The forest was randomly generated in the editor. Artists went back after the fact and touched it up a bit, but the editor did most of the work.

(to answer (member)'s question - it's much, much faster.)

The forests in your game will look the same as everyone else's.

The comment made during the demo was that the game visuals for the forests were being generated in real time - the game was rendering and displaying them at that moment, as opposed to a pre-rendered video sequence.

They don't respawn. They get knocked unconscious for a while.

Off the top of my head, two things that are very different from the video:

1) Enemy health indicator doesn't look anything like it did back then. More subtle now.

2) Persuasion interface - completely, totally overhauled since then.

If I can think of anything else I'll let you know.

And with ragdoll, you can't control how guys will die. Sometimes they'll die in ways that look really cool. Sometimes they just fall. Depends on how they're hit and how they're animating at the time.

Not in-game music. Only for the intro.

And it's not changing, because it's awesome ;-)

Love_from_above wrote: "It's also possible however that the book in question had a previously applied "burnt" or "worn" texture and the flaming dog running by it was just a coincidence that appeared to coincide with said burning of books."

That is most likely what happened. No fire damage for inanimate objects.

Also yes, if you go knocking things around in a shop, they will be cleaned up later. But it's automatic and only when you're outside of the cell, so imagine it's a servant doing it. :-) This is to prevent your save games from ballooning tremendously with unneccessary data about all the random stuff you knocked around.

I've said 1,000 times we aren't doing a demo for this game. Ever, ever, ever. It's not possible, it'll never happen. Ever.

We don't develop for Mac. We have no plans to start. So a Mac version would depend on reaching an agreement with a Mac developer/publisher to do such a version. Nothing like that is in place.

So if you want it, let folks like Macplay know it. In a market that size, demand is going to drive supply, not the other way around.

We have always planned to release both versions simultaneously. That hasn't changed, nor will it.

I lost count of the number of people that came up to me at E3 and other places, or sent me emails, and said they bought an Xbox to play Morrowind rather than go through the time and expense to upgrade their PC in order to play it. We're not talking about dumb schmucks off the street. We're talking about guys who work in the industry. People who make a living at making PC games. And not because I told them to, they made their own decision.

YOU may have a different opinion, but there are people out there who think that way and there's nothing wrong with that. I've said multiple times I don't really care which version you buy. But for people who want every bell and whistle turned on, the Xbox 360 is going to be the way to go for many of them. Don't blame me for that. I'm not the one charging $500 for a new video card when a new console costs $299 or $399. I honestly don't care which version you buy. Nobody pays me or our company to offer one over the other, and it's not like we're making more money off of one versus the other.

Just buy the version you can run the best and be happy. That's all I care about.

People's opinions of Hand-to-Hand sort of coincide with their expectations of the skill and how it should work. For a lot of players, when they think Hand-To-Hand, they picture the weakest form of attack available...sort of what you're left with when you play a first-person shooter and run out of ammo.

But for others, Hand-to-Hand is associated to battle-hardened martial arts monks who can use their very hands as deadly weapons.

In Oblivion, we're definitely going for the latter. I've playtested a character through several levels using solely Hand-To-Hand and it's very sweet, and it just keeps getting better the higher the skill.

The problem is it's hard to have a real sense of what 16 square miles is... in a video game or in reality.

I'm a game designer, not a surveyor, so really a value like this doesn't mean much to me. How many square miles is Vice City? Or North Korea in Mercenaries? Or Westfall in World of Warcraft? I dunno... but as a gamer, they all felt plenty big to me.

But I do know that the Oblivion game world is huge. Wandering through those forests/swamps/mountains -- trust me, the last thing you ever feel is that the world is too small.... And it's not empty big, either. It's chock full of Elder Scrollsy goodness big.

And, also keep in mind that the square mileage of the exteriors doesn't even take into account the combined square mileage of all the interiors you'll traverse.

