2641

Well, they had sorta the same system in Fallout 3, but there was a greater disparity between various monster difficulties in your level range.

I’m sort of torn between how I’d like to see this play out, because on one hand I like the idea of specific areas being off limits simply because of the higher level/tougher inhabitants there – which would give me something to aim for, and somewhat of an achievement when I’m finally tough enough to take it on. On the other hand, I don’t want to feel like the game is on rails (especially when considering future play-throughs), in that I’m forced to follow a predetermined path through the content because I’m constantly waiting to level up before venturing forward.

I wouldn’t mind most of the world leveling up with me, as long there is that disparity between something like a giant your level and a wolf your level. I think an ideal system would be this coupled up with very specific dungeons, or what have you, being much too touch to enter without some serious character advancement first. This would certainly help avoid Oblivion’s problem of doing certain quests/adventuring too early, and getting a really crappy version of a weapon that could have been so much better if the player had waited to level up before looting/questing for it first.

2642

Cities have ever been the bane of The Elder Scrolls (err, since Morrowind anyway, when I got on board). In Fallout it made sense to have a dozen people hunkering down in some burnt-out huts. In a thriving high-fantasy setting, not so much. My hope (and I have no reason at all to think this is true) is that there is one large, well-developed capital city and the others are settlements and economic areas.

As to size, I don’t want a larger world, I want more stuff in it. As people have said. Having a large, empty map is completely uninteresting to me. If The Elder Scrolls went in a different direction, removing fast travel and implementing hunger/thirst/fatigue, then having a large land mass to traverse would have an effect on gameplay. As it is, it’s just blank space for me to fast-travel over.

New Vegas’ more explicit skill-based system was handled clumsily ([you have 47/50 speech points necessary]), but I think it was a good way to provide variety for different character types. I hope Skyrim adopts some of those ideas.

2643

Guild Wars PVE is very good, especially on normal mode. Hard mode gets very gimmicky, but the stories are entertaining across all three campaigns, coming up with builds is fun, and the hero mechanic means you can basically play it however you want to.

Random loot and creatures off lists is hugely advantageous for modding. Rather than editing each chest load or monster spawn, you just insert them into the relevant lists and only have to place stuff for fights you want to be unique.

Oblivion was good and bad in world terms. The towns did have unique architecture, and the castles were very neat and well thought out, but the dungeons all shared a very small number of tile sets and mobs: an imperial fort tile set, an aeylid ruin tile set and a cave tile set. That was pretty much it. Mobs weren’t quite that bad, but mods that added more hugely increased the entertainment factor for me.

As far as unique experiences for every character, meh. You aren’t really supposed to create multiple characters; that’s why they can all level up in whatever and become equally proficient at everything. DAO was intended for multiple play throughs, and capped out at something like 40-60hrs depending on how you played it. It locks you out of content based on your choices. Oblivion is designed for a single 100-200+ hr playthrough, and content doesn’t get locked out by your choices (so you can complete all the guild quests on the same character, for example). Mods massively extend the life of the game, and there’s a ton of content hidden out there.

Morrowind was definitely the superior game purely from a locational differentiation POV, as there was a conscious effort to make the whole place feel alien. And they also locked you out of some of the guilds/families based on your choices. You couldn’t be a Telvanni and also be a member of one of the other houses, for example.

I’d love it if they brought back the archetype families for this one, so that there’s a feeling of progression. You know, you go through your guild and then pick a single family that gives you a unique and very cool house (like the Telvanni Shrooms). It’d also be nice if they had various ways to upgrade the house with more functionality and the ability to generate passive income through farming or something. You know, your own little build-a-settlement thingy, that’d be neat. I’m sure a modder will implement something along those lines, seeing as they built a whole slave plantation game inside Morrowind. In any event, I’m incredibly excited for this game, and will probably pick it up on release with monies from EL BONUS.

2644

Yeah, visually a thriving city should look something like one of the three cities in Assassin’s Creed. Maybe by Elder Scrolls VI, we can have something that looks that busy and that dense in a Besethda RPG.

2645

Agree that the “bustling” worlds of GTA4 or Assassin’s Creed look more alive because of how many (generic, meaningless) characters there are moving around, and how many structures there are – they look like lived in, viable places - but only visually.

But there’s something to be said for the approach of the Elder Scrolls games (and it’s been the dominant approach to virtual world RPGs - Ultima 9, Gothics, Risen, etc.) to actually identifying each NPC and giving them a home, schedule, purpose, etc. – every character you meet in Oblivion has some relevance in the world, instead of the generic, no-name bumper-car NPCs in GTA or AC. Witcher takes a middle approach, with named NPCs supplemented by a lot of generic ones to fill in the population (although even those “generic” NPCs have a place/purpose/individual treatment, although they respawn).

