By Alec Meer on October 29th, 2008 at 9:05 pm.
It’s almost as if Bethesda Softworks have just finished a game and so have decided to work on a new one. Imagine! Yes, a date for The Elder Scrolls V has been confirmed. Well, sort of confirmed. Well, mentioned. A bit.
“Potentially there’s a new Elder Scrolls title in 2010,” says Bethsoft exec Chris Oughton over at GI.biz. Woo!
Frankly, I’m going to go with reading that as “we’re definitely working on a new TES game, but we’re not quite sure about the release date yet” rather than “we’re only thinking about doing TES5.” It’s possible he wasn’t meant to let that slip, but let’s face it, it’s hardly a surprise. And with Fallout 3 scoring universally between Very Good and Really Bloody Very Good, riding that goodwill train seems a smart idea.
So, what do we want to see from TES 5? If you’d be so kind as to resist wholesale Oblivion-bashing that’d be nice (c’mon, we’ve done that to death already in other threads) – instead let’s nobly stick to constructive critique as to what can be improved, kept, removed, added, changed, funny-hatted, whatever. Let’s build TES5 right here, with the power of mere words. Strong, beautiful words.
Me, I want those bizarre insect taxi things from Morrowind to come back. Oh, and does anyone know the TES lore well enough to guess at what the setting/storyline could be? Again, I’m hoping for something closer to Morrowind’s weirdness (that ribcage city was extraordinary) rather than Oblivion’s somewhat vanilla Tolkieniess.
Edit – A helpful fellow named Luke drops me a line about the discovery that Bethesda’s owners Zenimax have apparently recently trademarked the following for clothing, video games, documentation and telecommunication respectively:
Serial Number Reg. Number
1 77051779 SKYRIM
2 77017500 SKYRIM
3 77044247 SKYRIM
4 77022291 SKYRIM
Which rather suggests TES5 will be set in Skyrim, chilly home of the fighty Nords. Which perhaps sounds a little plain, but hopefully a good opportunity for environments rather different to Oblivion’s lush forestry.
29/10/2008 at 21:17 qrter says:
As far as I remember Bethesda already said they were doing a fifth TES game quite quickly after Oblivion proved rather successful.
29/10/2008 at 21:20 Kestrel says:
They should totally set it in the Asian analogue, forget what it’s called but it has kingdoms of monkeys and vampire snakes (? my lore is rusty) and dragons all fighting each other..and it’s where the protagonist of Morrowind disappeared…sounds pretty sweet
29/10/2008 at 21:20 Theoban says:
I think the new one’s going to be set in Sumerset Isle, what with all the talk of Daedra worship and that.
But I’d like to see one set in the land of the Khajit, or even the Argonians. Hell, a return to Daggerfall would be nice, I’d love to go through Sentinel with modern graphics.
29/10/2008 at 21:26 cyrenic says:
Lame, this just looks like it’ll be Fallout 3 with swords.
29/10/2008 at 21:27 roryok says:
@theoban
hear hear, daggerfall’s setting in a new engine is something i’d love to see.
29/10/2008 at 21:31 Reid says:
I loved my Argonian spearmen in Morrowind. The brief marsh cameo in oblivion whet my appetite for an appearance in some form in any new TES game.
Having said that, Summerset Isle is pretty likely I think, especially with all the talk of it before. Plus, it can set up some more realistic “boundaries” which will shut up all those who aren’t fond of a game that plays up it’s roam anywhere abilities and then decides to suddenly shit on them with a pop-up.
29/10/2008 at 21:32 MtotheThird says:
cyrenic:
/thread
29/10/2008 at 21:34 Alex says:
Oblivion-bashing? I loved Oblivion. I really don’t know enough of the lore well enough to be able to speculate on things like the setting, though…
29/10/2008 at 21:35 subedii says:
When I saw they were planning it for 2010 I automatically thought they were planning ridiculously far into the future. Then I realised that there’s in fact only two years until 2010.
Grief I feel old now.
29/10/2008 at 21:38 MisterBritish says:
I’d like to see melee combat closer to Dark Messiah’s. And spell vfx more like Dark Messiah’s. And some interesting bloody magic, as opposed to: Do X fire/cold/elec dmg to X people at X range.
29/10/2008 at 21:39 Morte says:
I too would like to see TES5 go back to being mysterious and atmospheric, with thousand year old clues prised out of nomadic oral tradition, or secret church libraries, or monasteries with doors only visible at dawn and dusk. I think this is more about the writers deciding not to be mundane than specific locations on the map. But certain locations would help. They could set it in and around Black Marsh/Elsweyr/Valenwood where the Wood Elves and Khajiit eat each other and everybody enslaves the lizardmen. All very druidic, wild hunts in the night, weird architecture, strange nature gods ready to be awoken and whatnot. Or they could use the Summerset Isles, home to the high elves and the biggest source of heavyweight magic in the setting.
I’d also like to see them come up with a better answer to the levelling/scaling issue than the last two games, which were both rather broken unless you earned exactly as many skillpoints as they assumed would be normal.
I think it wouldn’t hurt to make TES5 smaller — let’s have 50 unique dungeons instead of 200 samey dungeons, or whatever the numbers were.
And I’d really like to get away from their “one string of unrelated inconsequential microquests per faction” model, and string together a bunch of story arcs with engaging persistent NPCs that invest the player in the story and the world. I’d avoid a straight line interactive movie structure that leaves players feeling railroaded (hello Bioware/Obsidian post 2003), and avoid a “these quests may as well be randomly generated” model like the bulk of TES3/4 which leaves me wondering exactly why I’m risking my neck. I’d prefer a “multilinear” approach like Fallout 1, one story but several paths through it and several endings, giving the player freedom to choose and putting some weight on the choices.
29/10/2008 at 21:43 Reid says:
This is the other Reid:
Heck, I’d like to see something set in Highwood. Cities in moving trees sounds awesome, as would moving from tree to tree without touching the ground; a true 3D experience.
Elsweyr, could also be cool, with a Hero’s Quest 2 vibe. I was always bummed that I couldn’t become a skooma/moon sugar dealer.
But I would really like to see a main quest that isn’t about daedra. How about the war for independence that the Orcs are waging in Hammerfell? Who wouldn’t want to be the warlord of a breakaway province?
But yes, I vote more weirdness. And warmth — the whole series has always played like a glass doll cabinet.
29/10/2008 at 21:44 Reid says:
err . . . Valenwood, not Highwood.
29/10/2008 at 21:45 Lacero says:
I’d like levitation to make a comeback. I know it makes gameplay balance harder, but surely they can restrict access in some way. Null magic zones or dispel fields or something. The Telvanni mushrooms towers in morrowind were really inventive.
Also, and I’ve not played fallout3 yet, I think they should drop their keyphrase based conversation system. Even if it was implemented well it would be odd, and it usually isn’t. Solstheim for instance.
Finally they really need to sort out their balancing. I’m not talking about the scaling, I mean if you get three 5x attribute increases a level you’re a god by level 20 and always far more powerful than anone else. If you get 1x increaes you’re gimped forever. The levelling system shouldn’t be a hard to understand and time consuming difficulty setting.
/marks Nov 2010 in his diary.
29/10/2008 at 22:02 Dr. 1006 says:
I’m hoping for Skyrim. Those Nords know how to have a good time. Oooh… Or Elsweyr: crazy cats doing drugs.
29/10/2008 at 22:08 Jonas says:
I’d really love it if Bethesda would spend some more time implementing more lasting consequences of your actions. I know better than most fans how complicated that can become, but frankly Bethesda has the resources to give it a shot, and if they pull it off, they’ll once again be guaranteed all those Game of the Year awards they’ve grown accustomed to getting.
For example, it would be fantastic if the different guild quest lines were affected by each other, so you’d get a different treatment from the Mage’s Guild if you’re already well into the Thieves’ Guild quest line by the time you show up looking for membership. I’d also really like to see some Fable 2-style permanent environmental changes such as bandit camps disappearing if you clear them out or towns growing larger if you support them.
