Vault Dweller
Commissar, Red Star Studio
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2003
- Messages
- 28,035
Despite the intensive coverage, many people are still unaware of the gigantic efforts and amazing features that went into oblivion. I meant, Oblivion. Anyway, being a public servant, I’ve decided to write a preview of this great game. Since I'm not a profeshunal journalist, I can't just make shit up and call it an exclusive preview, so I had to scavenge quotes from other previews and interviews for that extra authenticity that RPG Codex readers expect from this fine site.
Without further ado:
***OBLIVION THE ULTIMATE GAEM OF <s>DOOM</s> BLOOM***
<b>Concept:</b>
It's time to move RPGs forward and really show how entertaining they can be. ... Fantasy, for us, is a knight on horseback running around and killing things.
Our advances come in the form of refining and improving the gameplay elements most basic to RPGs - combat, exploration, dialogue - and adding in new features like Havok physics and our new AI technology.
I think you can look at the changes we made from Daggerfall to Morrowind and expect a similar jump from Morrowind to Oblivion.
<b>Gameplay Goals:</b>
It’s one of those things we’ve always wanted to do in a game – full real-time forests for you to explore. Our tech for creating forests is something we spent a long time on. We’re combining procedural generation of landscape (based on its soil type and years of erosion), trees (based on species and random growth clustering), and grass (base on regional patterns) to create some really amazing areas. Combine this with full canopy shadows from the trees and it really takes you to another place.
As far as gameplay – a forest really is one of the richest environments you could explore. The dynamic compass helps you find things because the first thing we experience with the forest was “I’m lost.†Being lost in the forest was not the kind of heroic experience we envisioned.
It excites me to push the genre forward - to try new things that haven't been tried. Whether it's <u>full forests</u> (what's with the forest fetish?) or worldwide AI or new combat schemes, we're always looking for ways to break the mould and present an RPG in a fresh way, in a way where you truly experience what is happening to your character.
<b>Target Audience:</b>
However, with Morrowind I think we saw that our kind of game appeals to a wider audience, given the game’s success among more casual gamers who are neither ‘hardcore’ nor ‘RPG geeks’
<b>Graphics:</b>
R0xx0r!!!
…it’s different in Oblivion. We have much better looking clothing, and it mixes and matches better, but you don’t have the huge range of options you could in a 2D system like Daggerfall’s
<b>Voiceover:</b>
Patric Stewart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
<b>Combat:</b>
This time we've realized how much combat people really do in a game like this...
The majority of players wanted a more complex combat system, one that had a lot more depth and excitement to it than simply clicking and rolling dice.
The basic idea of Oblivion combat is to impart the 'kinetic energy feeling' of guys bashing each other with swords. The game will have a number of special moves available and blocking is actively under player control, not automatic. As a result, timing moves, shielding yourself, and responding to the enemy becomes a key strategy in fighting.
The combat will be every bit as exciting as it is in a first-person shooter. Contrary to the RPG convention, the outcome of combat will not be decided by virtual dice rolls. Your opponent will block and dodge, so taking down an enemy is entirely on the player's shoulders
We really are striving to get the kinetic energy of guys bashing each other with swords down, and do it right, because no one has yet.
We demolished the Morrowind system of combat, and from its ashes arose something deeper, more engaging, and featuring a better blend of player skill vs. character skill. We threw out the wacky to-hit random rolls. Now if your sword hits an enemy, you’ve hit him, plain and simple. That simple change makes a world of difference in the experience. Combat is far less of an abstraction now.
No longer is simply clicking over and over and hoping that a random die falls in your favor a viable strategy. Now your enemy’s sword is something to be avoided, so you move. You dart in and out, getting in your swings while dodging out of his reach. You block with your shield or parry with your sword, then dash in as he recoils. Hit him with a strong enough blow, and watch as he staggers back, leaving himself open to your assault.
There are special moves you can perform and the blocking is active. So the timing of it becomes a key strategy in fighting.
<b>The Uber Awesome Radiant AI</b>
Our new Radiant AI system allows for full 24/7 schedules for every NPC. So we give them general goals, like – “Eat at this city at 2pmâ€, and they figure out how to do it. They will find food, find a place to sit and eat, and so forth.
With our AI system, we give the NPCs goals and we can conditionalize those for anything, the big one being "time of day". Such as "sleep here at night", "eat here from 12 to 2", those kinds of things. So for the E3 demo, we packed a bunch of goals together so you could see various things the NPCs could do back to back. She eats, she reads, she sleeps. So the only really hand-done parts were to squeeze it together. Can they light their pets on fire? Sure. Do they do it often? No. That was just to show it can happen and to get some laughs.
<b>Skillz:</b>
There are fewer skills (from 36 skills in DF to 27 skills in MW to 21 skills in Oblivion), but they'll be better balanced, there'll be skill perks as you advance, and the major/minor/misc mix is different (though I won't get in to how yet).
