By Alec Meer on April 18th, 2011 at 3:02 pm.
Well, there’s an awful lot more than 20 reasons to be helplessly nerding out about the next Elder Scrolls game, but a nice round number is a good place to start, right? Let me be clear: I love Morrowind, quite like Oblivion and really didn’t get on with Fallout 3. I am what you might call a doubter. Nonetheless, I am impossibly excited about Skyrim, having recently been shown an hour of it (and listened to a bonus hour of lead dev Todd Howard answering questions about it). Here are just a few reasons why…
(Click on the images for luvverly full-size versions, by the way)
1. Killing a dragon involves knocking the enormous thing out of the sky, with a combination of arrows, magic and whatever else you can think of. When you do, it crashes to earth like a meteorite, its huge body skidding along the ground in front of you with a sense of weight and speed that would kill anyone caught in it. Even then, the beast rises to its feet and takes another pop at you – moving along by walking on the tips of its visibly damaged wings. When you do finally slay the thing, you absorb its soul. This involves the dragon essentially catching fire from within, reducing down to a scorched skeleton the size of shed.
2. A new questing system means randomly-generated stories. If you’re sent on a quest to rescue a kid from a dungeon, though the nuts and bolts of the plot might be pre-written, the game will pick and choose characters and locations from what’s nearby and relevant, rather than have every player retrieve the same kind from the same dungeon. More so than ever, no-one will play the same game.
3. While the game’s pretty much the same size of Oblivion in terms of land mass, the inclusion of huge mountains – all of which you can climb to the top of, as well as often venturing within – means Skyrim has significantly more world to explore than its predecessor. “They create more time because you can’t just cut across them,” says Todd Howard.
4. The menus are pure sex, basically. The crisp, floating text, tiered menus and full 3D renderings of every inventory item is light years ahead of the fugly boxes and fuzzy, endless lists of Oblivion and Fallout 3. Seriously: these may be the best-looking in-game menus in history.
5. While in Oblivion dungeons were primarily designed by art staff, this time around they’re built by a new raft of level designers, which promise a more engaging flow and diversity to each. There are over 120 dungeons in the game, plus many more smaller points of interest and encounters.
6. For a dragon, combat is debate. When it’s breathing fire at you, it’s talking at you in power-words, or Shouts. Your part in the discussion is to Shout back…
7. The world is so much more alive. You’ll see packs of wolves hunting mammoths, you’ll see fearsome beasts such as giants wander by without bothering you because they’re off on other business rather than being mindless killers, you’ll see friendly passers-by running up to you with a sword you dropped earlier and offering to return it – or taking a pop at you with it if they have some reason to despise you.
8. Conversations with NPCs no longer involves an awkward zoom-in to their strange faces, a fixed perspective and an ugly text box. Now, it’s clean, sharp text floating directly onto the screen, and you’re free to look around as you please. Much of the incidental conversation, such as back stories, can be had while going for a stroll with a character as they chat away ambiently, rather than standing there clicking through text from a static position because you’re worried about missing something.
9. The skill and attribute system has been rethought to make it more streamlined yet offer much more varied character builds. We’re down from 8 attributes and 21 skills to 3 attributes and 18 skills, which will probably cause gasps of horror in some camps, but actually the aim is to make character builds even more diverse while getting rid of redundant levelling. Acrobatics is gone, for instance – “who makes a character that is like ‘I am someone who doesn’t run?” Each skill unlocks a series of perks, which add multiple new abilities – such as a slow-time mode for arrow shooting. Each perk has certain requirements, not purely having unlocked the one below it. “You see a perk you like and say ‘I’m going to start using my sword more because I want that perk”, says Howard. The attributes, meanwhile, are distilled to Health, Magicka and Stamina. “What we found was those [old] attributes actually did something else. For instance, Intelligence just affected Magicka. They all trickled down to some other stat.” Again- this will cause gasps of horror. Maybe those will be justified, maybe they won’t – we won’t know until we play. Conceptually speaking, however, I dig the idea of your character build now being more about your actions than about strict segmenting into what were in some cases multiple attributes with similar effects. It does mean it’s more a game of actions than of numbers, and that’s always going to get backs up, but in this instance I’m fairly sure they’ve genuinely done it to increase engagement with your character and what he/she/it gets up to than to stoooopidise matters.
10. The Giant Frostbite Spider, in motion, may well be one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen.
11. We won’t suffer the horrible voice repetition of Oblivion. “We’ve expanded it a lot. It’s a much bigger jump even from Fallout in terms of VO and the amount of people we have.” Max Von Sydow won’t be the only celebrity voice in the game, either… “I think you’ll all be very impressed, but it’s not just about getting the name on there.”
12. You can dual-wield weapons and spells. Or dual-wield spells. Or wield the same spell in each hand, and thus cast an ultra-spell. The combat system is about discovering combinations, stringing particular abilities together to create mighty tactics. Again, it’s all about creating a character unique to you, rather than being an archetype.
13. Character creation only involves choosing what you look like and which of 10 races you are. “After that it’s all about what you play. We want to minimise the initial decision point when you start the game.”
14. Modding is fully supported, in the form of the Creation Kit. “We’re really big into the mods on the PC. Hopefully day and date with the game, but there might be some slack there.” Bethesda have also been influenced by a few mods for earlier games – for instance, bows have been tweaked as a result of finding an Oblivion balance mod that did ‘em better.
15. The engine looks absolutely phenomenal in motion, with the draw distance, streaming and detail able to handle “massive changes in scale from plant to mountain.” There’s none of that awkward visual disparity between near and far away objects which we saw in Oblivion. Meanwhile, tree branches wobble delicately in the wind, mountain peaks have their own micro-climates (such as gorgeous snow and mist), and even your character’s hands are wonderfully animated – a far cry from the forever-clenched fists of so many games. “We like the downtime, the moments like watching the sunset, staring at the water.” Even pulling up the map involves seamlessly zooming up and above the world to look down at a full 3D rendering of it.
16. You get to fight magic zombie vikings. (Draugr, ancient undead Nord warriors). They look like muscle-bound, bearded skeletons, and they’re proper eerie.
17. There’s a real in-game economy. If, for any reason, you decide to destroy a local lumber mill, you’ll find it results in a shortage of wooden objects such as arrows in nearby shops. You probably shouldn’t destroy the lumber mill, then. Alternatively, you could chop some wood for the lumber mill, which will earn you a bit of cash.
18. There will be a few out-there quests, like entering the painting in Oblivion. “It’s good to remind people it’s a world of magic and fantasy.” There’ll also be a bunch of secret features, but it won’t be a unicorn again.
19. The skills/perks system is presented as a vast, twinkling star field populated by stellar patterns in the shape of this world’s various gods. The idea is your character looks to the very heavens for inspiration and power, rather than to some out of game list of stats. As you pick a perk the chart slowly lights up. “You’re creating this custom constellation just drawn for you.” It’s epic, strange and beautiful, and it makes character-tailoring visually part of the game rather than a bunch of statistics strewn across the menu screen.
20. All this, and we haven’t even been told about the guilds, the factions, crime, the major cities, the conversation system and so much more. It’s going to be an enormous game. It seems so much bigger, so much meatier, so much stranger than Oblivion. I can’t wait, I really can’t.
The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is released on 11 November this year.
18/04/2011 at 15:05 McDan says:
Cat people! Giant spiders! Dragons! (and they shout.. or whatever). I’m already looking forward to this too much anyway.
18/04/2011 at 15:06 terry says:
1. Mudcrabs.
2. No cliffracers.
18/04/2011 at 15:35 Bhazor says:
I saw a mudcrab the other day.
18/04/2011 at 16:18 Groove says:
It stole three gold pieces and my silver ring then ran off.
18/04/2011 at 16:25 Mattressi says:
Horrible creatures
18/04/2011 at 16:35 Wooly says:
Farewell.
18/04/2011 at 16:50 tomeoftom says:
We’ll miss you, but only due to fatigue.
18/04/2011 at 18:07 Stormdancer says:
I herd u leik mudcrabs…
18/04/2011 at 18:10 Shark says:
A: I saw a dragon the other day,
horibble creatures, I made a wide bow around it.
B: I don’t want to talk about that.
A: Farewell.
B: I heard others say that.
18/04/2011 at 15:09 pakoito says:
Where did you see the ingame menues? I cannot find them.
19/04/2011 at 00:26 Dozer says:
They’re on the tables in the in-game restaraunts.
18/04/2011 at 15:09 Vivi says:
“18 skills”
Fine, whatever.
“3 attributes”
What the hell, Bethesda?
18/04/2011 at 15:14 Epsilon Naught says:
Weeell, it’s better than blatantly rehashing the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system.
Wait, what am I saying, please just blatantly rehash the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system, it’s awesome
18/04/2011 at 15:23 unimural says:
IMO the character system has never been all that great in the Elder Scrolls series. Cutting it down to smarts, speed and strength (whatever they will be called) does raise the risk of really going overboard with the simplification, but I do feel this might be more in line what they’ve been after all along. The only strength the systems have had (and it’s been a major one) is the versatility of the skills.
The skills have been limited by stat progression, true. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t other workable solutions to guiding character growth.
It’s an action rpg, and having direct, simple effects for a limited number of stats is more in line with that. Personally I do consider it a loss, even if I’ve never liked their system. I would quite enjoy an excel sheet character system.
18/04/2011 at 15:27 Scotterius says:
Has there ever been a case where reducing the player character variables actually resulted in more diverse tactical combat? Morrowind was wonderful because you could essentially fool around and make your character simply godlike. My brother would take single jumps across the continent! It seriously rewarded player exploration and character optimization, I am afraid this is more of a lobotomy than an upgrade.
18/04/2011 at 15:30 Vivi says:
According to the article, the attributes are Health, Magic, and Fatigue (I don’t care if it doesn’t make any sense, Morrowind called it fatigue so that’s what it is).
Thing is, those aren’t attributes, at least not in the Elder Scrolls sense. So what determines those now, since that used to be the job of the attributes? Skills? That makes no sense. Or does everyone just have the same health, magic and so on?
18/04/2011 at 15:37 Xocrates says:
While I agree that the 8 attributes had some degree of redundancy, it does seem that 3 is cutting it out too low, to the point that’s essentially saying that your character will be decided by perks.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but having the stats as health, magic, and stamina seems both reductionist and ambiguous.
18/04/2011 at 15:49 Jesse L says:
I must confess, one of my favorite things about Morrowind was the ability to become overpowered.
During the mid-game I had a lot of money lying around, so I spent a big chunk of it on training up my unarmored and hand-to-hand skills. Then I took off everything but my magic Pants of Regeneration and Boots of Blinding Speed and ran up into the mountains to beat cliff racers to death with my bare hands.
Even with the Boots (hand-to-hand was linked to your speed attribute, so with the boots on it seemed like you could punch three times a second) it took a long time to kill anything, but it was still fun. I liked it when the cliff racers would faint, recover conscious, try to start flying again, and immediately faint again under the onslaught of my Blind Hundred Fist technique.
18/04/2011 at 15:53 BigJonno says:
To be fair, the levelling and stats in Oblivion were bloody terrible. Now, I like me some stats and I’ll reserve judgement until I play the thing, but I certainly won’t mourn the loss of the Oblivion system.
18/04/2011 at 15:54 Wizardry says:
Bethesda will eventually remove all statistics and skills entirely because it’s apparently difficult to understand what “strength”, “speed” and “intelligence” means. What I can’t stand is their reasoning for removing the statistics. If the statistics only affected the derived statistics (such as health and mana) then make the connection more complex. Stripping away poorly implemented mechanics because they were poorly implemented is the BioWare school of CRPG design. Fixing things that were crap is the proper way.
18/04/2011 at 16:07 Archonsod says:
Sounds like they’re going for something similar to Alpha Protocol with perks dictating your abilities. Worked quite well there, so it’s really just a question of whether Beth can pull off something as good here.
18/04/2011 at 16:27 Bremze says:
Strength – probably split into two perks
Intelligence = Mana
Willpower == Stamina (+ a mana regen perk)
Endurance == Health
Speed – perk
Agility – somewhat useless, melee works differently now, + a stamina regen perk
Personality – perk
Luck – might be split up into different perks
Perks will actually make character advancement much deeper, than it has been in Morrowind/Oblivion.
18/04/2011 at 16:32 Wizardry says:
And perks plus statistics would make things even better. Especially if statistics can be “fixed” so that they actually have far more complex effects on your character and their ability to pull off interactions in the game world.
18/04/2011 at 16:36 Maktaka says:
@Archonsod I really hope you’re right about taking AP for inspiration. It’s about time Obsidian got enough respect as a developer to have their ideas lifted for other games.
18/04/2011 at 20:45 Hammurabi says:
It seemed to me that there may be implicit stats based on your what you have done. Use a sword a lot and get stronger, use a bow get more dexterous, magic would make you more smarterer or wizened. Something like that. I mean, I could be off, but it does seem that what they are going for is to hide the numbers away from the interface. I mean, you don’t know how agile you are, right? I can look at something and tell if I can vault it or not because of experience. As usual we just have to wait and play, see how the whole thing works together.
18/04/2011 at 21:10 Wizardry says:
@Hammurabi: And if the player doesn’t have to think about the statistics of their characters any more, what makes the game play any differently from an open world action game? The difference may be that your underlying statistics and skills are changing behind the scenes, but how is the experience any different for the player? To the player, all you do is go around killing things, talking to NPCs and completing quests in both types of games. Without actively being able to control the progression of your character, it doesn’t play like an RPG. Hide all sorts of character advancement from Mass Effect and you get Gears of War with a dialogue wheel. Hide all the statistics and equipment from Oblivion and you get a first person open world hack & slash action game.
