I don’t mind most of it. I’m sure it would fail Interface Design 101 but I’ll let them have their fun. The only unforgiveable sin is the mouse interface with dialogue. It doesn’t always track which option you’ve currently selected. It’s best to stick with WASDE. Don’t use the mouse or it gets all screwed up.
I especially like that they learned that not every dungeon needs to sprawl on for what feels like forever
If only! Most of the dungeons I’ve finished so far have been very long with their own short stories. The occasional cave with a micro story (say, trolls and a dead bandit couple) is a welcome relief. I need more of them though.
and that there’s always a shortcut to the exit once you’ve cleared it.
I think this has been part of the series since Oblivion, hasn’t it? But they do a much better job disguising it. I just played Shivering Isles and the levels were pretty bad. Every time you hopped into a dungeon, the one way door was right there in an obvious location.
I liked the dungeons at first, but then I realized that they’re basically haunted houses. They’re basically totally linear loops, where you go in and then keep going forward through the predetermined sequence of events, with really no ability to go off to the side anywhere, and then you get to the end and the door opens and you’re back at the beginning, blinking at the daylight. Thanks for riding, and we hope you enjoy the rest of your stay at Six Flags Skyrim.
They are to Oblivion dungeons as COD is to Quake.
But at least the designers have used the linearity to put in some handcrafted experiences; knowing that you’ll encounter each room in order means that they can do more narrative in each dungeon.
That’s fair, but honestly I didn’t like the dungeons in Oblivion much. I’ll take the linear handcrafted experience over randomly generated tedium any day.
KevinC
3984
Question to All Ye Elderscrolls vets about Bound weapons:
- What are the statistics on the Bound Sword/Bow? Any way to tell?
- Do they become more effective with skill level?
EDIT: Okay, found a way to find out #1. Unequip any weapon, then summon the Bound weapon and open the Inventory | Weapons window. It’ll show your damage with the bound weapon in the bottom right. Still looking for the answer to #2 though…
How do you check the number of hours played? Is that in the game itself or is it a Steam thing?
Steam tracks it if you run the game from it, and game itself has ingame stats. Also it is displayed on savegames.
Hah I had vacation from wednesday till today, so I got to play Skyrim for 4 days straight…and tomorrow, I go to work. Fuck is indeed correct response :-).
gmonkey
3988
Dungeons in Oblivion (and Morrowind for that matter) weren’t randomly generated. They were just incompetently designed.
And linear dungeons speak of bad area design.
walTer
3989
The best looking game I have ever seen on my computer. Those 4 processors are just cranking away.
I too am a fan of the easy switching between 1st and 3rd person for different situations, plus it makes for the most amazing screenshots. I am actually getting used to the UI although the skills menu still pisses me off every time.
Again, all the “hate Oblivion/love Skyrim” talk sort of mystifies me. The dungeons in Skyrim so far don’t feel all that different to me except that there are fewer of them and I am only entering them in accordance with quests. Room by room, trap by trap, combat encounter by combat encounter, they’re quite similar. I don’t see how one is incompetent, and the other not.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Skyrim quite a lot, but then I liked Oblivion quite a lot too. The gameplay experience of both still seems very similar to me, allowing for some refinements in Skyrim and a smoothing out of the level-scaling thing (which was the only really glaring flaw in Oblivion to me).
Depends on what you mean by “randomly generated.” The individual maps were all fixed and distinct, but, just like with the first Mass Effect, I’m pretty sure there were a few basic templates that the team used and then stamped out some minor changes to. It’s not as obvious as it is in Mass Effect (ALL STRUCTURES IN THE GALAXIES ARE IN THE SHAPE OF A T!!!), but it’s perceptible all the same, in the way that all of Oblivion had a “not enough assets” type of problem (remember the conversations that a voice actor would have with himself about going to a store owned by himself?).
JeffL
3992
Denny, I deleted the install yesterday and played about 5 hours or so - mind you, I’d only played about 8 hours before that (I’m only at level 8.) I didn’t measure but I didn’t notice the load times being markedly longer. OTOH, I’m not sure I noticed the graphics being dramatically better.
gmonkey
3993
Yes, that’s awful, but it still isn’t “randomly generated” by any sense of the words.
To take your Mass Effect example, its dungeons weren’t randomly generated, Bioware just made the decision to only create, like, 3 different locations.
Me too, and I also prefer the Skyrim dungeons. I just wish they could be less linear while still retaining that more hand-crafted feel, like BG2 or something.
kerzain
3995
It’s like listening to two different albums by a band you like. Both albums sounds unmistakably like the band, but one album sucks and one is a masterpiece. Oblivion is Bethesda’s St Anger, cut and pasted riffs (dungeons), missing guitar solos (fun), and all. Skyrim is Bethesda’s …And Justice for All, a juggernaut of craftsmanship and skill, demonstrating some of the absolute best work that the studio has to offer.
Sure, there are a few things to like about St. Anger, and you can tell that underneath all the bullshit the album would (and could) be so much better with even a little tweaking. But, except for a few fans who find it enjoyable (I like St. Anger, but understand the grievances of those who don’t) it shits all over fans of the genre, and gets so much wrong even when almost all the right ingredients are right there.
They might feel similar, but one is exemplary, the other is vomit.
Yes, it’s a balancing act. Theoretically I like non-linear spaces too, but then I fret about missing an important path. So I try to suspend disbelief by not thinking about it. That’s not too hard because they do a better job disguising it.
They also do a good job ramping up the haunted house effect. In Oblivion when I went to a different named area, I thought “okay, same exact shit as the previous location.” In Skyrim when I go to the inner sanctum level I’m actually excited. Legitimate bosses and micro-stories help there too.
I agree in a general sense. Since this is the old “announced” thread for people who haven’t bought the game yet, we should caution that it does feel a lot like Oblivion. But as I’ve been saying all weekend, there’s more care in everything so it seems a lot better. Skyrim almost feels like the “baseline,” like what Oblivion should have been. They’re clearly refining their formula and moving in the right direction.
Speaking of dungeons, do “cleared” ones repopulate after a while like in Oblivion, or are they cleared forever?
I haven’t experienced it, but they were reported to repopulate after a specific point in the game (I don’t remember it being time, maybe at a certain point in the main quest? Or upon hitting certain other milestones like levels or something? Not sure, hell, maybe it was time).
So then, to people who have played it more than 20 hours, how is better than Oblivion??
Examples of what i am asking for:
Better art direction / art design
Less crashy
More involving combat
More interesting quests
Less dull npcs
Better balance in enemy encounters
Leveling system less broken
Better handcrafted dungeons
etc
So use a few arguments instad of saying “I hated Oblivion and I am loving Skyrim”. It would be useful to see why and how.
gmonkey
4000
The main thing that’s keeping me from getting Skyrim (other than a huge backlog, that is), is experience. Oblivion, Morrowind, and Fallout 3 received the same sort of glowing reception on release, by reviewers and fans alike. Everyone was talking like the games were some sort of new RPG paradigm. The “ohwaitthisisgoodbut” moments eventually came and suddenly all these games had glaring faults.
Also, Bethesda, with their tendency to plainly lie about their upcoming games, and their practice of shamelessly buttering up the press, leave me very reticent about giving my money away to them.
