Gavin Carter Discusses Elder Scrolls

Conspiracy_Of_Doves writes to tell us Brett Thomas over at Bit-Tech recently interviewed Elder Scrolls producer, Gavin Carter. From the article: "The size, scope and sheer graphical grunt required for Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion requires gigahertz of processing power to run, good bandwidth to update and expand, and gigabytes of hard disk space to store. Things that a console didn't really have...until now." The interview takes a look at the development with respect to the two different platforms, PC and Xbox 360.

Comments

so no xbox 360 core?

[El_Muerte_TDS]

gigabytes of hard disk space to store
XBox 360 core dosn't have gigbytes of disk space.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Kryptkrwlr_XTC]

Sure they do, on a Dual Layer DVD.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[qortra]

Some of the packages do: Xbox 360 info.
 
And interestingly, the original did as well (8 Gb hard drive, i believe).

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[wbren]

I don't know why the parent was modded +4 Funny, since that's a good point. What will people do if they bought the core version of the 360? Or am I just missing the joke?

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[jpx7777]

If they about the core system, then they do not deserve to play. Core-Tard!

http://www.cad-comic.com/comic.php?d=20050914

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[antifoidulus]

Uh, there is a difference between the XBox 360CORE which the grandparent mentioned and the full blown system. You obviously didn't read the article you linked to.....

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[qortra]

Here's some food for thought:

1) I did read the article I linked to.
2) I am aware of the core system and it's specifications
3) I was not attempting to disagree with the great-grandparent post, but merely amending it with all the relevent information.

It's very likely that Bethesda software will simply require people to have a hard drive. Several xbox 360 critics say the core system is pretty much useless. Either you have the money to buy the silver, or you just don't have enough money at all.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[wbren]

Although I think core-tard is a great new word, I think it's Microsoft's fault for offering such a piece of shit version of a good console.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously now, buying the core system is not a good idea. It's a gimmic to try to get more of these things off the shelves and rope people into steel accessory costs later. No serious buyer would get a core system.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[dbug78]

Probably because there's no +4 Ignorant. The game doesn't need to write gigs of data, only to read. DVD-9 will fill that need for the x360 just fine.

I realize the article does specifically say "hard drive" space, but I figured everyone here knew better than to take these interviewers too literally.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Anonymous Coward]

Games for the 360 are stored on a DVD, not the HD.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[garvon]

Yes you are.
The joke is the people that payed for the 360 core

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[wbren]

But what about new content published on XBOX Live? What about bug fixes? It seems to me that they would need somewhere to put all that stuff... Or maybe not. Either way I think I killed that "joke".

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[MBraynard]

Little thing called a memory card.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[timeOday]

It's very likely that Bethesda software will simply require people to have a hard drive. Several xbox 360 critics say the core system is pretty much useless.

Well I sure hope that isn't true, or there are going to be a lot of sad kids and ticked off parents on Christmas morning.

Whose bright idea was it to fragment a game console into sublevels?

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[earnest murderer]

People who buy Xbox games don't get bug fixes.

What was good enough to ship is what you'll have to live with forever. One of the main pluses of buying the PC version of Oblivion is that (hopefully) the most agregious bugs will be fixed by the time the first expansion rolls around. That's basically the way Morrowind played out and the XBox people just had to do a lot of stupid shit to work around bugs and broken quests.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[blincoln]

Whose bright idea was it to fragment a game console into sublevels?

The same company that's selling about 37 different, ambiguously-named versions of its next operating system.

I really think the gaming industry is headed for another crash. I was pretty young during the original one, but I remember a few things that seem suspiciously familiar now.

Coleco had at least three expansion modules for the Colecovision, none of which ever got used except the Atari 2600 "adaptor" that cost as much as a standalone 2600. Mattel did the same thing with the Intellivision II. Both of them (and Atari) tried to sell their systems as the centerpiece of something bigger (home computing, etc.) and it flopped.

This is what I think of when Microsoft tries to sell a pretend version and a real version of the 360, and adds on "media center functionality." It's what I think of when Nintendo announces a console based on having a whole pile of possible controller options.

I also think the increasing prices are going to be a problem. $40-$50 is a nice round number to sell games for when they're first released. As soon as you get up into the $60-$70 range, it suddenly looks like a much bigger chunk of change. Obviously hardcore gamers won't mind so much, but they only make up a small part of the market.

I guess that seems like the main problem to me - back in the 80s and now. The manufacturers seem to forget that the hardcore gamers and/or people who can throw a bunch of money into gaming are a vocal minority. That people who don't work for their company don't generally use their gaming console as the centerpiece of anything. MS could have done two systems the smart way - by having a basic system that was actually useable, and a more expensive one for the hardcore gamers. Out of the entire Real Edition, the only thing I want is the hard drive. I don't play online games, so I don't need the headset. I don't care if my controllers are wired. Maybe they think that by bundling all that stuff in they'll convert me into an online gamer so they can get more of my money from Live? I might be an oddity, but their incessant focus on that is actually making me LESS likely to buy a 360 at all. /ramble

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Mac Degger]

And it is equally well known that for consoles, the dev's can only program for the core system. They can not program for a niche; the publishers just won't give 'em the money. Go look on gamasutra, gamebindustry.biz etc. Bethesda won't require a HD...hardly any gamedev will....therefore, the x360 just as well might not have a HD.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Anonymous Coward]

The same people who thought ActiveX was pretty neat.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[utnow]

When did 7 become 37?

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Anonymous Coward]

When bole became hyper.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Jace of Fuse!]

Little thing called a memory card.

Compared to the hard drive, and possibly even content downloads, the word "little" seems to accurately describe a memory card.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Hast]

If you find that you want to add content then you can buy a HDD after you buy the core system as well. The final cost is the same as buying the big box from the start (but you won't get the other goodies in the big box like wireless controller and advanced AV pack).

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[SuiteSisterMary]

Seeing as how so many tout the stat that only around 10 percent of Xbox owners are on Live, I'd say that downloadable content didn't really wind up being all that much of a thing. A bit before it's time, perhaps.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[KDR_11k]

And obviously since you already bought a memcard it will cost you more than the real version.

Re:so no xbox 360 core?

[Breakfast Pants]

Hi. Exageration is a technique that has been used to emphasize the rediculousness of something throughout the ages.

Elder Scrolls

[AssCork]

Is for dirty D&D geeks that have no hope of ever talking to a woman - let alone touching one.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Availle]

I shouldn't even reply to this, but I'm a woman and I'm looking forward to this game. Yes, I take the occasional shower every day.

And for all of the dirty D&D geeks out there, I already have a boyfriend.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

Ummm.. Who cares. We aren't all here to text slobber on someone cause they claim they are female. I'm a D&D nerd with a girlfriend and I shower. Whoop dee doo

I'm really looking foward to this game because of the open endedness of the last one. I hope it retains that quaility.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[DreadSpoon]

"And for all of the dirty D&D geeks out there, I already have a boyfriend."

Ah, but one must ask, are his D20s big enough for you?

(And there goes my "always respectful" track record.)

Re:Elder Scrolls

[sound vision]

I'm gay, you insensitive clod!

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Availle]

Ah, but one must ask, are his D20s big enough for you?

If I comment on this, it might damage your ego.

And considering the sales for Morrowind, one might be inclined to think there are a lot of dirty D&D geeks out there. I mean, it was released in at least three different versions and had two expansions, on two platforms. This must mean something.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't be gay - if you're posting here you're obviously not cool enough to be gay ...

Re:Elder Scrolls

[wbren]

(Elder Scrolls) is for dirty D&D geeks that have no hope of ever talking to a woman - let alone touching one.

That's just not true! One time I was at a strip club and a stripper fell down because she was wearing stilettos. Anyway, on the way down to the floor, the back of my hand brushed against her shoulder. So yeah, we touch girls ALL THE TIME!!!

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Sheepdot]

I shouldn't have to say this, but your statement announcing you are "a woman" on Slashdot is akin to saying you're available and looking.

So stating "I already have a boyfriend" only indicates to the rest of us that you're looking for a geekier one than you already have.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just not true! One time I was at a strip club and a stripper fell down because she was wearing stilettos. Anyway, on the way down to the floor, the back of my hand brushed against her shoulder. So yeah, we touch girls ALL THE TIME!!!

And why weren't you right over her, fathering a child?

You're pathetic like me since I just realize that I was almost quoting Amy Wongs father above :'-(

Re:Elder Scrolls

[DreadSpoon]

"If I comment on this, it might damage your ego."

Possibly. But remember, it's not the size that counts... ... it's whether or not you can roll the crit hits.

(Just digging my well of depravity even deeper, aren't I?)

Re:Elder Scrolls

[ViX44]

Perhaps, but perhaps not. I've never really been 'into' D&D or RPGs or any of the fantasy stuff. But Morrowind I enjoyed because it was FIRST PERSON, and because it didn't saddle me with a linear plot to follow. My first time through, it was months before I bothered to do the primary quest, because I was busy filling out all the little squares on the auto map, looting every hole I could find and piling a mountain of gear on the second story floor of Ghorak Manor. It was like some big 'ole sandbox to play in, with all the toys laid out for me. I tried Neverwinter last night on a friend's box, and it just wasn't fun. Too much clickie this and wait for maybe something to respond, not enough run around and enjoy the world. Then again, I find D&D players annoying. They say things like "Dee Twenty" instead of "Icosahedral Die." Plato would spin in his grave.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Gumber]

My wife is also a woman who showers daily.

