Skyrim - Hi-Res Screens

Nerevarine said:

I would say that similar to why I enjoy any of the Elder Scrolls games and Fallout 3, I really enjoy the exploration and the overall atmosphere of the game world. I always feel compelled to simply explore the world in Elder Scrolls games; it becomes my "main quest" in a way, and it satisfies my desire to take a seemingly endless adventure in a foreign world. Random walks throughout the map just seem to yield new adventures and more sights to see. There's just something about randomly exploring the Elder Scrolls universe that captivates me more than exploration typically does in other open world games.

I can see why the lack of a good story would be off-putting, but the Elder Scrolls is one of the few series of games where I don't need a story to feel like my character is on an epic adventure; the open-ended nature of the game gives a player the freedom to almost create their character's own story. In a way, the random experiences created by exploration become a unique story by itself - if you use some imagination - and because of the open-ended nature of the game, no two "stories" will be the same. There is simply so much to do and see outside of the main storyline that a player could invest 100 hours into an Elder Scrolls game without ever touching the main story and still feel like they were part of an epic journey (if the sandbox experience and lack of direction appeals to them).

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Couldn`t put it better. I`d just sticky this whole post, for the endless future arguments

DArtagnan said:

The entire SPECIAL system, which is pretty much entirely from Fallout.

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..yeah, because that ruleset is so special that no one else could've came up with it (or stolen it and called it something else if they'd wanted to do that)?

Nah, i'm gonna continue to be a little bit hyped. In each of their games they've improved the combat, it sucked in Morrowind, was pretty bad to decent in Oblivion, was good or even very good in FO3 imo.. I'm expecting good or even great combat (at least it sounds great from what we know) + nice adventuring / free roam RPG'ing with awesome atmosphere in a "living, breathing world" (at least more so than other RPG's except for the older Gothic's or Ultima7) = win.

GothicGothicness said:

Certainly everyone is entitled to their own opinion. However may I ask which aspects of the Oblivion gameplay it is that you enjoyed? ( I am speaking about the vanilla version )

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I enjoyed almost every aspect for the first 20 hours. Then over each of the next 20hour increments certain aspects became more annoying until now, after well over 100 hours, the bad parts become such a bother as to make the game unplayable in the vanilla version. Even still, there are good gameplay elements in Oblivion I recognize even though I can't enjoy the game anymore. Stealth is fun, faction advancement is pretty good, fast travel is essential, combat is pretty exciting, and the quest system is a completely valid way to do rpg quests (despite the heavy criticism from people who like a different way).

I would love to, but keep in mind that I used mods to remove level-scaling and de-randomize the loot. Other then that, I kept Oblivion very vanilla with no drastic or dramatic changes.

…There's just something about randomly exploring the Elder Scrolls universe that captivates me more than exploration typically does in other open world games. ….

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So basically the main thing you enjoy is the world simulation? and exploring it?

And of course you still needed the essential mods....

To judge the engine some more things than visuals are important. One thing that always frustated me was the loading screen when entering any building or a new level inside one, I hate it !

Besides that, all indoor scenaries (rooms, dungeons) in oblivion are arranged in rectangles, I always feel running inside a construction kit.

And to those who compare a modded oblivion to other games: It's nice to have mod tools, but I would prefer a game that doesn't need that much modding, its up to the developer to do this. If I see how much mods are published for oblivion, I do not see they have an open heart for modders, but that many users are unhappy with the vanilla version.

I don't like the loading of interiors either, i hope they fix that.

Bethesda doesnt have an "open heart" for modders? Explain.

Mods doesnt just fix bugs, but in a lot of ways adds to the game (new quests, new loot, better or altered graphics etc). Personally i rather play a game i can customize as much as possible. Devs only has a certain amount of time to finish the game, mods are completely without such restrictions and can add to what they didnt have time or manpower for. It would be quite impossible to make a game as big as a fully modded Oblivion or Morrowind with 200+ mods

Rooms are arranged like rectangles? How should it be arranged?

GothicGothicness said:

So basically the main thing you enjoy is the world simulation? and exploring it?

And of course you still needed the essential mods….

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A lot of did enjoy the world exploration...hell I even sank 100 hours into the vanilla Oblivion. The mods allowed many of us to go back and explore the game again with some fresh content, so that was a bonus. The modding on the game is outstanding because it was a feature of the game, it wasn't something someone had to hack into the game to do. I would love to hear which open rpg on the same scale as oblivion did it as well?

I feel like stirring the pot today

There are many, many Gothic worshippers on this site. Most of them are jealous of the success of Bethesda Softworks over their defunct crpg. Obviously Bethesda knows how to build a successful selling crpg and Europe doesn't. Bethesda's games sell great in Europe, but European developer's games don't sell well in the States. Why?

Some Europeans like to think it's because American's only like simple games, though of course Might and Magic, Wizardry, Baldur's Gate, Ultimas, etc. all came from North America so that's not it.

