Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim

[Hana]

Wow, lol. This is why I don't do speculation. I haven't even looked at the new Skyrim section of BGS since it was born, and didn't bother with the speculation threads before that. For that reason. People get stupid. Honestly, I don't care what you think. I want the facts.So Samson's getting a new car next month.*ducks*I'll most likely go looking for this issue of GI too.

[Conner]

Hey, while Samson's out shopping for new cars, I heard an ad on the radio today for a new mercedes benz that he should at least look into, it sounds like it's got some pretty cool new stuff in it like being able to help nudge you back into your lane on it's own if you start to drift..

[Tommy]

Me too I think speculation is an utter waste of time. At this stage anyway because since they release the game soon, it's pretty finished by now anyway. OK I don't know the details of a game release schedule but I would guess they are already in serious testing / polishing mode, not really in the implementation / development mode anymore.I cannot imagine any user requests / speculation wishes, topics, will make their way into the final release at this point.

[Dwip]

DUDE YOU GUYS I HEAR THERE WILL BE NORDS IN SKYRIM AND DRAGONS AND OMG WHAT IF WE CAN FIGHT THEMYeah, I can totally wait on the speculation.Although if they show us Dwemer ruins I will likely squee.

[Arthmoor]

Dwemer ruins would rule. There's some speculation (oh no) that perhaps we'll get to see Falmer ruins. I guess it would make sense to have a new kind of ruin since each province seems to have one.As far as release schedules go, they're most certainly almost done by now. Polishing, perhaps adding small things, maybe still doing voice recordings. Over all though, yes, given the 11/11/11 release date they're probably looking at "going gold" by August at the latest. So in reality they're probably about 9 months from being fully complete.That of course means no stopping to go back and add cool new combat move X, or anything engine related. Any hopes of getting modern 2010'ish lighting and shadows was over back in early 2009. We'll be lucky if their new engine is DX10/11 capable since they can't very well abandon the XP crowd yet and the XBox 360 can't do any better than DX9 either. This also means if there's going to be a CS, they're done writing that long ago and would only need to do the public facing version.

[Dwip]

We'll see what they come up with, I guess. If nothing else, Bethesda knows how to make shiny looking games, so I have some hope. If we're lucky, they'll follow the Civ 5 model of allowing people to choose between DX9 and DX10/11, with added features for the DX10/11 folks. If we're REALLY lucky, we'll avoid the god damned annoying prompt system Civ uses, where it asks you each and every time you start the game.See when we get there though, I guess.

[Conner]

I'll bet that if someone made a suggestion that the devs thought sounded easy enough and cool enough, it'd still make it in before the official release (probably without accreditation), but for the most part, suggestions and wish lists at this point are already probably too late. Speculation is always worthless though.

[prettyfly]

Does anyone else here feel slightly cynical when they see someone drop an enormous essay on the suggestions thread suggesting that takes an hour and a half to read full of various demands, many of which are either a) personal preferences that are undoubtedly not going to please the bulk of the community or B) things will never make it into the game (I want to have families like Fable!) or regardless of that declare they want so many things that the majority of them will never be able to make it into the game due to time/technical constraints.?

[Hana]

That's why I don't read the suggestions thread.

[Conner]

I'll second Hana's remark.

[Arthmoor]

Yeah, some of the things they want are completely unrealistic and wouldn't exist in any game even if you gave it 5 years to be modded to the hilt.I think the best thing for all concerned right now is to wait and see what the new engine is all about and then decide what might need fixing. Bethesda has come a long way in the last 5 years since Oblivion and I for one have faith that they'll manage things just fine.

[prettyfly]

Well, I'll add that that was the first time I did so and I have no plans on doing it again.... :grinning: On that note, one guy asked for a world space 6 times that of Oblivion for 'realistic distances between city and sizable landforms or something like that... yeah, keep dreaming buddy.Still, regardless of the engine I'm sure there will be at least room for the good old village mod...

[Arthmoor]

For anyone who hasn't read it, GameInformer has their rundown article on the Elder Scroll series up on the web now. Worth the read.

[Conner]

Yeah, let's increase the world space enough to have truly realistic distances between cities and landforms and such, that way in-game it could take days/months to travel...

[Arthmoor]

You mean like in Arena or Daggerfall? Yes, if you chose to, you could wander off and get totally lost taking hours, maybe days, to wander back to civilization if you want. I don't think we really want that.I can't say I'd object to Skyrim having larger game area than Oblivion though. Oblivion seems a lot smaller to me than Morrowind was, for instance. Something at least as large as Morrowind (unless Oblivion really is bigger) so that there's room enough for a lot more goodies. I have hopes that it'll work out though since Skyrim is a smaller province than Cyrodiil, so if they do things right it will still feel big enough to be epic.

[Conner]

No, I was thinking like making the game scale as huge as Europe so that in-game travel time takes days (real time) to get anywhere afoot and at least hours on horse all for the sake of realism. Suffice it say I was being sarcastic.

