New Todd Howard Interview

[Lumpy]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/ar ... 8&skip=yes

Todd Howard: We have to be careful about that, as there's so much of it in previous games. We have people here who research Elder Scrolls lore, 'Lore Masters', just to make sure we're not saying anything that isn't true. One of the things we're very careful about is that we always write the lore from the standpoint of the world - the lore comes from someone within the world. So if we ever need to say 'well, that person was wrong', then we can do it.
[...]
In Oblivion, a lot of the story revolves around the amulet of kings, so we put a lot of research into how the amulet has been mentioned in previous games - some of them attribute certain powers to the amulet, for example. We have three or four people who check all this full-time, plus we have ways of searching the text we've put in our games too - but it does take some time...

For those that don't know, the lore was raped in several places in Oblivion, the Amulet of Kings being the main fuckup.
I guess they did check where it was mentioned, but their brain couldn't comprehend checking in places where it wasn't mentioned, and should be, if it had its current powers.

 

[Zomg]

I thought the conversion of the jungle concept for the imperial homeland into Peter Jackson's Lord of the Ringsâ„¢ faux-Zealand was an empty suit pussy move. I can't even guess how many relatively minor points were plowed over if they were willing to do that.

On the other hand, the ESF Lore people are pretty extreme.

 

[vazquez595654]

I thought the conversion of the jungle concept for the imperial homeland into Peter Jackson's Lord of the Ringsâ„¢ faux-Zealand was an empty suit pussy move. I can't even guess how many relatively minor points were plowed over if they were willing to do that.

Yeah they obviously ran into problems with this. When you have this much lore going into a game and you're trying to make a mass market piece of shit, it can get really difficult. So instead, they just said, "screw the lore." Smart move on there part since no one in the target market can read.

 

[Hazelnut]

Interesting comment, I'll pull it in here for everyone to enjoy...

I have... a few problems with the gloating of that moron. I'll go through them in order:

Is it hard avoiding contradictions with stuff from previous adventures?

Todd Howard: We have to be careful about that, as there's so much of it in previous games. We have people here who research Elder Scrolls lore, 'Lore Masters', just to make sure we're not saying anything that isn't true. One of the things we're very careful about is that we always write the lore from the standpoint of the world - the lore comes from someone within the world. So if we ever need to say 'well, that person was wrong', then we can do it.

We intentionally put repeating messages about stuff we want to remain mysterious too, such as 'where are the dwarves'? and 'what happened to this land in this ancient time'? We write them as history in the world.

In Oblivion, a lot of the story revolves around the amulet of kings, so we put a lot of research into how the amulet has been mentioned in previous games - some of them attribute certain powers to the amulet, for example. We have three or four people who check all this full-time, plus we have ways of searching the text we've put in our games too - but it does take some time...

This is sad - if they had three "lore masters", why did they do such an awful job with lore consistency? TES lore is far too detailed and intricate for me to get into a discussion of everything they did wrong here, but suffice to say they did an awful job sticking to their own lore. The quest to Pale Pass, "Lifting the Veil", was easily the most egregious, but it certainly wasn't the only one. And they spent extra time making sure Amulet of Kings was set up right? Then how'd they manage to screw it up too? Supposedly only wear-able by descendants of Tiber Septim... but Uriel Septim wasn't. And Alessia, the queen who first got it, definitely wasn't. The Dragonfires make absolutely no sense, either - what happened before the Empire was founded? Why didn't Mehrunes invade then?

The final scene looked awful, too.

Would you say Oblivion is a return to more traditional fantasy? It certainly has more traditional fantasy creatures - Morrowind was quite fanciful...

Todd Howard: Elder Scrolls has a lot of traditional stuff, if you look at Arena and Daggerfall. So we go for what's appropriate for that part of the world - the capital area Cyrodiil is a little more traditional, whereas Morrowind is a province on the outskirts. In that game we had to go to extremes to work in the more trad stuff, we wanted things to be more fantastical, to stick out more. With Oblivion, we wanted the forests and towns to feel familiar, so that when Oblivion comes in with these otherworldly creatures and danger, it feels fantastical - but it's not fantastical all the time.

