It sounds interesting for sure I did enjoy Oblivion but as others have said, its (all too many) imperfections in the vanilla verison did seem to stick out like a sore thumb at times. If they take the good from Morrowind and Oblivion and leave behind Oblivion's imperfections, Skyrim could be an awesome game.
It's stuff like that I wish they would improve, but I doubt they will. Still, if they improve the combat at least, then I'll be happy.
Thank god they fixed the faces. Though I'm apprehensive, I remember Oblivion looked and sounded really nice and as it got closer and more previews came out the graphics and gameplay all went downhill
They need a smaller world. Warcraft has shot itself in the foot in this respect by making the environs progressively huger and huger, obliging themselves to make faster and faster transport, so nobody sees any of the detailed work they put into levels any more because they're flying over them at 90 mph. Morrowind, by contrast, was actually tiny, but it felt huge and you felt like an explorer. This was due to the small scale, the draw distance and the neat, careful spacing between settlements that meant you never got bored before you got somewhere. Oblivion did the opposite, having about 4 interesting places in a 10 square km forest and very little worth seeing inbetween - then providing you with fast travel to get to the 4 places. The land in between might as well have not existed. TL;DR: they need to make the world small and full of stuff, and make the player realistically slow. Morowind was pretty on the ball on this one. edit - This is the quote of the thread.
Yeah I really liked how they did it with Morrowind, though it was still very large. I remember getting the boots of 300 speed or whatever they were, made it a lot easier to get around! But I liked how you couldn't fast travel everywhere, there were set points you could fast travel around, by ship/strider/etc and you always had the recall spells to take you back to your marked spot or to the nearest shrine/temple. Though I think Fallout did it well, there was fast travel, but there were plenty of interesting things around to explore. In oblivion, it was basically one of the cities or a cave and that's about it.
Huh? Am I seeing the same images as everyone else here? That looks like Oblivion (released in 2006(!) for reference) with slightly higher-resolution textures and richer-lighting. So.. It's Oblivion with Qarl's Texture Pack, essentially. Those visuals are barely an improvement on Oblivion, but then they have to cram a new game onto the same console; so that's hardly a surprise. Look at the shot with the character crouching. Angular, polygonal hair bound to the animation skeleton; clothing that somehow defies gravity and clings to the wearer. Is it not about time that we worked on details like cloth/hair physics instead of just upping the texture dimensions until the Xbox 360's graphics memory is full? Look at the shot with the dragon - The rock surfaces just bisect each other; as with world objects in every other Bethesda game since Morrowind, suffering visually from the symptoms of a world that's too big for its designers to construct realistically. Let's hope they at least get the z-occlusion culling working this time around so the framerates don't suffer from all those hidden, wasted polys. Look at the shot with the water, then look at the modeling and texturing of the rock surface on the right. It looks like something out of Quake. Plus, Bethesda's pre-release screenshots for Oblivion were mostly fake, too - I'm not excited by these shots in the slightest - They could have at least made their prerelease fakes look special. The gameplay is REALLY going to have to excel this time around (unlike Oblivion), because they certainly haven't sold me on Skyrim with their engine or visual assets. This. I hope they invest in more than 5-6 voice actors for NPCs this time; instead of blowing the voice-acting budget on celebrities to voice characters who contribute very little to the actual game.
As beautiful as Oblivion was, it didn't feel nearly as epic as Morrowind. With the different Dunmer clans having unique city styles and politics, it just felt so rich (as well as the numerous different environment types). I'm hoping that Skyrim is varied like Morrowind was, and I really hope the level scaling is toned down as this is what stopped me from completing Oblivion. Still looking forward to it immensely though.
This screenshot worries me the most: You'd have thought they would have improved the menu layout, but nooo, they actually make it worse. Star constellations? Really?
ok, the faces now don't look like there is something wrong with everyone, that woman still looks like a man in drag though. A man in drag wearing a wig I'm also fairly sure that bottom picture is fake/touched up as something about the lighting doesn't look right (can't quite place my finger on what, but something)
Graphics and engine are not a selling point of a game, and if they are it's usually a warning light that the game itself is underwhelming. See also: Presentation versus Graphics. Morrowind still feels visually wonderful, despite looking horrible in a superficial way, because the artistic design and environment layout were well done. Oblivion, by contrast, looks horrible in many places despite being lush and graphically complex. I agree. Game developers constantly underestimate gamers' tolerance for perceived-to-be 'boring' aspects of design and story, but in reality they respond to them very, very well. Personally, I'm tired of being patronised by the hammy overacting, B-movie writing and cliché stories of most games. Game developers do well when they treat the medium seriously and treat gamers as mature adults (they then usually go on to misunderstand why they succeeded and try to replicate the success by dumbing down their first creation and emphasizing all the wrong features, c.f. Oblivion). I'm reminded of TV's similar policy towards young audiences: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vf9q1upkOF4#t=14m6s (cont.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbK5pps32tE
Just saw the posted screenshots now, and if thats a new engine, Bethesda must think we're that stupid. or is it rather a case of "it is brand new, we just happened to type the exact same code for this engine as we did for the previous one" Whts next? Bethesda come out and say they have invented a new weapon just for the game: its made out of metal, sharpened on both sides and pointy at the end!!
They're not the best graphics in the world but they are a significant improvement on Oblivion, you should go and play it again. I hear people saying this a lot. That the graphics are exactly the same as the old game and there's no improvement. They've just forgotten what the old graphics were really like I guess, just because they're not cutting edge amazing doesn't mean there's no improvement. But then again, as I said above, Oblivion looked much better in the playable preview they had than the game ended up being. As elephant pointed out though, it's not the graphics that make the game, especially in a game like this. If they can get the gameplay and story up to a better standard than Oblivion was, I'll be happy.
