The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

What I don't get is how it's going to be Gamebryo even if it is some new version that they renamed. Wouldn't we have heard if Bethesda acquired Gamebryo?

 

 

 

During 2009 the development staff of Gamebryo dropped by more than half,^[1][2] and by July 2010 the engineering office in Chapel Hill, North Carolina was closed with several developers announcing their departure. On November 11, 2010 Gerbsman Partners was retained by Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc., the senior secured lender to Emergent Game Technologies, Inc., to solicit interest for the acquisition of all or substantially all of EGT’s assets, including its Intellectual Property (“IP”), in whole or in part.^[3]

 

 

 

[deanb]

If they have a full license to it they don't need to buy the company. It only started closing last year and they've being working on Skyrim for a lot long that a year.

[Mr W Phallus]

As for the mountain things, yeah. Sounds exactly like New Vegas, which pissed me off. The best part about Oblivion was getting so sidetracked that you began to enjoy exploring in different directions just to see what you would find. Now it looks like they plan on not only having a little compass ticker that shows you the way, but all the roads will lead you conveniently to each part of the main quest.

I think you're leaping to conclusions about the mountains. Specifically:

 

the inclusion of huge mountains – all of which you can climb to the top of

 

Ok so there are going to be insurmountable cliffs and what have you that you will have to detour around - you get them in real life too - but there is nothing to suggest the mountains will shepherd you through the world. In fact the above quote implies the opposite.

 

To be honest, even though game developers make all sorts of decisions that upset their fanbase, I don't think Bethesda are stupid enough to inhibit the exploration in TES in anyway when the fact you can pretty much ignore the main quest and do whatever you want is the main attraction of the series.

[AgamemnonV2]

As for the mountain things, yeah. Sounds exactly like New Vegas, which pissed me off. The best part about Oblivion was getting so sidetracked that you began to enjoy exploring in different directions just to see what you would find. Now it looks like they plan on not only having a little compass ticker that shows you the way, but all the roads will lead you conveniently to each part of the main quest.

I think you're leaping to conclusions about the mountains. Specifically:

 

the inclusion of huge mountains – all of which you can climb to the top of

 

Ok so there are going to be insurmountable cliffs and what have you that you will have to detour around - you get them in real life too - but there is nothing to suggest the mountains will shepherd you through the world. In fact the above quote implies the opposite.

 

To be honest, even though game developers make all sorts of decisions that upset their fanbase, I don't think Bethesda are stupid enough to inhibit the exploration in TES in anyway when the fact you can pretty much ignore the main quest and do whatever you want is the main attraction of the series.

Have you seen a map of Skyrim recently?

 

And not stupid enough to upset their fanbase? Did you miss out on Oblivion? I liked the game but I can't get into a chat about Bethesda with some pre-Oblivion fan coming in and mentioning all the things they did "wrong" in Oblivion.

 

Knocking attributes down to three sounds like the epitome of the hypercritical definition of "dumbing down."

 

Anyway, Bethesda (as is Bioware) is notoriously known for dragging things from their previous games as "base features" into their new games. Noticed how perks are making it in, as is "campfire crafting"? All that's missing is a sixth sense power that "slows down" time, allowing you to "target enemy vitals."

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

The thing is though... did Oblivion outsell Morrowind?

 

All that's missing is a sixth sense power that "slows down" time, allowing you to "target enemy vitals."

 

Actually it was either Kotaku or RPS that I saw where they mentioned that for archery perks there would be one for zoom, then one for slowing down time when zoomed, and stuff like that lol.

 

What are the three attributes btw? That could be seen as simplification rather than dumbing down if there's a larger number of abilities/perks and shit (which there appears to be at least in comparison to new vegas as you can go to level 50 and still unlock crap)

[AgamemnonV2]

The thing is though... did Oblivion outsell Morrowind?

I'm pretty sure it did.

 

All that's missing is a sixth sense power that "slows down" time, allowing you to "target enemy vitals."

 

Actually it was either Kotaku or RPS that I saw where they mentioned that for archery perks there would be one for zoom, then one for slowing down time when zoomed, and stuff like that lol.