Finally, I’d really love an Elder Scrolls game with actual dialogue options a’la Bioware, but I know it’s not a fair thing to ask – it’s just not the style of the series :)
Oh but at least do away with the “procedurally generated” (ie. computer-mangled) dialogue, please. Clearly it did not work as intended.
29/10/2008 at 22:17 M_the_C says:
@MisterBritish
Nooo, by all means try to come up with some improvements for the magick system, but I really hope they don’t follow other RPGs lead. Yes you end up with interesting spells, but you never use them, you just stick to one or two.
Black Marsh would be awesome, but the devs are sort-of moving away from the more interesting lore. Oh, sorry, you said no Oblivion bashing…
My main want for TESV is probably In-game fast travel. By all means, keep the map fast travel for people who aren’t into RP’ing, but it makes everything take so long for those of us who are. Also, storage bags or carts for whatever mount they’ll use. Pretty please. :)
29/10/2008 at 22:17 Gorgeras says:
Oblivion remains virtually untouched on my shelf due to the unfuriating consolised level system making the game impossibly hard unless you min/max with thorough knowledge of stat building. Don’t you dare run, swim, jump, fight, cast spells or make potions without an unreasonable level of clarivoyance.
Even with the changes to it in Fallout 3, I’ve been put completely off the game merely by it being included at all. That would be the second game this past month I long planned to buy but now won’t due to information discovered at the last minute.
Now I hear GTA 4 will only accept the 360 USB controller. It’s like developers are begging me to make death threats to them.
29/10/2008 at 22:20 Stick says:
Yeah, oddball like Morrowind (without the Hideously Ugly Characters) would be cool. Also, as mentioned, more focus and detail rather than umpteen square miles of drab. And… damnit, you’ve all stolen my points.
I’d like a little less freeform sandbox and a bit more actual narrative to blunder through. NPCs that play more of a part. (It doesn’t have to reach BioWare/Obsidian level of integration, just… some important, involved characters not voiced by high-profile cameo actors.)
Oh, and a combat system that doesn’t lose all fun and challenge once you figure out how to make a 100% Chameleon armor.
29/10/2008 at 22:27 Trithemius says:
More Ken Rolston, and his Glorantha-influenced mythological insanity.
(I know Ken is (apparently) working for BHG on a CRPG now but you did ask…)
29/10/2008 at 22:31 Larington says:
I don’t mean this to sound like a bashing attempt, but I really hope that they do their best to improve upon the weakness’ of Oblivion, in particular the sore points certain people will inevitably mention – The skill system is a smart idea, but needs definite adjustment so its less a case of manipulating the major/minor skills system to make the difficulty bearable.
Also, I’d like them to move away from the zoom in on character conversation thing and move to something far more free-form. Partly because I just don’t like that design, but also because it doesn’t work for a conversation involving you and multiple NPCs. (I’m still fond of the way its done in DX1)
@Gorgeras
About that GTA4 controller thing, where did you read it?
29/10/2008 at 22:31 malkav11 says:
I would like them to ditch the levelling system they’ve used in every Elder Scrolls game to date. I’ve never liked it at all, and none of the changes they’ve made have significantly improved it. Ideally I’d like something a bit more like Fallout 3′s incarnation of the SPECIAL system except of course setting-appropriate and with a few things like traits added back in. (Hell, the TES Sign system would be an acceptable substitute, if made a little more clearly interesting.)
And yes, a more original, interesting setting. Morrowind’s Vvardenfell was an amazing place to explore, and by all lore accounts they’ve got other such places to draw on. As for a main quest that isn’t about Daedra, they’ve done plenty of those – none of the main quests in Morrowind or expansions are particularly daedra-centric. The daedra give artifact quests, but they’ve always done that. I think Oblivion is actually the only one that’s had the daedra front and center, and I tend to agree that it should stay that way. Those Oblivion gates were hellatiously dull.
Finally, I’d like them to add back in stuff like levitate, teleport, and the more flexible enchantment system from Morrowind. I’m fine with them being tweaked to make them a bit easier to deal with and more intuitive, and they should interact with that new levelling system I want, but pulling those from Oblivion markedly reduced player freedom in unfun ways.
Oh! And leave off the damned minigames. Minigames are lame. They always have been.
29/10/2008 at 22:35 The Poisoned Sponge says:
I’d actually much prefer then narrow their scope so that you cost some of the open ended stuff for a much more polished and clever approach. Yes Oblivion was great, but only in certain parts like the Dark Brotherhood and the Thieves guild stuff. The rest of it was rather pants (for me). So I’d rather they focus more on giving a set of really good experiences than trying to ecompass everything. They just end up overstretched then. And please, get rid of the blood ghosts. And the fiery gates.
29/10/2008 at 22:36 Larington says:
Also, not necessarily fewer dungeons, but all of them should be more specifically purposed. In particular, all those ayleid ruins in Oblivion for which it wasn’t exactly clear how the race lived, slept, maintained themselves (Washing, (Wow an excuse to use the word) defacating, etc.).
I did like the idea of having characters going about their life, but maybe they ought to go a little bit further than that. Like characters actually prepare and consume the meals, you see a dinner dissapear properly instead of just a random eating animation and thats it.
For purely immersion reasons, of course.
29/10/2008 at 22:47 Thiefsie says:
Hire an animator
29/10/2008 at 22:49 Mister Yuck says:
My biggest complaint with Oblivion was that the game made me choose most major aspects of my character before I started playing. My first character ended up completely useless because I chose skills that sounded cool to me, but weren’t worth shit in game. Archery? Yeck.
29/10/2008 at 22:50 PHeMoX says:
I’m probably about the only one, but while Fallout 3 seems like a bullseye product, ie. top notch .. I am not at all interested in yet another Oblivion-like game.
I know I’m not supposed to bash Oblivion (anymore), but I found it really was a disappointing game.
29/10/2008 at 22:50 StarmanCyrus says:
I’d like to see a return to the moral ambiguity prevalent throughout Morrowind. There was never really a “we’re the good guys/they’re the bad guys” situation, even in quests, so much as an “us/them” situation. Vvardenfell was a very bleak environment, which put a heavy strain between the factions and made the lore very intriguing for me. Cyrodil was way too stable to really carry that mood off.
On that note, I’d like to see more factions available to the player. Like, LOTS of factions. And your progress in one story’s faction should affect the entire region; in both Morrowind and Oblivion, once you became the grandmaster of any guild, you could basically just move on and pretend nothing had happened (aside from enjoying the reward perks). I’d actually like to see a set up where joining certain factions precludes you from joining others, and at the same time picking your class skills also severely limits your other skills, encouraging players to try out a ton of different characters rather than just make one uber-toon.
The leveling system needs a bit of work too. Maybe so much as the stats you pick at the start of the game are static, or level up through quest rewards with your faction, or magic enhancements, and the only way you really level up is by improving your skills. And they also need to scale back the level-scaling from the silliness in Oblivion. I want to be able to walk into a dungeon and immediately have my head handed to me, not just go in and fight everything on par with my level. The scaling also made playing a hybrid character really hard: if you don’t level up your skills in the right way, every dungeon becomes an impossibility for you unless you play with the difficulty scaler.
29/10/2008 at 22:57 Ergates says:
I’m hoping for the return of Corky, everyone’s favourate Guar
29/10/2008 at 23:04 garren says:
Let’s see:
More choices and consequences.
Get rid of any level scaling.
Fire your dialogue team and hire people who have actually proven to make good dialogue in their previous games.
Hire better animators and voice actors too.
Fast travel sucks, think of something else. (I liked Morrowind style)
No, don’t give players the option to be master of everything and the head of every guild.
Tone down the bloom, seriously.
As for location, I’d love to see Black Marsh.
I know I’m forgetting stuff, but that’s it off the top of my head.
29/10/2008 at 23:04 Mattress says:
Y’know what would be class?
If Bethesda hired a writer whose area of expertise wasn’t Tolkien-Slash-fiction. That would be really sweet.
Also, I remember reading review praising Oblivion for how excellent a job they did recording every line of dialogue in the game (more dialogue than you could ever imagine hearing!) … this is indeed a commendable feat – if only all the dialogue was said by same five voice actors…
29/10/2008 at 23:06 James G says:
Most of my suggestions have already been made, but I’ll reiterate them again anyway.
