Early Look At The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 210
Bethesda plans to launch their newest Elder Scrolls game, Skyrim, in November, and they've finally started to take the wraps off the game. A preview at Eurogamer provides some information about the game's combat, the UI, and exploration of the game world. Quoting:
"RPGs send you into menus more than almost any other game genre, so it's weird that more thought doesn't go into inventory design, but as I play around with powers, weapons and items to lighten my load it becomes clear that Skyrim is a welcome exception. Its nested menus are accessed almost as smoothly as iPad page swipes, and navigating them is quick and clean. You can set favorites, equip items to either hand, and examine things in detail. More than once during my brief hands-on I have to rotate an object to look for a clue to a puzzle, or read a document, and it's all done without going to a different screen or do anything more complex than wiggling sticks and hitting a face button. It's easy to imagine that a system like this in Oblivion or Fallout could have shaved hours off the average player's actual game-time. As it is, it saves valuable seconds in my hands-on, and seconds are my currency today, so thank you to whomever at Bethesda designed the inventory."
Question about DRM (Score:2)
Is its DRM reasonable? If you buy the game, can you play and reinstall it as many times as you want on whatever computer you want, and can you play it without internet connection if single player?
Thanks.
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No, not quite all. While the original Oblivion was fairly unprotected, the Shivering Isles expansion and the GOTY Edition DO contain the dreaded SecuROM DRM. AFAIK, it does not "phone home" like some other titles, but it's there, nevertheless and will prevent use of some drive emulators and utilities like ProcessExplorer.
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The SecuROM is easily bypassed though. Fallout 3 in particular had SecuROM by you could play the game without the DVD even without a no-dvd crack just by running the game executable instead of the "launcher". You could even use the SecuROM remover and the game still would run correctly. If they keep that style in Skyrim it would be great. Especially if the game is a hit it will be proof that you don't need restrictive DRM systems to be successful.
SecuROM despite it's large problems is not "DRM", it's co
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No, SecuROM really is DRM, just like CSS or region encoding on a commercial video DVD. Anything that restricts free, unencumbered use of digital media is Digital Rights Management (some say Digital Restrictions Management).
SecuROM can be used by the publisher as simple copy protection (by verifying unusual data written to the disc), it can perform date checks and disallow use of the package before a certain date, it can "phone home" to request permission to install, or it can count the number of installa
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In all of Bethesda's previous games, the answer to that would be an unambiguous 'yes'.
Fallout 3 came with SecuROM (not the disk check version they claimed it was, even after they got busted for lying about it) and GFWL. So, based on history, 'no.' Their most recent offering was heavily hooked into Steam, so Steamworks seems like it'd be a good bet Skyrim's DRM will be.
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GFWL? Count me out, then. Having to create another e-mail account, Windows Live account, "gamertag", and remember more passwords just to play a game isn't an option for me. If it's not a problem for youse, great.
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That's one of the reasons I didn't play the Warhammer 40K games up until recently (when they stripped out the Live requirement.)
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No, Steam is the greater of two evils. It removes your rights. Fallout 3 had SecuROM only if you used the launcher, and it was removable with SecuROM removal tool. SecuROM never once got in my way and the game started instantly with no DVD check, whereas Steam was always in my face about Fallout: NV and slower to start up and with annoying ads when you quit. Fallout 3 I can give away and it will work, Fallout NV I can not give away because Steam has removed my consumer rights.
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You were not required to use GFWL for Fallout 3 and SecuROM was easily bypassed.
Fallout New Vegas was heavily borgified by Steam but this was developed by Obsidian and only published by Bethesda. Though it does give me a bit of a worry that Skyrim may be corrupted by the dark side too.
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In all of Bethesda's previous games, the answer to that would be an unambiguous 'yes'. They haven't indicated anything to suggest different for Skyrim.