She was giddy last night after viewing all the demo videos and she's only ever played one video game. Of course, that game was Morrowind, and she played a lot of it.

I'm just wondering what sort of upgrades I'm going to have to do to see this at its best.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[milimetric]

"My wife is also a woman who showers daily."
"I'm just wondering what sort of upgrades I'm going to have to do"

I've got some emails from pfizer that I could forward you if you'd like... they seem to know a lot about upgrades there in Kalamazoo, MI.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Mac Degger]

Plato, having written all of Socrates' work, amongst which the apologia, would probably be stone dead and inert in his grave. Saying that there was any afterlife would have him spinning in his grave.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

If I comment on this, it might damage your ego.

I don't see how that will work, unless he is your boyfriend.

Re:Elder Scrolls

[Anonymous Coward]

It will, that's what TES games are about, after all. I played Daggerfall for a very long time (pre-internet days for me), and I never finished the main quest, there was just too much else to do.

This should be good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm excited about this title and I am more excited because these guys are just down the street from me in Rockville, MD. A town better known for an REM song than for the fact that it's the place where they successfully mapped the human genome and more importantly, magically took away most of my winter and spring free time with this cool game.

Keith Curtis Discusses Punching Micks!

[Keith Curtis]

Hey! Are you a Lazy Irish Drunk?
TRICK QUESTION! They are all the same thing!

Parent should be modded better

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did the parent get modded down? It was a funny, informative criticism of the parent.

Re:Parent should be modded better

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't really say the parent was modded down, starting score was -1. The account holder trolls often therefore he was only labeled.

Re:Parent should be modded better

[Anonymous Coward]

It was by a fucking cunt. We don't like fucking cunts over here.

On PC, though...

[BronxBomber]

To me this game begs to be played on PC. With the HDR lighting its going to blow the 360 version out of the water, along with some other shading/lighting effects the 360 wont have..

And the TESCS - thats just a must have. I made the mistake of playing this on Xbox first, and while it rawked, I wish I could have modded it. It would have made an already ridiculously deep game even better. I nearly bought it twice so I could mess with the TESCS, but I got into WoW instead.

Re:On PC, though...

[Dixie Flatliner]

I'm sorry, but you are just wrong in every point. The 360 supports pixel shader models and lighting systems that don't exist in PC hardware yet.

Re:On PC, though...

[MightyPez]

Why exactly won't the XBox 360 have these lighting features? The GPU in the 360 is a next generation video card made by ATI, like nothing on the market right now. Do you have some insider knowledge that it won't have abilities of current DirectX 9 video cards?

Re:On PC, though...

[BronxBomber]

To clarify my OP: I was referring to the HDR capabilities in the NVidia 7800 GPU... there's even a quote from Todd Howard in the original press release back in July.

Press Release

Example of HDR/non-HDR lighting effect

Re:On PC, though...

[Anonymous Coward]

Eeee... how does it clarify your post? The 360 GPU may as well have HDR capabilities too, for all we know.

Re:On PC, though...

[Gulthek]

From what I've read on Gamespot the XBox 360 will graphically match the PC version*

* - Only for those with HDTV of course.

Re:On PC, though...

[MightyPez]

Yeah, you're still not making a case here. How does an Nvidia press release about their newest graphics card prove that the XBox 360 will not have similar (if not the same) HDR capabilities? Current HDR methods vary only a little in their implementation, and the end result is determined largely by the game maker, not the method.

Re:On PC, though...

[Anonymous Coward]

Unless you reference your sources, I'm calling BS. I know it supports the same (Pixel Shader 3.0), but more? Nah.

3.0 at this point should be able to support HDR and the likes though, unlike the GP thinks...

Re:On PC, though...

[master_p]

But within one year (max two) of XBOX 360 release, newer and better video cards will be available for the PC. The PC of 2007 will be much more powerful than the XBOX 360.

Re:On PC, though...

[Cheapy]

It truly is sad that people focus on the graphics of games these days, rather than the content. Graphics are simply a way to convey the content.

That said, your point on the mods was correct. I personally think the Xbox version of Morrowind was much better than the PC version (I have both), but the one thing that frustrated me was that you couldn't add mods to it. Also the fact that Bethsoft didn't feel like adding their own mods to the GotY edition, but that's another matter.

I plan on buying the Xbox 360 edition for a reason I'm sure a lot others have: It's cost-effective. If I had to buy the PC edition, I'd need to get a faster processor (I don't think 700 mhz will cut it), more RAM, a larger hard drive (Current one is 20 gigs), and a graphics card that will be able to run it. Oh, and the game.

For the Xbox 360 one, all I need is the Xbox 360 and the game.

Some will say that in the long-run, upgrading the PC would be better. I'd much rather have a system that will run games made for it 5 years after its release (assuming it survives that long), than have to upgrade my video card every two years to play the newest PC games.

Re:On PC, though...

[Mac Degger]

AHAHAHHAHAHAHAHahahghahahahhahaha....

Name one. Just one. Don't post here unless you know what you're talking about. Now go tell everyone how good your daddy's job is.

Re:On PC, though...

[Intocabile]

The 360 GPU has HDR abilities beyond that of current HDR methods and doesn't have the huge performance hit associated with FP16 vs. regular 32bit colour. This is all thanks to a FP10 mode that has the same memory footprint as 32bit. This allows the 360 to perform combinations of effects that have huge performance hits on regular GPUs, look at Project Gotham Racing 3 for a glimpse at what computers will do 2 years time.

Re:On PC, though...

[Carnildo]

Some will say that in the long-run, upgrading the PC would be better. I'd much rather have a system that will run games made for it 5 years after its release (assuming it survives that long), than have to upgrade my video card every two years to play the newest PC games.

Funny. I think the other way around. I like having a machine that can play games written two years ago at screaming-fast framerates.

Since the subject of the discussion is the Elder Scrolls series, the big advantage of waiting until last Christmas to get Morrowind (besides being able to get the GOTY edition for $20) was that I had a computer that could handle even the notoriously slow parts of the game without trouble. If I'd gone with the XBox version instead, I'd have had the same sluggish framerates in Balmora that everyone else complained about.

Re:On PC, though...

[Cheapy]

"same sluggish framerates in Balmora that everyone else complained about"? My friends and I all get normal framerates in Balmora. It never drops, even when raining. It's a vocal minority that is talking about that. (Loading times on the other hand...)

Anyways, I hadn't thought of your stand on that. I must ask though: What parts are 'nortoriously slow'? On both my PC and Xbox, nothing slows down really slows down. (Although it got a tad studdery in the final room of the game on PC.) I don't seem to remember any spots that would get slow on the mainland, or the other areas as well!

Re:On PC, though...

[ToasterofDOOM]

PC all the way. I lost so many days to Morrowind and the expansions, and I have been to the TES site almost everyday since it was announced. TESCS is definitely one thing that makes the game, and they just released it to see what would happen, not as a serious thing. Now, we are getting a refined tool, the one they made the game in. The 360 version will be nice, but games of this scale and detail deserve a PC.

BTW - Nords all the way!!! ::Die Fetcher!!!::

Re:On PC, though...

[Hast]

But games will still be made to run on computers of today... Which is the point of having a static set of hardware to aim for.

Re:On PC, though...

[Hast]

He probably means unified shader model which is used on X360. Ie vertex and fragment shaders run on the same processors and this allows more freedom for the developer. (On a GPU for PCs there is currently a part dedicated to execute vertex shaders and one part for fragment shaders. Typically it can handle more fragment shaders than vertex shaders at the same time.)

Besides that there is the point that the X360 GPU sits right on the northbridge which gives it priority access to main memory. Instead of at the end of a interconnector bus as in a PC.

Re:On PC, though...

[Spacejock]

My kids are both addicted to Morrowind and are hanging out for Oblivion. At 7 and 10 you'd think they were a bit young, but the 7-year-old created several homebrew dungeons and buildings in the TES construction kit, and the last I saw she was trying to apply a trader's NPC script to a wolf.

Alas, Daggerfall had them rolling about laughing at the graphics, especially the Killer Rat in the first dungeon. To think I spent more hours on DF than MW - and almost enjoyed it more. If it weren't for the bugs I'd still be playing it now.

Sadly, MW had a bug which destroyed the game for me. After several weeks playing time, the option to request promotion disappeared from all NPC dialog. Requests for help on forums and NG got me nowhere, and facing a choice between restarting the entire game or dumping it, I dumped it.

Re:On PC, though...

[xSauronx]

thats how its been for a while now, and people still buy consoles. im tempted to get a 360 myself, though i hate to say it.

Re:On PC, though...