 

What are the three attributes btw? That could be seen as simplification rather than dumbing down if there's a larger number of abilities/perks and shit (which there appears to be at least in comparison to new vegas as you can go to level 50 and still unlock crap)

I haven't read which thee attributes it is, but I'm venturing a guess it's going to be Charisma, Intelligence, and Strength--Intelligence for magic builds, strength for melee builds, and then Charisma so you can talk the Big Bad into killing himself.

 

TES has never been about simplification. Even in Oblivion you could drastically create a number of different types of builds because of the variety of skills and attributes. Reading one of their devs calling an archer-acrobat build as "cheap" just leads me to believe that rather than try to create an AI that would attempt to overcome its shortcomings in ranged combat they just took a baseball bat to the situation and then said, "Well, we fixed it."

[RockyRan]

Yeah I've read it now, my disc burner is much slower than I thought:

I was just curious if you'd be locked to only playing as a human or if you could play any race you want like the others.

 

One interesting tidbit is this:

14. Modding is fully supported, in the form of the Creation Kit. “We’re really big into the mods on the PC. Hopefully day and date with the game, but there might be some slack there.” Bethesda have also been influenced by a few mods for earlier games – for instance, bows have been tweaked as a result of finding an Oblivion balance mod that did ‘em better.

 

Creation Kit. Full name "Garden of Eden Creation Kit" aka GECK is the mod tool used by Fallout 3 n New Vegas. Now I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure you can't use modtools for one engine on a completely different engine (You wouldn't use CryEditor to make levels for UT3). Which does strongly suggest that they have being telling half truths and Skyrim is running on Gamebryo, just their own heavily modified in-house version*. (or maybe Gamebryo has always been able to do this and Bethseda finally got good at it) Kinda like Quake n GoldSrc I guess.

 

 

Also I'm not keen on the mountains. It says the world size is same as Oblivion, but the mountains mean there's more. To a degree yeah it means more surface area but mountains are huge and generally unclimeable. Also says how you have to walk around them which suddenly suggests the game isn't too open, but could be like New Vegas where it kinda forces you to walk around in a somewhat linear path for the start.

 

*tbh I swear they've mentioned this before. But most folks seem to be all on this idea that it's a new engine and not gamebryo still.

The GECK was just the TES Construction Set with a new name. Just about everything was exactly the same (except for navmeshing). I have no doubt Skyrim is working off of Gamebyro still. It's what they know best.

 

As for the mountain things, yeah. Sounds exactly like New Vegas, which pissed me off. The best part about Oblivion was getting so sidetracked that you began to enjoy exploring in different directions just to see what you would find. Now it looks like they plan on not only having a little compass ticker that shows you the way, but all the roads will lead you conveniently to each part of the main quest.

 

You know, that was actually the biggest complaint I kept hearing about Oblivion, about how in comparison to Morrowind (which had plenty of impassable areas and forced you to go around them and take "paths" sometimes), it was far too open ended and provided no interesting landscapes. After playing the hell out of Oblivion I agree with that. Making everything more or less flat enough to be able to draw a straight line from one spot to the other may sound like more "freedom" superficially, but after playing on that kind of world you quickly realize you're sacrificing freedom for visual and geographical variety.

 

I say keep the mountains and rock walls and other impassable areas. They allow for far better gameworlds anyway.

[TheMightyEthan]

You know, that was actually the biggest complaint I kept hearing about Oblivion, about how in comparison to Morrowind (which had plenty of impassable areas and forced you to go around them and take "paths" sometimes), it was far too open ended and provided no interesting landscapes. After playing the hell out of Oblivion I agree with that. Making everything more or less flat enough to be able to draw a straight line from one spot to the other may sound like more "freedom" superficially, but after playing on that kind of world you quickly realize you're sacrificing freedom for visual and geographical variety.

 

I say keep the mountains and rock walls and other impassable areas. They allow for far better gameworlds anyway.

I agree with the jist of this, but there's a very fine line between having interesting terrain that is not 100% passable and overly corralling the player.

