Fallout tidbit in Oblivion preview

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Odin

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Vilhelm informed us of a new preview of Elder Scrolls - Oblivion where Todd Howard talks about Fallout in one of the questions:<blockquote>GS: We have to ask--how, if at all, has Bethesda's recent acquisition of Black Isle Studios' Fallout license and confirmation that it will work on a Fallout 3 affected The Elder Scrolls IV's planning and design? How will the two games be different, or complementary? It seems safe to assume that Elder Scrolls IV will be Bethesda's next huge, sprawling role-playing game, while Fallout 3 will be a more-compact, self-contained adventure. Is this the case? Has Bethesda found itself forced to rethink or adjust its plans for The Elder Scrolls IV so as not to compete with its own plans for Fallout 3?

TH: Oblivion has been in development since 2002, so getting the Fallout license recently hasn't changed our plans for Oblivion at all. By their nature, I don't think they compete with each other. They will be very different games--not just in style, but in how they play. Also, for some time our plan had been to use this technology in other games, and Fallout is a great fit for that. </blockquote>Hmm this could be good news.
Link: Oblivion Preview@Gamespot
 
It could indeed mean something good.


But as they insisted on saying before, its still to early to tell fore sure.
 
PsychoSniper said:
But as they insisted on saying before, its still to early to tell fore sure.
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Too early by far, that's for sure. That bolded section is the same thing as saying that UT2004 mods are very different games, and it's about as helpful. Frag Ops to Red Orchestra, Alien Swarm to Air Buccaneers. Those are all knowns, but both Oblivion and Fallout are both very UNknown, regardless of the base engine they share. And no way to solve for the knowns, how fun. Sometimes I'd almost wish they'd say nothing about the games until they can show us gameplay movies.

That's kind of unfair, I guess. Just a few nights ago I was looking over the Oblivion previews to see if they talked about Fallout. Huzzah for the initiative of one interviewer!
 
Bet said:
That's kind of unfair, I guess. Just a few nights ago I was looking over the Oblivion previews to see if they talked about Fallout. Huzzah for the initiative of one interviewer!
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Try looking a bit harder into the news archive. The other incidents aren't too hard to notice. Thank you for lurking.
 
"Different" and "good" are two vastly unrelated things. Until some reviewer I trust (all of whom, I'm sad to say, post on this message board) says "Fallout 3 is the best game I've ever played!!!11one" I'm not going to be even optimistic about the game. Still, Bethesda has a reputation for poorly-executed games; not outright crap like the "new" Atari and SquareEnix.
 
Roshambo said:
Bet said:
That's kind of unfair, I guess. Just a few nights ago I was looking over the Oblivion previews to see if they talked about Fallout. Huzzah for the initiative of one interviewer!
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Try looking a bit harder into the news archive. The other incidents aren't too hard to notice. Thank you for lurking.
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Try looking at all, more like it. I seem to have lapsed on keeping track of this site like I have every other element of my life...not good. That bit from mid-September about F3 not having any developers is humbling. I had no idea. I'm going to shut up about new non-fan Fallout until there's some in-game footage or a demo, or the full game, or something. Sorry about my idiocy, everyone...

Roshambo said:
"Fallout fans are the worst fans there are." - Feargus "BioWare's Bitch" Urquhart
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I still regret the strong hate-mail I sent that poor guy when I was pissed off about some of the changes they made to Fallout 2. He even replied, very civilly, which makes the regret worse. 1998 was a bad year for me, but that doesn't excuse it. One of the many reasons that I DO try to lurk... I guess I'll just go back to that.
 
Hm..."different"? That could be very good...however like everything its all a matter of opinion as to what that means.

Has a nice ring to it though doesnt it?

Sincerely,
The Vault Dweller
 
Bet said:
Try looking at all, more like it. I seem to have lapsed on keeping track of this site like I have every other element of my life...not good. That bit from mid-September about F3 not having any developers is humbling. I had no idea. I'm going to shut up about new non-fan Fallout until there's some in-game footage or a demo, or the full game, or something. Sorry about my idiocy, everyone...
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This wouldn't have been the first time we've been told to wait for trailers, demos, etc. ever since FOT. Of course, we could always go by "direct quotes", if you get my drift. Or we could always go by the same marketing approach being used, yet again, in a smoke and mirrors approach and a very unclear and sloppy channel of communication between Bethesda and news sites/publications.

