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Given the...limited... influence possessed by the ICRC, I find it hard to get worked up about them making requests that, while controversial, are optional and in line with the sort of thing they would care about.

As for whether acceding to their requests is a good idea, I think that that's a matter of genre, or sub-genre. There's plenty of room for games where ICRC-respected rules are irrelevant to, or would be actively detrimental to, gameplay. Are voracious space bugs parties to the geneva convention? Or (with the possible exception of the overmind and the cerebrates) even moral persons? Pfft, grab your pulse rifle. Even in more 'realistic' shooters, if there are nothing but soldiers on the map, and the game's damage mechanics don't include disabling wounds or surrender, and the arsenal doesn't include chemical weapons and the like, it's pretty hard to breach any relevant rules(and, in games that do include civilians, they often do so specifically to add a 'something you aren't supposed to shoot' challenge, whether they enforce it with 'realistic' penalties or just score reductions/round losses).

However, there's also room for games that aim to achieve greater affective punch, and help hide the fact that you are just playing against a few heuristics wrapped in art assets, by creating emotional engagement between the player and the gameworld/characters. In such games, it would arguably be a sign of design success if enduring penalties for certain 'forbidden' actions seemed like a natural outcome. Remember in 'Fallout', where you could gain the 'childkiller' reputation? Did the game cluck, and moralize, and forbid you from harming a hair on their precious little heads? Hell no. You could pull out your gauss rifle and frag 'em. Did the game pull any punches about the fact that you just burned some serious goodwill among every non-sociopath whose help you'll probably need to survive a harsh post-apocalyptic environment? No. It did nothing to stop you; but if pissing off every decent person in the game made your task unwinnable, sucks to be you.

Not all games need to be that way (and, among games that are, nothing requires that treading the path of good be the only option, or even the easiest one...); but especially in RPGs, moral salience, and effective modelling of 'consequences' beyond HP loss and occasionally getting attacked by town guards is arguably something very much worth exploring.

I thought Dishonored did a pretty decent job in that regard as well. You could just fucking kill your way through (and, especially once you got a couple of useful gifts of the Outsider, the combination of being fairly delicate and inhumanly lethal made for a rather pleasantly taut mode of play); but other characters got squeamish about having a total psycho around (and, when I was playing at least, I felt pretty uncomfortable terminating hapless rentacops who were just trying to apprehend the guy they thought was a dangerous assassin) and there were incentives for playing a 'clean' game, without that being a requirement, or preachy or anything. Good old Thief and Thief II also used playing 'clean' as an additional challenge (and for somebody interested in larceny, not an unrealistic one, robbery pays, murder just draws heat). Even Skyrim, in all its lovely-but-not-terribly-deep gameplay threw in a few twists (nothing as good as Oblivion's dark brotherhood storyline, which was just plain fucking with you; but I'll admit that I never charged the Ebony Blade(it gained power if used to kill NPCs; but only if the NPC killed liked and trusted the player at the time. Kills against hostiles had no effect).

Sure, but go look at the system requirements for Skyrim on PC. It requires 2GB of system memory, and 512MB of video memory. It recommends 4GB of system memory, and 1GB of video memory. Even if the PC version was identical to the 360 version in visual quality, there's no way you're going to get that to run on a PC with 512MB of memory shared between CPU and GPU. The 360 OS has a much smaller footprint than desktop Windows, and it's designed to allow developers to have lower level access to components.

Are you sure it's a good idea to defy the Guardian God-King of the holy land of Vvardenfell?

As far as continuity goes, they did try to explain it in Oblivion, albeit very half-heartedly.

is there today any RPG out there that will allow you to bake bread, from harvesting the wheat to the finished product?

Skyrim doesn't let you bake bread specifically, but it does have cooking from raw ingredients (which can be bought or harvested).

Every review I've read said they've had crashes and issues on the console versions as well that forced them to reload old saves, as well as quests you couldn't finish.

Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas all have community patches that literally fix hundreds of bugs that were still left unfixed after the final patch (GOTY editions) from Bethesda.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:UMP
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes4Mod:Unofficial_Oblivion_Patch
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3808
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/268603-unofficial-new-vegas-patch/

Every review I've read said they've had crashes and issues on the console versions as well that forced them to reload old saves, as well as quests you couldn't finish.

Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas all have community patches that literally fix hundreds of bugs that were still left unfixed after the final patch (GOTY editions) from Bethesda.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes3Mod:UMP
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Tes4Mod:Unofficial_Oblivion_Patch
http://www.fallout3nexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3808
http://www.thenexusforums.com/index.php?/topic/268603-unofficial-new-vegas-patch/

...and HalfLife 2 got delayed for months? If this stunt delays Skyrim, these tools deserve a kick in the nuts!

So, they are improving from their old practice of releasing broken and buggy games with no plans at all to fix any but the most glaring problems later?

See the glitches list for Oblivion on the UESP wiki for a start; continue to the Unofficial Oblivion Patch where the modding community fixed over a thousand bugs left by Bethesda to rot; and that's not even including still unpatched bugs in the engine, for which you need some additional software made by modders ...

Mod that spoiling asshole down. To oblivion.

Now who's spoiling? Everybody knows that if he joins the Dark Brotherhood, then the murderer at the party at Summitmist Manor was the player character in Oblivion!

I'm sure open ended exploration can be quite enjoyable, but what I dislike about Oblivion's design is that iirc the level up bonuses to attributes are randomized

Incorrect. The levelups in Oblivion are completely deterministic, although the rules can seem a little subtle. See here.

I believe he's referring to the "balanced leveling"... where Oblivion levels the world with you. It's why I've moved to using OOO (lately, FCOM) as a major mod... it overhauls the world, including releveling the bad guys.

Little less intro next time.

I think he's just channeling Sheogorath.

A neuroscientist taking a cognitive-enhancing drug is a direct example of recursive, exponential growth to the Singularity.

Heh, kind of like making a +intelligence potion in Morrowind, drinking it, using your temporary intelligence boost to make a more powerful version, and then repeating until you're making +1000 potions.

I heard that he killed his boss and misused something rather important for selfish reasons.... Oh wait... VIVEK, not Vivec.

I looked through several comprehensive lists of mods to find all of the ones that sounded like things I wanted and which would play nice together, and dumped them all in at once, so I'm not entirely certain which one added the regional quests, but I think it was the super-famous and certainly must-have Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (OOO). It may have been an improved landscapes mod that I use, though.

Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul

A meta-list of Oblivion mod lists

Unique Landscapes -- Scroll down to Section 2 for download links for completed landscape areas. I use all of them, and it's made it much more fun to run around new areas rather than just fast-traveling everywhere.

A relatively non-controversial company, Bethesda, has in fact released a game -- Oblivion -- that featured the player torturing an NPC for information.

(Un)fortunately, the torture isn't remotely realistic and consists of beating someone who never bleeds, with hands that never get sore. The NPC commits suicide afterwards too, but even that's a bit of a non-event.

If you are looking to build a portfolio to show off to prospective employers, I think there is no better way to build one than participating in one of many open source gaming projects out there. Obviously others have suggested mods and successful mods that have gained commercial interest, but this is a very tiny percent of all the mods made, and a fractional one of mods started. At least with an open source project posted on SourceForge or something else there is no chance of the project which you have invested a good deal of time and work into disappearing overnight as happens with many mod 'teams'. Not to mention the usual advantages of FOSS development.

So, you might take a look around at what sorts of projects are available and prove to the gaming industry that you have what it takes to write for a game project. I happen to work on a TES: Daggerfall inspired project called DungeonHack and we are always 'hiring'. ;)

Can you press circle and square at the same time, on your PS controller?

Yes. At least one game I have played uses that combination. There's two ways of doing it, "base of thumb on circle + hit square with tip of thumb", or "index + middle finger"

And for sequential key presses a keyboard is obviously much better than a game pad, because you can use multiple fingers instead of getting RSI on your thumbs. With a game pad you use, at best, 3 fingers on each hand, and the thumbs do 90% of the work.

The thumbs SHOULD do 90% of the work, they're your strongest and most capable fingers. In the part of your brain that controls your hands the majority of it is devoted to your thumbs. They're your most important fingers. Your second most capable finger is the index finger. That's why console control pads are designed the way they are. Your pinky is the weakest and least dextrous finger, you don't want to use it much repetitively at all.