[McBeeferton]

Well, my main problem with Oblivion was that it looked nice, but ran sluggish. Also there was a lot of distance between areas of importance and there wasn't anything particularly great in the scenery. It's like, I wouldn't mind the long travel time if I had some nice things to look at and memorable points of interests. As it was, it was just kind of boring and repetitive going from point a to point b. I ended up saying fuck the plot and just went exploring. I had fun dicking around, but that got old fast because, like I said, there wasn't a whole lot of eye candy, and I think eye candy is essential. Take Fallout 3 for example. If you saw a few houses or a path that lead up some cliffs you would go check it out and you would probably find some interesting things. In Oblivion everything seemed bland and copy/pasted into the world and I felt uninterested in it all.

 

I didn't play it very long, in the end. I remember learning you could become a vampire and I set out to become one. After I became one I found out that it wasn't all that it was cracked up to be, but still pretty cool. Then I quit and pondered to myself why the game had so much appraise. ...Then I remembered I played the game on the Xbox360, so I did not have the luxury of mods.

[AgamemnonV2]

Yeah I've read it now, my disc burner is much slower than I thought:

I was just curious if you'd be locked to only playing as a human or if you could play any race you want like the others.

 

One interesting tidbit is this:

14. Modding is fully supported, in the form of the Creation Kit. “We’re really big into the mods on the PC. Hopefully day and date with the game, but there might be some slack there.” Bethesda have also been influenced by a few mods for earlier games – for instance, bows have been tweaked as a result of finding an Oblivion balance mod that did ‘em better.

 

Creation Kit. Full name "Garden of Eden Creation Kit" aka GECK is the mod tool used by Fallout 3 n New Vegas. Now I may be mistaken but I'm pretty sure you can't use modtools for one engine on a completely different engine (You wouldn't use CryEditor to make levels for UT3). Which does strongly suggest that they have being telling half truths and Skyrim is running on Gamebryo, just their own heavily modified in-house version*. (or maybe Gamebryo has always been able to do this and Bethseda finally got good at it) Kinda like Quake n GoldSrc I guess.

 

 

Also I'm not keen on the mountains. It says the world size is same as Oblivion, but the mountains mean there's more. To a degree yeah it means more surface area but mountains are huge and generally unclimeable. Also says how you have to walk around them which suddenly suggests the game isn't too open, but could be like New Vegas where it kinda forces you to walk around in a somewhat linear path for the start.

 

*tbh I swear they've mentioned this before. But most folks seem to be all on this idea that it's a new engine and not gamebryo still.

The GECK was just the TES Construction Set with a new name. Just about everything was exactly the same (except for navmeshing). I have no doubt Skyrim is working off of Gamebyro still. It's what they know best.

 

As for the mountain things, yeah. Sounds exactly like New Vegas, which pissed me off. The best part about Oblivion was getting so sidetracked that you began to enjoy exploring in different directions just to see what you would find. Now it looks like they plan on not only having a little compass ticker that shows you the way, but all the roads will lead you conveniently to each part of the main quest.

 

You know, that was actually the biggest complaint I kept hearing about Oblivion, about how in comparison to Morrowind (which had plenty of impassable areas and forced you to go around them and take "paths" sometimes), it was far too open ended and provided no interesting landscapes. After playing the hell out of Oblivion I agree with that. Making everything more or less flat enough to be able to draw a straight line from one spot to the other may sound like more "freedom" superficially, but after playing on that kind of world you quickly realize you're sacrificing freedom for visual and geographical variety.

 

I say keep the mountains and rock walls and other impassable areas. They allow for far better gameworlds anyway.

I love games that are very open like that. I found the world of Oblivion to be quite beautiful--instead of focusing on a particular quest, it became an aspect of the game to explore and find yourselves in situations that became adventures in themselves. Mount&Blade and Medieval II: Total War are some of my favorite games because the majority of the game is about the adventure you undertake and not some arbitrary NPC who has limited voice work and lines. If I can put in 90 hours in one playthrough in Mount&Blade and not even be close to "beating" the game then I would say that is a very enjoyable experience. I know some people like their games to finish, have definitive endings, etc. but I am becoming a big fan of games that run more on persistent world feelings.