DarkQuiksilver wrote: "The Dark Brotherhood is evil, in the same way that hitmen are evil. They're not evil by nature, but what they do is evil."

DarkSilver is essentially correct. The members of the Brotherhood are primarily evil simply for the fact that they accept money for the taking of innocent lives... that's a pretty heinous act in any culture!

That being said, throughout the Dark Brotherhood, there are a variety of quests -- some more blatantly "evil" than others -- and the player will have additional opportunities, both through action and dialogue, to further develop his/her character as really evil... if that's their choice.

Overall, as mentioned before, the questline is certainy more sinister/more evil than Morrowind's Morag Tong, by a long shot. In Morrowind, assassination was sanctioned through the writs. In Oblivion, when you murder for the Dark Brotherhood, you're mocking the Empire's established laws.

All hail Sithis!

In a game like Thief, there is one core gameplay system -- stealth. The entire game is predicated on the fact that the player is sneaking, in the shadows, for the entire 20-30 hour gameplay experience. EVERYTHING takes a backseat to that mechanic. Heck, in Thief 3, it was decided there wasn't enough development time to properly devote to decent sword combat, so it was cut -- but it was done so because even that wasn't as important as the core stealth gameplay (which is much better suited to the dagger anyway).

In Thief, every tool (water arrows, flash bombs), every scenario (breaking into a bank, stealing a jeweled scepter), every moment of gameplay (hiding in shadows, taking everything that's not nailed down) focuses on the player as a thief character.

Fast forward to Oblivion...a HUGE next gen RPG where you can be a thief...and a knight, and a barbarian, and a wizard, and an assassin, and a merchant, and an alchemist, and.... *phew!* That's a lot of different types of gameplay, and a lot of different gameplay systems. So instead of focusing very narrowly on one gameplay system, Oblivion focuses on several.

So, to that affect, it's just not even conceivable that Oblivion would offer a stealth system as fleshed-out as the one in Thief. Keep in mind that half the people who play Oblivion won't even CARE about the stealth (heresy, I know!), but that's the way it goes.

Now, that being said, stealth-lovers have definitely gotten some serious love. There are two main stealth-driven quest lines (Dark Brotherhood, done primarily by me, and the Thieves Guild, done primarily by Bethesda veteran Bruce Nesmith), tons of stealth-based scenarios (you can steal and assassinate to your heart's content), and a complete overhaul of the stealth system in general (lockpicking minigame, sneaking that takes into account NPC/monster line-of-sight, sound, light/shadow, and player skill.)

So no, the stealth isn't completely like it is in Thief. There are no rope arrows or water arrows. You don't blackjack people from behind. But there are tons of things Thief has never offered -- the ability to talk to people and get quests/influence them; a huge open-ended world that's yours for the taking; spells and potions you can make yourself that are completely stealth/thief/assassin oriented.

In the end, there's a big difference between both games, but I guarantee fans of Thief and thiefy gameplay in general will have tons of fun things to do in Oblivion.

As an aside, there's one other thing that's worthy of mention. Before I ever worked on the Thief series, the most enjoyable, immersive experience I had playing a Thief in a video game was my cat burglar character back in Daggerfall. It was those experiences that helped shaped my work on Thief. So now things have truly come full circle.

No, no bouncy breasts. Can it be done? Yes. Why? We chose not to as it added nothing essential to gameplay.

Cloth? Can it be done? Yes. Is there any in Oblivion? Wait and see.

Hair movement? No. Why? It could not be done with the system we chose for hair and heads.

Tails? Yes, they are havok'd. Can they be used as weapons? No.

These were only answered the way you see them because this much is apparent from the playable version shown at X05.

Carry on. This house is clean. No more evil spirits within this topic.

Stiler wrote: "Also VXSS, is there a reason that Havok wasn't used for hair/cloth simulation since flex modifiying isn't in? Since that's something that can be done with it.

Just time constraints or something?"