Try playing an on-line FPS using your PS controller against a guy with a keyboard and mouse. You'll get owned.

People keep saying that, and I don't really believe that it would be 100% true for every person on every game. The right thumb is generally the most dextrous finger in the body, well capable of extremely fine movements. Besides, I have analog movement too and if I wish, I can combine that analog stick for movement with a mouse. Thus giving me the purported accuracy of PC gamers with smooth analog movement.

If I want to open the map or the inventory, why would I need to keep my hand on WASD? And what's the problem with moving my hand even during gameplay? Will the game crash if I don't have three fingers resting on WAD?

Suppose you're in combat in Oblivion and want to use an inventory item not hotkeyed. I can bring up the menu while moving or while still attacking or while still blocking. because the menu button is circle. You have to use your pinky on tab, something you will not want to do repetitively. I'd lay odds that PS3/Xbox Oblivion players can play longer without finger/hand fatigue than the PC Oblivion players. I found that was the case with the PC and PS1 version of Diablo. I simply can't play the PC version as long as the PS1 version before hand/wrist/finger fatigue tells me to quit.

Walk diagonally: W + D (left middle finger and left index) or W + A (left ring finger)
Slow: Shift (left pinky)
Jump: Spacebar (left thumb)

Here's how it's done on the PS3
Walk slowly diagonally: analog stick (left thumb)
Jump: triangle (right thumb)

Notice how it uses the strongest fingers and doesn't use the weakest, and it leaves index and middle fingers free. I also notice that "Cast" is on the "c" key, which means that a PC Oblivion player cannot effectively move right and cast at the same time without shifting fingers from the standard "home" position.

Looks like you've never used a keyboard or have mutant hands.

I have thumbs, and enjoy fast intuitive D-pad or analog stick movement with my thumb. Keyboards are for text entry, not for playing games requiring. The fact that you can control a game with the keyboard is a kludge, and not a very good one, it's not optimal for comfort.

With 90% of games these days letting people bind any action to any key or controller button, Oblivion's interface is simply prehistoric. Defending it (let alone considering it "superior" because it can't be configured) is just clueless.

The UESPWiki says that the controls can be configured, on all platforms: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Controls#Remapping_Controls But I'm telling you that analog stick movement beats WASD any day of the week. Try it, with the Xbox/Wind

Say you have a secret. Divide the secret into 3 parts and find 3 people to hold the key. Each person holds 2 parts of the key. If any one person is unavailable, the key can still be used, but no one person can use the key alone.

If you or your friend had played enough Oblivion you'd recognize the inherent weakness in this idea: one of the three can frame the other two as a vampire, claim to be a vampire hunter, safely dispatch them in the open and then possess all 3 keys.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:A_Brotherhood_Betrayed

It's irritating to have links on words if the href has nothing to do with the anchor text .

Is that your Oblivion save-game file and my Oblivion save-game file are probably pretty similar.

It's not like Morrowind where there were dozens upon dozens of faction combinations, and things *actually* worth stealing. (We could have a whole conversation about what the point of being a thief is in a world full of 'levelled loot' and hilariously powerful 'unlock spells', but that's another post). In Oblivion there really aren't all that many ways you can play it. And the differences between the character types are amazingly minimal. (Argonians can now wear boots! And they can still breathe underwater, but who cares when there's nothing underwater anyway?). Oblivion has 4 guilds, and one main plotline. For all the illusion of 'uniqueness', your character probably isn't.

Though I don't disagree that most save files will end up inherently similar (especially early on, and late in the game), I would like to point out that one of the most useful items I acquired in Oblivion was the Fin Gleam Helmet which could only be found by exploring underwater.

