RPGmasterBoo Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 (edited) Oblivion and F3 were completely, mind numbingly, boring to explore due to moronic NPC dialog and interaction, repetitive dungeons and mostly stupid quests. I don't know what it was exactly, but I found Oblivion very dull to explore too. It was (at the time) all pretty & shiny but something was missing. I'm not sure if it was repetitiveness or just a sense of generic, empty blandness to the overall "look". Grass, trees, running through a town. At any rate the exploration boredom is the main reason I didn't get terribly far into that game. I kept trying but after a few hours I was bored. Another reason to buy Skyrim for me is curiosity about the new engine & of course any modding tools/abilities. Hope it's like FNV where any small things that might bother me, I can mod more to my personal tastes. Always a plus for any game. Just never did it for Oblivion... edit..typos & stuff Oblivion's game-world was completely lifeless and the more populated parts were filled with brain dead zombies. The level design might have been made by a random generator considering how with the most advanced graphics of the time, it completely failed to inspire interest and awe. It had more variety in grass than in dungeons for christ's sake. You just need to play Gothic 3 at the same time, to see how a real world should be designed (up to a point anyway, the game was completely broken in most respects). Edited April 23, 2011 by RPGmasterBoo Imperium Thought for the Day: Even a man who has nothing can still offer his life
Wombat Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 Gothic 3 was vast...but quite empty, too...somehow realistic for deserts, though. I'd rather point out Gothic 1/2 if it is just about the liveliness of the world. I also point out the Witcher, on this account, too (There is an interesting review at RPG watch). Personally, I think Morrowind has its own liveliness but it is not presented as visuals: Most of them are in dialogues and in-world writings. Like you find dark elves are not happy with the presence of the Empire underneath but to trigger such conversation, the characters conversation skills have to be high. Also, even the house of Redoran eventually shows their political interests if players get deeper in them. These things make tings more convincing to me. They are different approaches but, I think, makes the world lively. For me, characters and dialogues are quite important, too. Something like Hanlon in FONV makes players to think before doing any action. He might be deluded and probably plays as a part of the "corruption" of already too big NCR, ironically, but his action is understandable and questions how actions of individual means in an overwhelmingly huge organization, which can be sympathized by some players, for example. Bit of a serious touch here but, there is YesMan, too. His character and manner are so friendly and pleasant inappropriately to what he is doing/talking about: a nice touch of dry humour. Entertaining, but with some twists and insight to our own societies. Haven't played FO3 but I am quite sure it doesn't have an NPC like them. I don't know about other people but, with game-plays, these things keep me interested.
RPGmasterBoo Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 I agree with that review. The Witcher was the first significant (in a genre developing way) game since the end of the infinity engine games. The cues other companies, Bioware in particular take from it are obvious. The sequel looks poised to take things even further, cementing CD Projekt as the next big name in RPG gaming. Imperium Thought for the Day: Even a man who has nothing can still offer his life
WDeranged Posted April 23, 2011 Posted April 23, 2011 (edited) Haven't played FO3 but I am quite sure it doesn't have an NPC like them. I don't know about other people but, with game-plays, these things keep me interested. Fallout 3 hasn't got a single deep character, it has quite a few likeable ones but they find themselves in absolutely no interesting situations, it's shameful how it won a writing award, the gameworld however is deep, very explorable. *edit* After a few minutes thought, Point Lookout and The Pitt were an improvement, Desmond and Ashur were reasonably memorable. Edited April 23, 2011 by WDeranged
LadyCrimson Posted April 24, 2011 Posted April 24, 2011 Oblivion's game-world was completely lifeless and the more populated parts were filled with brain dead zombies. That seems about right. I remember wandering around outside for long minutes and encountered nothing but a few wolves, rats and crabs. And they weren't close together. No buildings, no shacks, the occasional cave entrance. For some reason the game didn't inspire me to want to explore. It's weird because FOV certainly has plenty of low population areas too, with empty beige landscapes, but somehow I didn't find it 'lifeless.' Even in Two Worlds1 the urge to explore was more present than I had in Oblivion. Don't know what the difference is. Funny how the brain works. “Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.” – Alan Watts
entrerix Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 i don't think i've seen mention yet of handplaced loot, but since the dungeons are all being built by hand, one can assume that there will at least be some unique items in each of them. makes exploring WAY more fun if you know there is actually stuff worth finding out there and not all randomly generated garbage ala oblivion Killing is kind of like playin' a basketball game. I am there. and the other player is there. and it's just the two of us. and I put the other player's body in my van. and I am the winner. - Nice Pete.
