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SecretMaster
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ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 8:58 pm

Yeeeeessssssssssss! It's official!

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/vga-1 ... 9?type=flv

Here is to hoping it doesn't suck as bad as Oblivion!
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:04 pm

I'm looking forward to it.

But Oblivion didn't really suck.... just a bit.... repetitive.
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JustAnEngineer
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:06 pm

TheEmrys wrote:
Oblivion didn't really suck.... just a bit.... repetitive.
And the people were ugly. And the interface was designed for some lame console. And it took forever to walk everywhere.
 
SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:09 pm

Did I put this in the wrong forum?

D'oh!

Please move to gaming
 
SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:12 pm

TheEmrys wrote:
I'm looking forward to it.

But Oblivion didn't really suck.... just a bit.... repetitive.


I always get on a high horse with this but...

Coming from Morrowind, Oblivion was the biggest let-down ever. They made some great technical enhancements; combat was awesome, magic got some much needed fixes, and thief skills were much better done. The skill perk system was okay.

What I found bad was:
The removal and merging of a bunch of skills
The terrible auto-scaling feature
The very bland world (it was pretty but that was it)
The main plot (had huge potential but I was really let down)
Reduction of factions
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 10:09 pm

JustAnEngineer wrote:
And the people were ugly. And the interface was designed for some lame console. And it took forever to walk everywhere.


And the interface was modded almost immediately after release. And hey, never heard of Fast Travel? And... well yes, the people were kinda ugly. But it didn't really take away from my enjoyment of the game.
 
SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 10:25 pm

Grape Flavor wrote:
JustAnEngineer wrote:
And the people were ugly. And the interface was designed for some lame console. And it took forever to walk everywhere.


And the interface was modded almost immediately after release. And hey, never heard of Fast Travel? And... well yes, the people were kinda ugly. But it didn't really take away from my enjoyment of the game.


Regardless of mods or not, it was really poor thinking of Bethesda with regards to the interface. Within minutes of playing the game for the first time I was immediately frustrated with how bad the UI was. I really never understood that. I'm sure it was easily rectifiable too.
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sat Dec 11, 2010 11:01 pm

I love me some Elder Scrollz.

Haters.
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sun Dec 12, 2010 7:04 am

I'll confess something: I've never played through the main storyline of any of Bethesda's games. Sure, I've watched other buddies or siblings through the various endings of everything but Arena and Daggerfall, and I totally get a whole bunch of the complaints (bugs, repetition, awkward this-or-that interface, etc.) and sure, there are disappointments in droves, oftentimes.

But every time I think about it, I my conclusion always boils down to this: I've always sunk many dozens or even hundreds of hours into each of the games and loved every moment. For whatever my opinion is worth, I always felt like I get a good deal for my money and time spent. And if I don't finish it, who cares? I didn't finish much shorter games.
 
EsotericLord
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:27 am

First off, stop blaming consoles for Oblivions dumbing down. Morrowind was on the Xbox 1, and aside from really long loading times, and a cumbersome journal, it worked great. I played the crap out of that game.

Oblivion was dumbed down because Bethesda was trying to appeal to a broader market. As fun as Morrowind was, it really just tossed you out in the wild with no guidance. Some people (me) loved it, and some hated it. Oblivion was a lot more structured. Armor tiers, weapon tiers, scaled enemies, unkillable main npcs, these were all things to make it less of a hardcore game and more causal.

I do hope TES V is more Morrowind and less Oblivion though.

Also, HELL YES SKYRIM. I always play a Nord in ES games.
 
