TESV: Skyrim preview

[CaptHawkeye]

Hilariously it's a lot of what Stark said. Obsession with simhard-y stuff. Wasting effort into making detailed game and engine mechanics that never become greatly relevant to the gameplay.

[General Zod]

That's the biggest problem I had with Oblivion. It totally kills my immersion and suspension of disbelief. The gameworld feels huge, and it is, and there are hundreds of places to go (caves, forts, ruins and so on) but they all feel the same (one cave is pretty much the same as any other cave), and the cities feel more like large villages with walls around them. I can't wrap my head around it.

I don't even know if it's an engine limitation. Would it be so much of a stress on the system if they put in crowds where the market place is, or actually filled up the seats in the arena so it doesn't feel like you're playing gladiator for only a couple of dudes? The other issue is interactivity. You can talk to any NPC in the game, but you're limited to 'where are the shops' and 'hey know a good rumour?' questions. The problem is once you get an answer to the above two, you have literally no reason to click on an NPC in the game ever again, unless they're offering you money to do a job for them.

Just like Fallout?

At least games like Mass Effect have the decency of making it so you don't actually have an option to talk to the NPCs if they're not going to provide you with anything useful.

[Aaron]

At least New Vegas made an attempt to portray a wasteland civilization, rather then a billion fucking raiders like in FO3

[Chardok]

True. New Vegas itself felt...like. not abandoned. At least there were dudes in the casinos playing games and drunken NCR wandering about the streets for flavor. There was an attempt with NV, at least.

[Stofsk]

I haven't played Fallout 3 or New Vegas, but that last point is another thing that shit me about Oblivion too. The problem is, modding the respawn levels so that it takes a lot longer for monsters to respawn is actually detrimental to the system. I think it's something to do with the fact that the game needs to keep track of too much information which piles up if you delay the respawn time to something half way realistic (so in Oblivion's case, instead of a couple days passing before the Cave of Evil has been repopulated, wait a few months for a new band of monsters to move in). I think it leads to crashes or something, I remember reading something about this on TESNexus because ultimately I hated riding my horse through the countryside and stopping every minute or two to kill a wolf or black bear or fucking troll and I was going to mod it out of the game.

It's one of the reasons I just stopped playing Oblivion.

[Artemas]

Even so, Fallout 3 was better than Oblivion in regards to the size of it's population. It was a post-apocalyptic wasteland, of course it's going to be fucking barren. Likewise with Morrowind, which was basically Australia; it's the far away place they send prisoners to. TURNS OUT THERE AREN'T MANY PEOPLE ABOUT.

Anyway, Stark basically hit all the points, so I guess we unlocked the secret of game design? lol.

[Stark]

Morrowind had a better feel to it largely because it was so empty; everything was supposed ot be blasted and broken and semi-abandoned. I pretty much never went to Vivec so I dodged the hilarious 50-person city.

What's strange is that other games around early TES era went out of their way to dodge it. Ultima Underworld 1 & 2 had the entire plot revolve around you being in a prison, because they couldn't do the Ultima-style open-world without it being amazingly shit. Then Daggerfall came along, and although it's 'huge' with a giant 'area', it's really just a flat plane 1000kms a side with 50 towns in it; hardly a technical achievement. Daggerfall however introduced the TES move towards 'simulationist' play, where it was actually about faction grinding and talking to bitmaps rather than adventuring. Oblivion just took this further - now you can (really badly) stack objects or have cutlery on a table be interactable, but you can't actually do anything game-useful with it and it results in a totally fucked physics system. This is a sign of bullet points (like 'interactive world' or '5903820498 objects' or 'flexibility') taking over from actual utility.

I mean, what was the point of putting those five billion rusty tin cans in Fallout, again? Was seeing a washroom full of interactable, grabbable, inventory-listable useless crap really adding to the game? Why are there 50 useless items in every shop, and yet you buy things through a fucking menu?

[Vympel]

I mean, what was the point of putting those five billion rusty tin cans in Fallout, again? Was seeing a washroom full of interactable, grabbable, inventory-listable useless crap really adding to the game? Why are there 50 useless items in every shop, and yet you buy things through a fucking menu?

Who the fuck knows, really (there's a Perk in NV's Dead Money DLC that finally gives Tin Cans a reason to exist though, apparently). Man that crap is so annoying when looting bodies in New Vegas. Oh yay, a butter knife.

[Stark]

What's amusing is that if they weren't married to menus, the junk would actually serve a role. In Ultima 7, containers contained 'paper doll' objects, and things could be hidden under each other, you would need to organise your shit, etc. Having to actually 'loot' a box (ie, dig around miscellaneous crap to find actual player-useful items) is not represented by having a long list of useless crap.

[Vympel]

What's amusing is that if they weren't married to menus, the junk would actually serve a role. In Ultima 7, containers contained 'paper doll' objects, and things could be hidden under each other, you would need to organise your shit, etc. Having to actually 'loot' a box (ie, dig around miscellaneous crap to find actual player-useful items) is not represented by having a long list of useless crap.

