Two Worlds II - Translated Review Q&A

What exactly are you arguing?

That because some people, who dedicate themselves completely to making horses work to your satisfaction succeed - making horses right is easy?

Are you saying that all those other attempts at getting horses right were deliberately made poor?

Don't you see how that makes no sense whatsoever?

I am saying that high budget Devs added horses as a special feature without giving them much attention , i bet my a$$ that they could make them right yet they didn't .
Horses & horse fighting would have made TES games crap because the scope was 1 vs 2 or at best 4 people , same with the Gothics, The Witcher and TW1 , i can not think of any way someone can balance a mage firing fireballs from a horseback .
Mounted combat defeats the purposes of those games .

Oblivion's horses only needed some agility and to be able to make back steps...

How this doesn't make sense ?
 
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I am saying that high budget Devs added horses as a special feature without giving them much attention , i bet my a$$ that they could make them right yet they didn't .
Horses & horse fighting would have made TES games crap because the scope was 1 vs 2 or at best 4 people , same with the Gothics, The Witcher and TW1 , i can not think of any way someone can balance a mage firing fireballs from a horseback .
Mounted combat defeats the purposes of those games .

Oblivion's horses only needed some agility and to be able to make back steps…

How this doesn't make sense ?

Ehm, first of all - I think we're talking about different things. I'm talking about making horses feel like horses, look like horses, and act like horses. I also talk about making them meaningful to have as a feature.

At the time of Oblivion's release - their implementation of the horse was just about the best available - when you combine the above features.

Your argument that they implemented horses essentially "without meaning" and without the right "feel" - just to make the game challenging, is about as far away from my perception of reality as I can imagine.

I'm not sure if you realise this, but it costs a lot of time and resources to get animators and designers to implement this kind of feature in a game that's otherwise not about horses at all. There's a gigantic difference between a horse focused mod or a game where it's part of the title, and a general RPG like Oblivion.

That you can have horse enthusiast modders spend their free time dedicating themselves to making a horse mod, doesn't exactly make the professional approach trivial. It's bound to get easier as the feature is getting more common, and developers are getting used to it - but I think there's a lot of work to be done yet.

You're making about as much sense as Alrik normally does. Tell me, do you hail from the same planet? ;)
 
Ehm, first of all - I think we're talking about different things. I'm talking about making horses feel like horses, look like horses, and act like horses. I also talk about making them meaningful to have as a feature.At the time of Oblivion's release - their implementation of the horse was just about the best available - when you combine the above features.

As explained my point is that horses having a meaning in OB would greatly outbalance the game above everything else

Your argument that they implemented horses essentially "without meaning" and without the right "feel" - just to make the game challenging, is about as far away from my perception of reality as I can imagine.

My argument is that they made horses as they did in order not to screw the whole TES series thing , this is why mounted combat was left out .
Also in the map there was not enough space for horses to strafe and because of textures and horse distance enemy cavalry within arrow reach would become invisible ; so nothing to do with challenge , it only has to do with game mechanics.
When you add horses you have to add horse riding skills and as we know modern RPGs are trying to reduce the amount of skills .

I'm not sure if you realise this, but it costs a lot of time and resources to get animators and designers to implement this kind of feature in a game that's otherwise not about horses at all. There's a gigantic difference between a horse focused mod or a game where it's part of the title, and a general RPG like Oblivion.
That you can have horse enthusiast modders spend their free time dedicating themselves to making a horse mod, doesn't exactly make the professional approach trivial. It's bound to get easier as the feature is getting more common, and developers are getting used to it - but I think there's a lot of work to be done yet.

No argument there, Beth even skipped the dodge animations in Morrowind .
I am positive when i say that the technology and the skill are there for good mounted combat games to come forward , Assassin's Creed had horses only for transportation but the whole thing looked good.
Horses above everything need space and good combat style, for example i could never land an arrow on a head using Gothics/Risen 's archery style .
In the last RPGs all we see is stupid islands with limited space , can you imagine your character on a horse in Risen's starting beach? lol nfw !

You're making about as much sense as Alrik normally does. Tell me, do you hail from the same planet? ;)

Not making sense is the purpose of the forums , no?
 
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As explained my point is that horses having a meaning in OB would greatly outbalance the game above everything else

Well, in my opinion they did have meaning. They made you travel faster and felt like a decent reward/upgrade. It came too soon though, but I think it GREATLY helped my immersion, actually. Too bad the streaming technology was utter crap.

My argument is that they made horses as they did in order not to screw the whole TES series thing , this is why mounted combat was left out .
Also in the map there was not enough space for horses to strafe and because of textures and horse distance enemy cavalry within arrow reach would become invisible ; so nothing to do with challenge , it only has to do with game mechanics.
When you add horses you have to add horse riding skills and as we know modern RPGs are trying to reduce the amount of skills .

Essentially, I think the primary reason horses weren't implemented better was simply due to time/resources. They didn't set out to create the perfect mounted experience, they set out to create a huge free-roaming CRPG, and added the horses in a way that time/resources allowed, within reason.

I think balance considerations were incredibly minor in comparison to that reason.

No argument there, Beth even skipped the dodge animations in Morrowind .
I am positive when i say that the technology and the skill are there for good mounted combat games to come forward , Assassin's Creed had horses only for transportation but the whole thing looked good.
Horses above everything need space and good combat style, for example i could never land an arrow on a head using Gothics/Risen 's archery style .
In the last RPGs all we see is stupid islands with limited space , can you imagine your character on a horse in Risen's starting beach? lol nfw !

The technology is there to do pretty much anything with graphics on your computer screen. The question is if the technology is sophisticated enough to make fully implemented horses and mounted combat without making it prohibitively expensive, in terms of how much better the game would sell, or even be.

You seem to think so, and I don't. I certainly don't think it was feasible in Oblivion/Two Words with the teams/budgets available. It would have required an entirely different focus and approach, and something significant would have had to be sacrificed to get that. I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have been worth it.

Not making sense is the purpose of the forums , no?

You got me there ;)
 
What's the release date for this? I read it'll be next year for uk/america, but what about europe and will that version include any english translation?

The European release just got delayed til November. Seems they have been swamped with pre-orders(not surprising given Southpeak has already postponed the US release til 2011) English translation will be included in the European release along with four other languages
 
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I just checked the stores - the new date here is 12.11.2010. Bad news.
 
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I am saying that high budget Devs added horses as a special feature without giving them much attention

This could also mean that horses are regarded as something unimportant for the ["real"] gameplay.

I guess it works like this : The more focus (by devs) = the more considered as important (by the devs).

I guess some just don't see any importance in using a mount at all. Just a guess.
 
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Yes, like Alrik says, kind of natural, no? you could make a game have the best horse riding ever if you think it's vital to gameplay and want to spend a lot of cash and development time on it.. it's kind of easy to see what's been prioritized or not in a game ;) it's all about that, everything from dialogues, to graphics, to horse riding or how much freedom the player has to explore (in a bioware game = very low priority, in a Bethesda game = highest priority)..
 
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I never said I was normal. ;)
 
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