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The Elder Scrolls IV Formally Announced
war3rd writes "Bethesda Softworks recently announced the development of the next game in The Elder Scrolls Series, (and follow-up to the game Morrowind) Oblivion. The next issue of Game Informer will have a 12 page spread with all the details and tons of screenshots."
The elder scroll series (particularly the first two) are amazing RPG's. There is so much depth that they are unreal. You can literally play for months just doing side missions with out even touching the main plot. The ability to join guilds in Daggerfall was one of the coolest features. Of course the one rather annoying thing is that bethesda seems to have problems ironing out bugs before a release, but hey...you can't get everything you want. ;) I have always wished that someone would do a remake of daggerfall with like the quake 2 engine. If you are reading this bethesda...release the source!!
I own all three games, and feel like a sucker for keeping on buying them. I thought that morrowind would be better, but it's the same load over and over again. Some people like repetitive leveling games; I, on the other hand, prefer an RPG with a plot. There's no way Bethesda is gonna get *more* of my money.
Just so you don't think I'm trolling, KOTOR was decent, and Tales of Symphonia for the cube is pretty good too. Last *stellar* RPG for the PC in terms of interesting plot had to be the Fallout series (1 & 2), mostly because they were unique (i.e. post apocalyptic) and not the same old fantasy crap that every single gaming house is pumping at us lately. Planescape was awesome too, simply because it was unique as far as fantasy RPGs went.
But hey, let's keep on pumping out the "hits" - the next Fallout game is going to use the Obsidian engine too. Bloody hell if the PC RPG industry isn't shot.
Condemnant quod non intellegunt.
A plot doesn't count as depth either. While the bethesda games relied on the player to progress the plot they had much more depth in terms of historical and cultural backgrounds, mythology and world detail than any of the games you've mentioned. I'm a fan of all of them, but they're are distinctly different.
While the BlackIsle-era RPGs are very, very well done, they are ultimately limiting in their progression and prefer to progress the player through an intriguing story (which is not bad). However, don't hate the Elder Scrolls series for its desire to simulate a living world instead of bringing you a hollywood-level entertainment production. It has an entirely different goal than the aforementioned RPGs, and one that make's it very unique and very good.
Let's look at what we're saying here, though. The whole big issue.
There are two basic polarities for game design. Only two! And this is more than just for RPG's. There is the closed, tight, event and trigger driven storyline. Then there is the open ended methodology, where the player is left to decide what things to do and which places to go.
This is really more like an axis than two seperate directions. Many storyline driven games will include set "choose-your-own-adventure" decisions that branch off into slightly different pathways. Many open-ended games will have a plot that the player can choose to follow if they want to. Many simulators include scenarios that steer the direction of play.
You can't bag a game because it sits on one or other end of the "open-closed" gameplay axis! Some people will like an open-ended game. Other people like to be led through the story.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
The Elder Scrolls series is plagued with high-concept, badly-executed games. Daggerfall was great... in theory. In reality, it was a buggy nightmare on the level of Ultima IX. Morrowind sounds nice... in theory. In reality it's an FPS sans 'S', Myst with fed-ex quests. A scenery-viewing game with intermittent dialogue. Zzzz.
I think traditional CRPGs have it right in focusing on item, inventory and stat management, and combat rules, rather than trying to crowbar a "role playing" (something which you can only do in the presence of an audience - playing means acting, not gaming) experience into a single-player game.
Morrowind just didn't do it for me. I like the open-endedness, and I don't mind not having specific goals, but the world just didn't pull me in. Sure, there was lots to do. You could go clear out dungeons, join and advance in guilds, aimlessly explore, but I never really got the feeling that this was a living, breathing world. Virtually all the wildlife creatures you encountered would attack you (by essentially making a beeline right at you once you got within a certain range), townpeople would have no real lives aside from waiting for you to trigger a conversation, things felt too small. Yes, I do mean small...I know morrowind was large but it felt like a huge world scaled down into a bunch o sub-areas...like ohhh, heres the volcanic area, walk for ten minutes and now you are in the swamp area...walk into a town and its like ten houses all packed together with one of each kind of shop, and a bunch of people standing around doing nothing. It just didn't feel like a real world at all.
The gameplay all consisted of going on quests to either kill someone or retrieve an item for someone. The dialog system was terrible, and it never made you feel like you were actually talking to anyone, just probing them like encyclopedias for information on specific topics.
Thats just my opinion, but I've talked to others that have these problems with the Elder Scrolls series. Too much focus on making a big world, and not enough on making that world engrossing.