Yeah. Gamebyro would play havoc with that, watching all the shit fly everywhere the moment you distrub it, though (witness the bizarre thing that's been in the engine since Oblivion, where if you move a single object on a table, or other surface, every object nearby seemingly floats off the surface for no discernible reason).

Oh, tin cans did have a use in Fallout 3, I forgot - you needed them to make Nuka-Grenades in Fallout 3, and they also made good Rock-It Launcher ammo, whilst in vanilla New Vegas they're used to make Powder Charges. The "Junk Rounds" perk in Dead Money allows you to craft ammo out of scrap metal and tin cans.

[Stark]

Yeah, they'd have to use Ultima 7 style 2D windows, because their physics engine is so fucked. Turns out all that stuff was never really helping the game? It's ironic that the engine has little actual physics in it, outside of 'table falls over when fork is dropped'.

[Eleas]

Yeah, they'd have to use Ultima 7 style 2D windows, because their physics engine is so fucked. Turns out all that stuff was never really helping the game? It's ironic that the engine has little actual physics in it, outside of 'table falls over when fork is dropped'.

I never liked the inclusion of Havok physics into Oblivion, mostly because Havok is segregated from the rest of the engine. It was hard to miss that when you could model objects all you liked in matters of shape, but had to borrow the physics properties from other objects because Havok couldn't be changed.

Mind you, the mod that gave you a wizard's spell that blasted an enemy into the air almost made up for it. God damn, that was beautiful.

[Stark]

And then it bugged out, and every impact did 1000000000 havoks, and suddenly stabbing a guy sent him sailing out the window and you were killing everyone in one hit, all cause of a system that doesn't even appear to be used for particle effects or projectile arcing.

[Eleas]

And then it bugged out, and every impact did 1000000000 havoks, and suddenly stabbing a guy sent him sailing out the window and you were killing everyone in one hit, all cause of a system that doesn't even appear to be used for particle effects or projectile arcing.

That's what bugged me, too. Havok doesn't even seem to be there for any purpose. It's mainly in Oblivion to... advertise that the game features Havok physics, I suppose.

[Wing Commander MAD]

You can talk to any NPC in the game, but you're limited to 'where are the shops' and 'hey know a good rumour?' questions. The problem is once you get an answer to the above two, you have literally no reason to click on an NPC in the game ever again, unless they're offering you money to do a job for them.

I'd chalk that up to the stupid trend to have all conversations needing audio dialogue. Yeah, the NPCs in Morrowind didn't really say all that much unique either, but they felt more varied due to having more conversation topics. If only there were decent synthesized voices that could be used if they're going to insist on using all audio conversations. Mind you that wouldn't solve all the problems. A far better approach would be have voice overs only for major NPCs and the rest have text with voiced greetings and such. Not using big name actors so you can have more than half a dozen voice actors couldn't hurt either. Oh and going back to Morrowind style menus or similar would be an improvement in every aspect of the game the the menu system touches.

I'll also agree on the annoyance of having everthing* Havoked in Oblvion. My personal favorite is loading a save inside a house where the character was stationairy at the time of saving, only to have objects magically go flying about the room. Reload the save and it may happen again, or not. Why couldn't only actors and weapons/armor use Havok? Maybe they'll have learned from their mistakes.

I wander what preorder/collectors bonus they'll offer this time around? I actually liked the Pocket Guide to the Empire that Oblviion came with, the coin on the other hand was rather meh (actually mine is unopened).

Note: Apparently paint brushes of all things have no physics and just float, though they do have collisions. Supposedly you can make ladders out of them, though why you'd try I'll never understand.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Note: Apparently paint brushes of all things have no physics and just float, though they do have collisions. Supposedly you can make ladders out of them, though why you'd try I'll never understand.

Really? You never knew that? It's quite simple, really.

AI actors can't jump. They're also approximately dumb as a rock, so if there's not a great huge staircase broad as an avenue up to where you are, they can't get to you.

AI actors who aren't cowards (IE, beggars/townsfolk) are far, far too stubborn to go away when you've angered them.

Therefor, if you get to any place high up where they can't get to you, and they don't have any ranged capability like spells or archery, you can shoot them dead/zap them dead all day long and they'll just run around like low-grade morons, jolting themselves left and right as they futilly try to run towards you only to realize you're too high up for them to hurt, so they just kind of... Keep doing it.

And if there doesn't happen to be a convenient rock nearby, you can always just build your own paintbrush ladder and sniping platform.

[Stark]

The one thing Oblivion needed was a way to be easier, right?

[ShadowDragon8685]

The one thing Oblivion needed was a way to be easier, right?

The mods I installed when I first got it (I mean, the ones other than the one to make ladies naked, of course... And other than the huge number of houses and what-not...) actually made it pretty damn hard. Melee was more or less an impossibility, even with good gear and cheatedly-strong character I'd get my ass handed to me in melee, so I preferred archery and (if possible) stealth.

Never actually used the paintbrush trick myself. Oh, since they're sky-anchored, I suppose you could also use them to prevent NPCs from moving through a doorway if you put a couple of them in it.

[Stark]

Oh man, remember how ranged weapons all sucked? There's some quality game balance. And good old walking backwards! Those were the days.