I'm pretty excited all of a sudden. I'm usually on such a downer about modern gaming being so dumbed down and consolified, and I'm not much of a fan of Oblivion. This has me interested though. I always loved the graphics and feel of the Elder Scrolls games, I just thought the combat and skill system was always very poor. They have addressed that, so I'm excited to see what they did. There's a few things removed which could be more dumbing down, but for now I'm thinking positively and assuming that it's genuine refinement. I can't wait for the reviews.
ah im the opposite, further reduction of skills? again?! I like games like the morrowind series because of the sheer option of options, which sadly have been shrinking since the series started. I rather swap for less classes and more skills, lets face it half the races in oblivion were useless in terms of racial abilities
lol Yeah it's not a nice trend. Usually I would be up in arms about it, and it actually serves as nice numerical proof of the continual dumbing down of games with the "18 skills, down from 21 on Oblivion, and 27 on Morrowind" quote. However you can have all the skills in the world and if the combat is no good, all the skills don't help. I found that with Oblivion especially, I spent the first half of the game running around spamming firebolt over and over, and then in the second half of the game, I could make a single spell that killed everything in one shot. It was pretty awful for me. I thought the melee fighting was not much better either. Sneaky rogue stuff was ok, but straight melee was just left click right click and got me bored fast. So I think if they can spice up the combat, I wont mind that there is less skills. If they do a quality over quantity thing, it could end up really good. I hope...!
"cooking/farming/mining/woodcutting/blacksmithing" wonder if they are counted in with the 18 skills? If yes then im even more depressed, if not then it isn't as bad as i thought. Though i can't see them appealing to everyone heh
It does sound interesting and I personally can't wait (loved Oblivion), but the following sentence worried me slightly: "The game will look at the nearby dungeons you've explored, automatically set the mission in a place you've never visited, and designate opponents that are appropriately matched to your strengths and weaknesses." The level scaling was one part in Oblivion that was generally flawed and I hoped that they would remove or at least lessen the effect. My main wish is to rebalance certain magical abilities, for example Invisbility. The one part that completely broke Oblivion and ended up ruining it for me was the ability to enchant clothing items with invisibility. Even very early in the game I was able to add a low level charm to enough parts of cheap armour to give overall 120%+ invisibility, meaning the game just fell apart!
Yeah I hated stuff like that. Although again that's something that makes me hopeful, if they reduce some skills, maybe they are going to take more time and care and attention to this stuff and try to balance it all better. Of course, they might just reduce stuff AND make a hash of it... but I have to hope for the best!
hmm cant say im particulary excited, but its a TES game so i'll get it. Seems like they've kept a load of stuff in there from oblivion which we hated, shrinking skill set, levelled items and areas and added some stuff from their other franchises, I mean perks?! WTF. Still, its early days maybe they'll change some of this stuff before release.
They need to fix the scaling. It shouldn't be hard. It sucked in vanilla oblivion, but Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul found a perfect balance between scaled and static. Partly it was the variation by range factor: a group of enemies might vary from 5 levels above you for the boss to 5 levels below you for some of the grunts. In vanilla they'd all just be your level, which made it dull and predictable. The same system also applies to loot.
Yeah, it also makes it so that you don't feel your progress. One of the main points of an RPG is that you level up and become a beefcake, and get to lay waste to all the little rats and goblins and crap that caused you trouble in the early days. That didn't really work in Oblivion. I would much prefer that they make their game far more traditionally. It takes more time and effort but it's far better. Populate the world properly with low level creatures in the early areas. Bats, giant wasps, wolves, mud crabs, etc.. All level 1-4 to get you levelled up. Then you progress out to the forests and wilderness and you come across angry bears and goblins and whatever, and that's level 5-10. And so on and so on, up to high level creatures like dragons etc. It's better that way, because it feels like a real world, it gives you stuff that you genuinely need run like crazy from if you get ahead of yourself, and it means that once you do finally level up a fair way, you can strut through the wilderness near your home town without getting wtf owned by a level 50 butterfly...
