Leaked GameInformer article has some BIG details revealed about Skyrim:

"One noticeable change is  that there isn’t a class selection at the start of the game, and “every skill you level contributes to your overall level”. Each time you level you get extra health and the option to choose more health, or between magicka or stamina, and each level will bring you perks. Player will not cap out at 50 either, as you will just start advancing at a much slower rate.

Some skills have been cut, one of which is mysticism. There will be 18 to choose from, where as Oblivion had 21 and Morrowind had 27. Players can specialize in certain professions while those who want to a do a bit of everything may do so.  Warrior/Mage/Thief sounds great to us.

The story takes place 200 years after Oblivion,  and the dragons have returned to Skyrim as was forseen long ago. Your job is to stop the dragon god, as you are dragonborn and therefore destined to be the one to hunt the evil doer down while civil war rages around you. Creatures who may get in the way of your sword include: yetis, large spiders, and of course, the prerequisite dragons.

Enemies include were-yeti’s, giant spider, dragons and other cool creatures.

Combat will be more “dynamic and tactical” and you will assign each hand a function. Stamina is wasted by sprinting, and the emphasis by the dev team this time around was improving combat and the feel of weaponry in your hands.

Quests are more dynamic, and are determined by how you build your character. Example: Say you are a Mage instead of a warrior – a magician may approach you for something, whereas is you were not a mage, you would never have spoken to him. Another example, is if you kill someone who owns a store – who didn’t do that in Oblivion? – and this store owner was at some point going to give you a  quest – his sister would inherit the store, but you may have to butter her up a bit before you will get the quest.

Dropping pile of weapons in the street in order to save inventory and come back to it plays out different. If you drop a sword in the street, it may just dissapear, someone could find it and give it back to you, or it will cause a series of actions to happen where a couple people fight over who gets to keep the found sword.

Quests will also be  modified by how you have played – so certain missions will take place in areas you have been to but not necessarily the same dungeons.

Here’s some other information NeoGAF pulled from the scans, you can also check out Nathan’s earlier post on level scaling:

• Third person view has been improved
• 5 massive cities, more variation in caves and underground stuff.
• there is an option for no HUD.
• On Conversations: Conversations aren’t done in a zoomed in static shot anymore.Start a conversation with some and they will act like someone would in real life, looking at you occasionally and walking around a bit and also continue doing a task if they were doing one while talking.
• On Weapon smithing: Go to a forge and carve a new weapon out of red hot metal.
• Dual-wielding: you have two hands now in combat and you can wield anything to both hands. You may assign a dagger on left hand and use a mace with right hand. The choice as they say is yours.
• Duel: You may duel any NPC on the streets western style.
• Inheritence: When you kill a shopkeeper, his/her family member will inherit the shop and will be angry about you, but stil give you missions.
• Level-scaling: It is coming back
• 18 skills: supposedly even less skills to play with?
• No mysticism
• Perks: Rumored to be in Skyrim. I may have understood it wrong.
• Boosts: Pick stamina, health, magic boosts on level up.
• Enchanting: This skill makes a return.
• “Radiant storytelling” or Level Scaling 2.0: “The game eventually logs a huge storehouse of knowledge about how you’ve played, and subsequently tailors content to your capabilities and experiences. Entering a city, a young woman might approach you and beg you to save her daughter from kidnappers. The game will look at the nearby dungeons you’ve explored, automatically set the mission in a place you’ve never visited, and designate opponents that are appropriately matched to your strengths and weaknesses.”
• Fast-Travel: As you probably expect, you can instantly travel to previous locations with a tap of the button
• Sprinting: You can now sprint about!
• Town visiting: You may do more in towns, like tailor weapons, cooking, farming or mining. Not much details about this or how detailed they are as jobs.
• Dynamic Shadows
• Improved Faces/Improved Models Example: Faces have been dramatically overhauled. Characters now exhibit more emotion show of distinctions between different races and just plain looks better.
• Radiant AI
• Updated Engine Snow falls dynamically (not as a basic texture on the ground)
• Trees and branches move independently with the wind
• Water flows
• Randomly generated quests
• Beards
• You can’t run backwards as fast as you do forward.
• 10 races to choose from (Holy crap thats a lot of races)
• confirmed creatures: zombies, skeletons, trolls, giants, ice wraiths, giant spiders, dragons, wolves, horses Elk, mammoth, saber-toothed cats
• presumably open cities (as dragons can attack)
• Hud-free first-person view and improved third-person perspective
• very unique landscapes! Also unique dungeons! In other words, lots of uniqueness!
• Character creation improved, body features customizable
• 2-handed weapons and duel wielding confirmed.
• Finishing moves, unique to each weapon and enemy you fight.
• Kids
• Dialog will pop up when you approach an enemy
• cooking/farming/mining/woodcutting/blacksmithing
• Perk picking at every level-up
• 5 Magic Schools Destruction Alteration Conjuration Restoration Illusion."

Pictures?

YES!!! Glorious!

Holy snappin' dog shit

Thumbnail'd!

                   BEWBS!!

Meh, looks really generic, like Oblivion. At least that last environment shot and the dragon indicate potentially more varied landscapes and enemy variety, and they've improved character models (although shown armors are bleh).

YYYYYEEEESSS!! Sooo good! Please tell me dungeons will have some sort of design and I will be pleased.

Agnates said:

Meh, looks really generic, like Oblivion. At least that last environment shot and the dragon indicate potentially more varied landscapes and enemy variety, and they've improved character models (although shown armors are bleh).

It's to be expected. At least this generic will be higher fidelity!

In the June 2006 issue of EGM, which I was reading last night, this is what Todd Holland says about difficulty scaling:

"When you are creating a wide-open game like this, you really have to find some way of having the difficulty adjust for if the player is really, really powerful, or if they just start the game and this is the quest they ran into.  Otherwise, you're constantly running into things that are too hard and you don't like them, or they're too easy and you're bored"

I thin khe has a good point EXCEPT it seems to me that it would be very easy to design the game such that hard quests don;t appear until you are at the right level.  Which is what I guess they are going to do in Skyrim (in addition to keeping the scaling difficult of enemies).