JustAnEngineer
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sun Dec 12, 2010 11:42 am

The biggest problem with the UI was that it was huge (for someone playing on a low-resolution television screen from the other side of the room) and it required menu navigation (for someone playing with a crappy console controller instead of a mouse). The user-added modifications were a near necessity to make the game usable on the PC with a high resolution screen. If it was easy enough for a user to create the modification, then shame on Bethesda for putting out the awful UI that shipped with the PC version of the game.
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sun Dec 12, 2010 12:24 pm

The first thing i noticed within the first hr or so of my 200 hrs in oblivion that pissed me off was the quest marker. Worst game compass ever. The second thing was the levelled scaled enemies. The third was the loot scaling and pointless exploration and non-importance of levelling. The fourth was the pointless storyline. The game was only worth playing beyond 10 hrs due to the enormous amount of modding that the community did. Vanilla oblivion = crap. Modded oblivion = amazing.
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sun Dec 12, 2010 3:52 pm

good find. oblivion was the RPG ive played so far and i was looking forward for another chapter
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Sun Dec 12, 2010 5:47 pm

Those open kinda games require a new mindset. I got bored in Oblivion after some time, and also Fallout series a bit. You are sort of free, you can explore everything, but if you're not on the main quest line you can get bored quite fast, and the traveling really asks for some flying saucer sometimes. I know fast travel is nice help, but it also breaks the whole feel of the genre.

On a side note, those long sequel games are also a bit tough to get into, I played a little of ES3 and a little of Oblivion, so the whole back story is kinda missing, and therefore I don't quite feel why people are so eager for the next chapter. Then again, I've played through Baldurs Gate/ID/NWN series, and since I've played through them all, I understand why some people might appreciate every next sequel.

Maybe the the thing that's stops me from enjoying those games is that I can't crawl through all the places and loot everything. So there is no accomplishment of doing 100% of the game. At the same time you always feel like you're missing something, but if you do explore, most hidden places are quite static.

I liked how Baldurs Gate:TOSC handled those things, every area had a quest or something as far as I remember. Nowadays, I can't get used to gray quest-less space fillers of Oblivion/Fallout games, yet crawling the whole map to find if there is something cool is simply infeasible and will take months, which is unreal.
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SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Mon Dec 13, 2010 5:22 pm

Just FYI, IDtech5 will not be the game engine used for Skyrim. Bethesda developed their own engine for the game it seems. Looks like their love affair with Gamebryo is finally over.

http://twitter.com/Bethblog/status/14010984884604929
 
derFunkenstein
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Mon Dec 13, 2010 8:28 pm

I think you're reading an awful lot into that single message. All it says is that it's "brand new". I think since Rage has not yet shipped it would qualify as "brand new" if they DID use iD Tech 5. Gonna take more than that to completely close the door on the iD engine. I'm not saying it absolutely is, but Zenimax bought iD in part for their engine - saying it'd be used in-house.

It's supposed to be in Game Informer that ships out next month (according to the same Twitter feed) so we'll probably get the final answer there.
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SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Mon Dec 13, 2010 11:00 pm

derFunkenstein wrote:
I think you're reading an awful lot into that single message. All it says is that it's "brand new". I think since Rage has not yet shipped it would qualify as "brand new" if they DID use iD Tech 5. Gonna take more than that to completely close the door on the iD engine. I'm not saying it absolutely is, but Zenimax bought iD in part for their engine - saying it'd be used in-house.

It's supposed to be in Game Informer that ships out next month (according to the same Twitter feed) so we'll probably get the final answer there.


I should have clarified. Todd Howard stated way before the official announcement that they wouldn't be using IdTech5

Bethesda Game Director Todd Howard explained in a separate interview with IGN that his game would not use id Tech 5. The studio's new engine built for its upcoming title is more beneficial to creating huge, open-world games, such as Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, while id Tech 5 is better for more contained environments.


http://pc.ign.com/articles/111/1112464p1.html

Additionally, ES: V has presumably been in the making long before Zenimax acquired id Software. They started development right after the completion of Oblivion.
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Mon Dec 13, 2010 11:02 pm

That's not clarification; that's a whole different source. If the Twitter account you linked had linked to that, I'd have agreed. So it's definitely not iD Tech 5.
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SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Mon Jan 03, 2011 5:47 pm

Semi related.

Despite countless replays of Morrowind, I will be at it again soon enough. I saw this latest mod compilation and it blew my mind.

http://morrowind2011.wordpress.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs

If Skyrim manages to capture the feeling of a really unique, otherworldly place, I will fall in love with it. This mod compilation for Morrowind is just incredible, and they are only showing a redo of one of many distinct regions.
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Thu Jan 13, 2011 2:23 pm

SecretMaster wrote:
Semi related.

