The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim announced
Bethesda has announced a new entry in The Elder Scrolls series, Skyrim, plus a new engine.
There's precious few details to be gleaned from the announcement, but a teaser trailer on IGN tells that dragons may be the big baddies this time around.
The title also suggests that the game will be set in Skyrim, a cold and mountainous country in the far north of Tamriel, the fictional continent that has hosted the Elder Scrolls series.
Skyrim will apparently be built on a whole new engine too, with Bethesda's community manager Nick Breckon tweeting earlier that he 'can now confirm that the TES V: Skyrim engine is all-new.'
RPS followed up with Breckon to clarify what he meant and have since confirmed that the engine is being built internally at Bethesda and is not just a new iteration of the dated Gamebryo engine used in Obvlion.
The most recent game to use the Gamebryo Engine was Fallout: New Vegas, which suffered from dated visuals as a result.
Let us know your thoughts in the forums.
Previous Article
51 Comments
Discuss in the forums Reply**** YES
New engine plus new levelling system will make this a fantastic game - no doubt from my end.
Hopefully it'll go back to morrowind for ideas. Combat in oblivion was better but the whole game was too bland. 1 square yard of yorkshire copy and pasted several million times! Morrowind felt it has so much more diversity especially with the expansions. I hope they bring back unarmored, lances and enchanting skills and just remake the leveling system it sucked big time. That sounds very negative on oblivion but it was still fairly good. Morrowind was just so much better overall
More of Morrowind's strangeness and diversity would certainly be appreciated, I would happily forgo a fair amount of graphical spender to have the variety of environments and immersion which Morrowind had.
Admittedly there was a bit of a flaw in the system. Choosing a skill as a "major skill" meant increasing it led to levelling up. Leaving say Blunt as a minor skill then levelling it up a lot meant the world difficulty didn't change but your damage with an Axe went through the roof. I never tried this myself, but it seems to be mentioned a lot. I thought there was a system whereby it was impossible to improve your skills above the level of their controlling attribute in Oblivion, though perhaps this needs to be adjusted. A cap at 60 for weapon skills at level one is way way too high in a game that levels all the enemies based on your level and not your skills. Either the caps need to be very strict (and possibly dynamic) or the levelled world needs to be done away with altogether.
Personally I think OOO has the right idea, with levelled enemies that vary within limits; for example a rat or wolf will always be really weak once you reach a certain level, rather than managing to kill you despite your amazing gear and history of massacring Daedra. Similarly with OOO installed any group of enemies would be at a variety of levels; if you're fighting five bandits, two might go down very easily, another two might be the same as in Vanilla Oblivion and the last might be rather harder. It makes fights much more interesting than in Vanilla, where you were practically guaranteed every single battle would be the same level of difficulty regardless of your character build, level, equipment or who you were fighting. It got old fast. I hope Bethesda learns from the many excellent mods that became popular during Oblivion's term.
Back to TES V, If this game is indeed set immediately after the events of Oblivion I assume it's got something to do with the war between the Nords and House Redoran, as is mentioned several times in conversations between NPCs in Oblivion.
Demons Souls was released this year. Oblivion is from 2006, so of course it seems old in comparison. You can't compare something new to a game that's going to be 5 years old in just three months time.
When it came out Oblivion was an amazing and virtually unparalleled experience, so people raved about it. It was also released on consoles and did very well there because most console gamers had never played anything so unrestrictive.
It's still popular on PC today because most of the "major flaws" can be fixed in half an hour by downloading a few mods. The loot and leveling systems are completely fixed in OOO, as I mentioned already.
The combat and dialog are less easy to fix through modding, but again remember how old this game is. March 2006 was over a year and a half before the release of the original Mass Effect, now recognised as a landmark in game voice acting. It was also almost two and a half years before Mount & Blade, which has technically superior (though far more clunky-looking) combat.