Good god, I hated Oblivion's imperfections. It still irritates me that they managed to break such a potentially brilliant game, it had so many good components. I'm hopeful for this one. The most important things are the levelling system, the voice acting and the AI. If they fix the NPCs, that'll immediately save it from about 90% of all Oblivion's gamebreaking problems.
Hopefully they take this game more in the direction of Morrowind, as far as the environment is concerned. I remember just exploring for hours and finding an unlimited amount of interesting things. Oblivion was different, because interesting things to explore in Morrowind were replaced with Oblivion Gates in Oblivion, and the only thing redeeming about Oblivion gates were those stone enchantments, I forget their names, that you would get at the end. I can just remember spending hours in single cities (Especially the Vivec City) trying to get my hands on rare loot. I remember once using all my combined skills to get in the bank Vault in (I think) the Redoran District. All the really awesome NPC's, like Creeper, the Talking Mudcrab, and that weird Argonian dude on the rock in the middle of the sea. Morrowind was so much more engaging in almost every aspect, and Oblivion was a huge let-down (Still pretty fun, especially with third-party mods) and their DLC wasn't half bad, either (But lacked customization). The new engine looks amazing, which is definitely a major plus, but I really hope Bethesda retains what made Morrowind so epic. Bethesda is one of the few game companies which have stayed true to their form, and Oblivion shook my faith, so to speak, in Bethesda, so this is their chance to really redeem themselves to not only me, but everyone else (that's a lot of people) who loved Morrowind and were disappointed by Oblivion.
Think you just summed up what everyone is hoping for. Part of me wishes they would ditch fast travel, makes the world feel so much smaller and instead of running to places discovering new places on the way you missed it out instead. Maybe introduce camping into the game that do the same as inns in town just as a limited effect, after all how many camping sites did ya see all over oblivion
Yea, fast travel is a double edged sword, but I definitely like the camping idea. I definitely think that in Skyrim, the Lore will be ten times as epic as Oblivion or Morrowind, though. Dragons, and all that mythology that goes along with it. If Bethesda manages to infuse the potentially epic Lore of Skyrim, and the epic environmental gameplay of Morrowind, I think they'll have a game of the decade on their hands.
I really do hope they amped up the combat in this rendition, and balanced the classes out more. Oblivion got wayyyy too easy once I had a few skills up to 100. Also, I didn't like the fact that I could become the Mages Guild master without a single magic skill....they should change that. All these RPGs could take notes from the combat system from Demon's Souls...that was perfect.
I agree with you that fast travel does make the world feel smaller, and forcing the player to travel everywhere would help them appreciate the world more and find more places, making the game a longer and more enjoyable experience.... HOWEVER...they need to have faster means of traveling. Just walking/running/horse doesn't cut it. Too slow for how big the world is. The horse was extremely awkward to use and really not that much faster once my character had some speed built up. If you could summon creatures (a dragon maybe?) or a magic carpet or some sh!t like that then we'd be in business!!
In Morrowind, they had Stilt Striders, which was basically fast travel, but it only went to larger cities and you had to pay for the fare. Bethesda could return to this type of system, and I'd use it. If the world is really expansive in Skyrim, I'll just refuse to use fast travel, or hopefully they have an option to turn it off.
I liked the Silt Riders way far better. It still cut down journey times but it meant that you had to actually still travel a bit by foot and get to know the land, and learn to defend yourself etc.. I felt like I teleported about so much in Oblivion that I barely even needed to play the game. Once you fumble your way to a few key locations in the game, you barely needed to walk anywhere again. Lol you wouldn't believe how many times I've heard about that game in this last week or so. Seeing as I don't have a PS3 I can only drool over it It looks great, and it gets such glowing reviews, it's almost enough to make me buy a PS3 just for that game. Combat is the most important part of RPG's to me, so it's why I've never been a big fan of the Elder Scrolls games. I would LOVE for them to finally come up with a good system for it.
Yep. At times, the system was a little unintuitive, but it forced you to learn the layout of the world map, so in the end it worked out.
Good to see they have altered the way you have conversations with people haha never really liked the way the NPC just stares at you with dodgy mouth/facial movements. I'm liking the perks idea too, these worked great in Fallout 3 and Vegas. I can't wait for this game, definitely will be getting it.