[Arthmoor]

Actually you weren't. Supposedly Arena was as large as Great Britain and would take you, in real time, months to cross it on foot.

[Kayle]

It really was. And it really did. Arena was far too large for it's own good. But it was still a fun game. Hell, even being lost you still had fun.

[Conner]

Oh geez! That's just crazy. What could possess a dev to make the game world so large that it's incredibly unlikely any player will ever bother to see it all?

[Arthmoor]

It wasn't really intended for you to wander around in. At least I can't see them seriously expecting anyone to do that. Fast travel was the only practical method for getting around. Which is somewhat chuckle-worthy since so many people cry about it being in Oblivion :PSame was true of Daggerfall too. You could venture into the open wilderness, but it would take hours before you found something interesting. Iliac Bay being only one region of Tamriel, it wasn't nearly as large a game, but I once read it took someone 19 real time hours to go from end to end.Which makes me really appreciate the fact that Morrowind was a sensible size. Not too small as to feel cramped, but not too large to become annoying. Plus it had the very cool travel network of silt striders.

[Conner]

I think a gameworld shouldn't ever really need to be larger than it would take a character to walk across it it's entire length in a few hours real time, even a MMO with all open spaces and open pvp shouldn't need to be larger than that. I suppose some folks clearly disagree. :shrug:At least you're saying it had fast travel as an option. Even Oblivion feels a little large at times when you're wandering larger distances and don't have fast travel opened as an option yet because you haven't been to that side of the map yet. Fallout 3 is just as bad, it's a good size and all, but when you're walking through the wastes having to spend half an hour to an hour real time just casually walking along not really encountering anything it gets boring. Frankly, I found Fallout 3 even worse when you had someplace that you couldn't fast travel to but had to walk the subway tunnels repeatedly mind numbingly dull. The first few times through the subway was kind of cool having grown up with the real world version of those subway tunnels, but they get old after awhile, especially once they're already cleared and you're just walking down an empty tube for long lengths.. On the other hand, Doom 3 was fairly smallish overall, but the infrequency of maps and often nearly identical areas you had to navigate frustrated me quite a bit. :(Maybe I just don't have enough patience to appreciate the graphics enough for some of these games, but I find it hard to appreciate the graphics when I'm otherwise bored in a game where I'm also supposed to be constantly watching for enemies everywhere.

[Arthmoor]

I could go into all kinds of rants about the ridiculousness of FO3's metro tunnel system. I hated nearly every aspect of it because it was needlessly over complex. Of course, from a technical perspective, it was necessary because you couldn't just link the entire DC city area together in one vast chunk of the worldspace. It would have been like trying to make an open city out of the Imperial City. Only worse, since like the IC, none of the pieces actually align right if you try.Fast travel in Oblivion takes a lot of the charm out of the game. So I generally don't use it when I'm actually playing. It's infinitely useful during mod testing though.The way you split the difference on that is to use a travel services mod. In FO3, as far as I know, mine is the only one. Buy a trip to the city nearest to your destination, then venture forth. Far less of a hassle that way. Though it does nothing for the pain and suffering that is the DC metro system.

[Kayle]

I hated the Metros in FO3. I was so glad that there were none of them in New Vegas. Of course, in New Vegas I didn't Fast Travel at all, because I played it in Hardcore mode, where you have to pay attention to your starvation, dehydration and sleep deprivation meters in addition to your health, and fast travel just filled them up way to fast. Overall I think New Vegas has been my favorite Fallout title to date. (Mainly for the whole Hardcore Mode bit)Fast travel does take the charm out of Oblivion, but I find I use it a lot more since playing FO3, which is distressing since I just applied all these Landscape mods and still haven't explored them all yet. Of the ones I've explored though, UL - Brena River Ravine is my favorite so far. The quest there was engaging and fit well with the Lore of the Province.

[Dwip]

Meh. Metros were awesome. Fast travel is also awesome. The first remains an immersive exploratory experience, while the second is handy for those times I don't want to be immersed so much as I want to get wherever the hell it is I'm going.Pretty sure I did the traverse the Daggerfall map end to end thing once. Took forever. And boy am I glad we got away from those endless random dungeons everywhere. Morrowind was totally the right move in that regard.

[Conner]

@Samson: I may have to grab that mod of yours for FO3 then. I love FO3, but the drudgery of traversing the countryside on foot is a real pain in the ass.@Kayle: I haven't played New Vegas yet. I don't usually go in for hard core mode in most games, but I may give it a try just to see when I do get around to NV.@Dwip: Well, yes, it was great for immersion, but after a few trips through subway tunnels it got old, especially when I started being more concerned with getting where I was going already and even the metro stations all started to feel close enough to identical to start being less immersive and more tedious.I agree that endless random dungeons are endlessly boring after a very short order too, but they do work well for pure hack 'n slash play. Overall, I agree that getting away from them was a definite move in the right direction though.