A tighter designed would with more variation would probably be my number one priority, especially if applied to dungeons. Also, I think it would be great if they turn the imagination up a bit, and have a few areas that are off-the-wall in a non-wacky kind of way.
I’d also love to see them throw away the concept of a main quest line, and instead have the various side-quests feed in and out of this. When you first begin the game, disembarking from a boat say, or with a trade caravan, you have very little in the way of pointers to any major quest lines. Instead, the quest would reveal itself through interaction with the world and the people in it. This would allow players to forge their own paths to the end-game, possibly with different results. As such an approach would require a tight integration of the main plot into the structure of the world, and lasting effects of the quests you decide to complete, I can understand that it may be difficult to implement.
I’d also like more ‘secrets; within the game, which probably tied in with my first point. In Oblivion it was rare that you came across something that surprised you, or made you think that you had discovered something significant. For example, most of the kit you found was randomly generated, and although it may be powerful, it never felt very special.
29/10/2008 at 23:07 McCool says:
@Gorgeras
Don’t want to start an argument or anything, but the very nature of TES’s leveling system is that you can completely change what your character is like at any point – ie, there are no real lasting effects to any of your choices in the game. Even the skills you choose at the beginging are just ones you get a headstart in. If there is one thing the system needs, it’s lasting concequences to in-game choices.
Oh, and Fallout 3 uses a completely different leveling system – Fallout’s, to be precise.
I concur with what the rest have been saying in this thread, IE, moar delicious Morrowind-style mystery and depth. Personally I’m up for some Summerset Isle, and that seems the most likely option, too. The only choice that’d disapoint me would be Skyrim. After all, we’ve just played through it not long ago in Bloodmoon. I want new!
29/10/2008 at 23:08 garren says:
Oh yeah, never again use the same voice actors from your previous games, unless some familiar character makes a cameo appearance.
29/10/2008 at 23:08 simonkaye says:
I think Jonas has it right. We need to be getting to the point where we feel like our actions and decisions in the game world have really big ramifications. Like, if I save a village, I want a discount when I visit, or maybe a friendly greeting. Kvatch should get rebuilt over time. People should comment if I do something morally ambiguous. Otherwise it feels a lot like moving systematically around a map and ‘fixing’ various problems. Deus Ex managed it about a million years ago, why can’t Bethesda?
I’d also like to see something close to the ‘Radiant AI’ that Oblivion originally promised, a far more complex magic system that interacts properly with the in-game physics, and more than three voice actors.
As for setting, I’m going to guess another island – easier to explain away having a bordered game world. What’s the name of the High Elves’ place?
29/10/2008 at 23:10 McCool says:
@garren
Can’t we have the Morrowind Dark Elf actor back? He was awesome.
To this day, when I turn my computer on it growls “We’re watching you, scum” at me.
29/10/2008 at 23:15 McCool says:
Beth need to take a long, hard look at Fable II. The way the NPCs act in that – from how they turn to look at you, comment based on anything from your reputation, your attire, or maybe how they personally feel about you. Then your ability to make these simple expressions, each with appropriate reactions. It’s magical, really. If I run into an NPC in a hurry I want him to push me away and swear at me. If I stand there staring at him I want him to get concerned. Who cares about Radiant AI scheduals? I want NPCs that act like they have some awareness of whats going on around them.
oh, and NO LEVEL SCALING ARGHJ SRKASJHDFAJKSHDKASHDKJLASHLDJKH
29/10/2008 at 23:28 Pags says:
Stick in Mount&Blade’s combat system for a start, unless they can honestly do something better. Also, like everyone else said, magic needs to be more physical, otherwise it’s all a little Pokemon-ish: “Dark elf used fireball! It’s super-effective!” “Nord used frost! It isn’t very effective”
Also, and I’d like to see them move towards actions making real impacts on the game world, which comes in brief snatches in Fallout 3. I don’t care that there’s a million ways to do a quest if all those different paths lead to one outcome. I mentioned it before about Deus Ex, and really the only other games I can think of which did it as well were Omikron and Fahrenheit, but I’m willing to concede to a set plotline as long as how I go about doing it will actually change things down the line.
29/10/2008 at 23:30 James G says:
I must say, I’m pleasantly surprised at the positive things I’m hearing about Fable 2. I had pretty much written it off as going to be another so-so title from an over enthusiastic Molyneux (Molyneux*, promises the World, delivers Milton Keynes. It may still be impressive on some level, but its not what was promised, and its Milton Keynes). However all the feedback I’ve heard about it so far has been positive. I expect I’ll pick this one up when it comes to be PC, assuming its not a poor quality port.
* Post-Bullfrog
29/10/2008 at 23:44 Haplo says:
It’s going to be set in Skyrim; Bethesda went around somewhat recently copyrighting Skyrim and all things to do with that, so I’m betting my money on the land of the Nords. Everyone in the ES community is buzzing about it, and Skyrim has the most ‘I bet it’s gonna be this’ votes, by far.
29/10/2008 at 23:45 TheFool says:
I’ll mainly discuss location as the rest have covered gameplay well enough.
My key desires are (1) variety of geography/culture/architecture/etc., (2) a world far closer to 1:1 than that of Oblivion (at least in the population centers. None of this “The greatest city of all Tamriel is 2 square kilometers and has 200 inhabitants!” nonsense), and (3) this varied geography/architecture/culture must be interesting and not betray the batshit genius of the lore (*cough*Cyrodiil*cough*). With that in mind, I propose the border between Valenwood (walking tree cities ftw, and also a chance to make the wood elves something other than annoying) and Elsewyr (desert in the north, lush jungle/rainforest to the south). To hint at the High Elf lifestyle, the coast can feature a few highly-developed High Elf trade settlements. Plot can be about a potential rekindling of the Wood Elf/Kahjiiti wars in the restructuring/fall of the Second Empire.
As for the engine, my key wish: NO LOADS LONGER THAN FIVE TO TEN SECONDS DURING GAMEPLAY, DAMMIT. Exceptions for large interior areas, fast travel and extreme transitions as required, obviously, but Far Cry 2 has made all other games pale by comparison.
29/10/2008 at 23:49 Oli says:
It has been confirmed quietlythat it is set in Skyrim.
29/10/2008 at 23:52 Jonas says:
Fable 2 was positive surprise of the year for me. Got it the day after I got the highly anticipated Far Cry 2, and proceeded to entirely forget about FC2. Fable 2 is probably my favourite game of the year for the way it makes your choices really change the world, the way it delivers its emotional points, and the dog.
I’m fanatically a cat person, but Fable 2 made me want to get a dog.
But yeah, oddly my biggest problem with Oblivion (and don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed the game immensely, especially the brilliant Dark Brotherhood quest line) wasn’t the outrageously unbalanced levelling system or the immersion-disrupting procedural dialogue recorded by 8 voice actors, but the fact that I became arch mage and was still made to grovel my way up from the bottom of the Thieves’s Guild. And was then made to steal my own staff from my own tower. That was just not good enough for an RPG :P
29/10/2008 at 23:54 Pags says:
Oooh, just remembered.
Crowds. I want crowds. I don’t want to interact with each and every one of them, but I do want them to be there. If they could implement the whole Fable reputation thing with the crowds too that’d be grand. Also, no more ruins. Ruins are boring.
29/10/2008 at 23:55 TheFool says:
oh boo. I find the Nords to be the single most boring race in the series. Hopefully they play up the crazy voice shaman lore up as the “wind-based people who destroy mountains with a whisper” thing’s all they’ve got
29/10/2008 at 23:56 Bananaphone says:
More unique dungeons, please. Fill them with traps and mysteries. More quests like the thieves guild, brotherhood and Mehrune’s Razor DLC.
Improved combat would be nice too. Look at how Dark Messiah did it. Something like that, where you can use the environment to your advantage, would be awesome.
29/10/2008 at 23:58 McCool says:
@Jonas
I was EXACTLY the same with Far Cry 2/Fable. I’m even a cynophobe – mortal fear of dogs. I wanted to kick my dog in the sea, until we got to the first bit of the open game. Immediately he started barking, I duly followed him, he wanted me to dig something up.