Why don't European games sell here? The biggest reason is delay. A lot of people like to play games when they first come out and everybody else is playing them. Most of the time, unlike Bethesda, European developers take over a year, sometimes two!, to bring the game to an American market. I'm sorry we don't want to play hand-me-downs. We're certainly not going to pay full price for a game that's been out for a year or more in Europe. DKS is a great example of this. This is a very good game that waited till much too late to make an impact here. I can't tell you how huge of an issue this is for non-fanatics. I'm not sure why Europe can't figure out the logic of simultaneous release. I can see waiting a month for localization, but six months to a year? Boo hoo, we can't find a publisher. Tired of hearing that lame excuse too. Nobody cares.

The second reason is marketing. Hype sells. Europe likes to be extremely frugal with advertising and that's not going to cut it in the States. You must get in our face because we have thousands of other things grabbing our attention. We're a different breed of buyer and we're not buying anything out of loyalty until you've got a bonafied hit. The bottom line; you've got to spend money to make money. If a third of your total budget isn't reserved for marketing, then you'll fail to make an impact.

The final piece is support. Bethesda gets patches out in a month or so. Some European developers don't patch at all and if they do it's six months later. Again, this just isn't going to cut it. You can't delay the game to Americans so that you can patch and you can't take 6 months to patch your product after release.

bemushroomed said:

Bethesda doesnt have an "open heart" for modders? Explain.

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Hard to explain, I just feel that they release uncompleted games plus mod tools, so modders can do the work of the developers, and in case of Oblivion many bugfixing mods do this. In addition, without mods, Oblivion looks just ugly to me, I get bleeding eyes from its lowres textures. So I think they do not release these tools to allow the extension of their games, but to protect themselfs from angry users, imho.
A game that has that much mods is not a game with good modding support, but a game with many flaws.

bemushroomed said:

Rooms are arranged like rectangles? How should it be arranged?

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Ok, most rooms are rectangular. But there are more variations than 4 even sized walls placed in 90° beside/below/above a same dimensioned room, …
But I've more problems with dungeons/caves, they all feel like designed on squared paper, not natural, just synthetic, not comparable to i.e. Gothic, Risen, …
I do not know the mod tools, but I think this is a restriction of their engine as well, always place even-sized tiles side by side, no option for large rounded surfaces …

bemushroomed said:

I don't like the loading of interiors either, i hope they fix that.

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Does current console generation have open world games without loading screens? Most of the console games are corridor shooters. I think its spefically a limitation related to the small amount of memory on current console genertion so its not fixable.

zakhal said:

Does current console generation have open world games without loading screens? Most of the console games are corridor shooters. I think its spefically a limitation related to the small amount of memory on current console genertion so its not fixable.

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It just a case of will. A good engine may compensate this by implementing different level export algorithms, who cares if the console will have load screens and the PC version not. In my experience (as a developer for 20 years now) its just laziness or too short time frames, nothing more. Same for highres textures. It would be that simple to design levels in highres and downsize them for consoles, I will never understand any reason to not do this …

I don't really agree. You can tell a game is using Unreal Engine 3 the moment you see it, same with id Tech 4. Engines can often be instantly recognizeable despite artistic differences.

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Rubbish, you're recognizing the game, not the renderer. Render a generic sci-fi interior with generic alien/soldier guys and and the same shaders turned on and the differences will be minor.

The xbox 360 has a fixed architecture. As devs get used to it they will be able to bleed out small enhancements, but it's going to be nothing like the technology generational jump of Unreal 2 to Unreal 3, because those engines were designed to take advantage of different generations of hardware.

blackhobbit said:

Hard to explain, I just feel that they release uncompleted games plus mod tools, so modders can do the work of the developers……

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Do you really believe that they decided to release an incomplete game and let the modders do the remaining work?

One of the major complains about the game have been (and rightfully so in my eyes) the level scaling, and several mods change that. Level scaling was there by design, bcit wasn't something they didn't know how to get around, or didn't have the time to get around leaving it to the modders to fix. They thought it was a good idea. But they gave those who didn't like it the necessary tools to change it.

And, frankly do we know how many of the players were unhappy with it? According to Wikipedia 1.6 million units had shipped by the end of april 2006. 9 months later they had sold more than 3 million copies. It doesn't say anything about the quality of the game, but is sure doesn't sound like there were that many players unhappy with it. I'm pretty sure that those of us who discuss the game publicly are in the minority. The huge majority of gamers don't tell, so we really don't know what they think. Except for the fact that they kept on buying it, or as we like to say: voting with their wallets.

I do not know the mod tools, but I think this is a restriction of their engine as well, always place even-sized tiles side by side, no option for large rounded surfaces …

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Like in the imperial city?

I do repeat myself when under stress I do repeat myslf when under stress.... To those who can: delete.

blackhobbit said:

Hard to explain, I just feel that they release uncompleted games plus mod tools, so modders can do the work of the developers……

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Do you really believe that they decided to release an incomplete game and let the modders do the remaining work?

One of the major complains about the game have been (and rightfully so in my eyes) the level scaling, and several mods change that. Level scaling was there by design, they thought it was a good idea, it wasn't something they didn't know how to get around, leaving it to the modders to fix. But they gave those who didn't like it the necessary tools to change it.

