Oblivion

F

Fatcat

Swabbie
Banned
I just noticed this on the web site. In the interview, they say that the programmers added a mathmatical model to the game based on actual geological patterns. They apparently worked the model so that the trees grow in game, the ground erodes realistically, and the forest grows in real-life patterns. No game has ever even come close to this level of detail.

http://games.net/features/101408.shtml
 
What they usually stay silent about is the reason ;). It is incredibly time-consuming to go through the world planting trees, rocks, and so on... which is precisely what they did for Morrowind. So, it is preferable to come up with a system that can do the work for you. They wanted to do this for Morrowind, too, but it seems they didn't get it right and decided ultimately to go for the hand-made approach.

Oblivion's forests certainly could be just as detailed (if not more) if they were done by a person, without any knowledge of erosion patterns and such. But... well, if planting a few trees and bushes is time consuming, you can imagine how much more time consuming it would be to create a world as detailed as Oblivion seems to be, if you were doing it by hand.

Still, it certainly is nice to see Oblivion achieve what its predecessor was supposed to achieve. It's just a pity that all this wonderful technology is being wasted to depict a sickeningly ordinary world. They'd better come up with some jungle add-on afterwards, or I will :p.
 
Quarto said:
Still, it certainly is nice to see Oblivion achieve what its predecessor was supposed to achieve. It's just a pity that all this wonderful technology is being wasted to depict a sickeningly ordinary world. They'd better come up with some jungle add-on afterwards, or I will :p.
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But the other world(oblivion) is supposed to be very different from the "normal" world. so I'm sure the scenery wont be too repetive.

Edit: I take it the editor will be as flexible as morrowinds, then?
 
Q doesn't mean that the world will be repetitive... he means that the world will be just a more detailed version of the kind of world we've been seeing in every other fantasy RPG for decades (while Morrowind had giant bugs and giant mushrooms and houses carved out of giant crabs and etc). Sure, the oblivion part will be different from the rest of the game... but the rest of the game won't be different form every other game that came before this one. :p
 
If only I could get my Morrowind game working, I'd go right now and visit the library of Vivec, instead of having to read this online.

Back on topic, this news strikes me as sort of ironic. Wasn't it Fable who first boasted that it would have trees growing and such? I always thought the Elder Scrolls was a better series, this kind of proves it.
 
There's only one Fable game so far, so Elder Scrolls is, of course, the better series.
 
Yeah, they've already announced that it will become a series, but it isn't yet. Lost Chapters comes out this fall, and it's just the original Fable with some new quests.
 
I've not heard of this. It would be nice to play and just think of it as "the rest of the game." Cause that's how I felt at the end. I says, "Where's the rest of it?"
 
Still, it certainly is nice to see Oblivion achieve what its predecessor was supposed to achieve. It's just a pity that all this wonderful technology is being wasted to depict a sickeningly ordinary world.
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Oh, don't worry. The entire world won't be a giant forest, and Oblivion itself is supposed to be very different. The capital city and the forest landscape is supposed to be a pseudo-Roman, Black Forest landscape. Even the Imperial Legion is remarkably Roman in appearence. You could make a fantastic world with a very different landscape, but it would be harder to make it feel real.
 
Anyone here actually liked Fable? I found it boring as hell, and totally not immersive. It looked beautiful, but that's only enterteining for a while. I enjoyed games like Baldur's Gate I & II though, so I do like RPG's. Just not all of them.
 
Fatcat said:
Oh, don't worry. The entire world won't be a giant forest, and Oblivion itself is supposed to be very different. The capital city and the forest landscape is supposed to be a pseudo-Roman, Black Forest landscape.
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Yeah, I've seen the screenshots - the cityscapes are equally disappointing. It's not about looks, it's about atmosphere. And netches. It's all about the netches.

Even the Imperial Legion is remarkably Roman in appearence. You could make a fantastic world with a very different landscape, but it would be harder to make it feel real.
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On the contrary, it's far easier to make a fantasy world feel real than a realistic world. For example, it never occured to me that Vivec was a weird, unrealistic city. It seemed right, because it didn't try to be realistic. But when I look at the screenshots of Oblivion cities, I see a fake medieval city made by people who have no idea what a medieval city looks like.
 
Yeah, I've seen the screenshots - the cityscapes are equally disappointing. It's not about looks, it's about atmosphere.
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I'd say they got the atmosphere right. What was wrong with the cityscapes?

On the contrary, it's far easier to make a fantasy world feel real than a realistic world. For example, it never occured to me that Vivec was a weird, unrealistic city.
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What do you mean? Vivec, while certainly different looking, wasn't unbelievable.

But when I look at the screenshots of Oblivion cities, I see a fake medieval city made by people who have no idea what a medieval city looks like.
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What's wrong with them?