It would indeed by a shame if Bethesda abandoned all their loyal modding fans by putting restrictive DRM on Skyrim. I never play Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3, or Fallout NV without many mods that improve on the already excellent games.
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Already up for pre-order on Steam, and they will probably be using SteamWorks activation for the DVD (when asked about it, Todd Howard's only reply was "We like Steam") so whatever policies Steam applies will hold.
If it uses SteamWorks it will require an internet connection to activate but can be played offline after this.
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it'll most probably have drm, but you'll get a crack like always - you really think that crackers are going to pass on it?
same as always, really.
I think a much larger problem with the game is going to be targeting 360 as well. think about it, how much memory do you have to spare on xbox 360 for behind the scenes rpg world and ui decisions? and how you could throw an extra gigabyte for that on a pc. well, that and the fact that the edge preview of it sucked, I mean, it was a glowing preview, but focused on e
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Delete the original shortcut, since the executable it calls up includes the disk check. Create a shortcut to fallout3.exe instead. No more SecuROM disk check.
Yes, it really is that simple.
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No more SecuROM disk check.
Just an additional note on this - the SecuROM version was more than just the disk check. This became evident due to a patch being required because Fallout 3 refused to run when it detected ProcessExplorer on the system. And it did install the usual OS hooks after installing FO3, which I did manually end up removing.
But, it was nice that the workaround to get around SecuROM on the system was just to link directly to Fallout3.exe instead.
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I made an ISO of my oblivion disk: so convenient, no messing around trying to find the CD, just mount an image.
I actually own 2 oblivion disks: one came as part of a pack.
the no DRM thing is a big plus for the elder scrolls series.
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Yes I know oblivion didn't have it, but that's almost 5 years ago! It already existed, but wasn't such a trend as now yet.
Stick!? Face button!? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Oblivion's UI was painfully obvious that is was a console port. I couldn't tell you one specific issue right now, but I do explicitly remember thinking about it every time I'd go into the inventory.
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Fallout and Oblivion both had terrible UIs due to their console origins. Having only one hotkey for your Pipboy, IIRC, meant that instead of being able to tap I for inventory like with most RPGs, you had to hit Tab and then click on the relevent submenu.
They weren't the worst ports, but they weren't good by amy strech of the imagination.
Well, stay away from Bethseda then (Score:3)
Morrowind, horribly crippled on the PC with regards to loading, although this was fixed when the PC only expansions arrived which suddenly realized PC's had more then 32mb of ram available and a speedy HD. Before: Loading every other step After: No loads ever.
Oblivion, OH MY GOD CAN THAT TEXT BE ANY LARGER and an inventory system from hell.
Consolitus has struck heavily in the realms of the elder scrolls. Luckily so far the games have been very modifiable meaning paying customers could fix the game unpaid bu
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RAM isn't a loading limitation....bad game design is. There are PS1 and PS2 games that don't have loading screens in game, because they are dynamically streaming assets from disc as needed. One example is EQOA on the PS2, unless you directly teleport/coach/recall home between locations, you will never see a loading screen past game start. You could run from Fayspires to Freeport to Qeynos and then swim to Odus., and NEVER see a load screen, something the PC version of EQ at the time couldn't claim even t
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RAM isn't a loading limitation....bad game design is. There are PS1 and PS2 games that don't have loading screens in game, because they are dynamically streaming assets from disc as needed. One example is EQOA on the PS2, unless you directly teleport/coach/recall home between locations, you will never see a loading screen past game start. You could run from Fayspires to Freeport to Qeynos and then swim to Odus., and NEVER see a load screen, something the PC version of EQ at the time couldn't claim even though it was running on machines with more RAM.
Ridiculous. There's a difference in the size and amount of graphical assets used in games today than those in games when the XBox 360 was released, and PC graphics capabilities today far exceed the consoles. The XBox has a tiny amount of RAM compared to your average gaming PC, and it's a hindrance to development of games with large amounts of detail in their environment. That's why we get details popping in and out as you move around the world. There's no room to store that many things in RAM at once.