 

Which is probably why I disliked Fallout 3: New Vegas so much.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

I like how you start talking about gameplay when everyone else is talking about visuals.

 

Also, were you playing a different new vegas than me? I didn't do the main storyline for a good 70 hours of new vegas and just explored the fuck out of everything

[Mr W Phallus]

Have you seen a map of Skyrim recently?

I haven't, but do you mean this sarcastically as in I couldn't possibly know whether the mountains will shepherd the player or is there an actual map which disproves my point?

 

And not stupid enough to upset their fanbase? Did you miss out on Oblivion? I liked the game but I can't get into a chat about Bethesda with some pre-Oblivion fan coming in and mentioning all the things they did "wrong" in Oblivion.

I've barely played Morrowind, so not sure if I could form a proper judgement there, although I must say my first impressions were 'this is very much like Oblivion'. It took me a little while to warm to Oblivion but eventually I came to love it. Again I'm a bit confused as to what you're trying to say, but I get your point that a lot of Morrowind fans are critical of Oblivion. The thing is whilst they got rid of some of the character options - which some fans didn't like - Oblivion was still about being a massively open world, and in that sense it was less restrictive (from what I've personally seen of Morrowind anyway).

 

I haven't read which thee attributes it is, but I'm venturing a guess it's going to be Charisma, Intelligence, and Strength--Intelligence for magic builds, strength for melee builds, and then Charisma so you can talk the Big Bad into killing himself.

Almost:

There are three main stats: magicka, health, stamina. In Oblivion you have 8 attributes and 21 skills. Now it’s 18 skills and 3 attributes. What we found was those attributes actually did something else. e.g. intelligence affected magicka. They all trickled down to some other stat.

More stuff about skills and levelling up here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/18/skyrim-skills/

 

TES has never been about simplification. Even in Oblivion you could drastically create a number of different types of builds because of the variety of skills and attributes. Reading one of their devs calling an archer-acrobat build as "cheap" just leads me to believe that rather than try to create an AI that would attempt to overcome its shortcomings in ranged combat they just took a baseball bat to the situation and then said, "Well, we fixed it."

I agree, saying levelling up an acrobatics skill and using a bow is cheap shows a complete misunderstanding of why a lot of people enjoy role-playing games. That is the kind of creative thinking they should be encouraging and they should only be trying to stop it from making the game too easy, not to stop it completely.

 

You know, that was actually the biggest complaint I kept hearing about Oblivion, about how in comparison to Morrowind (which had plenty of impassable areas and forced you to go around them and take "paths" sometimes), it was far too open ended and provided no interesting landscapes. After playing the hell out of Oblivion I agree with that. Making everything more or less flat enough to be able to draw a straight line from one spot to the other may sound like more "freedom" superficially, but after playing on that kind of world you quickly realize you're sacrificing freedom for visual and geographical variety.

 

I say keep the mountains and rock walls and other impassable areas. They allow for far better gameworlds anyway.

I completely agree, a flat plain just advertises it's emptiness, and whilst the large scale may seem impressive at first you'll soon just get bored of travelling over huge distances of nothing landscapes. With a hilly area it's more interesting aesthetically and you can pack more stuff closer together without making it look cramped. It's just a shame we can't level up our acrobatics skills and play climb the mountain by the most difficult route.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Mr W Phallus

[RockyRan]

I love games that are very open like that. I found the world of Oblivion to be quite beautiful--instead of focusing on a particular quest, it became an aspect of the game to explore and find yourselves in situations that became adventures in themselves. Mount&Blade and Medieval II: Total War are some of my favorite games because the majority of the game is about the adventure you undertake and not some arbitrary NPC who has limited voice work and lines. If I can put in 90 hours in one playthrough in Mount&Blade and not even be close to "beating" the game then I would say that is a very enjoyable experience. I know some people like their games to finish, have definitive endings, etc. but I am becoming a big fan of games that run more on persistent world feelings.

 

Which is probably why I disliked Fallout 3: New Vegas so much.

