Skyrim - News Roundup

I'm not sure if I'm in the minority on this, but a great UI is really important to me. And games played on a PC must take advantage of keyboard/mouse and resolutions supported by the PC.
You might be in a minority, but if so you're not alone. Loved Morrowind, played it to death -- a few times -- but never made it more than ten hours into Oblivion across the numerous times I've tried. The repetitive gates... I can handle that. The flat characters... no real deterrent there, either. Even a nonsensical story line... not the point of the game. But that interface was just atrocious. A button press and at least three mouse clicks (and probably some scrolling as well) to find the item I want? That's garbage.

Oblivion was such a waste of potential fun for me it was infuriating; I could SEE the game lurking in there, could even experience it, but that damned interface kept intruding with every little thing I wanted to do, and eventually I just threw up my hands and said "Screw it". It wasn't worth the continual frustration.

Have already decided that unless they can be bothered to create a good keyboard/mouse interface with this game, Skyrim is a game that I'm going to skip. Regretfully, perhaps, since I enjoy the whole Elder Scrolls style of game and the lore they've made for the setting, but I'm tired of fighting with software because someone couldn't be arsed to make a workable interface.
 
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You might be in a minority, but if so you're not alone. Loved Morrowind, played it to death — a few times — but never made it more than ten hours into Oblivion
At least you made 10 hours on Oblivion...I couldn't put that much into ....But i will buy Skyrim...and well if I don't like it maybe my kids will...or they will get a another trade-in...
 
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This fear of consoles robbing the potential of a theoretical primarily-PC version of a game are not entirely unfounded if we focus on Oblivion. That was an annoying UI - but the core problems of the game and the most significant barriers to immersion had nothing to do with "consolitis" at all. Dialog, setting and story decisions (as in the rarity with which it seemed that anyone was acting like it was Armageddon despite the giant gate to Hell wreathed in fire and sittting in the middle of their potato field) and other similarly jarring lack of response from the world and its populace; these flaws were introduced in the storyboard phase.

Story is secondary from RPG's perspective. What matters is the situations brought to RP.

As to the world and its dullness in Oblivion, people invoked the lack of processing power and RAM to explain for example the disappearance of radiant AI.

Multicore procs add potential to AI. Hard to consider average gaming PCs and consoles provide an equal potential on this regard.

Another consideration is that the modding scene can fill certain gaps but not all.

A modding communauty brings when it comes to fill emptiness in a gameworld (if allowed), they can add settlements, add towns, add NPCs, quests. They struggle when it comes to ingame functionalities like better AI.

PCs forcefully impose other design direction than consoles.
 
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At least you made 10 hours on Oblivion…I couldn't put that much into ….But i will buy Skyrim…and well if I don't like it maybe my kids will…or they will get a another trade-in…
Heh. Those ten hours were spread across maybe seven new characters and at least four new installations of the game that I can recall, so I don't know that I'd call those 10 hours of game "well spent", exactly. Even now I see the Oblivion GotY box sitting on the shelf and occasionally find myself thinking "you know, that might be a good game to play... wide open environment, pretty graphics... why not give it another go?" The classic "IT'S A TRAP!!!" scenario.... tricksy developers.

Am personally in the "they're going to have to actually convince me that they've addressed the problems of Oblivion before I'll buy it" phase. Am not even following the game at this point, save for reading the headlines about it that pop up here occasionally.

So, given that even games which are touted as being "designed for PC" have irritating little interface quirks in them (was not impressed with the list inventory in TW2, for instance, after the click-and-stick inventory in the first game), a game like Skyrim that's first and foremost a console game ... well, let's just say that I'm not holding my breath for this one.
 
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