Skyrim - Todd Howard Interview @ EDGE

Dhruin said:

@JDR, MW did many things better but none of those (save scaling, perhaps) are related to gameplay modes,

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Perhaps!? How about "for friggin´ sure!" .
Oblivion may have some "gameplay modes" like archery and such better (though still not great), but its level scaling makes a lot of difference for character development and exploration which are both rendered pretty much meaningless in this game´s case.

GhanBuriGhan said:

I still plan to replay Oblivion with lots of mods and the shivering isles expansion. Not for the main quest though, I am not going through those Oblivion towers again (unless there is a great mod for those parts?).

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None that I know of, though FCOM at least makes the realms more unpredictable enemy&loot-wise, but for what it´s worth, you don´t have to close that many gates to finish Oblivion´s sucky main quest since the main source of possible irritation in this regard, Allies for Bruma quest, can be skipped entirely.

DeepO said:

Perhaps!? How about "for friggin´ sure!" .
Oblivion may have some "gameplay modes" like archery and such better (though still not great), but its level scaling makes a lot of difference for character development and exploration which are both rendered pretty much meaningless in this game´s case.

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Still not great? I'm as much an Oblivion basher as anyone here (well, not quite, perhaps) - but I actually think it handles archery better than all other games in the genre. Much of that has to do with the excellent physics engine. Perfect? Perhaps not - but infinitely better than Morrowind. Same goes for stealth - where only dedicated stealth games compare. Don't underestimate what those things mean for us who love that kind of gameplay.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

They do.

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Nope, that's too simple. As I said above there many other mitigating factors.

DArtagnan said:

Still not great?

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Yes.
Just various degrees of good and so-so´s and I´d agree that archery, especially when coupled with stealth, may as well be the best conceived "gameplay mode" in the game.
But to me great, at least in this context, meant that an aspect is so good that I find a game worth playing for that aspect alone, even when I think the rest sucks.
I wouldn´t play Oblivion for the joy of its "gameplay modes" alone.
For a game to be enjoyable for me, I either need it to be strong in at least one of its major aspects or to work well as a sum of its parts.
And, well, Oblivion doesn´t work well as a sum of its parts for me either, probably because two aspects I consider vital for an open world RPG, exploration and character development, bring the whole sum far too down in my book.

But for the record, I had a good time playing the game modded - for most of the major stuff I find problematic I´ve found mods which I think address the problems well.

Dhruin said:

@JDR, MW did many things better but none of those (save scaling, perhaps) are related to gameplay modes, which we were talking about.

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And the real rub is that for a lot of people, perhaps even the majority of people, core gameplay is what matters most. Maybe it's the only thing that matters at all.

If you watch let's play videos on youtube and their equivalents elsewhere you will quickly notice that perhaps those of use who crave story, immersion and world design are pretty rare.

DeepO said:

Perhaps!? How about "for friggin´ sure!" .
Oblivion may have some "gameplay modes" like archery and such better (though still not great), but its level scaling makes a lot of difference for character development and exploration which are both rendered pretty much meaningless in this game´s case.

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Agreed, but I found that easily fixed with mods only days after release. I didn't find Morrowind's satisfactory, either, which left me overpowered around level 12? before I'd really started the game. That might be a win to MW but not by much for me.