[Dixie Flatliner]

Why the hostility? 0.o Alright then, USA for one, and not the nation kind - Unified Shader Architectue, or PxSv3.1 depending on who you talk to, unsupported on the current generation of GPU. Also the hardware does support HDR since anyone who knows what "they are talking about" knows that HDR is a software solution to what is essentially a hardware limitation. I do wonder why I post here at all, but I don't think it has anything to do what I know...

Re:On PC, though...

[xappax]

There's a command for the "admin" console called (i think) AddTopic. I've used it a couple times to resolve quest-related problems where the topic you need to talk to someone about isn't available. Just open the dialog screen on them, hit ~ to bring up the console, and do AddTopic [topic you're missing].

Re:On PC, though...

[Spacejock]

Thanks for that. I was running Morrowind on a PIV 2.26 ghz with a 4200 TI, and my system is currently an Athlon64 3400+ with a 6800GT. The extra oomph should really make it look good at 1280x1024, so I might just give it another go. (Before Oblivion comes out and makes my PC run like an 8mhz Atari ST again...)

I got old too soon

[milktoastman]

As a college undergrad, I was interested in the Elder Scrolls 2 from watching others play. I never really had a computer that could run it. In Grad school, sans flies, I bought a computer to run Elder Scrolls 3 and was so looking forward to playing a computer/console RPG of the likes I had dreamed of since 8th grade...but when I tried it, I realized, I just couldn't get absorbed. It required such an investment of time and interest that my busy life wouldn't allow. Also, I actually felt guilty playing because I knew how much valuable 'real time' was going to waste. I guess I'm too old to play these games now. Too bad my last fling was Ultima 9. Kind of cool, but not what I had dreamed of playing. Don't you wish the sheeny scales would flute madly?

Re:I got old too soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Amen Brother! I have the same problem.
-James

Re:I got old too soon

[planetoid]

Haha, I wasted a good chunk of my GPA during the two years I was hooked to a Quake 3 mod called Weapons Factory. I don't really mind, it made that particular time of my life (where education was mostly irrelevant non-major-related busywork) fly by faster and more fun.

I think as long as you do more than just play a game -- ie, make an attempt at building your own content for it, be it investing time in making levels or whatever user-end creativity any particular game allows -- you shouldn't feel guilty. I'm about to graduate this December, with more skills under my belt than my university ever bothered to teach me as a result of tinkering with Nethack's code, making custom levels for Quake, building your own modules for Neverwinter Nights (which is like, levelbuilding and coding and storywriting all in one, very fun), etc. Just more good stuff to put on your resume.

Re:I got old too soon

[Gulthek]

Holy Avatar, you're last RPG fling was Ultima 9? I'm so sorry.

My brother and I actually downgraded our gaming machine from a modern (at the time) video card to two 3DFx cards in SLI (it was designed for Glide) so we could play U9 without it crashing every 5 minutes. Then it only crashed every 20 minutes.

Not to mention being so incredibly awful that it actually made us yearn for the days of cheap sprite graphics and dungeon running in Ultima 5/6/7. Or even Ultima 4. Almost Ultima 3. Not "Avatars in Space" Ultima 2, and not "Glorified Nethack" Ultima though. And I don't think anything will ever make me yearn for the spell casting atrocity of Ultima 8 (and the sad fall of Dupre).

Re:I got old too soon

[Angry Toad]

Yup, it is a real problem.

    I console myself with the thought of how amazingly good the games will be when I retire and can start to enjoy things like that again.

    Plus even if I can't afford to play it full time, I'll be damned if I'm not going to wander around in Oblivion just for the sake of enjoying whatever I can.

Re:I got old too soon

[Anonymous Coward]

I know a lot of people really loved TES3, but, like you, I just couldn't get absorbed by this game. I'm 36, don't have much free time, but one thing is for sure, if the game was good, I would have found the time. The problem is that beyond the pretty graphics, the game is boring. The story is only in the background and NPCs are so lame that the world is just unrealistic. To me, TES3 is just a hack'n slash kind of game.

I'm playing with Ultima Underworld again, and, even though it's a game made 13 years ago, it's so much better than TES3. My advice is try Thief or Deus Ex. I'm sure you'll realize that you can find a lot of time to play games.

Re:I got old too soon

[TrappedByMyself]

You should try World of Warcraft. You can play at a leisurely pace and not have to worry about getting sucked in.
Definitely the game for RPG fans with busy lives.

Re:I got old too soon

[furrywithwings]

Did they ever patch U9 into some kind of stability? I gave up trying to play it midway after it would blow up whenever something 'weird' happened.

Re:I got old too soon

[Phoenixhunter]

That's my problem with it. I wanted an MMO to get addicted to, and WoW isn't =(

Re:I got old too soon

[Jarlsberg]

I played it until the end - but I didn't quite finish it. You see, I needed an artifact (can't remember just what it was) to finish the spell that would kill the demon on that little island you come to in the end. Unfortunately, I left the artifact behind earlier in the game, and going back was impossible as soon as you come to this island. I was *terribly* annoyed at the time, and uninstalled the game in disgust. I watched the ending by playing the in-game movie with a media player....

Re:I got old too soon

[Shano]

Between the last official patch and the unofficial "fan" patch, it's now more or less playable. In the sense that it won't crash too often, that is (well, no more than Morrowind with more mods than is good for it).

The fan patch even makes it run at an acceptable speed on non-3dfx hardware.

Re:I got old too soon

[LardBrattish]

I guess I'm too old to play these games now.

Jeez, I'm over 40 now & I played Morrowind to DEATH. Completed Neverwinter Nights, Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale 1&2 (including all the addons)

You're just not trying hard enough ;)

Re:I got old too soon

[Anonymous Coward]

Just because you're over 40 doesn't mean you have a life.

Does it run...? No it doesn't

[Linzer]

I did play TES III: Morrowind and enjoyed it a lot. Unfortunately, I don't have a windows machine anymore to install this when it sells, and I certainly don't have plans to build one in the future.

Win PC and XBox don't make a multiplatform game, really. I had some kind of hope a long time ago, when they were still talking about a PS3 port.

One other thing

[BronxBomber]

If you want to try the one that started it all, go here. Its free. Windoze only and you need DOSBox.

Re:One other thing

[Linzer]

DOSbox IS multiplatform. It runs very smoothly on linux etc.

Re:One other thing

[BronxBomber]

I wasnt referring to DOSBox as Windows only. I was referring to the Arena executable.

Re:One other thing

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, DOSBox runs the Arena executable. Hence, if you can run DOSBox on a non-Windows OS, you can run Arena...

What are you talking about?

Re:One other thing

[Anonymous Coward]

The docs appended with Arena describe install for 2k/XP. I think he was probably thinking it was only Win-compatible, not knowing anything about DOSBox

Re:One other thing

[gringer]

Minimum system requirements:
386/25 MHZ, DOS 5.0, 4MB RAM, 25MB HD Space, VGA graphics card, Mouse, Soundcard (Ensoniq, Aria, Roland, SoundBlaster, Ultrasound).

Looks more like DOS than Windows to me. DOSBox may eventually (as in DNF eventually) have [decent] Windows support, but it's not there yet.

Re:One other thing

[HunterZ]

DOSBox is a cross-platform emulator that uses SDL for most of its I/O. Windows and Linux are officially supported, but as it is open-source, there are many other ports floating around as well.

Re:One other thing

[HunterZ]

Oops, misread your post. Arena is a DOS game and thus neither requires nor can be expected to run particularly well under Windows. The link you mentioned may be for a Windows-based self-extracting archive or installer, however.

The bottom line is that I recommend running it under DOSBox. Both the floppy and CD-ROM versions run fine under the latest CVS (the CD-ROM version has problems in DOSBox 0.63 and may even be unplayable even with tricks)

yeah... yeah....

[Anonymous Coward]

requires gigahertz of processing power to run,

boah.. wow.. sweet lord jesus.. now if only the fan wouldn't be so noisy that it fucks up the whole living room atmosphere and visitors keep asking why that noisy shit has to be on..

good bandwidth to update and expand,

requires you to beta test it...

and gigabytes of hard disk space to store.

requires gigabytes of hard disk space to store save games and the updates (bug fixes)...

Things that a console didn't really have...

Which is great!

1992 Called...

[1992 Called]

Actually, you're right on the money - forget I called.

2q 2006

[selfabuse]

Wonder how Microsoft feels about them knocking the release date back another 6 months. I was at the local EBGames recently, and they were mentioning how many people had already called to cancel their xbox360 preorders - and this was just a day or two after the delay was "discovered". I say discovered, because the publisher, Take 2, mentioned it on their financial statement, but it took a week and >45 200 post topics on the elder scrolls forum to choke a response out of Bethesda. Even then, their response was to sliently change the release date in the FAQ. Just in the past day or so the PR guy made a statement, but I think the damage has already been done. Knocking it back another 6 months gives me time to save up for some new hardware to run the PC version instead of buying the 360 like I had planned.

Re:2q 2006

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably the way Bethesda felt when MS knocked back the date of Windows XP after years of delay. Pot calling kettle.