18/04/2011 at 23:22 gwathdring says:
Huh. I always thought the statistics were a necessary evil that facilitated certain types of tabletop role-playing games. I felt the goal was to take a character, enjoy the role, and become immersed in a fantasy world while mucking about with friends. Depending on how good the GM is and what the player group feels like doing, the immersion and mucking about take turns being more or less important. Zoom to computer RPGs. I’m far more interested in exploring a vastly detailed world, crawling through zombie-filled caverns, firing bolts of fire, and making a name for myself in a living, breathing world of NPC’s that have genuinely interesting things to say. If I wanted pure action, sure I’d play something else. But I’ve never played a single RPG for the number crunching.
I’ve always thought that advancing specific skills and abilities based on general adventuring experience and arbitrary levels of said general experience was an inelegant way of setting up character advancement that allows for the sense of development that makes RPGs more than pure exploration and action. You develop a character over time, rather than observing the story as a static piece of the landscape. I don’t think the specific numerical system is or has ever been an important part of that process. I recognize that many people do feel this way, but I don’t quite understand why beyond nostalgia.
I’m into things like D&D for the communal storytelling, and the “dungeons and dragons.” The romp through a fantasy world. I don’t want it to be all action, no. But my character advancing by the numbers isn’t all that much better. A use-based skill system makes a lot more sense to me and seems a far more elegant way to add flavor to a character in a personal way. I like perks, too, for the same reason that I really wanted to like SCION the first time I played it: a few context sensitive special abilities and items laid out with the rest mostly up to the character feels so much more natural than a tabulated list of all items and abilities the character may use. I’ve always been of the opinion that even in a system that has more detailed charts and tabulations, a good GM rewards creativity and good sense over spread-sheet optimization.
That said, the Skyrim system won’t necessarily do a better job of meeting my stated preferences than oblivion. But as Health, Magicka, and Stamina are used in the action-oriented part of the game it makes perfect sense to me that action-oriented decisions and mechanics determine these values. If you want to play as a muscle-less magic user who has contempt for mundane weapons and can barely figure out how to use them anyway, it makes a fair bit of sense that a game system would decide how to award your stamina and weapon skills based on the fact that you don’t actually use a weapon very often. Seems fine in theory as far as I can tell.
18/04/2011 at 23:59 Wizardry says:
But you can experience all of those things in other genres of video games. Zombie filled caverns can be found in first person shooters. Vastly detailed worlds can be found in action adventures. Firing bolts of fire can be done in any game with magic. Making a name for yourself can be achieved in any game with a personal plot. A living, breathing world with NPCs can be found in The Sims.
My point is that what you enjoyed from RPGs was what RPGs allowed you to experience. RPGs allowed you to experience all of the above, for example. But if you remove all the rules that make up RPGs you aren’t left with an RPG any more. You might, however, be left with a game in which you can role-play in.
Let’s create a game. Let’s have a huge open world full of interesting locations. Let’s then populate this world with NPCs and monsters. Let’s then attach dialogue to the NPCs and add quests to the game world. We then make monsters drop equipment on death. Let’s drop the player in the world when they start up this game.
What would the player experience? Exploration, check! NPC interaction, check! Real-time combat, check! Looting, check! Is this game a CRPG though? If so, what made it a CRPG? If not, what needs to be added to make it a CRPG?
Yep. If the player never has to deal with statistical progression then, from a gameplay perspective, they aren’t playing a CRPG. If you remove the levelling system from Baldur’s Gate you are left with a real-time-with-pause tactics game. If you remove the levelling system from Mass Effect you get a character focused Gears of War. If you remove augmentations and skills from Deus Ex you get a non-linear FPS. If you remove the character progression from Pool of Radiance you get turn-based tactics game. And even if the statistics are still there, being modified as you play, yet hidden from view, you don’t get a CRPG back because the player never spends any of their game time dealing with the statistics.
19/04/2011 at 00:17 gwathdring says:
I suppose. Personally I’ve always found the story and role play to be the key components of RPGs. It’s what I’ve liked about the genre. The games that pack the most of those features all together tend to be table-top of western CRPGs. Yes all of those games have statistics and leveling systems. But the less those systems get in the way of the dynamic progression and world interaction, the happier I am as a gamer. I don’t want to get rid of progression. And as long as there are numbers in the background it’s nice to see them and be aware of how they work. I like that level of transparency that comes out of CRPGs.
But I also don’t need the numbers to work in a specific way as long as I still get the same experience. It doesn’t sound like Skyrim takes away the access to numbers any more than Oblivion’s auto-leveling skill system did. It just changes what makes the numbers move, just as various CRPGs and table top RPGs have different loot and experience point systems.
In essence: yes you can have all of these features without having the statistical experience. But I’d still call it a Role Playing game because as genres go there isn’t really another place to put it and a lot of those features have become associated with RPGs in the game industry. It’s a matter of definition at that point, and I don’t feel the need to define an RPG. And I’d love the game just as much with less fiddly numbers. I don’t want the game to be “simpler” or “easier.” But I don’t need the complexity to come from the numerical tallying system, nor want it to. As such, as long as Skyrim delivers all the features listed here and then some … I’ve got everything I need to be happy in a CRPG, whether or not anyone else would call it that.
P.S. I think a large part of this is that I don’t think genre matters at all. I don’t need all of the trappings of a specific genre to enjoy the meat of the game. If the game is primarily good because of it’s genre savy, then it’s probably not the sort of game I’d enjoy playing. I’m not saying you’d enjoy playing it either, but rather that changing the name to “real-time-tactics-with-pausing” ignores a fair bit of what made it memorable. Justified or no, people remember the characters being engaging, the story being interesting, the sensation of character and choice alluring. Mass Effect 2 didn’t just attract people because it was a shooter (though it attracted some pure shooter fans, I’d wager … they may have been somewhat disappointed though); again whether or not it was empirically “a good game” people loved the characters, the story, the interactivity with the story, the sense of choice … these are feature that have nothing to do with the “gameplay segments” if you try to pigeonhole gameplay into genres. But for better or worse (worse, surely) the mining sequences are also gameplay. The conversation sequences are also gameplay.
Baldur’s Gate is as much “real-time-tactics-with-pausing- when you leave in the statistics as when you remove them, and just as much about role and character when you leave them in as when you remove them. A game is, in short, at least a sum of it’s parts. Sometimes it’s more than that, but it is unfair to consider a game a sum of those parts which fit within a given genre.
Skyrim seems generally to be a game that is marketed towards people who like the genre video game players and developers consider RPGs. It contains many features most often found and most often asked for in games dubbed RPGs. It’s about taking a character from the ground up, from rags to riches, from peon to warlord, gaining power, allies, enemies, and skill along the way. The specifics are different, but the sentiment is there. If you stripped away the transparency of the statistics (or played a tabletop RPG that doesn’t have many numbers and uses a perk/talent system instead of skills/ACs/DCs), those features and that sense of industry history and origin would still exist.
But I’m not going to compel you to call it an RPG. Mostly I’m curious as to what is so attractive about the statistical aspect, and what makes it better than a system that still has numbers and such, but holds you and your numbers accountable in part for your in game actions rather than your out of game decisions?
19/04/2011 at 01:13 JerryAKAGerry says:
In real life if you want to get better at say playing basket ball, what do you do? You go play basketball. If you want to get better at sword fighting in Skyrim, you go kill things with your sword (or swords :) . Why is that a bad thing? It makes character progression seem more real, less desensitized. I like to be emersed into a game, without having to stare at charts and numbers and progress bars. And I’m sure that this won’t feel like a hack and slash game, you’ll know when you get stronger and you’ll get the gratification of working on some skill.
19/04/2011 at 01:34 Wizardry says:
I really don’t mind statistically watered down games existing. Not one bit. However, the fact of the matter is that no big developers are making the games that we used to call CRPGs. One of the reasons for this is that the definition of the CRPG has changed among modern gamers and developers. Completely.
In fact, if you give a modern console gamer a game like Champions of Krynn they wouldn’t know what to call it. It doesn’t match up with the experience they get from Mass Effect at all. It doesn’t have cut-scenes with dialogue options. Your party members don’t talk to you and aren’t romanceable. There is no cover-based third person shooter combat. There aren’t tonnes of side quests to do. There is a far greater difference in terms of gameplay between Champions of Krynn and Mass Effect than between Gears of War and Mass Effect.
What I want is a game that has no action elements and therefore does not require fast actions by the player. I want a game where I can develop the skills of either a single character or a small party of characters over the course of the game. I want the skills I develop in them to be tested frequently by all types of interaction from dialogue to combat, swimming to climbing, kicking down doors to picking locks, foraging for food to hunting animals. I want specialisation to reward me by allowing me to play through the game in a manner that makes the most of the specialisation.
Is this what a CRPG is? Well, yes, at least partially, because I know for a fact that I can experience that with a good RPG system. Similarly, you can experience everything you want with a good RPG system. But once you start removing statistics, perhaps you are left satisfied, but I’m certainly not, and neither are all those gamers who grew up on statistics heavy CRPGs such as Champions of Krynn (as an odd example).
When Wizardry is only connected to modern CRPGs such as Oblivion and Mass Effect because of player developed character statistics, you can’t then remove that final link and still use the genre name. It makes no sense. Not only is it misleading, it’s also damaging for the future of games that resemble the origins of the genre rather than modern games.
19/04/2011 at 02:02 Berzee says:
One major reason to do the “click on the plus sign to level” instead of the “it goes up as you use it” approach is because…well…practice is boring. Having just spent some time grinding skills in Oblivion, it is definitely boring. =P I decided to stop grinding and only level by doing what seems funnest and most immersive at the time, but for a while the zombies were stopping my fun. I like that your character has to practice his skills to get good, but the whole point of clicking that plus sign is so that you can enjoy your character *at* every skill level, but not *between* every skill level while he does boring practice. =)
If a game depends on *player skill* then practice is great. But having to make the player do a repetitive action to allow his character to learn something, is the origin of the grind.
So with something like Wizardry wants, you get to play the action-packed sections of a character’s life (his dungeon dives, his quests and battles, even those times where he is creating a great work of craftsmanship or having interesting conversations) — but you don’t have to play those sections where he is whacking the practice dummy or practicing disarming expressions in the mirror (because they didn’t put anything *fun* in the game to represent those activities).
Of course the level-with-use system is another way of abstracting practice time (by saying, okay, whatever he spends his time doing, let’s assume he spends his practice time doing that too). That can be a great way to let people who want to ignore the numbers do so…but it has the downside of making it so that if you do want to pick up a new skill late in the game, you’re gonna have to grind to bring it up to speed. Or pay for training – that’s a good way around that issue.
What I think actually has the spreadsheet crowd (not said disparagingly or even without a degree or self-identification) up in arms, though, is NOT the actions that must be taken to progress. I don’t think people, even Wizardry ;), cares very much about whether you increase your Kung Fu skill by clicking a plus sign or by repeatedly clicking a practice dummy.
What he/they/we DO/DOES care about is…we don’t want things to progress until there IS NO LONGER a Kung Fu skill. Because TES games have historically had, not the most, but a lot of character customization, we hope that by the time we play the 10th game in the series, they haven’t reduced all weapons skills to “Enemies Explode”.
It is the lack of meaningful/strategic development choices, not the lack of visible plus signs, that’s feared. The lack of a way to give your character some individuality and personality (since, after all, they want everyone to have a unique Skyrim experience ;), or to invent interesting ways to beat the game. Even in Oblivion, if you want to, you could make a choice between having tons of Magicka, or having tons of Magicka Regeneration…the former lets you cast whoppin’ big spells, while the latter lets you cast weaker spells basically infinitely. But if they remove Intelligence and Willpower, this is no longer an option. Perks could give you that choice, but it would feel a lot more artificial instead of something you figured out or invented or naturally arrived at yourself.
This is partly guesswork, since I’m not as upset as some others about the potential of the skill system, but I think I can understand why they are. =)
19/04/2011 at 03:00 Wizardry says:
Yep. You’re right. I might not like use-based skill systems in my CRPGs but they are perfectly fine as CRPG systems.
You see, when CRPGs were character skill driven rather than player skill (action) driven, everything was abstracted. When you told your character to pick a lock, he/she either succeeded or failed. Now you get lock picking mini-games with a high degree of player skill involved. With an abstracted system, getting trained in a skill is automatic. You could go to the local magic trainer and spend 1 year of your character’s life boosting your magic skill. Time would pass instantly and you’d be back in control of your character, aged a year, but with a whole host of more powerful spells. In Oblivion you also had trainers which did the same job (but without ageing your character), but because there were action mini-games and action combat, it made sense to level your abilities up on use.
In other words, use-based levelling does work well with certain types of games, such as action CRPGs like The Elder Scrolls series. That’s not really my issue. My issue is with the removal of statistics such as the 8 attributes and the skills (Skyrim has 18, down from the 35 of Daggerfall, 27 of Morrowind and 21 of Oblivion).
19/04/2011 at 04:09 Jason Moyer says:
Having just spent some time grinding skills in Oblivion, it is definitely boring.
Yes, and it’s also boring farming monsters for experience in Baldur’s Gate. Neither of those is something you’d do in a tabletop roleplaying game, because a good DM doesn’t allow you to game the system.
Anyway, the key things for me in a CRPG are character progression and choices & consequences, and neither of those are present in non-CRPG open world games.
19/04/2011 at 04:09 Jambe says:
Alec Meer: master forecaster.
19/04/2011 at 04:24 Wizardry says:
What kind of idiot grinds in Baldur’s Gate?
