Interview Exciting Oblivion persuasion mini-game is revealed!

[Balor]

Note my reply in that thread .
I'd be flattened to recieve such reply - however, not that I'll be a member of any church save CoS one, and even that is unlikely .

 

[Levski 1912]

So when is Lumpy going to post his 95 theses on the ESF?

 

[Section8]

It's bad, but not THAT bad. The success depends on speechcraft, while disposition is foremost governed by personlaity IIRC, so both are stats driven. And at least it now involves a minimal amount of thinking (or testing out) what might work with the NPC - there was no such thing in the MW version. I just doubt the time driven thing wil work out - either its not a challenge and thus superfluous or its actually adding a twitch component where it doesn't make sense. they should instead have limited your number of atttempts and given you ways to learn about the NPC's personality beforehand.

Yeah, I said somewhere in another thread that I wholeheartedly support seamless integration of sensible mini-games, and also that this is better than Morrowind in some respects, because it's more than just a die roll.

But, that said, I find it hard to even consider this one as a different design philosophy. It's just bad.

 

[Proweler]

It's bad, but not THAT bad. The success depends on speechcraft, while disposition is foremost governed by personlaity IIRC, so both are stats driven. And at least it now involves a minimal amount of thinking (or testing out) what might work with the NPC - there was no such thing in the MW version. I just doubt the time driven thing wil work out - either its not a challenge and thus superfluous or its actually adding a twitch component where it doesn't make sense. they should instead have limited your number of atttempts and given you ways to learn about the NPC's personality beforehand.

Each person reacts differently to each type of persuasion. Iit might be worth spending some time figuring out what they like before you speak to them.

 

[Whipporowill]

Iit might be worth spending some time figuring out what they like before you speak to them.

Oh yeah? What are you gonna do, read their diaries?

 

[Cimmerian Nights]

Stop busting balls guys. Arranging colored wedges, my 11 month old would love it!

 

[Data4]

Stop busting balls guys. Arranging colored wedges, my 11 month old would love it!

Great! Be sure and read him/her The Real Barenziah. It's nice and kid friendly now, since it doesn't include passages like... oh...

"Nice pair, kid." She was facing the wall but she could feel the stares of the other patrons. A hush had fallen over the place. Even the bard had stilled. She felt both nausea and a hot burning desire. Her hands released his turgid penis and then it was inside her and she was screaming in both pain and ecstasy. Then everything went black.

...anymore.

-D4

 

[Drakron]

You really think the Daggerfall version of those books are going to be on rated "T" (for ReTarded) Oblivion?

 

[Dreagon]

The more I think about this, the more jaw droppingly amazing it seems. That somebody over at Beth even CONTEMPLATED turning conversation into a twitch skill is just unbelievable. That they did it, just boggles the mind.

I'm waiting for them to announce that they changed their mind and are now having P. Diddy do their soundtrack.

 

[Seboss]

Well,well,well. Congrats for the witty comment guys but I must have missed something. Where are the dozens of high profile cRPGs you're playing or waiting for ?
Surely there are tons of better games than TES IV hmm ?

I mean, ok Oblivion don't meet hardcore RPGers like yourselves, but is that a reason to give up one of the VERY few RPGs we may see on our PCs this year ?

Hmph, you're all liars anyway. You will all play it to death like everybody else.

 

[Whipporowill]

So you're saying we should embrace games that does a poor job of giving us what we want - just because we won't be getting what we want? Sounds like a great way to change things that, ayuh.

Sure I'll play Oblivion and sure it's going to be fun, but there's a lot of streamlining the game further and further away from the pc AND rpg audience that we simply - do - not - like. Get it?

Oh, and there's always Gothic III to start with.

 

[Dreagon]

Well,well,well. Congrats for the witty comment guys but I must have missed something. Where are the dozens of high profile cRPGs you're playing or waiting for ?
Surely there are tons of better games than TES IV hmm ?

I mean, ok Oblivion don't meet hardcore RPGers like yourselves, but is that a reason to give up one of the VERY few RPGs we may see on our PCs this year ?

Hmph, you're all liars anyway. You will all play it to death like everybody else.

Aw c'mon, Pete. We're all friends here. Post under your own name.

