Elder Scrolls V

I can't say that I'm too excited about this, though I'd really like to like the game.

Oblivion didn't impress me at all and I quit by the time I was level 7. It only has a handful of dungeon areas that are all very samey. Fort, ruins, cave, sewer. Over and over again. I don't care that there are different enemies in the various ruins or forts or that small little aesthetic changes are made for each one, I want a different look and for the dungeon to not feel like every other ruin/fort/etc I've been in before.

In fact, once I mentioned this to a friend of mine that had started playing Oblivion, he quit after another hour or two of playing, realizing the same the I just told him.

Fallout 3 had the same problem. Boring, bland post-apocalyptic overworld with the same handful of areas - sewer, enclave camp, raider camp, cave, misc building.

At least Oblivion had a lush overworld that was pretty to walk through.

I really hope they fixed all of this in Skyrim, I really do.

I do find it funny that in Fallout even the settled areas look like no one has tried to pick up any trash.

I want to find this mythical game everyone always compares the current game to. You know the one I mean, where there are 100s of different dungeons and every last one of them has completely different polygons and textures from all the others. The enormousness of such a task would make it nearly impossible to store all that information much less hire the underpaid populace of a small Asian country to enter the data into digital form. As stated, Oblivion had a varied and beautiful above ground, and I think they made good use of the underground areas as well.

Morrowind?

Morrowind stinks of the copy-paste dungeon just as much as Oblivion. Frankly, it never bothered me that much, but I guess that's just me...

JohnnyGottaKeyboard said:

I want to find this mythical game everyone always compares the current game to. You know the one I mean, where there are 100s of different dungeons and every last one of them has completely different polygons and textures from all the others. The enormousness of such a task would make it nearly impossible to store all that information much less hire the underpaid populace of a small Asian country to enter the data into digital form. As stated, Oblivion had a varied and beautiful above ground, and I think they made good use of the underground areas as well.

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You make a decent point, but I would argue that it's entirely possible to create a game with varied dungeons without the need for the hoard of underpaid Asian peoples to enter data and without making the game overly huge - create fewer of the copy/paste dungeons and program in unique ones, instead.

Is there any distinct number for how many of the copypasta dungeons there are in Oblivion or Fallout 3? I felt like every time I turned around there was another underground area that was the same as everything else.

The way I figure, the game devs promise a huge open world in the game with tons of things to explore and do, so what happens? They jam the world full of these crappy little holes in the ground that all feel alike in order to fulfill this promise of 'so much to do'. If they focused on building unique dungeons instead of rehashing them again and again just to have higher numbers of dungeons, the higher quality would shut people like me up.

So, say Oblivion has 50 of these copypasta dungeons. If they reduced that to 25 or 30, but made sure each dungeon was unique (say, not everything was below ground so they can justify randomly generating it or making it the same as all the rest) I feel like the quality of them would make up for lack of huge numbers of them.

You bring up Oblivion's wonderfully varied overworld - and I agree with that - but how much more awesome would it be to stumble across above ground places? The game's world history is rich enough that there could be abandoned palaces rotting in the forest, crumbling towers, bone graveyards(where large animals go to die), villages lost in a swamp or in the mountains, and they could all serve as dungeons.

I would also ask for better quests that integrate these places in the game better. Sure it may not be relevant to the main quest, but make the sides quests incorporate the new, varied dungeons, and make the side quests longer and more involved, sometimes. I get tired of "go here, kill that, collect thing" or "go here, talk to X, return".

Of course, I understand that all of the new programming will lengthen the game's development time, but I feel like the end game would greatly benefit.

I never had a problem with Oblivion's many similar dungeons.
Caves are caves. And the ruins are meant to share their structural similarities. I can forgive a lot in the name of lore.

I loved that Game!

tarcanus said:

You bring up Oblivion's wonderfully varied overworld - and I agree with that - but how much more awesome would it be to stumble across above ground places? The game's world history is rich enough that there could be abandoned palaces rotting in the forest, crumbling towers, bone graveyards(where large animals go to die), villages lost in a swamp or in the mountains, and they could all serve as dungeons.

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I would say that Oblivion had all those.

But first, let me agree, there are a lot (A LOT!) of the sort of cast-off cut and paste caves you describe. (I'm less apt to stipulate the Ayleid Ruins are too similar. As another poster said, they are supposed to be similar and I personally found some of them beautiful and many quite varied.)

But as to a village lost in the mountains--The Ancestor Moths. (Border Watch was sort of misty mountains and swamp.) Hackdirt is not so much structurally unique, but the Dunwich Horror storyline there is great.

Ruins rotting/crumbling in the wilderness: Sancre Tor and Silhorn spring to mind.

As to great and unique caves (they exist!): Sideways Cave is fantasic IMO (especially the sunken lake area with the waterfall). And of course there is the ever popular Rockmilk cave.

All of these things are just off the top of my head. Factoring in The Shivering Isles and the time I could take actually looking over the game map, I still have to insist that Oblivion provided a plethora of visual delights--even underground.

(After heaping all this praise, I feel compelled by the curmudgeon in me to reiterate I think Oblivion is still the buggiest game I ever played on a platform [PS3]. The number of times it crashed or froze [or just forgot to run script until after a reload]...! Sony should have sued them for releasing such a piece of programming crap on their new platform. Whew, I feel better.)

Oblivion had a varied overworld? I'm afraid I couldn't see it through all the near-identical woodlands that had been copy-pasted to infinity.

