Interview Oblivion tit for tat with Pete Hines at GamesPlanet

[Saint_Proverbius]

Tags: Bethesda Softworks; Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

There's <A href="http://www.gamesplanet.be/index.php?main=gp_article&info=gp_article&articleId=531&chk=5OqEhh8AZ2">an interview</a> with <b>Pete Hines</b>, an honorable man that refuses to pants new co-workers if they're female, about <A href="http://www.elderscrolls.com">Oblivion</a>. The interview covers <i>Radiant AI</i>, why trees are a bitch, the tool set, nothing about <i>bumpmapped nipples</i>, and this:
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<blockquote><b>I know that no official PC system requirements have been released, but seeing the gorgeous screenshots makes me wonder. Will players need a monster system to run the game?</b>
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As always, we like to push the technology, so if you want your PC to run the game at its fullest potential, you’ll want the latest, greatest PC out there. However, we are working on making it much more scalable that Morrowind so that the game will run on a wider variety of machines. It’s just too early to say how far we’ll be able to drop the system specs and still have the game achieve an acceptable level of performance.</blockquote>
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Memory leaks are a great way to push the technology.
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Thanks, <b>SleChY</b>!
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[LlamaGod]

Morrowind ran like dogshit no matter what. You had to use that FPS program thing to do anything to adjust performance.

 

[Claw]

Pushing the technology is just another way of saying the performance sucks.
There are already engines that push the technoloy so much they run at single-digit framerates on my pc just rendering grass, trees and water. I want a game that runs.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

Huh huh.. huh huh... you said tit...

 

[jiujitsu]

When I hear that a game is going to have high specs I don't get mad, I get happy. In an evil way. See because my computer can take it. And I love to hear people, who have shit comps and need an upgrade, whine and whine that the game sucks because they can't play it.

Join #fallout at irc.gamesurge.net around the time the system specs are released and you will see what I mean. I can't wait.

"NOTHING SHOULD EVER CHANGE! WE SHOULD NEVER NEED TO UPGRADE! 2D 640x480 4EVAR! SHUT UP, JIU, PRISON DICK IS WAITING FOR YOU AND YOUR COMPUTER!"

 

[corvax]

Shut up Jiu. Endless nights in the state pen with no lubrication is what's waiting for you. Ur ded fagget. Radeon 7000 rulez! :twisted:

On a serious note, PC gaming is becoming too damn expensive for me.

 

[Spazmo]

Listen, jiu, it's great that you make enough money eating prison dick to buy neato computers (conjugal visits at $500/hour), but that's not the point. The point is that... err... well, I got nothing beyond the prison dick thing.

But on an unrelated note, I wish Oblivion previews and interviews would discuss actual meaningful things that are going to change in the next TES game. Okay, great, no more whipping out the hands to cast spells and hey, PATRICK STEWART!, but how is dialog actually going to work? What are you really doing to fix Morrowind's awful combat? Are there going to be fewer well written books and more well written quests? We probably don't know until the game is released (I predict answers that are respectively horribly, not so much and less of both!), but in the meantime, let's all enjoy some screens saturated with garbage light bloom effects.

 

[Claw]

When I hear that a game is going to have high specs I don't get mad, I get happy. In an evil way.

That isn't evil, just childish.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Are there going to be fewer well written books and more well written quests?

Actually, there would be less quests and more dungeons, according to what's been mentioned at the official forums.

...but in the meantime, let's all enjoy some screens saturated with garbage light bloom effects.

There is no such thing as too much bloom! (Unofficial Bethesda's slogan)

 

[jiujitsu]

People are already starting to cry. Lovely.

 

[Balor]

Well, I hope that the bloom can be turned off.
Cause if it cannot be, I'll find it hard even to test my own mods, not to actually play the damn game. It seems like my monitor is completely misted, I just fighting an urge to wipe it when I browse Oblivion screens.
Btw, hilarious part:

The gameplay of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind had an open end and allowed enormous freedom. Without even doing a single quest, players could walk for several hours, discovering the landscape, investigating castles, go treasure hunting in dungeons and so on.

Oh, teh freedom. Freedom of standing in a middle of tundra, with nobody really caring what and how are you doing, with exciting quests like 'kill that polar fox before it approaches (Russian humor alert)", move that stone 5 meters, collect X amount of berries...
Isn't it fabulous? Not.
Freedom is not just things you can POSSIBLY do.
Freedom is amount of things that are interesting and sensible. Otherwise, it's just freedom of running back and forth, left and right, with infinite variations. Freedom, indeed.
Oh, of course, for some people simply running around, collecting berries (heh, I even made a mod to help them with mega-ugly MW 'organic container' system) and the like is great fun.
But still, some people think that salivating on their own shirt is great fun too.
And btw, what do they mean by 'open end'?
The storyline, sidequests (usually, quite dumb) aside, is as linear as a telegraph mast.
Not that even Planescape offered a lot of nonlinearity (you have to buy Hammer&Sickle, for instance, to see it), but at least each ‘quest’ could be resolved in multitude of ways, and dialogues were, indeed, incredibly branchy.
Now, if you can combine ‘branchy’ and ‘Morrowind dialogue’ - you’ll be awarded a medal for beating a Guinness record of “Best abstract thinking” and a free place in nearby asylum, cause such person simply cannot be sane.
I'm still waiting for Oblivion, but not because of it's 'storyline' or 'unique gameplay' - but to make a TC with better (at least, I sure hope so) scripting engine, cause scripting in MW required a good deal of (un)healthy masochism, so poorly documented, awkward and bug-ridden it is.

