IGN interviews Emil Pagliarulo

[Oblique Strategy]

The invisible one make nooo sense. Maybe they could just have a fatal amount of radiation on the borders?

If they did that you would have fans screaming "Why would there be fatal bands of radiation on the borders when you can walk right through the center of the capitol - ostensibly the biggest target during the attack - without dying of radiation sickness? Fuck Bethesda!"

Either way sucks, but in my opinion it's better to just admit there is an invisible barrier, rather than work in a series of obstacles that your super-powerful character is somehow unable to circumvent.

 

[Brother None]

Either way sucks, but in my opinion it's better to just admit there is an invisible barrier, rather than work in a series of obstacles that your super-powerful character is somehow unable to circumvent.

You mean like Gothic's solution somehow didn't work?

Why not just infinitely generate desert beyond a border?

The fact is, limited maps and the whole "immersive first-person" thing don't match up. Todd's insistence to have both means one looks stupid. You can argue about how he's somehow forced into that all you want, but it's his choice, and it looks stupid.

 

[Oblique Strategy]

You mean like Gothic's solution somehow didn't work?

Why not just infinitely generate desert beyond a border?

Infinitely-generated terrain works when an endless, uniform landscape makes sense. D.C. is part of a super-city stretching all the way north to Boston - an area of extremely high population density and urbanization that makes such a solution totally unbelievable and unworkable.

I haven't played Gothic, so I cannot comment about its approach to the problem.

 

[Sander]

Infinitely-generated terrain works when an endless, uniform landscape makes sense. D.C. is part of a super-city stretching all the way north to Boston - an area of extremely high population density and urbanization that makes such a solution totally unbelievable and unworkable.

Ehm, remember that apocalypse thingie that happened and pretty much destroyed much of the world, leaving only rubble?
Yeah.

 

[Vault 69er]

You mean like Gothic's solution somehow didn't work?

Why not just infinitely generate desert beyond a border?

Infinitely-generated terrain works when an endless, uniform landscape makes sense. D.C. is part of a super-city stretching all the way north to Boston - an area of extremely high population density and urbanization that makes such a solution totally unbelievable and unworkable.

I haven't played Gothic, so I cannot comment about its approach to the problem.

So at worst they have to add some randomly generated rubble to the randomly generated desert and leave players to wander around forever if they're so inclined.

 

[Oblique Strategy]

Ehm, remember that apocalypse thingie that happened and pretty much destroyed much of the world, leaving only rubble?
Yeah.

If you leave a destroyed central city and move out into the surrounding landscape you are not likely to find an endless pile of powdered rubble, but similarly ravaged towns and cities.

 

[Sander]

If you leave a destroyed central city and move out into the surrounding landscape you are not likely to find an endless pile of powdered rubble, but similarly ravaged towns and cities.

Which can be procedurally generated a la the desert. There doesn't need to be any life there, and there likely is no life there considering the natural gravitation of people towards a center of 'civilisation'.

 

[Oblique Strategy]

Which can be procedurally generated a la the desert. There doesn't need to be any life there, and there likely is no life there considering the natural gravitation of people towards a center of 'civilisation'.

Which would then almost undoubtedly lead to claims that Bethesda had created an "empty, boring world outside of the central areas"

Nothing is going to be perfect here. You don't have to like the concept of the invisible barrier, but to me it's just more honest and less contrived.

 

[Vault 69er]

Which can be procedurally generated a la the desert. There doesn't need to be any life there, and there likely is no life there considering the natural gravitation of people towards a center of 'civilisation'.

Which would then almost undoubtedly lead to claims that Bethesda had created an "empty, boring world outside of the central areas"

Nothing is going to be perfect here. You don't have to like the concept of the invisible barrier, but to me it's just more honest and less contrived.

Well damn, if you can predict all possible outcomes so readily, get me some of next week's lottery numbers for the UK, will ya?

You don't know what the reaction would be. And no, it is not "more honest and less contrived". Todd and Emil want to make immersion a priority. Invisible magic walls kill immersion. It's very simple. The two aren't compatible.
Which just highlights that Bethesda are being dishonest. They don't care about immersion at all; they're just sticking to their own safe tried and tested territory.

 

[Oblique Strategy]

You don't know what the reaction would be...

Which just highlights that Bethesda are being dishonest. They don't care about immersion at all; they're just sticking to their own safe tried and tested territory.

I think you just confirmed my point.

 

[Sander]

Which would then almost undoubtedly lead to claims that Bethesda had created an "empty, boring world outside of the central areas"

Do you have an actually valid argument, or are you just going to whine some more?

Nothing is going to be perfect here. You don't have to like the concept of the invisible barrier, but to me it's just more honest and less contrived.

Fine, if you like it better then that's your right. Just don't try to make up some bullshit reason as to why they have to do it.