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That was the OPS point I believe... bad game design is inclusive of being able to determine RAM capacity and loading enough information to deal with it, dump what you don't need anymore and load in new content. Oblivion almost got this right with the chunk loading, but it still needed work. Fallout 3 was a little better, but it was still not quite there.
EQ was designed to load in one zone at a time. You can tell this by their zone lines being specifically designed to force you into a tunnel. EQOA was sp
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Sure, but that all still falls under game design. I agree with you... but the problem isn't with PCs. It's with the people making the game and deciding how they are going to handle situations, how much time they spend on graphic assets, and all those other things.
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Without the additional numbers from the consoles, there might not be any more Elder Scrolls games, because RPG's are a niche market, even more so than they used to be. Publishers look at sales numbers and think, why should we make a game that will sell less than a million when we can do another "16 million shades of brown military shooter of the week" and have lots more sales.
Because the market can only support so many of those and you get massively diminishing returns being Brown Shooter #20 this year. There is pent up demand for games like the Elder Scrolls series because we don't get too many like it. If they're going to release on the PC, they should put at least a modicum of effort into ensuring that the interface is decent for PC users.
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Limited dev time? A UI fix for Oblivion was available like the next day after the release.
TweakUI? Was called something like that.
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Keyboard movement sucked in 1983 when too many C64/Atari/Apple/IBM PC gamers, after spending too much money on their hardware, didn't spend any money to get a joystick. Keyboard movement sucks in 2011 too, keyboards were designed for text entry not game control. Yes they have lots of buttons so you can have "I" be inventory or "M"
be map, but that's just bad UI design, relying on lots of buttons rather than designing a UI that doesn't need lots of buttons but has the same functionality. A keyboard based UI
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You might be interested in this article covered in a number of places online.
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/ms-killed-pc-xbox-cross-platform-play [eurogamer.net]
http://gizmodo.com/5593116/were-pc-gamers-too-good-for-microsofts-cross+platform-gaming-project [gizmodo.com]
The story was covered at slashdot, but my search-fu only really extends to google.
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Found it!
http://games.slashdot.org/story/10/07/23/2127253/PC-Gamers-Too-Good-For-Consoles-Gamers [slashdot.org]
Your search skill has inceased, you might want to rest to meditate.
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> Thank you! Now I can relax when bragging chavs wax lyrical about how much better a pad is, I knew I was right anyway because I can turn and point my gun at your head faster with a mouse than is physically possible with a pad, but now I have it confirmed
Any serious FPS gamer could of told you that. There is a reason most console FPS don't have you look up/down for the most part and limit the rotation to primary around the vertical axis.
1. It's partly because the dead zone on gamepads sucks. Quite a fe
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You may not believe me, but PC gamers are ham fisted and have no fine motor control with their thumbs. It's why you can't aim with a dual analog. Simply put console gamers have been building up their thumbs over years, and you can't expect to be able to do the same thing if you've never used a right thumb analog stick. For example when I tried to play the PSone Quake II with the dualshock, I couldn't hit anything, because the games I played didn't use the right stick for much more than camera control.
Bullshit (Score:3)
Bullshit. And frankly, the farther I see you going down this line of pulling stuff out of the ass about keyboard controls, the more comical it gets.
A bunch of us have been playing TES games just fine with a keyboard and mouse too. And there are many millions of people world-wide playing WoW and other games just fine with keyboard and mouse.
And sorry, MOVEMENT is hard for you with a keyboard? WTF were you even trying to do, that movement was such a problem? Tightrope walking? Or WTH? Especially if we move ou
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There is a tight rope in Rift. I found it rather simple to do with a mouse/keyboard.
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A bunch of us have been playing TES games just fine with a keyboard and mouse too. And there are many millions of people world-wide playing WoW and other games just fine with keyboard and mouse.