Turned out to be a rubber cricket ball.
Moments later he recieves his “Flintoff” dog-tag and becomes my most loved animal in all fiction.
30/10/2008 at 00:03 rei says:
Too bad if it’s indeed set in Skyrim. I was hoping for something more exotic again, such as Akavir or even Pyandonea.
30/10/2008 at 00:10 Reid says:
This is Reid:
Alec, you sound like one of those ineffectual teachers giving the “hey guys let’s get along” speech right before they have a breakdown in front of the class. :>
30/10/2008 at 00:17 Pags says:
Goddamn, Skyrim. What if they overdo it with the HDR again and we end up being snowblinded by our monitors?
30/10/2008 at 00:18 Gorgeras says:
McCool, I have no problem with the TES levelling system. I enjoyed Morrowind very much. But Oblivion is not Morrowind in regards to the way a character makes ‘progress’. In Morrowind, I didn’t get weaker as I got stronger. I was able to go five levels as a fighter and then dabble in magic or stealth stuff without suffering to hideous unbalance. Not so in Oblivion, where hideous imbalance strikes at at level 3 if you were stupid enough to choose the wrong pre-made class(most of them) or badly designed one yourself to put your most used and useful skills nowhere near high enough to earn a useful ability.
Morrowind allowed me to adapt if I got it wrong, Oblivion denies me this.
30/10/2008 at 00:28 Pidesco says:
I hope they finally decide to actually improve on the Daggerfall game model, instead of making a Daggerfall with nerfed character development options, again.
They could start by giving some life to NPCs through schedules, and changing behaviour based on location. Creating an ingame economy would a must. Also, how about giving the player things to do other than crap fetch quests? Like allowing the player to actually become an alchemist, for instance. Or a merchant king. Also, being the head of a guild should influence how the game plays, instead of just being an empty ending to a quest line.
And stop making the game world smaller.
The Elder Scrolls’ core design philosophy has always been about creating a living, breathing world for the player to faff around in, so Bethesda shou+ld start acting like that premise isn’t just marketing speak.
30/10/2008 at 00:32 McCool says:
@Gorgeras
Hmm, I’ve never really considered how the scaling system could make the game that unbalanced. As I played it, all you needed was one way of doing damage (be it a weapon skill or Destruction) and the game pretty much completes itself. Even in the event you picked no damage-dealing skills what-so-ever, it’s still always possible to just train yourself some and not level up so fast, isn’t it? That said, I feel sorry for anyone that bought Oblivion expecting to get very far in it without being forced into combat. For as we all know, “Role Playing Game” now translates only to “choose how you want to kill Goblin Game” /rant
Um..constructive criticism. To reiterate, as long as they keep out level scaling, they can’t go wrong! Yeah!
30/10/2008 at 00:34 guardian says:
“Oblivion remains virtually untouched on my shelf due to the unfuriating consolised level system making the game impossibly hard unless you min/max with thorough knowledge of stat building.”
It has a difficulty slider, it’s as hard as you want it to be. I didn’t pay any attention to the stats and completed the main quest etc with the difficulty in the middle with no problems. I love the slider and really hope they keep it, when I go back to the game I turn it down until I remember how everything works.
I’d like to keep the auto-levelling but make it in some way so that people who OCD over the numbers don’t get pissed off this time, and cap the gear levels so bandits don’t get fancy magic swords. The fundamental idea of an RPG where you never, ever have to grind or get locked out of an area because the monsters have three times your hit points is a fantastic thing and made me see the whole genre in a new light.
And more physical and skill-based combat a la Dark Messiah would be cool too, so long as you can still pause and spend a minute in combat thinking about which potion to drink.
Also more flowers! I loved flower picking for some reason. They should make that the main quest and keep the goblins for side stuff. :)
30/10/2008 at 00:45 McCool says:
@guardian
It’s not anything to do with OCD number-lust why the Level Scaling is so widely loathed and thought of as what killed Oblivion. Personally, it’s the fact that it killed any oppertunity of roleplay, immersion, storytelling danger (be that adventure or intrige) from the game, making it an entirely hollow, empty experiance to anyone who wasn’t able to double-think the system away.
Alot of us LOVE the idea of visiting a temple only to get our ass handed to us, barely escaping alive. We note it on our maps, and remember to return one day when we are big and strong. Morrowind did this easily by making the Daedric Ruins so obviously terrifying that if you actually entered one as a Lvl 1 character you deserved what you got. And so what if early in the game I find an awesome lvl 20 sword lying under a bed and steal it? All that means is my story is entirely unique, I have an advantage I’ve earnt (through luck and low moral standards) and get to feel smug/guilty every time I thwack a scamp dead in one easy swipe.
30/10/2008 at 00:59 Cooper says:
Regardless of where this goes, I would love once all areas are covered for them to go back and import all the old games into the final.
Imagine the size of the game world!
30/10/2008 at 01:00 noom says:
I doubt it would be done, but one (admittidly slightly silly) thing that bugged me in Oblivion was having really good armour that I just didn’t like the look of. I like having a really pimped out character looking just how I want without the nagging feeling that I could be doing better wearing something slighty ugly. Call me crazy but perhaps a system where your armour choices are purely aesthetic, and actual defensive bonuses and such are determined by interchangable enchantments thingums. Maybe the more powerful enchantments could embellish your armours in some way so you still got some correlation to how powerul you are and how powerful you look.
I’m just thinking out loud here though. What do other people think about this..?
30/10/2008 at 01:54 devlocke says:
I appear to be completely alone in this, but I always thought the great thing about TES games was the massive scale, and thought Oblivion continued the downward spiral of the serise by tightening the focus too MUCH. My ideal TES game would be the massiveness of TES: Arena meeting Morrowind’s functionality. Arena sucked for me because I kept getting stuck in walls in dungeons and having to re-load and remember not to go into any tight corners or anything.
Morrowind was virtually perfect as far as meeting my expectations, but it wasn’t as wonderfully huge as the earlier games had been. TES has always had a problem with cookie-cutterness, but it seemed like it was virtually just as cookie-cutter/samey on Oblivion’s scale as it was on the nearly global scale (hemispheric, maybe?) of Arena.
I should note that I may be getting Daggerfall mixed up with Arena. I played them both a gajillion years ago, compared to Morrowind which I finally beat last year, and Oblivion which I quit playing last year because my PC was suboptimal for it and I got tired of dealing with stuttering.
I didn’t have any problem with balance in Oblivion, for the record, except for the first gate city. I died ten billion times there and in the demon realm that I think happened right after it. But once I leveled enough to avoid hits occasionally and score hits occasionally, I was fine. I did a custom class I called ‘Drunken Lunatic’ where I just picked the skills that it seemed to me a vagrant drunk would pick up on his own (fisticuffs and clubs and running, etc.). It was a lot of fun trying to imagine how a drunken lunatic would react to any situation, and like I said, once I got competent enough at punching people and wearing armor to not die every time an enemy noticed me, it was quite fun. I played it a lot before deciding to stop until I could upgrade my PC; I think I was one or two quests away from the end of the Thieves Guild stuff.
Someone earlier mentioned that they’d rather have the plot introduce itself subtly through the gameplay. I’m pretty sure it did in both Arena and Daggerfall. You eventually got a note telling you that some strange person wanted to meet you at a local tavern or something. It was really low-key. I had tons of fun with Arena and never did a quest related to the plot. Or maybe it was Daggerfall. One of them I played a lot, and one I didn’t play so much.
Anyways, yeah, make it bigger, so I don’t mind that it’s just as bland as the others. There’s something awesome about taking 30-day-by-ship journeys to places, and seeing a bunch of different styles of terrain and architecture in a way that makes sense, instead of seeming crammed into a video game. The only drawback was that there was a lot of sameness in the quests and characters, but… honestly, that was a drawback with Oblivion and Morrowind too.
30/10/2008 at 01:59 Cibbuano says:
I can’t agree with this more… despite the fact that you were trapped on an island, it really felt like different parts of the island were strange, new places.
