The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Website Online

[Tannhauser]

The upcoming Elder Scrolls game, TES IV: Oblivion, has launched it's website. Right now it is rather bare, containing four screenshots, two pieces of concept artwork, a press release, and a FAQ. As for this information's relevance, remember that Oblivion will share the same engine as Bethsoft's Fallout 3.<blockquote>Howard commented, "Our games have always been about great depth and variety in creating any kind of character you want and going out and doing whatever you want." He added, "With Oblivion, we're taking the idea of a virtual fantasy world as far as it will go."

Oblivion features a groundbreaking new AI system, called Radiant AI, which gives non-player characters (NPCs) the ability to make their own choices based on the world around them. They'll decide where to eat or who to talk to and what they'll say. They'll sleep, go to church, and even steal items, all based on their individual characteristics. Full facial animations and lip-synching, combined with full speech for all dialog, allows NPCs to come to life like never before. </blockquote>Link: TES IV: Oblivion Website
Spotted at Blue's News

 

[Bet]

As for this information's relevance, remember that Oblivion will share the same engine as Bethsoft's Fallout 3

Wow. Just...wow. You know, until now I had been imagining Fallout in the Morrowind engine. And now...wow. I feel a lot better after seeing those glam shots. Maybe it's the fact that I'm having computer problems that make everything else in life seem trivial right now, but now first-person Fallout doesn't seem so horrible. Not what I'd choose, of course, but...not so horrible. I've got hope for the first time in a while that Bethsoft might actually pull this off.

Oh, and hello everyone.

 

[Lost Metal]

I don't understand what about that article or the screenshots is giving you "hope" that Bethesda will "pull it off."

I can't imagine a Fallout 3 that looks like those screenshots look. The graphics are much too Half Life 2/Realistic/Modern looking.

Fallout doesn't need to look extremely realistic or modern. It needs to look rugged, beat up, dark, but with style. Its own style.

Not to mention that, with a Fallout game that graphic-intensive and an engine that wiill probably hog up every last resource~
They probably won't have any room for an actual "game" in there. Most likely just boring ass, apathetic NPC's scattered by the dozen across a truly bland and massive landscape.

and what about the system requirements? That engine is gonna require the player to own a system of considerably spendy proportions.

 

[Claw]

I don't understand what about that article or the screenshots is giving you "hope" that Bethesda will "pull it off."

Right on. Those are a "glimmer of hope" at best.

They do however mean that it may be possible to creade a 3D world both large enough for pseudo-isometric perspective and detailed enough to make NPC faces look good enough for dialogues.
That doesn't mean they'll even try, or make Fallout 3 good. So far, we know nothing.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

Fallout 3 is going to look super-cool, I don't think there's anyone that could deny that. The issue is Bethesda's mentally in their computer game design. Take the comment recently about being able to do everything all in one go. Rather than having any re-play value, you just level up and max out every skill at once and then do everything. Things like that might sound good to some but it's "not Fallout".

Fallout is all about playing it again and finding out something you didn't know before. It's all about focussing on a different character type and getting a whole bunch of different quests or some dermal implant armour, or a sixth toe or a completely different ending. That's Fallout.

Then there's dialogue. It's about making choices and having to deal with those consequences, not getting the same damn dialogue options from every NPC in the game with generic responses.

... and so on and so on...

 

[tre]

... now first-person Fallout doesn't seem so horrible.

Doesn't it stop being Fallout if it goes FPS? It totally changes everything we want out of the Fallout universe. An FPS won't even have space for a Real Time With Pause system.
An FPS shooter with "RPG features"? Bullshit. Shoot 'em up and leave 'em bleeding.
The graphics don't mean a fucking thing if the game doesn't deliver what the previous 2 titles did.
Sure, I can forgive Beth if they loose the TB system, because that I can understand. But if they decide to go FPS then I doesn't have a reason to buy the game and then I'd rather wait for Troika to finish their PA RPG.

Let's just hope that Bettys Oblivion-engine is elastic enough to stretch out to bird's eye view.

 

[Per]

Let's just hope that Bettys Oblivion-engine is elastic enough to stretch out to bird's eye view.

... and allow for turn-based tactical combat where accuracy is determined by character shooting skill and not player mouse wrangling skill.

Etc.

 

[Edge386]

I agree that the game perspective should be alotted space to pull out far enough to somewhat simulate the perspective of the previous Fallout titles.