Just fyi history > date/time of update
http://www.uesp.net/w/index.php?title=Oblivion:Lin ux&oldid=106687
Also there have been a couple changes since the last Mongoose entry that included many typo-fixes, and a possibly improved way of installing the DirectX dll's

Here's how you do so:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Linux

NOTICE:
You might want to check the history for the last Mongoose update in case asshats from slashdot add bullshit to the wiki entry. ;)

300 hours, roughly I guess. Here's better data on how much time you have left vs both current reference ID and framerate
http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Shivering:Reference_Bug#R emaining_Playtime

That's basically it but its a little more complicated than that. Indeed, all objects in Oblivion are referenced by an unsigned 32-bit integer known as the formid. The high 8 bits of this value, however, is reserved for the mod index. The first master file (generally Oblivion.esm unless you are running a total conversion) has a mod index of 00, the next mod you install has an index of 01, etc.... Objects that are generated dynamically in the game have a mod index of FF which is where the problem arises. Create too many new objects in the world (16 million) and you overflow this counter.

While this problem does bring into question the ID system used by Oblivion it is still a large improvement over that used by Morrowind (the mod/plugin data structures between the games are very similar) which had numerous duplication and mod conflict issues. If Shivering Isles had not had a bug which generated too many new objects we'd likely never of heard about it.

Dave Humphrey -- http://www.uesp.net/

I think Oblivion handled this well, scaling the world as you went and giving you really interesting things to do from the get-go. What other games dodge this bullet? Do you see this timesink as an inevitable part of the RPG genre?

Granted, Oblivion is a game where instant immersion is truly possible, where you can literally choose how you want to explore the world. The quests in the game provide some structure, but you really can just pick a direction and start walking when you begin the game.

But the world scaling backfired, I think. Leveling your character a dozen times and then going back and pummelling that boss is a major part of the fun in an RPG. Getting trounced by the same adversary whether you are level 1 or level 12 is not very fun at all. But that is only part of the reason why I think Oblivion does not address the grind issue very well.

Ironically, the main reason that Oblivion doesn't address the grind is because the developers did too good of a job implementing magic in this world. Without putting out too many spoilers for people who haven't already figured it out, even level 1 characters can create spells that completely unbalance the game, no cheats, no console commands, no mods required. (If you are curious about these spells, checkout http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Useful_Spells) And I don't mean for just spellcasting classes -- magic in Oblivion is so open and customizable that it takes only a little bit of thought to create unstoppable characters of any class. Grinding your way battle after battle through adversaries to level up is boring, but so is blowing right through them.

Well, if you don't mind putting some effort into it, you can (style if you wish, and) print them out for offline reading, or just view them online at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (a GREAT resource, btw):

Books in Morrowind
Books in Oblivion

I find myself just sitting back and reading through them from time to time, even though I can't say I do much reading IRL. It's just amazing how much they add to the story, half the game is in the books.

Well, if you don't mind putting some effort into it, you can (style if you wish, and) print them out for offline reading, or just view them online at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (a GREAT resource, btw):

Books in Morrowind
Books in Oblivion

I find myself just sitting back and reading through them from time to time, even though I can't say I do much reading IRL. It's just amazing how much they add to the story, half the game is in the books.

Well, if you don't mind putting some effort into it, you can (style if you wish, and) print them out for offline reading, or just view them online at the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Pages (a GREAT resource, btw):

Books in Morrowind
Books in Oblivion

I find myself just sitting back and reading through them from time to time, even though I can't say I do much reading IRL. It's just amazing how much they add to the story, half the game is in the books.

A minor point, but any quest or NPC flag should be command-line fixable. The UESP Wiki has every quest documented quite well, most of them with item/flag command-line information. http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Oblivion

I found that out when I went to https://www.uesp.net/ the other day. There is a news article with a link to http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=login&p_lang =english&p_d=trmk where you can search for trademarks.

Check this page out http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Gripes and see if your personal gripe is mentioned

In Morrowind, you could actually get yourself a girlfriend, and as close to married as you'll get in that game. After meeting and befriending her, then doing a few personal things for her, she ends up giving you the key to her house in Pelagiad, which becomes yours for all intents and purposes. As far as I can remember, there's only one bed in that house, but so long as you don't mind catgirls that shouldn't be an issue. :)

If you got XBox version, you got what you asked for. But that's not the only problem with Oblivion.
A long list of gripes about Oblivion, and growing.

Dumbed down.
Very linear quests.
Terrible UI
Frustrating "levelled monsters/merchants/loot" system
Arcade minigames instead of use of stats
Horrible voice acting
Crashes

The list is longer than that...