Anyone here actually liked Fable? I found it boring as hell, and totally not immersive. It looked beautiful, but that's only enterteining for a while. I enjoyed games like Baldur's Gate I & II though, so I do like RPG's. Just not all of them.
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Yeah, I liked Baldur's Gate. I wasn't impressed with Fable. The graphics were ok, but everything had this vague cartoony look to it, kinda like World of Warcraft.
 
What's wrong with the cityscapes? They're open. They're breezy. That shot with the fenced villa-like buildings and the cathedral in the background, it looks like a suburb. Medieval cities don't look like that. There's usually one or two wide streets (about as wide as an ordinary two-way road today), and everything else is narrow and claustrophobic. There are many streets where a carriage would have difficulty passing a man. That's the effect of having to maintain city walls - it's too expensive to expand them, so the city simply has to fit inside. And that's atmospheric. What they've shown so far - it's exactly like a suburb. Sure, it's pretty, but it's also dull.

I do still hope that perhaps they have some more crowded cities that they merely haven't shown yet. After all, they've shown what, two dozen screenshots so far? The only trouble is, these first two dozen screenshots are supposed to show the most representative aspects of the game. I mean, look at the first pages of Morrowind screenshots - you got dwemer ruins, crabville, an imperial fort, mushroomville, Balmora, Caldera, half a dozen wilderness shots from different locations, with different enemies. You've got incredible variety, and each location is more interesting than the last.

Compare this to Oblivion's first two dozen screenshots. Suburbville. Silver armour guy. A dungeon. A silver sword. Another silver sword. Pretty green forests. More forests. Oh yes, and a deer. Lots of variety. And sure, there's also Mr. Three-eyes, but he has trouble saving the day all by himself, especially since he's just another humanoid. Well, maybe the concept art contains something else? Oh, look, more silver armour. I'm excited.

What can I say? Considered purely as art, it all looks fantastic (ok, except the minotaur). But as the first look at the sequel to what I consider the second-best RPG ever, they really haven't done much to impress me.
 
Ugh. I'm starting to get sick of this. Every other RPG/Missions game has to have a huge expansive world with everything just as realistic as humanly possible with sooo much room and sooo many different things to do. Sure, it's nice, but after three GTAs, a couple of Elder Scrolls, a pair of KOTOR and one Fable, I'm starting to think this is the next fad of gaming after FPS. I mean, who wouldn't like to have every game as immersive as a MMORPG? Or at least that's what they're saying in the game companies.

I really couldn't care less about Oblivion. It may be epic and grand and everything, but so far it's only really appeared on the PC, and seeing the game in it's true glory requires one of those 5k Alienware PCs. Otherwise we get thick fog(like in GTA) or low poly characters/textures/enviornmental effects, and I reeeeally like getting the most out of my games. I guess that's why I stick with old PC games and console games, since I know I'll never have to turn down the graphics settings.

Anyways, if/when it comes to the console, it won't be a great transition. From a full keyboard to a dozen buttons, I think there will be some issues. So, for right now, I'm not really interested in modern PC games. I'm also still waiting for a god PC like Fatcat has, where it doesn't crash when it runs games. Heck, even playing the Standoff demo for an hour made it close up on me.

But, back to the fad idea, I really think that they should spend less time making trees grow. Unless of course, Oblivion is a life simulator. I thought it was supposed to be an epic quest from what Fatcat has told me, but, if it's just supposed to be a guy in medievil times of knights and dragons trying to have a life, it's completely different from any strategy adventure game like The Legend of Zelda.

I know I'm not interested in Oblivion, and there's not much more to it than that. I think it will be a great game, and I hope it sells millions, but, I hope even more so of the next Zelda game, since that would encourage people out of this fad that they're getting into. I guess it's not really a fad yet, but, I hope no one tries to make Mario span over acres of land with hundreds of real growing trees and NPCs in a platforming game. In all honesty, that would suck. I'm not even sure if I support the idea of huge worlds, after seeing how much depth there could be in single rooms in Metroid Prime 1 and 2.

To every man his own, as they say.
 
Quarto said:
I do still hope that perhaps they have some more crowded cities that they merely haven't shown yet.
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Me, I just hope that if you keep running east for long enough, you'll end up in a crab town with nix hounds, siltstriders, and dark elfs wearing bones for armor.

I've had my share of temperate forests and deer and cathedrals and ruins comprised almost entirely of marble columns and brave human caucasian knights in plate armor half a dozen games ago, thank you.

I hope the next dozen screenshots are more interesting (NOT prettier or more "realistic") than what they've shown so far. :(

I also hope they fix their stalactites so they look like they're actually a part of the cavern's ceiling.
 
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