With Skyrim coming out soon you may want to catch up a bit with some footage of the game. If that's the case, then there are plenty of links to videos and trailers below for you to watch. A few are from E3 (the Electronic Entertainment Expo), some from the official Elder Scrolls website, and others from various sites. Each video has a short summary of what it is about so you can decide if you want to watch it or not.

E3 Videos

This is the complete behind-closed-doors game demo. There are several versions of this, with much of it edited out. Most of the edited versions have commentary but I found those distracting from the game demo (that and some of it was a little strange). Of all of those, this is the complete version uploaded to YouTube by IGN.

Part 1

Part 1 of the video demo has Todd Howard introducing the game. It starts off in the wilderness, with mountains in the background and many trees in the surroundings. It should look familiar if you watched edited versions shown at E3.

Todd shows off some third person animations and also talks about dual wielding. Then he shows a bit of combat with wolves and an archer. The archer puts away the bow and pulls out a dagger when Todd closes in.

Fading to a scene of a town, he talks about the menu Skyrim offers and shows a bit of it. He also talks about how you can view any item is 3D and turn it to look at it from different angles inside your inventory menu.

After that, he enters the town of Riverwood, where idle chatter is heard about a dragon sighting. He goes to see the blacksmith, and then a logger, who tells him to take an axe and cut some trees if he wants to help. The weather “dynamically changes” as he rides his horse up the mountain. Nearing what appears to be a fort, he dismounts and the horse begins its walk home, and Todd enters a battle with bandits. A spell similar to Life Detect is used, and glowing blobs of purple appear. This spell appears to be in the school of Alteration. As they discover him, these blobs turn red, symbolizing an enemy. Nocking an arrow to his bow, he takes down the bandit in two shots.

It fades in to a snowy scene, where he is assaulted by a dragon. After firing two arrows into the dragon's hide, he retreats into Bleak Falls Barrow.

Part 2

Mysterious music starts as Todd walks in the dim entrance corridor.

Bleak Falls Barrow is an ancient Nordic ruin, where they used to worship the dragons long ago. It is only one of the one-hundred fifty hand-crafted dungeons of Skyrim.

He sneaks up near two talking bandits, and stealthily shoots two arrows for two kills. The AI fails here, however, since the bandit doesn't even try to move after his friend is shot. In any case, Todd then loots the nearby chest and finds a small stash of treasures, a Glass Longsword among them. Starting to dual-wield with his newly acquired longsword, he walks into the next room. A bandit marauder attacks, but is killed under the dual blade assault. A dragon shout is used, and then he is stabbed by the Glass Longsword. A frost trap is placed, and rats are killed. It fades to a spider, killed under the wrath of a stream of fire and the Glass Longsword.

Later on, he finds a Dunmer trapped in a web, presumably the recently killed spider's prey. He runs off, saying that the treasure is his, and is silenced by Todd's sword. His journal is seized, along with a golden claw.

Walking forward he is attacked by Draugr warriors, which are undead skeletons. A few spells and the same shout from earlier are shown off.

After the fight, it fades in to a hallway with swinging blades. If you've played Oblivion, you may see the similarity to the Ayleid ruin trap. A shout is used, warping him to the other side. A Draugr Deathlord appears, and Todd uses yet another shout, this one slowing time. The combined strength of a double handed shock spell finishes it off.

The video fades to a mysterious water way where Todd has a staff that shoots a ball of light. Following a stream of water, which looks very nice, he arrives at a large chamber with beams of light. It appears to be a bottomless pit, so he walks back a bit and goes through a convenient hallway to his right.

Taking out a Dwemer Axe and sporting a new fire spell the hallway leads Todd onto a narrow bridge, where he fights a Frost Troll. The video fades to a Draugr fight, when a new death animation is shown, killing the Draugr with a satisfying crunch.

Walking into the hallway the Draugr had guarded, Todd comes to the Hall of Stories. I won't spoil what he says though...

At the end of the hall there is a puzzle involving a locked door. Remember that golden claw from earlier? Yeah, that's the key to this. The answer is on the bottom of the claw, which reveals the order of the pictures. Todd arranges the rings, and fits the claw into the slot. The door opens.

Pulling out his weapons, he walks up a short set of stairs, and through a hall into a chamber with many waterfalls. Walking across a bridge, a dragon wall is found, and he learns a new word in the dragon language from the Word Wall it is on. The relevation is short-lived, since he is attacked by a Dragon Priest. The priest summons a Frost Atronach, but Todd ignores it and sprints past it to throw fireballs at the priest. After another throw, it disintegrates and Todd shows the spell Clairvoyance, which shows a blue trail out of the dungeon.

Part 3

Exiting from the other side of the mountain, Todd arrives at the open landscape of Skyrim, with a town in the distance.

Nearing the plain, giants and a pack of mammoths are visible. The ground shakes with their every step. Upon hitting a mammoth, the giants and pack of mammoths attack. A dragon saves him, pulling a giant into the sky and flinging him away. The dragon roars as it spits out fire. A guard comes to help, but the dragon sets him on fire and clamps his jaw around him. The guard is sent flying with a toss of the dragon’s head.

With a bloodied muzzle and several arrows in it, the dragon cannot take flight and is beaten by Todd’s Elven Mace. It falls to the ground as it is killed, its body turning to flames.

Todd absorbs its soul, when a frost dragon joins the fight, roaring in anguish as its friend dies. Instead of breathing fire, this one spits out a bone-chilling blast.

On top of a nearby fort Todd fights the dragon. Using the word of power learned from the Word Wall earlier he unlocks the final word of Storm Call: Wrath. The combined words, Storm-Lightning-Wrath, create a thunderstorm that shoots bolts of lightning down on your foes.

Raining heavily, a storm is on its way. The dragon is electrocuted and tumbles from the air, crashing into the ground below, creating a trench of sorts. Unable to regain flight, it stays on the ground, breathing a cold breeze onto Todd.

His Steel Battleaxe fights it off, and he jumps on top the dragon’s head. The dragon attempts to throw him off, but only succeeds in sealing his death. As he flies into the air, Todd readies his axe and smashes it into the dragon’s head. Its death grants Todd another soul to unlock another word later, and the Dragonborn yells into the stormy night.

Trailers

These are the trailers from the official Elder Scrolls website. They are from months ago, before E3 back in June.

Announcement trailer

This trailer is what came out long before anything else. It is a wall that has pictures carved into it, depicting future prophesized events that are probably magical like the Elder Scrolls, since parts of it move.

Official trailer

This is an expansion to the Announcement Trailer, with cinematics that hint at what the game will look like.

The Sounds of Skyrim

Game Informer have created a series of videos looking at how the sounds of skyrim have been created that may be interesting for you to watch.