Oblivion Designer Moves To New Company

Gamasutra reports on the new position that former Bethesda designer Ken Rolston has taken with Big Huge Games. The lead designer for Bethesda's hit titles Morrowind and Oblivion, Rolston is now slated to be working on an unnamed title for the Rise of Nations developer. Rolston announced he was planning to retire early last year but ... apparently not. The designer characterizes his new project as 'a strikingly original and cunning concept for a console RPG'. No name or concept was included in the announcement.

scaled leveling system, nuff said

If he's the one who came up with the crappy enemy scaled leveling system in Oblivion, I hope his new project bombs big time.

Re:scaled leveling system, nuff said

If you are a mage, make use of the mages guild to create customized spells that match your abilities.

Like my favorite spell, "Camp Fire". This little gem consisted of a long duration firespell that did a few points of damage. It also did some fatigue damage as well. This kept the mana cost somewhat low. When you encounter a bad guy, the first trick would be to hit him with some powerful fatigue drain effects, until he hits the ground, passed out. Then, run close and drop the camp fire on him. He will lay on the ground, unmoving, happily toasting away to his death. Sometimes it takes a while, so feel free to pull out marshmallows and toast accordingly.

Oh, should fire not get the job done, you could try the sister spell to Camp Fire, entitled, "Electric Chair". :)

Reapy

It has nothing to do with that

Enter a gate of Oblivion at level 1 and this terrible threat consists of a bunch of puny weaklings. Walk down a road just outside of a peaceful town at level 20 and you get attacked by bandits with godlike strength, wielding ancient weapons of power.

Re:scaled leveling system, nuff said

You know.... there was a difficultly slider... and since it's a single player game, feel free to make the game as difficult as you like.... you're the only person you have to please.

Seriously, I didn't find it all that hard in the end (but I spent well over 100 hours on the game, so I was pretty trained in most everything), but I ended up turning the difficulty down slightly just so that the actual fighting portion of the game didn't take so long so I would have more time to explore and such.

Oblivion more than any other game is a sandbox, you build the experience you want...

Friedmud

Big Huge Games?

If this console RPG they're making is as good as Rise of Nations was, then hot damn, should be good. I just wish the rest of the RTS people liked it. :[

Will ES go the way of BG

I wonder if this means that Elder Scrolls games will go the way of Baldur's Gate (aspired to but never reached by subsequent games by the developer (or, rather, what's left of the developer)). I'm curious about Fallout 3, but ES matters more to me, and I'm hoping the rest of Bethesda's designers will be able to determine what worked about those games and what didn't.

Anyway, he was planning on retiring after Oblivion anyway, so it's only a good thing he's staying in the industry to help on another RPG. Auto-leveling of monsters in Oblivion notwithstanding, he's still one of the best designers out there.

Interestingly...

Even though he's been given a large pay rise, he's found that everyone else has also received the same raise and all the prices have gone up accordingly, leaving him wondering why he bothered.

Re:Ehh..

No one cares. Console RPGs direly lack in comparison to their PC counterparts.

Of course. Since the top selling and top rated RPG's of all time were either only on consoles, or were on consoles first before being ported to PC. (i.e. Final Fantasy 7, Chrono Trigger, etc.)