Re:2q 2006

[Vacuous]

They most likely don't care that the game has been pushed back seeing as MS is planning to cause an artificial shortage upon release of the 360 to generate demand and hype.

Re:2q 2006

[Fallingcow]

Surely not a 6-month-long shortage. More like one month or less.

Re:2q 2006

[Vacuous]

Maybe, but who buys a $500 (I'm Canadian) console for a single game?

Re:2q 2006

[Fallingcow]

Hey, I don't know. I'm just going to buy it for the PC, since Morrowind was so good. I don't have an X-box and I'll probably not buy a 360. I've just got a PS2 for its RPG's (my GF and I play them, something to do together, hard to do in front of a PC), and if the PS3 draws the same number of those types of games then we'll likely get one of those eventually. I play my FPS's on the PC, where god intended for them to be.

I still don't get the X-box. I've played Halo, and it's probably OK when played on the PC (but then, wouldn't one just play UT2004 since it's the same thing but way better?), but Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, and Turok: Rage Wars are still far better for console FPS mulitplayer than it is. And they're from the previous generation of consoles!

Re:2q 2006

[Vacuous]

Yeah, I don't get what is so great about the X-Box either, I didn't even like Halo. Xbox 360, however, is a different story because Microsoft learned from their total failure in Japan. They are courting a lot of Japanese devs this time around, Square-Enix being a major one as FFXI is a launch title for the 360. I wouldn't be suprised if we saw FFXIII for the 360 as SE is probably pissed at Sony for pulling HDD support. Personally I'm not going to be an early adopter this generation, I want to see where the big 3 are going this time.

Language Police...

[yobtah]

Dude... "gigahertz" is not the plural of "gigahertz".

Re:Language Police...

[ichigo 2.0]

yeah, it's gigahurtz!

Re:Language Police...

[MoriaOrc]

Even though gigaertz actually is the singular and plural form*, the article still gets it wrong. They should say it will require "several gigahertz," to distinguish between the singular and plural.

*We would say "I have a 2 gigahertz processor" / "My processor runs at 2 gigahertz" and the same for a 1 GHz processor. (Or maybe you would say your processor is 2 gigahertzes? I hope not ..)

Re:Language Police...

[pharwell]

well yeah, but when you say "gigahertzes," you sound like Gollum, which.... umm.... actually is pretty cool now that I think about it. Say it with me kids....

gigahertzes!

I for one:

[kurbchekt]

would personally... Ahhh, nevermind. I never thought I would've gotten tired of a Simpsons joke until I started reading Slashdot.

Re:but... rock sucks

[Bloodlent]

Bigot. You're obviously not cool enough to be a heterosexual white male, then? Oh, it's discrimination when I put it that way?

Bethesda's Spy-games

[Anonymous Coward]

I lost all respect for Bethesda (the company--not its developers) as a result of visiting their forums of late.

Their marketing/PR departments seem to have delusions of grandeur and importance. They are a game company, not a CIA contractor working on national security. The depth of the secrecy they force around the game just pisses off fans (no release *date*, no system requirements, et al), and make them seem like paranoid psychotics.

That, and even when they finally manage to say something, it comes accross as meaningless corporate double-talk and/or lying.

And let me not even get started about their PR front-man, Peter... he alone is the source of remarkable amounts of bad faith from Bethesda customers and prospective customers.

Urgh... amazing game... amazing developers... surrounded by mental deficients, it would seem.

Re:Bethesda's Spy-games

[earnest murderer]

Personally I couldn't care less about the release date. When it gets here is when it gets here. But anyone with a capable PC at that time would be a fool to buy the XBox version and turn away all the patches that are forthcomming.

The word Daggerfall alone strikes fear into anyone who tried to play it. This is the kind of game Bethesda would publish if Microsoft(?!) didn't turn their trash away.

For morrowind at least the PC users got patches, granted it really took a full 6 months until the expansion came out before the worst of the bugs got fixed.

The XBox Morrowind players, they got told to "load an old save before you started on that quest (5, 10, 20 hours of playtime?)", or an elaborate song and dance with shuffling save games and using other games to write over Morrowinds cache, or if a critical NPC disapeared the dreaded "start over, maybe it won't happen the next time". If you had any heart for it left over you could wait and buy the game-of-the-year edition (at full price) and get some of the bugs fixed. (yes you still had to "start over")

My interperetation... They have 6 months of serious bug fixing that they were willing to overlook and press the DVD's as "good enough to ship" but they couldn't make the fucker work at all in time for x-mas. Certianly explains their secrecy.

Given their history, there will be a patch for the PC version before they make it onto the shelf. Xbox users? Start over, maybe it won't happen the next time around.

Observations

[ViX44]

As a gamer who hasn't bought console since SNES, I couldn't care less about precious XBox ver. 2 and the steamroller of hype.

But the issues I do care about are:
* That article includes a screenshot with an Argonian, who looks like an alien bug or something. Nowhere near the lizardy look that Morrowind had, which ruled. If they screwed up the models' heads just to make the human full-helmets and boots fit them, I'm sorely disappointed. The critter people need custom gear.
* HDR is crap. I don't care what the wankers who played Lost Coast say, it looks bad. Ambient lit places look fine, but all of those screenshots that have anything white or metal in them look like overexposures through a soap opera filter.
* From the E3 videos, they seem to think we need to zoom in on every pore of a person's face when they're in a conversation. I hope that has a toggle to turn it off.
* It was supposed to be out on November 22nd, but now, it seems XBox releases got pushed back, and now ES4 "isn't done yet." They'd better fix my Argonians while I'm waiting.
* Also from videos, they were showing off the new dungeons. While dungeons were pretty much cookiecutter in Morrowind, I didn't like how the demo seemed to be filled with gimmicky traps and such. I hope that's just for press, and I won't find myself guessing where the next 'suprise' trap is going to be. (Like how Doom 3 'scares' you by trapping every gun and spawning monsters behind you.)
* In the video, we see that digital dogs haven't progressed much. Just like in Deus Ex, when a dog turns, it magically spins about it's center. I have a dog, she doesn't turn like that.

Anyway, my $5 are already down, and it's not like I'm going to not buy it, anyway, nomatter how much they wreck things.

Re:Observations

[Digital Vomit]

In the video, we see that digital dogs haven't progressed much. Just like in Deus Ex, when a dog turns, it magically spins about it's center. I have a dog, she doesn't turn like that.

My dog does that. What kind did you get?

Re:Observations

[Zed2K]

If the only experience with HDR you have is screenshots then you have no ground to stand on. Its one of those things that looks so much better in motion.

Re:Observations

[Fallingcow]

Lots of stuff does look better with it. Some stuff looks weird and, as the parent poster said, overexposed.

The tech still needs some work.

Re:Observations

[Anonymous Coward]

HDR done badly look exactly as the parent described it. HDR done right looks absolutely magical.
It is my preferred scene lighting method for my 3D Animation projects. It's not easy to do right, but when done right, it looks far more realistic than point lighting.

Re:Observations

[TechnologyX]

Holy shit, here, let me stop the world for you, shitstain.

Pre-order it here!

[Anonymous Coward]

You can pre-order the game here: Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

This title was the "System Seller"

[popo]

Without Oblivion, XBOX 360 has no real "system seller".

No Halo? no Oblivion? Perfect Dark Zero could be cool, but I don't
see nearly the same level of excitement for it.

I think this is going to have a huge impact on the bottom line
for initial Xbox sales.

I don't know about everyone else here, but for me the first Xbox
was about Halo and Morrowind.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[ilyaaohell]

Project Gotham Racing 3 is the "system seller". That, and possibly Call of Duty 2, though to a lesser degree (the graphics in it are too current-generation for most people's tastes).

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[CharonIDRONES]

Completely agree.

My PC has no chance of running Oblivion, except for into oblivion.

I was going to be one of the people intending to buy a 360 for the soul purpose of buying this beautiful game, but now with the release pushed back, I think I just save some dough a build a new system.

Bye bye 360, what other games did you have again? No Halo? No Oblivion? Sorry.

-Brandon

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Keeper]

You've forgotten about PGR3, Kameo, Condemned, COD2, and DOA4. All of these titles are "system sellers" for their genre. PD0 is going to be a lame game; I wouldn't discrace the other good titles available on launch by mentioning it.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Anonymous Coward]

OMFG--

Kameo?
Condemned?
COD2?
DOA4?

What part of "system seller" don't you understand?

Those games are "B TITLES" -- with the exception of COD2, but it has NO WHERE NEAR THE AUDIENCE of Halo III or Oblivion.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Morinaga]

What kind of audience did Halo I have before it launched? Answer, none because no one knew what kind of game it would be let alone the fanatical following it would produce. Can we in restrospect say the same things about Gears of War? Perhaps we will.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[PimpWilly]

At launch, racing games are always a system seller. But as time goes on, they're the first games ditched for the next wave, and nobody ever looks back at them.

Nearly every launch title is either a port of a current X-Box title, or something thrown together to capitalize on console launch madness. Perfect Dark Zero may be the only exception, and the quality of that game is debatable as well until we get our hands on it.