 

[Levski 1912]

NWN 2 gives me some hope of reliving the glory days of Planescape. But I think this year will be better for strategy games. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but still...

 

[pantheon]

I can't see the point in the mini - game. Why waste gameplay on such a mindless mechanism.

I liked the TES forum suggestion in Lumpy's thread - we find and collect jokes and taunts in the game world and have the ability to try them out on people. Some jokes/taunts are better than others and results would also be based on how well we tell/say them (based on speachcraft skill).

 

[LlamaGod]

Gothic 3 > Oblivion

 

[Aibric]

Each person reacts differently to each type of persuasion. Iit might be worth spending some time figuring out what they like before you speak to them.

No, it wouldn't be worth the time because every time you go into this little "mini-game", it says that the person will always like one of the options. Considering that there's only four choices anyway, they might as well have just given you a list and highlighted the best choice...or for that matter they might as well only give you the one right response in the first place...better yet, they should just remove any real dialogue at all because at this point its reduced to a formality that actually detracts from all the redundant monster clobbering and loot grabbing all munchkins love. Get where this is going?

Morrowind's dialogue system was pretty horrid in this regard, too, but at least you really had to be willing to sit there and click persuasion for a really long time (and I have enough redundancy in my life to care to engage in it for fun) to get to this level of pointlessness. A munchkin would do that and think they just performed an awesome "trick"...now, stats need never really impede the fun of doing everything and seeing everything and hearing everything all with one character.

And look, I'm not a Bethesda hater. Though I found that it became repetitive, I liked Morrowind and played it a reasonable bit. However, I have a feeling that when i've loaded up Oblivion (with Daemon Tools) that I will experience Deus Ex:IW deja vu, and that ain't pleasant. (Only this time I won't shell out $50 before I play it!)

 

[Data4]

Well,well,well. Congrats for the witty comment guys but I must have missed something. Where are the dozens of high profile cRPGs you're playing or waiting for ?
Surely there are tons of better games than TES IV hmm ?

I mean, ok Oblivion don't meet hardcore RPGers like yourselves, but is that a reason to give up one of the VERY few RPGs we may see on our PCs this year ?

Hmph, you're all liars anyway. You will all play it to death like everybody else.

So...hmmm.. We're all starving because there is no food available anywhere. Now, on one hand, we have a steaming pile of yak shit (but no yak. He took off... right... work with me, here) and on the other we have nothing. We're starving and our choices are to eat nothing or eat yak shit.

Yeah, I'm going to pass on the yak shit, thanks. Oblivion, hopefully won't be yak shit. Besides that, so what if every one of us buys it? Still doesn't mean we can't bitch about what they screwed up or didn't include IN THE CONTEXT OF IT BEING A RPG AS OPPOSED TO A FIRST PERSON ACTION ADVENTURE SHOOTER... which, incidentally, is what I'm tricking myself into believing it is. Hell, it might even be the best FPAAS I've ever played!

Still doesn't justify the fucking-over of the RPG aspects.

-D4

 

[Greatatlantic]

What will be the impact on modding ? It was already hard for mod sites to identify Mods dependences on x-packs for Morrowind. Isn't this dependency on let's say horse armor and 10 other various plugins make it hard to identify user made plugins requirements ?

Our simple requirement is that if you use something of ours, the end user must own the original source to be able to use the plugin. If you mod Oblivion, they must own Oblivion to run it. If you use part of an expansion, they must own the expansion. If it uses our plugin, they must own the plugin. Very straightforward.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the question asks if they made any progress in making it easier to identify what pluggins/expansions you need to use a Mod, and they come out and say you need to the pluggins/expansions the mod uses. That wasn't the question asked, now was it.

 

[kingcomrade]

Exciting!

 

[Seboss]

Still doesn't justify the fucking-over of the RPG aspects.

-D4

I don't see how the persuasion mini-game (that I don't find very convincing - no pun intended) would fuck over the RPG aspects.
Persuasion was not very exciting in Morrowind IIRC. You just click on Admire/Threaten whatever at random wishing for a lucky strike. WoW ! That's some pretty good role play.

Turning this part into an 'action' mini-game is certainly not the best thing to do IMO, but at least you take an active part in the persuasion process.

