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My post in the news section was too long, but I hate deleting stuff. It's like I'm writing on Twitter or something. OK, in reply to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim - The Dark Brotherhood Returns :

Bethesda's next entry in The Elder Scrolls series has a spread in the latest issue of Dutch magazine Power Unlimited, and thanks to the guys at Gaming Everything, we have a pretty good idea of what sort of information is revealed within. The best news I see below is that The Dark Brotherhood will be making a return in Skyrim, with the most concerning news being the "level lock" imposed on dungeons after entering them:

Oh man, Power Unlimited! That was my first gaming magazine ever. I think I won a subscription to their magazine, back in '92 or something. I didn't have a computer or a console, but I loved reading about games.

“Low-Fantasy” (game does not look as vibrant, vivid as Morrowind, more like Oblivion)

I wouldn't call Morrowind vibrant, but at least it had its own, distinct sort of fantasy thing going on. Kind of like Shivering Isles.

- Game is as big as Oblivion

Flash-based inventory

Using high OSI level programming languages for ingame stuff is something I really don't like. It's a waste of resources. They used dhtml in Oblivion and now they're going to use Flash? I suppose everyone will run a powerful PC sooner or later, but this is just lazy work.

- The Dark Brotherhood is back

No complaints. I liked the Morag Tong though, which was sanctioned and had its own, distinct non-Imperial style. I was hoping Skyrim would have its own equivalent, but it seems like we're headed for another low-fantasy game. If I see more 'Mithril', I'm going to Bethesda and kick someone's butt.

- Special animations for sneak kills with daggers

That's good news, but they need to be careful they don't look too identical, because that makes the action repetitive real fast.

Low fantasy, more like Oblivion and not morrowind? I for one liked the dark setting in Morro, even cliffhangers. Mostly because there were alot to choose from at any given moment, as opposed to only meeting minotaur lords and full-glass-armor bandits in Oblivion after lvl xx..

Also while enchanted armor in Morro was annoying at times, at maxed graphics settings Oblivion was sparkling and shiny.. Bright lights, colorfull grass, everything reflecting light so badly, as if they were the lights source aswell.. Everything was too.. what's the word.. Ah yes, flashy (hidden pun)
In a word : BLAERGHHH! (mount & blade quote)

We cannot expect a touching, surprising and pioneer main storyline, because this was never TES strong point, but it still can be epic (like in Morr) or transparent and shallow (Part four)

Dark Brotherhood returns.. Well, Dark Brotherhood appeared in almost all (all?) previous TES parts, so it's not much of a news.. But it shows that Bethesda has read the countless messages stating, that side quests suck EXCEPT for DB. (i for one liked a few thief ones too)

"level lock" imposed on dungeons after entering them

I wonder what this could mean. Because i swear if i see another type of enemies instantly vanishi from the face of the planet, and get replaced by some stronger ones the second i gain a level, with bandits finding endless stashes of better armors and weapons, i'll uninstal this b*** and throw away, just like i did with its prequel (yes. )

- Game is as big as Oblivion

Im confussed. Was Oblivion realy that big? I didn't notice it at all.. I was fast travelling.. Why? - you ask - BECAUSE of the level scaled enemies and flashy, bright and colorful areas naturally
But yes, Ob was quite big, but each region was looking exactly the same.

In short, the more TES5:Skyrim will be based on any game that is NOT oblivion, the better game it will be.

Ahoy

STworca, in Cyrodil on horseback you could pretty much run through the length of the country in 20 minutes, which I guess would be the equivalent of the size of any decent real-life city's downtown area. Make that 3-5 hours and you have a country the size of Holland. Make it 2 Days and we're talking about France.

It's an old/moot discussion point, but TES Arena had enough landmass to fill up an actual continent. They've done country rather than continent scaled games since, but I'm not sure at what point someone thought making things 20x smaller was a very good idea.

Hmm OK.