Oblivion, however, is a VERY HIGHLY anticipated game from a respected series that was designed from the very beginning to be ready for next gen-consoles. It is going to harness the power of the 360 better than any other title, possibly save Perfect Dark zero. To ignore this fact is to just prove your ignorance.

The loss of oblivion at launch is a HUGE, HUGE crush to the fans moreso than microsoft, though. While me (and a bunch others) are not going to buy a 360 at launch anymore with the loss of this game, there are thousands of ignorant people who are chomping at the bits to get their console at launch. Couple that with the huge expected shortage at launch, and they are going to have no problem selling out anyway.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Delphiki]

there are thousands of ignorant people who are chomping at the bits to get their console at launch.

What the fuck is wrong with people on slashdot? Just because people are interested in different games than you, they're ignorant?

At launch, racing games are always a system seller. But as time goes on, they're the first games ditched for the next wave, and nobody ever looks back at them.

I guess that's why GT3, GT4 and PGR2 all tanked.

Jesus, how can people spew shit out of their mouths without being aware of it? I would think the smell would bother them. Either way, heads need to be cracked in.

To ignore this fact is to just prove your ignorance.

PGR3 is a good title from an established developer and a resepected series, designed from the start to work for the next generation. COD2 is a good title from an established series and developer, though maybe not as next-gen, but a huge number of people will love it even if it's only marginally better than Xbox games in terms of graphics. How about NBA 2k6? Good developer. Check? Established series? Check. Obviously next-gen? Check.

Oblivion might have a slight edge on other games, but Jesus, it's just one game, in a genre that most people don't give a shit about.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Mac Degger]

My god, why is it that in threads like these nowadays we get much more of our fair share of neophyte know-nothings?

Halo had a HUGE following before it was released. And it had an even bigger following than that before it was announced to be xbox only (ie before Bungie sold out). That's because Bungie made the Marathon series of games.

Everyone knew what kind of game Halo would be, too. Marathon on steroids.

Can we say the same about Gears of War? Not really, because it's a new franchise (in the way Halo wasn't really), and it's EPIC who are making it, and they're only known for some good multiplayer work.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Jabroni_5000_Deluxe]

"Can we say the same about Gears of War? Not really, because it's a new franchise (in the way Halo wasn't really), " How in God's name was Halo not a new franchise? Because it was supposed to be, according to you, "Marathon on steroids?" With that argument isn't Gears of War Unreal Tournament 2k4 on steroids. It was NEW in that it was a completely new IP with an all new engine. How is that not new? Halo's E3 impressions was absolutely abysmal. The press on this game was some of the worst I've ever, ever seen, calling it a "turd" would be one of the better previews I've heard. You seem to be rewriting history a smidgen with the "HUGE" following:

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Mac Degger]

Dude, Halo has been 'most anticipated game' at E3. Don't make yourself look stupid.

"Halo's E3 impressions was absolutely abysmal"

Not really;

"The press on this game was some of the worst I've ever, ever seen, calling it a "turd" would be one of the better previews I've heard."

Bullshit. Link me to one preview which said that, from one of the bigger gaming sites. Halo was pretty much universally praised (even if I thought it was a crap FPS).

"It was NEW in that it was a completely new IP with an all new engine"

New engine, yes, new IP, not really. Bungie was prettyy straightforwards in saying that there woiuld be lots of Marathon elements in the game.

"You seem to be rewriting history a smidgen with the "HUGE" following:"

Again, bullshit. You are the revisionist. As I said, link me some respected preview which dismissed Halo. Hell, I'll even accept Gamespy/Spot. But you won't find 'em. Halo was HUGE. Why do you think Microsoft bought Bungie so that Halo would launch on the xbox? Because Halo was HUGE.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[PimpWilly]

Exactly how was GT4 a system seller, when it came out near the end of the consoles life cycle? Seems like you're missing the point of the thread anyway. This isn't about the games tanking, it's about a console having a crappy launch choice.

The argument here is games that cause a person to buy a system. If you didn't have a PS2, you didn't go out and buy one just to play GT4. Games like Halo, however, caused people to buy an X-box. The follow up to that argument was that Elder Scrolls is a great launch title to have because its going to be one of the few that is actually going to take advantage of what the system is capable of.

Aside from pretty graphics and an increase in price, all those games you mentioned have nothing over their XBox counterparts.

Now, are these people who are drooling to get a 360 ignorant because they play a different genre of game? No, they're ignorant because they know nothing of the tech side of games (hence, the ignorance they have) and just want something pretty to look at.

What I find funniest is you bring up the most generic, carbon copy sequels up in your argument. NBA 2k6, Call of Duty, Project Gotham Racing, these are titles that are churned off the programming assembly line after being produced by marketing research tailored to what will cause people to open their pocket books. They are not pushing gaming at all, they are content to make a small profit and call it a day.

Oblivion is so much more than that, its a fully interactive world to the extent we have not seen before. To compare it with titles such as the ones you brought up wouldn't be fair.

2 Years from now, nobody will give 2 fucks about PGR3, NBA 2k6, or Call of Duty 2. They'll all be playing PGR5, NBA 2k8, and Call of Duty 3. But people will STILL be playing and raving about Oblivion.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Delphiki]

Aside from pretty graphics and an increase in price, all those games you mentioned have nothing over their XBox counterparts.

What makes you so sure that Oblivion is anything mroe than a prettier Morrowind?

What I find funniest is you bring up the most generic, carbon copy sequels up in your argument. NBA 2k6, Call of Duty, Project Gotham Racing, these are titles that are churned off the programming assembly line after being produced by marketing research tailored to what will cause people to open their pocket books. They are not pushing gaming at all, they are content to make a small profit and call it a day. Oblivion is so much more than that, its a fully interactive world to the extent we have not seen before. To compare it with titles such as the ones you brought up wouldn't be fair.

Honestly, do you know what I thought when I played Morrowind? Lot of decent RPG content, but absolutely nothing to set it apart from a hundred other RPGs except for the size of the world. Oblivion is not pushing gaming. It's a highly polished RPG sequel. Did you copy the line about it being a fully interactive world to the extent we have not seen before directly from Bethesda's marketing department?

Morrowind had nowhere near as much interactivity with the NPCs in the world as Fallout which came out how many years before Morrowind? It's a good game, but it's not creating a new genre or redifining the one it's in.

2 Years from now, nobody will give 2 fucks about PGR3, NBA 2k6, or Call of Duty 2. They'll all be playing PGR5, NBA 2k8, and Call of Duty 3. But people will STILL be playing and raving about Oblivion.

Don't kid yourself, they won't be, they'll be drooling over Elder Scrolls 5, and have forgotten about Oblivion. I don't know anyone who has played Morrowind more than a year or so after it came out.

If you didn't have a PS2, you didn't go out and buy one just to play GT4.

That's funny, because I know at least one person who did. But more to the point, I was refuting the claim that people stop playing racers right away, and they somehow have less value in a launch lineup than other genres.

No, they're ignorant because they know nothing of the tech side of games (hence, the ignorance they have) and just want something pretty to look at.

This is the first time anyone in this thread has mentioned the tech side of gaming other than graphics. If Oblivion is a superb RPG are you saying it's going to be because of certain non-graphics technology? Such as what? Or did you just throw that sentence in there to puff up your ego, and try and make people think you know more than them? Did you read an article online about A* and suddenly decide people who just play games for the fun of it instead of for the tech behind it are ignorant?

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[jez9999]

XBox? I don't need no stinking console, these types of games are much more fun played close up to the screen, using a keyboard and a mouse. At least, they are now I'm totally used to doing it that way. Give me a PC anyday.

On another topic, my experience with Morrowind was rather depressing. I started out playing it hoping for an improvement on TES2. At first, I thought I'd got it - it certainly improved on the graphics side. But I'd say the gameplay is *worse*. The fighting system is clunky and far too easy, the storyline is too linear and the NPCs are pathetic, half of them just standing in the same place 24/78 for the whole of the game. Not good. Let's hope they overhaul and vastly improve the AI in Oblivion. I have to say my trust in Bethesda was shaken with Morrowind; I'll probably purchase Oblivion, but it better damn well be good.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Haeleth]

I don't know anyone who has played Morrowind more than a year or so after it came out.

That has to be the stupidest logical fallacy I've ever read. "I don't know anyone who did it, so obviously nobody did." Well, I'm one such person - I didn't even BUY Morrowind till a year after it came out, and I still play it from time to time. And there are many, many more. Take a look at some of the modding sites some time. People are still releasing new addons for the game.

If Oblivion is a superb RPG are you saying it's going to be because of certain non-graphics technology? Such as what?

Um, have you even read any of the Oblivion previews? How the hell have you managed to miss all the hype surrounding the AI? To listen to the developers, you'd think that Oblivion is going to be a 100% accurate model of the real world, with NPCs that are smarter than the average Ivy League graduate. Goodness only knows whether any of that's actually true, but certainly graphics isn't the major thing that Bethesda fanboys are getting excited about.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[PimpWilly]

Oblivion has implemented the Radiant AI system, something that I believe is new to gaming AI. Basically, each AI is programmed to THINK for itself based on its needs, and react accordingly. You know that NPC you came to talk to? Well, he's not standing in that same spot waiting for you to return. He's off living his life, doing what he needs to do, so that when you return you have to track him down. Or wait outside his house until he gets home from work. Or go off and find his job and find him there.