Also, there is nothing stopping choices and consequences from popping up in non-CRPGs. Choices and consequences, as you probably mean them, do not make a CRPG. They are a good thing to have, of course, and I’m a big fan, especially when choices are affected by your character’s skills and the consequences are more than flavour text. There are so many games with choices and consequences out there that have nothing to do with the CRPG genre. Even open world games. Even GTA IV had some.
21/04/2011 at 14:58 Josh W says:
Baldur’s Gate is a hybrid rpg/strategy game, in my book.
I agree that we are coming to the point where genres are becoming outdated names, because two people can go “I love rpgs” and mean completely different things, but I don’t think that is because one side are leaving behind the history of rpgs.
There are games that have complex mechanical customisation to suit the situation.
There are games that shift around challenges to suit your playstyle.
These are opposites!
Would you call gratuitous space battles an rpg? Probably not, but it involves customisation of your team to better face threats, along a campaign structure that unlocks new elements.
In contrast, we have a school of games like elder scrolls or even left for dead that twist around according to how you play, trying to replace a certain kind of GM from the tabletop games.
Choice and consequence is only part of it, that’s just a subtle feedback loop, it’s subdivided in a continuum from modern Warren Spector: “playstyle matters” to “learn the system and craft the perfect solution”.
Then there’s the interface style, the pace. Broad view? Local view? Tactical? Impressionistic?
The term rpg has represented a huge spectrum of aspiration for developers, in making games that have a world, in making characters that feel complex, in representing change and improvement, in letting players tell a story with your game, in putting depth and variety into the possibilities for your character, and the enemies you’ll face.
In the olden days, most games on the other side of the spectrum from you broke, because we didn’t have the processing power or the insight into player feedback needed to get them to work. The other thing was easier.
Just like pen and paper rpg makers have started to reach beyond that to those specific things they really wanted most, I hope we can do the same. So you want more character crafting and customisation, a slower pace of action. Maybe something that brings back nostalgia and allows you to use your old reflexes, or maybe you want something else that older games have almost delivered.
This is an interesting and important thing, people can make games for you, and probably on smaller budgets too because they can do it on less processor intensive systems. If you’re not getting served, don’t mask your complaints by putting specific personal meanings on general terms, find a new way to describe it.
This is 2011, games have been developed which take on multiple sides of the legacy of rpgs, something that is both a culture of game designers, a body of techniques, and an aspiration. The idea has become pluralised since when you or I played with a small circle of people before the internet. It seems reasonable for language to change as the situation does, and now it’s at lot easier to put something in the rpg box than push it out. If you want exclusive defintions, I suggest you make some new ones, to fit the broader spectrum of games we find.
21/04/2011 at 16:58 swest666 says:
You guys are reading too far into this. Attributes, Skills and Stats are three completely different things.
The three Attributes we will have are Health, Magicka, and Fatigue. It’s been that way for as long as I can remember, and it will stay that way.
I’d say there would be a minor re-work on Stats because Willpower and Intelligence are both related to Magicka (Regen vs. Max Amount). “So I have X amount of magicka, but I can’t regen it fast enough? WTF?! *FACEPALM* ”
Skills, as far as I’ve heard, are the only real things that have been given a re-work, because the effects of Alteration and Illusion almost go hand-in-hand when you look at the similarities of each respective skill. I’d say they’ll combine Acrobatics and Athletics into one, if any (because the ability to jump really high and run really fast does not determine your ability to kill things).
I can only see just little common sense adjustments like that being done.
18/04/2011 at 15:10 Kaira- says:
I for one greet our new confused turtle-overlords.
18/04/2011 at 15:11 Epsilon Naught says:
Why must you do this to us? The game’s still 8 months away, you horrible person! Looking forward to this SO BLOODY MUCH
Oblivion but better looking and with competent combat, levelling and dialogue? DO WANT
18/04/2011 at 15:26 Dajs says:
I find myself more drawn to the fact that they are connecting character building with the world in a seamless way (constelations, new revamped attributes, dragon battles). I think it’s gonna do wonders for immersion.
Looking forward to this and GW2… god why are they so far away!?
18/04/2011 at 15:11 Laneford says:
Time to finally get a new PC I guess. (aka, this game will cost me £500)
18/04/2011 at 15:12 cqdemal says:
If this is as good as it sounds on paper, then I’ll probably die in front of my PC on November 14 or so after a proper marathon session.
18/04/2011 at 15:12 TheApologist says:
‘The menus are pure sex’
That is quite the claim for a menu. :)
18/04/2011 at 15:33 Benjamin L. says:
The Skyrim menus may be “pure sex” but that’s not what I wanted to know.
How *useable* are they long term with a mouse?
18/04/2011 at 15:40 RaytraceRat says:
I want to see those sexy menus! pix plx!!111 – I think its a proper way to communicate with a cRPG player, isn’t it?
18/04/2011 at 15:50 Wizardry says:
Why the hell do they list the skill bars horizontally? That’s the most retarded thing I’ve ever seen. You have to bloody scroll the screen left and right to see all your skills. Horrible, horrible console game interface.
18/04/2011 at 16:53 Nick says:
don’t worry, mod tools will give us a not as pretty but actually useable interface.
18/04/2011 at 18:19 Andy_Panthro says:
I’ll always prefer utility to beauty in menu systems.
Only the first couple of times will you think “wow, that looks nice”, all other times you’ll be far more concerned with how easy it is to navigate, and getting the most information (and most useful information) with the least number of button presses.
18/04/2011 at 19:15 Jeremy says:
@Wizardry,
They’re not horizontal so much as circular. The constellations are attributed to certain skill sets, so it makes sense to have it look like that. Doesn’t make it “console”.
18/04/2011 at 15:13 Caleb367 says:
Aw hell. This, Witcher 2, AND Mass Effect 3. I’m gonna explode from raw RPG-ness.
18/04/2011 at 15:23 Bloodloss says:
Why? Were you planning on playing some RPGs in addition to those action/FPS games? ;)
18/04/2011 at 15:36 Durkonkell says:
I too am looking forward very much to these three games that are categorised as RPGs. Because they are RPGs. And I like RPGs.
18/04/2011 at 15:40 Balerion says:
@Bloodloss: Surely you meant TPS as in Third Person Shooter and not FPS as in First Person Shooter, right? If you want to be a smart***, do it properly ;)
18/04/2011 at 15:56 Wizardry says:
Yep. The three biggest “RPGs” of the year are all action game hybrids. Get used to it.
18/04/2011 at 16:29 Orija says:
After the DA2 boogaloo, I wouldn’t really get mighty excited for ME3.
18/04/2011 at 15:13 Mike says:
So, Alec, what was your favourite bit of Skyrim?
18/04/2011 at 15:13 bwion says:
“13. Character creation only involves choosing what you look like and which of 10 races you are. “After that it’s all about what you play. We want to minimise the initial decision point when you start the game.””
If they can really make this work, this could be phenomenal. I’m a huge fan of ‘generate your character by playing the game’, when it’s done well.
18/04/2011 at 15:14 Lewie Procter says:
I am such a nerd, the economy and the menus are the two most exciting things to me there.
18/04/2011 at 16:44 Alexander Norris says:
You’re not the only one. That, and the randomised quests.
This does look phenomenally good, unlike Oblivion and Fallout 3. That said, it’s waaaay too soon to tell for real. :(
18/04/2011 at 15:14 cqdemal says:
Looks like Alec fixed that. I thought it was intentional and found it pretty funny. Hell, magic zombie vikings!
EDIT: Awww, now my comment no longer makes any sense.
18/04/2011 at 15:17 Shazbut says:
Sounds wonderful.
18/04/2011 at 15:17 Corrupt_Tiki says:
Damnit Alec! Damn you and all of RPS Towers to heck!
Another $100 Day one release game on the must have list; Also one which will probably strain my (not so old) computer, meaning I will want another Upgrade, bah!
:3
18/04/2011 at 15:19 Scotterius says:
What about that terrible auto leveling system that Oblivion had? You know the one where the goblins and bandits are always the same level, and gear only appeared according to level of player. Fallout 3 had a little of this, Morrowind had none of it. Please tell me its gone or truncated.
18/04/2011 at 15:26 Schadenfreude says:
Morrowind did have a tiny bit of it actually. Mostly down to the wildlife you encounter e.g. at higher levels you’d start running into Winged Twilights in the grasslands and Golden Saints always seem to show up in the mountains.
They didn’t just equip the ashlander bandits with Glass and Daedric armour though.
18/04/2011 at 15:36 Scotterius says:
That does sound right. I use to hunt those golden saints to enchant my pants :) I miss Morrowind.
18/04/2011 at 16:10 Archonsod says:
Yeah, Morrowind utilised level lists for random monster and loot spawns too. The only real difference being they were actual lists rather than just increasing the level of whatever it generated.
Dunno though. On the plus side it meant you kept variety. On the negative side, every damn list included cliff racers.
18/04/2011 at 16:26 Corrupt_Tiki says:
I think the main irk with Oblivion is that; at lvl 1 your fighting bandits in leather armour etc, fairly ‘normal’ weapons, but then as you get stronger, they obtain Glass and Daedric armour? excuse me, Mr Bandit, that is a nice fine set of Glass armour you have there, why not sell it at the markets and buy a property and become an aristocrat or somesuch.
I prefer the old school sorts of RPG levelling, where, you know, your not supposed to be there when that giant monster strolls along and swipes off your head with one flick, or you get murdered by millions off little but eye poppingly strong cave leapers etc.
^^I can’t quite remember which RPG punished me like this, ie; smacking you around the head and saying NOT THERE YET, MORON. I was thinking Diablo 2, as in, if you got your friend to rush you, so you ended up being level 15 and stuck fighting Diablo. But I’m sure there are other examples..
18/04/2011 at 16:35 Wizardry says:
@Corrupt_Tiki: Might & Magic?
18/04/2011 at 20:28 Aedrill says:
@Corrupt_Tiki
The Witcher was like that, and The Witcher 2 will be like that as well. CDProjekt guys said they will never make an RPG with autolevelling which is heartwarming, if you ask me.
One thing I’d like to know about Skyrim is somewhat related to The Witcher. Will the main quest be about saving the world again (I didn’t finish Oblivion because of this stupid, cliche story), and what about non-linearity? Whithout the latter it ain’t RPG, it’s hack n’ slash with advanced dialogues.
18/04/2011 at 21:02 ceriphim says:
THIS. Honestly the only thing I’m still nervous about is the leveling system. I HATED how useless and underpowered it made me feel.
If I’m a level 30 well, anything, I want to be able to commit genocide on my starting town (or at least what I was hunting at levels 1-20). Eff you for making me totally useless, Oblivion.
@Corrupt_Tiki I was just talking about this in another thread, but Demon’s Souls did that. You took on the wrong guy before you were ready and would get straight murdered.
18/04/2011 at 15:19 The Sombrero Kid says:
Sounds delicious.
18/04/2011 at 15:19 Jacques says:
Combat is debate eh? Are there any silence spells in the Elder Scrolls series?
I wonder if that’s been inspired by any of Bakker’s literature.
18/04/2011 at 15:19 Robert says:
ELDERS SCROLLS VI: AKAVIR
Forget dragons. We Shall Have Tiger-Dragons. They Eat Everything.
There Shall Be Truly Original Quests: Every Tiger Will be Randomly Generated So People Won’t Have the Same Meal/Experience Twice.
We Have Done Away With The Old Attribute System, They All Trickle Down To One Thing Anyway: POWERLEVEL. This Is Currently The Only Attribute And Will Bring More Clarity Yet Diversity. All Skills Have Been Removed As Well, For There Shall Only Be Your Eating Skill.
18/04/2011 at 15:33 skraeling says:
This sounds eerily like Pac-man.
18/04/2011 at 15:21 DrGonzo says:
Yeah what a strange article. I read it as being incredibly sarcastic, and why we shouldn’t bother with Skyrim. But knowing RPS that’s unlikely.
EDIT- Oh it’s been edited now, but before it just had this underneath every pic
“You get to fight magic zombie vikings. (Dragur, ancient undead Nord warriors). They look like muscle-bound, bearded skeletons, and they’re proper eerie.”
Which is of course a great reason as to why Skyrim sounds pretty generic and pants.
I’m hopeful on this game though, I think they will have learned from their mistakes in Oblivion.
18/04/2011 at 15:22 Brumisator says:
The best part of any RPG for me is staring at the character creation screen for a long long time, so I’m a bit irked that it’s been streamlined out of the game.
However, a bigger part of me embraces that this is the natural evolution of the elder scrolls.
SO MANY goo things in this list, hooray!
18/04/2011 at 15:29 squareking says:
The word “streamlined” always carries a negative connotation in my mind. Hopefully it’s all for the better in this case. I’m super excited for this.
18/04/2011 at 15:39 Scotterius says:
Yep, choosing the kind of character is a favorite part of mine too. Probably stems from pen and paper.
18/04/2011 at 15:43 Vexing Vision says:
I think I’m one of the few people who spent more time at the power selection of City of Heroes than with the costume design.
I love character creations, and the more I can point-buy, random-roll or distribute, the happier I am.
I must have played Temple of Elemental Evil through at least 10 times, just because designing parties was so fun.
18/04/2011 at 17:21 Mattressi says:
Yeah, I agree: I generally play an RPG to completion far far fewer times than I start a new character. I think I finished Morrowind once and I’ve yet to finish Oblivion – I just love creating characters (and mucking about with random side things…and ignoring the boring main plot).
