Gaming Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim Preview

For this: I am very excited.

For Oblivion I have three words: Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul.

 

He doesn't have doubts. He has credibility-crushing irrational hatred. When you post in boolean ("This isn't the absolute best thing ever created, and, therefore, is the absolute WORST thing ever created!"), there's pretty much no contribution or significance to your post. I'm not commenting on Sears' intelligence at all. I'm only pointing out that he certainly left the majority of it out of that anti-Bethesda (and, for some reason, Bioware, and I would bet pretty much anyone who makes highly successful games that he feels have flaws) comment.

As for Bethesda's games' realistic list of flaws, I think the problem lies in the translation from completely un-"realistic"-style graphics to "realistic"-style graphics. First-person is a big part of it. I mean, could you make an expansive world game with a 1st-person perspective using Doom graphics? Sure. Would we, as the player, feel very immersed as a direct effect of the graphical quality? Not unless you've got a SERIOUS ocular prescription, haha. So, at some point, game developers said "Now that general graphics capabilities are so high, what say we try to make RPGs with graphically immersive contextual realism?" Then, they run into the whole "Well, even though we CAN make a huge, awesome-looking world, it still takes a very long time to do so" dilemma. So, they can basically either make everything flawless, perfectly gorgeous, and amazing and have a game world about the size of a small fishing village, OR they can try to meet in the middle on polishedness and content. Am I saying they met at the perfect spot? No. Probably not. But, the transition from old, old RPGs that didn't even attempt 1st-person to something like Oblivion, or now Skyrim, is not nearly as simple as going from 16-bit graphics to 32-bit graphics. It's not standard-definition to high-definition. It's a completely different method of going about a graphical engine. And there are tons of other factors that prevent them from just fiddling around for 10 years until they perfect it before releasing another game.

Are some of their choices probably influenced a little more by money than they should be? Most likely. But, I honestly think that with Bethesda, that's not so much of a problem. Some studios might ditch entire visions of a game in lieu of guaranteed market share based on mildly silly research statistics, but Bethesda's team seems pretty dedicated to the Elder Scrolls series.

That said, I've read pretty much as many previews and articles regarding first-hand experience with Skyrim that I possibly can, and I feel that it's going to be a severe improvement from Oblivion. Will it be perfect? Probably not. But who NEEDS something to be absolutely flawless before they'll partake of it?

 

I'd contest that - I dumped 50 hours into the Steam version of Oblivion without using any mods, and have no recollection of any bugs at all.

That's not to say there weren't any, I simply don't remember any. Instead I remember an awesome game with some really brilliant quests (the entire Dark Brotherhood guild is amazing for instance).

I'd just pick it up and appreciate you're playing a game that's quite a few years old.

Sent from Bittech Android app

 

It always amazes me that people spend so much time making mods for a game like Oblivion. It was a travesty of a game, pretty but completely vapid and empty, with terrible quest design, broken character development, and overall was a step down from Morrowind in virtually every way (which itself was colossally overrated, but never mind that).

Beyond that, though, I just don't understand how someone could actually summon the willpower to produce such an extensive mod. The Elder Scrolls Construction Set/GECK is quite possibly the worst SDK I have ever had the misfortune of using. I know all SDKs have their issues, but the Construction Set is borderline unusable - it takes, on average, about five times as long to do something in it as it does in just about any other modern SDK. Even laying out a basic level out of prefab meshes takes an hour versus 2-5 minutes in anything else, and all the while you're fighting some of the clunkiest controls and one of the worst interfaces ever. I know that some people probably must just really like the game, but jeez, I would never, ever touch that thing unless someone was, you know, paying me.

 

Big question for me, as I understand it in Oblivion enemies always scaled to match your power. So even crappy guards would be super heroes if you had levelled up.

Will Skyrim use the same system?

 

Ugh.

These last two weeks are gonna drag, even with BF3 to tide me over...