I can’t say I’ve ever heard or seen anyone complain about that aspect of Morrowind.
Oblivion gets a lot of crap when compared to Morrowind, but a lot of people forget the elephant in the room - Morrowind’s combat was a steaming pile of frustration (until you discovered the enchantment glitch and became an unstoppable god) - spell failures, sword swings missing, getting your ass beat down and being helplessly pummelled (my first death in the game was due to this - those rats in the basement ate me alive - hardly an epic start). Oblivion’s combat was much improved, but it introduced flaws of its own.
If Beth can learn from their mistakes - and the improved levelling in Fallout 3 demonstrate that they can - Skyrim may well be the best in the series, with all the series strengths and the flaws ironed out. Still annoyed about fewer skills, though…
Where did you read about this? Did they say why they changed it? Were the animals different before they went idyllic-forest?
I don’t think he meant *Obilvion *itself started off with jungles and they changed it during development - at least I’ve never heard that. I’m fairly sure they went Middle Earth from the get go - the version of the game I bought came with a making off DVD where they show how much outdoors scouting they did to get the forests just right and natural, hand-crafting the rocks and so forth.
But Cyrodiil is described as a jungle in the in-game books and travelogues you can read in Daggerfall, *Morrowind *and amusingly enough *Oblivion *as well (they just copy/pasted many of the books).
PGE 1stE (and NPC) describe Cyrodiil as;
“It is the largest region of the continent, and most is endless jungle. Its center, the grassland of the Nibenay Valley, is enclosed by an equatorial rain forest and broken up by rivers.”
So many gamers expecting this with Imperial Legions marching through every now and again instead found this. Quite the shock - though from screenshots so far Skyrim looks suitably Skyrim-ish.
This is handwaved away in the obscure text “From the Many Headed Talos”;
“‘You have suffered for me to win this throne, and I see how you hate jungle. Let me show you the power of Talos Stormcrown, born of the North, where my breath is long winter. I breathe now, in royalty, and reshape this land which is mine. I do this for you, Red Legions, for I love you.’”
Mankar Cameron references it in game in the Commentaries on the Mysterium Xarxes;
"CHIM. Those who know it can reshape the land. Witness the home of the Red King Once Jungled. "
Additionally, each enemy type had a minimum level and a maximum level. If the vault dweller was of lower level than the enemy’s minimum, the enemy would be set to the minimum. If the vault dweller was a higher level than the maximum level of the enemy, it would be set to the maximum. Otherwise it was set to match your level.
Also, scaling occurred when the enemy is first created. Which means you could enter the deathclaw caves at a low level (say to get the endurance bobblehead early) and immediately leave. Later, when you decide to actually take that section on, the deathclaws would be at their lowest possible level, regardless of your level.
Note that the levels all get reset if and when a batch of enemies refreshes. (E.g. Bethesda HQ would get higher level raiders if you returned at a higher level after wiping them all out the first time.)
The real problem with Fallout 3-type scaling was that the monsters got ridiculously tough and penetrated all your armor (such that it was useless), but didn’t get any more interesting. In fact, it got more dull over time, because the enemies just took too much to kill.
New Vegas handles this better. There is some scaling, but it’s within strong limits, always based on location, and features enugh enemy variety that it never becomes completely predictable (the numebr of times I’ve gotten surprised when a baddie pulled out a grenade or Laser RCW…)
A few more details have emerged.
Key points;
- Perks are present, and include enabling a mace to ignore armour, axes causing bleeding and swords landing more critical strikes.
- Although classes are gone, birthsigns and overarching ‘nebula’ take their place - one for Warrior, Mage and Thief. All of these were signs in their own right in Oblivion (IIRC, Warrior boosted your Strength and Endurance attributes, Thief your Luck, Speed and Agility, Mage - my favoured sign - +50 magicka), so how exactly this’ll work is unclear. As you pick your perks in these three classes, the sky changes.
- Block has been completely revamped - it’s all about timing now, holding the block button bashes your shield forward. You have you block to meet the attack.
- Staggering is back, in a big way. Given how annoying this was in Oblivion (Clannfears, Daedroth and Xivilai could make you their bitch my staggering even godlike characters), this is unwelcome news to me. I think it’ll hand an advantage to characters geared towards ranged attacks.
- Speaking of which, archery overhauled - a lot more deadly, averting the ‘annoying arrows’ trope. For balance, arrows are rarer and more expensive, and attacks take longer.
- Magic works more like the plasmids in Bioshock, wielding in hand - can’t hold a weapon like Oblivion. Elemental spells overhauled - fire does the most raw damage, shock drains magic and frost slows and drains stamina. You can use a ‘ward’ spell as a shield in combat with other magic users.
My optimism becomes more and more cautious with each new set of info.
I wonder exactly what they mean about blocking. At first it sounds almost like shieldless blocking in Mount & Blade; more engaging, but virtually useless when fighting multiple opponents.