I still regret the strong hate-mail I sent that poor guy when I was pissed off about some of the changes they made to Fallout 2. He even replied, very civilly, which makes the regret worse. 1998 was a bad year for me, but that doesn't excuse it. One of the many reasons that I DO try to lurk... I guess I'll just go back to that.
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Well, if you did bother to lurk, you'd know one of the numerous reasons why Fallout fans don't really care for Feargus and his corporate whore mentality, instead opting for caring about design more than a group of attention whores who are content to shit out Shovelware with a $50 price tag. One of the reasons why Asswind Dale 2 sold so poorly is because the original's expansion was so half-ass, they had to have the "rest" for download.

As ignorance is bliss, maybe you like to get assraped for full price for a crappy game that only belongs in the CRPG genre by name only. Sure, BIS used to add a lot of gameplay to their games, but not for long under Fear-Gut's direction and public asskissing up to Citizen Caen's ideals while at the same time suckling from BioWare's teat, although on an outdated and flawed engine. Which was a point of irritation for the many consumers who bought it and cared about such things. Maybe you could have been one of the few that bought Lionheart, another brain trust of Feargus and Co., at full price. I don't know, but you really seem to suggest that you're the type.

I suppose that should have been obvious from even a little bit of lurking, so I suppose we're the assholes here.
 
Admitidly he got quite a bit wrong, but at least he admited to fucking up. You gotta give a guy credit for admiting his fuckups, rather than claim it'll be cool (Like Herve and FOOL)

Course, it is 3 am and Im rather drnk, so if I missed something feel free to vat this post Rosh.
 
Also, for some time our plan had been to use this technology in other games, and Fallout is a great fit for that.
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Why do they talk about this ''technology'' thing all the time. Do they imply not using the TES engine for F3? Or ''not quite using'' it? Or only utilizing some parts of that engine, but modifying the other.
You can call it nitpicking, but usually when company has intention to make a game on certain engine they just say it - ''we gonna make a game using x engine''. Nothing to take or add.
Maybe I'm exaggerating an importance of Bethesda spokesperson's persistent use of words ''our technology'', but could it be that they will change the whole Oblivion engine so significantly to fit the Fallout needs better which is why they avoid to use the simple word - ''engine''.
And that could be good news.
 
Gnidrologist, it simply means that we plan to re-use Oblivion code in other games. When you start talking about an "engine" it gets tricky, as Oblivion is comprised of a large number of SDK's, API's and game systems, and in some sense you could call some of THOSE "engines". It's a vague word that could describe all the mechanics of a game (such as the Doom 3 engine), graphical rendering only (such as Gamebryo), physics (such as Havok), or game systems such as AI. So Todd's just using the word "technology" to describe the collection of software components that make up Oblivion.

We'll use pieces & parts of this technology in future projects. It won't necessarily all carry over wholesale, and almost certainly not without extensive modifications for each game.
 
Well, the graphics would be the rendering engine, the composition would be the layout engine, the networking would be the networking engine and the collective term would be "game engine" or just "engine". Simple as that. If they don't work with such modules, they just have one big pile they refer to as an engine, but I doubt that.

I would bet that the rendering engine will be the same (or a modified version of it) and so will be the networking. Let's just hope that they'll rewrite the core engine so the game mechanics to support turn-based combat (and thus SPECIAL, which really screws up in real-time combat, see FOT) and such things.
 
MrSmileyFaceDude; Hi Mr. Bethesda Developer Man. :)
Here's one question for you:

Can the different portions of what we could refer to the "Game Engine" handle an Isometric-sortof style?

Since this isn't related to Fallout at all, and just a question that regards the engine itself, perhaps you could share some insight?
 
And to add to that, could whatever part of the game engine be redesigned to support a a ruleset and implement dicerolls for combat and other actions ?
 
Yes, (un)support of TB combat is really the most important aspect of your ''technology''. Frankly, I don't care about camera viewpoint if it's possible to play in a full TB mode. I don't expect a crystal clear answer, but you could give us a hint whether it is possible at all to tweak your engine set to be at least not complete real time.
And wish you happy developing, MrSmileyFaceDude.:)
 
Technical issues like camera viewpoint aren't difficult to implement. It has to be planned early of course -- because art assets, particularly interiors, need to be designed appropriately. But it's not outside the capabilities of ANY 3D graphics engine.

Everything else is primarily an issue of code design, and object-oriented programming techniques make it much easier to swap in things like different rulesets, etc. Basically it wouldn't take a 100% start-from-scratch rewrite to make a very different game.
 
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