Yes, there are better versions of each of these systems in a number of games, but can you name another game that gives you everything Oblivion offers? Even today I don't think such a game exists. Mass Effect et al are all very linear in comparison, while more traditional "hardcore" RPGs lack the immersive first-person combat.
This is exactly why I have a love/hate relationship with Oblivion; it's by no means perfect, but if gives a taste of some perfect RPG that I'm dying to play. Oblivion is certainly not that game, but it's the closest thing to it that I've played so far.
Shame next gen consoles aren't around yet, so we will get similar experience to oblivion I think, not that that's a bad thing though, keen to see the new engine though, hopefully it will involve realistic animations :D.
However, I do agree with the comments that Morrowind beats Oblivion. Oblivion was good but I did find it really conventional as a world and as a story -- it felt like everyone else in it was very settled and there was no real tension (the Cthulu style 'demonic hordes' thing was straight out of the rpg text book).
By contrast Morrowind was fantastically alien - none of the human colonists really seemed to belong, the indigenous dunmer were both unsettling and sympathetic at the same time, and the environments were really compelling: I remember a storm halfway up the mountain when the sky turned red and there was so much rain, wind and dust that you could barely see the beasts attacking you. Whereas Oblivion felt like visiting France -- A lovely country, but not exactly 'edge of your seat' exciting.
So fingers crossed we get a swing back towards TES3. Given the name, perhaps it will pick up where the Bloodmoon expansion left off (at least in terms of mood/themes)?
Jhng
Exactly the points I wanted to make!
I do get rather fed-up when people go on about how 'bland' the game looks, when it was breath-taking, (and system crushing) at the time.
Oblivion wasn't without it's faults, (as everyone has already mentioned) and yes, in many ways Morrowind was better - but I'm still hugely excited to see how they'll be moving the game along more than five years after the last one.
Hehe, remember that well!
I was thinking that too...
Name one that did ALL of those things better in combination, in a single game. That's my point. Plenty of games are better in specific ways, but Oblivion stood alone as a game that offered everything and actually delivered on most of it. The only RPG I've played with a similar level of freedom and non-linearity is Morrowind, but the combat in that game is absolutely terrible, as was the draw distance.
I hope they can make such another ground-breaking experience but thats a tall order and no new consoles for the big bucks. I didnt mind i had to get sli to run it well. If same happens again, i'll be more than happy to see pc gaming progressing further albeit making nvidia richer
Yet Morrowind was better in every other aspect. There are lots of games that offered what oblivion did, how long you been gaming? gothic 1 and 2, ultima, morrowind, etc...... Off the top of my head. Oblivion didnt innovate squat, just made everything easier, and more shallow and watered down. Its laughable you mention draw distance considering the old tech in morrowind, and really irrelevant. Gothic 1 and 2 blow away oblivion, too bad they ruined the gothic series with 3 and arcania. Hell, with patches Gothic III was better. Baldurs gate was very open and was ten times the rpg as oblivion.
As a big Demon's Souls fan myself I agree that the combat in DS is far better. It was just designed better than Oblivion, imo. Nothing to do with age or hardware limitations. The side-stepping/rolling is much better (God of War had good rolling on the PS2) and the variety of attacks makes the combat more diverse. Fights feel more immersive compared to Oblivion's run up and start swinging method.
Oblivion's fatal flaw combat wise, again imo, was being so heavily first person based. Third person or at least over the shoulder are much less clunky for combat. God of War in 2005 and Assassin's Creed in 2007 both make great use of a smooth third person camera and are from roughly the same time.
Needless to say, my hopes for Skyrim are a better third person mode.
I couldn't agree more. I don't actually know Demons Souls but I play lots of RPG's and also MMORPG's. To me Oblivion is like a totally second rate MMORPG with nobody to play with, a fraction of the loot, a fraction of the content, a smaller world, less locations, less unique dungeons, basically just inferior in absolutely every single way.
The only reason it's popular is because it had killer graphics and because it's so simple, anyone can play it.