They've created a game world whose goal is that it does not revolve around the player character. That is where the innovation comes in. That is where it blows away the games you brought up.

In fact, the problem with the AI is that it was too good. In play testing, the guards would get hungry, go off, and shoot a rabbit. But in that town, that was illegal, so the other guards would come to arrest him. Then there would be a big fight, which lead to the town falling into civil war. Details like that make me want to pick up and play a game, the kick ass graphics are just a plus.

It sounds to me you know little to nothing about the actual subject of Elder Scrolls anyway. The fact you said there is nothing that set Elder Scrolls apart from the normal RPG except world size, well now I'm just arguing ignorance with the ignorant, so there's no point in continuing.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Delphiki]

Well, educate me then? I mean I played through the whole game, but clearly I don't know anything about it. So what set Morrowind apart?

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[Morinaga]

Hey, why don't YOU find us one of these steller preveiws of Halo before it released for Xbox?

There are all kinds of games that have hype but don't live up to it. Microsoft and certainly the guys and Bungie had no idea the game would be as successfull as it turned out to be. I remember some talk about how it was a dissapointment that Halo was not coming out on PC. I remember that the EARLY screenshots were impressive. I also remember that by the time it was ready to roll out everyone was burned out on the wait and thought the graphical steps forward were down right pedestrian by the time it released compared to what was currently available. The previous poster might be a revisionist in so far as bad press it concerned but I certainly don't remember this explosion of back orders for xbox because Halo was going to release for it. The truth is that Halo wasn't a gold mine AAA title when Xbox released but it became one. Not much different than where Xbox sits now except the 360 does have Oblivion in the pipe which seems to have certain people exited.

Re:This title was the "System Seller"

[PimpWilly]

The game is a virtual living world, where you are free to roam and do what you want. There is a main story pushing the game forward, but you are free to ignore it with no limitations at all. In this game, you can play the noble paladin and go from town to town doing good deeds. You can also play a thief, sneaking into peoples houses and pilfering everything in sight. There are hundreds of variations between the two extreme cases of play styles, but in the end, you as the player make that choice. In terms of RPGS, you are given a story and you must play through that story progressively. Your characters are given to you, and you watch the story play out. You don't get to design your own characters personalities. You don't get to find a town in the game, settle down, and live there, making your own quests. Traditional RPGS drop you into this world with a few characters, introduce the story, then have you battle your way through while you sit back and have the characters stories revealed to you in bits. By the end of the game, there is some big revelation, then you beat the boss and the game ends. In morrowind, this is not so, which is why its different. You've played it, didn't you feel like this entire living world was there, and you were just a visitor to it? Oblivion is like that, but takes it to the next level. NPCS don't sit around waiting for you. Land isn't designed, its terraformed over a 5000 year period from a pc simulation, then the population and cities and such is placed into that terraformed land, making it feel more realistic. Houses and property can be owned officially, instead of only through stealing it from someone. All in all, it's the closest game that I've seen/read about/heard about to simulating a real fantasy world. Thats what's getting all of us oblivion fans so excited. What dissapoints me is that for next gen launch titles, they're just trying to get games onto the shelves to make money without making sure they are good. Hell, Madden 2006 is CUTTING features that is in the XBox version just to make sure it hits release date. The fact that Oblivion is already a highly anticipated PC game that requires a very top notch PC makes Xbox 360 very appealing to those of us not looking to upgrade our PC. Who knows, maybe by the time it launches, those of us complaining will be picking up our 360 anyways just to play Oblivion anyways.

That's nothing

[phasm42]

Personally, I lost count at 175 hours in the current game, Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind. Think about that for a second: that's 2 hours after work every day for 3 full months.

Apparently this guy has never talked to an Evercrack fiend.

Re:That's nothing

[SatanicPuppy]

Or any hardcore gamer. I remember playing old school MUDs with guys whose "time played" was measured in months. My own time played in that particular game was a little more than two weeks, unsurpassed until lately when my Warcrack addiction passed the three week barrier.

Re:That's nothing

[Derekloffin]

Indeed, Evercrack, or World of Crack, or City of Crack, or Final Crack, whatever your taste may be. I think I have something like over a month of playtime on FFXI and I'm one of the conservative ones. Some people I'm sure a pushing over a year of playtime (not just owning the game, actually playing it).

Re:That's nothing

[TimeSpeak]

gota love that--->
/played
Charactor creation date 16 March 1999 Total time played 365 days and 1 minute(8,760hrs)
http://www.rutabaga-paradox.org/april04/oneyear.jp g

Re:That's nothing

[Hakubi_Washu]

What a lot of people seem to miss is that ES3:M was single-player only. It's amazing that it can rival "keep addicted" MMORPGS in playtime! (It felt more MMO to me while playing than WoW ever did, too.)

Re:That's nothing

[Anonymous Coward]

I have many characters for World of Warcraft. Most of them have less than 100 hours on them, but one of them has over 1,000 hours -- that is over the past 12 months. Some times I wonder if I spend more time playing WoW than I do at my full-time job.

This is typical among hard-core MMORPG fans.

Re:That's nothing

[patio11]

Lets see, in the last year I've racked up 30 days of /played in WoW (thats, oh, about two hours a night, averaged with some nights being none and some Saturdays being game-sessions) and my guild describes me as "casual".

bugs

[Erpo]

good bandwidth to update and expand

Translation: We're really looking forward to releasing an unfinished game and (perhaps) patching the bugs as you find them.

Re:bugs

[Keith Russell]

Oh, that's an Elder Scrolls tradition. Or have we forgotten Daggerfall Of The Perpetual Patch?

Re:bugs

[Anonymous Coward]

So? That's not new with the TES games, Daggerfall was the first one I played, and it was so buggy some of the major features (daedra princes) were simply not available to me. Plus, savegames could get corrupted. And I didn't have internet at the time, so no patches.
  Still, I love the TES games, even unpatched they're lots of fun. And they're improving, too, Morrowind was a lot less buggy than Daggerfall.

Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[adam31]

We're locking the framerate at 30fps on the 360

We don't do a lot with dynamic landscape changes beyond things like grass swaying in reaction to the weather.

No cloth physics unfortunately. We found they are a huge sink for processing time

So, wait. This game is 'next-gen'!? It sounds like all they did was port their pixel shaders to SM3.0 ...

Now I'm sure the gameplay is great. But what are they doing with all the extra cycles? There just isn't an excuse to run 30fps any more. Just slapping some over-saturated bloom effects on the framebuffer doesn't cut it.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[RingDev]

Most people will plug their 360 into a standard def CRT TV. 30fps is fine, and standard TV is what 320x200 resolution? Even if you run 640x480 and down sample to a standard TV resolution you should be able to run damn near anything.

I'm not sure what the output on the 360 is, but it is likely designed for 1040i or some other HD format. And running 1024x768 is a good deal more realistate. Throw in full screen 8xAA and other standard goodies, and its understandable why cloth physics would get dropped.

That said, I wouldn't touch a game console with a 10 foot pole. And I look forward to enjoying TES4 on my PC.

-Rick

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[ilyaaohell]

I prefer these sorts of games running at 30 fps. It's artistically more pleasing on the eyes. This is the same reason that a cinematic film running at 24 fps is artistically more pleasing on the eyes than a digital camera home movie running at 60 fps.

I'd say that 60 fps is mostly only useful for fast-response twitch sorts of games, like racing games, shooters, and the like. Other games, like RPGs, adventure games, etc, would look perfectly fine at 30.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[Anonymous Coward]

personally I'd be happy if it didn't run at 1080i, but had cloth physics.

You can shove as many HDR lit anti-aliased large texture polygons at something as you want, but if the world doesn't react the way a world should, then it doesn't feel realistic.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[Keith Russell]

For typical console purposes, standard definition is 640x480.

Microsoft has been advising X360 devs to target 16:9 720p (1280x720), and downsample to 480i for non-HD TVs. I have a feeling 1080i will be supported on X360 about as well as it was on the original XBox. (Do we really need X360's power for another Dragon's Lair title?)

I agree that, with a kick-ass PC, the X360 version would be a waste. As long as they learn from the mistakes of Deus Ex: Invisible War, and not dumb down the PC version to the console's level. (Maybe that's addressed in TFA. I can't read it through the blankety-blank filters at work.)

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[ikkonoishi]

From what I can see the two are being developed concurrently with optimizations applied seperatly to each version.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[Mac Degger]

"I prefer these sorts of games running at 30 fps. It's artistically more pleasing on the eyes. This is the same reason that a cinematic film running at 24 fps is artistically more pleasing on the eyes than a digital camera home movie running at 60 fps."

WTF? NOOOOOooooo!!11!!1! We have another ignoramus here! Someone who has no idea how technology works, and can't be bothered to look up some biology/visual tech pieces on the intarweb!