Ludicrum said:

Oblivion had a varied overworld? I'm afraid I couldn't see it through all the near-identical woodlands that had been copy-pasted to infinity.

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Yes because the snowy mountains around Bruma look exactly like the swamps between Bravil and Leyawiin. And of course the golden wheat hills east of Anvil are completely interchangeable with the lush woodlands around Chorral.

Really people, these blanket swipes at this game (usually without any sort of reference to a game of similar scope that managed to do it better) keep forcing me to defend it. I wish I was half as passionate about it as I sound because hawking it is starting to cause me physical pain.

JohnnyGottaKeyboard said:

I wish I was half as passionate about it as I sound because hawking it is starting to cause me physical pain.

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But it is so much fun to watch.

JohnnyGottaKeyboard said:

Yes because the snowy mountains around Bruma look exactly like the swamps between Bravil and Leyawiin. And of course the golden wheat hills east of Anvil are completely interchangeable with the lush woodlands around Chorral.

Really people, these blanket swipes at this game (usually without any sort of reference to a game of similar scope that managed to do it better) keep forcing me to defend it. I wish I was half as passionate about it as I sound because hawking it is starting to cause me physical pain.

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Haha, hey, I admitted that I only managed to get to level 7 before I gave up trying to enjoy all of the copypasta areas. I'm glad that there are some varied cave environments and whatnot, and am sad that I missed them. Perhaps more of these unique things in the beginning of the game would be a breath of fresh air.

And when it comes to the blanket swipes, without references to other games that have done it better is because, to the best of my recollection, I haven't found a game that does it better. This leaves Oblivion as the 'best' and I laugh at that notion when there are so many obvious things that could have had a bit more time spent on them to raise the quality of the game overall.

Of course, you didn't even mention the actual Oblivion realm/plane.



eta: i'll wait till i hear reviews of ESV to purchase and even then, i'd just as soon wait for the obligatory game of the year edition

E3 Gameplay Demo

-We get to see some dragon action, I like how they're given free rein to roam as they wish. Despite their strength the dragons don't seem too rare, which I like. Not sure how many of them there are, set number or limitless.
-Combat looks pretty visceral and fun, although I feel the animations need help.
-Inventory and dialog system look okay at this point but I'm not really jumping for joy at them.
-He says there are ~150 dungeons. He didn't specify if they're 150 different dungeons, or any real details beyond them being hand-drawn.
-Saw some shouts, and nicely enough, not all shouts are literal shouts, i.e. Whirlwind Sprint, Slow Time.
-Graphics and overall design appearance look very nice. I especially like the Dragon Priest and his Ice Antronach (or is that an Ice Golem? I think Antronach, it'd fit the whole powerful natural force theme better).
-Clairvoyance seems a nice mechanic. Like a golden trail of breadcrumbs, but at will.

Release date is still at 11/11/11

If you didn't care to mod your Oblivion, well...you can't really complain about the vanilla experience. Games like this are meant to be modded. I've had Oblivion since it came out. NEVER finished it. Played 400 hours. Have a blast every time. One day I will beat it, but the open endedness + mods = fun fun fun!

I wish I could get into Morrowind but I'm a FPS gamer (PC, not Xbox thank you) and I like to be in control of what I hit. The combat system irked my half-geek something awful.

As for 5...looks pretty. My wonder laptop probably won't run it. Going to love being a dirty thief in it when I can play it however.

When it comes to Oblivion, I always spend so much time modding it that I never actually get around to playing it :S
One of these days I'll force myself to just install FCOM and play with that. Probably around 11/11/11 if I don't have enough money at the time, I usually prefer to wait for deals, but if it's a game I've been wanting and it's getting good all-around reviews then I make an exception.

Watched the E3 demo. Interface is WAY too modern looking and would better suit a shooter. Really, the simple inventory menu was enough. Guess I'll have to wait until that sucker is Darn-ified

Do not worry, dragons will not show up right off the bat. And it seem they are totally unlimited in number, apparently you can end up being chased by at least 3 at once, if not more. And they are not pushovers (or so Bethesda says).

Let those dragons try to find my sneak-level-100 ass. I'll let em get one good chomp of it if they do, too.

You're going to sneak the entire time you're traveling through the open world?

Which reminds me, I hope the cities in this game are part of the world, instead of segmented like in IV.
It would be so awesome, if you were just wandering down the street in a city...

Hero: "La-de-dah-de-dah-de-dah."
Guard: "Oh noez! Giants are smashing through the western walls!"
Hero: "I'll be right there!"
Guard: "There's an army of undead crawling up from the sewers!"
Hero: "$#!% Uh...Hold on!"
*Dragon lands on a nearby roof*
Hero: "AAAAAAAAAAAAH!"
*Dragon breathes fire down the street.*

THE END

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That would be so #&%*(*#$ epic!

A true Tamrielic ninja is never seen

Little info from Gamescom.
Probably the best piece of news for some is that the world will be roughly the same size as Oblivion, but they're putting forth the effort to make each dungeon interesting and worth exploring (or so they say).

Skyrim is goingto be great, and Oblivion is awesome. I wish I could have appreciated it more when I first got it. But I am totally into it now. Too bad friggin TV decided to take a spill, not sure when I will be getting another one, buts alright either way.

I don't see the land scape looks all the same. I mean if you walked miles and miles in wilderness you would start to think that everything looked the same. I think they did a great job with it. There are subtle differences, especially if you payy attention to the alchemy.