Well most MMO's do everything Oblivion does but 10 times better. And I can think of some old RPG's that do everything Oblivion does but better, and lots of RPG's that maybe don't do as much in one game, but do most things far better.
I wish Bethesda would finally up their game, or be punished. It won't happen, but that's my wish.
Better in every other aspect? Really? I wasn't a huge fan of Morrowind's voice acting, I have to say.
There were loads of other rubbish things about it that were fixed in Oblivion too, though nobody ever seems to mention the stuff Bethesda got right. Everyone complains about the dull leveled world, but I remember well the 100% static world of Morrowind that had very little replayability because everything was the same the second time through. You could even remember where you got something cool and go pick it up. There was a sword in one of the watch towers in Balmora that you could flog for some cash as soon as you start playing, and the Amulet of Shadows (which made you practically invincible) was in a pond by the side of a road north of Ald Ruhn, I believe. Once I'd played through once I lost any real desire to explore the same world a second time.
Oblivion has random enemies and random loot, so you never know what you'll find. Granted, the vanilla version of the game was far too limited in terms of item and creature level variation, but this was easily fixed by the modding community not long after launch. It could never have been made the game I'm playing right now without the underlying systems Bethesda created and allowed the modders to tweak.
All those games you mentioned are great, I'm sure, but they're irrelevent. I was trying to explain why Oblivion was and is popular. Those games are all really old and ugly, lets be honest. If you're looking to be immersed in an RPG it's much harder when you're constantly thinking "my God this is ugly". Oblivion still looks gorgeous with a couple of mods (though requires SSDs in RAID to load all the textures without any pauses) and that's part of the reason it's popular. Like I said, people like it because it does everything. It might not do specific things as well as older games but they are all missing something else that Oblivion has, I can guarantee. Where is the voice acting in the Gothic series? Where is the first person 3d perspective in Baldur's Gate?
RPG doesn't have to mean a complex system of die rolls, but to me it DOES have to mean a completely immersive world. Oblivion does that the best, so far, because it has everything you need. It's huge, it's pretty, it's first-person, you can go anywhere and do whatever you want in whatever order you like, you have a decent enough combat system, a decent enough magic system, challenging enemies, NPCs that talk to you with real voices, plenty of quests with pretty good writing in many places, NPCs that walk around and seem to have lives of their own... and that's just the vanilla game. Yes it could be improved massively in many areas and Bethesda should indeed look to the classics of the genre for inspiration on how to do this, but I honestly believe they are on the right track. They have the makings of an incredible game already in Oblivion and I think we should all be hoping that they don't get scared by everyone saying "Oblivion sucked!" and return to the days of weapons that constantly missed due to invisible dice rolls or NPCs that don't speak because that way you can't tell they've only got half a dozen voice actors available.
Oblivion was a massive leap forwards and I think people should appreciate that!
@Sloth: Yes I just looked at some videos, it looks very good for combat. I'd want to stick with first person for immersion reasons, and I imagine that's why they have problems with the third-person mode: first person gets in the way, but it's what most people will use and therefore takes precedence. I think we can all expect a better combat system from this new TES engine as they've had 5 years to work on it already!
@Sausages: I've never seen or played an MMO that comes close to Oblivion in terms of graphics, player perspective or combat. They all seem to be third person RPGs from 2002 with horrible horrible lag every time you tell your character to attack because it's all turn-based underneath. Also, there's a monthly fee. I paid £12 for Oblivion in 2008 and haven't paid a penny more since. If you can't enjoy games that aren't multiplayer that's fine, but I generally prefer a single player story driven experience. Usually when I play with people online they just annoy me so much I go play something else; such was my experience with Guild Wars and Eve.
You are exactly right when you say other games don't do as much in one. I can't grab the story from one game, the combat from another and the magic system from a third. Oblivion does almost everything well, even if it's beaten by other games on specific points. When you average the whole experience out it's one of the best RPGs I've ever played and without question it is the most immersive, due to the focus on first-person gameplay in a gorgeous world.
