Morrowind

Skyrim's Menu System

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Everyone knows what Oblivion’s menu looks like: the yellow parchment, the large, ugly text, and the sepia map. Many mods fix this, but for Skyrim, Bethesda is making a new user-friendly menu completely from scratch.

Unlike previous menus, Skyrim’s won’t take you back to the page you were on the last time you looked on the menu. Instead, it will bring you to a compass, where you choose which page to go. If you were to press on the right arrow, then it would take you to the inventory, which separates items by type. You can also view every item in 3D. If you were to press the left arrow, then it would take you to your spells, complete with how each works (for example, shock spells drain magicka as well as health). Pressing the up arrow would cause you to look up to the sky, where the three major constellations will be shown: The Warrior, The Thief, and The Mage. Each has six constellations inside, all of them representing a skill, which means a total of 18 skills. Each skill level-up will go towards a new level. Every time your level goes up, you can choose a supplementary perk for one of your skills. If you use heavy armor a lot, then you’d want to choose one that is related to heavy armor. Like in the Fallout series, some perks can be chosen more than once to be "leveled up".

Finally, pressing the down arrow will make the screen zoom out to reveal a map of Skyrim, which is fully interactive. You can move across the map and examine the mountains, the caves, or the cities, similar to the 3D item viewing. You can manage markers, plan where you’re going to go, or fast-travel (yep, its still there!). When outside the compass screen and in the game world, you will be able to hit a button and it will pause everything and bring you to your favorites screen. This screen is very similar to hot-keys in Oblivion, except that the slots are unlimited, and you can assign anything to them. In theory, you could put everything in your inventory on this screen. You can’t determine the order the favorites are in, however; they will be listed alphabetically.

That’s all for now, thanks for reading and keep watching the TESNexus news for more information on Skyrim!

47 comments

  1. marksman_sniper
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    Thanks for the post!
  2. Thrakkkk
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    tbh oblivion's system isn't that bad... a bit klunky but it works. personally i never use hotkeys in oblivion because the inventory works well enough for me. what i really want is a way of storing my items without having to buy a house. I find i'm constantly holding on to valuable items because no one will pay their base value.

    reasonable idea - I'd like to add that stuff like clams shouldn't be able to hold swords.

    as for the other things of making the world more immersive, like giving npcs jobs, i'm excited. it's one of the most immersion-breaking things for me.

    yeah definitely one of the best new additions. anything to make npcs more lifelike is a plus.

    as for the equipping spells thing. why not just have 3 slots, spell, right hand, left hand? but it seems like it works ok.

    There basically already is 3 slots in Oblivion. You just can't choose which hand holds what.

    HOWEVER, I want there to be 4 slots: 2 magic slots. On the 360 controller the left bumper could be used for casting an additional spell (instead of grab). The options menu can allow you to switch the left button between grab and spell #2 because there really isn't room on the controller to put grab somewhere else. Grab isn't that important anyways.

    the real problem with oblivion's combat is that it's too simplistic; you can either block or atack. There are no criticals which 1-hit enemies or other special moves, which are the bread and butter of cinematic combat. This is also why people run backwards so much, because no matter how many times they stab their foe in the chest, they'll never hit the heart, and they have to run back. simply slowing down backpedalling doesn't solve the issue.

    Melee combat does need a bit of tweaking. I don't see a way to add criticals unless they happen somewhat randomly during a power attack (depending on level and what not). And if you are in sneak mode there should be a chance of a critical assassination move when you try to do a power move from behind.

    The only other way I can think of to make melee combat better is to have roll dodges and being able to see over the shield better. Maybe it only gets raised higher on the screen right at the moment you take a hit. Enemies should have patterns that allow you to guess when to attack, block or get out of the way just like Super Punch-Out.
  3. Zaldiir
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    Well, Special Moves and Critical Strike (along with perks that ignore some/all armor when using maces, bleeding with axes, etc) are in Skyrim, so yes, that along with slowing down backwards running speed will solve the issue with the simplistic combat. (The reason why they are slowing down backwards running speed has nothing to do with what you said though - the reason was that you could outrun enemies by running backwards and shooting at them with either magic or arrows.)