If you recall, I didn't say one thing about mice, only keyboards. and in fact I said one of the ways of having analog movement and aiming was using an analog stick for movement, but a mouse for aiming.
And yes, there are plenty of people who use keyboards to move in MMO's, but movement in those games is really secondary, you're often standing in one place. and not moving while attacking since it's all numbers. So the keyboard suffices. but any FFXI player out there can tell you they could always spot the
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Here's a good test. Try using your joystick to control your computer. You can do it, it's not difficult to setup. Now try and click on the icons with your joystick. Now try again with your mouse. See the difference? Can you see why nobody uses a joystick to navigate the desktop?
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Comon joystick boy, just watch this, this and this video and tell me you can do that stuff with your joystick. Now watch a someone on a PS3 play UT3. I hope you have the intellectual honesty to admit the clear difference.
Bunny hopping and leaping around while carrying a half dozen weapons? That's not very realistic is it...if you had that much equipment on in RL would you be jumping and turning like that...no, you would not. If games aspire to realism..then they shouldn't have been able to do that.
Here's a good test. Try using your joystick to control your computer. You can do it, it's not difficult to setup. Now try and click on the icons with your joystick. Now try again with your mouse. See the difference?
Yes, I've done it, works well, for the most part. You're not going to be using it to draw with, of course the real pros don't use mice for that either. But it's fine for the average pointing and clicking.
Now imagine all the icons are people's heads and you're in a FPS. Can you see how a mouse makes things a little easier?
When you learn to fire
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And you can't argue with the fact that I sat in front of my friend's console, turned sensitivity up to max, pushed the stick all the way to the right, and was dissappointed with the speed of my turn.
That could have been a design decision for realism purposes. Think about it. If you're carrying a pistol, shotgun, double barrel shotgun, assault rifle, machine gun/chain gun, plasma gun, missle launcher AND some end game BIG GUN, and carrying all the ammo for those AND armor and equipment, how fast could you realistically turn.
Sorry. Click. Head shot.
When you learn to fire a real gun, what do they teach you? Fire at center of mass, never the head. Headshots are an artificial un-realistic aspect of FPS's that is just tradition
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Sorry got my word switched, I meant to say PC version PSone port.
Last I played the PC version, holding down the mouse did nothing, I had to keep clicking. Course I might not have had the latest patch to it, or hadn't changed a setting. But the constant tiny wrist movements were the worst.
Crescendos and magic (Score:3)
One thing that bugs me about Bethesda is that they almost never ramp up the excitement. Sure there are plenty of interesting story lines, but I can probably count on half a hand the moments where something really exciting happened—a situation that made me go "oh shit!" and freak out a little about how I was going to survive. Not every quest line needs to have an awesome climax, but they could definitely use a lot more.
And make magic a first-class citizen, please. I'd love to use it heavily for offense/defense, but it was weak as hell in Oblivion compared to just wildly swinging a sword around. I really like being able to get creative about things, like walking on water while shooting enemies with my bow as they try to swim toward me. Other times I just want to be a little more Rambo and run in throwing fireballs looking badass. But in Oblivion the fireballs look and act like you're just throwing candles. There's nothing badass about them.
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Did you never go into the darker caves where you had to chose between having torch or weapon equipped? I kept running into mobs and almost panic as I had to get my bow out.
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Also, once you hit level 12, start running Oblivion Gates. (Level 12 is the highest auto-level for the sigil stones in Gates.) Save when you reach the stone, and reload until you get the one that can enchant gear for Chameleon (I think
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There WERE mods that made magic more powerful, but it was overpowered ... hugely overpowered. I tried a few and you could pretty much do anything with a fireball.
