How big world do you want?

[Nihatek]

Hello,

 

my point of view is little different. First of all i think that defining how many locations game should have is pretty stupid - you can have great game which you play for more hours then another with many locations - just becase locations that one location could be bigger then all in second game combined.

 

With locations i think that several things are really nice to consider:

a) story of that location should have sense (eg. icebergs in equator area just dont make sense, also winter country with sexy-half naked amazons too)

b) there should be diversity of locations - i really loved World of Warcraft, because no location looked like something else (right now i am not telling to draw it same as wow, but that i think that not every location should look like mid-european forest with some kind of stronghold in there all the same. And that i would like to see a see near the desert as well as go through creepy swamp, so i get to "scottish" style highlands with castle on the cliffs from where i can finally reach final destination of high mountains where air is so thin air, that you can barely breath, not even think about fighting - and where i finally found enlightment.)

[AGX-17]

I don't really care about # of locations or maps or whatever, so much as the actual content that goes with them. Having 100 locations is useless if most of it is empty land imo. It's kinda how fallout 3+ felt for the most part. You had interesting locations interspersed with vast amounts of barren land which had nothing of interest, and were a chore to walk from and to. Luckily you could quick teleport to locations once you've discovered them though I suppose.

 

Skyrim on the other hand wasn't as bad. It still has a similar setup, but as you're wandering through the map you find a lot of cool little things. Either the AI doing something interesting, some sort of encounter, random NPCs going about their way, etc..

 

You're saying Skyrim was better for doing something no different from F3? What you're talking about is random encounters between locations and you find a lot of cool little things all over the capital wasteland. At least Fallout 3 had a then-unique setting and interesting locations and destinations, for the most part. Skyrim's level of cut & paste caves, abandoned castles, nord ruins and dwemer ruins is a lot more monotonous. Fallout 3 did a great job with environmental storytelling (though not with written/narrative storytelling,) especially because it's a much more relatable setting.

 

A skeleton in a dungeon in Skyrim is just another skeleton in just another dungeon in just another medieval stasis fantasy world lousy with skeletons. A skeleton on a soiled mattress locked in some sewer utility room is a little tragic story of the Great War's aftermath.

Edited November 5, 2012 by AGX-17

[Elerond]

I personally disliked how enviroment was designed in Fallout 3, for first sight it looks cool, but when you start to wander around it start to feel that things are randomly dropped around the map there is few logical explanations why settlements are where they are, how settlement get their food/water/or both. There were lot of cool ideas in Fallout 3, but they feeled to me that they where disconnected from each other. Skyrim in gave me much better feeling that things in the world are connected and even that Skyrim had lots of things that I didn't like, enviromental design was not one of those, I would say that it may have best enviromental design in Bethesda's games or at least it shares top place with Morrowind.

[rjshae]

I like how the "don't care" option is in the lead. People seem to trust OE a lot

I think the fact that they are professional game designers says a lot. We all have our own personal preferences in what we desire for a game, but they are the ones who will have access to the full picture and the experience to know what makes the most sense in terms of implementation. I trust them in the sense that I trust the plumber to fix the plumbing or a lawyer to understand the law (plus their record speaks for itself).

Edited November 5, 2012 by rjshae

[AGX-17]

I personally disliked how enviroment was designed in Fallout 3, for first sight it looks cool, but when you start to wander around it start to feel that things are randomly dropped around the map there is few logical explanations why settlements are where they are, how settlement get their food/water/or both. There were lot of cool ideas in Fallout 3, but they feeled to me that they where disconnected from each other. Skyrim in gave me much better feeling that things in the world are connected and even that Skyrim had lots of things that I didn't like, enviromental design was not one of those, I would say that it may have best enviromental design in Bethesda's games or at least it shares top place with Morrowind.

 

The world design (narratively) and justifications in F3 are terrible, but that's neither here nor there. I can write of paragraphs of complaints about F3 in this area, but the topic here is the basic size and scope of the game world, not how the end result is narratively justified. Most of Fallout 3's locations are based on the real DC area, not just randomly sprayed accross a randomly generated map.

Edited November 5, 2012 by AGX-17

[nikolokolus]

I guess I like a game to be "big," but not if it's mostly filler. Honestly, the more I think about it, the more I just don't care.