We’ve combined a couple here and there from Morrowind, so things like Short Blade and Long Blade are now a single Blade skill.
But let’s face it - when you talk about ranged combat in an RPG, you’re talking about bows.
When we look at characters that like to do ranged combat, they mostly want to use bows and arrows. So instead of doing many types of ranged combat, we decided to stick with bows and arrows -- but -- it's a grand implementation of bows and arrows. You feel the string draw, arrows arc properly, bounce realistically, and stick deep into the right materials. You can see the quiver on your back and type of arrows you have and there are tons of different bows and arrow types. So we trade having several types of ranged combat done in an average way, and get bows done in a grand way.
<b>Magic:</b>
It’s tough to know where to start, there are so many changes. The biggest one is probably the removal of the “magic mode†from Morrowind. No more running around with your hands up in front of you, unable to defend yourself from melee opponents. Now you can cast magic any time you choose, even using a sword and shield.
You can also cast spells at any time. In Morrowind you had to "ready magic", which meant unequipping your weapon and raising your hands into the "casting position". In Oblivion you just press the casting button.
There's a skill-based penalty for casting depending on how much armor you're wearing. So if you want to be a battle mage, you'll have to work on your armor skills -- get them up high enough and there will be no penalty.
This way, there's an actual DIFFERENCE between the pure magic user and the battle mage. Battle mages will simply want to choose an armor skill as one of their major skills.(More like HAVE to choose)
<b>Guilds:</b>
As far as factions, there are four guilds you can join in Oblivion: mages, fighters, thieves, and dark brotherhood (assassin’s guild). You can join each of them and experience their storylines and rise to the head of each guild (in one game), which has its own reward.
Standing in one guild does not affect another for the most part. We like players to be able to experience them all, but obviously certain character classes have an easier go of one or another.
<b>Dialogues</b>
After overhearing this news, we had the attack itself added to our journal as a new <u>dialogue topic</u>, which we were then able to ask the bard about--resulting in a new quest to help at the town added to our journal.
<b>Cool Features:</b>
An on-screen compass will not only tell you which direction you are going, but will also point you in the direction of places of interest. Another new feature to help alleviate these problems is the ability to instantly teleport to any place that you know about instead of being required to use a scroll or spell.
It doesn't automatically load the last game save. It brings up the load saved game screen. But you can always press "DONE" without choosing a file and continue playing, even though you can no longer necessarily finish the main quest.
...............................................
I'm sure there are other quotes that I missed so feel free to post them here to make it the best and most informative preview ever - the #1 source of all Oblivion information!
Without further ado:
***OBLIVION THE ULTIMATE GAEM OF <s>DOOM</s> BLOOM***
<b>Concept:</b>
It's time to move RPGs forward and really show how entertaining they can be. ... Fantasy, for us, is a knight on horseback running around and killing things.
Our advances come in the form of refining and improving the gameplay elements most basic to RPGs - combat, exploration, dialogue - and adding in new features like Havok physics and our new AI technology.
I think you can look at the changes we made from Daggerfall to Morrowind and expect a similar jump from Morrowind to Oblivion.
<b>Gameplay Goals:</b>
It’s one of those things we’ve always wanted to do in a game – full real-time forests for you to explore. Our tech for creating forests is something we spent a long time on. We’re combining procedural generation of landscape (based on its soil type and years of erosion), trees (based on species and random growth clustering), and grass (base on regional patterns) to create some really amazing areas. Combine this with full canopy shadows from the trees and it really takes you to another place.
As far as gameplay – a forest really is one of the richest environments you could explore. The dynamic compass helps you find things because the first thing we experience with the forest was “I’m lost.†Being lost in the forest was not the kind of heroic experience we envisioned.
It excites me to push the genre forward - to try new things that haven't been tried. Whether it's <u>full forests</u> (what's with the forest fetish?) or worldwide AI or new combat schemes, we're always looking for ways to break the mould and present an RPG in a fresh way, in a way where you truly experience what is happening to your character.
<b>Target Audience:</b>
However, with Morrowind I think we saw that our kind of game appeals to a wider audience, given the game’s success among more casual gamers who are neither ‘hardcore’ nor ‘RPG geeks’
<b>Graphics:</b>
R0xx0r!!!
…it’s different in Oblivion. We have much better looking clothing, and it mixes and matches better, but you don’t have the huge range of options you could in a 2D system like Daggerfall’s
<b>Voiceover:</b>
Patric Stewart!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
<b>Combat:</b>
This time we've realized how much combat people really do in a game like this...
The majority of players wanted a more complex combat system, one that had a lot more depth and excitement to it than simply clicking and rolling dice.