Please, get hit with a clu-by-four.

fps has little to no bearing on how a game 'looks', appart from the fact that less than 25 fps is really irritating for games where you move around even a little, and the more/faster you move around, the higher the fps you want.

25 fps is fine for movies, not for games. Research project: find out why this is.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[vectorian798]

Apparently you seem to know nothing about the game and just posted something half-assedly controversial to get modded up.

The game has many novel features. First, every single NPC in the game has its own life cycle including eating meals, working, sleeping, idle activities (note that I said idle activities, not just idle actions such as those in Far Cry). This enhances the 'immersion' factor, which was a VERY big part of Morrowind. Oblivion takes place over a fairly large amount of land (the # of sq. mi. is at Oblivion's website), has a weather system, open-endedness that Morrowind had (feels a lot like Fallout in the sense that you have lots of stuff to do other than the 'main quest').

The physics engine is awesome even without cloth physics. Trees, grass, arrows, etc. If you look at one of the gameplay videos here you will see a demo where the player character fires arrows into a bucket hanging from the ceiling or something, and the bucket sways and the row buckles etc. from the arrows hitting it. You can then walk up to the bucket, and you will notice that depending on how the arrows penetrated the wood in the bucket (angle, force, etc.), the bucket is tilting or perhaps moving slowly to a stop. When the player character removes the arrows from the bucket, the bucket moves to reflect each arrow you pull out, taking a different 'tilted' position or whatever as per physics. I don't know about you, but the job they did in modifying Havok is pretty damn good.

Graphics: you have to be retarded if you think the game is just bloom effects. First, you might have noticed the large number of textures and colors in the world (in the cities for example). Graphics = technical quality (engine) + artwork (textures). Second, the tree generation (I believe they are using Speedtree like Gothic and Unreal 2007) is awesome, it actually feels like a forest instead of a few scattered trees with few leaves on them. Lastly, you may have noticed that the shader effects are present almost everywhere, whereas in Morrowind they were (mostly) confined to the water. There is soft-shadowing, self-soft-shadowing, and a host of other effects you would want in a tier-1 game as well.

Sound: If you check out the videos I pointed above, you will hear some of the same songs that were in Morrowind. These songs are extremely well done, and conducive to the atmosphere of the game. Oblivion apparently has many more songs now, as expected, and an awesome all-star cast of narrators that really make characters come through more realistically.

For those who enjoy games like Baldur's Gate, Fallout, or really any of the Black Isle works, Morrowind and Oblivion are a must-play.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen this over and over again. They say that the XBox 360 is 'next-gen', but I've yet to see a gamedeveloper not bitch and moan about it not having the horsepower to run the games. A while back I saw an interview with a developer on the 'Project Gotham Racing' game, he said that they capped the framerates on 30 fps. I've played different games on different frame rates, and 30 fps just doesn't do it the way 60 fps do. There's just a huge different in how 'smooth' the game runs. You get way more immersed if things move at 60 fps.
I've also played the CoD pre-release demo on the XBox 360 and I was utterly disappointed. I know that it's a pre-release, but unless they want to do a lot of patchwork on the graphics, it's far from impressive. It reminded me of 'just another PC shooter'. It didn't look impressive, nor did it 'feel' impressive. It was just another game on just another machine.
The Xbox 360 will just be forgotten, just like the Dreamcast it.

Also I have to say... that controller just feels plain weird.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[Anonymous Coward]

your TV only refreshes at 30FPS, so even if the game generated 60FPs, only every other frame would be displayed. So by capping the frame rate at the refresh rate of the TV, they don't waste time rendering frames that won't be displayed, and can spend more time calculating AI and physics.

Capping a console game's frame rate to 30FPS isn't an indication that the console sucks - it just makes sense

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[king-manic]

I prefer these sorts of games running at 30 fps. It's artistically more pleasing on the eyes. This is the same reason that a cinematic film running at 24 fps is artistically more pleasing on the eyes than a digital camera home movie running at 60 fps.

I'd say that 60 fps is mostly only useful for fast-response twitch sorts of games, like racing games, shooters, and the like. Other games, like RPGs, adventure games, etc, would look perfectly fine at 30.

If I had mod points I'd mod you -1 WTF.

Frame rate have nothing to do with artistry. Frames rares are required to be high in anygame where things move a lot. 30 is ok. 60 is smoother. There is a difference.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[LMariachi]

The difference you're seeing is largely due to motion blur. When shooting film, motion blur is related to the frame rate and shutter angle of the camera. Of course there is no actual camera involved in 3D videogames, but with modern video cards motion blur can be added during rendering, simulating the look of 24fps while the actual framerate is much higher.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[Mycroft_VIII]

Actually TV resolution (USA, non-high definition) is fairly close to 640x480, slightly less.
    It's interlaced so you get every other row on each pass (odd rows one pass, even the other) and get 60 passes per second.

Mycroft

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[Craster]

The game has many novel features. First, every single NPC in the game has its own life cycle including eating meals, working, sleeping, idle activities (note that I said idle activities, not just idle actions such as those in Far Cry). This enhances the 'immersion' factor, which was a VERY big part of Morrowind. Oblivion takes place over a fairly large amount of land (the # of sq. mi. is at Oblivion's website), has a weather system, open-endedness that Morrowind had (feels a lot like Fallout in the sense that you have lots of stuff to do other than the 'main quest').

All of that was in Ultima VII, ten years ago.

What you're actually saying is that they've done impressive things with the graphics - whoopdedoo.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[SuiteSisterMary]

As I've said many times on slashdot and other places, is that the difference is with film, each frame is everything that happens in a 1/24th second. With a game, you're getting sixty snapshots/second, or however many. Like a strobe light.

Which is why 3dfx tried to introduce their T-buffer. And why I was delighted to see, in screenshots for DOA4, engine-added motion blur.

Re:Next-Gen, Riiiiight.

[MBraynard]

You forgot the games biggest draw:

CAPTAIN PICARD OF TEH STARSHIP ENTERPRISE!!

Yeah, that's right. He does the voice work.

And if I play this game anything like I played Morrowind on Xbox, the moment I see him it's going to be a shelaly to the back of the head. Bring back Kirk!

Welll... yeahhhh!

[Imazalil]

Well... it's as next gen as the xbox360 is next gen to the original xbox. Faster processor, better graphics. I'm sorry you were expecting something more? Take a look at all the games lined up, do you see anything next gen about them? Yeah, they have better textures, more polygons, run in HD, but other than that they are still the same games. TES4 is as 'next gen' as anything else coming out, and believe me getting anything beyond 30fps in this game won't make a difference, it's not exactly quake.

Im.

PC/XBOX360 simultaneous development?

[eudas]

It'll be interesting to see if the game play will be undesirably impacted due to decisions about how to accomodate the development for both PC and console, similarly to how Deus Ex: Invisible War was impacted.

One would hope not, but unfortunately, those console dollars are mighty attractive these days.

eudas

Re:PC/XBOX360 simultaneous development?

[Bishop]

The record of simultaneous development isn't good. It shouldn't be a surprise. Even if the graphics capability is on par, the user controls on a console are completely different then those on a PC. User controls are often overlooked, but need to be intregal to the game. More then any other factor bad user controls will break a game. There is also an annoying tendancy to dumb down simultaneously developed games, or games ported from the PC to the console. Which I find odd as there have been some great, wonderfully complex console games.

Re:PC/XBOX360 simultaneous development?

[NCraig]

It'll be interesting to see if the game play will be undesirably impacted due to decisions about how to accomodate the development for both PC and console, similarly to how Deus Ex: Invisible War was impacted.

Morrowind (the previous game in the series) was developed simultaneously for PC and XBox and didn't seem to suffer at all for it.

Interesting Thoughts on Threading

[jfmiller]

Gavin Carter: Oblivion will absolutely benefit from a multi-processor or multi-core PC architecture. These improvements have largely been driven by our optimizations for the Xbox 360 hardware. We have built a dynamic thread management system that manages processor load by our specific direction and by priorities. Portions of physics, AI, loading, audio, and rendering tasks can all be moved to different threads to keep the overall load balanced. The net result for the end user is a smoother experience.

I think there are some interesting bits in this response. "We have built a dynamic thread management system" really caught my attention. I have read a number of recent articles [ 1, 2 ]talking about the need for multithread programming, and the difficulty of doing it. It seems to me that the ES4 team has not only embraced the idea of threading, but done so in what I think is a very logical manner.

What I envision of a dynamic thread management system from the quote above seems to be what is needed in the next generation of applications. With clock speed giving way to more cores speed increases will need to come from running tasks in parallel. For a number of reasons that I will not go into here, threading by hand can is difficult to do safely, and in many cases ends up being premature optimization. On the other hand leaving threading to a compiler or even worse the CPU circuitry itself has been seen to be fairly ineffective. The human who writes an application is probably the one most qualified to find parallelism, but may not be the best one to implement it at the thread level.