As for the combat, Improve it in the 3rd person, add all the stuff cut out from Morrowind, and make horse combat possible.
In fact just make TES:V have all the features of a fully modded Oblivion with FCOM and Deadly Reflex mods, that coupled with a non-Gamebryo Engine would be brilliant.
pc's got 5 years of hardware improvements. who needs next gen?
Big jumps in PC game visual quality tend to come with new console generations, I think that's what Waynio means.
liked oblivion and the expansions.. should be fun- mass effect 3 looks good too from the trailer
oh here's some screenshots that sum up the console gamer very well courtesy of venetica
http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/3158/venetica201012120310401.jpg http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/7096/venetica201012131429145.jpg
- Far bigger, more diverse world map
- Much more immersion, the world seemed to be more open, the main storyline was obscure... Oblivion was a sandbox but there was a clear path to follow from the beginning. In Morrowind, you could choose to follow many different paths, there were more guilds, much more side quests on each guild...
- No incremental / balanced enemy level please (in Oblivion, I saw a farmer with a daedric armour... crap). I want to become super-powerful and come back to that scary middle-of-the-game enemy race and destroy it with a finger
- You could literally become a demigod in Morrowind. The level system and enchanted items that you could find or create allowed you to reach tremendous levels of power.
- Levitation: a total plus!!!! I enchanted my boots so I could keep flying all the time during my travels... that was soooo coool...
And a side note: please no MMO nor multiplayer...
DX11 Goodness ;)
Will be building a new PC for Nov next year then.
Yeah & to be honest Two worlds 2 on PC looks & plays freaking gorgeous with max settings so I suppose pc games aren't entirely reliant on new consoles IF the devs cater properly .
I'm not sure what you mean by player perspective, but combat is something I could defend forever. It's pretty much the biggest thing in my gaming life. I live for RPG combat, and I know it inside out. To me, Oblivion is some of the worst combat I've ever seen. I like that it's fluid and plays like an FPS which is quite good (although I'd rather just play a real FPS if I want that kind of thing). What I hate is that it's so shallow. As a melee or hybrid character there is little more to it than left click to swing your weapon, and right click to block, with a few spells to help you out. As a spellcaster, you spend most of the game running around, spamming your crappy generic firebolt spell like the most tedious FPS ever made. Later on when you can make spells, you can make a spell that kills 99% of enemies with one shot. It's got to be the worst I've ever seen, by quite a big margin.
I wasn't all that impressed by Dragon Age, but to think that each character in that game is comparable to Oblivion and yet you have a whole party of them, just shows how far behind Oblivion is. As for MMORPG's, I don't know what MMORPG's you've played but most of the ones I've played have first person views, and most of them are leaps and bounds ahead of Oblivion. I could explain it but there's too much in those games to even explain, but even in the likes of WoW, the combat is far more advanced, and most MMORPG fans consider WoW to be a kid friendly simple game.
Something like Vanguard absolutely craps all over Oblivion in every respect. The only comparable thing would be the graphics (and even that I would give to Vanguard), but everything else, is miles better than Oblivion. The world is probably multiple times bigger, it has dozens more varieties of locations, it has an amazing crafting and harvesting system, it has flying mounts, player owned ships that they can sail, it has better music (and far more of it), better UI, infinitely more spells and combat abilities, better everything basically, and it has some of the best combat you can find outside of specialist titles like Magic The Gathering.
As for cost, that's a different discussion. We're talking about gameplay, not which game is the best value for money. Although even with that, there are some free games that I would much rather plan than Oblivion anyway.
I think Eve and Guild Wars (which isn't even an MMO) gave you a bad impression. The whole point of MMO's are that they are massive. They are filled with real people in the same way that real life is filled with real people. If someone annoys you, move on and play with other people. That's what it's all about, and eventually you make friends and join guilds and that way you get to just spend all your time surrounded by people you like.