Who said havok wasnt being used for any cloth? ;-)

Hair? No. On a technical level.... as was seen at shows like X05, Facegen allows for many things to be done with the head. This, in turn, affects the hair. Throw the skeleton structure, the head mesh, and the hair mesh in that pile and you have one huge soupy mess. Especially since you can adjust hair length. Its completely and utterly technical with all of what is going on in there. Animating hair will NOT work at all in that equation. Tell ya what though.... we can give you animating hair, but you will lose your ability to lengthen it and FaceGen will have to go bye bye. It's always a toss-up. The scales tipped in favor of hair length and Facegen.

And believe it or not, these things ARE weighed in on the CPU. They can be heavy too. We are VERY poly heavy in Oblivion and to have these things flow with wind, motion, and touch, you are most assuredly looking at a pretty heavy frame count hit.

As an animator for OBLV, I am compelled to dip my pen in this ink.

First off, nothing is ever final till the box is on the shelf. If that demo was prepared for E3, then those anims were pre E3.

Also, jerkiness isnt exactly animation. Take into consideration the actual animation system and how it threads the anims together. A set of anims is created allowing a creature/NPC to have locomotion, combat, and other various motions. This set of anims sits happy in a folder until the animation system calls for them.

Bob plays Idle animation. *animation system calls for Bob to walk forward* Bob walks forward. *animation system calls for Bob to draw sword* Bob continues to walk forward and draw sword.

Word of the day.... "Animation Blending".

What happened here was, Bob was able to keep walking while drawing his sword. Those a 2 different animations. The animation system using a priority bone tree that says Bob's upper body can play the *draw sword* anim while his lower body takes less priority doing so, so he can continue to advance. This system takes a lot of trial and error work and things are being caught all the time, and we need to go back and toy with the bone's priority settings (animators).

The way I see it, this system is superior and robust to anything we have done in the past and well worth it. Sure, it means we need to beat the termites out with a toothpick, but it is so worth it. When we see anything jerky, it usually isnt the animation, but something fishy with the blending. There are usually a couple ways to fix that.

Anyways, not trying to defend our animation or our system, just thought I would explain it a little more and give you an insight to how robust it is. And yes, Havok plays a large part in the animation. Without weight, friction, and contraint, you somply cant knock these guys around like pin cushions. It feels good, really. Hitting a guy with a dagger and the using a claymore on him.... you will REALLY feel the power of size and difference.

More on this later perhaps....

As stated before, fixes and tweaks are made daily. As a matter of fact, I just tweaked a few anims about an hour ago. It's always an ongoing process until we go GOLD.

I wont sit and defend what was in the video because it was older work, and mostly because, before E3, we werent even in our polishing stage yet. Will the anims be perfect when we ship? No, nothing is ever perfect. Will I be happy with them? Probably not, because I always look back at my stuff and want to do more. But, as all animators at all game companies will tell you, there are MANY sources within the game that need to sync up in order to make anims look correct. Everything relies on something in a game. In this case, the anims rely on the animation system. The system relies on Havok and Gamebryo. Thats where the whole term TEAM comes in. All along, the animators need to work closely with the animation system coder and he needs to work with the Gamebryo folks. Assebly line work. The bottom line is, we want the anims to look as good ingame as they do in Max.

The way I see it, things get cut and things get added. None if it is decided because we are catering to a new generation. Like I said before, TES is and always has been about lore. Visit the lore forums or any number of the TES lore fansites. They will surely tell you. And the funny thing is, THAT is where I generally see all of the TES old schoolers discussing things. And better yet, they could care less about the pump up in graphics since another title simply means.... more lore.

I too am an old schooler. First ever PC game was Arena. Been a fan since. Started working here at the end of Daggerfall and hope to see another 15 TES titles ship through these doors before I am too old to push graphics for Bethesda. And still, for me, its the ever growing lore and storyline that builds throughout all of the titles that keeps me going.