However, while I lament the loss of character creation, I do not lament the loss of TES horrible stats/skills/levelling. It irritated me to have so many stats that they were all kinda useless. About the only stat I ever really used was strength for the carry weight increase and intelligence for more magicka if I was playing a mage (except in Morrowind – I also increased agility so that I could hit things). Willpower was stupid and really didn’t need to be there at all (the bonus to efficiency/potency of spells should have been given simply by increasing skill proficiency), speed and athletics should have been combined into a stat or a skill (though, I don’t agree with entirely leaving a speed stat/skill out, like it sounds like they have), luck was relatively useful in Morrowind and relatively useless in Oblivion and I never bothered with it because I could just raise my skills instead, endurance is just a combination stat to increase health/energy (I refuse to call it fatigue – restore fatigue spells are ridiculous!), and personality was implemented the same as speechcraft – again, another stat/skill combo which should either be a stat or a skill.
Maybe my hatred for a large number of stats is misdirected though – I think my true rage arises from the absolutely disgusting levelling system; the system which made me steal ridiculous amounts of gold in Morrowind so I could afford trainers just to get those 5x multipliers and the system which made me go to that woman with the scamp-spawning-staff’s house and run around bashing the stupid scamps just to get my bloody multiplier (of course, the bashing was done with a weapon which I had no primary skill with – lest I level without attaining 3 sets of 5x multiplier and get raped by high level rats).
I shall end my replant (reply which turns into a rant) here. Good day, gentlemen.
18/04/2011 at 21:30 Mo says:
I’ve always hated character creation screens because they ask you to make a series of very critical mechanical decisions before you’ve even started playing the game. By the time I’ve figured out that I don’t really enjoy playing the class I’ve chosen, I’m not arsed to start over and play the (often mediocre) opening area again.
19/04/2011 at 04:31 bill says:
What Mo said. Or you’re forced to search on the internet to find out what are the recommended builds.
I don’t remember what it was, but after i’d started playing i discovered that i’d started Planescape with the most useless type of character. :-(
And it was worse in morrowind where the insane leveling/attributes system meant that the best way to create a character was the opposite of what you’d expect.
18/04/2011 at 15:25 groovychainsaw says:
Sounds brilliant! And scarily close to my idea of an ideal RPG, with procedurally generated quests and an economy you can affect through your actions granting consequence to ‘messing around’ in the world(I expect it won’t be as full-featured as that, but its a step in the right direction for me).
Its preaching to the converted really, as I’ve loved all of the elder scrolls games, but nonetheless, nice to see they’re continuing to try new ideas and mechanics out.
18/04/2011 at 18:36 Jac says:
The procedurally generated quests is the thing that actually worries me. Hopefully they won’t be obviously distinguishable from the hand-made ones. Might be a bit soulless.
19/04/2011 at 13:02 groovychainsaw says:
It’s not like the oblivion quest givers were well realised, well voiced and scripted and full of life, though, were they? ;-) Anything that makes the world feel a bit more random (and by extension, natural and emergent) is welcome for me. I kinda want things to go wrong and seem a bit odd rather than uber-slick and scripted the whole time.
18/04/2011 at 15:26 Urael says:
This is going to be bloody brilliant. Cannot wait.
18/04/2011 at 15:27 Gnomad says:
Sure wish I could watch that hour’s worth of Skyrimness.
18/04/2011 at 15:29 Novotny says:
No unicorns = no buy.
18/04/2011 at 15:37 kikito says:
I’m sure they will release a DLC if enough people voice the same opinion. Otherwise, it’s moddable, so unicorns will surely appear. Pink ones.
18/04/2011 at 15:30 Vinraith says:
Largely interesting, though I agree with others that the stat simplification is concerning. Ah well, like any other flaws, the mod community will likely pick up the slack. It’d be easier to be picky about these sorts of things if massive open-world single player RPG’s were more common than they are, as it stands I’ll take what I can get and fix it as best I can.
18/04/2011 at 15:33 KingKrapp says:
@pakoito
Your use of ‘ooze’ gave me a wide grin. Well played, sir.
18/04/2011 at 15:34 kikito says:
I prefer single player games to multiplayer ones.
Among other reasons, I don’t have to stand people voicing their “obviously true because I think it is true” opinions.
18/04/2011 at 15:35 Pathetic Phallacy says:
What, no promise of Radiant AI this time?
Also, what the hell is the combat like? I wish the people from Elder Scrolls would play some Mount and Blade or Demon’s Souls and just rip off their combat mechanics.
18/04/2011 at 15:58 Wizardry says:
Or Blade of Darkness.
18/04/2011 at 16:03 Wilson says:
Hehe, yeah. Still, this stuff sounds interesting. We’ll just see how the execution is.
18/04/2011 at 16:40 Kaira- says:
Or even better: Dark Messiah of Might & Magic.
18/04/2011 at 16:51 Pathetic Phallacy says:
Might and Magic would be nice, for sure. But nothing, in terms of melee mechanics, is a step up from Mount and Blade. But I know that type of combat system would not fly on consoles.
18/04/2011 at 17:30 Davie says:
@Kaira: Bethesda bought Arkane Studios a couple years ago, so it is actually possible some of their talent is being applied to Skyrim.
18/04/2011 at 20:09 sinister agent says:
I don’t see how M&B style combat wouldn’t work on a console. In fact, I’d argue that it could be even better, with less confusion of movement vs. aim direction. It’s pretty simple – map left mouse to right trigger and right m ouse to left trigger. Bang. Exactly the same combat, different controller.
18/04/2011 at 15:35 reticulate says:
I’m really liking the idea of these semi-procedurally generated quests. I’d assume once the base mechanism is in place, they can essentially just feed it a bunch of variables (all the way through to voice acting, etc) and output a completed quest. That means less time fiddling with stupid little broken quest things and more time spent on stuff like an economy or Radiant AI (For Reals This Time).
It all looks fabulous, and I’m sure it’ll be huge and a wonder to explore. But I’m still wary of Bethesda’s history of somewhat over-promising with these things.
Obviously I’ll still buy the bloody thing though. They already have my monies, regardless.
18/04/2011 at 15:39 kikito says:
I would point out that “procedurally generated” doesn’t imply “bug-free”. I would not underestimate Bethesda’s cunningness in bug-writing.
18/04/2011 at 15:37 Vexing Vision says:
Disappointed on character creation. I LOVE designing my own character and trying out different skill-combinations. Spent ages in Daggerfall.
Very excited about everything else.
18/04/2011 at 15:38 JFS says:
Khajit! Somehow I thought they’d be excluded from Skyrim, God knows why, but now I’m a happy moon sugar addict.
18/04/2011 at 15:38 Basilicus says:
I just hope it’s a little more difficult to bank thousands upon thousands in gold. I don’t want to be able to make that in a week. I want to struggle as any of a thousand like warriors, barely being able to afford enough potions and being swindled by expert merchants who’ve been at this for years.
It’s why I installed the enhanced economy mod in Oblivion and set the buy/sell to screw me royally. I want to achieve because of my ambition and exploration, not because I have all the best items on an entire continent just a month after being released from prison.
18/04/2011 at 15:39 Vandell says:
Hey, look. The character models are actually decent for once! And the khajiit look badass!
18/04/2011 at 15:46 Coins says:
I really hope they can live up to these promises. I want Bethesda to be awesome again.
18/04/2011 at 15:46 Wizardry says:
So to summarise, Skyrim will be more immersive and a better action game but a worse CRPG. Got it.
18/04/2011 at 17:01 Berzee says:
Let me just say, with no hint of hostility at all — it’s so weird how you always say “CRPG” instead of just “RPG”.
Thank you.
(I agree with your assessment, btw — although, Oblivion requires so many wiki-tricks to level and design your guy properly, I don’t mind *that* system being changed)
18/04/2011 at 17:08 Wizardry says:
Yep. The whole grinding up a select few skills in order to get +5′s on your chosen statistics upon levelling up is one of the poorest levelling mechanics I’ve ever seen in a CRPG. Laughably bad. But, like I always say, fix crappy mechanics rather than strip them out.
18/04/2011 at 17:24 noerartnoe says:
@Berzee
My theory: because a (proper) RPG is of the PnP variety and “controlled” by a GM/DM/ST/? capable of adapting the story and not a bunch of circuits.
Or it could be something else entirely, what do I know. *shrug*
18/04/2011 at 18:13 Berzee says:
@noerartnoe
Likewise when he says “action game” I assume he means like real-life boxing or karate or something, because he didn’t say “computer action game”.
18/04/2011 at 15:50 S.T.A.L.K.E.R. says:
Even pulling up the map involves seamlessly zooming up and above the world to look down at a full 3D rendering of it.
This is awesome.
18/04/2011 at 16:23 Jad says:
Yes it is. I actually almost wish I hadn’t read that, as I’d love to have that experience the first time I press the map button and “whoosh” I’m flying. I’m sure I would have let out an expletive.
Ah, but what could have been …
18/04/2011 at 18:30 Serenegoose says:
Just for the cartographical record, my favourite sort of in-game map is the one that you hit a button and then your character pulls out a map and looks at it, like in far cry 2. I like that sort of immersive touch.
18/04/2011 at 18:33 Doesntmeananything says:
Yes, would very much prefer the Serenegoose’s version of a cool in-game map instead of this.
18/04/2011 at 15:50 Scilantius says:
Wow. Today seems to be awesome-news day. And the day I comment on two different articles, both comments starting with “Wow.” This sounds pretty nice, although even further “streamlining” doesn’t really sound all that cool, but hey, I’m willing to keep an open mind after reading all the other cool things. Definately looking forward to this, though,…
18/04/2011 at 16:02 Scilantius says:
Oh, and I almost forgot,… if they slap on dynamic leveling, so I can go and topple those wandering giants and swat dragons out of the sky at the start of the game, I’m going to be pissed. Very pissed.
18/04/2011 at 15:51 bildo says:
“The idea is your character looks to the very heavens for inspiration and power, rather than to some out of game list of stats. As you pick a perk the chart slowly lights up”
They did this in Daggerfall :D
18/04/2011 at 15:51 Tizoc says:
I am excited.
18/04/2011 at 15:52 thegooseking says:
Are the stories actually randomly generated? As I heard it, the quests would be templates which would be filled in based on where you were and what you had done in the past and so on. Which is, um, not random. It actually sounds a lot better than random. Random wouldn’t be very good at all.
18/04/2011 at 17:11 Berzee says:
Agreed! With a story or a quest, you want to know there was a person behind it, to give it a personal meaning. Randomly generated, however detailed and convincing, would still feel Programmed To Happen, instead of as if it had actually happened. =)
(Although…I might still feel this way about filling in the templates. I realize that lots of quests are generic, but I do like to feel as though it’s important that *that particular kid* got kidnapped, and that particular mother is worried sick. That’s why I haven’t tried Din’s Curse, yet :) )
Maybe it will be better if I only think of the immutable important missions as “Quests”…and think of the templated ones as simply “Troubles”. Yes, I like that…Quests and Troubles. :) The reason I try to do every quest in a game is because you never know when you might encounter a very fine plot or character…but the reason I might take care of some Troubles is simply to feel like a hero.
18/04/2011 at 15:52 Sonny B says:
Gotta say this game is gonna be like a joygasm But “which add multiple new abilities – such as a slow-time mode for arrow shooting” made me cringe just a little I’m sure It’ll still be Orgasmic. (/Enough of orgasm puns)
18/04/2011 at 15:58 Joshua says:
Wasn’t oblivion going to be completely awesome as well?
18/04/2011 at 18:05 Arglebargle says:
Yeah, they sure suckered the reviewers on that one. I guess the 4-6 hours that they got to actually play on it didn’t tell them everything they needed to know. About the mudcrabs. And the levelling. And….
I don’t have expectations that they are suddenly going to do anything other than their usual.
While this seems to be bringing fits of joy to many, I haven’t spent a single gold coin on a Bethesda game since Oblivion. They are really going to have to produce before they get me back, and I’m much more likely to wait til it goes on sale cheap.
18/04/2011 at 15:59 Casimir's Blake says:
Only the fifth reason interests me. They can have hundreds of miles of beautifully-articulated tundra, the rolliest of rolling hills and trees that make Crysis look old.
But all of that is a waste of time if there aren’t any good dungeons to crawl in.
So come on Bethesda, make it happen! From Software can’t be bothered to make King’s Field V so you’re the only devs left making first person RPGs worth playing! (Well, pre-Fallout 3. Or maybe pre-Oblivion. Hmm.)
18/04/2011 at 16:01 Bureaucrat says:
I suspect that the randomized quests thing is either going to be so lightly done that it boils down to a handful of minor quests randomly picking one of 2 or 3 possible NPCs to use, or it’s going to generate some first-class unitentional hilarity.
Anyhow, what is it with Bethesda and their persistent attempts to ‘evolve’ their games beyond any but the most gamist of interactions with non-hostile NPCs? (Morrowind’s wiki-dialogue and Oblivion’s ridiculous joke/threaten minigame come to mind.) Whatever happened to writing interesting characters and using structured sidequests to illustrate why and how they’re interesting? That should be one of the strengths of a single-player RPG. Instead, Bethesda seems quite eager to abandon any attempt at authorship in the name of creating a “varied experience” for players. But really, why should somebody playing a single-player RPG even care whether somebody else experiences the game the same way they do?
18/04/2011 at 16:07 Kieron Gillen says:
Because it feels more alive? More like a unique fantasy world rather than a written experience? The simulationist* has always been one of the RPG’s appeal.
KG
*Go with me here.
18/04/2011 at 16:13 thegooseking says:
Abandoning authorship (to an extent) is a good thing. Anyone who thinks otherwise wants the moon on a stick.
There is an inherent conflict between authorial control and player agency, and there is an inherent conflict between authorial control and any kind of emergent simulation. Those conflicts are simply not going to go away. The more you try to hold on to traditional authoring techniques, the worse these problems become, and the more you get absurdities that ruin the experience for you.