I played both an archer/sword-shield fighter type with a bit of magic and an almost-all-magic/sword (or staff, whatever) type. I actually found it easier to be the magic user; that could be because I opted for mostly light armor when I went through the first time, which made melee a bit more challenging as almost any hit really hurt (I dabbled in
Already pre-ordered (Score:3)
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I don't care what the previews say, good or bad, my copy is reserved and my kids have ordered theirs too. Daggerfall, Morrowind and Oblivion have all kept me entertained for hundreds of hours, and I doubt Skyrim will be any different.
Same here. Although if not for the frequent crashes those hundreds of hours might have been dozens of hours instead. Having to restart the game because it crashed yet again is hardly entertaining.
Bethesda makes fun games. Bethesda also makes very buggy games. I can only hope Skyrim is better.
I also really wish they'd take the time to remake some of the older games. Morrowind was massive and there was just so much to do, but frequently borked when attempting to do the most trivial of things (such as equ
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Bethesda also makes very buggy games.
I've noticed that to a degree with Fallout 3 GOTY. Never played it before, because I'm not a console gamer and don't generally buy PC games first-run either. My kids (adult/near-adult sons) played it a lot (regular FO3 + DLC and FO New Vegas) on their 360s, and it was always fun to watch, so I was jazzed to buy the GOTY package off of Steam.
I ran into a problem where the game would freeze. A lot. Seemed to be repeatably related to situation or scene content. There were
You've still got FPS in my RPG! (Score:2)
As far as I can tell, the combat is still dependent on *my* twitch shooter skills as much as *my character's* combat skills. So whatever wonderful story, exploring and interacting experiences are on offer, I'm not going to get to see them.
Combat doesn't *have* to be turn-based, I've learned to work with Dragon Age, for example. But it *should* be based on my character's abilities tied to my decision making, e.g. I choose to shoot a bow at the orc over there, the character's archery skill determines if I h
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I played this on the PS3, but then got a 5$ version of GOTY for the PC instead of buying DLC of playstation store
While it doesn't bug me a whole lot the difference was quite drastic, when shooting bows or spells. I had a though then that the game should allow a 'lock on' for tracking mobs that move about. And I don't mean an aim assist. You should be required to get initial aim on the mob yourself, but then once acquired, the character should, based on their skill, be able to follow it themselves.
The option
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I'm still baffled as to why this series is held up as the crown of "hard-core" RPGs, when it's such a hybrid...
It's because of the amount of choice available in gameplay. The series, on a whole, is very open-ended. Very few others provide anything other than linear play in single-player games. That's the essence of role-playing: being able to do what you want, when you want, without being railroaded down a storyline.
There are few games that you can spend hundreds of hours actively exploring new things and n
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There is a lot of character skill in the game still. Oblivion was not very twitchy at all really. You could just madly swing the sword by clicking and it would do damage proportional to your character skill and attributes. If course if you are more twitchy you can time things to swing when the enemy isn't blocking, and you can aim the ranged spells better, but it's not necessary.
Fallout 3 was even better in this regard. You did not need to "aim" very accurately. Even if you did aim very well the shots
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Ok so you don't like Elder Scrolls games. You've had 4 previous versions to figure this out ahead of time.
Rotating objects is a time saver? (Score:2)
More than once during my brief hands-on I have to rotate an object to look for a clue to a puzzle, or read a document, and it's all done without going to a different screen or do anything more complex than wiggling sticks and hitting a face button. It's easy to imagine that a system like this in Oblivion or Fallout could have shaved hours off the average player's actual game-time.
Uh, now every time I pick up something I need to visualize it in 3 dimensions and then figure out if something is scrawled on the back of it? This is in a world where you can grab and lift just about everything in the game?
This is starting to sound like something out of Riven, where somehow the designers confused challenge with tedium (walk up to door, then turn around 180 degrees and click the magic pixel on some object).
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I might be biased, but Riven was awesome.
just sayin'
Inventory of Oblivion (Score:2)
All I can say is if the inventory system is once again designed for some crappy console on a 320 line screen like Oblivion's was, I'll be waiting to buy this until the PC-mods come out.