 

[Vault 69er]

You don't know what the reaction would be...

Which just highlights that Bethesda are being dishonest. They don't care about immersion at all; they're just sticking to their own safe tried and tested territory.

I think you just confirmed my point.

No it doesn't. And you're just evading my point.
You're arguing from the tired old "Nothing Bethesda will do will ever be good enough!" fallacy. I'm simply pointing out that invisible walls ruin immersion, therefore if Bethesda are willing to put them in they do not care about immersion as much as they say they do.
I have *never* seen anyone who played Oblivion accept it's invisible walls from an immersion standpoint. Plenty of people however accepted Daggerfall's random terrain, or Morrowind's infinite sea.

 

[Oblique Strategy]

Do you have an actually valid argument, or are you just going to whine some more?

I already made a valid argument. You don't have to like it, or simply dismiss it as "invalid" because your opinion differs.

Fine, if you like it better then that's your right. Just don't try to make up some bullshit reason as to why they have to do it.

I think I argued my position quite well, as I laid out the options and showed why they all suck.

I have *never* seen anyone who played Oblivion accept it's invisible walls from an immersion standpoint. Plenty of people however accepted Daggerfall's random terrain, or Morrowind's infinite sea.

I've never played Daggerfall, but Morrowind's infinite sea worked because Morrowind was an island. You can't pull that off believably with the D.C. area, nor can you just toss up random buildings that go on and on and on if you want to maintain complete immersion.

 

[Brother None]

I already made a valid argument.

Unless you have a magic sphere and can tell what'll happen if Bethesda does something, your argument is invalid. And a straw man. You're saying "you're going to have this opinion!" How about you let us form our own opinions, next time?

 

[Vault 69er]

I think I argued my position quite well, as I laid out the options and showed why they all suck.

No you haven't, you simply assumed any alternatives are impossible or the fans would immediately hate them.

I've never played Daggerfall, but Morrowind's infinite sea worked because Morrowind was an island. You can't pull that off believably with the D.C. area, nor can you just toss up random buildings that go on and on and on if you want to maintain complete immersion.

Why the hell not? Are you telling me it's impossible to randomly generate land with generic ruined buildings, streets, etc. everywhere?
Eventually the player gets bored and turns back, but that's the point.

 

[Nim82]

Gah, hate defending Beth but.. Oblivon did have a massive amount of landmass outside of the invisible border, you can walk for literally hours in any given direction before the worldspace runs out and you meet water or fall off the mesh. Nearly all of Cyrodil (the main TES continent) is height mapped in there. But the ingame map only depicts the province they have fleshed out. Going out beyond the border means going off the map, hence them putting invisible walls there - to stop people getting lost. One console command and they are off.

For reference, pretty much the entire continent here is in Oblivion, the game is set in Cyrodil - turn off the barrier and you can walk to the edge of the continent if you wish, where the continent ends there is infinite water. Hardly immersion breaking imo. If the world suddenly vanished at the invisible border, that would be different - but that isn't the case, it's a very soft barrier compared to many games and imo far better than an artificial moat.

It's also (as I said earlier) great for modders. Theres an Obliv mod that is attempting to populate Skyrim and is plonking down towns and roads there. If F3 has a toolset, no doubt those who buy it will be wanting to improve it - the additional landmass (if it's like Obliv) will be a godsend to them.

Basically there's far better things to whinge about than this

 

[Señor DeLuxe]

Seriously, what are you arguing about?!
What the game world border looks like is just a minor issue, at least I thought so. Having an invisible border is somehow dumb, but having an insurmountable wall of cars piled up in the wasteland is even dumber. An endless, randomly generated wasteland void of interesting structures is (at least in this area of the US) just slightly more believable than everything else. And not that much more fun than an invisible barrier. If that justifies the additional effort I don´t know...

Doesn´t bother me that much however, there´s no way I´m gonna buy this game anyway.

Just thought Oblique Strategy was not being treated fair, although he actually pointed out HIS preference (with some valid points indeed) in a quite reasonable manner.

 

[Stag]

Because he was arguing and putting words into our mouths.

DC wouldn't be terribly hard to do. You've got the Potomac (river...) surrounding part, and a lot of highways and such to block off parts (i.e., freeways fall and you can't cross all the rubble.) The trouble comes when you leave DC, which Beth has said you will.

The infinite desert works well, but for complete immersion, as Brother None and Sander have described it, you'd essentially need to map all of the Americas, non?

 

[DirtyDreamDesigner]

There will be an invisible wall at the end of the world.

But, then how did the BoS and the Super Mutants and the Enclave get there?

 

[Starwars]

But, then how did the BoS and the Super Mutants and the Enclave get there?

They just haven't announced the nuclear powered teleporters yet.