TannisRoot on 9/6/2015 at 20:37
Skyrim's writing was better than Oblivion's? I found it to be atrocious. The Mary Sue plot was bad enough, but the guild quests in particular were a far cry of what they were in Oblivion - particularly Dark Brotherhood's and Thieves Guild.
nicked on 10/6/2015 at 16:18
Mm, that is what annoys me in games like that - the protagonist has nothing stopping them becoming the best at everything, the leader of every organisation or guild in the world and generally the centre of the universe.
I'd like to see a game that took the Elder Scrolls idea of only leveling up the skills you use, but make the reverse true as well. So every time you level up, any skills you haven't used much get significantly lowered as you get "rusty" with them. Perhaps you could level these skills back up slightly quicker next time as a result of relearning them. Then make it so, for example, you can't become leader of a group of mages unless you're level 100 in a magic discipline or something, and if you then leave and go be a thief for 20 hours, they fire you and get someone else in to lead the mages.
I want to be forced to specialise and have that close off avenues of progression for me, so the world feels genuine.
Jason Moyer on 10/6/2015 at 17:23
I can't remember if Oblivion did it, but Morrowind had attribute and skill requirements for advancing in the guilds. Personally, I think the fighters/thieves/mages guilds should be mutually exclusive beyond doing some tasks before joining the guild proper.
As far as the writing and stuff goes, I honestly could not care less about that when it comes to Bethesbryo games. To me, they're all about the exploration and moment-to-moment gameplay and if there's an interesting quest or two it's just a bonus.
Nameless Voice on 10/6/2015 at 19:43
Skyrim's setting, world and characters were generally much better-written/crafted than Oblivion, which was very "standard fantasy setting" and had ridiculously flat characters and really unrealistic cities.
The individual quest lines in Skyrim were fairly bad, though. Most were really short, and the Thieves Guild questline in particular was so awful that I literally played through it, then reloaded from a save before I joined them to wash away the awfulness.
... yeah, to be honest, as much as I like Bethesda games, their writing has always been one level of awful or another.
driver on 10/6/2015 at 19:59
The Gothic and Risen series (Well, I can only speak for the first game of the latter) generally did a good job of giving you choice but also restricting you at the same time. To advance the story you had to chose which faction to join and that gave you access to different kinds of skill trainers (Though you could still branch out a little, you still focused on that factions' main skill style), and while you were generally free to explore the map as you saw fit you were restricted to a degree by the strength of the opponents you faced in different areas rather than just bits being arbitrarily fenced off until you did x quest or got to chapter x, though different factions had exclusive areas that you got early access to by joining them.
I think someone said on here before that the ES games plonked you in a world and said 'Here's a world for you to conquer' and the Gothic ones said 'Here's a world to try and survive in'.
Personally speaking I thought the writing took a bit of a dive in Oblivion compared to Morrowind but that was probably down to the fact that Oblivion was the first to have speech and the dialogue had to be much more concise as opposed to the pages of text you got in the previous game. True, most NPCs in Morrowind had identical dialogue, but it was much easier to skip over it and find a new topic than having the same stuff blurted directly into your ear over and over (See: random Mudcrab conversation. Who didn't get thoroughly sick of that?). Skyrim was better than Oblivion in that regard, but still several notches below Morrowind, I think.
Jason Moyer on 15/6/2015 at 05:09
Looking for a decent sharable link to the presentation today, but needless to say it looks goddamn amazing.
Sulphur on 15/6/2015 at 05:29
Here you go:
[video=youtube;QxSn2BBJQy8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxSn2BBJQy8&feature=youtu.be[/video]
Hurray for creaky frame rates. I think we can all be resolved this is going to happen exactly like it did before - a sprawling game hobbled by an outdated base engine that's had smatterings of new tech frankensteined onto it, and resents every inch of progress made. I'm gonna predict a massive gameworld, massive performance issues on consoles and PC, and more bugs than sticks have ever been shaken at on the entire planet.
nicked on 15/6/2015 at 05:52
Yep, looks like a Fallout game...
The full voice acting concerns me. Logistically it means there's probably far fewer side quests or deep conversations to be had. Unless the voice acting stops at a certain level, like it's only for major scenes and the top layer of conversations or something.
Jason Moyer on 15/6/2015 at 06:08
There has been full voice acting for every NPC in Bethsoft games since Oblivion, hasn't there? I bet there is a lot less player dialog to voice than you'd expect, and that 20 hours into the game it will be "mudcrabs, horrible creatures" level of annoying. I actually kinda hope you can disable the PC voice.
If you want to see the full presentation beyond the in-game stuff:
[video=youtube;e0E4wviq9Jc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0E4wviq9Jc[/video]
I kinda hope they release Fallout Shelter to Steam as FTP.
Renault on 15/6/2015 at 20:45
No one has mentioned it yet here, so I will - official release date is November 10th, 2015.
