh Grant cry - Not that he sets the bar very high.

Wolves!

I seem to find them in every western RPG I play: Wolves! These snub-nosed, sharp-teethed predators hunts us everywhere we go! Oblivion was no different, except I was a little surprised to find wolves walking by themselves in Ayleid ruins.

Skyrim will also feature wolves, but with a great upgrade (apart from the visual one,) that makes them go from plane, simple and dull, to pretty damn awesome!

Instead of finding them prancing about alone, which wolves normally don't, they will most often be found in groups, just like we saw in Gothic 3 (Bugthic as I call it) and in Fable 3, which doesn't really count, 'cause everything was in groups in Fable 3.

As I've mentioned earlier, some footage and sources indicates that some enemies will move strategically, in a good ol' teamwork kind of way and it has several times been said by the developers that you can spot a pack of wolves taking down a mammoth strategically, as they would in real life. I'd say that it's fair to take off our hats and guess that when battling these creatures, we will see some realistic action.

Not only do they hang out together, but according to some E3 footage, they also have a pack leader. In the footage we can see a wolf standing a little out from the rest, running at the front, which would indicate that it is the pack leader.

It would be interesting to know if you could scare of some of the wolves if you smashed their leaders head in, but I guess we will have to wait for the game to come out, before we can find that out.