Hey, look, another thing they got wrong. According to previous games, Cyrodiil was a tropical rain forest. Certainly doesn't look like it here. And if it's the heart of the Empire... Where's the rival factions, vying for power? It's the capital of a great and vast empire - which suddenly lost its Empire. In the tradition of TES, there should be dozens of power grabs made by many different factions. None of that happens.

What's your favourite quest in the game?

<snip>
In the main quest, I like the one where you're in the Imperial City where you're going to get some books - real adventure gaming. I also like the last few quests in the main game where you get these huge battles - they're really cool too.

Oh, you mean where there's supposed to be a secret message, but you have to go to the Mages' Guild to get it figured out? Yeah, that was really great. Not to mention how screwed up the level scaling is in that quest - because I'd done other guilds before the Main Quest, I was a high level - and the goblins in the sewers were vastly more difficult than the ambush at the end. Yeah, that was really well done, guys!

And "huge battles"? Hardly. I understand the constraits of the game's engine on having too much going on at once, but that's not something to be proud of.

What's your favourite guild in the game?

Todd Howard: Definitely the Dark Brotherhood. Even from very early on, we'd do pitches and have the designer write it up. Fortunately, I had the privilege of working with all the guilds, but Emil Pagliarulo, a guy we'd hired who'd worked on Thief 2 & 3, worked on the Dark Brotherhood. He's a brilliant designer and had a really good idea of what the DB needed to be, what flavour it needed to have.

The Dark Brotherhood was very well done, I have to say. I liked it a lot. Except! Who in god's name decided to leave the player mute and unable to warn the Black Hand of the trap they were going to walk right into? You had the traitor's goddamn diary! Why on earth couldn't you, ya know, mention it to them that they'd gotten it all wrong, killed the wrong guy, and they were about to lead the traitor into the Night Mother's sanctuary? I don't know about anyone else, but that left me screaming at my computer.

We had one designer per guild, and they did a pitch to the whole team - 50 or so people - and did a presentation given as though the player is experiencing the quest. We walk into a quest and see pictures and everything before we start making it, and then everyone makes their comments. Then we tweak on paper and everything goes through that process again. That gave us a very good breadth of each guild, but even in the early stages, the Dark Brotherhood was looking really, really cool.

Who was in charge of the Mages' Guild? I'd like to throttle him. I'd have trouble doing it that badly if I tried. Really, anyone and everyone responsible for the stupidity present in that questline should be summarily fired.

 

[Seboss]

Change the title The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion to Quake Wars: Medieval and it's a moderately enjoyable game. Oh and skip the dialogues too.

 

[LlamaGod]

Hexen 3: Oblivion, eh?

 

[Jasede]

How dare you!?!

Hexen 2 had more personality, fun and replay value than that festering, steaming, putrid, vomit-inducing, horrible, abominable, shitty, stupid, mindless, boring, idiotic, moronic, vile, evil, [...] piece of utter shit that's called 'Oblivion'.

Not only are you insulting Hexen (It had more classes than Oblivion, for [insert higher power here]'s sake! And, ZOMG, they played differently!), you are also not mocking Oblivion enough with this.

Hello?? Oblivion was a game that made Morrrowind feel like a good game! What more needs to be said!?

 

[Micmu]

Hexen 3: Oblivion, eh?

NOO!! Hexen kicked ass. And still does, I'm playing it right now with Doomsday.

 

[NoisyKillerHPB]

I don't usually care to join the Oblivion bashing but after playing the game quite a lot I just can't imagine where the 3+ years of development went ;/

 

[Rat Keeng]

We love the Painter quest ourselves. How did you come up with that idea?