WDeranged Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 Fallout 3 had a large amount of hand placed loot, hopefully they'll continue the trend.
HoonDing Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 makes exploring WAY more fun if you know there is actually stuff worth finding out there and not all randomly generated garbage ala oblivion Clearly you never came across the Ring of Disrobing. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
Tale Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 Was it underneath the rusty warhammer? "Show me a man who "plays fair" and I'll show you a very talented cheater."
HoonDing Posted April 28, 2011 Posted April 28, 2011 Typical for Bethesda, the only unique item (aside from Daedric artefacts) was also the ultimate munchkin tool: the Staff of the Everscamp. The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
entrerix Posted April 28, 2011 Posted April 28, 2011 fallout 3, and then new vegas, were each about ten steps ahead of oblivion when it comes to world building and content. if they can take that amount of content and put it in an elder scrolls game with functional levelling and a fun combat system.... much goodness Killing is kind of like playin' a basketball game. I am there. and the other player is there. and it's just the two of us. and I put the other player's body in my van. and I am the winner. - Nice Pete.
WDeranged Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 Here's an interview with Todd Howard, not much new info apart from cities definitely being walled off with loading screens, the odds of levitation coming back just went down
Syraxis Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 Here's an interview with Todd Howard, not much new info apart from cities definitely being walled off with loading screens, the odds of levitation coming back just went down Modding community go!
HoonDing Posted May 2, 2011 Posted May 2, 2011 (edited) I don't think that can be modded out. It's hardcoded. The cities in Oblivion were never made seamless as far as I know. I'm guessing Mark/Recall and similar forms of teleportation are also out, then. Edited May 2, 2011 by virumor The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
Hell Kitty Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 I used a mod for Oblivion that removed the walls, so I don't see why it'd be any different for Skyrim. Of course it's not as simple as just removing the walls, the mod made it so there were two versions of the city, the shiny new version which was now part of the overall world map, and the original walled in version which was broken and innaccesable.
Lexx Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 It's not impossible, but it will require more power to run smooth. The only reason why they are walled at all is the performance... See Fallout New Vegas' New Vegas. Even though the location is super small, they needed to place walls in between to split it up, else consoles would have died. Removing the turf on pc, I see no problems here. But well... console players. :> "only when you no-life you can exist forever, because what does not live cannot die."
HoonDing Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 (edited) Morrowind had seamless environments and managed to run on Xbox, though. I wouldn't be surprised if they walled off cities in Oblivion to prevent their Radiant AI from depopulating all their cities and botch many quests. Edited May 3, 2011 by virumor The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
Lexx Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 I don't really think so, as it's possible to control the ai range of (town)npcs, as well as all other. So it's not like they would go rampage randomly into the wide world. And if it comes to enemies or other hostile stuff... well, easy solution: Don't place them near towns. :> And as quest npcs in Bethesda games are invulnerable anyway, I don't think it would influence any quests as well. About Morrowind... I don't know, maybe the Xbox was good enough to run it well or the game just didn't had that many npcs running around in the towns and not as much objects to render (though, it also had a limited sight range with fog in the distance, unlike Oblivion which had a LOD system for the distance instead). "only when you no-life you can exist forever, because what does not live cannot die."
vault_overseer Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 So do people still believe that this is a new engine? Beth fooled me once with ESIV, twice with F3 and now trying to play me like a tard with exactly same hooks. I may be stupid, but I ain't no cretin, Beth. No no no.
Sannom Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 So do people still believe that this is a new engine? Since Bethesda said that it wasn't, I would be surprised if people still 'believed' it. Some may not know however.
HoonDing Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 Since Bethesda said that it wasn't They did? The ending of the words is ALMSIVI.
WorstUsernameEver Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 Since Bethesda said that it wasn't They did? Their reasoning is "Gamebryo was just the renderer anyway and we rewrote that so it's a new engine", and they're using mostly the same formats so.. it's just another iteration of what they've been using since a while. Sure, they may have rewrote a lot of systems and added stuff, but it's not going to be radically different. A lot of people bought the "rewrote from scratch" hype talk they used with GameInformer though.
WDeranged Posted May 3, 2011 Posted May 3, 2011 Whatever they've done with the renderer I just hope it's stable this time around, their Gamebryo implementation has been broken since Morrowind, quite shameful really.
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