The interface for all the option/equipment/character menus should also have the vault tec battle worn look to them, as well as a pip boy interface. It should be allowed to go online like Van Buren was going to be. Dialogue trees should be enormously plentiful as well. At least 4-5 different core solutions to beating the game, as well as side quests. I don't want to see a single pre scripted solution to beating a quest involving setting off a trigger for a movie sequence and following the bouncing ball, as the only option. I want depth.

EDIT: Good god, I almost forgot the most important part of the recipe. PLOT. If the plot does not fit in the Fallout universe and/or is not credible, then they can eat my sh*t. I feel very strongly about this.

Yes, the graphics look magnificent, and Bethesda has done a great job with Morrowind (I own it for X brick and love it, although the PC version looks better) but Morrowind is NOT the Fallout universe. I just don't think they will deliver the experience I desire for a Fallout sequel. Only time will tell...[/i]

 

[Bet]

All valid concerns. I suppose it's way too early for any kind of optimism, anyway. The PC could still end up with it's own mess like that console version of Fallout. Sorry for getting everyone worked up.

I did forget to mention the main part of my optimism, however, which was a stupid mistake - the engine is going to be form-fitted for modding. To this day the main problem that I have with Morrowind is the sheer amount of third-party stuff. I have over a gig of plugins (when COMPRESSED) sitting on one of my HDs, and that's just the highest-quality stuff that a guy with good taste felt like putting together. There's so much more available on the web than there is in that archive that it's frightening. That's where most of the hope comes from. Even if Bethesda manages to screw up everything but the engine, hopefully they'll provide at least an engine that can run unarguably good, evolving, outstanding third-party stuff.

Then again, this is assuming they pull off the engine. So I'll limit my optimism to the engine and to Bethesda employing some good Fallout-inspired writers.

 

[tre]

One thing that's well, sort of a relief... kind of. Heh. Is that Beth will be working with this engine on one game before going to Fo3.
The graphics guys will be pretty used to the system by then.

Who knows. Maybe they've solved the puzzle and actually got an engine that can do all sorts of perspectives without loosing any of the engines power.
Hard to believe though.

I'm still a bit optimistic.
But am looking forward to Troikas PA more than this, right now. At least they've got something to show and they sound like they're pretty much at the same point of development (Troika and Betty, that is).

Ah well, a year or something off. Plenty of time to speculate.

 

[Lost Metal]

I'm with you there. Until I know whether or not the game is real-time or turn-based. I am looking forward to Troika's PA RPG much more than I am looking forward to Fallout 3.

Shit, I am looking forward to World Series Poker for Xbox Live, more than I am looking forward to Fallout 3.

Sounds weird as hell to say but it's true.

Actually, after renting FOPOS for Xbox, I refuse to ever buy or play a real-time Fallout game.

FOPOS played the same way Feargus Urquhart looks. Shitty.

 

[Paranoid Jack]

Ah well, a year or something off. Plenty of time to speculate.

LOL, now that is optimisctic. I would say three years would be closer to realistic. I can't remember how many years it took them to make Morrowind (I think it was 4 or 5 total) but now that Oblivion is supposed to be a step beyond Morrowind I would bet on two or three other PA PC games hitting the shelves long before F3 even goes beta.

Am I being too negative here?

 

[Macaco]

I'm with you there. Until I know whether or not the game is real-time or turn-based. I am looking forward to Troika's PA RPG much more than I am looking forward to Fallout 3.

Troika's PA rpg wich will probably NOT be turn based....

 

[PsychoSniper]

I still say Fanout is the true succesor to FO, since Beth will proably screw with at least some of the essentles.

 

[Bet]

I still say Fanout is the true succesor to FO, since Beth will proably screw with at least some of the essentles.

This is the first I've heard of Fanout. Who would have thought a whole thread of depressing banter would result in such a good discovery. I'll keep my hope for Bethesda's Fallout close, but hope for this Fanout closer. And hope for the 1.06 patch for Fallout 2 to come out before the desire to play it again peaks. Maybe I'll just dive into Tactics and see if I can maybe finish the third time I tried. Ah...that would be really, really optimistic though.


Edit: Ah, son of a... I never even thought to mouse over that .gif in your signature. I saw that however many times while trying to get my mind off my computer last night, browsing these forums, and never once did I mouse over it. The sweet irony that the discovery would wait until after I had found a solution to the computer trouble, for two bits of good news in quick succession.

 

[brandons1313]

Wow those screens look amazing! I think a 3d, first person, Turn based fallout would be awsome (not fps!). Its all about if they use the right textures with the engine. It has to have that PA fallout feel. Of course SPECIAL and good story are nessesary. I will be happy.