I think we've already established how Bethesda cook up new ideas...

Todd: "More monsters! More monsters!"
Todd: "I want more monsters here!"
Todd: "What's that?"

Steve: "It's a painting, Todd. Like the ones you made that we put on the refrigerator, see?"
Todd: "Can I go to the painting place?"
Steve: "Well, no."
Todd: "But Steeeeve, I wanna go into the painting!"
Steve: "I don't think we can do that, Todd."
Todd: "But Steeeeve, I wanna go into the paintinga-wa-wah waaaah waaaaahh!!!"

Steve: "Shhh-sh-sh-sh-sh, it's okay Todd, of course you can go into the painting."
"Lackey! Get some men to work on a painting-entering quest, and fast!"

Lackey: "But sir, we've no men to spare! They're all working at full capacity."

Steve: "Give me a second... Todd? Do you like spears?"
Todd: "..."
Steve: "Todd?"
Todd: "She's pretty..."
Steve: "Yes, yes she is, but I mean spears, like those long things, with a sharp thing at the end. Those are bad, you can't even use your blade skill with them. We don't like those, do we Todd?"
Todd: "No!"

Steve: "Gooood. We don't need crossbows either, do we?"
Todd: "No?"
Steve: "That's right Todd. They're bad, like spears. Legolas never used spears or crossbows, did he? Legolas doesn't like those things. Do you?"
Todd: "NO!"
Steve: "Do you want uncle Steve to take care of the bad spears and crossbows for you?"
Todd: "Yes uncle Steve."

Steve: "Okay then. I think maybe we also don't care much for flying, do we Todd?"
Todd: "I wanna fly, fly is fun!"
Steve: "But if you fly, you might fall down and hurt yourself, like when you rolled out of bed and hurt your head, remember?"
Todd: "No..."
Steve: "You fell out of bed and hurt yourself, that's why mommy doesn't talk to you anymore. Do you want that to happen again?"
Todd: "NOOO!"
Steve: "Alright then, so I go get rid of bad flying to, right Todd?"
Todd: "YEAH!"

Steve: "Yessss, don't worry, nasty things and flying wont hurt you anymore, and we can try the painting quest next week!"
Todd: "You're the best uncle Steve!"
Steve: "Goood, you just keep playing little Toddler, we're gonna be rich."
"Lackey! Stop all attempts at implementing levitation, and pull the spear and crossbow animators as well, get them to work on a painting-entering quest!"

"... and get him some more motherfucking chocolate milk, stat!"


All characters portrayed in this thread are fictional, even those allegedly based on real people. Events, statements, names and locations may or may not have been altered, and either way, are all entirely fictional and/or nonexistant, any relation to real people, places or events is completely coincidental.

 

[Jasede]

Somehow, I feared that this little dialogue would end up like:

Todd: "You're the best uncle Steve!"
Steve: "Good, now show me how much you love your uncle..." (He locks the door)
Todd: "Can I play with the spear??"
Steve: "No, Todd.... you can play with this short sword instead... Yessss, just like that. See how it's becoming a long sword? That's why we use the same skill for both!"

 

[John Yossarian]

Thanks for the sig. material Jasede.

 

[Red Russian]

Whilst I can't critisize Todd on screwing up TES's history ('cause I'm not well versed on the matter), I do find it rather sad that from the comments seen, that Bethesda doesn't actually take it's history as serious as, say, a writer. Yes, I know, it's Bi-thesda... oops... I mean, Bethesda, but still.

I guess by looking at the comments made above that Bethesda just doesn't count on the fact that it's audience will even read the history. He, being Todd the Tard, can think up *any* shit he likes together with his cock-sucking "Lore Masters" without their... ahem... "lectured" customers realising what's going on. They see all the contradictions as mysteries and things that make TES that much more "immersive".