    And as for your suggestion about equipping spells, you just suggested making it like it was in Oblivion - you equipped your spell separately. The reason you have to equip spells in one of your hands is because you use your hands when using magic (as you can see in Oblivion), and making it more tactical. (i.e you have to decide if you want to try and be offensive by using a weapon and a spell, or if you want to be defensive with a shield and a weapon.)
  4. BloodySahara
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    tbh oblivion's system isn't that bad... a bit klunky but it works. personally i never use hotkeys in oblivion because the inventory works well enough for me. what i really want is a way of storing my items without having to buy a house. I find i'm constantly holding on to valuable items because no one will pay their base value.

    what beth really needs to add is action bars... yeah, action bars. they're around for a reason. ideally you could have a variable number of action bars, as well as item sets to put in them. i'd use those.

    dragon shouts. meh; they seem to be just glorified spells to me. it doesn't seem like an intrusive feature so i'm not worried, but they could probably put their time into other areas.

    as for the other things of making the world more immersive, like giving npcs jobs, i'm excited. it's one of the most immersion-breaking things for me.

    unless people's bodies just rot in the streets for days like in oblivion. then there's no point.

    as for the "equipping spells" thing. why not just have 3 slots, spell, right hand, left hand? but it seems like it works ok.

    overall, excited for skyrim.

    Edit:
    the real problem with oblivion's combat is that it's too simplistic; you can either block or atack. There are no "criticals" which 1-hit enemies or other special moves, which are the bread and butter of cinematic combat. This is also why people run backwards so much, because no matter how many times they stab their foe in the chest, they'll never hit the heart, and they have to run back. simply slowing down backpedalling doesn't solve the issue.
  5. Zaldiir
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    Well, I do not feel that having your definition of a hotkey in the game is very important. <img class=">
    But honestly, it would be nice to have it, I just wanted to clarify the definition of a hotkey.^^
  6. chaospearl
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    Now we're just playing the semantics game because you know I'm right. <img class="> Skyrim's much touted menu system doesn't have one click no pause hotkeys. I feel that's a huge mistake on Beth's part and that it'll be one of the first mods available, assuming the PC version menu doesn't have it. You obviously feel it isn't important, which is fine. Just don't try to tell me that it really does have hotkeys by stretching the definition to include things that have no similarity to what most players are looking for in hotkey functionality. <img class=">
  7. Zaldiir
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    That is what hotkeys was in Oblivion yes.

    I have a hotkey for opening my mail client - that doesn't mean that that hotkey opens my desired mail as well, but it's still a hotkey. Same for this - It's a hotkey to open a menu of your favorite items/spells, from where you choose which to use.

    Just because hotkeys in Oblivion was like you explained doesn't mean that's the definition of a hotkey.
    What is the definition of hotkeys however;
    "A hot key is a key or a combination of keys on a computer keyboard that, when pressed at one time, performs a task more quickly than by using a mouse or other input device."
  8. chaospearl
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    And @chaospearl: You click one button to get to the favorites screen, which is the same as hotkeys apart from there being many more spots to use, and it pauses the game. So it's an easy way to find stuff in your inventory/spellbook. It's still in!


    I don't mean to be rude here, but it isn't the same as hotkeys by any stretch. Hotkey = you click one button or hit one key and your spell or weapon is equipped. No pause in the action, no menu to look through, no scrolling, no further clicks. One button.

    How is that the same thing as hit a key and the game pauses, bringing up a menu from which you scroll through to choose what you want, then unpause the game and continue?

    It's not only not the same thing, it's not even close to being remotely similar. The entire issue here is that I don't want to pause the game and look through a menu, even if that menu is only three items. If I wanted to pause and scroll, I'd just... bring up the regular menu. What I want is no pause in the action, and no menu to choose from. Just hit a key, and your (whatever) is equipped. That's a hotkey. Anything involving pausing the game = not a hotkey.

    All that said, it's not like a crap menu system would cause me to not buy the game. I'm still hopeful that there's a different menu for PC, that hotkeys will be involved, and even if neither of those turns out to be true, I'm certain that there'll be a hotkey mod available within about 11 hours after 11.11.11. Hotkeys are too integral to too many players. If Beth won't give us what we want, we'll mod it in ourselves. Always have.

    I'm just complaining because it really lowers my faith overall that nobody at Beth thinks hotkeys are important. Because if they got this one so very wrong, what else did they mess up that might not be so easy to fix with a mod?
  9. Zaldiir
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    hehe, Pete Hines' response to the people worried about the menu system:
    @Zaldir I feel like they've always been worried about that...since before MW came out. It'll be ok.
  10. Rapsynrev
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    Any news on what skills are added? I realize I may be alone here, but I actually enjoyed speechcraft in Oblivion and would love to see it return (even though the minigame itself could use some changes to make it a little more fresh). I haven't seen any confirmation on the skill Speechcraft being in the game (although I'm guessing that's what the "aft" is in the menu screenshot). I'm also hoping they do a little more with the perks adding dialogue options than they did with, for instance, lady killer, in fallout 3. It was a good start, but I'd like to see some more speech related options. Just my opinion.