No level cap sounds very interesting. Perks ? Sounds interesting, too. Magic is like Oblivion ? Sigh. So I take it that its still rather primitive and unbalanced. Oh well you cant get everything. Dragonslaying makes you stronger and transports the soul of the dragon to you ? Hmm, interesting. In any case, sounds like they're trying to finally get a rulesystem that is fun to play and [url="http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Efficient_Leveling"]not one of these masochisms[/url].

Dungeons locked after you entered them. Now why exactly would that be a good idea ? Weird.

So after they added action elements in Oblivion (that I hated A LOT btw) they add adventure elements in Skyrim ? Oh well.

Rest sounds solid. Fast travel, 5 cities, 130 dungeons, many dragons, dark brotherhood, thats all fine and dandy.

Tenser wrote:Dungeons locked after you entered them. Now why exactly would that be a good idea ? Weird.

That really should say 'Monster/Item level locked after 1st entry into Dungeon'. I've been wondering about it too. I think they wish to make it less obvious that there is levelled content in the world, but I can think of more effective ways to make happen. It's still weird though, even if it works. They can just revamp the levelled system like so many mods have done in the past.

Tricky wrote:STworca, in Cyrodil on horseback you could pretty much run through the length of the country in 20 minutes, which I guess would be the equivalent of the size of any decent real-life city's downtown area. Make that 3-5 hours and you have a country the size of Holland. Make it 2 Days and we're talking about France.

It's an old/moot discussion point, but TES Arena had enough landmass to fill up an actual continent. They've done country rather than continent scaled games since, but I'm not sure at what point someone thought making things 20x smaller was a very good idea.

As i said, i was fast travelling anyway, to spare myself the horrors Mmmm TES Arena.. While it would be awesome if these maps would return, keep in mind that with the current graphics the game would require 10 blu-ray discs of terrain textures, unless it would be made of the same tiles over and over. So that's the trap that open-exploration games ran into. Bigger world = Moar .bmp's or whatever format they put the textures in.

They've done country rather than continent scaled games since

I actually checked out the time it took to get from Anvil to Bruma and then down to Leywiin on foot, and it worked out that Cyrodil in Oblivion was about the size of Devon. So I'd say county sized rather than country sized, and Devon isn't the biggest county even in England!

galraen wrote:I actually checked out the time it took to get from Anvil to Bruma and then down to Leywiin on foot, and it worked out that Cyrodil in Oblivion was about the size of Devon. So I'd say county sized rather than country sized, and Devon isn't the biggest county even in England!

I actually meant city sized (only country by Bethsy's definition), but you get the drift of where I was going by the rest of my post. I always got the feeling it was just about the same size as the province of Utrecht, Holland.

Stworca wrote:would require 10 blu-ray discs of terrain textures, unless it would be made of the same tiles over and over. So that's the trap that open-exploration games ran into. Bigger world = Moar .bmp's or whatever format they put the textures in.

Reusing textures and, more importantly, shaders can really reduce the need for different textures. You probably wouldn't be able to tell the difference nowadays. The clearest example of this would be [url="http://www.theprodukkt.com/kkrieger"]KKrieger[/url]. It's a game that's been around since Quake or so. Zipped, it has never been bigger than 100 or so kilobytes, but it has a large playing map, enemies, architecture and music. It just makes really clever use of DirectX libraries, shaders and mathematical whatnots to keep the size of the whole thing down.

It's certainly not impossible, but it's just much easier and cheaper to buy a few licenses and smack them all together.

Flash based inventory? Ugh. Well, maybe they're going for something where you don't have to spend a lot of time in the inventory and dealing with menus. Since you can toggle off the hud apparently, maybe a flash inventory won't be that annoying.

I don't know how I feel about the game being as large as Oblivion. On one hand, Skyrim on the official map is actually quite a bit smaller than Cyrodiil, so they could have been justified in making the world smaller. On the other hand, I felt Oblivion was small. But why? Well, the view distance made it seem small, and there wasn't much variation in the landscape. It looks like they're improving on both of these.

