Todd Howard Tempers Skyrim Expectations

[Z3RO180]

i get to fight dragons as a viking.

 

[Twad]

Well.. yeah.

Skyrim obviously got engine improvements for the graphics, rendering,t extures and all that. But gameplay improvement is another matter entirely, and we wont know until we play it.

 

[Siege_TF]

I'm boycotting it regardless because of this Elder Scrolls / Scrolls crap. Nobody's going to call it Elder Scrolls 6 (or 5 or whatever. not important). People are going to call it Skyrim.

 

[keideki]

A little late to try and stop the hype train, don't you think? Everyone is already expecting it to do crazy amazing things... but as long as they make a good RPG I don't how far it 'pushes the envelope'.

 

[The Electro Gypsy]

Well by it being not Oblivion it's already a massive leap forwards. I still don't understand why people adore that game as much as they do, it was one of the worst games I've ever played :/

 

[ReiverCorrupter]

Morrowind was slightly more buggy and a lot uglier than Oblivion, sure. But it was also longer and more fun.

I enjoy the story and atmosphere of Morrowind, but I just can't play it.

The gameplay was shit.

If you actually payed attention in oblivion there was just as much there as there was in morrowind.

I agree the game play was crappy. It's a hack-n-slash. They aren't known for great combat. But combat was just as crappy in Oblivion, so I don't see your point. And no, Oblivion had only about half the quest lines as Morrowind. It had half of the weapons too, no spears or throwing darts. They reduced long and short blade to just blade and made axes part of 'blunt' even though axes are in no way blunt weapons. By NO REASONING could you POSSIBLY say that Oblivion had as much content. You're just factually wrong. It was prettier and it had voice acting instead of text boxes, but that's a change in quality not quantity. They could have gone the extra mile and given it more content but their budget was probably spent on a better graphics engine and getting Patrick Stewart for a bit role.

I'm not saying it was a bad game, quite the contrary, it was great. I'm just saying that if you put aside the technological difference between the two games, there's no comparison in terms of content. I'll put it as simply as I possibly can: they improved the engine for Oblivion but sacrificed the formula. To use a food analogy, they cut out half of the ingredients so that they could buy fresher versions of the remaining ingredients, but that isn't an improvement on the recipe.

 

[AppleShrapnel]

My two cents: Morrowind goes down as a personal gaming milestone. Never before or since have I gotten so engrossed in a game... I shutter to think how many hours I poured into it (on the old Xbox, no less).

Personally, I couldn't bear to play it again... it just doesn't age well. My biggest complaint, both then and now, was the whole behind-the-scenes die rolls... that's not something that really belongs in a computer game, if you ask me. Pen & paper? Sure. :/

Oblivion was awesome, too. I won't deny I'm a sucker for pretty graphics, and IV certainly trounced III in that regard. Also, no die rolls was nice. Active blocking was cool, too... I didn't like that spears, medium armor, clothing slots and weapon classes had been removed/altered... but omitting these things streamlined production to some degree, I should think. That's less assets to fuss with for modelling, texturing, animations, etc etc. Less/consolidated skills means less under-the-hood calculations to slow things down, too... I still don't necessarily like the fact that this trend has taken over Bethesda games (and BioWare, too), but these sacrifices could very well lead to more stable games... just random, baseless speculation on my part, though. >.>

 

[Muphin_Mann]

Hmmm...Howard musta somehow never played Oblivion.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

I don't really care if it's not as huge of a step up as it usually is.
I still cannot wait for this damn game.

 

[Vrach]

Mechanically, however, the game will serve up about the same level of changes and improvements as previous releases. "The number of gameplay changes and things like that are probably on the same level," he added.

But that's what counts. And it's not just that, one of the greatest complaints over Oblivion was it's setting as it felt very samey across the map - which is something they've both said and showcased is not the case in Skyrim.

And with all the new gameplay features like the combat and magic system overhauls, the jump is gonna be just as big - if not bigger - than Morrowind>Oblivion. From Morrowind to Oblivion, we just got a "you can now use both weapons and magic at the same time. From Oblivion to Skyrim, we're getting "you can now put whatever the bloody hell you want in either of your hands, including two weapons or two identical or different spells. I'd call that an improvement.

The dialogue system is also a pretty big change, although granted, Morrowind went from silent to fully voiced Oblivion (which was a huge leap at the time, despite the complaints over voice acting), so that's hard to top.

The AI, we'll see. Radiant AI is something Oblivion pioneered. It wasn't perfect with Oblivion, but it was a breakthrough. While they're merely refining it for Skyrim, that's all it really needed and in no way a small step if they got it right (or well, a lot righter).

Oh. And dragons

I see where he's coming from on a few points. Oblivion pioneered a lot of things. But it also did them relatively badly (great for the time, but overall...). While refining those is not exactly groundbreaking, it's certainly gonna be impressive, perhaps even more so than the original breakthroughs.

 

[thebobmaster_v1legacy]

Oblivion was a leap forward from Morrowind? Graphics aside nothing in the game stood up to what Morrorwind had to offer

Yeah. I have fond memories of swinging a sword repeatedly at an enemy, only to miss at close "biting my face off" range, because my skill was only average.