Dexter111 said:
You'd be surprised, for instance it's almost a tradition for them to have the main character be some sort of backstory-less prisoner that gets freed at the start of every game and stuff like horseback-riding and dual-hand casting was already there in Daggerfall, also barely anything has changed in regards to main game mechanics from having HP/mana and a compass, to being able to hit with the sword and cast spells etc.
Crap, forgot about the prisoner thing. Yeah, its true that you start these games as a prisoner. If by dual hand casting you mean using both hands for a spell, that's different than what was done in skyrim and oblivion. In skyrim, you can use both hands for a spell at the same time to overcharge them into a costlier, but more powerful spell. You already know how you can only equip either a spell or a weapon, which is what morrowind and I suspect daggerfall did, but you could only have either a spell or a weapon in your hands. I really enjoy Skyrim's system of switching between both hands for spells and weapons: as in having a sword in your left hand and a fireball spell in your right. Oblivion's system just equipped a spell, similar to equipping a piece of armor and allowed you to cast it regardless of what you were holding or doing. But see? That's three games with very different casting systems. I really think you are oversimplifying things when you talk about game mechanics not changing at all. I mean, if you boil it down, yeah, you swing swords and cast spells. But that's basically any fantasy game ever. If I said in Half Life 2 you just shoot guns and walk around I would also be technically correct, but I'm ignoring everything else that's going on, similar to how you are ignoring the details in Skyrim.
Also, are you implying HP/Mana bars and a compass need to be changed? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Bars are a perfectly fine way of showing you status effects without having to go into menus or pause the game to figure out how you're doing.
Dexter111 said:
Of course there's always refinements and improvements and at least they take several years to iterate but it basically is the very same game concept over and over again...
Well, yeah. If, of course, by "same game concept" you mean "Fantasy RPG set in the land of Tamriel wherein you play a character." I don't see a problem with the concept, but the actual games are quite different, in spite of having the same concept.
Dexter111 said:
My point is that despite, finally deciding to employ such outlandish things as "level-designers" very large parts of their world still looks very samey, I posted the link just for the fact that it is the first game to have done this not the guys opinion on it. Almost every dungeon and cave in Skyrim is still comprised of almost the same basic few tile sets that are repeated... it gets really boring after a while, even if they decided to not actually copy/paste the very same layout like in their previous games.
I'm pretty sure they had level designers before, just not very good ones (especially the ones in Oblivion). I've played upwards of 100 hours and I can honestly say no two dungeons have been exactly alike. If you're complaining about the dungeons and caves having the same theme, I'm going to have to stop you right there, criminal scum.
Of course, they're going to look similar, otherwise it would be silly to walk into a dragr tomb full of stone nordic carvings and then walk into another dragr tomb full of wooden anime carvings. They need to feel similar because they were made by similar people. Now, the layouts for every dungeon are different, that's just fact. Some of the dungeons might feel the same because of the theme, but hey, its either that or silly, glaring stupidity. I guess if I can sum up the four basic types of dungeons they would be: castle ruin, nordic ruin, cave and dwarven ruin. But between these four basic types, there are also loads of subtypes and details between the subtypes. Hell, at times these dungeons run into each other. That's not even counting all the things you can find by trekking out in the wilderness.
Dexter111 said:
I'm not making stuff up... I just happen to know how some of this stuff works, you can't make a game with the land-mass of say Oblivion or Morrowind without procedural algorithms and it's a rather easy way of doing it by specifying a "area/land-type" to a certain land mass and the computer will do the grass and plants and similar from there, or do you honestly believe that they put every blade of grass into the game itself?
Just Google it for a bit, there's articles about it... for instance here:
http://www.mxac.com.au/drt/OblivionProcedural.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_The_Elder_Scrolls_IV:_Oblivion
Obviously I don't believe they hand plant every blade of grass. I just disagree with your implication that they arranged the whole game by putting down a big "X here" stamp and then didn't even bother to look at it.
Dexter111 said:
There's also a pretty good nice looking Oblivion "Google Earth" type map here, which makes this obvious: http://www.uesp.net/maps/obmap/obmap.shtml
There's a clear separation between area types and within those area-types there are clear recurring patterns over and over again.
That doesn't mean the developers pressed the "Make the game button" and fucked off to twiddle their fingers. Also, to be fair, the mapping in Oblivion was quite bad, there wasn't much flow when you went between two already mapped areas, it always seemed to snap into another territory, but I never felt that way when I traversed around skyrim, so I don't think the oblivion map really applies.
Dexter111 said:
I also wasn't talking about how "good" a game is, but about the amount of work that went into its creation and while every indoor and outdoor environment in The Witcher 2 and RAGE is truly different looking and also feels different that can hardly be said for any of the Bethesda games, including Skyrim (although as I said, they improved slightly... for instance they had a few different city types for once).
I completely disagree with your supposition that less work went into Skyrim's creation than W2 and RAGE. As for the few different city types, there were always different city types in Morrowind and Oblivion. You're being a little deceptive here: Every main city in Skyrim is unique. There are some similar looking towns in terms of their style that varies throughout the landscape, but that's kind of dependent on where you are, although there is always an underlying theme between all of them: they're nordic. They were built by either ancient nords or current day nords, so of course they have to look similar.
I understand complaining when everything looks the same, but to complain that
everything doesn't look different is kind of silly.
Dexter111 said:
I also included that video just because it describes rather well how a "brush" tool for plants, trees and rocks etc. works too as that is what is being used in most of these "Sandbox" games, I could obviously not find a video of a Bethesda developer creating a level for Oblivion or Skyrim... if you can find any you're welcome to show it
I can't find one. Neither could you. So maybe we should not assume that Bethesda made skyrim on a glorified MSPaint until we either see direct evidence or the game designer flat out say how they made it.
Dexter111 said:
I am and I will, I played Skyrim to about the part where I was supposed to collect some Horn for the Greybeards and had explored about 3 of the main cities and quite a few of the caves etc. till I got bored by it and moved on to other titles, I've played through both L.A. Noire and Saint's Row 3 (in Co-Op by the way, which improved the enjoyment of the game a lot) and also played the SWTOR Beta amongst other things... still haven't started Batman yet as I'm waiting on a clear up about their DRM and the DirectX 11 support and I don't think I'll be returning to Skyrim at any time.
Don't get me wrong, you sound like a fair, upstanding gentleman who obviously knows his way around video games, but its just so very strange to find somebody with a perfectly opposite opinion of a game. I truly enjoy skyrim, from its art design, to gameplay, to sound, to story, to even giants that can catapult me up to the sky. In fact, it has become one of my favorite games of all time from the sheer amount of fun, immersion and story that the game has presented to me. I have argued with friends about character motivations, story elements and even the large number of grey moral choices that the game presents. The gorgeous sweeping landscapes, the interesting tomes and notes from those long or recently dead... To find somebody who calls it bland and boring is just something that strikes me dumbfounded. My experience was so positive and enriching that to hear(or see, in this case) somebody saying things that are literally opposite to things I had experienced is just beyond my ken.