That's just your opinion. Mine is different. I think it does almost everything badly. I like it's graphics, but I can't think of ONE other redeeming feature. It has a very bland world with hardly any variety at all, it has cut and paste dungeons that are all the same, and all too small, it has about 4 different types of enemy in the entire game, (and the same with voices), it has a main quest that I could complete in about one afternoon, it's filled with the most generic of side quests, it has no real tradeskills, and it has some of the worst combat I've ever seen.
Exactly. It's all flashyness and no substance. Besides graphics, it's a step backwards from even Morrowind, and even Morrowind wouldn't make my top 10 RPG's.
I agree with some of the criticisms you've made, a number of them are fair, (ie, limited combat) but I also think a number of them are not.
Talking about graphics for a moment, you compare it to Vanguard and Age of Conan, but:
Oblivion: 2006
Vanguard: 2007
Age of Conan: 2008
So there's a difference right there. Plus both of those are MMO's, so will have ongoing development on them.
Dragon Age was made in 2009, so again, hardly a fair or equal comparison.
You talk about the MMO's being multiples bigger than Oblivion with tons more content - well I should hope so, they're MMO's! You can't in one breath say they're massively bigger and more content-rich, then in the next breath say you shouldn't compare costs - costs in that respect are everything.
Oblivion: Say £25 (when it came out).
MMO: £25 + what? £9 per month for a couple of years?
£25 + (£9 x 24) = £241.
If you're paying ten time the amount I think it's fair to expect at least ten times the content - just as you wouldn't directly compare a Ford Focus (£15k) to a Lamborghini Gallardo (£150k), because while they're both driving experiences, they're in different leagues of expectation.
Also don't forget that in MMO's the player experience is constantly tweaked, refined and added to over the course of it's life, constantly rebalancing and improving the experience. That's what subscription buys.
They may both be fantasy games, but really, they are very different choices. I used to play MMO's but gave up due to time constraints - whereas something like the Elder Scrolls can be picked up for a spare half hour and then put back again. You really can't do that with an MMO, not if you're playing with other people or are part of a guild - once you log in you're expected to complete a certain quest/mission, which usually ends up taking hours.
Don't get me wrong, I think Oblivion was 'dumbed-down' considerably even from Morrowind, (for it's console release no doubt) I just think expectations of a single player, one-fee game have to be kept realistic.
If they can fix some of the major gripes people had with it: Enemy levelling for example, (which should be easy to fix) I think the next one could be superb.
I'm looking forward to it anyway. In November...
But I don't want to keep going on about graphics. I'm not interested in them. I am happy to admit that Oblivion had amazing graphics and it was fantastic looking and still looks good even today etc.. But I don't care, because I'm one of those unusual people who plays games for their gameplay more than the way they look, and that's what disappoints me the most about the Elder Scrolls games.
Oblivion was an incredible game. Morrowind was an incredible game. I see a lot of people attacking both for particular things they did and didn't do. Take both of them as a full experience, for what they are. They are both different games.
Now, having said that Morrowind was better. Better and probably should have got much more praise than it did. At the time it was released, it did things that were unprecedented. It allowed you to totally immerse yourself in a world and do what you want, a concept relatively new at the time (save GTA, though ESIII probably accomplished this much better). Though it didn't get a lot of attention because of both GTA and the fact that it was inaccessible. It was a hard core gamer's game.
Oblivion was much less a new experience than it was a "where do we go from here?" game. Instead of taking the overload you with stuff to do approach, Bethesda decided to scale back on the size, and instead try to create a more detailed experience. Think about the voice acting. Something we take for granted now with games like mass effect out, it was something that at the time, and even now, hasn't really been accomplished in a rpg that size.
I look at Oblivion as something like a Jade Empire and and Elder Scrolls 3.5. We'll improve on the complaints of the original and experiment with some new stuff that will hopefully come to fruition in a later game (we'll have to see when this is released). And it ended up being an incredible experience. I just hope that they don't go and try to make another mass effect. That's the only shortfall I see possible with this one.
