Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Interview
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Q: What aspect of the game has been the most successful so far?
A: It's tough to define the terms of success when the game hasn't been released yet. Right now I'd have to give the nod to our phenomenal environments. The art direction of the game and level of quality our artists are churning out is unparalleled in the industry today. The full-scale forest environments we're doing are atmospherically beyond anything we've been able to do in games to date. We're not only about the bright and sunny, though we've got some fantastic dungeon environments as well. Caves have a real dark, dank, wet feeling, with stalactites and stalagmites everywhere you look, and even small shafts of light penetrating down from cracks in the rock above.
We've also got dilapidated forts, ancient Elven ruins, and a host of other environments. And of course, if those don't totally satisfy your appetite for treasure hunting and monster killing (or sneaking!), there's always the plane of Oblivion itself. We've got a real crack team of designers dedicated to building our levels this time around. We've got people who have done level work for Unreal 2, some Doom 3-engine projects, and a ton of other games. I think our dungeon design is going to be a big evolution over what we had in Morrowind.