jamesmcm said:
Perhaps, that is a worrying conclusion. But I hope Bethesda won't dumb the games down too much - (many of the changes in Oblivion were due to porting it over to consoles).
I wouldn't say Morrowind is a dumbed-down Daggerfall, sure lots of mechanics were removed but Daggerfall had some major issues due to it being so larger like texture re-usage, quest repetition, etc.
I hope the next BethSoft engine will support seamless environments - then they can add some of the Daggerfall mechanics (like climbing into towns, etc.) back in.
I can see that the games have been dumbed-down to a certain extent but I don't think all hope is lost. IMO, the improvements made to Oblivion outweighed the dumbing down (it's a shame they dumbed it down in the first place though) and the new stealth system was an incredible improvement.
The step down from MW to Oblivion was, for me, too much to take. They took what I considered to be a superb FPRPG and turned it into some console garbage where skills meant nothing.
ie: In Morrowind, to pick a lock you had to have a high enough skill. In Oblivion you could have a skill of 1 and pick any lock in the game as long as you were good enough at the mini game.
The same thing happened with Persuausion. In MW it was a skill check, in Oblivion it was a ridiculous mini-game that involved a rotating circle.
I find FO3 to be simply Oblivion with guns, and I mean that in nearly every sense of the word. Grab a melee weapon and swing it in FO3. Then, swing a sword in Oblivion. IT's the EXACT same animation.
The dialogue system, the NPC animations, the horrid, NPC faces, etc, etc, are all recycled from Oblivion.
Sadly, the developers at Beth are either too lazy or not inclined on getting a new engine (they've used the same engine for Morrowind, Oblivion and FO3), and I doubt we'll get a new engine for TES V.
In order for me to even consider purchasing FO4, they'll have had to have created / bought a new engine, and fired Todd Howard.