 

Of course, of course. Freedom in exploration and making your own adventure is the exact reason why I loved Oblivion.

 

I'm just talking about the gameworld in itself. Like MightyEthan said, there's a fine line between corralling the player and making a gameworld where everything is not flat, but when I say "keep the mountains and rock walls", believe me when I say I in NO WAY want a restrictive gameworld at all.

 

Do I want it just a bit more restrictive? A tad, yes, but not because I want restriction, but because I want a better, more finely crafted and ultimately more interesting gameworld. Like I said, a flat plane is the most "free" of all gameworlds, but it's also the least interesting. I think Bethesda's setting out on making the gameworld a lot more like Morrowind's. There's obvious areas with completely impassable terrain, but the geography is designed such that you're not always walking in essentially corridors made out of carved rock. I want geographically interesting areas, like for instance walking along a steep wall of rock and discovering a small cave that looks like it leads to an open area of some sort from where you're standing. So you go through the small cave and discover that it opens to a circular ravine with a bit of treasure on one side. That's the kind of thing I want to see in Skyrim. Am I so "free" that I can access said ravine from every direction? No, but by making the access to that particular "ravine" a little more restricted (only through that small cave) it allows for a far more interesting geography. And without that mountain with that huge wall of "restrictive" rock you can't have that ravine in the first place.

 

Think of a line graph with 0 being "Flat/free" on one extreme and 10 being "Corridor/linear" on the other. Oblivion's gameworld was a 1. I'm hoping they move it up to 4.

Edited April 19, 2011 by RockyRan

[AgamemnonV2]

I like how you start talking about gameplay when everyone else is talking about visuals.

 

Also, were you playing a different new vegas than me? I didn't do the main storyline for a good 70 hours of new vegas and just explored the fuck out of everything

Do me a favor. Go straight to New Vegas once you start the game. The most direct route. Without mods or messing around with the console, etc. Let me know how your exploration goes.

 

It's like a recurring theme around here to completely ignore what I was talking about.

 

Of course, of course. Freedom in exploration and making your own adventure is the exact reason why I loved Oblivion.

 

I'm just talking about the gameworld in itself. Like MightyEthan said, there's a fine line between corralling the player and making a gameworld where everything is not flat, but when I say "keep the mountains and rock walls", believe me when I say I in NO WAY want a restrictive gameworld at all.

 

Do I want it just a bit more restrictive? A tad, yes, but not because I want restriction, but because I want a better, more finely crafted and ultimately more interesting gameworld. Like I said, a flat plane is the most "free" of all gameworlds, but it's also the least interesting. I think Bethesda's setting out on making the gameworld a lot more like Morrowind's. There's obvious areas with completely impassable terrain, but the geography is designed such that you're not always walking in essentially corridors made out of carved rock. I want geographically interesting areas, like for instance walking along a steep wall of rock and discovering a small cave that looks like it leads to an open area of some sort from where you're standing. So you go through the small cave and discover that it opens to a circular ravine with a bit of treasure on one side. That's the kind of thing I want to see in Skyrim. Am I so "free" that I can access said ravine from every direction? No, but by making the access to that particular "ravine" a little more restricted (only through that small cave) it allows for a far more interesting geography. And without that mountain with that huge wall of "restrictive" rock you can't have that ravine in the first place.

 

Think of a line graph with 0 being "Flat/free" on one extreme and 10 being "Corridor/linear" on the other. Oblivion's gameworld was a 1. I'm hoping they move it up to 4.

Just when exactly is the last time you've played Oblivion? The majority of the game world is not flat, but it is certainly free. People often mistake this because they spend their first part of the game in The Wold (which IS actually flat, i.e. designed after prairie plains) while the rest of it is hilly or even mountainous. In fact, Bethesda tried its best to create multiple themes and areas within Oblivion. I really don't know how anyone can call a game that probably had the most beautiful scenery until Crysis came around "flat."

 

http://www.oblivion-power.de/files/oblivionpower/downloads/cyrodiil-terrain.jpg

 

Please, explain to me how in the world that is "flat."