For example, my most memorable moment in Oblivion was when I was head of the Mages’ Guild and was given a Thieves’ Guild quest to steal something… from the head of the Mages’ Guild! It’s not good for the most memorable moment to be something that ridiculous.
18/04/2011 at 16:14 Bureaucrat says:
I don’t really see how “unique fantasy world” is exclusive of “written experiences.” The most unique fantasy worlds I’ve seen have all been authored experiences.
As I see it, a quest that is generated by an RNG might be an appeal for people who expect to replay a game several times, but for a more typical one-and-done player, a quest written by a human is almost always going to be a more cohesive, satisfying experience.
18/04/2011 at 16:16 Wizardry says:
Perhaps because interestingly written characters and exciting quest plots have absolutely nothing to do with CRPGs? All that matters is that the statistics and skills of your character(s) are tested in all interactions they take part in, while those interactions also feed back into the advancement of the statistics and skills. Having brilliantly well written dialogue with lots of player choices would not make the game any better as a CRPG. It would, on the other hand, make it a better video game. Dialogue is only a very small portion of a CRPG. It’s one type of interaction out of possibly thousands you could have.
18/04/2011 at 16:33 Basilicus says:
You’re acting like the quests won’t be written. They’ll still be written as precisely before; it’s not as if the dialogue is thought up by randomly combining words. They’ll just have variable values in them based on how you’ve explored the world up till then.
18/04/2011 at 16:57 Nick says:
“You’re acting like the quests won’t be written.”
Well, it is Bethesda..
18/04/2011 at 17:15 Berzee says:
I agree with OP =)
18/04/2011 at 16:06 Doesntmeananything says:
Stop eating my comments!
Sounds just like the usual Howard-talk. Taking into account what he had said about Oblivion and Fallout 3, and how those game actually turned out to be, we can safely strike off more that half of those reasons. And some of those sound like absolutely terrific small touches, but on second thoughts start to make no sense, like NPCs picking up your sword (honestly, why would anyone drop a sword in an RPG if not to get rid of it?). And that bit about economy – I bet it’d be implemented in some sort of superficial way, perhaps like many of these promises.
I can’t argue that they don’t know what was bad about their previous games. They absolutely do, and I think they know how to make this one a much better experience. Of all things, I’m particularly enthralled by the new coversation system, though I’m almost certain that most of the talking would still be quite static, with the protagonist indeed being able to run around a stuffed dummy of an NPC who would move, however, only on scripted occasions.
Some more fishy stuff:
“It’s a much bigger jump even from Fallout in terms of VO and the amount of people we have…”
If he means Fallout 3, then this is painfully hilarious. If he’s talking about New Vegas, then it still doesn’t quite assure me that there will indeed be necessary changes in that department. Both games lacked variety in voice acting for me, albeit New Vegas did a lot to cover up for that. And apart from companions, I’ve found the overall voice acting lacklustre.
“Bethesda have also been influenced by a few mods for earlier games – for instance, bows have been tweaked as a result of finding an Oblivion balance mod that did ‘em better.”
Yeah, Howard mentioned that earlier. But it’s tragic that took hints only from a simple rebalance mod (it upped arrows damage, good God!), or at least that it’s the only mod that they openly admitted to have taken hints from. Clearly, they’ve been influenced my magic and combat enhancing mods for Oblivion, why not give them proper credit?
I guess I just can’t take Howard seriously. Better to ignore all the information about the game before the release and plunge into Skyrim withouth hoping that this time it will live up to the expectations.
18/04/2011 at 16:07 Foosnark says:
People excited about the fancy new technology in Skyrim may not be remembering how “well” Radiant AI worked..
18/04/2011 at 16:09 Doesntmeananything says:
*Nevermind*
18/04/2011 at 16:11 Doesntmeananything says:
Sounds just like the usual Howard-talk. Taking into account what he had said about Oblivion and Fallout 3, and how those game actually turned out to be, we can safely strike off more that half of those reasons. And some of those sound like absolutely terrific small touches, but on second thoughts start to make no sense, like NPCs picking up your sword (honestly, why would anyone drop a sword in an RPG if not to get rid of it?). And that bit about economy – I bet it’d be implemented in some sort of superficial way, perhaps like many of these promises.
I can’t argue that they don’t know what was bad about their previous games. They absolutely do, and I think they know how to make this one a much better experience. Of all things, I’m particularly enthralled by the new coversation system, though I’m almost certain that most of the talking would still be quite static, with the protagonist indeed being able to run around a stuffed dummy of an NPC who would move, however, only on scripted occasions.
18/04/2011 at 16:12 Doesntmeananything says:
*Nevermind*
18/04/2011 at 16:23 Doesntmeananything says:
*Nevermind*
19/04/2011 at 05:42 Grape Flavor says:
was a quality album, sure, but you didn’t really need to post it 3 times.
18/04/2011 at 16:11 StingingVelvet says:
My main issues with Oblivion sound like they might just be getting addressed, so that’s good news.
The most important thing however is: do the Argonians and Khajit have their Morrowind feet back?
18/04/2011 at 16:12 x25killa says:
I’m sorry, did you just say you can chop wood and then sell it to the local lumber mill? TIME TO UPGRADE MY PC THEN :D
18/04/2011 at 16:20 zergrush says:
Do I absolutely NEED to keel ‘em dragonz? Can’t I just, dunno, put a bandana on him and call him Spot and we would be friends forever going on adventures?
Dragons are awesome, I don’t like to kill them.
18/04/2011 at 16:20 DainIronfoot says:
“a game of actions than of numbers, and that’s always going to get backs up,”
But quite frankly those people can go back to their excel spreadsheets. The less number crunching involved the better in my book. I’ll take the big open worlds, the conversations, the swords, the magic and all the other nice things and throw out the +1 strength. Therein lies my ideal game.
Even if for some it means we’ll get cries of “its not even an RPG at all! i mean look at it! in what way is this supposed to be an RPG”
18/04/2011 at 16:28 Wizardry says:
Go back to their excel spreadsheets? Go back to their CRPGs more like. Perhaps people like you can go back to action games set in a fantasy world with lots of dialogue, quests and branching stories? After all, fantasy worlds, quests and branching stories have nothing to do with the fundamentals of the CRPG genre.
People who accuse CRPGs of being excel spreadsheets are just being plain dumb. Just because you hate numbers in your games doesn’t mean everyone does. In fact, because CRPGs were originally all about number crunching, perhaps you are the one “in the wrong”.
18/04/2011 at 16:41 DainIronfoot says:
Which action games would they be? Recommend a few?
Anyway, those CRPGs are still there. You can play them any time you like. The rest of us can move on. Personally, when I swing a sword in a game, I don’t want some behind the scenes calculation to tell me I’ve done 3 damage because my strength and dexterity are only level 4 when it looks like I should have cut the fellows head off. I suppose that makes me dumb in your eyes. Shame
I really don’t care about the traditions of CRPGs or whatever angry internet men tell me these games should be. As I said, I’d like fun games.
The term “Role Playing Game” should not have to require a critical mass of numbers.
18/04/2011 at 17:04 Wizardry says:
But you are wrong. Just plain wrong. It’s not even really about an opinion. If your strength does not determine how much damage you do, while the way in which you, the player, swing you weapon at the enemy does, then it becomes a game about PLAYER SKILL and not CHARACTER SKILL. Character skill being more important than player skill when performing fundamental actions is the basis of a CRPG.
Put it this way, how do you play the role of a crappy fighter (such as a mage) when your hit chance and damage isn’t based on the statistics and skills of your character? With the way you seem to want to play, you’d have to intentionally force yourself to play poorly; missing enemies on purpose, aiming for their armour instead of their weak spots. That’s effectively LARPing in game form.
18/04/2011 at 17:09 DainIronfoot says:
Then in that case, as I say below, I wouldn’t classify it as a CRPG and move on and enjoy it anyway. Even if I am wrong, plain wrong, it may be possible to enjoy the game with fewer numbers. I mean, look! There are still levels and stats in this game.
There are obviously going to be a logical set of stats based limitations (that as you point out, is necessary from a gameplay perspective and progression is satisfying and rewarding), but hopefully they’ll be more mount and blade than dungeons and dragons.
18/04/2011 at 19:50 Jim Rossignol says:
I’m baffled as to why anyone thinks that the character’s abilities in this game won’t be defined by numbers.
18/04/2011 at 20:09 Archonsod says:
“That’s effectively LARPing in game form.”
:)
Wizardry has this weird definition of cRPG’s as being somehow completely divorced from the RPG part. I assume he utilises the acronym purely because he’d feel silly referring to them as ‘c’ games.
18/04/2011 at 20:26 Wizardry says:
It’s not about the game still having numbers left in it. It’s about getting rid of numbers progressively as the series moves on. Daggerfall has the most. Morrowind had less. Oblivion had less. Skyrim will have the lowest amount by some distance considering the removal of primary statistics and a lower number of skills.
Seriously. Replacing numerical statistics and skills with perks is simplification. If you’ve seen discussions about party building in Wizardry 8 you’ll understand how fundamentally different it is to people spamming their links to their World of Warcraft talent trees. Fallout had perks. Fallout also had traits, SPECIAL and skills. Trim down the skills (which The Elder Scrolls has been doing in every iteration since Daggerfall) and remove the statistics (which Skyrim seems to be doing) and you’re left with a far more shallow character building system.
18/04/2011 at 22:10 DainIronfoot says:
Jim: If this is aimed at me, then no, of course I don’t think that. I just think there will be less numbers, hopefully gained more logically than previous examples of this genre. As I said, less dungeons and dragons, more mount and blade.
Wizardry: Well you can play this wizardry 8 game then can’t you? Everyone wins!
18/04/2011 at 23:06 Wizardry says:
You’ve never played it? Why aren’t I surprised. I could fart out a better CRPG levelling/character system than whatever Skyrim will end up having, and I’m not even being boastful. Just play a few older CRPGs, take inspiration, learn about what works and what doesn’t work, then come up with your own. Bethesda’s approach is to streamline the Daggerfall system even more (which they didn’t even invent as the designers have since left the company), and then add in perks that they inherited from the Fallout license to make up for it, while conveniently forgetting that perks were only a small part of Fallout’s system.
19/04/2011 at 10:08 arghstupid says:
I find it bizarre that there are still so many numbers in rpgs, they just remind you you’re in a game. they should still be there working away behind the scenes as character development is an integral part of the genre, but couldnt increased strength just be represented by your character starting to look a bit beefy and being able to beat up all the other kids? giving you a page full of stats just encourages you to play the system rather then play as a character.
19/04/2011 at 11:55 DainIronfoot says:
“Why aren’t I surprised.”
Yes, playing an obscure game much beloved of those who love number crunching RPGs is a clear sign of my mental inferiority. WHY AM I SO WEAK!?
Oo, or COULD IT BE… (wikipedia)
“With a lack of widespread advertising and limited distribution, the game failed to attract much attention at its release.”
And therefore as someone with very little interest in most RPGs, specifically these old school ones it’s highly unlikely I’d seek it out isn’t it?
19/04/2011 at 13:57 Archonsod says:
Heh, the Wizardry series wasn’t exactly amazing to begin with, but 8 was the worst of the lot. Funnily enough main criticisms were it’s enemy levelling system and interface.
19/04/2011 at 14:53 Wizardry says:
@arghstupid: That removes all the strategy from the game, so no.
@DainIronfoot: Wizardry 8 is not obscure at all. It’s the final game in one of the longest running PC RPG series of all time(1981 to 2001). A series that is one of the most influential in all of gaming and probably the most influential CRPG series of all time. It was also the final game by Sir-Tech, the developers of the Jagged Alliance series. It’s not my fault that you’ve never heard of them. It’s your fault, if anything.
@Archonsod: I swear you said Wizardry VII was the worst Wizardry game in a reply to me mentioning Wizardry VII. Perhaps you’ll call Wizardry VI the worst Wizardry game if I mentioned Wizardry VI. The fact is that Wizardry 8 had a much more satisfying and well thought out levelling system than anything Bethesda could create.
19/04/2011 at 15:46 DainIronfoot says:
“It’s not my fault that you’ve never heard of them. It’s your fault, if anything.”
Oh dearie dearie me..
Ignoring your angry internet manning for a minute. for a moment (I mean, telling me it’s my own fault I haven’t heard of your favourite obscure RPG, can’t you see you’re being somewhat… unreasonable?) did you not see the wiki quote?
I think it’s rather pointless arguing with you about this as you seem somewhat.. obsessed
Plus I was… 12 in 2001. With less interest in dull RPGs than I have now.
19/04/2011 at 16:54 Wizardry says:
A dull RPG? How do you know? I thought you hadn’t even heard of it? Why judge a game you have never even heard of? Scared of something? I think you are.
19/04/2011 at 17:06 DainIronfoot says:
“Scared of something? I think you are.”
Don’t you see you’re not well?
I did a brief wiki search, which told me it was obscure (Look, I said it twice up there) and a youtube search.
You’re a little.. obsessed aren’t you?
19/04/2011 at 17:14 Wizardry says:
Did Wikipedia also tell you it was dull? It must have! The Wizardry series is not obscure. It’s one of the most famous CRPG franchises of all time.
19/04/2011 at 17:31 DainIronfoot says:
And returning to my original point, I should care because? Look, you’ve proved in various comment threads that you’re a bit of a nutter about this sort of stuff. But Wizzzardry will STILL BE THERE. So you can still play it.
I think we’re done here. You’re obsessed and I don’t care beyond poking to see exactly HOW obsessed.
19/04/2011 at 18:27 Wizardry says:
So you are allowed to complain about how shit character systems are that contain lots of numbers while calling me obsessed for pointing out a CRPG that I believe disproves your point?
