Elder Scrolls Oblivion Gold

Gamespot has word that Bethesda's upcoming release Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has gone gold. It is due out on the 20th. They also have a rundown on some gameplay. From the article: "In true Elder Scrolls fashion, you start Oblivion rotting in a jail cell. Don't worry--Oblivion plunges you into the action and story faster than any Elder Scrolls game to date. We'll get into some minor spoilers here, though many of the following facts have already been revealed publicly. Once again you'll play as a character burdened by destiny to save the world, this time from a demonic invasion from the hellish plane known as Oblivion. Before you know it, you'll go from the dungeon cell to exploring a dank underground, killing rats and assassins while also getting some welcome introductory exposition from Emperor Uriel Septim VII, voiced by Patrick Stewart himself." I know I don't normally mention gold releases, but I'm really looking forward to this one. You know a guy is committed when he buys new RAM for a game.

Comments

Re:Will Oblivion fix Morrowind's bland NPCs?

[tukkayoot]

This is one thing they are definitely addressing in Oblivion, with their vaunted Radiant AI. To summarize, NPCs will have goals and will have various means of achieving those goals. The most often mentioned example is that of an NPC getting hungry, and going to the store and buying some food. Or they might steal it, or go hunting for it.

It sounds promising. In the official Oblivion forums I read one of the anecdotes shared by the developers while testing/tinkering with NPCs. They created some NPC that had it as part of his daily schedule to sweep his porch (or something like that), the problem is they didn't give him a broom. So what does this enterprising NPC do? He goes inside his house, gets his trusty axe, and murders a fellow townsperson who happens to have a broom, takes the broom and proceeds to sweep his front porch.

Obviously at that point the AI required a bit of tweaking, but even in this "blooper" it demonstrates some of the game's promise in the area of NPC intelligence and behaviors.

I don't think there's much doubt that this is going to be a good game that many people will become obsessed with. The question is, will it live up to the hype? Arguably, Morrowind did not, due to a laundry list of deep flaws, not the least or greatest of which (in my opinion) were the bland NPCs. They have to figure out a way to make the game fun as opposed to just plopping the player down in a vast world and expecting him to be happy to wander around awestruck by the environments they're surrounded by.

The main issue I had with Morrowind is that it was too easy, and seemed almost designed to be exploited. I suppose this is a difficult problem to avoid in an open ended game where the player is supposed to be empowered to do any number of things any number of different ways, but it really weaken the entire game experience. I really hope they fix this in Oblivion.

And here is the link...

[jeks]

The Morrowind Speed Demo.

Re:Just New Ram?

[ElleyKitten]

>>You're better off on the PC. Not much more money, and you can use it for other stuff too.

Not that much more money?!? A PC with the recommended specs will easily cost you twice as much as a 360. I hate it when people talk about PC gaming like it's cheaper than console, because it it quite clearly is not. And yes, while you can use the PC for other stuff, you could also use a much cheaper PC that you don't have to upgrade every year for all that other stuff. Sure, gaming PCs do have benefits over consoles, but don't try to pretend they aren't a lot more money.

Re:RAM = commitment?

[Sparr0]

procedural content generation is, in short, a system where you store properties and methods for generating content, instead of storing the content itself. .theprodukkt's demo scene stuff uses it, as does 3d studio max.

Imagine making a texture (not a picture) of something like wood or rusty metal in photoshop. You start with a base color, add some repetetive but randomized detail, apply a bunch of filters, and youve got something very nice. Now you save a picture of it. That is old school. The procedural way is to store a list of the things you did, and save that, then feed it to a copy of photoshop again later. This has two advantages. One, it saves a shitload of space, since the list is tiny and the resulting bitmap is huge. Two, it allows for really 'smooth' changes. You can change one step in the middle of the list and get a similar-but-significantly-different texture.

The same goes for music, 3d models, animations, etc.