 

[Gonchi]

Ok, that’s it.

I’ve heard people all over the net saying that a first person turn based Fallout wouldn’t be so bad, but I just can’t for the life of me figure out how a turn based first person game would work at all, and still be enjoyable.

Part of the charm of Turn Based combat in Fallout (for me anyway...) came from its isometric perspective that allowed you to see the whole “battlefield” which in turn allowed you to tactically plan your moves. How would that be accomplished in FP? I can imagine a 360 rotation camera, but what about for combat inside buildings, where walls will block your line of sight? I don’t think I’d enjoy Mariposa if I had to do it in FP...

Has it even been done in other games before, and I’m the only schmuck who’s never played them?

Please enlighten me, even if it must be done harshly.

 

[FeelTheRads]

Well... for example the Might & Magic series which are first person have the option to play TB and in my opionion it works pretty good, but I have to admit it's not really enjoyable. Anyway, it's much better than playing it RT.

Of course, Fallout should never be first person.

 

[N]

Performance?

I remember that before Morrowind came out, all sorts of folks on the net were praising screenshots from it, using terms such as "gorgeous", "stunning", "fantastic", etc. And at the time I agreed.

Then, however, I played the actual game and in my opinion discovered the following:

The animations of characters were terrible. The NPCs all walked around with this silly, wooden puppet sort of choppy gait that really looked ridiculous.

The world felt 'floaty' -- like there was a wrong sort of weight for your own character, as if you were running around on the moon.

Performance outside in open areas was absolutely terrible. Performance inside buildings was fantastic. Performance almost seemed to not matter between resolutions -- 800x600 ran nearly the same as 1152x864, etc.

When not inside a loaded area, you could perform the following: walk your player directly up to a stone wall, turn on wireframe mode, and see absolutely every polygon for every object beyond it, in full detail, to the extent of the horizon/viewable area. Inside closed areas, there was an obvious 'end of horizon' beyond the walls of the interior area, which obviously attributed to framerates in the 60-80+ inside, and down as low as 10-12 outside.

I found the performance of the engine thusly to be terrible annoying and 'slow' when trying to do anything outside. While I realize you don't need what one could consider "high framerates" for an RPG, on the other hand, in an RPG where enemies all just run at you and hack away (as well as you boringly just click-releasing repeatedly for combat) -- it starts to become a nuisance to have framerates below 20.

 

[Roshambo]

Re: Performance?

The world felt 'floaty' -- like there was a wrong sort of weight for your own character, as if you were running around on the moon.

I'm a little unclear on the above. I, as one of many, found the movement rates in Morrowind to be absolute shit unless you go into a private building, push the autorun button, and wait overnight. Forget about running from anything if you're not ready for it or you're slightly outmatched. The only way I think it passed through playtesting is that the testers already knew the level design, tested by Quest-By-Number, and otherwise didn't really bother to playtest the game. Then comes the important point of "Did the developers even bother to play the game before it was released?" It's the reason why I would prefer to play Daggerfall over Morrowind, another reason as I am also fairly disinterested in some of the moronic Indy James-esque mods out there with 0% creativity and setting relevance behind them.

Of course, you could probably just use an editor and save yourself a lot of time to make the game otherwise playable. That violates numerous design principles that I cringe at seeing it.

I would like to believe that they actually do "progress" in design, but Daggerfall and Arena weren't anywhere as flawed in that aspect. If you saw a very nasty enemy, you did have some chance of fleeing before they cheap-shot you to death because some designer thought that player awareness in the game didn't have much importance. MMORPGs are excused by having higher-level enemies be able to chew you apart easily, but at least most of them also had a way to evaluate or otherwise know what the monster was before it popped out from nowhere and is now running at you with speeds you won't see until later in the game. Although this is purely "speculation", I believe that the slow movement was little more than something to remove attention from the fact that the framerates were often dragging ass when nothing was really going on. Could this also explain the removal of Climbing and fond aspects of Daggerfall, where being a Catburglar meant something other than a Khajiit that waves to the shopkeeper and then goes over just out of sight to rifle through everything placed "safely"?

I will agree that Morrowind looks better than the previous games, but that's about all I can really say that the series has going for it at times other than the editor. I would like to believe that it should be common sense, but these are flaws and annoyances that could have been avoided by common sense, and were actually put into the sequel rather than being an old flaw that was fixed. In other words, they went into the wrong direction there, and I hope TES IV isn't more of the same.