You: “Hey guys. All FPSs suck.”
Me: “Doom was good because of x, y and z.”
You: “What is this Doom you speak of? Some sort of obscure game?”
Me: “You’ve never heard of Doom? Seriously?”
You: “YOU’RE OBSESSED WITH THIS DOOM GAME!”
18/04/2011 at 16:25 Wulf says:
I feel that this has all been dumbed down into something that drunk men would want to play on a Sunday evening or somesuch, I just don’t get much of an RPG vibe from it, it sort of seems like the fantasy version of Gears of War. You know, male power fantasy/trip and all that.
I think the two most disappointing things for me are that, first of all, they’ve put that much effort into the Khajiit, this might actually be the first time ever that the Khajiit look remotely decent (but still no Char, I’ll admit, even there), and we have no character creator to actually put one together. And second of all, it seems like something that drunk men would play on a Sunday evening – everything’s boiled down to violence, essentially.
I’m a fan of RPGs, but I expect RPGs to have dialogue, and to be able to reason with the vast majority of foes within the game. I got that to a degree from Fallout: New Vegas and it made me happy. But I think this will just be kill, kill, kill, dragon shout, level up, kill, kill, kill, dragon shout, level up, kill, kill, kill, dragon shout, level up… and so on.
I miss intelligent RPGs, I find that they’re becoming rare, and I’m sorry to say it but I do. I really miss them. This new design style that they’ve taken with Skyrim seems more dumbed down and removed from dialogue and choices than ever.
I’m usually the first to see these things, give it a while and others will catch on.
I’m still holding out hope for Guild Wars 2 to be a little bit different, despite being an MMORPG. When did MMORPGs become more interesting than single player ones? At least t me. Personal opinion and all. Oh well. Don’t mind me, I’ll just go and lament over there, in the corner.
18/04/2011 at 16:44 Kaira- says:
“I think the two most disappointing things for me are that, first of all, they’ve put that much effort into the Khajiit, this might actually be the first time ever that the Khajiit look remotely decent (but still no Char, I’ll admit, even there), and we have no character creator to actually put one together”
I think it has been pointed to you, time after time, that you can make a Khajit-character. Also, as the text points out…
18/04/2011 at 16:45 Doesntmeananything says:
I usually tend to avoid using ‘dumbed down’ and ‘consoles’ in one sentence, but I think I can’t help it this time.
Dumbed down consoles.
In any case, it seems that they’re just continuing the trend with their series. TES games are captivating because of their world, at least for me. And while writing did degrade from early to later games, it wasn’t particularly relevant. So when you expect a new TES game, you mostly expect an interesting world (albeit a little clichéd in this case). Of course, this doesn’t excuse the lack of moral dilemmas, interesting characters, etc. It’s a shame they develop the series in this highly mainstream console way, but to be fair, you’ve always interacted with the world of TES games through either talking or violence. They just capitalising on the latter in this particular case. And that’s what people seem to want.
18/04/2011 at 16:46 Wulf says:
@Kaira
I just won’t believe it until I see it. Yes, I’ve read it, but… I’ve seen no screenshots of it, no videos of it, and the Nord as the main character just seems to fit the theme of the game.
You’d think that if this were in the game, there’d be some assets depicting this, somewhere. But it’s always the same Nord character. Always.
I’m just waiting for them to say that they cut race choice from the game for the game’s bests interests, to portray the kind of story and setting that they wanted to, which requires a more specific choice of character.
18/04/2011 at 16:51 Wulf says:
@Doesntmeananything
“Of course, this doesn’t excuse the lack of moral dilemmas, interesting characters, etc. It’s a shame they develop the series in this highly mainstream console way, but to be fair, you’ve always interacted with the world of TES games through either talking or violence. They just capitalising on the latter in this particular case. And that’s what people seem to want.”
That’s what’s bothering me, I suppose. Oblivion had some choices to avoid outright slaughter, and Fallout 3 had a few more, then New Vegas had a lot more, and for a while I actually thought that things were on the right track. But this seems like a step back. Is it truly what everyone wants? Does everyone just want to sit there, mashing buttons, killing things… no inclination toward story, character building, choices, or anything?
Hence my Gears of War in a fantasy setting statement.
18/04/2011 at 17:31 Doesntmeananything says:
“Is it truly what everyone wants? Does everyone just want to sit there, mashing buttons, killing things… no inclination toward story, character building, choices, or anything?”
There’s no need to dramatise. I’m at least 90% sure that you can avoid violence as much as in Oblivion. So you won’t have a lot of options for that, but there will be some. I don’t think the game will decline into mindless-violence-all-the way trip, and perhaps I was a bit too harsh towards console crowds in that regard. I get a ‘We Improved It’ vibe from the marketing campaign, and as such, the combat gets a lot of mention because it was atrocious in Oblivion and now it’s ostensibly much, much better. Incidentally, the combat is what appeals to most of the gamers. Ultimately, it may seem like there’s an emphasis on killing things, but I believe it’s not the case – more like you’ll actually have fun killing things, as opposed to Oblivion where you indeed mashed buttons.
Oblivion, despite all of its shortcomings, still had soul, this ethereal atmosphere about it. And it was marketed in quite the same way as Skyrim, with ‘sleek’ and ‘cool’ gameplay thingies placed on the foreground. I quite understand that such fantasy palls on you, and you yearn for something zany, highly original, but to be fair, it’s too early to claim Skyrim a bore. It may very well have some surprises.
Yes, I’m optimistic about the game. but not about the promises.
18/04/2011 at 17:34 Alec Meer says:
Where on Earth did you get the idea there was less/no story or non-combative stuff?
They haven’t yet shown guilds, they haven’t shown Persuasion or trading, they haven’t yet shown cities, they’ve only shown a tiny handful of spells, they haven’t talked much about the story at all, or shown much in the way of any specific quests or characters.
It’s seven months until the game comes out and they’ve promised they’ll be showing a lot more before then. This is just the first time we’ve seen anything substantial of it.
It’s *absolutely* ludicrous to be making those kind of ‘oh, it’s thrown out everything I love!’ statements at this stage.
18/04/2011 at 18:02 Urthman says:
Wulf, those very same criteria you’re using would “prove” that you can’t play as a female Shepherd in Mass Effect 2.
18/04/2011 at 18:17 DiamondDog says:
“I’m usually the first to see these things, give it a while and others will catch on.”
That’s amazing.
18/04/2011 at 22:14 Urael says:
Oh Wulf, mate, seriously, not again. Look. either stop commenting on Skyriim threads or you and me are REALLY going to fall out. From the very word go you’ve had it in for this game. and no amount of argument to the contrary seems to be having any effect. Or blatantly pointing out your hideous misonceptions; remember the “only one race” jag you were on for a while?? The one several people comprehensively linked to with absolute proof to the contrary?
“I’m just waiting for them to say that they cut race choice from the game for the game’s bests interests, to portray the kind of story and setting that they wanted to, which requires a more specific choice of character.”
OHFERFUCKSSAKE!
We get it. You don’t like Bethesda RPGs. So how about sparing us from having to listen to more of your premature, prima-facia judgements on a game that is looking more and more what fans of the series have been asking for. Seriously, it’s getting like that grain of sand in your butt-crack you just can’t get rid of – bloody annoying!
19/04/2011 at 00:30 Fiatil says:
Why on earth do you think they would force us to play a Nord in this version when they didn’t force you to play as a Dunmer in Morrowind? If you can be the savior of the most xenophobic race in the game as a Khajit (you know, their slave race), then I’m pretty sure they can lore it out so that you can save the Nords as anything too.
19/04/2011 at 05:58 Grape Flavor says:
Either Wulf truly is trolling us or his IQ does in fact fall to a clinically retarded level every time he hears the word “Skyrim”.
Dude, just stop. Even the RPS writers are calling you out on your shit. I’m not going to even bother to refute your accusations because the facts are out there so clearly and yet you willfully refuse to see them. Nothing we say or link you to seems to change your mind.
@Urthman
Yeah really. By these standards there is abundant, absolute proof that Shepard is both male and, furthermore, looks exactly like the one on the box! “What do you mean you actually have full choice in the game? Lies! Lies I tell you! I’ve seen the box art! That’s all I need to know!”
Also everybody playing Wulf Post Bingo: mark off “Male Power Fantasy” on your card.
Could have sworn “Xenophobia” would be in there somewhere! Drat, and that’s just the one I need!
18/04/2011 at 16:27 Amasius says:
20 good reasons to buy it, nice. But how’s the writing? I never managed to finish Oblivions main quest because the writing was so terrible.
18/04/2011 at 16:30 Wulf says:
I think they just need to get the people they lost after Morrowind back. I remember reading that a bunch of people left Bethesda after that and I think that most of that was their writing/creative talent. So I agree with you, it was nothing too special originally, and there wasn’t much in the way of choice. And from what I’ve read, this seems even more devoid of choice.
I suspect that for a long, long time the best Bethesda game for me will be Morrowind, that won’t change for decades to come, I imagine, simply because they had such a strong sense of individuality with that game, it was interesting, if nothing else.
18/04/2011 at 16:33 rareh says:
I have to say Morrowind’s World and Lore are amazing, image how disappointed I was when i got oblivion it looked like something randomly generated.
18/04/2011 at 16:35 Wulf says:
…that’s exactly how I felt about it. You had all these amazing, hand-crafted areas in Morrowind, where you could see that someone had obsessively built them bit by bit, with the passion that only a truly creative person can muster, and then, Oblivion, I step out of the sewers… terrain gen, yaaay.
This is why I’m putting so much hope into Guild Wars 2 – because their art people are that insane, and they want to provide us with interesting experiences, and even a personal storyline with actual choices, rather than just the average old fantasy toss.
It’s interesting, but if Guild Wars 2 is the example, then innovation truly has moved over to MMOs.
18/04/2011 at 16:41 Wizardry says:
Daggerfall was by far the best thing Bethesda have done in my opinion. Losing their creative individuals and letting Todd Howard design their games dragged Bethesda down.
18/04/2011 at 16:53 Doesntmeananything says:
Absolutely agree that placing Howard at the helm was a horrible, fateful decision. If the games are not much of an example, then simply see what he says or how he talks! No way he can create anything intelligent.
18/04/2011 at 18:33 Arglebargle says:
There’s no reason to trust Bethesda to deliver on this. Oblivion had a dull poorly written D&D mishmash in story and background, and the patently awful re-use of the demonic plane castles, which quickly became boring, instead of being a high point of the game, as it should have been. *See Dragon Age 2 complaints. Fallout 3 played a little better, but that was probably based on my incredibly low expectations. And its user interface was pathetically awful. When it wasn’t also crashing….
Howard waxed enthusiastically about both. There’s no reason for me to be enthused about him waxing the light fantastic on Skyrim. I will cross my fingers for luck, as it would be nice to see them round back into good form.
18/04/2011 at 16:29 rareh says:
Pros
7. The world is so much more alive.
17. There’s a real in-game economy.
Cons.
3. While the game’s pretty much the same size of Oblivion in terms of land mass
9. The skill and attribute system has been rethought to make it more streamlined
these 4 really stoke out, i really don’t know if i want skyrim anymore…
At least modding can fix those cons.
18/04/2011 at 16:38 _Jackalope_ says:
This better not get delayed. It’s due out around my birthday and I’ve booked the month off. I keep telling myself it’s so I can enjoy turning 30 and make the best of it, go to places I’ve wanted to visit but kept putting off, see old friends etc but really it’s so I can hide in a fantasy world of Bethesda’s creation and not accept reality. I will feel bad about killing dragons though. I cried like a baby when I saw Dragonheart.
18/04/2011 at 16:38 Dachannien says:
Reason 21:
11 November 2011 is on a Friday, so you’ll have the whole weekend to play it, instead of getting you to foolishly participate in a grind-fest-in-ARG’s-clothing that purports to cause the game to release substantially early but in reality only moves up the release time by a few hours to a point when you were probably going to be asleep anyway.
18/04/2011 at 16:43 UK_John says:
I really do worry about the skills/attributes. This is the meat of real RPG’s, not the “micro-climates” or “sexy menu’s” and other graphical things.
I also think this author and Bethesda are not giving credit where credit is due. Many of the idea’s from oblivion mods are going into Skyrim, not just the bows. For examples, the spiders and animal factions of Martigen’s Monster mod seems to be a major part of this new game. Then you have the more realistic economy. I could list others, but the point is many, if not most, of the new idea’s in Skyrim are coming from Oblivion mods! There was even a mod very close to this “Radiant Story” system that is going to replace the defunct Radiant AI.
I just hope in the final standing that this doesn’t become, in reality, a game closer to a Bioware so-called RPG than a real Bethesda RPG. I don’t buy Bioware games anymore, as to me they have become Action-Adventures, as in combat and conversation systems. This year I have bought Drakensang River of Time and Two Worlds II, I will be buying The Witcher 2 next month. These are REAL cRPG’s and they all happen to come from Europe. Bethesda is the last major U.S. publisher still making old-school RPG’s. Skyrim is going to show us if that’s the way they are continuing, or whether they are selling out bit by bit, just like Bioware, but at a slower pace.
18/04/2011 at 16:45 Jorum says:
I think people are being presumptuously negative on “this dumbed-down” and “this isn’t a RPG”.
Mechanical complexity and lots of numbers doesn’t make a good RPG.
A decent RPG has things like
1) can I choose what type of person I am and how I do things (within the limitations of a game)
2) can I make meaningful decisions that have actual impact on the world or story.
3) does the world and the creatures and people react in a reasonably realistic way to my actions.
After all, in most RPGs the various stats/mechancis choices are really false choices.