The basic idea of Oblivion combat is to impart the 'kinetic energy feeling' of guys bashing each other with swords. The game will have a number of special moves available and blocking is actively under player control, not automatic. As a result, timing moves, shielding yourself, and responding to the enemy becomes a key strategy in fighting.
The combat will be every bit as exciting as it is in a first-person shooter. Contrary to the RPG convention, the outcome of combat will not be decided by virtual dice rolls. Your opponent will block and dodge, so taking down an enemy is entirely on the player's shoulders
We really are striving to get the kinetic energy of guys bashing each other with swords down, and do it right, because no one has yet.
We demolished the Morrowind system of combat, and from its ashes arose something deeper, more engaging, and featuring a better blend of player skill vs. character skill. We threw out the wacky to-hit random rolls. Now if your sword hits an enemy, you’ve hit him, plain and simple. That simple change makes a world of difference in the experience. Combat is far less of an abstraction now.
No longer is simply clicking over and over and hoping that a random die falls in your favor a viable strategy. Now your enemy’s sword is something to be avoided, so you move. You dart in and out, getting in your swings while dodging out of his reach. You block with your shield or parry with your sword, then dash in as he recoils. Hit him with a strong enough blow, and watch as he staggers back, leaving himself open to your assault.
There are special moves you can perform and the blocking is active. So the timing of it becomes a key strategy in fighting.
<b>The Uber Awesome Radiant AI</b>
Our new Radiant AI system allows for full 24/7 schedules for every NPC. So we give them general goals, like – “Eat at this city at 2pmâ€, and they figure out how to do it. They will find food, find a place to sit and eat, and so forth.
With our AI system, we give the NPCs goals and we can conditionalize those for anything, the big one being "time of day". Such as "sleep here at night", "eat here from 12 to 2", those kinds of things. So for the E3 demo, we packed a bunch of goals together so you could see various things the NPCs could do back to back. She eats, she reads, she sleeps. So the only really hand-done parts were to squeeze it together. Can they light their pets on fire? Sure. Do they do it often? No. That was just to show it can happen and to get some laughs.
<b>Skillz:</b>
There are fewer skills (from 36 skills in DF to 27 skills in MW to 21 skills in Oblivion), but they'll be better balanced, there'll be skill perks as you advance, and the major/minor/misc mix is different (though I won't get in to how yet).
We’ve combined a couple here and there from Morrowind, so things like Short Blade and Long Blade are now a single Blade skill.
But let’s face it - when you talk about ranged combat in an RPG, you’re talking about bows.
When we look at characters that like to do ranged combat, they mostly want to use bows and arrows. So instead of doing many types of ranged combat, we decided to stick with bows and arrows -- but -- it's a grand implementation of bows and arrows. You feel the string draw, arrows arc properly, bounce realistically, and stick deep into the right materials. You can see the quiver on your back and type of arrows you have and there are tons of different bows and arrow types. So we trade having several types of ranged combat done in an average way, and get bows done in a grand way.
<b>Magic:</b>
It’s tough to know where to start, there are so many changes. The biggest one is probably the removal of the “magic mode†from Morrowind. No more running around with your hands up in front of you, unable to defend yourself from melee opponents. Now you can cast magic any time you choose, even using a sword and shield.
You can also cast spells at any time. In Morrowind you had to "ready magic", which meant unequipping your weapon and raising your hands into the "casting position". In Oblivion you just press the casting button.
There's a skill-based penalty for casting depending on how much armor you're wearing. So if you want to be a battle mage, you'll have to work on your armor skills -- get them up high enough and there will be no penalty.
This way, there's an actual DIFFERENCE between the pure magic user and the battle mage. Battle mages will simply want to choose an armor skill as one of their major skills.(More like HAVE to choose)
<b>Guilds:</b>
As far as factions, there are four guilds you can join in Oblivion: mages, fighters, thieves, and dark brotherhood (assassin’s guild). You can join each of them and experience their storylines and rise to the head of each guild (in one game), which has its own reward.
Standing in one guild does not affect another for the most part. We like players to be able to experience them all, but obviously certain character classes have an easier go of one or another.
<b>Dialogues</b>
After overhearing this news, we had the attack itself added to our journal as a new <u>dialogue topic</u>, which we were then able to ask the bard about--resulting in a new quest to help at the town added to our journal.
<b>Cool Features:</b>
An on-screen compass will not only tell you which direction you are going, but will also point you in the direction of places of interest. Another new feature to help alleviate these problems is the ability to instantly teleport to any place that you know about instead of being required to use a scroll or spell.
It doesn't automatically load the last game save. It brings up the load saved game screen. But you can always press "DONE" without choosing a file and continue playing, even though you can no longer necessarily finish the main quest.
...............................................
I'm sure there are other quotes that I missed so feel free to post them here to make it the best and most informative preview ever - the #1 source of all Oblivion information!