My unofficial excuse for none of these weapon types.....

....hmmm, sorry, dont really have one.

I guess all I can say is, ah well. But, in all honesty, they were the most unpopular. As an animator, I preferred being able to spend more time on animations for characters with weapons that were most likely to be used. No sense in spending a 50/50 task timer on a bow AND a crossbow if I knew the bow would be used more. That way I could dedicate 100% of the task time to making a very quality bow animation. I dont expect anyone (except other animators) to agree with me, but on a development level, I prefer quality over quantity.

Just MY opinion. :-)

You will be surprised. Lockpicking is one of the things that turned me off of Splinter Cell. In OB, I was worried when I first heard about it. When I first tried it, I was a little depressed about it.... but, it caught on to me and suddenly its fun AND now I kinda look forward to finding locked doors and chests.I honestly dont think I have ever used the Auto pick option. I say give it a try first.... it may surprise ya.

AH, there it is. Bethesda must listen to consumers and what they want. Understand, if Bethesda did that, they would probably be making a shooter or a Mario ripoff title.

Fact is, Bethesda is a private organisation. No public shares. The only people Bethesda MUST listen to are the investors. However, Bethesda does listen to the fanbase. There was a cry for a playable orc race and the addition of playable khajiits and argonains in Morrowind. They listened and that happened. Research is done before making any change to the game. These types of decisions are not made sitting the bathroom for 15 minutes with a magazine and a can of Glade. They are thought out quite a bit with pros and cons weighed. When something comes out, it is for a good reason. I understand that spears, crossbows, and throwing weapons are suspected of being pulled, but just know that there are reasons for cuts. The reasons for cuts usually mean that room needs to be made for something new or perhaps some technical reason.

And catering to a new market called consoles? No, not at all. Bethesda makes games on PC, for PC. Building a game alongside a console just means certain steps have to be made to keep it copatible for both. This alters nothing. I dont know what urban myth exists that says because a game is on console, it will sick on PC, but it it completely untrue. *cough*Battlespire*cough* was on PC only.... cant blame the (lack of) success of that title on a console. ;-)

I understand that no matter how much I say on the subject people will still trail on about cuts, additions, and purple horseshoes. Its part of the curse of being a dev.... being judged before the judges even get a chance to test drive your product. But thats ok, I smile anyways. Cause I get to play the game for hours and hours every day.... and you dont.... and I am having a TON of fun (and I know you will too, so I will get the last laugh).

Ya, seriously, we would be stupid to make a game that you all would buy, only to have to put it on a shelf for 2 years until a computer was out that you could actually play it on. That is NOT what we did.

I wont give specs, but I am using the SAME computer I worked on Bloodmoon with, and even after all of the wear and tear from the graphics programs used to work on Oblivion, I playtest with it as well and it maintains just fine. The only upgrade I have had in the last 3 years on this thing was an Audigy 2 sound card, and thats only cause I fried the old sound card.

Too good to be true? No. It's not in the graphics, it's in the compression. A good, solid compression will allow those "too good to be true" graphics to play back with a great framerate on an "average" computer. I consider my computer here at work slightly below average. Hope that relieves some of the forehead sweating.

Compression in the sense that the graphics will be pipleined smoother through the CPU/GPU. Of course, everything is compressed, so perhaps what I should be saying is optimization. All you can do is take my word for it though, so I am probably preaching for no reason, heh. You will see. The performance is pretty impressive for what all is being rendered.

Red Feather wrote: "The most important thing I was going to say though was when you're talking to people I noticed something kind of bad. The NPCs eyes don't react like they should. They kind of just stare straight ahead the hold time and occasionally blink. In HL2 and Vampire bloodlines, npcs eyes look around and add to the expression. From what I can tell in this video from conversations with the emporer, a human bard, and the bookseller, their eyes do absolutely nothing except look straight ahead and blink. Hopefully this will get fixed!"