 

I haven't, but do you mean this sarcastically as in I couldn't possibly know whether the mountains will shepherd the player or is there an actual map which disproves my point?

http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/pgtte_v3_map_skyrim.jpg

 

That's part of the official Tamriel map from Bethesda.

 

http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=20734

 

That's a fan mod that's lore-heavy.

 

Other than High Rock, Skyrim is notoriously known for being mountainous.

 

I've barely played Morrowind, so not sure if I could form a proper judgement there, although I must say my first impressions were 'this is very much like Oblivion'. It took me a little while to warm to Oblivion but eventually I came to love it. Again I'm a bit confused as to what you're trying to say, but I get your point that a lot of Morrowind fans are critical of Oblivion. The thing is whilst they got rid of some of the character options - which some fans didn't like - Oblivion was still about being a massively open world, and in that sense it was less restrictive (from what I've personally seen of Morrowind anyway).

Actually Morrowind is just as open. The complaints are centered around that Oblivion has a compass that points you in your quest direction. Morrowind did not have this. In fact, this was such a complained about feature in Morrowind that it was the reason that there is a quest compass in Oblivion. More than a few times I got lost in Morrowind because the quest directions literally said, "Go left, go right, walk two miles down the road, pass the fluffy bunny, and then hop on one leg three times and you will be at your destination." Some quests don't even give you a direction at all!

 

People generally felt that the quest direction compass "shrunk" the world of Oblivion.

 

Almost:

There are three main stats: magicka, health, stamina. In Oblivion you have 8 attributes and 21 skills. Now it’s 18 skills and 3 attributes. What we found was those attributes actually did something else. e.g. intelligence affected magicka. They all trickled down to some other stat.

More stuff about skills and levelling up here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/18/skyrim-skills/

Yeah, I read that but they don't mention which three attributes made the cut (note: magicka, health, and stamina are not attributes).

Edited April 19, 2011 by AgamemnonV2

[McBeeferton]

I have to agree with the term "flat". It doesn't fit with Oblivion. I remember there being quite a lot of hills and even a few mountains that you could climb. Or at least one, which had an oblivion gate waiting for you...

 

and this is from someone who probably didn't explore but a quarter of the game.

Edited April 19, 2011 by Sir Beefychu

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Do me a favor. Go straight to New Vegas once you start the game. The most direct route. Without mods or messing around with the console, etc. Let me know how your exploration goes.

 

Slaughtered via Deathclaws.

 

 

Also I got what was meant by "flat" but I guess eveyone else didn't.

 

Basically what is being said is that yes there are hills and mountains and shit but they barely get in your way. The terrain isn't as extreme as Morrowinds.

[RockyRan]

I like how you start talking about gameplay when everyone else is talking about visuals.

 

Also, were you playing a different new vegas than me? I didn't do the main storyline for a good 70 hours of new vegas and just explored the fuck out of everything

Do me a favor. Go straight to New Vegas once you start the game. The most direct route. Without mods or messing around with the console, etc. Let me know how your exploration goes.

 

It's like a recurring theme around here to completely ignore what I was talking about.

 

Of course, of course. Freedom in exploration and making your own adventure is the exact reason why I loved Oblivion.

 

I'm just talking about the gameworld in itself. Like MightyEthan said, there's a fine line between corralling the player and making a gameworld where everything is not flat, but when I say "keep the mountains and rock walls", believe me when I say I in NO WAY want a restrictive gameworld at all.

 

Do I want it just a bit more restrictive? A tad, yes, but not because I want restriction, but because I want a better, more finely crafted and ultimately more interesting gameworld. Like I said, a flat plane is the most "free" of all gameworlds, but it's also the least interesting. I think Bethesda's setting out on making the gameworld a lot more like Morrowind's. There's obvious areas with completely impassable terrain, but the geography is designed such that you're not always walking in essentially corridors made out of carved rock. I want geographically interesting areas, like for instance walking along a steep wall of rock and discovering a small cave that looks like it leads to an open area of some sort from where you're standing. So you go through the small cave and discover that it opens to a circular ravine with a bit of treasure on one side. That's the kind of thing I want to see in Skyrim. Am I so "free" that I can access said ravine from every direction? No, but by making the access to that particular "ravine" a little more restricted (only through that small cave) it allows for a far more interesting geography. And without that mountain with that huge wall of "restrictive" rock you can't have that ravine in the first place.