I envision that this system has allowed the different groups involved to create their distinct tasks and rules that govern how the tasks interact, but instead of trying to hand code that interaction, they have designed a system that does the dirty work of translating task interaction into thread logic for them. Additionally, this seems to be done on the fly so a system like the XBOX360 with 3 PPE cores can execute differently then a new PC with a multi core an AMD or INTEL cpu. It also would seem to allow program to adapt to the loads finds itself under.

I for one would really like to hear more about the way this thing functions. In a post to one of the articles I referenced, I asked about the availability of programming paradigms that would abstract the concept of threads much as many languages now abstract the concept of memory allocation with "Garbage Collection." I didn't get much of a response. I'm hoping some Slashdot reader can fill me in on what is know about thread management systems.

JFMILLER

References:

• Wikipedia Entry: Threads
• Ars Technica Article: Introduction to Multithreading, Superthreading and Hyperthreading
• A threads FAQ from comp.programming.threads

Re:Interesting Thoughts on Threading

[Anonymous Coward]

Fundamentally there is nothing difficult about using threads other than one important concept which must always be kept in mind: all resources shared between threads must be protected in some manner (except for read only accesses in some cases). That's basically it.

Most dynamic thread models I have seen are thread pool systems in which one queues up a work item and passes it to the thread pool to execute as needed. This abstracts out some of the details, but the hard part here is still synchronization. This still must be handled by the implementer of the functionality being threaded.

It has been my experience that the less control one has directly over threading, the more likely one is to run into hard to find deadlocks and race conditions.

Re:Interesting Thoughts on Threading

[Hast]

I believe it's mentioned in one of the discussions in those articles you linked but the fundamental problem is that you have one set of data - the game state, and a bunch of threads that work on this. In the end everything, user input, AI, physics and game rules will affect the game state. And some threads like graphics and sound read from this in order to find out what to show/play.

Now the problem is that you need to ensure that you can get a static view of the world when you begin a new iteration. So that you don't render objects from different world state times and similar.

One way to solve problems like this is mentioned in the Ars discussions that is the Timewarp discrete event simulation algorithm. It allows for multiple threads to simulate on the same data set and if threads get into a paradox it rolls their changes back and treat them together. Eg. you can use it to simulate a forest of trees which blow in the wind. Usually you can treat these as separate object and as such use separate threads for all of them. However sometimes two (or more) trees will collide and then you need to undo the simulation steps and figure out what happens.

In a way you start accessing the world data as a database instead of just a data struct. This adds some overhead but also allows you to handle conflics in a robust manner.

BTW the term dynamic thread management system is also know as a scheduler which manages processes in your OS. It's a well know and extremely well researched topic. There is even quite a lot of effort spent on researching how to make programs which essentially take over the OSes function to maximise efficiency on a platform. (Exokernels are an example of this.)

It's about the size of the game

[DeadScreenSky]

He's just referring to the size of the content in a PC context (ie a hard disk). It's been confirmed for a while to work on the core X360 system.

failz0rs

[Anonymous Coward]

mo're gran3iose

yuo fail 1t..

[Anonymous Coward]

[nero-online.org] And enjoy aal the gawker At most

Man, that Xbox 360 must be cool

[dghcasp]

I haven't followed all this stuff about the new Xbox, but I read this article because a cow-orker of mine has been raving about the Elder Scrolls series.

From TFA:

The Xbox 360 poses some unique challenges in the fact that it's half console, half PC, yet a generation above either of them in their current form.

Man, a generation above current PC's! So what has it got?

1. A Hexium processor instead of a Pentium processor?
2. A 128 bit operating system?
3. More than 64 Gb of memory?
4. 4000x3000 graphics? (run out through your 720x480 TV?)
5. Terabyte ethernet?
6. DTS2 audio with 18 channels at 192Kb/s per channel?
7. A quantum processor?
8. ...

or is this standard journalists who don't understand quoting people who don't understand?

Re:Man, that Xbox 360 must be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

a cow-orker of mine has been raving about the Elder Scrolls series

I would never trust what a dirty Horde orc - who fancies Tauren, no less - would think about anything. Dude.

Re:Man, that Xbox 360 must be cool

[Anonymous Coward]

> 1. A Hexium processor instead of a Pentium processor?
pretty much - three 3.2GHz Power PC cores, and a custom built GPU from ATI.

Re:Man, that Xbox 360 must be cool

[Babbster]

I'll give you credit for the funny tone, but your note at the end makes your post a serious one in terms of your overall point, so I'll respond that way...

How many people actually have multiple cores (be they in single-processor or multi-processure units) in their home desktops? Given the prices, and the timeline in terms of availability, of dual-core CPUs right now, I'd figure it's not that many. How many of those people have more than 512MB of memory? Again, probably much fewer than you'd think when looking at the signatures of people posting on gaming boards.

By the time a large number of gamers have one or more of the "next-gen" gaming consoles in their homes, the folks playing PC games on dual-core CPUs, on 64-bit OSes with gigabyte ethernet home networks and 2GB or more of RAM will still be in the minority. And by the time those kinds of specs ARE the majority in home PCs, they still won't have the kind of gamer numbers that the X360, PS3 and Revolution will already have in place.

Even at $400 a pop, the Xbox 360 represents a tremendous value for the gaming power you get compared to the price you'd pay for something similar in the PC world, and it'll stay that way for at LEAST two more years (during which time, the price of the X360 will, of course, come down). Whether the games are good enough to make it truly worthwhile is open to debate (and I'm one of those who will likely wait until at least spring 2006), but the idea that anyone outside the power-gaming minority will have home PCs of similar capability anytime soon is ludicrous.

Frame rates

[Anonymous Coward]

We're locking the framerate at 30fps on the 360 [...] So, wait. This game is 'next-gen'!?

I dunno about "next-gen," but you realize that American TVs only have a refresh rate of 29.97 FPS? European TVs are even slower at 25 FPS. It makes absolutely no sense to waste processor cycles on frames that your TV can't display.

So... the "excuse" is that it's physically impossible. Unless you consider double buffering, which would be prety dumb in this case.

I admit it.

[earnest murderer]

I'm the guy who liked U8.

There I said it.

Re:I admit it.

[limabone]

I didn't even realize there was one of you. What a fall from grace Ultima 8 and 9 were!

In Ultima 8's defense though, I think the only reason the game sucked ass is because the CD-ROM distribution method was not yet mainstream and they released the game on floppies, forcing them to keep the number of creatures, places, goodies, etc to a minimum. I think if the game had come out a year later on CD-ROM and they had spent more time on that stuff it would have been much better.

Re:I admit it.

[Gulthek]

I liked it in theory. The tale of the Avatar who must break every one of the virtues to escape is quite interesting. Does it show that the Guardian is more powerful than the Avatar and can bend him to his will? Does it imply that the virtues are 'optional' and can be superceded for a higher purpose (the ends vs. the means)? Or does it mean that even the Avatar is, after all, a flawed human and the virtues are ideal goals but unattainable in the real world?

Very very cool. Unfortunately the implementation of the story left a great, great deal to be desired.

Re:I admit it.

[earnest murderer]

Indeed, by the time I found it it was on CD-ROM in the bargin bin. The "jumping madness" that everyone was so upset about had already been patched away.

Still thought the ending was a bit weak.

For the record, I retured Ultima 9 to my local EB games. I didn't even have to explain myself.

Re:but... rock sucks

[Anonymous Coward]

It's well known all heterosexual white males are rich and represive, therefore everyone else is allowed to discriminate against them...

Better graphics, yay..

[Cheetahfeathers]

But did they fix the boring? I tried ES3, and can't recommend it. It is not a role playing game in the slightest bit. The world is way too static. You kill a leader of some faction and what happens? Do others sweep in to take advantage of the chaos? Do you get recognized as some great/horrible person by random folks? No, nothing. The world stays essentially the same. You kill a freaking _god_ and are recognized by another god and what happens? Nothing.. you're still the same unremarked upon person going around doing remarkable things and having nobody remark upon it and nothing of any importance change as a consequence.

Roll playing and computer games just do not mix well. They can't mix well until we have true AIs running the game. Until then, the best we can do is games such as Fallout, Arcanum and Vampire: Bloodlines. A good balance between open ended and structured story.

ES takes the Final Fantasy railroading problem and tries to take it in the other direction. It goes way too far, and fails just as badly as the Final Fantasy series in making a computer RPG.

Both types of game may be fun for those that like that, but neither are role playing.

Re:Better graphics, yay..

[Aexia]

That's why I hated Daggerfall. For all the open-endedness and dozens of differently named NPCs, it felt incredibly lifeless and lonely. There were essentially two NPCs in the game: the randomly generated walking signpost and the static quest bulletin board.

Try Fable

[doudou42]

I am a big fan of the Elder Scrolls, but I just buyed "Fable : The lost chapters" on PC and it is amazing.
The graphics are stunning, lightly cartoonized and the world is really reacting to your actions. The only problem is : Too small, too linear.

I think (hope) the guys at Bethesa saw this game and will make TES4 evolve in the good way.

Anyway, I'm saving money in order to upgrade my PC so I can play TES4 in good conditions.

no. this is really what started it all...

[Anonymous Coward]

You must be too young to remember this is really what started it all...