 

[bryce777]

Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Nothin aint worth nothin but it's free....

 

[Fintilgin]

I must say I'm a bit sad on the choice of the guilds. I can see why they wanted to reduce the number to give each one more depth, I just wish they'd included an Imperial Legion/Cult style faction. It just seems odd that in the Imperial capital province of Cyrodiil, the heart of the Empire, you can't join the Legion or the Church of the Nine Divines. Given the plot of the invasion from Oblivion it seems even stranger that you can't side with the Church. I'm guess I'm just disapointed my paladin won't have a character appropriate guild to join.

Having both a thieves guild and an assassin's guild seems a bit redundant. The priests and holy knights got a bit short-changed on that one. Personally, I'd rather have seen the Dark Brotherhood remain unjoinable and let PCs join the Church instead.

Oh well, someone will probably make one with the editor eventually.

 

[triCritical]

Has there been any talk on random quest? IMO one of those things that added more replayability to Daggerfall over Morrowind was randomness. I think it was looked down upon in Morrowind, when in actuallity, allowing the character to do everything sort of ruined all other attempts in the game. Maybe its just me but I want some of the more mundane quest to be random.

 

[Sarkile]

Really, the majority of Morrowind's quests felt random anyways, so it wouldn'tve hurt anything.

 

[merry andrew]

That video of someone finishing Morrowind in around 15 minutes is great.

Will this feature make it into Oblivion?

 

[obediah]

Really, the majority of Morrowind's quests felt random anyways, so it wouldn'tve hurt anything.

I would agree with you if it wasn't for Bethesda's patented 'O-vercomp' system of feedback processing. The biggest case in point - "Dungeons in Daggerfall are just too big and random" - solution make the dungeons not half as big, or 25% as big, or 10% as big, or even 3% as big. No sir, you can map the average Morrowind dungeon on a postage stamp with a jumbo crayon.

 

[Country_Gravy]

Oh, teh freedom. Freedom of standing in a middle of tundra, with nobody really caring what and how are you doing, with exciting quests like 'kill that polar fox before it approaches (Russian humor alert)", move that stone 5 meters, collect X amount of berries...
Isn't it fabulous? Not.
Freedom is not just things you can POSSIBLY do.
Freedom is amount of things that are interesting and sensible. Otherwise, it's just freedom of running back and forth, left and right, with infinite variations. Freedom, indeed.

Hey, new guy...Haven't you heard? Freedom is just a word. If I am going to get all worked up over a word, my word is going to be "POONTANG"

 

[Sarkile]

I would agree with you if it wasn't for Bethesda's patented 'O-vercomp' system of feedback processing. The biggest case in point - "Dungeons in Daggerfall are just too big and random" - solution make the dungeons not half as big, or 25% as big, or 10% as big, or even 3% as big. No sir, you can map the average Morrowind dungeon on a postage stamp with a jumbo crayon.

That's true. The dungeons in Daggerfall were almost unbearable for me, but the dungeons in Morrowind were so boring. I remember finding out once that I had cleared out a nest of vampires without realizing it. For a group as powerful as them, you would think they would be able to get a base larger than two rooms.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

Has there been any talk on random quest? IMO one of those things that added more replayability to Daggerfall over Morrowind was randomness. I think it was looked down upon in Morrowind, when in actuallity, allowing the character to do everything sort of ruined all other attempts in the game. Maybe its just me but I want some of the more mundane quest to be random.

You know, I think I'd actually warm up to Oblivion a bit if they announced it has some randomly generated dungeons and events. It's rather strange that there are more and more games that have randomized dungeons and quests since Diablo popularized them, but Bethesda who actually made one of the better CRPGs with random generation freaked out after a bit of criticism and moved away from that method of content generation.

 

[Zufuriin]

There were one or two larger, interesting dungeons in Morrowind. But if it's any indication of how interesting they were, I don't remember anything about them. Except for that they had some cool stuff. Or was that a mod? Or even a dream?

Oh well, I hope it's better this time around.

 

[Shagnak]

There were one or two larger, interesting dungeons in Morrowind.

I remember there being some fecking huge motherfucking ones in the two addons.
In Morrowind itself there were a lot of smaller ones.

Hmm...hang on, there were some big ones there though as well. Like those huge buildings dotted around the coast (on the west side?) that were chock full of Daedra and their followers.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

Yep, the lost Daedra temples or whatever were pretty fucking badass. And Tribunal had a humongous underground dungeon that was also a helluva lot of fun.

 

[Zufuriin]

Yeah, good times. But I presume that expecting several of those types of dungeons in Oblivion would most likely lead to dissapointment. So I won't get my hopes up, and there will always be that chance that I will be pleasantly surprised. Then again, that's what mods/plugins are for, no?

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

You are going to LOVE the dungeons in Oblivion.