Skyrim: updated info and Dunmer and Argonian screenshots

After a drought of new information, there’s been a little from the recent QuakeCon. For those after screenshots of races other than orc and khajiit there’s a new one released by Betheseda of a dark elf thief (which I’ve trimmed down and put below), and the journalists who got to play the game will each get a screenshot of the characters they made (one of which is an Argonian).

The dunmer is definitely less human and better than its Oblivion counterpart, but I prefer the orc and khajiit. However, my dark elf characters are usually female so we’ll have to see what they look like.

Naturally mini-spoilers abound below, so if you want to go into the game totally unaware of what awaits you, better stop reading here.

Skyrim is split between those loyal to the Empire and Stormcloak rebels, who are a faction that can be joined.

When doing character creation the creator remembers your settings, so if you make a khajiit and move away then return your khajiit creation will be waiting for you. There are tons of creation options (I’ve previously mentioned facepaint and so forth, but two new ones is that dark elves, and maybe others, can have eyes of different colours and laughter lines can be added).

Crafting an item is a six-stage process, and alchemy occurs with a lab.

As with Fallout 3, there are travelling merchants, who set up camps along riverbanks.

Companions (similar to Fallout 3) exist, including animal companions.

There’s a mysterious black door which sounds reminiscent of the Dark Brotherhood’s hideout in Oblivion. It’s probably them, but some reckon it might involve vampires.

Last but not least, here’s a rather good spliced together Skyrim theme, created by smeagol92055:

Thaddeus

Update 12^th August:

The journalist screenshots are now being released. I’m not going to post them all now, but as the Argonian has been eagerly anticipated I thought I’d put it up. (For those wondering, she’s Lizzle-Bob, created by the Destructoid journalist, and I got the picture from the excellent UESP forum):

For what it’s worth, I think the Argonian looks bloody fantastic.