As for Morrowind comparisons, I actually think they are taking more inspiration from that game than Oblivion. The art direction is unique, they're going on about the lore, talking about creature habitats, and there's even a new piece up on game informer's website where they talk about the menu system, and in the screencap you can see the character as "Bendu Olo" a Dark Elf.... the character they used in pre-release Morrowind concepts and screenshots (yes I know more about ES than is healthy).

Above everything else let's hope that[url="http://www.cad-comic.com/comics/799236285c1729jev2s5e7b91488.jpg"]this[/url]won't be the case with Skyrim.

Stworca wrote:Above everything else let's hope that[url="http://www.cad-comic.com/comics/799236285c1729jev2s5e7b91488.jpg"]this[/url]won't be the case with Skyrim.

LOL! Allies were never a large part of the gameplay, but the thought of the old AI trying to follow me through steep fjords and icey glaciers is a little unsettling.

Tricky wrote:LOL! Allies were never a large part of the gameplay, but the thought of the old AI trying to follow me through steep fjords and icey glaciers is a little unsettling.

Not a big part, true.. Except final stage of main storyline

Demon's! Let's slay them and save the c..
Argh you m'f'n idiot, stop jumping in front o...
STOP RIGHT THERE YOU CRIMINAL SCUM!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRGGHHHH

The only challenge I ever found in Oblivion was trying to keep those morons in Kvatch from dying - so yes I would say allies were a big part of the game.

endboss wrote:The only challenge I ever found in Oblivion was trying to keep those morons in Kvatch from dying - so yes I would say allies were a big part of the game.

Sadly that was made almost impossible if you use Fran or Oscuros mods, turning up at Kvatch at 3rd level to be confronted by Flame Atronachs and Clanfears really does make keeping them alive a serious challenge.

There was a way around the morons. Go down the mountain/hill on the opposite site, then circle around the lava. You can reach the tower without ever getting being forced into dialogue with them, giving you ample time to clear the place out. After that it's just a matter of backtracking and picking the morons up, and climbing to the top again.

As for the low-fantasy aspects..

I am starting to wonder if that's just a whimsical observation on behalf of the people who wrote the article. Yes, Oblivion definitely was that. The thing is that more than a few sketches are looking a bit too specifically Scandinavian to be considered low-fantasy. That isn't even my observation, but one made by my girlfriend who majored in Norwegian Cultural History and Folklore.

We still need a lot more screenshots and sketches to be sure, but for now I'll just state that I reconsidering my earlier conclusion. We might very well be still heading for a game that looked as distinct as Morrowind did.

Tricky wrote:There was a way around the morons. Go down the mountain/hill on the opposite site, then circle around the lava. You can reach the tower without ever getting being forced into dialogue with them, giving you ample time to clear the place out. After that it's just a matter of backtracking and picking the morons up, and climbing to the top again.

As for the low-fantasy aspects..

I am starting to wonder if that's just a whimsical observation on behalf of the people who wrote the article. Yes, Oblivion definitely was that. The thing is that more than a few sketches are looking a bit too specifically Scandinavian to be considered low-fantasy. That isn't even my observation, but one made by my girlfriend who majored in Norwegian Cultural History and Folklore.

We still need a lot more screenshots and sketches to be sure, but for now I'll just state that I reconsidering my earlier conclusion. We might very well be still heading for a game that looked as distinct as Morrowind did.

"So, tell me your interests and we can help pick out an adequate major for you. Do you like business, economics, literature, politics, science..."

"I'm actually quite fond of Norwegian history and folklore."

It tends to happen when you live there. Moving on.

Really? We don't have a bunch of people majoring in American history over here. It's usually general history with maybe a specialization. I don't think we even have American folklore courses.

No, I am making all of this up on the spot.

I knew you'd crack sooner or later.