Other games have had that issue, but I never played a game (up to that point) on a PC that was so clearly designed out of the box for a console/gamepad that it made PC play almost painful.
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Add some mods and it is much better to play on PC than a console where you can't have mods. These games had somewhat similar interfaces even from back in Arena and Daggerfall, which were not meant for consoles. I'd have preferred more keybindings myself instead of all that mouse clicking, but I don't see this caused by being console oriented.
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Re:Meh... (Score:5, Interesting)
No, you're definitely not the only one to feel that way. In fact, I'd say it's a time-honored tradition for older games to come out and poo-poo the latest Elder Scrolls game, regaling us with stories of how complex and deep the older games were. That's not to say that I disagree; in fact, I whole-heartedly agree with this criticism. However, I also find the later games to be enjoyable for what they are. As long as you're willing to accept that certain features have been irrevocably streamlined away, and they're not coming back, you can still have quite a bit of fun with Morrowind, Oblivion, and Fallout 3 (which isn't an Elder Scrolls game, of course, but still uses the same engine).
I get just as frustrated as everyone else, when I load up the newest Elder Scrolls game, and some weapon or skill that I liked is gone, but -- usually -- the rest of the game makes up for that. And they can never take Arena, Daggerfall, or Morrowind away from us. If you want to levitate, while shooting a crossbow, well, you can always load up one of the older games. In fact, Morrowind and Oblivion both still have a surprisingly active modding community (or, they did, when I last re-installed the games and was collecting mods).
Now, I'm not a fanboy, and I'm not saying Oblivion was an amazing, top-notch game -- but each of the Elder Scrolls games has been deeply flawed in its own idiosyncratic way, and I've been able to overlook those flaws, because I like the overall game design. Arena is a bit fuzzy in my memory, but I remember it being a bit shallow. Personally, I thought Daggerfall was almost unplayably buggy, soullessly random, and had a horrendous UI. Morrowind was frankly a bit boring, with nothing but endless Cliff Divers for miles and miles. Oblivion heavily penalized you for improving any non-combat skills, and the vaunted Radiant AI was a total joke. But there were aspects to those games that kept me playing for years. So, in the end, I'd advise cautious optimism and trust in the game design. The worst thing that happens is that you post another stereotypical "back in MY day" rant on the official forums and wait for a mod that fixes all the bone-headed decisions they made in the new game.
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Daggerfall - hugest map ever. and the dungeons were a joy... up until I realised how thay were built from blocks and learned to navigate each block with my eyes closed (J-shaped green stone corridor? There'll be a secret door on the outside of the curve.)
Morrowind was a revalation at the time, but I soon got tired of how linear the plot dungeons were.
Obl
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The auto-level balanced was terrible.
Game started easy and stayed easy on easy mode, and started some-what hard and got impossible on hard mode.
Doing side-quests actually hurt your chances of winning with the difficulty set to be hard enough to be worth playing at the start, and never to doing a couple side-quests make the next main mission easier, unless you started with the game too easy for it to matter.
I also found that Oblivion and Morrowind felt smaller than Arena (when walking between towns), but the
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Doing side-quests actually hurt your chances of winning with the difficulty set to be hard enough to be worth playing at the start, and never to doing a couple side-quests make the next main mission easier, unless you started with the game too easy for it to matter.
What they IMO should have done is have the auto-balance only be relative to your progress on the main quest line. This would have rewarded those who do side quests, who would then be more powerful versus the late level foes than someone who didn't.
But what really made Oblivion a game I don't return to is the lack of voice. You have people gathered, apparently always in somber mourning, because they're silent. In battle, I hear the swoosh of a sword, the bang of a fireball, but I can hack a guy to pieces
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"run backwards and fire constantly until the enemy drops". Many games have this AI flaw, but Oblivion and Fallout 3 more than most.
