TESV: Skyrim level cap explained

Upcoming fantasy RPG The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is a "1-50" game, Bethesda has revealed.

Skyrim players will find they level up faster than they did in Oblivion and Fallout 3, game director Todd Howard said at Bethesda's showcase event last week.

"We do balance this game," he said. "The levelling is faster. Oblivion and Fallout 3, we think of them as 1-25 games. This is a 1-50.

"But what that means is we just sped it up. It's not like it's going to take you longer. There are so many perks and the power really comes from the perks, we wanted to get it going faster.

"You level faster in the beginning and then it slows down."

While most players will max out the game at level 50, Skyrim has a "mathematical" level cap "probably somewhere in the 70s", Howard said.

Meanwhile, Howard described Skyrim's open world as "about the same size" as Oblivion's.

But the addition of difficult to pass mountains "theoretically create less space but more time because you can't cut across them".

"It ends up feeling bigger," Howard said. "And the game tends to get harder as you go in elevation. You know, oh those trolls, they're up there, so I'm not going to go through the mountain. I'm going to go this way."

Bethesda has increased the number of staff creating dungeons so they end up feeling varied.

"We've got eight or nine guys now who are really good. We have at last count 120-some dungeon dungeons, and then we have another 100 plus what we call points of interest, outside encounters.

"The game is just too big, actually."

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