Also, the fast-travel system takes you out of the game. I ended up just zipping around, never getting an appreciation for where I was going.
Morrowind, on the other hand, taught me to fear certain regions, to seek secrets out and to enjoy the scenery…
30/10/2008 at 04:08 sinister agent says:
1) Improve combat – as someone said, copy Mount & Blade for a start, then try to improve on it.
2) Improve – totally rewrite – the AI. Combat AI above all – stealth was useless in Morrowind and close to it in Obliv. There needs to be more of a grey area between ‘utterly invisible and undetected’ and ‘every living thing within a mile magically knows exactly where you are’, and the enemy and creature tactics were non-existent. That needs to be fixed, badly (I know you said no oblivion bashing, but I’m saying this in a constructive spirit of demonstration, not mud slinging). It would be fantastic to have other stealth characters attempt to backstab you.
3) Locational damage. Seriously, this shouldn’t have to be pointed out, but it needs to be in there.
4) Other adventurers. Other notorious killers and villains and merchants, and any other characters who change the state of the world regardless of what you do. It would be particularly neat if you could have a rival (friendly or otherwise) travelling around, stealing treasures from under your nose, and perhaps once in a while showing up to save your life if you’ve been respectful to them in the past.
5) A new bounty system. There’s no reason you shouldn’t be wanted in one town and hailed as a hero in another, or at the very least, it should take a few days for news of your crimes to spread (petty ones never spreading, obv). In fact, towns and cities should be essentially independent, disunited entities, especially out in the sticks – it fits the medieval-ish theme better and makes more sense for a land under an emperor’s heel. This would fit well with…
6) … meaningful faction relations. Each town could be divided into a bunch of vague factions or groups (even just general groups like ‘merchants’, ‘politicians’, ‘peasants’ and so on), and your actions or lack thereof could affect how each one treats you, and you should have to choose which of a pair of factions to join or appease (if any). If you get enough power within a faction (or even just sufficiently impress them – let’s say you fight a notorious monster type in the wilderness with magic and the news spreads – the mage’s guild should give you some sort of recognition whether you’re a member or not) you should be able to affect it in some way – get the guards to crack down on pickpokets or vagrancy, or get the mages to ban nords (annoying most nords, of course, and triggering some suitable missions), or encourage merchants to start smuggling (then grass them up to the guards for a profit/control of their shop). You could do anything. Yes, it would be a hell of a lot of work thinking of all the possibilities, but you can choose where to draw the line, and it’s the obvious place for a massive world to go.
7) A secret underwater town. No, seriously. It should be possible to reach only if you’re a lizard or a very good magic user (or befriend one). And it should be (a) worth the hassle and (b) genuinely secret, leading me to…
8) Rumours that are actually rumours and not invariably hints about a quest. So far the games have been set in a bizarre-o world where you can believe, word for word, literally everything you ever hear, and never put a foot wrong as a result.
9) Deceit. Characters who trick you into murdering someone (unless you refuse mid-mission), but instead of having your hand held or having a scripted “stop, I am innocent, you are being deceived” scene, you have to work it out for yourself, or suffer the consequences. Having to actually think about missions would be a major plus.
10) Non-lethal combat. Hand to hand in particular, or blunted weapons and stun spells/narcotic arrows.
11) Decent music, and lots of it. I got sick of all the tunes within a few hours because they were so few, and also because the ‘danger music’ invariably gave away all surprise and suspense, particularly in stealth.
12) A notice on the title screen saying “for christ’s sake, go to bed, you fool”.
30/10/2008 at 04:11 sinister agent says:
Oh, and a third person view that means clothes are actually worth buying (combining clothes and armour should come back, too, or at the very least, bring back the unarmoured skill so clothes serve a purpose), and strolling about is a bit more pleasant.
30/10/2008 at 04:15 Caiman says:
POOP is clearly the best way of playing Oblivion:
http://www.poopmods.com/
30/10/2008 at 04:26 sinister agent says:
An economy. A way to play as a nondescript opportunist instead of a superhero, a lá Christopher Livingston, or at least to day job as one – perhaps even a secret identity, so that you only became a hero or villain (with the suitable reputation and perhaps powers you’ve earned) when you put on a particular costume or cast a particular spell (which would fail if you cast it with a witness around).
The economy in particular. That wouldn’t be too difficult to do, and it’d make speech and trade worthwhile skills. It’d tie in with more advanced repercussions and factions, too, since you could open a shop and set prices, or press to legalise certain goods, etc.
Okay, really shutting up now. But really, all you need to do to come up with ideas for this is sit down and play obliv and morrowind with a notepad and write down “this would be improved by…” every time something disappoints or annoys you.
30/10/2008 at 06:10 Thiefsie says:
You’ve got some great ideas there!
Espec the alter ego one, and the rumours of rumours one :) I also like the being deceived to murder someone one without it being too bloody obvious – that would be pretty easy to do even now in games.
30/10/2008 at 08:50 Acosta says:
I would really like if they went back to think in terms of scale. I miss the bold ambition of Daggerfall and I would love they had the time to figure some way to bring back scale such massive scale to TES, or the ingenuity of the spell creation system.
30/10/2008 at 08:54 Mr_Bacco says:
I would really like the Morrowind-era system of dialogue to come back. I think it offers a lot more scope for complex quests and development of the character of individual NPCs.
Also, reinstate the old racial accents in the TES world, the old Dunmer voice was top-notch. I found the fact that all the three elven races were voiced by the same female and male voice actors in Oblivion really jarring and quite offputting.
30/10/2008 at 09:02 Malagate says:
There’s a hell of a lot of mods that beth could learn from, for instance some of the leveling mods handle it so much better than the normal leveling system.
Also as mentioned before improve the combat to be more like Dark Messiah and Mount & Blade, so mounted combat with physics interactions.
Speaking of Physics, apply it more often. I remember they touted their Havok physics gubbins and all I can recall it doing in the game was make some very questionable traps and some odd ragdolls after you killed someone. I would like to see some physics involved when I hit someone with a power swing from a two handed warhammer, although there are bigger concerns that have already been mentioned involved with NPCs that don’t involve hitting them.
Finally I’d like to see a better way for handling objects and stealing in game, it was quite a pain to move around objects to get them to sit exactly right without bouncing around and it was extremely odd that you couldn’t pick up and examine a shopkeepers wares without being called a thief and arrested (note not taking it into your inventory, just moving it around). Also the way they handled “hot” goods was strange as well. For something expensive or unique I could understand the red hand, but every generic or petty item you take also getting the red hand? As if a trader is going to be able to tell the difference between a stolen apple and an apple taken from the wilderness. They could do a lot more with it, for example if you steal from a shop who is a member of the traders guild, then all traders in town will be aware of what was stolen, so if you try to sell the stolen goods in that town the traders will call the guards on you. If you take it to another town or find a non-guilded trader then they are none-the-wiser and will buy it up (unless it is a very well known treasure).
30/10/2008 at 09:32 Dante says:
Well the obvious thing I’d like is the the much vaunted ‘radiant AI’ they touted for Oblivion to actually make an appearance, rather than the ‘like every other AI but slightly more stupid’ version we ended up with.
One path to getting that could be approaching the problems the AI poses as if it were a real world problem. One of their tall tales from development involved a quest in a drug den where the player would inevitably find the dealer dead, killed by his clients for his product. Their response was to hobble the AI, whereas I would have liked to see them approach this as if it were real, ie: give the dealer a big badass bodyguard.
Anyway, I think the NPCs are the thing that needs working on the most, they really pulled you out of the game with their stilted interaction, rubbish AI and terrible voice acting. Either get it to work or just make them static quest givers, we accept them, if you shoot for more you have to deliver it.
30/10/2008 at 10:15 Bobsy says:
Apart from the obvious “ARE YOU THE COUNT” problems, what I found most dispiriting about Oblivion was the lack of character the gameworld had. It suffered from trying to emulate the LOTR films, but there was a kernel of a good idea at its heart. That is to say, a sort of medieval roman empire.
But it didn’t work. One thing this resulted in was that all races from over the empire had migrated into its heartland and they were all “romanised”. That is to say, they were all the same.