 

Think of a line graph with 0 being "Flat/free" on one extreme and 10 being "Corridor/linear" on the other. Oblivion's gameworld was a 1. I'm hoping they move it up to 4.

Just when exactly is the last time you've played Oblivion? The majority of the game world is not flat, but it is certainly free. People often mistake this because they spend their first part of the game in The Wold (which IS actually flat, i.e. designed after prairie plains) while the rest of it is hilly or even mountainous. In fact, Bethesda tried its best to create multiple themes and areas within Oblivion. I really don't know how anyone can call a game that probably had the most beautiful scenery until Crysis came around "flat."

 

http://www.oblivion-power.de/files/oblivionpower/downloads/cyrodiil-terrain.jpg

 

Please, explain to me how in the world that is "flat."

 

You're taking it far too literally. You CAN draw a straight line from one destination to another with very minimal deviations. That's what I'm talking about. There are rolling hills and the occasional terrain elevation that is impassable head on, but move ten feet to the right and you can keep going in your merry way. I'm completely at a loss as to how you can't realize this.

 

I'm also unsure as to why a game having beautiful scenery somehow makes the world not "flat". Perhaps if we were talking in terms of symbolically flat (as in, "his performance was flat"), but rest assured all of us here are talking about geographically flat (as in, "I can walk from one side of the map to the other without anything that gets in my way significantly").

[AgamemnonV2]

Do me a favor. Go straight to New Vegas once you start the game. The most direct route. Without mods or messing around with the console, etc. Let me know how your exploration goes.

 

Slaughtered via Deathclaws.

 

 

Also I got what was meant by "flat" but I guess eveyone else didn't.

 

Basically what is being said is that yes there are hills and mountains and shit but they barely get in your way. The terrain isn't as extreme as Morrowinds.

Why exactly is this a bad thing? I can understand some geographical features but to railroad the entire game seems just annoying and frustrating (which is what came of my experience with New Vegas). If I want to go scale a mountain then, gorramit, I'm going to, especially if I have the skills to do so. New Vegas is literally marred with not only geographical dead ends, but invisible walls that restrict you from exploring (I was able to scale the mountains near Khan territory until I stumbled upon one).

 

You're taking it far too literally. You CAN draw a straight line from one destination to another with very minimal deviations. That's what I'm talking about. There are rolling hills and the occasional terrain elevation that is impassable head on, but move ten feet to the right and you can keep going in your merry way. I'm completely at a loss as to how you can't realize this.

I realize this just fine. What exactly were you expecting from a part of the game world that features relatively low elevation terrain? Would you be happy if the Imperial City was built on top of Mt. Everest and the only way to get to it you'd have to take a winding mountain passageway that'd take you ten minutes to scale or a half hour just to get around to the other side?

 

The Jerall Mountains is your "mountainous feature" that you're looking for. Good luck moving ten feet to the left. Let me know how that works out. I already know considering I've tried to scale the mountains numerous times from multiple entry points.

 

I'm also unsure as to why a game having beautiful scenery somehow makes the world not "flat". Perhaps if we were talking in terms of symbolically flat (as in, "his performance was flat"), but rest assured all of us here are talking about geographically flat (as in, "I can walk from one side of the map to the other without anything that gets in my way significantly").

http://www.geo.msu.edu/geogmich/images/slides3-H-lakeplain.jpg

 

That's geographically flat.

 

http://screenshot.xfire.com/screenshot/large/cb15f02534c89812c88620bfa71439dba9ce1011.jpg

 

Now, as intelligently as possible, explain to me how that is flat.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

Why exactly is this a bad thing? I can understand some geographical features but to railroad the entire game seems just annoying and frustrating (which is what came of my experience with New Vegas). If I want to go scale a mountain then, gorramit, I'm going to, especially if I have the skills to do so. New Vegas is literally marred with not only geographical dead ends, but invisible walls that restrict you from exploring (I was able to scale the mountains near Khan territory until I stumbled upon one).