That changed a few weeks ago. They now look around occasionally as they're talking to you.

Note: Refers to E3 demo.

There is definitely a parabolic trajectory when you fire an arrow. The goblin just isn't all that far away.

A flaw is in the rationale you assume we have for releasing games on the console in the first place. Of course, as a business, Bethesda must make a profit. It'd be stupid to spend time working on a game and not expecting to make a profit -- that's not how companies stay around. And unless you have a fundamental objection to capitalism itself, it's silly to complain about a company attempting to maximize profits. The flaw in your thinking here is that that's all we care about -- money. Let me tell you -- I for one as a programmer with many years of experience could be making significantly more money outside the gaming industry. Those of us in the trenches -- we programmers, artists, designers, producers, etc. -- we are in this industry because we love it. We love games, and we want to make the best games we can. And we want as many people as possible to play the games we make.

PC versus console is a pointless debate. We're gamers -- the platform is irrelevant. It's the games that matter, whether we play them on a PC on our desk or a console in our living room. Morrowind proved that a huge game with hundreds of hours of varied gameplay CAN succeed on a console as well as a PC, and Oblivion will support that.

No. For ranged magic, you can try not to get hit by the projectile. Otherwise the only way to avoid being affected by a hostile spell is through resistance (to magicka or elemental attacks), reflect or absorb magicka. A plain, unenchanted shield can't do that for you, whether you're blocking with it or not.

One of the high level Sneak skill perks negates the detrimental effects of sneaking in armor.

Melboz99 wrote: "Hey, I think I know what the tabs are:

Tab 5: The Skull with a lightning bolt going across it: This is probably reserved for necromancy. I'm not sure why it wouldn't be in the same categories as cast on touch or cast on target."

You are very smart. Although tab 5 contains magic that is currently affecting you, the others are correct :-)

The L and R only appear on Xbox and indicate that you can switch to different menus using the left & right triggers.

When you commit a crime, both your bounty and infamy go up. Your bounty can be removed, though, if you go to jail or pay fines -- but your infamy will not go back down. Basically it's a gauge of how much of a criminal you are. It's used in determining an NPC's disposition towards you.

Infamy works the same way as bounty does -- except that it never goes away. Because it doesn't go away, it doesn't have as much of an impact on others' disposition towards you as your bounty does, but it still does have an effect.

Actually in this case it simply means that we're not finished optimizing the game yet (that means making the game run faster.) Until we've reached the point where we decide we can't make it run any faster, we won't really know what the minimum system spec is. Once we know that for sure, we'll announce it.

Monophonic wrote: "No no, I think it's just the fact that rats are jumping! It's just so silly, rats were not designed to move around via jumping. They've got stout little legs and pudgy elongated bodies."

Actually, rats hop along as they run. They can walk & trot, but when they really want to get moving, they hop just like in the video. Being much smaller than Oblivion's ROUSes, they do so very quickly. But they definitely do hop when they run. I should know -- my wife and I have had rats as pets for many years ;-)

Now you know -- and knowing is half the battle.

No. Morrowind mods will not work with Oblivion, and Oblivion mods won't work with Morrowind. There have been too many changes to the data for even the most basic mods to be compatible.

A screen not too dissimilar to the inventory menu appears. You can switch between viewing the contents of the container and the contents of your inventory, and move stuff back & forth from the container to inventory as you want to.

Basically your fatigue is always being restored. Running makes it restore more slowly (most of the time so that it's not coming back at all.) Certain actions drain fatigue -- doing power attacks drain a lot, for example. And everything you do is modified by your current fatigue -- so if it's low, you're not going to do as much damage in your attacks, for example. It makes a BIG difference.

In Morrowind, we originally had it so that you couldn't run if your fatigue reached 0. And it SUCKED. Folks complained that movement was too slow in Morrowind anyway -- imagine if you could only run for short periods of time.