I got bugger all impression of any culture, any heritage, other than rather bland-looking ruins that meant very little (despite being fun to explore – one thing I loved in Oblivion was the dungeoning and questing) in a wider context.
In short – Tamriel was not a place I liked being in. Which for an open-world game was a pretty major problem.
30/10/2008 at 10:18 Bobsy says:
Oh, and as sinister agent says, much, much more music. For reference, Oblivion’s entire soundtrack lasts 90 minutes.
My final savegame is clocked at 100 hours of play.
30/10/2008 at 10:21 Ian says:
If the combat is to be like Dark Messiah, we presumably DON’T want the Many Convenient Spike Racks of Doom. :D
30/10/2008 at 10:44 Ergates says:
If, as seems to be the case, it’s being set in Skyrim, it would be nice to have weather than mattered.
e.g. If there’s a blizzard, you can see very far in front of you, and if you don’t find shelter, you freeze.
30/10/2008 at 10:51 Malagate says:
@Ian, ahaha, yes it would be better not to have a game where almost every fight can be won just by kicking people into or off of things. As hilarious as it was, a hard fight against 2 Necromancers and 6 Guards on a ship should not be as easy as hiding behind a box and then kicking them off the boat one at a time as they come for you.
Which also reminds me of what that system was based on, Arx Fatalis. Arx would probably be a better system to base TES combat off of, that is to say power attacks that can be held rather than instantly used and dismemberment. If they included the oh-so-lovely system of baking pies from Arx as well then I would be most blissfully thankful.
Weather effects Ergates? I approve most wholeheartedly! Warm fur coats all round, I’d imagine glass isn’t that insulative.
30/10/2008 at 11:04 Dante says:
They probably need to hire some new art designers too. The first time I saw the forest it was pretty, but it was just a forest. Anything original was largely a bit poor.
Especially helmets. They all looked so bad I refused to wear one.
30/10/2008 at 11:11 Turin Turambar says:
I would like some dialogue with the NPCs! In Oblivion the amount of dialogue decreased dangerously close to an hack & slash game.
30/10/2008 at 11:32 Flubb says:
I’m actually surprised at all the love for Dark Messiah in this thread. I loved the game and it’s the first game for a long time that I played all the way through (with only a sleep break) in which I actually wanted to know what was going to happen next (I really don’t understand why it scored so low on metacritic.)
I felt roughly the same way in Morrowind (albeit on a much longer time scale) but less so in Oblivion. Maybe familiarity bred contempt in me, but I felt less involved in something bigger than myself in Oblivion (too much of the hero perhaps?). Morrowind I felt like a small cog in a wheel that only got bigger over time. Kvatch pretty much told me I was the saviour of the world from the beginning.
30/10/2008 at 11:39 Quine says:
I’d like to see some more advanced types of quest- eg. get hired to guard/run a caravan between cities- if the caravan master then you get some budget to hire NPCs (or not) and do some equipping, then have some basic shouty commands to move/halt the wagons and order the defenders, then go through a tense (and scenic) jaunt through the world, picking campsites, ordering watches (or pulling all-nighters with proper lack of sleep effects), scouting for ambushes and so on.
It should take some organisation to pull off, and even if nothing much happens you should feel immersed in the responsibilities, and eventually have the funds to start your own lucrative runs.
None of this is rocket science and would be a lot more interesting that the usual lonely solo runs most RPGs insist on.
30/10/2008 at 11:45 AndrewC says:
Vertical gameplay, possibly even going so far as platformy elements if they can get the control system responsive – not insta-death jumping sections or anything, but more sections where there is skill involved in traversing the environment. This is just a suggestion under the wider category of making the world more visceral and not just a pretty postcard slapped over a spreadsheet.
Players having a real effect on the world. The reason why complete destructability is never really implemented is that a player will destroy the world completely and, thus, the game. Good – let the player do that. You can destroy any town and it will slowly get rebuilt, but all the quests and shops and that associated with the town will not be available while it is being rebuilt. And everyone will hate you. So a player will be able to grief the entire world, and will get obvious feedback on the consequences.
Feedback in general. It is difficult in games with complex mechanics to know what anything does. Equally, Oblivion’s population had lives and routines and faction affiliations but it was difficult to tell. More behaviour from the people to tell what they are doing. So, in general – more information that can be got just by looking at the gameworld, rather than from sub menus.
To be fair Bethesda seem to be moving roughly in this direction in previous games anyway – so I just want them to do it better. And get some more voice actors and better animators, obvs.
But those looking for a more hardcore game should probably run away now. It will only go further in the accessible direction. Remember that scaling levelling was there so the player could have an adventure wherever they happened to be, rather than getting murdered 20 times in five minutes for no reason they could understand. For those who get worked up by the stats behind these games, Oblivion is not for you.
I want TES5 to be an RPG for those who don’t care about the stats.
30/10/2008 at 11:46 Ergates says:
I’d imagine glass isn’t that insulative.
Or that effective as armour whilst we’re at it.
30/10/2008 at 11:53 Urael says:
Simply go back to the levelling system in Morrowind and I’ll be there for TES5. I hated the system in Oblivion, where the entire world upgraded its various creatures to match your might. At Morrowind’s conclusion I was a collosus, smacking down all before me with glee. I almost never finished Oblivion, what with the perpetual hassle of levelling up only to grind away at the new and harder bad guys: what, then, was the point of levelling up if fights were going to be just as hard as they were at the start of the game? Yes, make harder bad guys: I initially want a few areas that I cannot go near for fear of having my butt soundly kicked but don’t replace the lesser ones when I’ve become an all-conquering god-character, or else how will I *know*I’ve become an all-conquering god character unless I can smack Cliff-racers down with one bored wave of my hand?
30/10/2008 at 12:07 Gurrah says:
I’m with you there Alec, the insect taxis were the best thing in Morrowind. Well not the best thing, but the whole mode of transportation in Morrowind was awesome. No quicktravel whatsoever, you had to plan your route the transportation tools you had available, and there were quite a few. Mages Guild teleportation, the insects, ships, spells for teleportation to the nearest shrine and last but not least a bit of walking, which didn’t matter at all because if you knew where to find which insect-stop and townportal-mage, almost every location could be reached within a few minutes. It was a believable system, and it worked great.
30/10/2008 at 15:23 blindpsychic says:
What everyone here has said, in addition:
Hire an animator. Like, a real one. Not some dudes who just do the basic animation, or just leave what ever the animation capture gives you.
Ok, Bethdesda, I know you want to hire a big name actor to do the voice of some great badass, but DON’T DO IT. NO. DON’T. Stop wasting your budget on getting some famous guy to sit in a recording booth for a few hours. Hire some real voice actors who are good at what they do now that you have crazy money.
30/10/2008 at 15:43 Morte says:
Hmm, I’ve just looked at a map of Skyrim and noticed Solitude. Which reminds me that “The Wolf Queen of Solitude” is one of my two favourite bits of TES lore (with “A Dance In The Fire”).
This could actually work out well, as a dark/nasty/different game instead of a vanilla Tolkeinesque first person slasher for kids. If they have a change of heart and go back that way, that is.
30/10/2008 at 17:57 Gorgeras says:
Let me put it this way. The spells you start off with are fine for level 1. For level 2 it is a very good idea to pick up the free spell you are given when you join the Mage’s Guild at the first chapter house you come across on the way to save Sean Bean. This spell is ok for level 2, as long as you don’t come across some fire-resisting loony elemental. Oh wait, this is exactly the kind of thing you have to fight as you get closer to Sean Bean. Oh sod, I’ve just hit level 3, this spell is now utterly inadequate against anything with even moderate fire resistence. The only effective spells I have are the ones I started with, which are useless against almost anything at level 3.
There is a difficulty slider, but why the hell should I use it? It’s not my job to balance the game, it was Bethesda’s.
30/10/2008 at 19:07 perilisk says:
1. Less irritating character advancement system (particularly the HP calculation and the stat multipliers). Keep ‘Use to Learn’, but just give a perk and a limited number of stat-improvement points at level up. Oh, and either unlimited training or rollover training points. I’d love something closer to Daggerfall’s system, or SPECIAL, or GURPS, but that’s not going to happen; but you can at least give us one that doesn’t practically demand metagaming.