 

Oh, so you played the console version, no wonder you didn't like it.

[Mr W Phallus]

Almost:

There are three main stats: magicka, health, stamina. In Oblivion you have 8 attributes and 21 skills. Now it’s 18 skills and 3 attributes. What we found was those attributes actually did something else. e.g. intelligence affected magicka. They all trickled down to some other stat.

More stuff about skills and levelling up here: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/04/18/skyrim-skills/

Yeah, I read that but they don't mention which three attributes made the cut (note: magicka, health, and stamina are not attributes).

Ah I see what you mean, however there is this:

The attributes, meanwhile, are distilled to Health, Magicka and Stamina.

But that's the RPS writer not a Bethesda spokesperson so I'm not sure if he's inferred that from the original quote I posted or if he has hands on time or some other factual confirmation.

[AgamemnonV2]

Why exactly is this a bad thing? I can understand some geographical features but to railroad the entire game seems just annoying and frustrating (which is what came of my experience with New Vegas). If I want to go scale a mountain then, gorramit, I'm going to, especially if I have the skills to do so. New Vegas is literally marred with not only geographical dead ends, but invisible walls that restrict you from exploring (I was able to scale the mountains near Khan territory until I stumbled upon one).

 

Oh, so you played the console version, no wonder you didn't like it.

I don't own a console, so that would be a no. And if you're about to use mods as an excuse to fixing New Vegas then I'm going to mention the Unique Landscapes mod for Oblivion.

 

Ah I see what you mean, however there is this:

The attributes, meanwhile, are distilled to Health, Magicka and Stamina.

But that's the RPS writer not a Bethesda spokesperson so I'm not sure if he's inferred that from the original quote I posted or if he has hands on time or some other factual confirmation.

Yeah, what he means is that the attributes affect your stats (like they have in previous games). Multiple attributes affected different stats (Endurance increased health and stamina while Intelligence increased your Magicka, etc.). My thought is they'll reduce it to Strength to affect stamina and health, Intelligence for magicka, and then Charisma for chat dialogue crap. That or they'll tie chat dialogue to Intelligence and then probably use Endurance or Agility to affect your stamina.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

And if you're about to use mods as an excuse to fixing New Vegas then I'm going to mention the Unique Landscapes mod for Oblivion.

 

Quite simply I'm talking about getting rid of invisible walls not something that adds or changes the content of the game. Stuff like that I find to be fair game as it's barely above a bug fix. The same can be said for the community patches New Vegas has.

[AgamemnonV2]

And if you're about to use mods as an excuse to fixing New Vegas then I'm going to mention the Unique Landscapes mod for Oblivion.

 

Quite simply I'm talking about getting rid of invisible walls not something that adds or changes the content of the game. Stuff like that I find to be fair game as it's barely above a bug fix. The same can be said for the community patches New Vegas has.

It involves editing game files, i.e. something you wouldn't be able to do on the console version and something Obsidian didn't do themselves. It is not a legitimate argument against the state of the game vanilla-wise.

 

I could just as easily set the New Vegas entrance fast travel discovered when you first start the game as easily as I could remove the invisible walls.

[Faiblesse Des Sens]

And if you're about to use mods as an excuse to fixing New Vegas then I'm going to mention the Unique Landscapes mod for Oblivion.

 

Quite simply I'm talking about getting rid of invisible walls not something that adds or changes the content of the game. Stuff like that I find to be fair game as it's barely above a bug fix. The same can be said for the community patches New Vegas has.

It involves editing game files, i.e. something you wouldn't be able to do on the console version and something Obsidian didn't do themselves. It is not a legitimate argument against the state of the game vanilla-wise.

 

I could just as easily set the New Vegas entrance fast travel discovered when you first start the game as easily as I could remove the invisible walls.

 

Except that's cheating and not a bug fix

[AgamemnonV2]

Removing game boundaries is not a "bug fix." It is cheating, however.