No Difficulty Scaling in Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Bethesda has confirmed in a recent interview that Skyrim – the next Elder Scrolls game due out this November – will not feature the same dynamic level scaling as its predecessor, Oblivion.
In a recent interview with the Official UK Xbox Magazine, Bethesda’s Todd Howard explains that Skyrim’s game world will operate similarly to Fallout 3, and determine difficulty based on how terrible you are at the game. This is in contrast to Oblivion, where everything in the world would suddenly gain the ability to kick your ass after each successive level-up.
“The other thing it does is save the state of the monsters. So if you come in and it says, okay it’s going to be this hard for your character… it won’t change its difficulty if you leave.”
“We have the ability now to set a dungeon and say that ‘this dungeon is this hard.’”
Great news for adventurers. Bad news for vampires and mountain lions.
I was actually a fan of The Elder Scrolls difficulty settings, it made the game much more challenging, and therefore more fun. Can hardly wait until its released.
Between the two predecessors, I prefer Fallout’s method of having semi-static area difficulties, as opposed to Oblivion’s “the entire world levels with you” methodology. Both had their pros and cons, but in my experience Fallout’s was more enjoyable.
THANK GOD.
Awww I kind of missed the change of monsters when you leveled up. Oh well, still super-excited about Skyrim. My body is ready.
I couldn’t be more excited. I must have spent at least 30 hours just wandering from dungeon to dungeon in Oblivion, ignoring the story. While it was a blast, I was always disappointed how everything leveled up with me.
Great news.. difficulty scaling makes perfect sense for the Elder Scrolls series.
So happy.
Probably a good idea. The monsters scaling with you in Oblivion led to some moments where I would repeatedly get my ass handed to me.
Level scaling in oblivion was the most frustrating thing I have ever experienced, I wish I had a PC to run that game so that I could get mods to fix it.
So I don’t have to choose the skills I use the least in order to keep the game at a reasonable difficulty? Excellent.
This game looks awesome everything about the elder scrolls games are amazing you could rome around, explore the beautiful forest and so forth. This looks like the best elder scrolls ever followed by oblivion then morrowind. I hate fallout, it is like every other game with ugly scenery, futuristic, boring, horrible stiff, unamazing game play.
Personally i hated the fact that itrained the perfect warrior / mage / thief in oblivion, training with summoned creatures along the river at a thieves camp. for weeks i perfected my character, only to go into combat and have to set the difficulty level down to very easy because everything leveled up with me but were now harder to kill than when i first started the game with my rusty bloody sword and my half broken armor. tsk tsk. look forward to that being fixed.