Hmm, I’m a magic user so will I choose this axe of cuttyness or the staff that makes my spells better?
At every stage all your mostly doing is deciding “will this make my fireballs more hurty? yes/no”
I actually really like number 13 – having to choose stats and abilities before I even play a game always bugs me. I don’t know if I want an extra point in strength Mr Menu , I didn’t design this game.
Tell you what – if I start spending all my time shooting things with arrows assume I like doing that and make me better at it as I go along.
18/04/2011 at 16:55 Wizardry says:
Mechanical complexity and lots of numbers don’t make a CRPG good. However, mechanics and numbers that connect up the interface for character advancement and the effects your character has on the world (and the world on your character) is what’s important. This does require complexity, unfortunately. Stripping back all statistics makes everything one dimensional. You no longer have the ability to create the character you want to create. Bethesda will probably substitute this with allowing you to play the character you want to play by having all options open to you. This isn’t what CRPGs are about because CRPGs are about your character interacting with the world rather than the player. You tell the character what to do, the character succeeds or fails based on their statistics and skills.
18/04/2011 at 17:03 DainIronfoot says:
Then assume this isn’t a CRPG and get on with enjoying it without the preconceptions of the genre?
Jorum: I agree entirely.
18/04/2011 at 16:46 PleasingFungus says:
This sounds like it could be incredibly interesting, and spectacularly broken.
I can only wait to see what kind of bugs things like “randomly picking NPCs to be kidnapped” will produce. Man, this’ll be great.
18/04/2011 at 16:49 omicron1 says:
“You could chop some wood for the lumber mill.”
SOLD.
Seriously.
A living economy (along with New Vegas’ hardcore mode, please!) is in the top 5 of my most-wanted features for this game. The more it lets me live in Skyrim, the more I’m going to love it. And this looks like I’m going to love it to pieces.
18/04/2011 at 16:55 Megadyptes says:
This game will be pretty damn awesome in a couple of years after several hundred mods have been released. I can’t wait!
18/04/2011 at 17:00 mike_c says:
@BigJonno I hope it’s a fire enchanted axe or the damned thing’ll regenerate
18/04/2011 at 17:12 Nihilille says:
It’s a good thing you meant to type athletics and not acrobatics (DO YOU REALLY LOVE THE ELDER SCROLLS IF YOU MAKE SUCH A MISTAKE?!) since acrobatics is what I’ve built every single one of my elder scrolls characters around. Jump, jump, jump, jump…
18/04/2011 at 17:25 megazver says:
I am all aboard the Prune The Attributes Train. Prune them. Prune them hard.
18/04/2011 at 17:30 sexyresults says:
STOKED!
18/04/2011 at 17:32 dethtoll says:
As someone who generally finds fantasy boring and was left comatose by Oblivion, I can’t help but… really kinda look forward to this.
(ps I loved Fallout 3, come at me bros)
18/04/2011 at 17:32 Davie says:
What’s this I see? Khajiit, not a hairy man wearing a lion head! And, Orc, not a fat green guy with his nose cut off! The best of these screenshots are the character’s faces, by far.
This is going to be awesome. SO effing awesome. And I’m totally going to burn down every lumber mill.
18/04/2011 at 17:33 MistaJah says:
19. The skills/perks system is presented as a vast, twinkling star field populated by stellar patterns in the shape of this world’s various gods. The idea is your character looks to the very heavens for inspiration and power, rather than to some out of game list of stats.
What is this utter bull :D Oh god… Molyneux, is that you? But I won’t judge beforehand. I’d just like to see a glimpse of the menus so ridiculously praised.
18/04/2011 at 17:41 bluebogle says:
I could just die from sheer excitement!
But I won’t, as I really want to play this game!!!
18/04/2011 at 18:17 stblr says:
The real strength of Morrowind’s system, and why it has so many doe-eyed followers these many years later, is that Skills and Attributes are exposed by other in-game systems, namely Alchemy, Enchanting, and spellmaking. I didn’t care that I could raise my Acrobatics by jumping hundreds of times over and over; what I DID care about was quaffing three dozen Acrobatics-raising potions in a row and jumping over a goddamn volcano.
My fear for Skyrim’s reduction of Skills and Attributes isn’t that I can’t customize my character by stabbing with my dagger several hundred thousand times, it’s that by nixing these stats, I can’t modify them by some other means and become the tiny god I’ve always wanted.
18/04/2011 at 18:19 Outsider says:
I’m looking forward to this. Though there is a nagging feeling that I end up getting with these huge amibitious and beautiful games and that is the lack of multiplayer. I think many games would be worse with it, but there still are times while roaming around and looking at great things or experiencing some epic moment, that I become alert to the fact that I have no one to share those moments with.
Not sure if that makes sense.
18/04/2011 at 21:56 dogsolitude_uk says:
It makes perfect sense.
In fact it was my g/f’s suggestion that we LAN a couple of PCs to play Neverwinter Nights in co-operative mode that got me into the wonderful world of RPGs four years ago! We’ve been looking for decent LANnable RPGs since.
She still teases me about Boddynock Glinkle being sh!t and constantly getting killed to this day…
19/04/2011 at 04:45 dethtoll says:
This is completely unrelated but as a Gibson fan I love your username.
18/04/2011 at 18:23 Soon says:
I’d like to know how AI react to ranged combat if they can’t reach you. Because I’m boring.
And, yay AI ecology and uh, skeleton beards!
18/04/2011 at 18:25 groghog says:
Really excited about this. Especially like that you won’t have to just stick to archetypes like in Oblivion.
That’s one of the things that really bugged me, not being able to mix things up and just having to be a straight stabber/arrower/wizarder
18/04/2011 at 18:27 Kevin says:
Has Todd Howard confirmed or denied that Ralph Cosham of Brother Jauffre fame will be returning, Alec?
18/04/2011 at 18:30 Kevin says:
Going to be weird not jumping to everywhere whilst constantly casting a low-level mysticism/illusion/conjuration/alteration/restoration spell in an Elder Scrolls game. Now I’ll be running everywhere… whilst constantly casting a low-level mysticism/illusion/conjuration/alteration/restoration spell
18/04/2011 at 18:37 The_Great_Skratsby says:
Hooboy after Oblivion and Fallout 3 I was adamant that I wouldn’t be hyped about the next Betheda game, but from these details there is only so much salt I can add. Please, please don’t be over promising.
18/04/2011 at 19:06 Jad says:
“We’re really big into the mods on the PC.”
And this is why I love Bethesda. You know all those other developer interviews where they promise that they really care about the PC version, how they are taking advantage of all that the PC offers? And you know how this just ends up being mouse-controlled menus, and maybe nicer graphics? Perhaps even some fancy talk about DX11 and larger player counts on PC servers?
Yeah, that still doesn’t shout “PC-focused” nearly as much as this simple little sentence.
18/04/2011 at 19:13 dogsolitude_uk says:
I’m not so sure about the interface: that zodiac thing looks suspiciously like the kind of interface where you have to scroll left and right to select something, and I hate them. Probably because I spent all that money on that mouse thing.
Anyway, my g/f, who has been following the Skyrim news with some interest, would like to know:
1 – Can she play a Khajiit?
2 – If so, can she choose it’s face, colours and markings? According to her, you should be able to have stripey ones, spotty ones, dark ones and light ones, and the head should be the same as the body.
*sigh*
18/04/2011 at 20:12 Kaira- says:
1 – yes she can.
2 – I don’t know, and fast googling didn’t really reveal anything.
18/04/2011 at 21:14 dogsolitude_uk says:
Thanks :) I should have read the article properly before posting!
She loves cats and stuff, and went round Morrowind with a companion mod collecting Khajits and buying them expensive robes. After a while she had a crack team of well ‘ard cats following her around, and some others sitting at her home.
One got afflicted with a curse that dropped its charisma right down, and nobody liked him.
18/04/2011 at 19:31 Jimbo says:
Can I buy one lumbermill and then burn down all the other lumbermills?
19/04/2011 at 04:25 The Dude says:
This, please! Level 20 Entrepreneur.
18/04/2011 at 20:23 MythArcana says:
More varied character builds?! Perhaps read your own article and do some math.
“We’re down from 8 attributes and 21 skills to 3 attributes and 18 skills.”
8 * 21 = 168 <—— Oblivion
versus
3 * 18 = 54 <——-Skyrim
How do you conclude that removing 114 options in just this one example alone helps create more varied builds? No wonder the industry is failing large lately with this kind of logic. Here's a little lesson for the kiddies today, and this one is free!
Streamlined = PC game which is ruined to scale DOWN to the console platform.
18/04/2011 at 21:20 dogsolitude_uk says:
I applied the same sort of Maths to my review of Dragon Age: Origins for Amazon, but the Amazonian Mods were having none of it and ti never got on there…
Seriously, this crap about ‘streamlining’ for ‘greater flexibility’ is sheer marketing bunkum. Anyone who’s done GCSE Maths should be able to work out the various combos. For example, Intelligence didn’t ‘just feed into Magicka’, it also had a bearing on stuff like lockpicking, alchemy etc.
09/06/2011 at 00:20 youreareuoy says:
Soooo agree with u there pal. It’s just like that Spotify new announcement:
In Spotify, we’ve always supported the idea of taking the music to as many people as possible in the world. That’s why we just decided to limit the Free Accounts music listening from 20 hours a month to 10.
I mean, do u rly think we’re THAT stupid
18/04/2011 at 20:50 leeder krenon says:
Will there be horse armour?
This game sounds amazing. I hope it is.
18/04/2011 at 20:55 satsui says:
This is an orgasm in a box.
18/04/2011 at 21:34 DrGruu says:
They should just use the Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup system – it’s awesome and sounds like what they are aiming for.
18/04/2011 at 21:44 Pidesco says:
Some of these things really appear to be things to be wary of in Skyrim, except they were worded in a specific way by marketing (or rather, Todd Howard) in order to sound awesome.
2, 3, 9 and 17 really stick out as a bunch of baloney.
And 19 seems to say nothing at all, although I guess I’ll have to see it in action.
Hurray for the in-game economy, though. I’ve been waiting for that in an Elder Scrolls game since Daggerfall.
18/04/2011 at 21:51 dogsolitude_uk says:
We’re down from 8 attributes and 21 skills to 3 attributes and 18 skills, which will probably cause gasps of horror in some camps, but actually the aim is to make character builds even more diverse while getting rid of redundant levelling.
…and…
“What we found was those [old] attributes actually did something else. For instance, Intelligence just affected Magicka. They all trickled down to some other stat.”
Hmmm…
Morrowind worked like this. You had eight Attributes. These were Strength, Intelligence, Willpower, Agility, Speed, Endurance, Personality and Luck. Each one of these affected a number of derived attributes, and/or governed a skill.
Intelligence did not just affect Magicka, it also gave bonuses on Security (locking/unlocking stuff, disarming traps etc) and Alchemy (mixing potions and identifying ingredients). If you took an Intelligence hit (e.g. after having an ‘Endumbening’ spell cast on you) those other skills would be affected for the duration.
The Attributes fed into four Derived Attributes: Health, Magicka, Fatigue and Encumberance, which, at the most basic level, affected immediate gameplay and changed depending on how many times you got hit, how many spells you cast, how much you were carrying etc. These were calculated from the characters Attributes.
Example: Endurance (Attribute) would affect how quickly your Health (Derived Attribute) went down in battle, as well as how quickly your Fatigue (Derived Attribute) went up.
It’s actually not that difficult to grasp. Maybe it’s just me, but there seems to be a concerted attempt on the part of Bioware and Bethesda, and other software companies, to dumb the living hell out of every game in case it scares da kidz off.
Worse, they do it and then lie about it, sweep it under the carpet, dismiss the concerns of the fanbase, pretend they’re not doing it and so on. I get heartily sick of this tacit insistence, not just in the gaming industry but the film industry, the music industry, the TV industry and the press, that we’re a bunch of morons who deserve no better than spoon fed easily-digested pap.
If you complain or protest on the basis that it was the complexity and involvement of the games that attracted you in the first place, you get ignored, shouted down as ‘elitist’, told to ‘move with the times’ (i.e. just passively accept what your given and like it’), or hit with the ‘sense of entitlement’ meme.
On April 1st, RPS ran a great piece about Chess 2.0. Clearly you guys are aware that this dumbing-down/’streamlining’ is a serious issue in Gaming. I think we mostly agree that it’s also happening elsewhere in other industries and media as well.
So why oh why are you pushing this ‘streamlined = great!’ party line? If a game has been simplified, had it’s mechanics gutted, to appeal to a broader fanbase please at least have the honesty to say so. Tell us what’s been knifed out, what the potential shortcomings are. We rely on you guys to give us unbiased, critical coverage of the industry and its products on the basis of your extensive experience, not to present us with constant happy-sheets about the latest AAA title.
09/06/2011 at 00:25 youreareuoy says:
for president.
18/04/2011 at 22:14 Robin says:
No spears.
:(
18/04/2011 at 23:05 Wizardry says:
.
18/04/2011 at 23:24 Oneironaut says:
All of this sounds great except for #7. I can see that happening too often and breaking immersion when you’re in the middle of nowhere and a random NPC walks over and hands you your sword. If the rest of the game is any sign, this won’t be a problem and it will be a rare enough occurence to be a positive experience.
18/04/2011 at 23:45 Wulf says:
Well, after reading all that, I’ll say this…
If the character creation stuff is really true and they won’t backpedal at the last moment, and if by some insane chance they decide to give me the option to barter with or persuade the dragons to help me instead of having to kill them off (since permanently killing off dragons just so I can mooch off their power like a nasty little parasite isn’t something I want to do) then I may just be interested in this.
