maximaz said:
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Basically, I share the pessimism here but the setup and the teaser so far shouldn't be to blame for it. Ripping them a new one because of this teaser is being unreasonably picky.
First of all, nice post.
As I said earlier, is not the problem in the teaser, it's the context and the "promise" of it.
Elder Scrolls have and have had very deep, coherent and rich lore. Until Todd and Co. started to build upon it. There are literally hundreds of great stories to be revisited from Morrowind alone and many of them could be used to be far more original then "dragonborn kill the dragon" or "he eventually become friend with dragon and defeat some another dragon" or some similar nonsense. It's simply too shallow and overdone however awesome they try to make it.
What could be more generic than this? Zombie and Nazis don't count. What? Evil wizards? Evil gods? Wizard-gods? Meh, we had that already... And all that, as someone have mentioned, "in generic medieval world #3". Ok, probably with snow. That's the problem for me.
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About RPG (my interest) quality of the game.
It's known that customer defines quality, not supplier. Supplier is there to satisfy customer's needs. At least in normal world. So, Let's see for whom they are making this game. Who are THE customers? I think, (target audience) Oblivion and (target device) console users. And 90% of those users don't have a slightest idea what RPG really is nor do they really care, as long as they could visit every dungeon at level 3 or as long as they can make nude mod, or something similary complex...
So to conclude, they (Beth.) could use best game engine possible, they could make great battles (with more then 16! NPCs) and they could even make great game, but as far as RPG game goes, I really don't have any reason to suspect or argument to deny prediction that this game would be RPG joke again. As Oblivion was. And for a record, I liked Oblivion for what it was.
Not to mention all PC castration for a sake of unified design for X360/PS3, UI wise, AI wise... Hell, in any possible way.