It’s pretty damn cool that you can go in every building in Oblivion - track every NPC to his/her home, and see what they do during the day, discover their relationships, etc. Personally, I much prefer that approach to the “busier” city approaches of GTA/AC, which look more realistic, but have artificiality embedded through cardboard NPCs and structures that can’t be entered – I think Oblivion/Risen’s approach works better for RPGs, while the GTA/AC approach works better for action games, or action/adventure, so I don’t really think it’s desirable to conform the approaches across genres.

2646

While the Witcher did have a mixture of the two, (I haven’t played the sequel yet), it still didn’t have enough generic NPCs. I see nothing wrong with having a whole lot of generic townsfolk, and then having the few relevant ones that you can follow and see their schedule. I have to admit that Gothic was a lot better at the first approach than Oblivion. Following someone around in Gothic was a lot more rewarding than following someone around in Oblivion with their stiff mannerisms and gamey “conversations” with each other and their crappy animations.

Still, Gothic’s setting as a prison colony made sense in the context of a town with just a few people in it. Oblivion’s capital city should have had a lot more people in it. It’s not just an RPG approach we’re talking about, it’s also the context in which it takes place. It makes sense that a prison colony only has small communities. It doesn’t make as much sense in the capital city of a vast empire.

2647

It makes it hard to pick out the relevant ones if they’re in a cloud of visual noise people.

And really, this isn’t just a Bethesda thing; the planets in KOTOR and Mass Effect are curiously empty, too. I think for most people this is just one of those things that fades into the background most of the time.

2648

Obviously this is when smart developers rely on the good old (horribly annoying, immersion breaking, fun-dampening, sandy-vagina inducing) exclamation mark.

2649

Seen any mudcrabs lately?

2650

2651

But the point is that it shouldn’t just be a difference between “I have a quest for you” and “I AM A PEASANT GOODBYE,” you know? There should be people with personalities and random pieces of information.

That’s to me the most pernicious impact of WOW and its ilk – that weird instrumentality they bring to games. There’s “lore” which is in little books that you read or whatever; there’s quests, which exclamation point people give to you; and there’s random noise.

When you look back at the great open-world RPGs of the past – your Ultima VIIs, say – what you see is that the characters in the game organically provided a lot of functions. They’d tell you about the world in conversation, they’d provide little hints to mysteries that weren’t labelled and called-out as such, they’d provide you with “quests” that weren’t really quests (“As I was going to sleep last night, I saw some bright blue flashes off in the woods; think I’m going to shutter my windows from now on.”), and they’d just… well, be characters.

That’s what Skyrim should be shooting for: A world in which each person feels like a real person, with a real personality and a real life, and who might tell you something about the world, or about history, or about something you’re looking for, or who might just have an amusing anecdote about working in the kitchens.

I’d rather have a capital city with 50 well-fleshed-out people than with 1000 interchangeable drones. I mean, Arena had gigantic cities that were full of a million clone people walking around; but nobody wants to go back to that.

2652

I totally agree with you. I hate the exclamation mark, and the reasons behind its existence. Even if the minor characters do nothing more than drop one liners of interesting lore, back story or whatever I just want them to have a purpose for being. Minor characters like these (And I expect them to be characters, not glorified scenery) help set the mood, and they shouldn’t be voiceless drones taking up space. I don’t need a bunch of empty faces walking around replying to my hails with a default “Hi there!”

My expectations in games like these are that every npc serve some purpose, no matter how seemingly insignificant, beyond that of simple window dressing. I don’t need branching dialog trees from every one, but it doesn’t hurt to feel encouraged to speak with every one you run across, if you so choose.

I just hate excess for the sake of excess.

2653

Going back to not requiring everything to be fully voiced would help this a lot. I really hope some developer has the balls to do this.

That’s what Skyrim should be shooting for: A world in which each person feels like a real person, with a real personality and a real life.

To be fair, most RPGs can’t even manage this for the six people in your party. I can’t blame Bethesda for failing to provide that for peasant 6 in settlement 3.

2654

For the record, Skyrim’s main quest can be completed in just over two hours (but probably not by you or me).

2655

But also to be fair: Your party is a LOT harder than the random peasant dude. You are going to interact with your party in a zillion ways over the course of the game, in a zillion circumstances. For them to feel real requires them to react to plot events and your own random actions (“Dude, did you just shoot a guard in the face for no reason? Not cool!”), and to grow and change over time.

For the random peasant to feel real, he has to say about as much as a random peasant would to a stranger, and maybe if some world-altering event happens, have a few words to say about that.

2656

I’ll settle for a few interesting characters and loads that tell me to fuck off because they’re busy chatting about the latest word on mudcrabs.

Going with the voiced first line/unvoiced convo would help a lot for minor characters. No one can afford to voice the amount of text Morrowind had for every character.

2657

We know

2658

And now we know a third time.

2659

The first time it came up, I didn’t make the connection that I’ve been watching a speedrun of The Witcher 2. I think his best time is 2:12 or something.

2660

Yeah, I think PST and the infinity engine games hit the sweet spot there. Having the first bit of dialog/or choice lines voiced is enough for characterization. I tend to skip the voiceovers as soon as I’m done reading anyway.