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Xbox 360 gamers will soon have reason to rediscover The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. Bethesda today announced plans to release a free title updated later this month that will integrate Kinect support, allowing gamers to yell out over 200 voice commands, including dragon shouts. From bartering to battling, the Kinect update adds a new dimension to Skyrim that previously didn't exist, and there will also be a handful of new functionality to go along with the voice commands, such as special map features, additional hotkey options, and the ability to sort items by name, weight, and value.
Kinect support is limited to voice commands only (boo!), representing a missed opportunity for Bethesda to turn an awesome April Fool's prank into an actual thing. So while you won't be face-planting into the coffee table and taking a wooden splinter to the knee, you will be able to issue follower commands, navigate menus, and create and load saved games using only your vocal cords.
Another missed opportunity here is for PC gamers. It appears the update will only apply to Xbox 360 gamers, which is unfortunate now that Kinect is officially available for Windows, not to mention the fact that many PC gamers already have access to a microphone, be it a headset or via a built-in mic on their laptop.
Bethesda will roll out a full list of voice commands in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out this teaser video.
Image Credit: Elderscrolls Wikia
Comments are closed on this article
MrPC2010
April 15, 2012 at 7:44pm
Wtf, first, why couldn't we use Kinect for PC? #2 even if we cannot use Kinect, why not use another software to do the job? Any serious gamer have a headset/microphone!
I am jealous of consoles! I never thought this could happen in my life!
THE_REAL_MAVERICK
April 14, 2012 at 8:23am
I'm still waiting for it to go on sale. Who wants to pay %60 for a digital copy of the game? Not me. PC is better for that game anyway.
JohnP
April 13, 2012 at 1:09pm
Falling off a cliff: You: Quickload! Kinect: Quicksaved You: NO! Quickload! Kinect: Quickloaded SPLAT!
bling581
April 13, 2012 at 9:57am
A bit disappointed, but seeing that the Kinect for Windows is fairly new (not to mention pricey) I can understand why they are releasing it for Xbox only. Until there's many games with PC Kinect support I can't justify spending $250 for it.
Big Hoss
April 13, 2012 at 7:08am
I think it might be fun to use voice commands, but PC gamers already have mics. Why not just build it to utilize the mic? I can't imagine sitting in front of my pc and doing motion control, which seems to be the main benefit of Kinect. Why not use the mic? Any ideas?
JohnP
April 13, 2012 at 1:05pm
Someone once said that there is $100,000 worth of dedicated hardware built into a $150 device. Kinect is a very sophisticated box with a lot of discrimination software with positional mics and cameras to prevent accidental gestures and odd noises to be interpreted as a command. It that software/hardware discrimination punch that does the magic, not just a microphone.
phoenixjc
April 13, 2012 at 8:42am
It may be because the kinect device handles some of the input processing for the system. I don't know for sure, but if the Kinect itself handles the voice recognition processing, then it would be because they didn't design Skyrim to do "true" voice recognition.
If Skyrim just accepts pre-formatted inputs from the Kinect, then it makes sense why you wouldn't be able to just hook up a mic and use that. I would think that if that were the case, it wouldn't be limited to Kinect, you would be able to issue voice commands using the headset as well. So it is probably that the Kinect is processing the voice input.
That being said, I really don't know why they couldn't impliment this on the Kinect for PC. I would assume that it does the same thing, but maybe it does voice input differently.
FrancesTheMute
April 13, 2012 at 8:38am
This is what I was thinking. Seems to me the mechanics of the voice commands could be easily ported over to the PC to be used with a standard PC mic.