What are you talking about? I answer some of your points, and I'm not allowed to because it's not fair? What?
You compare a game to some that are nearly four years newer, or ones still under constant development - I point that out and that's unfair of me?
You compare a game to one that costs many, many times more - I point out that's not a fair comparison and I'm not allowed to do that?
The reason I brought up the subject of money was this:
Yes. And it's an MMO: Which has monthly subscriptions, which pays for developers to keep developing and improving and expanding it.
Why is that an unreasonable point to make?
You cannot fairly compare a standalone product of nearly five years ago to a modern, subscription based MMO under constant development. It's an absurd comparison. I think the fact that you're even attempting to do so speaks volumes about the scope, scale and ambition of Oblivion in the first place.
OK, I'm not really convinced you even understand what an analogy is after that. (Or the concept of value).
The point I was trying to make was that if you pay a lot more for something then the expectation level will be greater. Or put another way, if you pay a great deal less than the expectation level should be lower. You shouldn't really need to actually afford a £150k car to understand the point I was making...
The fact that you can afford both standalone games and MMO's does not make it fair to compare them to each-other. And the crisps to a meal analogy is nonsense, as you're not comparing like for like. If you need to be able to actually afford it to understand the comparison I was trying to make, then compare a £5 meal in a cafe to a £50 meal in a restaurant. Yes you expect the £5 meal to be enjoyable, but not on the same level of perfection as the £50 one.
Is that really such a bizarre point I'm trying to make?
The point I made about MMO's vs a single player, standalone game - that you can dip in and out of the single game easier - was meant to be just that, it's easier. I wasn't suggesting that to play MMO's you have to be hooked on 8 hours a night. However, if you're playing with a bunch of other people and you go on a quest together, it's not really very good etiquette to simply check out halfway through - as depending on the role you were playing in the group you may end the quest for everyone. You start doing that too often and you soon lose friends in the game.
That's not a criticism of the genre, just pointing out an important difference and why some people prefer one over the other.
Look, we both agree on certain aspects of it: That the combat could be improved, that elements of it were too simplistic or should have been better - I'm just saying it needs to be judged of its time, not against modern games of an entirely different model.
Has Warrior returned?? he was the last person i saw on these forums use this level of idiocy to argue a point!
? What have I said that is idiotic? Or are you just trolling.
Not to even mention single player equivalents like the early Might & Magic or Wizardry games, or Betrayal At Krondor etc.. or all the countless none first person games which are amazing like the Fallout games, BG1+2 etc, and yet they are no less immersive either.
Your price angle is a crappy argument too, because I've already told you about games that are completely free, including MMORPG's.
That's just your age argument again. You don't have any valid argument, all you have is AGE and PRICE and both of them are bad arguments. There are examples of older games than Oblivion which do things better, I told you why price isn't relevant to anything except value for money, and most importantly of all, all of this crap has NOTHING TO DO WITH THE GAMEPLAY which is what we were discussing before you came along and tried to drag the discussion in to a completely different direction to suit yourself.
I logged in to counter some of what you said, but thinking about it, I'd just be wasting my time wouldn't I?
- You fail completely to understand the points I'm trying to make, (not just that you disagree with them, but that you simply don't even understand them).
- Accuse me of 'imposing conditions' or 'taking the subject off course', when actually I'm just countering your own arguments and comparisons.
- Argue with me even where I'm agreeing with you.
- Then throw in some SHOUTING AT ME for good measure.
This clearly wasn't a discussion, it was a competition. Well, I hereby withdraw and declare you the winner.
You beat me, well done.
Oblivion + mods = Awesome!
Skyrim + mods ...
What makes PC gaming the greatest?... MODS!
Those of you that didn't think Morrowind or Oblivion were great games did not mod enough.
Look at any game that gives you the tools to mod the hell out of it as an open book or a gateway to unlimited creativity.
Here is a screenshot for if you don't want to start up Oblivion:
http://img26.imageshack.us/i/skyrimlogoinoblivion.png/