Despite countless replays of Morrowind, I will be at it again soon enough. I saw this latest mod compilation and it blew my mind.

http://morrowind2011.wordpress.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs

If Skyrim manages to capture the feeling of a really unique, otherworldly place, I will fall in love with it. This mod compilation for Morrowind is just incredible, and they are only showing a redo of one of many distinct regions.


We'll see. Morrowind is Morrowind, and the other provinces are not. When people complain that Oblivion feels "generic", it's because it's set in Cyrodiil, which is pretty much your "standard" fantasy environment. It's unavoidable without changing the setting. Now Skyrim should be more "unique" environment-wise, but I bet some people are still going to be unhappy because it's not Morrowind.

Oh and hey, that guy's site has changed: http://morrowind2011.ultimaaiera.com/ And he's had to take the original version down due to copyright issues (although it's still possible to find a copy, I have one).
 
SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Thu Jan 13, 2011 4:58 pm

Grape Flavor wrote:
SecretMaster wrote:
Semi related.

Despite countless replays of Morrowind, I will be at it again soon enough. I saw this latest mod compilation and it blew my mind.

http://morrowind2011.wordpress.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9NX-MvnYUEs

If Skyrim manages to capture the feeling of a really unique, otherworldly place, I will fall in love with it. This mod compilation for Morrowind is just incredible, and they are only showing a redo of one of many distinct regions.


We'll see. Morrowind is Morrowind, and the other provinces are not. When people complain that Oblivion feels "generic", it's because it's set in Cyrodiil, which is pretty much your "standard" fantasy environment. It's unavoidable without changing the setting. Now Skyrim should be more "unique" environment-wise, but I bet some people are still going to be unhappy because it's not Morrowind.

Oh and hey, that guy's site has changed: http://morrowind2011.ultimaaiera.com/ And he's had to take the original version down due to copyright issues (although it's still possible to find a copy, I have one).


You realize that prior to Oblivion, Cyrodil was described as a jungle and everyone assumed it would have been so. The devs changed it to "generic fantasy land", which was an original annoyance by some (including me)

On the other hand, some trickles of Skyrim have been released via the Game Informer magazine. A good summation is found here:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/t ... mpilation/

I'm on the fence about Skryim so far with the (limited) information revealed. It isn't quite Oblivion, nor Morrowind, nor Daggerfall. It is a quasi-blend of the three with some new directions. I don't like the further reduction of skills (Morrowind had 27, Oblivion 21, Skyrim 18) nor their new way of tackling leveling. The game engine sounds pretty awesome, and if the "accumulating snow" is exactly how it sounds... awesome!
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Thu Jan 13, 2011 5:31 pm

I played Morrowind after Oblivion and found it almost impossible to go from the streamlined UI of Oblivion to the the clunky menus of Morrowind. Making the Speechcraft and Security skills into minigames blows Morrowind's guess-work risk taking out of the water (if I wanted to roll dice, I'd play pen and paper RPGs). Also, horses, if you don't like walking, and FREE fast travel. The people were hideous, which is inexplicable given that I could make decently attractive avatars, but by virtue of advanced technology, they looked better than Morrowind's. The merging of skills streamlined the game. Morrowind's extra blade and axe/blunt skills along with the medium and unarmored skills provided an illusion of options. If you use heavy armor, that's what you use. Light armor is then little more than pricey clutter/vendor fodder, and medium armor doubled the amount of that. Spears would've been cool in oblivion, but throwing knives etc.? Useless. Morrowind seemed to have more to do, but the landscape was hideous where Oblivion is beautiful. All this being said, I can expect that Skyrim will incorporate some of the additional breadth that Morrowind had while improving on the things Oblivion did right.
 
SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 2:39 am

babs wrote:
I played Morrowind after Oblivion and found it almost impossible to go from the streamlined UI of Oblivion to the the clunky menus of Morrowind. Making the Speechcraft and Security skills into minigames blows Morrowind's guess-work risk taking out of the water (if I wanted to roll dice, I'd play pen and paper RPGs). Also, horses, if you don't like walking, and FREE fast travel. The people were hideous, which is inexplicable given that I could make decently attractive avatars, but by virtue of advanced technology, they looked better than Morrowind's. The merging of skills streamlined the game. Morrowind's extra blade and axe/blunt skills along with the medium and unarmored skills provided an illusion of options. If you use heavy armor, that's what you use. Light armor is then little more than pricey clutter/vendor fodder, and medium armor doubled the amount of that. Spears would've been cool in oblivion, but throwing knives etc.? Useless. Morrowind seemed to have more to do, but the landscape was hideous where Oblivion is beautiful. All this being said, I can expect that Skyrim will incorporate some of the additional breadth that Morrowind had while improving on the things Oblivion did right.


Its a role-playing game for pete's sake. I liked having the option of light, medium, and heavy armors. I liked all my weapon choices, regardless of how "useless" some of them were. It's the damn Elder Scrolls series, which was known for its breadth of choice. Daggerfall had tantos, daikatanas, katanas, flails, etc. Oblivion also lost levitate, which was arguably the keystone spell of the entire ES series. I truly hope it is brought back in Skyrim.
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:50 am

Losing levitate was not a "meh, let's get rid of it choice," but a necessary one. The way the engine was designed with having to load the cities, levitating into or out of them wasn't possible.
 
bored_and_agitated
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 7:30 am

You guys think there's any chance of Bethesta pushing the graphics bar as hard as they did with Oblivion?

i.e. should the hardware imma buy in a month be scared?
 
BlackStar
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 8:55 am

Console port, so no.
 
Obsidian
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 9:12 am

BlackStar wrote:
Console port, so no.

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SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 1:41 pm

bored_and_agitated wrote:
You guys think there's any chance of Bethesta pushing the graphics bar as hard as they did with Oblivion?

i.e. should the hardware imma buy in a month be scared?


I don't know to be honest. I'm sure that it will look better than Oblivion, but in regards as to how much better I am dubious. I personally don't think the leap in graphics from Oblivion to Skyrim will be anything like the leap from Morrowind to Oblivion. The game informer screenshots make it hard to tell, we'll have to wait to real screenshots are posted online. I'm thinking that with the in-house engine Bethesda built, the game might be more efficient in terms of programming, although its pure speculation and I know nothing about Gamebryo (other than it made Oblivion and Morrowind crash a lot). There are significant AI improvements as well, I don't know how much that will reflect on CPU requirements.

One way to put it into perspective is this; When Oblivion came was released, the x1000 series from AMD/ATI and the GeForce 7xxx series were the two most recent architectures. You could get away on playing Oblivion with a ATI 9500pro and an Athlon 2600+ (something I did), of course with limited eye candy (but the game ran fine). So that was roughly 2 or 3 generations old compared to what was new back then. So assuming Skyrim is the same, you could probably run the game with a AMD HD 4xxx/Nvidia equivalent with some degree of eye candy.

This is clearly all speculation, and until more concrete info is passed around who knows. The one thing that I think could really a be performance hog is their "dynamic snow" that is supposedly in the game/engine. Dynamic snow being snow falls realistically; it accumlates on the ground and on branches and such. It sounds great right now, but I don't think it work as expected or imagined.
 
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 3:27 pm

I upgraded from a GeForce 5200 to a 6600GT for Oblivion, you sure it was the 7000 series that had just come out? Also, Skyrim apparently won't be using Gamebryo, so it will most definitely be a visual upgrade from Oblivion.
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SecretMaster
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Re: ES: V Skyrim announced

Fri Jan 14, 2011 4:22 pm

khands wrote:
I upgraded from a GeForce 5200 to a 6600GT for Oblivion, you sure it was the 7000 series that had just come out? Also, Skyrim apparently won't be using Gamebryo, so it will most definitely be a visual upgrade from Oblivion.


Yep. Oblivion came out in March of 2006. TR's review for the GeForce 7600 and 7900 were March 9th 2006, the X1900XTX was January 2006.

The first test of Oblivion as far as I can tell came in May:

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