New RPG from old TES devs incoming

More here:

https://www.pcgamer.com/the-designers-of-the-original-elder-scrolls-are-making-a-new-rpg/

https://www.pcgamesn.com/elder-scrolls-6/daggerfall-successor

To be noted that they have on board Ted Peterson, which is the person that developed most of the TES lore (all the books in Morrowind and Oblivion are his work).

No name for this project yet, nor a lot of details. We will probably find out more later.

From Arena devs IIUC, but it doesn't matter really.
What matters is the engine are they gonna use to make the game. If it's some modern and proved engine, could be an awsome game. If it's some inhouse engine, could end up a highly interesting game like PB's or Spiders' ones. But it might as well be another iteration of Gamebryo named differently to cover for incompetence which would mean another buggy mess.

So I'm not gonna get excited until we learn more.

I hope that they won't use the Gamebryo engine. The damn thing should be retired by now.

What they want sounds ambitious and they should use a robust engine, one which is not 20 years old. There is also the money concern. What they have in mind requires a lot of money. And they are a new studio, not a AAA company. While i would like to see them succeed, i can't help but ask if they are not too optimistical.

The lore is the only good thing in TES games, with tons of nod to real life mythologies and ancient litteratures, and he's responsible for all of it.

As someone who like History and mythologies, I'm really curious to see his next work.

Oooh, this could be good. Hopefully, they get sufficient funding. Speaking of which, if they don't even have funding yet, it's going to be several years until its release.

Usually when old timers try to make a comeback it's like watching your uncle get dead drunk on your cousin's wedding and he tries to hit on bridesmaids.
Keep yer expectations and trepidations in check, younglings.

Some info (gathered from the discord):
- they are in pre-production so things are subject to changes
- they have about a dozen people working part-time on pre-prod and 1 investor
- they will probably use Unreal (the other one they looked at is Unity as Julian is familiar with it). They want an engine that can support mods.
- Setting will be western high fantasy with some weird things in it.
- Ted is researching how the medieval era people saw magic to design their magic system/lore.
- They want the landmass to be on par with Daggerfall (aka the size of Great Britain, also 4000+ dungeons and 5000+ cities). You can infer from that that it will not all be hand placed.
- They want "infinite quests", and for that they created a system they call dynamic composition which takes more factors into considerations (like reputations, local area, events, etc) than what Daggerfall used.
- the focus will be on adventuring (something people have an hard time understanding on the discord with all the not-adventuring related features they are requesting)
- Ted wants the game to have more skills than there was in Daggerfall, but he wants them to be useful for adventuring (skill will raise with usage)
- Other features 100% in the design docs: spell maker, climbing, guilds/factions and reputation system

The things they will reveal toward the end of this year will have concept arts. Including Ted new in-world "self insert" (it was Sheogorath in TES).

Also, the website saying "production values of today games" doesn't mean AAA game which I get the impression everyone is expecting the game to be. My gut feeling is that this will be a private investor low budget indie project. So expect lots of procedural generation, almost no voice over and very few not adventuring related features.

Thanks for the update. Not exactly what I wanted to hear to be honest. One of few aspects I've never enjoyed in TES is procedurally generated content, for example "fetch me a book in a random dungeon that you cleared 8 minutes ago".

Only partially what I wanted to hear.

The engine (any as long as it's not Gamebryo), saving on VO due to small budget, no dump skills… Yay!

Random generator for everything, means so called radiant quests too… They lost me.

4000+ dungeons and 5000+ cities). You can infer from that that it will not all be hand placed.
- They want "infinite quests", and for that they created a system they call dynamic composition

Click to expand...

Welp, my interest is nil now. It looks like another settlement game could use my help.

2nd time in a month I've totally agreed with Drithius...armageddon commences now

The game is supposed to have a main questlines too and more depth than Daggerfall had.

joxer said:

Random generator for everything, means so called radiant quests too… They lost me.

Click to expand...

They said it wasn't like radiant quests which is a simplified version of what Daggerfall does anyway. They are aiming for something more complex than Daggerfall's system.

Some example from Daggerfall (Unity version) I got yesterday:

A tavern customer asked me to clear an house in-town that had a monster problem (spiders). Once in the house I had a popup talking about scratching sounds and there was someone in it whom, when asked about the house, mentioned the guy at the tavern looking for someone to help. It's not that far from one of BG1 hand-crafted quest…

I joined a temple and they sent me to clear ruined temples that now had evil entities ruling them. The first one required me to find holy water in the temple first and then defeat the evil entity (a zombie) to destroy it permanently with the holy water. The second one required me to go find someone in another temple to bless the holy water first and then go to the dungeon, find the entity and destroy it (and this time it was a ghost underwater). Same quest template, different in-game experience.

Of course, you can also get "cast sleep on cursed noble" 3 times in a row at the Mage Guild too.

What I would like to see from Daggerfall done today:
Spellmaker
Flying
Holidays
Character creation with advantages/disadvantages
ProcGen would be okay for some stuff but bigger towns should be handmade and some loot should be placed.
Same with quests-Radiant quests are somewhat okay as long as there are many hand-placed quests to go along with them. Each major faction should have non-random quests, for instance.
Factions should have requirements. Anyone can join a guild and do novice quests, but climbing higher in one should stop growth in others.