Slashdot Mirror
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."
TES:Oblivion -- thats the "world" in between the dungeon polygons in Daggerfall right?
Moo.
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!!
What I like most about their games, are the detailed and different worlds they create. Morrowind so far have been the best, the overall theme is excellent made. Even common stuff is interresting like, say, the red dust winds. It wasn't as smooth running as Gothic when traveling large distances, but then I didn't have the fastest computer back then.
:)
:D
That being said, their games also suffers from the typical mistakes. Monsters practically everywhere, all bend on attacking you, and spawning after some time have pasted. It rather distracts from the game play* and the experience of the world. Increasing the world significant in the next game, and vary the monster a lot (more variation in missions and more real NPCs is probably to huge a task, to even ask them to do) would make the game even better. Monsters shouldn't lurk right outside heavy fortified forts, and rats/tiny creature should be clever enough not to mess with full plate armour (even less be able to damage with those ridicilus tiny teeth and claws).
Will I buy this game when it is released? I will in all likelyhood, I liked their previous games, and will probably like this one too. When this type of game is so far apart in releases, you can hardly resist. And for the love of gawd, make a Linux/Mac release
* Let's be honest here, like most computer "RPG" games, they are often just hack'n'slash thinly disguised. Esp. after you have cleared a few level and missions, it rarely differs, online or not.
P.S. The best 3D "RPG" is still Ultima Underworld 1+2
Carbon based humanoid in training.
Here's a Coral Cache link to some guy who scanned a bunch of the screenshots.
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.
The worst part is, it looks like this will be a console exclusive release (of course). Presumably only for XBox-2, as it doesn't seem to be in Sony's arena.
We might be lucky and get a console port however (the PC's of the time will undoubtedly be at least as powerful as XBox2). Hopefully PC gamers won't need to buy a gamepad to play the game.
I am government man, come from the government. The government has sent me. -- G.I.R.
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.
...for waiting until people finally finished Morrowind.
Feeling so good natured I could drool
I agree, but the scrolls were different for trying to make a whole world for you to explore rather then a tight plot for you to follow. I liked both for good reasons, but elder scrolls suffers from becoming boring.
The main problem for me has been the world looking too similar. In daggerfall you had just a couple city styles, snowy, desert, normal, volcanic ect. The dungeons were the same pieces slapped together differently.
Morrowind fixed this somewhat, but the whole world still looked dark and dreary. Building construction had the same style to it, sure it was "different" but still felt the same. I didn't play either expansion so maybe they fixed this.
I think they need to keep on the same path they are now and do a few more things to really help the game out. They need to vary the enviroments up a bit, I want to see a tree top town in one spot, a cave town in another, a few typical fantasy towns and outpost settlements, some squat dessert towns, a port town and whatever else they can think of. Make them all different in some way.
But bigger then that, is they need to breath more life into the world. But walking around morrowind for the most part felt dead. I'd like people to react to your character without having to talk to them. If it's been known that you are a violent killer, or maybe you can dress the part of a violent killer, I want to see people look your way and cringe, or notice you and turn and walk the other way.
The towns need a life to them. They already do a pretty good job with npcs and having some walking around at certain times and having a day/night cycle to the town. But if I break into someone's locked door I want them to scream in fright or run away and get help. Do it in a way that the npc has a bubble around them as they run to the guard station and anyone who hears her crys for help will try to protect her or head for the guards or try to knock her out and rob her.
I guess the more they can do to steer it away from what we know rpg's to be, the better. We don't need plot. We need to walk into a town and not have to talk to everyone, aquire some fetch/kill quests and get some rewards by going back to them. Breath some life into it the town somehow.
Easier said then done though.
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.