I hope they reconcile the perk system with their classless approach. Am I going to be able to eventually get good at magic even if all of my early perks are for melee skills? If not, will there be a way to respec my perks?
What will the menus be like on the PC version? How many items will I be able to hotkey? How many items will I be able to see in my inventory at once?
I really like the news about stealth and bows, though. I thought that archery was quite well done in Oblivion until high levels where you have to fight ogres with bigger and bigger health pools. At that point you pretty much have to use poison to significantly harm an enemy (side note: frost salts + vampire dust + spiddal stick + imp gall = crazy good poison). Their new vision for archery sound like it will fix that. Its good to hear that daggers are getting a boost, too; in Oblivion there wasn’t much practical reason to use any weapon other than a longsword even for sneak attacks.
The news about bows is probably my favourite overhaul; my bow characters in Oblivion bordered on the ridiculous at any level; at lower levels awkwardly waddling backwards turning bandits and woodland creatures into pincushions and doing the same to Ogres and Daedra at higher levels.
Presumably, Oblivion and Morrowind style, the menus and overall GUI will be the same on PC and console, the number of hotkeys (or ‘favourites’) being the variable. Apparently it’s all been streamlined and ‘apple-ised’, which is good news - the previous games had endless clunky menu systems.
I think it sounds kind of like Demon’s Souls, where you had to time your blocks in order to intercept the enemy attack. (But you also got a damage reduction for just holding it up, but if you wanted to actually block and counter the blow, you needed to intercept the blow rather than just catching it.) I imagine it will be split in two like that because timing the blocking against, say, arrows makes no sense.
Q&A with Todd Howard came out today.
Key points!
- No spears - boo!
- Blade and blunt skills from Oblivion are gone. Weapon skills are two-handed, one-handed and archery. The perks are what differentiate between weapon types (sword, axe etc), not the skill itself.
- Possibility of werewolves/vampirism?
- Alchemy is in stealth skills?! Smithing confirmed. Umming and aahing about spellcrafting - if it isn’t in the game I’ll go mental. All my commonly used spells in Oblivion were custom.
- ~280 perks, including ranks.
- The classless systems essentially works like the first dungeon in Oblivion, before Baurus asks you what class you’d like to be.
- Facial gen overhauled; pick from presets then tinker from there.
- Dragons are like a mix of a ‘Big Daddy and helicopter from Half-Life 2’. Multiple types, but no dragon mounts.
- Companions extremely likely.
- ‘Radiant story’ aspect downplayed a bit, more like favours than full-blown quests, some quests have no ‘radiant’ aspect at all. You’ll be given a differently dungeon for a quest and things like that. Given how hyped ‘radiant AI’ was in Oblivion, I’m not expecting too much from it.
- Factions are back. Some factions are returning.
- Skyrim promises to be more unique than Oblivion’s generic fantasy setting and dungeons that all look the same; ruins vary in age.
- Skyrim is about the size of Oblivion in terms of landmass, but with more mountains. There’s five or six regions with different terrain types, like tundra or glacier.
- HUD ‘comes and goes as needed’ - there’s always a compass, but health, stamina and magicka only pops up in combat.
- Greybeards on High Hrothgar find out about an event that occurs between you and a dragon which confirms you as Dragonborn, then call out ‘Dovahkiin’ to you, shaking the mountains. You climb 7000 steps up the Throat of the World. You start off in prison again.
- ‘Max level’ is Oblivion style, not Fallout style. You level a lot faster, especially in the beginning - due to the perk system. I ended up at level 47 in Oblivion, Skyrim is aiming to end around level 50 but could go as high as 75 (!).
New Trailer featuring gameplay is out!
::Faints::
Max von Sydow was a nice touch, as was the callback to the original Morrowind theme music.
Can’t wait to get my hands on this!
Can hardly wait!
My only complaint is a number of games are being released around the same time that I very much want to play as well (Mass Effect 3, Batman: Arkham asylum 2).
I need to plan some vacation time around then!
head asplode
The full main theme is bloody great too, nice to hear a Nordic twist on the Elder Scrolls theme.
sigh. I’m gonna have to play this, aren’t I ?
Though I wonder what kind of nuclear powered gaming rig will be required to run something so purdy. Have they published minimum and recommended specs yet ?
It’s meant to run on consoles man. What gaming PC now a day’s can’t do that?
Argh!
It is Games For Windows Live bullshit!
Damnit…I swore I’d never buy another GFWL title and now I’m going to probably have to eat those words.
Damn damn damn…
Why oh why do they do this to us? Make super awesome game (probably…Bethesda rarely disappoints). Fuck it up with shitty DRM.
Just buy it then download the torrent and crack. Best of both worlds.
ETA: I’m gonna get banned for this, aren’t I ?