Until you find a critter which has more speed than you at least. I think a Deathclaw at least can outpace a player? Still, broken AI either way. I suppose enemies with ranged attacks don't suffer nearly as bad, but melee stuff yea... Maybe everything melee should be given some kind of "sprint" ability as to not trivialize an entire class of enemy.
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Or at least not always rush in a straight line towards the player.
This was ridiculed in Daitakana, so how come people accept it in Oblivion and Fallout 3?
Make the enemies weave, not go in straight lines.
Make them favour approaches that give cover, the more so the less health they have.
Make two or more foes attack from different directions.
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Oblivion. Shiny, new. Lots of things I abused in previous games taken out. I hate auto-level balance with a passion.
Each new game brought a whole slew of changes - mostly good (I've only gotten stuck on the scenery half-a-dozen times in Oblivion. But no levitate to get out quickly...) and some not so good.
This is why the only real way to play Oblivion is on the PC with mods that fix the bad decisions (like auto-leveling) and add so much more variety and fun to the game that Bethesda never did. I give them credit for building the framework of the game that only became amazing when combined with a dozen or more mods. It's such a completely different game at that point that you wouldn't believe it.
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the "natural leveling" mod is one of the most worthwhile out there.
I loved some of the ones I added, even the more subtle ones like the book and potion mods just added that little bit of richness to the world.
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I've played through Oblivion twice on the Xbox. Would it be worth it to buy a copy for the PC just to play with the mods?
Yes. Absolutely. I'd advise getting an overhaul mod like FCOM, and then going through the popular mods at TESNexus to see what else you'd like. It can take a little time to get all the mods you want to use installed, but there are tools that help get things configured, and the people in the forums have been pretty helpful as well. I had about 30+ mods installed last time I played. It's a completely different, experience than vanilla Oblivion, and it's better in every way.
If you get the PC version, grab
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Daggerfall? that game was horrible broken pile of crap. You could fall through wall, lighting would shift, and the 'open content' just mean lots of crypts you get diseases in.
However, I loved the character creator.
Morrowind and Oblivian where plain and the art was boring. I think the artists where only allowed to use 4 colors.
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Wow, you must really be looking forward to Skyrim then!
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While I did like the 'random' quest elements of Daggerfall, to be honest they were a little overwhelming. So many towns, cities, sites. Spending hours in a dungeon looking for a werewolf and then the exit...
I dunno, I think I preferred Morrowind to it. As long as the gameplay isn't padded by walking through the wilderness killing boring things, I'm not going to complain.
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They killed Oblivion by dumbing it down so far for consoles. They did a lot to improve upon that issue with Fallout though. Of course, Oblivion was boring just for the setting if nothing else. It felt generic, especially after coming off of Morrowind.
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Giant corridors with a single path, like dungeons in World of Warcraft, that famous console game? And yeah you can't climb or fly in console games, especially not Assassin's Creed.
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Removing easily exploited for easy victories features like that were a good thing.
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If you want to solve a $60 game in under an hour, who does it hurt?
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Removing easily exploited for easy victories features like that were a good thing.
Why? It's a single-player game so the only person being cheated is the one doing it and even then, it might make them enjoy the game more.
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Good point. Thanks for clearing that one up for me.
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This. Or even just near-100% chameleon worked. :P
Short of that, a chameleon spell worked. Or touch-damage+invisibility.
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Yes. At least according to Bethesda.
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Where the hell does he mention the iPad in TFA?
Here (it's even in the summary):
Its nested menus are accessed almost as smoothly as iPad page swipes
Note that the AC missed that it was a comparison to the smoothness of the menu system only, not a statement that the game will run on an iPad - it most definitely won't.
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In tomorrows news, Bethesda has been sued for patent infringement
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and what's wrong with that? It's 2011, a dual analog controller should be standard PC equipment by now. Cross platform is here to stay. just stop worrying and love the dualshock. Oblivion was a well regarded game on all 3 platforms. Ignore the PC partisans that say you need to mod it for it to be playable, that's nonsense and traditional PC gamer snobbery. Yes it has a 10 foot UI, deal with it.