I guess the tar and feathers are now on their way here to me house for using... immersive. *shrugs*

 

[Lumpy]

Contradictions can be good, and can make a world more believable and deep, if they are done like in Morrowind. There were official accounts of the history of the gods and Dagoth Ur, and there were the true facts, that you got from various sources, such as the Dissident Priests, Vivec's secret writings, the Ashlanders etc. as the story progressed.
In Oblivion, it's like "Only a descendant of Alessia can wear the Amulet, and its current wearer isn't one."

 

[LlamaGod]

Hexen 3: Oblivion, eh?

NOO!! Hexen kicked ass. And still does, I'm playing it right now with Doomsday.

Yeah, me too. Playing a Cleric on Pope difficutly and it's pretty awesome.

But theres a few points where I think 'Hmm, Oblivion with Daggerfall graphics. It'd be something similiar to this.'

Except for the fact theres axes.

 

[ad hominem]

Love the fine print, Rat Keeng!

 

[ad hominem]

Contradictions can be good, and can make a world more believable and deep, if they are done like in Morrowind. There were official accounts of the history of the gods and Dagoth Ur, and there were the true facts, that you got from various sources, such as the Dissident Priests, Vivec's secret writings, the Ashlanders etc. as the story progressed.

I don't know if I would define that as a contradiction, though. I agree, that was one of the best parts of Morrowind, but I wouldn't call it a contradiction because people had their reasons for saying each of the things they did. I think the term implies something much more arbitrary.

/splitting hairs

 

[kingcomrade]

Except for the fact theres axes.

Well, sharp ones.

 

[Lord Chambers]

Is it even possible for 3 or 4 people to work full time on resolving lore issues? Seems like it'd be a matter that could be solved in one weeks worth by one person. Text searching the games, then writing reccomendations and corrections for someone else; think of how much you'd work out in just an 8 hour day.

 

[Drakron]

There are guidelines ...

The problem was they plain ignored the existing lore and did what they want, the daedra invasion was stupid because it failed to account the time before the amulet was created and now someone have to resolved that little fuck up because some idiot wanted the classic "Oh noes, a demon invasion !!! " ...

Consider this, Morrowind actually EXPANDED TES lore and no matter what can be said they did a rather interesting take on religion, you have a "evil guy" that was beyond the standart evil beyond evil.

Oblivion?

Crazy cult, crazy cult leader with a classic "demon lord" ... when you ripping off BioWare storylines (you think I did not notice how close its is to NwN and BG2:ToB story?) you really not going to break new grounds ... or even old grounds for that matter.

What Bethsoft did with TES:Oblivion was a big "screw you fans".

 

[pantheon]

Yep - I still can't sit down. Absolutely buggered.
Ob is a joke as a TES game.
Why they chose to do the capital of Tamriel when they had no intention of adding to the lore is beyond me.

 

[ad hominem]

Is it even possible for 3 or 4 people to work full time on resolving lore issues? Seems like it'd be a matter that could be solved in one weeks worth by one person. Text searching the games, then writing reccomendations and corrections for someone else; think of how much you'd work out in just an 8 hour day.

Or even better yet, keep from pissing of your employees so much that it's an entirely new crew from game to game. If there was anyone on the staff who had even played the older ones they could have caught stuff like this. I'm starting to think more and more that this nutcase is a pathological liar. Unfortunately for Bethesda, he's a patho liar with a lot of control, so all the stuff he says has to be implemented somehow...

 

[Slith]

Anyone want to go in detail over what parts of the Lore were butchered in Oblivion?

 

[pantheon]

The huge lack of it is a good place to start.

Also:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=503073

 

[Kendar]

One of the worst things of the scenario are the pauses : "sorry, the plot cannot advance, you have to gather the stellar m-///jedi mast-/// imperial recomm-/// ARTIFACTS !"
When the plot is already crap, that won't help. Gathering stuff is not a problem, but only if doing so, you make the plot advance. I have not played Oblivion for months, but I am pretty sure you didn't.