Gee, when the sun's low in the sky, you generally can't see into the water much in real life. And when you are close to the water, a low angle generally prevents you from seeing reflections. Also, willows tend to have brighter green leaves than many other kinds of trees.

Perhaps some of you need to get out more. Then you'll learn that water looks different depending on the angle you're looking at it, the position of the sun and other light sources, and the relative positions of things near the water. And maybe then you'll make the connection that since the lighting, locations, weather and flora in the other screenshots are all different, then maybe other views of the water will be different as well.

Of course the water has reflections. The picture some people are complaining about is a nice, atmospheric shot, and that's why it was released. It wasn't specifically released to say "HAY LOOK AT R L337 WATORZ!!1", it was released because it's a pretty scene.

There's only one female mesh (and only one male mesh.) It has to represent all ages. The skin gets tinted according to the face's skin tone, and the mesh is scaled according to race & gender (and obviously the beast race textures are completely different.) We're not doing body morphs. You can adjust the faces to pretty much anything you want, but not the bodies.

The skill usage values are fixed regardless of your skill level. What changes is the number of uses required to advance from level to level. Thus it takes much longer to advance from 50 to 51 than it does to advance from 1 to 2.

Sydek wrote: "What I remember from Morrowind is that your magic skill would raise soley when used. When it came to leveling up destruction for instance, it didn't matter if a magic bolt killed/hit an enemy/npc/monster or if it hit the wall.

Will this be changed in Oblivion? It doesn't seem rewarding to safely level up a skill against a wall."

There's a small skill usage for casting, a larger one for a successful hit. The exact values of these skill usages depends on the magic school.

Yes. Successful sneak attacks result in significant bonus damage.

What To Expect From MSFD:

- I will answer questions about features that we have already announced are in the game, to the best of my knowledge, and to the extent at which I am at liberty to discuss them.

- I will IGNORE questions about features that we have not already announced. That means not responding to forum posts or PMs. At all. I'm not allowed to talk about these things, so please don't expect me to.

- I will RARELY attempt to justify, defend, or explain the omission, inclusion, or implementation of a particular feature. Mostly because most of the time I was not involved in the decision to leave out or add or modify a feature and I don't want to speak for those who were, but also partially because it's usually a waste of time. People will complain about things no matter what you do, and it's a waste of time, energy and bandwidth to get drawn into long, drawn out discussions about it. It is what it is. The question "why is XYZ not in the game" will rarely get ANY response from me, let alone an answer. Now, if I know a lot about a particular feature, I might get into discussing how it's implemented & why, but I won't get into a back & forth battle of should have/would have/could have. That's not to say that complaints aren't necessarily valid -- just don't expect me to get drawn into explaining or justifying every decision made in the development of the game.

- I will correct mistaken impressions or erroneous information when I see it, but I can't be everywhere

- I tend to lose interest in discussions where the technical, artistic and creative abilities of my co-workers (or mine, for that matter) are questioned. Don't expect me to participate actively in these threads. I doubt any of you would if the positions were reversed.

- I think that Oblivion is really, really amazingly good, and better than Morrowind in every way. I think that the team has done an incredible job with the art, quests & dialogue, and technology. The game is a heck of a lot of fun, and I think that even doubters are going to be pleasantly surprised. And I'm not just saying that because I'm working here. Oblivion's turning out to be something very, very special.

So. Keep posting, keep complaining, keep hoping, keep speculating, keep asking questions. I'll chime in where I can, where I feel it's warranted, and where I feel I can contribute.

We briefly thought about having essential NPCs just taking no damage at all -- but that would have led to them becoming unstoppable juggernauts, mowing down everything in their paths. Not a good situation. I think we went through about 4 different variations on this before settling on the scheme we have now.

If you perform a sneak attack and are undetected, you'll get a bonus amount of damage depending on your sneak skill and whether it's a melee or marksman attack. Once someone's in combat with you, you are very unlikely to be undetected in a subsequent sneak attack, meaning the chance of getting another sneak attack bonus is slim.