And, frankly do we know how many of the players were unhappy with it? According to Wikipedia 1.6 million units had shipped by the end of april 2006. 9 months later they had sold more than 3 million copies. It doesn't say anything about the quality of the game, but is sure doesn't sound like there were that many players unhappy with it. I'm pretty sure that those of us who discuss the game publicly are in the minority. The huge majority of gamers don't tell, so we really don't know what they think. Except for the fact that they kept on buying it, or as we like to say: voting with their wallets.

pibbur said:

Do you really believe that they decided to release an incomplete game and let the modders do the remaining work?

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I do not think they decide to do so, I assume they do less care about quality. I do not talk about the mods that enhance the game, I talk about mods that fix problems or bring the game to a better experience (i.e. gfx mods), which is imho a task for the developer.

blackhobbit said:

It just a case of will. A good engine may compensate this by implementing different level export algorithms, who cares if the console will have load screens and the PC version not. In my experience (as a developer for 20 years now) its just laziness or too short time frames, nothing more. Same for highres textures. It would be that simple to design levels in highres and downsize them for consoles, I will never understand any reason to not do this …

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I agree that its stupid since textures are propably highres in the first place so why not use them. But it seems like a rule that the only thing pc-conversion usually gets is better resolution and anti-alias. And perhaps som physx effects if nvidias pays them to do it. It would be interesting to ask som game dev reasons behind this, but most likely they dont just care. PC is not their main platform.

crpgnut said:

There are many, many Gothic worshippers on this site. Most of them are jealous of the success of Bethesda Softworks over their defunct crpg. Obviously Bethesda knows how to build a successful selling crpg and Europe doesn't. Bethesda's games sell great in Europe, but European developer's games don't sell well in the States.

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This does nothing say about the quality of the game nor the underlying engine, only a good distribution and promotion team.

blackhobbit said:

I do not think they decide to do so, I assume they do less care about quality. I do not talk about the mods that enhance the game, I talk about mods that fix problems or bring the game to a better experience (i.e. gfx mods), which is imho a task for the developer.

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I agree with the bugfixes. Foir the other issues, I suppose it's about priorities, And different opinions. What's important for the experience? To me the graphics in Oblivion is more than good enough (as I've said elsewhere: As long as graphics are good enough, and I think Oblivion is far beyond that, I'm fine, doesn't affect my experience at all). So I'm happy with them spending their time on other things.

And here we are I think at the heart of it: There's no consensus, but a lot of different, and partially incompatible opinions about what the developers should or shouldn't have included in the game.

zakhal said:

I agree that its stupid since textures are propably highres in the first place so why not use them. But it seems like a rule that the only thing pc-conversion usually gets is better resolution and anti-alias. And perhaps som physx effects if nvidias pays them to do it. It would be interesting to ask som game dev reasons behind this, but most likely they dont just care. PC is not their main platform.

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I agree to your post too. There's only a minority of players who know a PC version can look better, and they don't care about minorities. Besides that, this minority will buy the game anyway, as they play all games above a minimum acceptance level, as they are FREAKS, like me .

GothicGothicness said:

So basically the main thing you enjoy is the world simulation? and exploring it?

And of course you still needed the essential mods….

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No, not "world simulation." I also liked the core gameplay, especially the stealth, as that was implemented pretty well I thought. And I've always liked the Elder Scrolls skill system, too. It's different, and not everyone likes it, but I enjoy unique ideas. But everything I liked about the gameplay only enhanced the exploration, and fun exploration is a pretty big deal for any open-world game, especially one the size of Morrowind or Oblivion.

I did play vanilla Oblivion for 50 hours or so before modding the game a bit, and I still enjoyed it in its vanilla state, but I thought that I should mention it because I spent more time playing with a few mods. Perhaps I shouldn't have mentioned that I even used mods at all if that becomes the focus. And "essential mods?" More like extremely basic mods. I didn't overhaul the game at all.

As for the argument that Bethesda makes incomplete games on purpose so that modders can "fix it" for them: I really don't think that is a fair statement at all. Companies should be praised for allowing mods, not criticized. Bethesda is one of the last companies around that even allows full-scale modding, and I think that's pretty cool of any company to do. People like to say that modders "fix" Bethesda's games, but modders only "fix" the game by adding something new or changing the game to fit your own perception of how the game was supposed to be. So when someone points to a mod and says that it "fixes" the game in some way, it only "fixes" what an individual player might not like (not what is "broken") on a subjective basis. For example, I used a mod that removed level scaling. I didn't like the level scaling, but that doesn't mean that it's "broken" or needed to be fixed. It was just something that I personally didn't enjoy, and mods can make the game more appealing to each individual's tastes. I think it's pretty cool to be able to customize an RPG that can tailor the game more to my tastes.

Also, a great mod isn't possible without a solid base game to work on. There is no amount of modding that can make a game like Arcania interesting to me, for example, regardless of how good the modders are, because the base game isn't good. Nehrim also wouldn't have been possible without a solid base game to work on. I found Oblivion to be a solid base game, and I was able to implement a few changes that made the game more suitable to my personal tastes - which was pretty much vanilla just without level scaling or randomized loot along with a few very minor mods that I tried out just for fun. I didn't feel like any of the mods I used "fixed" the game.