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Us PC-gamers play our games on the keyboard and mouse because it is the basis UI, the conversion to joypads is a bad afterthought.
Joypads are great for platformers and Streetfigher type fighters etc and for the people who enjoy to play all kinds of games on the joypad, more power to them, but joypads on the PC doesn't really need a standard dual analogue controller, it already has that with the xbox 360 controller.
I bought Oblivion for the PS3 for +/- 6 euros and am playing through it. It is playable, but
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and what's wrong with that? It's 2011, a dual analog controller should be standard PC equipment by now.
Hint: It isn't, because we have something better: a mouse.
Once you have an analogue controller that allows you to turn around and aim at an arbitrary tiny spot of your choice within a fraction of a second, you can come back.
The only thing I feel a PC need is a WASD touchpad replacement, that offers infinite directions instead of just eight. But a mouse against the other controller is no contest at all - the mouse wins for both speed and accuracy.
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Once you have an analogue controller that allows you to turn around and aim at an arbitrary tiny spot of your choice within a fraction of a second, you can come back.
Why on earth would this be relevent to an RPG, rather than an FPS?
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Camera rotation in the RPG is the same, and navigating anything more complex than the Final Fantasy menus on the NES/SNES is faster and easier with a mouse than a joypad.
Skyrim is an RPG with an FPS world interface, so it's completely relevant. Pretty much any MMO you want to pick is the same.
Joypads are great for games that have limited UIs and non-3d worldspace. Otherwise, they can't hold a candle to a mouse. That's not fanboyism; it's fact.
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Yeah. They should just create less actual game content and instead require you to get through 15 levels of tetris in order to move an item in your inventory. You'd get to spend way more time playing their $60 game then.
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How nice, the game developers are looking for ways to help us spend even less time with their $60 games. I'm so glad they've got our best interests at heart.
No, they are trying to allow you, in your limited time for gaming (well, I have limited time anyways!), to enjoy the *game* and not have to hassle with menu hierarchies and clunky UIs simply to add a spell to a quickslot or drop an item from your inventory. They want you to spend more time enjoying the game elements, not the menus. Sounds good to me.
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From the article:
How nice, the game developers are looking for ways to help us spend even less time with their $60 games. I'm so glad they've got our best interests at heart.
Don't get me wrong, I like a well designed inventory as much as anyone, but I'm uncomfortable with the notion that a game developer would have as a goal, making our experience of their game shorter.
To be fair, Bethesda is not one of the companies that's really guilty of cheating us out of game-time like some others I won't name (Infinity Ward). I've never really played a Bethesda game and felt like I didn't get my money's worth.
Are you suggesting that time spent juggling inventory is quality game time? I've spent huge amounts of time doing that and similar management tasks in Bethesda games and I'd certainly welcome an interface that made it less tedious without dumbing it down. I've also spent far more time in each of those games than any official estimates of how long it takes to finish. If Skyrim is half the size and complexity of any of their earlier games, it'll be easily worth the money.
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Of course not. I'm suggesting that it's not a good sign when developers are looking for ways to "shave hours off the average player's actual game-time" as the article suggested.
The article didn't mention "quality game time".
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Less time? These games take forever to play if you like to explore and follow the side quests and such. These are the best value for the money out there I think. But they're not for the typical fps shooter on rails fan, they're about world immersion and RPG.
The goal here is probably to fix up the incredibly annoying inventory system that was in Oblivion, which was only slightly improved upon in Fallout3. It's almost like they added this cumbersome system in order to artificially extend play time :-)
But
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That's what I said, Bethesda is one of the good ones.
Wait, you're concerned about the reality of a "magic backpack" in a game that allows you to cast spells to kill dragons? Once you accept the premise that there is magic that allows
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