Rock, Paper, Shotgun

08/11/2010 at 22:11 Ricky says:

Watching that just reminds me how much I thoroughly enjoyed playing Morrowind and Oblivion. :) Good times.

Please, please don’t use that Oblivion/Fallout engine ever again though. I’m pretty sick of it now.

08/11/2010 at 23:12 alinkdeejay says:

We’ll expect more from the gameplay, and AI, and the general interaction in the gameworld, so the game will be even more demanding to build an engine for, yet we want less bugs and smoother animations?
I don’t think you can have it all, unless you’d have something like unlimited resources.

Sure, New Vegas was bad in that aspect because it was even buggier than Fallout 3, especially on release. But to think a new engine would solve all bugs and performance issues, and on top of that allow the game to expand on gameplay elements so that we can rightfully call it a sequel, rather than just a graphical update with old gameplay, I think we would be asking too much.

If they’re going to improve on the graphics, and on the general depth and details of the gameplay, they’re going to have to cut corners somewhere, one way or the other. The general attitude now is about the same as when Morrowind was the current game and we were looking forward to Oblivion.

We thought everything would have to be perfect. For the most part it was a big improvement but there were some issues due to the complex nature of the game, especially AI routines. Now we want things improved upon for the next elder scrolls but we’re once again asking the impossible. It’s like we haven’t learned from the very recent past and setting ourselves up for frustration.

I say for the next game, simplify the rpg elements even more (I know it’s not a popular thing to say, I dont give a damn) so there’s less that can go wrong that would cause bugs. Also simplify the interactions with npc’s a bit too, except dialog trees, which can be improved a lot, make it mass effect-esque. Don’t give the AI too many tasks, it’ll just bog up processing power. I don’t give a shit that this or that npc eats breakfast at 8 am, and the other gets up at 6 am and goes to bed at 9 pm. Most of the annoying bugs in the previous games on any engine had to do with the AI being dumbasses.

Make them simplistic where you can rather than making them all unnessecarily complicated. That’s why npc’s dissapear, start running away unexplicitly, attack you out of the blue, get stuck in some animation loop, you name it.

There’s plenty of great rpgs with simple npcs. If they prioritized on working like that, maybe we could have it all, better gameplay and better graphics, and a bigger more detailed world to explore.

09/11/2010 at 05:16 Travis says:

Everywhere on this internet people want to share their opinions on how New Vegas either is too bleak and barren or how it’s too full and messy. It’s strange.

I say, it’s a damned good game.

09/11/2010 at 06:53 Davie says:

Not bad, and yeah, a new game would certainly be nice. My only absolute demand is that they remove the wooden character models and hire someone who can actually animate. /entitlement

09/11/2010 at 11:15 alinkdeejay says:

If the engine hasn’t been decided yet, let me suggest far cry 2′s Dunia engine, it’s capable of great graphics, although it’s mostly the work of individual animators, we know great animations can be done in this engine, and renders a big open world with very little pop-up and lag when moving between cells, and handles vehicles really well too so we could have horses that don’t feel like a chore. The fire stuff would also be awesome, imagine spells actually burning or freezing the environment. Magic would become a fun and viable option in an elder scrolls game omg. It seems moddable, although ubisoft never really supported that.

And the biggest up-side would be that it runs great on medium specced pc’s nowadays.

Only problem I can think of is that it would require some sort of deal with Ubisoft. And that right there is why it will never happen.

09/11/2010 at 12:54 NicelyDicely says:

I have to applaud the chap for a rather well done rap and video, but I do have to say that I never was so bored out of my mind as in any of the Elder Scrolls.

Then again I’m the kind of guy who prefers to actually have a point when doing something and direction, and purpose. Not this kind of “So hai, here’s this humonguous world and we really don’t care what you spend your time with, though you might be able to find a plot thrown in if you just look carefully enough.”.

Dunno, I always felt that if I wanted to go into a fantasy world a good book is much more interesting. Or, if I wanted to be astounded by FX and CGI, a really properly well done movie.

Only few games manage to bridge the gap with a mix of great game world and open, yet semi-concise game plot. Deus Ex and VTM Bloodlines did it fairly well, and others have, too…the issue with it I think is mostly making the world itself interesting enough to actually get me to bother with it.

And just making every cup and candleholder an item just does not cut it for me.
_IF_ it were to fascinate me as a plain “Giant open world where you can do anything” it would have to do far, far more, too. As in infinite possibilities (murderrapebecomekindchangelawshavechildrenrunbakeryorundergroundbrothelleadwarsdestroyhalftheworldexplodecitieshaveandparticipateinchariotracesandinventthelightsaber) and not just “This is about as much as a budget can strain to, now just feel really happy it’s already as insanely broad and filled with pointless NPC chatter as is”.

So, rather have more compact and to-the-point smart/funky stuff like Giants: Citizen Kabuto or Sacrifice or MDK come back than yet-another-superduper-open-roaming-world title.

09/11/2010 at 14:30 Rob says:

Oh man. That Wabbajack namecheck was great.

09/11/2010 at 18:01 Dingo says:

Oblivion with Mods?
Best game evaaaaaaaa!
^_^

10/11/2010 at 04:52 asdf says:

Conversations about the next Elder Scrolls being more Morrowindy make me a sad panda. You sweet little cherubs with your sweet little doe eyes upturned, wishing so hard and pleading to the Zenimax overlords to bring back the uniqueness of that game… it’s so sad to see people hoping for that in which there can truly be no hope.

You know all those things that made Morrowind truly special? The alien and intensely atmospheric environments? The strange, otherworldly architecture? The truly inhospitable wilds that required thought and progress before you could tranverse them safely? The insanely dangerous enemies that you eventually make your little bitches because you have saved up so much money and leveled so much that you’re a walking God? The feeling of exploring a unique world populated with many distinct cultures?

People DIDN’T LIKE THOSE THINGS.

I’m not talking about those of us posting here now (the anointed). I’m talking about People; the ones who, en masse, do the buyin’. And these people want familiar. They want instant gratification. I know this because I read all their complaints after Morrowind came out, and I distinctly remember wishing I could set each and every one of those motherfuckers on fire. But soon I could see the writing on the wall, and Bethesda clearly did too.

Now, Morrowind was FAR from perfect, but it excelled in the ways that really matter. And Oblivion was far from terrible; in fact, there was a lot I had a deep respect for. But ultimately it was boring. It was barely a fantasy environment; a vast majority of it could be straight out of European history books. A huge amount of time is spent in castles, dungeons that just look like castles but with blue lights, shacks, and grassy forests. Once in a while you go into Oblivion. Sometimes a weird beast would attack you with a +1 Spell Of Out Of Context in the middle of a beautiful field of grass, dotted with flowers and ringed by majestic trees. And the fucking leveling… no more needs to be said.

People ate that shit up. The entire world bought Oblivion. For fuck’s sake, Zenimax made so much money they bought id Software! You think they’re going to dial back all the stuff in Oblivion, make it more intellectually and mechanically challenging, and reduce the appeal? NOT LIKELY.

Also, totally unrelated to anything listed above; most of the weapons and all of the armor looked like shit.