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HellGate, Elder Scrolls Hands-On
Hellgate: London and The Elder Scrolls IV are two hotly anticipated roleplaying titles coming at us in the upcoming year. Hands-On examinations of Hellgate are available at Gamespot, 1up.com and IGN. The Elder Scrolls is examined at Gamespot and IGN. From the 1up article: "'Since we're building an RPG, even though it's primarily played from the first-person perspective, we don't want it to be a twitch-fest,' he says. 'We're doing things that have soft-targeting, or area effects, or auto-locking, to make it where your success in the game isn't determined on your physical reflexes, or the dexterity of a fourteen year old. It's all about building up a character: your level, your stats, your skills, your equipment, your items -- it's the classic RPG in that sense.'"
I'm glad they're going to make the NPCs do more than just stand there in Oblivion.. One of my quests in Morrowind had me stealing a key from this guy. I found him in a tavern surrounded by his cronies.. Since I couldn't steal the key without being detected, and I couldn't kill them all. I decided to wait outside till he left.. (I was still pretty new to the game) After a couple day and night cycles I went back in to see what was up.. They were all still there!! That's what I call dedicated alcoholics!
Uhm.... Morrowind was in production for six years because the developers were busy designing 300 game hours' worth of content for the game. You could keep yourself busy for a very, very long time, even without expansion packs, if you didn't rush through the core quest to the end of the game.