2. Flatter challenge curve, no/less leveled content.
3. Build a world, not a game. Everything in Oblivion, from the story to the items to the characters to the guilds, screams “game” to me. None of it works, or even builds the illusion that it could. Put some real thought into how your cities work, where your factions fit in society, how people treat one another, the state of the economy and politics, and so on.
4. Not every NPC needs to have a name and a story. Focus on building a convincing illusion of simulation, versus a crappy shot at real simulation. Also, as long as you’re not giving NPCs names, don’t litter the screen with them. Oh, and get some variety in bodies and animations. Kids, old people, crippled beggars, whatever.
5. Less boring magic. Woot, 45 pts of damage. That’s like, a lot, right? If your character can’t quantify it, I don’t need to see a number. I’d love to see Frost freeze water (especially if armored enemies sink), Fire ignite flammables, Night Eye give me catlike pupils, and so on. Magic could be so much more interesting, but it will take effort.
6. Fix the NPC conversations. I don’t care if it means having less variety — just have fewer of them. While you’re at it, drop the one-keyword conversation system. Name, job, bye worked for Ultima, but we expect full lines now. Oh, and don’t let whoever designed the speechcraft minigame near the game.
7. Lockpicking in real time, as per Thief 3 (or Thief 1/2). It’s tense, but less prone to either being ridiculously easy or hard for certain gamers.
8. Drop the Big Name Voice Actor, and hire more Small Name Voice Actors. And maybe some quality animators too. Or at least make some of your Small Name Voice Actors do mocap.
9. Urgent Save the World Quest and Free Roaming Sandbox don’t go well together. Big complaint about Oblivion (and Mass Effect). Pick one or the other. Or, at the very least, let us trigger the Urgent Situation, and then compel us to resolve it before going back to Free Roaming. You can have a game and “Do Anything”, but if you want to create a world, you need reasonable consequences and structure. Suspension of disbelief can only go so far.
10. Fast travel without encounters or any sort of survival requirement was incredibly convenient, and incredibly boring. You had a much better system in Daggerfall, go back to it and expand it. Oh, and make mounts suck less (mounted combat, maneuverability, etc.). I’m trying hard to think of a game that had mounts and implemented them worse than Oblivion.
30/10/2008 at 19:27 Thirith says:
perilisk, while I agree with most of what you wrote, this one I don’t agree with at all:
Pre-written, full sentences work for pre-defined main characters, but if I’m supposed to play any character I want fully written lines are counter-productive. They define the PC’s personality, and you can’t provide the equivalent of “name” and “job” for a dozen different personalities.
There are exceptions: lines where you’re not asking for information so much as making a point, threatening, trying to flatter etc. For those you can easily provide full sentences, but the more generic ones? Leave them as the equivalent of “name, job, bye”, as far as I’m concerned.
30/10/2008 at 19:28 OJ287 says:
Mods are the best market research you can get for a sequel – they need to look at the best mods out there for the predecessor and do them to a pro standard.
New game areas like moving ships and a castle builder would be a step up. I want Bethesda to be ambitious.
31/10/2008 at 01:58 MetalCircus says:
Skyrim? Snooze.
31/10/2008 at 02:00 Moonracer says:
while my ideas are perhaps still far to ahead for games I would like to see and Oblivion type game where the NPCs and buildings/vehicles are all controlled through a sort of very slow RTS system. Like a giant RTS skirmish between two or more computer opponents and you essentially acting as a freelance unit on the field.
Set the pacing and AI gamemasters up right and you’ve got a real live dynamic world with an insane amount of replay value (every game plays out different!
31/10/2008 at 09:36 Ergates says:
What perilisk said.
31/10/2008 at 11:57 Jason Moyer says:
Eh, Skyrim? So basically Bloodmoon then?
I’ve always wished they’d do a game in Black Marsh or Summerset Isle.
10/11/2008 at 03:21 David says:
I want to see werewolves with 2 claws visible for attacking people, and vampires with coven quests, and a coven that you can interact with. please. if not I really will not buy this new game.
10/11/2008 at 03:29 David says:
the whole surprise of “hey the main game quest just got easier because i was attacking this thing and it infected me with a disease that makes my stats stronger but i have to pay a small annoying price” has just faded off into the distance… what’s with the segregation of this element of power and mystery? this was not something that was meant to be on a seperate cd people…
19/11/2008 at 02:11 John says:
This is what I want:
SHIPS that you can sail around on.Pirate combat between ships.
Horses/mounted combat, modelled directly after Mount And Blade. Like Bethesda should just buy the Mount And Blade company and use that engine directly.
More openness.
A better developed ecosystem- the plants look good but I’d like to see more animals running around in it.
More atmospherics/weather. Morrowind nailed that but Oblivion really felt dry in that regard.
Keeping the levelling system about like it is in Fallout 3. Much better than the Oblivion one.
Tons and tons of equipment and spells.
19/11/2008 at 02:21 John says:
Thirith, they actually did a great job of good dialogue in Fallout 3, and had it character-dependent by making basically any character stat be fair game for triggering a new dialogue option. When talking to Reilly I used the Gun Nut Perk, the Medicine Skill, and my Karma Level all at once. That’s a great way to have it character dependent.
19/11/2008 at 21:14 theRobzilla says:
I agree with Pidesco, an in game economy would be a nice addition. With traveling traders, ala Fallout 3. Also, after buying all the houses and everything to go in them, and selling Daedric armor for less than half of what it’s worth just to acquire huge sums of septims just became a dead end. There should be more opportunities to spend your wealth on worthwhile things. Like hiring a merc do to your dirty work, or opening a shop where traveling npc’s and traders could buy all the loot you’ve acquired. I know it would likely not be a main focus for Bethesda, but it would be a great addition.
Also, bring back Boats and Giant fleas for fast travel; and mark and recall to more than one location.
03/12/2008 at 02:27 Blindtostito says:
Look theres only one thing I want in this game. That would be skooma. Not just skooma, no fuck you. A mountain of skooma. One I can dive in then come up look at all the people who try to get my skooma and go “No fuck you! This is my skooma, fuck you! Then I can make a tower where I throw skooma down at crowds then jump down and retrieve it, no fuck you thats not it! You can only drink four potions, no fuck you, I can drink skooma like a wolf that just came out of hibernation! And the city of skooma! What about the city of skooma!? No fuck you, I didnt get it in Oblivion, I want it this time around. Yes where there is skooma showers and the lightning bolts hit you with a jolt of skooma, no fuck you it is possible. You have the power to make this game out of pure skooma, do it. It shouldnt matter where it is, no no no fuck you, all that matters is that there is skooma.
03/12/2008 at 02:31 Blindtostito says:
I also agree with the other opinions posted despite the fact that I am distracted by my brilliant ideas. Really, a mountain of skooma, think about… no fuck you.
23/12/2008 at 18:58 Jeremy says:
Spoiler alert for Oblivion? Maybe? Play it for 10 minutes and you’ll be unspoiled at any rate.
I’d like to see the story develop in a way that is more interesting and lends itself more to justifying the 35 hours of exploration before actually advancing the plot. In Oblivion, you’re in jail, then holy crap the King dies then… is that an elven tomb? Oh look, a run down fort.. 30 hours later (or months in game time) you suddenly remember you just witnessed the murder of the king and should probably investigate it for a bit. Strangely, everything else stands in the same place too. It just seems like there are these huge things happening in the world that nobody cares about. Oblivion gates? BFD, I’m going to wander back and forth between the castle and my home. This is more a complaint with plot development than anything else, it just seems like Bethesda jumps into this huge dramatic story arc so quickly that it doesn’t make sense to include any exploration (thankfully they still do). I know its a game, but still, if I just witnessed a king get murdered and he cryptically mutters a prophecy of cataclysmic portents, I *might* check it out before satiating my wanderlust. Maybe that’s just me. Perhaps easing into the story would make things like traveling for 5 months straight more acceptable. Would it make sense to have a point of no return? Functionally it may not work, but in the world of reality it certainly makes a whole lot more sense.
