4401

You almost have to think that the sales of Skyrim and the Steam numbers will be a wake up call. Or at least hope so. I know I do.

4402

Reckoning is coming and is somewhat similar. Fallout 3 and NV are also similar and sold well.

4403

Well, Fallout 3 doesn’t count because it was also Bethesda (and NV was basically a huge Fallout 3 mod).

Basically, no one does this as well as Bethesda because no one has been doing it as long as Bethesda, nor learning as effectively from each iteration as Bethesda. They’re the top of this particular massive-world-building single-player heap.

MMOs aren’t quite in the same ballpark, though Skyrim has clearly learned many lessons from WoW’s crafting systems. But Skyrim has much more complex AI, and much richer single-player content, than any MMO I’ve yet seen.

It may be possible for another company to beat Bethesda at their own game, but it would take an extraordinary amount of discipline and focus to match the institutional knowledge they have over there.

4404

Anyone remember the name your baby contest Bethesda announced?

Gamer parents name newborn son after Skyrim character

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/technology-blog/gamer-parents-name-newborn-son-skyrim-character-214058518.html

Yup, someone really did it:

But this time, the tiny warrior arrived right on time, and on 11/11/11, Dovahkiin Tom Kellermeyer was born. The lucky couple contacted Bethesda, who verified the new baby’s name and birthdate, and held true to their promise, granting the couple — and Dovahkiin himself — every one of the company’s games free for life.

4405

It really is very good. Things that, I think, should rightly count against it in the Best Game EVAR stakes include mostly average combat (I enjoy it quite a lot actually, but there’s no denying it could be better) and decidedly average UI.

But hell, at this point I would rank it very high indeed - it’s set an indisputable benchmark for open-world RPGs. For open-world games in general for that matter. And that’s coming from someone who has a general dislike for how Bethesda often designs games. I thought Oblivion fell far short of what it promised (and basically was fun insofar as any open-world game is fun for me) and I didn’t even finish Fallout 3 due to strongly disliking its design and just getting bored.

I feel that Bethesda have had the formula for a truly amazing game for a long time, but have fallen short (Oblivion or Fallout 3 for my money) through dubious design decisions and an overall lack of conceptually ‘getting’ what’s most important. With Skyrim they’ve fundamentally nailed it. Skyrim is competing with the Zone for the game world I most love being in, and I can’t give it higher praise than that.

4406

For ES:VI I want them to work on the whole ‘I SAW SOME MUDCRABS YESTERDAY!’ thing, which is as painful as ever in Skyrim. Just shut up, ambient chatter people!

4407

But mudcrabs are adooooorable

4408

I don’t get the mudcrab hate. I love them! They look cool, they really suit the waterside environment, and they are big enough to not be absurd as enemies. If they ever take them out I will (pretend to) boycott Bethesda!

4409

Um, yes. Yes, we do. Or you could scroll up ten posts or so.

I don’t think Alistair hates mudcrabs, I think he hates NPCs who bark the same repetitive “OMG A MUDCRAB NO WAI!!!11” line over and over and over and over and, well, over.

Lh’owon, what’s the Zone? Is this an EVE Online thing?

4410

Have you played any of the other open world RPGs? How do you think they compare?

4411

Oh sorry, the Zone is the area around Chernobyl in the STALKER games. I hold it in high regard for its exceptional atmosphere.

4412

As for best-game-ever status, I dunno, but I will say that it’s so good it’s made me retroactively like Morrowind even more. “Oh yeah, I did get ridiculously, obsessively into that game, didn’t I?” All these years I just remembered the sandstorms, and leveling up just by jumping around a town.

The complaint wasn’t about the mudcrabs, but the fact that strangers will volunteer random information about them as you walk by. I keep running past a guy who tells me I’M THE CAPTAIN OF THE CITY GUARD! every time I get within a few feet of him, which makes me think he’s just desperate for some kind of validation.

On the other hand, I like how they’ve tailored some of that chatter to your character. I had guards warning me to be careful with my destruction spells until I drank a “fortify speech” potion, at which point they told me that I couldn’t sweet-talk my way past them like I could with shop owners.

4413

Yea true, and I agree generally.

I recall that the ambient stuff was worse in Oblivion. Didn’t they have a dynamic conversation system where random people would talk to each other on the street? Which made for gems like “Hello, I saw a mudcrab the other day!” “Goodbye” “Hello there!”

That’s cool about the guards - you just made me realise that the reason they frequently say “I’ve heard about you and your honeyed words” is that I have a high speech ability (and an amulet of speech). I had assumed they were saying that as a general line of dialogue, that’s really cool.

4414

Yeah. Except when they comment on something that I might have a little ability in (A 30 2h), “The gods gave you two hands and you seem fit to use them both to shed blood. A true Nord if there ever was one.”

Uhh, no. See this Shield of Ysgramor and the Glass Sword? Comment on that. Everyone here basically worships him as is, and I can see through this sword as I’m shoving it down your throat.

4415

To pull the discussion of archery out of the UI thread, I did some testing after realizing how often I was missing long range shots and…

That shows a noticeable (at long ranges) targeting error of the crosshair. Actual aim is a couple of pixels to the left of the center of the crosshair.

You can see in the left image that I’m clearly targeting its head. In the right shot shows where my arrows land, clearly missing the whole target even if my vertical aim was correct.

4416

I’ll have to take your word on that, I’m not following that image at all.

4417

Isn’t that inevitable with a projectile fired from one side of your body? It doesn’t know at what distance it should intersect the centre point of your crosshair, as the crosshair doesn’t have a particular position in the world.

4418

I assume you did not take the breeze into account? ;)

4419

Yeah I didn’t realize how confusing it was until after I made it. I shouldn’t have taken the left image in 3rd person view.

Basically, the blue arrow is just showing where my crosshair is over the target. The next picture the blue arrow is shown to mark the crosshair, arrows on the ground, and my (barely visible) character in the distance.

Yeah this does make sense.

It’s more of a demonstration to show that:

  1. It’s tough as hell to hit anything at that range, as it should be, and
  2. You have to compensate for this if you are going to attempt to shoot something at that range
4420

That was my first thought as well. The horizontal offset could be due to windage.