After all I’ve read and the underwhelming experience of Oblivion I find it hard to get my hopes up, but since everyone else seems to be so into it, I’ll keep an open mind, just in case. Still can’t just permanently kill off dragons though, and if I have to do that to progress then that’s a deal breaker for me. One thing I liked about D&D is that if you were clever enough, you could appeal to a dragon’s narcissistic side or greed, even with the most evil of dragons, and win the day without bloodshed.
And I don’t mind having to do incredibly difficult tasks either to win them over in comparison with the comparatively easy task of just killing them off. I kind of hope they’ll give the option. I can’t see that happening, though. Even being a Khajiit might not be enough to convince me if the game centres around killing dragons. Yes, I’m weird, I know. But I can’t be anyone but me. And I can’t apologise for that because we’re all who we are.
19/04/2011 at 00:08 DiamondDog says:
The thing is Wulf, you aren’t weird. You seem so achingly desperate to paint yourself as an eccentric outsider who runs counter to everyone else. Problem is there are many people who feel the same as you.
I enjoy reading your rambling posts, but I could do without the constant patronising of other peoples intelligence. Your idea’s aren’t that far out that no-one else can keep up. We get it.
19/04/2011 at 02:09 Berzee says:
As far as the not-being-willing-to-kill-dragons, though, he’s definitely in the minority. Not an obscure and confusing minority, but still minor. =)
19/04/2011 at 03:29 Tetragrammaton says:
I suppose the fact that I will only buy this game if you can actually wear the dragon after killing it puts me in some kind of minority. (A mentally unbalanced one, perhaps.)
19/04/2011 at 15:44 Berzee says:
“(A mentally unbalanced one, perhaps.)”
Hey man, don’t apologize. You are who you are.
19/04/2011 at 00:18 Dozer says:
reply fail.
19/04/2011 at 00:54 Mario Figueiredo says:
Really, really, excited about Skyrim (which for some irritating reason I can’t stop reading as “squirm”). But of all the great advantages you mentioned, this is the only one I have doubts. Not because the world size is an issue to me; if Skyrim had the same size of oblivion, I wouldn’t flinch. But because the way you put it, made it feel like just like another one of those cheap tricks to make the world look bigger or the gameplay to last longer.
19/04/2011 at 01:12 Tunips says:
You know what we haven’t seen in any of these screenshots yet? A beard. (On a humanoid face-generated character, anyway)
WHAT ARE THEY HIDING?
19/04/2011 at 01:44 Burning Man says:
All this is well and good, and it looks to be much much better than Oblivion could have ever been….. but…..
How am I supposed to set Athletics and Acrobatics to 200 and bunnyhop through the game anymore?? WAAAAAAAH!
If they don’t allow you to overpower yourself in a simple and easy fashion, I am not getting this game. I love breaking RPGs and fooling around with everything. Especially with Oblivion, where I couldn’t care less about the story, storytelling or questing. I’d just max out Conjuration, and send my Markynaz in to wipe my enemies out while I watched. And laughed.
I would then proceed to bunnyhop through the countryside.
19/04/2011 at 02:45 Coillscath says:
I’m still extremely apprehensive, but what they mentioned about destroying the lumber mill made me hopeful that there could still be some world-affecting fun in watching a dragon tear chunks out of a village before you’re able to kill it, and then having that damage stay there for a while afterwards until it’s all repaired.
19/04/2011 at 04:28 The Dude says:
I think this game would be five times more awesome if instead of killing a dragon you could tame it, and ride it across the sky all over Skyrim.
And make it spit fireballs on command so you can obliterate the entire cat people race and be a gorram racist. Yep.
25/04/2011 at 00:21 thinkpadius says:
mod please.
19/04/2011 at 08:16 Unaco says:
Damn you Bethesda! I had cynically written this off, after Oblivion and Fallout 3 and the general decline in PC RPG’s over the years. But I must admit… my initial scepticism has been fading as more details are released. I’m not sure I agree with the reduction of skills, but I’ll keep an open mind for now. And the auto levelling / Level Scaling system (seen in Oblivion) is anathema to how I want my RPG’s to play… so I hope it’s toned down (to Morrowind levels) or easily modded around.
But I do really like some of the things I’m reading and seeing (Dragon slaying and the debate mechanic, the economy, dual wielding or at least spell + weapon, the wildlife, randomised/dynamic quests, modding, and those Zombie Vikings, which do look properly eerie). I know Beth has promised me the world and more before, and failed to deliver… But I’m going to try and stay positive on this one. From the looks of it, I might even end up dropping my ‘character’ (the same character I use for all RPGs pretty much) and making a new one called “Logen Ninefingers”. They are modelling missing appendages I hope… and scars… and beards.
19/04/2011 at 10:48 roryok says:
I swear I am not being sarcastic when I say I’m looking forward to characters who lean on porches, and all that that implies
19/04/2011 at 11:58 Sinnorfin says:
My view is that integrating an RPG-s back mechanics seamlessly into the game is a good idea only when the integration is done fully.
Any remain of statistics and numbers should not be integrated.. Rpg with ‘off the game’ inventories were allways better.. I think morrowind’s windows like menus served the purpuse and game a lot better than fallout 3 ‘s pipboy.. Yes it was meant to be more immersive but it just emphasized on the fact those numbers are truly part of the game. While in say, morrowind, the distinctiveness of it all separated it from the game-experience. I think that’s the way to go, we all know we’re playing a game.
Stuff like that ‘ hoo, star signs as the skills, its nice for a second or two but then we’ll cry in our minds for a simple list of skills in a nice compact menu.
Floating ‘level up’ text is like ..’ its part of the gameworld,’
While an ugly black box.. how ever ugly it is , with a text inside ‘level up’ is ‘ Ah, its an out of game message..’ Like OOC talk in signaled with // in an online RP session.. It doesnt interfere with the game experience if we know its not part of it.
19/04/2011 at 17:11 TheArtofOilRainbows says:
I’m not sure how I feel, either, but it sure looks pretty, at least. And I kind of agree about what you said about the Pipboy, but who knows…ah, I really wish my brother didn’t have control of my XBox now…
19/04/2011 at 12:46 Navagon says:
This really does seem to be the result of listening to the fans. That by itself has me very interested in this game.
Of course they could always introduce something else that has gone unmentioned that screws it up a bit. But even if that does turn out to be the case, there’s so much that’s awesome about what they’re trying to do with this game that any flaws should be easy enough to overlook (until they’re moded out).
19/04/2011 at 13:53 Ultramegazord says:
Knowing it’s Bethesda we’re talking about it will probably suck, Morrowind was their last great game, everything after that is so mediocre, Fallout: New Vegas was an exception but Obsidian did it.
I really hope this game is more like Morrowind and less like Oblivion.
19/04/2011 at 17:04 DainIronfoot says:
reply fail
19/04/2011 at 17:06 TheArtofOilRainbows says:
To be honest, since I’ve only played some of Daggerfall and Oblivion, I probably shouldn’t be talking. My biggest problem with Oblivion was the level up with everything around you system. I remember deciding to restart the game after playing a few levels because I focused on silly little things, and because I was unfocused (after all, I AM a high school senior, who can’t make a fairly signifigant life choice on college and intended major). With what I’ve played from Daggerfall, I remember the opening well. The endless choices were both exciting and daunting. Seeing as I didn’t get very far, I had to wonder, “Should all these choices be given to a novice? Can’t they be chosen with time?” Yes, tutorials suck. But that’s why they can be made optional. Or, just make the choices come with time, if you’re going to keep it complicated. So the leveling’s good, in a way.
Others are complaining about bringing down the skills. In my opinion, instead of dropping some skills and attributes, they could have a branch of 3 as opposed to two. So this govern’s this govern’s this. That way, for people who decide, “oh crap, I think I want to level up this instead!” then they won’t be as far behind and won’t have to grind. Maybe it would make things too easy, maybe it wouldn’t. But the customization would still be there. Although I liked Fallout 3′s perks and it was a good game, there was something about it that didn’t have the same addictive feel as Oblivion. Anyway, I can’t decide whether I like the new leveling up with Skyrim. It sounds like it will come with improvements, buuuut I can see why the longtime fans are complaining, because it’s not really the same.
Still, it looks gorgeous, and although the perks and the dual wielding didn’t sound that amazing at first, I’m seeing now how it’ll add to the game, and I’m pumped. I’m going to get this game, and I’m really excited. I really hope that with all this stramlining, though, that the physical character creation aspect doesn’t sink and that wasting time in Skyrim exploring or on side quests still has that instense charm. : )
19/04/2011 at 17:30 DainIronfoot says:
A reply fail that put my comment at the top, whaaat?
20/04/2011 at 00:22 Sepulchrave76 says:
All of those 20 reasons sound brilliant, even if some of them are a little vague, but the thing that gets me most excited? Zoomable 3D map. Seriously. What is wrong with me?
20/04/2011 at 20:37 Blackseraph says:
There is one reason I am not excited about Skyrim that much.
Oblivion was fairly bad game.
I did love morrowind however and thought fallout 3 was ok.
So we’ll see what Skyrim brings.
24/04/2011 at 22:16 skinlo says:
I disagree with you, I really enjoyed Oblivion. Played a lot more of it than Morrowind and its grey/brown colour palate.
24/04/2011 at 22:27 Dominic White says:
Oblivion is ‘that game’. You know, the one with near-universally great review scores, sold millions on multiple platforms, had/has one of the largest modding scenes on the planet, countless people have sunk 100+ hours each into it.
Apparently nobody liked it. Yeah.
09/06/2011 at 00:11 youreareuoy says:
r u fkin kiddn me.
23/04/2011 at 08:07 SubZero says:
I was wondering why almost all of the comments on this site were intelligent and well written. Then I realized that it is predominantly European-English.
I’m used to the idiotic banter of North American Trolls. You guys really are smarter. I’m writing this from Canada.
A bit of input on the game.Trimming off the fat of the statistics is a good move. People are just used to having the workings exposed, and are habitual statistics-trackers. If the computer can be made to manage these things, and still develope the full, typical range of characters (male-dwarf-fighter to female-elf-mage spectrum) then Bethesda will have pulled off a real feat. There are umpteen ways of customizing your character without the superficial comfort of knowing that your character has an assigned number of intellect points on an arbitrary scale.
This game is going to get some serious attention. Very streamlined, very realistic. On par with drugs and prostitution for the potential threat to society as we know it :)
24/04/2011 at 23:04 icupnimpn2 says:
Hey, way to sell out the continent. Why don’t you go marry Guy Ritchie?
27/04/2011 at 06:53 farfox says:
#2 will proabbly end up poorly and need modding.
#3 is awesome.
#4/5 sound promising.
#7 has been promised many, many times before by games.
#8 is nice.
#11 is very welcome.
#12.. I still expect a somewhat poor combat system, btu we’ll see.
#17 sounds exciting, but we’ll see if they can pull it off.
Regarding #9…
Isn’t it a sad day when RPG developers think that “intelligence” only means “Can cast several spells in a short period”?
Let’s look at what Todd actually said:
“In Oblivion you have your eight attributes and 21 skills. Now you have 18 skills and three attributes. What we found is that all those attributes actually did something else. A fan may say ‘You removed my eight attributes!’, and my answer is, which ones do you want? They’re all a trickle down to something else. Now when you level up you can just raise your Magicka. In Oblivion you have to raise your Intelligence knowing that you’re Intelligence raises your Magicka.”
Todd didn’t say, “Perks and skills will end up representing the other parts of the other characteristics.” He said that those stats all only trickled down to Health/Magicka/Fatigue. I don’t see any reason to have faith that they’ll accommodate for this loss of character creation through perks that accomodate roleplaying desires. You want a character with a strong will? Too bad, Hey, how about a big MP bar?
What he’s really doing is like merging physical attack and special attack in pokemon, as well as both defense stats. Hell, this is like merging Health with Attack, since strength is gone.
Also, having sprint does not mean speed is irrelevant. What if you want your character to have a faster normal speed, or a faster sprint, as well as larger jumps? What if you want intelligence to affect dialogue options in ways different from personality/charisma, like other RPGs? What if instead of throwing stats out, they enriched them and made them more interesting and alluring? Cutting the game’s flexibility and making it less interesting because it is somewhat flawed is a worse choice than just adding some more properties to stats to differentiate them and merging a few. You don’t amputate a broken arm.
28/04/2011 at 00:25 bassman7573 says:
I jizzed all over my keyboard. If Todd Howard ever comes to PA I’m going to hug him and jizz all over him too.
29/04/2011 at 21:35 MDS says:
Is “Draugr” an online sharing/blogging service of some kind?
06/07/2011 at 16:32 mejoff says:
http://aroleplayergaming.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-is-crpg-part-1-of-what-will.html
http://aroleplayergaming.blogspot.com/2011/05/what-is-crpg-part-2.html
http://aroleplayergaming.blogspot.com/2011/06/what-is-crpg-part-3.html
26/08/2011 at 19:33 3ay says:
Sounds like they’re going for something similar to Alpha Protocol with perks dictating your abilities. Worked quite well there, so it’s really just a question of whether Beth can pull off something as good here. şahinnparadisegelenekselramazancoşkusu
26/08/2011 at 19:34 3ay says:
ntelligence did not just affect Magicka, it also gave bonuses on Security (locking/unlocking stuff, disarming traps etc) and Alchemy (mixing potions and identifying ingredients). If you took an Intelligence hit (e.g. after having an ‘Endumbening’ spell cast on you) those other skills would be affected for the duration. şahinnparadisegelenekselramazancoşkusu
03/11/2011 at 05:39 Sonofthenorth says:
Is it a bad thing when you get ‘excited’ reading about a game? If it is my GF won’t be happy…