I'M in a conference room in Los Angeles and the people from Bethesda are telling me I'm the first Australian allowed to play The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim.

I have three hours to get my head around what’s to come on November 11 when Skyrim gets its Australian release.

If you’re one of the six million people who played the series’ previous instalment, Oblivion, you may well be reading this with some trepidation.

Oblivion and Bethesda's other major big release, Fallout 3, were mighty entries into videogame history, but they suffered from enough flaws to leave you longing for what could have been.

Skyrim may just have it.

Better weather



While Oblivion’s world environment was derided by some critics for suffering from a sort of fantasy sameyness, the world of Skyrim is surprisingly natural and fresh.

Beautiful, icy and dynamic, the fantasy landscape is beset on all sides with jagged, windy peaks. The weather effects are astonishing.

Mist, fog and clouds are not only beautiful to look at: they’re the most perfectly rendered I’ve ever seen in a game.

The character creation screen’s physical customisation is extremely deep. Characters are nuanced and the models gorgeous.

I played a Nord, long-haired square-jawed warrior types - kind of a cross between Sean Bean in Game of Thrones and Mel Gibson in Braveheart.

Better character development



Gone is the class systems of the previous game. Instead, players develop their skills more naturally as the game progresses, with eighten different skills divided between categories of magic, combat, stealth and crafting.

The preview begins 45 minutes into the main storyline, and I’ve been asked to be very careful about what narrative I give away.

(Partial) nudity



After creating my character, I woke in a dank and frosty cave.

I stumble out of the cave in my underpants, and wander down the hill, searching for some clue as to what to do next.

Near an old mine, a scruffy looking man stands guard. He makes warning signals.

Whatever could be wrong? It’s not as if I’m a naked man with long hair wildly approaching unannounced from out of the wilderness.

Oh, wait.

Skyrim’s heads up display (HUD) is now labelling him as a “Bandit”. As bandits do, he draws his sword and begins to beat me into submission.

media_camera Picture courtesy Bethesda

Better weapons system



As I stumble about, wildly flailing at the bandit with my fists, a Bethesda employee wanders past and casually explains that I have some armour and weaponry in my inventory, and shows me how to equip it.

The inventory system has some interesting new features. Equipment and spells can be now be “favourited” more easily – placed in a quick-select menu for easy access, making combat light-years more dynamic than previous Bethesda open world titles.

Armed and back in action, I drew my sword and defended myself... then accidentally changed the camera angle from first-person to third.

As anyone who played Oblivion or Fallout 3 will remember, Bethesda’s third-person mode used to be like watching a weightless ragdoll skating magically over the ground.

Not so with Skyrim. The weighted camera, the perfect frame composition and just the sheer fact that a Bethesda player character now actually looked like he was governed by the forces of gravity made it easy to take my sweet revenge on the bandit.

The obvious next step was to enter his paltry mine and proceed to slay and loot all of his fellow miscreants. Hey, the HUD said they were bandits. They clearly deserved it.

The game intermittently informed me that my skills in heavy armour, one-handed swords and stealth were increasing. After 10 of these notices, I “levelled up”.

Better, er, level-up menu...



The level up menu is worth mentioning. That does sound strange - it’s only a menu, after all.

But what a menu.

Zipping around a star constellation, choosing your skills from 18 different trees represented by zodiac signs is a great moment in video game menu history.

Enjoy it, because you only get one skill point per level to spend in those skill trees.

Now with some clearly formidable battle-prowess under my belt, it's time to meet the locals.

In a quaint medieval town, Riverwood, I'm quickly enlisted by the local blacksmith, despite the fact that I am now clothed but also rather bloodied, to help him craft a dagger and some other basic items.

Better crafting



Well, it's a crafting system. But it’s deeper and more logical than those I’ve seen in other games.

When you’re at the appropriate workbench, be it a forge, a tanning rack or a grindstone, you can convert materials that you’ve found, like raw leather, into other materials, like leather straps.

You can then further combine or enhance those items with more materials, like forging a bronze helmet and adding leather straps to it for a better fit.

I spent a little more time in the town, mainly because an elf in the tavern wanted me to deliver a forged letter from his rival to the woman that he was courting.

media_camera Picture courtesy Bethesda

Better people



Gone are the doughy faced clones of Oblivion and Fallout, replaced with realer looking people who work and go about their business as you talk to them.

As I left Riverwood, I was starting to get into the persona of my character. I liked the idea of being a mischievious vagrant, flitting from town to town, shaping the outcome of events to my liking.

On the road I encountered a group of soldiers with a prisoner. The soldiers were mildly rude to me, so I decided to intervene, freeing the prisoner and slaying his captors.

I was also able to equip the hapless man with a spare sword and some armour, but although I came out of the encounter unscathed, the prisoner fell in battle.

But he died a free man.

In the remaining time I had, I found an enormous stronghold and was sent on a variety of missions culminating in the extremely difficult slaying of a dragon.

As my Nordic avatar pulls his arrows from the beast’s corpse, a hand came down on my shoulder.

My three hours in Skyrim are over. And I was just getting warmed up...

Next week: Todd Howard, Skyrim's game director, talk about the challenges of game design in a changing industry

Will Colvin was flown to Los Angeles by Bethesda



Originally published as First preview! What's changed in Elder Scrolls