About Gothic 3, yeah well, the Gothic games are nice but how somebody could say it's better than Oblivion is beyond me. Oblivion will improve on every single aspect of Gothic, except if BethSoft outrageously lies. Like Valve did ..

 

[dunduks]

About Gothic 3, yeah well, the Gothic games are nice but how somebody could say it's better than Oblivion is beyond me. Oblivion will improve on every single aspect of Gothic, except if BethSoft outrageously lies. Like Valve did ..

Uhh, like what are you talking about???
G3 will greatly improve NPC scheduling (all of Gothic games had very impressive scheduling) and according to interviews the devs are making the new scheduling system as robust as your worshipped "Radiant AI".
Combat in Gothic games also was more interesting/balanced then in Morrowind and it still looks like it will be better then Oblibion.
Game world this time around will provide more choices and consequences then before - compare that to Obliblion where your actions have no impact on gameworld.
Graphics - both games will have good graphics + Gothics animations dont suck huge cock and doesn't look deformed.
Oh and Gothic 3 will have dialog as did previous games.
Maybe I have missed some points, but this alone make Gothic a better game then Oblivion in my eyes.

 

[Seboss]

It's just a matter of taste I guess. For me Gothic is corny and very linear in ways. Regarding NPC schedule, it all look like an elaborate script to me, I mean the NPC would always do the same action at the same time. Maybe Gothic 3 will improve on this, but Oblivion will bring some 'randomness' in NPCs lives for sure.
Regarding animations, drop the crap man, Gothic's anims were as awful as Morrowind's.
Combat wasn't so much interesting either. Left-right-left-right until the baddy drops dead. Not more exciting than the Morrowind click fest.

Oblivion and G3 will be very similar IMO, it's just a matter of universe and mood. And German humour...

Finally, I don't worship anything, I'm not some obsequious fanboy from Bethsoft official boards. I'm just annoyed to see so much people bashing this game for kicks. Your jokes aren't funny and you don't seem to bring any point.

 

[Section8]

Regarding animations, drop the crap man, Gothic's anims were as awful as Morrowind's.

As you say, it's a matter of taste re: your other points, but the animations aren't open to conjecture. Morrowind's animations were atrocious. Without exception they looked like somebody's first attempt at using the Biped modifier. Gothic's weren't anything special, but neither were they so horrible as to look completely amateur.

 

[LlamaGod]

It's just a matter of taste I guess. For me Gothic is corny and very linear in ways.

In Gothic 3 you can join the orcs, the humans or fight for yourself only, 3 seperate storylines, and the world in 3 is atleast x10 larger.

Regarding NPC schedule, it all look like an elaborate script to me, I mean the NPC would always do the same action at the same time. Maybe Gothic 3 will improve on this, but Oblivion will bring some 'randomness' in NPCs lives for sure.
Regarding animations, drop the crap man, Gothic's anims were as awful as Morrowind's.

It was scripting, duh. They had it in their games with Bethesda didnt. Obviously they are going to make better than the omgmagic Radiant AI (which is exactly the same thing, just random events thrown in).

 

[Data4]

Still doesn't justify the fucking-over of the RPG aspects.

-D4

I don't see how the persuasion mini-game (that I don't find very convincing - no pun intended) would fuck over the RPG aspects.

Maybe "fuck over" is too strong a thing to say. What I mean is that I was hoping certain things would be improved on based on feedback. Rather than MW's system evolving into a minigame, I was hoping Oblivion's persuasion system would be more incorporated into a more robust dialogue system. Instead, we still get wiki, which turns everyone into a pseudo-interactive information kiosk. The only difference now is they talk.

I've decided to do a little project. I'm going to hunt for and read every Morrowind review available online, and every shortcoming the reviewers notice, I'm going to check in Oblivion. Might prove interesting. I mention this because I just read the Gamespot review, and this stood out:

You're on your own through most of Morrowind, which makes you feel adventurous, but sometimes lonely. That's also in part because interacting with characters is a pretty detached process that boils down to clicking through a list of available topics of conversation. (emphasis added)

Now, I'm no genius, but that quote pretty much casts the topic wiki style of dialogue in a disappointing light. Seems like that would be something to improve on since it was noticable enough to get a mention.

-D4