I also liked the idea (I don’t remember who wrote it, and quite frankly, I’m not going to reread all the above posts) of rumors and things like that actually referring to something in the game that is not quest related. It’s all about building a world and creating smaller stories within that world to make it authentic. Fallout 3 started things moving in this direction and, honestly, I connected more with all the little side stories in Fallout than I did in the main story. Bethesda built a better world than a main quest, and I applaud them, now they just need to bring those concepts together.
Which brings me to another point, don’t make a single followable main quest. I’m going to reference Fallout in this little quip: If I leave the vault and decide, hey, I’m evil and I’m going to become a raider, why in the world would I even care about my father or fighting the Enclave? It just doesn’t make sense that I would go about murdering, pillaging and cavorting… then find my dad and save the WORLD. Seriously.
Last thing, make the characters a part of the world around them. React to things around them, like shooting their partner with a sniper rifle. I would run, why doesn’t the npc? Hey, I saved your life and all you’re going to say is, “Welcome to Megaton” for the next 45 years of your life? Even a repeatable yet believable phrase would be better, like, I don’t know, “Hey, what’s up?” or whatever periodically / geographically / racially correct dialogue that would be.
Honestly, a lot of these things are minor in the sense of functionality. Does the game work without these things added, sure, it’ll still get a bunch of 9s and 10s, but it just breaks the immersion of a game when NPC’s react just the way we would expect a code controlled AI script to react.
23/12/2008 at 19:44 Thirith says:
Definitely agree on that one. What gets me about Oblivion is that they have the toolkit to make all of that happen, but they screw it up with writing that’s at best perfunctory, at worst laughable and with plotting that is transparently “gamey”. Heck, they even manage it every now and then with great quests, but the main quest is so… nothingy.
I enjoy Oblivion for the world it creates (especially with the Unique Landscapes mods) – I basically play it as a sort of soothing walking simulator with the occasional quest in between, though.
06/03/2009 at 21:22 mop45star says:
OK first of all :
I am a HUGE fan of oblivion so i thank bethsda for such a great game
Although i have not finished playing oblivion but up until now i have logged to 320 hours of game play :) :)
So you could see how much i love this game
Now the one thing that i wish for in tes v is the story to still be in cyrodiil as i much like to know what will happen to it after martin because the left the story in a interesting level
(spoiler)
I mean when you talk to high council after the martin’s transformation
Now if we are to talk about the in-game clues of tes v it is most likely summerset isle
But i really hope that the story sties in cyrodiil and at the beginning of the game the ask about your your oblivion hero’s name and race and sex so that he will be mentioned in conversations in tes v that will be just awesome :o wow!
I will not talk about anything else as I like it the way it is
Ohh i can not wait till it is out
29/03/2009 at 14:40 simonkaye says:
Someone should forward this thread to Bethesda.
Keiron? Alec?
19/04/2009 at 17:17 XMadscottsmanX says:
4th comment down, cyrenic
He says, and I quote: “Lame, this just looks like it’ll be Fallout 3 with swords.”
I’m insulted! The Elderscrolls games were the back bone of the Fallout 3 gameplay. Oblivion was as good as Fallout 3 if not better. To say a sequel to Oblivion is just “Fallout 3 with swords” is stupid. Fallout 3 was just Elderscrolls with guns.
Has he even heard of Oblivion?
Sorry if I’m ranting a bit. I just thought it was a stupid comment.
19/04/2009 at 17:37 jalf says:
Oblivion was a terrible game. It was an impressive sandbox, for the time, but it is virtually unplayable without at least 3 mods installed.
That’s why I was impressed by Fallout 3. It was the first indication I’d seen that Bethesda had actual game designers employed. (Next step: Prove that they also have animators)
Apart from that, I strongly suspect cyrenic was making a joke, because Fallout 3 often gets branded “Oblivion with guns”. ;)
19/04/2009 at 20:09 XMadscottsmanX says:
Fair enough. I’ll accept that.
28/06/2009 at 08:25 Zephyx says:
@jalf: are you kidding me ? I played oblivion with 2 years without mods!!! 2 years!! And besides all the minor glitches and errors, it was a great game; not just an awesome sandbox, but exciting material that no other game has established before
01/09/2009 at 18:56 David says:
I think at least two provinces with one of them being Cyrodiil warring, like Skyrim trying to secede from the Empire and you could choose to help Skyrim or the Empire, and if you choose to help Skyrim you could choose its political persuasion(Democracy, Monarch) a whole second life element, with economy and proper investment in shops for a stipend of gold every week or you could beat the shopkeeper into paying you protection money anhelping the criminal underworld, there should be more of a criminal underworld which would have warring gangs trying to control territory(kinda like the Camonna Tong and the Thieves Guild but more immersive)
16/10/2009 at 23:02 chowdmer says:
everything in oblivion was generic. at first i was pretty excited cus i am a morrowind veteran and i wanted some new TES content to play with and oblivion was pretty nice. i was impressed. after 2 years of oblivion and an invincible armored mage charectar that cound kill a lich on hard i like 5 hits i started to notice that you could go very far in the wilderness without encountering anything but a rat or a goblin or nothing at all but in fallout 3 there were super mutants shooting at you and raiders attacking you from every direction. TES 5 should have more enemies and more action. and if you get overwhelmed you should be able use a V.A.T.S similar combat system to take on te group with ease.
mounts in oblivion sucked eggs, i got my first horse and it actualy seemed to be slowing me down cus i could hardly control it’s crappy controls. armor rating in oblivion meant nothing. you could not actualy tell the difference from iron to deadric in an actual fight. hand to hand was underpowered and there were no spiked nuckles or anything cool to slap on your fists to pump up the DMG. stealth was ok. TES 5 should has destructable buildings and mounted combat. you should be able to actuay hear your charectar talk. see him/her climb up a ladder. open a chest or drink a potion/eat. WTF bethesda? are you to lazy to put some more effort into anamations? anyway TES 5 should be more immersive, put less time into graphics and more time into the actual content. add a quest where a master inventor discovers the secrets of flight and you can purchase a small private zepplin or whatever. add more variaty and less graphic work. lol, srry for my awful spelling
16/10/2009 at 23:03 chowdmer says:
everything in oblivion was generic. at first i was pretty excited cus i am a morrowind veteran and i wanted some new TES content to play with and oblivion was pretty nice. i was impressed. after 2 years of oblivion and an invincible armored mage charectar that cound kill a lich on hard i like 5 hits i started to notice that you could go very far in the wilderness without encountering anything but a rat or a goblin or nothing at all but in fallout 3 there were super mutants shooting at you and raiders attacking you from every direction. TES 5 should have more enemies and more action. and if you get overwhelmed you should be able use a V.A.T.S similar combat system to take on te group with ease.
16/10/2009 at 23:04 chowdmer says:
TES 5 should have lightning bolts that you can ride if you get a certain spell.
17/01/2010 at 23:33 rootbeer9000 says:
Well Oblivion was fantastic but here are some improvements
1. Bring back morrowind weapons like spears throwing knives, ninja stars etc.
2. More gore, decapitation limb severing.
3. Maybe add a race.
4. CAPES AND CLOAKS THEY ARE BAD ASS
5. Bring back morrowinds useless spells like levitate
6. Better combat system more animations
7. Put ridable flying creatures
27/09/2010 at 00:26 jon says:
you idiot elder scrolls came out 1st so fallout is just an other elder scrolls
21/10/2010 at 06:14 CrackerJackerHeader says:
Dude, your more of an idiot than your friend is! fallout isn’t completely like Oblivion. There is one major difference. Fallout 3 is in modern times not midevil times. People in oblivion didn’t have guns dumbass!
21/10/2010 at 06:10 CrackerJackerHeader says:
Fsha! Why would you want the new elder scrolls game to just be in summerset isles. I say they should make Tamriel instead. With a few tricks of my own put into it. Just add the sweet robes and weapons you get in assassin’s creed and feed dragons all through the mix and thats one badass game. Maybe even more badass than Fallout new vegas
hBKy
21/10/2010 at 06:17 CrackerJackerHeader says:
The names Mike by the way. Taint no business of yours maybe.