A poison is simply a potion with all negative effects. You poison a weapon by "equipping" the poison, and it asks if you want to poison the current weapon (if you have a bow equipped, the next arrow you fire will be poisoned.) It's a one-shot deal -- once the weapon hits an opponent, the poison is applied.

Since a poison is a potion with ALL negative effects, if you make a potion with any positive effects, it's not considered a poison. So when you equip it, you'll drink it.

Robes are in the game. Some have hoods. Cloaks never were -- and weren't in Morrowind, either.

There are camps and settlements scattered all over the place, and some dungeons have areas where the bad guys slept. After you clear out the dungeon, there's nothing stopping you from sleeping on that bandit's bedroll. Not like he's going to be using it anymore.

It's not the Morrowind theme, it's the Elder Scrolls theme. Morrowind had the first arrangement of it, Oblivion has the second.

There are a number of pre-defined classes, but you can modify them by picking whichever 7 out of the 21 skills you want to define your own custom class.

One game I know of that did something like that was Star Fox Adventures. There was always a winding tunnel you had to travel through to go between zones. It was never straight, because they didn't want you to be able to stop in the middle & see both sides loaded or in partial states of loading.

We're not doing it that way. The tunnel would have to be too long (and unnaturally so), it'd have to be long enough so that the fastest possible character wouldn't move faster than it took to load the other side, etc etc etc. It's just cleaner, faster, and works better for Oblivion to do it the way we're doing it. It's only the large cities that are like this, anyway -- the smaller settlements and villages are as open as they were in Morrowind. It was a choice of performance over the realism of having the city gates be open, or having to artificially constrain the entrances to cities with a weird tunnel or wide moat or whatever else. We chose performance, and I think that when you start seeing "Chorrol Opened" mods show up, you'll realize why we did it this way. And agree with it.

Well, the difference is that he doesn't want to have to activate the gate, he just wants to walk in there. You'll still see a loading screen. The reason we tend not to do these things is that you might accidentally walk through -- say you're fighting someone and you back up through the load door. A nuisance. We prefer having you perform an action -- activating the load door -- to reduce the chance of accidentally going through.

Just because you can't see them doesn't mean they don't need to be pre-loaded for when you CAN. If you get close to a city, you could suddenly turn towards it -- and if the city is wide open and wall-less, then that stuff had better be loaded.

It's not a rendering issue. It's an issue of a large amount of data that needs to be loaded. Walling off the cities allows us to make them have more "stuff" going on in them -- in terms of artwork and activity. If you're just walking by with no intent of going in, the last thing you want is for the game to slow down while all that info is being loaded on the off-chance you might decide to stop in.

You can block with a shield.
You can block with your weapon.
You can block with your hands.

Blocking with shields or weapons absorbs damage from the attack (preventing some of it from getting through to you), and the shield or sword will take damage. Shields generally have higher durability than swords.

Blocking with your hands does NOT absorb weapon damage (only hand to hand damage), but it can cause the opponent's blow to recoil.

Some of the higher-end skill perks for the Block skill only apply to blocking with a shield -- you gain a chance to do a "block attack," where the shield is used to bash at your opponent after their blow recoils off your shield, and if you hit them you can get a chance to stagger them or even disarm them.

You also get a block attack ability as a perk for your Hand to Hand skill. If you're blocking with your hands, and your Hand to Hand skill is high enough your character can throw a punch after the opponent's blow recoils off your blocking hands, and if the punch lands you have a chance to stagger or disarm your opponent.

But regardless of whether you're blocking with a weapon, shield, or your hands, the effectiveness of the block is based on your Block skill.

Technically there is no parrying -- you can block with your weapon if you have no shield. Parrying implies deflecting blows, not just blocking them. The effectiveness of blocking with your weapon is governed by your character's Block skill.