Interview Ken Rolston (Oblivion's lead designer) retirement interview

[Keldryn]

Wow, this is reaching new lows of closed-minded, one-sided tirades even for this board.

Let's totally ignore other relevant quotes from the interview, such as these thoughts that I doubt many people here would disagree with:

Rolston: I had once dreamed that roleplaying games would transform culture. I expected roleplaying games to take their place alongside literature, drama, and cinema. It didn't happen that way, perhaps just because it is so much more work for users to produce a narrative than to consume one -- or perhaps because crafting narratives as a hobbyist is of interest only to a limited number of people. I'm only a little disappointed, though. For a small number of people, roleplaying games have become a uniquely satisfying pastime, perhaps even occasionally a vehicle for exploring the human condition.

As teams have grown larger, schedules longer, and production budgets titanic, computer games have become almost as slick and polished as television and cinema -- and often as dull and formulaic. I preferred working in small teams with short schedules and smaller budgets, and I don't prefer the slick, polished products of today to the rougher, simpler products of a decade ago. Clearly the mass market prefers the slicker games, but I prefer, for example, the original Pirates and Civilization to the various later editions.

He's pretty clearly lamenting the direction that the modern gaming industry has been heading in, with the emphasis on slick graphics and selling millions of copies vs. selling thousands of copies. I don't think the guy deserves the personal attacks that he has been getting over various aspects of Oblivion's designs that you happen to disagree with

Rolston: I prefer Morrowind's partially recorded dialogue, for many reasons. But I'm told that fully-voiced dialogue is what the kids want. Fully-voiced dialogue is less flexible, less apt for user projection of his own tone, more constrained for branching, and more trouble for production and disk real estate. Voice performances can be very powerful expressive tools, however, and certain aspects of the fully-voiced dialogue -- the conversations system, for example -- contribute significantly to the charm and ambience of Oblivion.

I don't see how anyone can come to the conclusion that "he didn't seem to fight against fully voiced dialogue very hard" from this quote. There simply isn't enough information there. No reasonable person would just up and quit in a role as lead designer simply because the powers-that-be of the company you work for dictate that your project must have fully-voiced dialogue. That isn't the same thing as just caving in to whatever other people have to say about the design. No matter what project you are working on, a lead designer has to make some compromises. It isn't his project; it's a collaberative effort, and whether they are the right people to make such calls or not, the people who are picking up the $15 million development bill (or whatever it is) are part of the process. How much he tried to fight that decision isn't really relevant to the interview question. He said he doesn't really like the fully-voiced dialogue and gave his reasons why, and that's really all that he needs to say. To get into the internal politics involved would be unprofessional.

Rolston: (...)I only wish we'd presented Morrowind's main narrative with the same obtrusive urgency. The overwhelming number of quest choices and the lack of narrative focus was justly identified by many as a serious weakness in Morrowind.

I happen to agree that it is a serious weakness in Morrowind's design, and one shared by a great number of open-ended RPGs.

Rolston: Morrowind stops being much of a gameplay challenge long before you've exhausted the narrative and setting content. Encounters indexed to the user level addresses that problem directly. I think leveling was, at first, perceived as a cure for the obvious balance flaws of Morrowind. But as we refined leveling gameplay during development, we appreciated how it made the game more fun in every way. It does feel a little artificial, and, to some extent, it robs the player of the joy of getting the crap kicked out him. But I think minor refinements in leveling practice for the next Elder Scrolls projects can reduce those blemishes to a large extent.

I don't think that levelling up to the point where you can easily kick the crap out of everything that moves is a vital part of the RPG experience. From a gameplay point of view, I think that it does make for a better game when the challenge is maintained throughout the gameplay experience. Most games outside of the RPG genre don't get easier as you progress and actually become more challenging. I enjoy a good challenge, but I don't know that I ever found much joy in getting the crap kicked out of me. And he admits that there are flaws in the auto-levelling paradigm, but expresses optimism that those can be overcome. What's the huge beef with that? He's not saying it's perfect and inarguably the best way to do it.

Rolston: I've always preferred the sandbox or freeform model of RPG gameplay. I implemented greased-rail linear narratives in PARANOIA because I knew the players would ignore the storyline in the first place; I encouraged them to do so at every opportunity. It's the same with Oblivion. I was perfectly happy with a linear main quest narrative, because I knew the 'enlightened' (i.e., irredeemably perverse) user would march off at right angles to the story line the moment he had the chance.

And he clearly admits a preference for freeform gameplay, which I don't think anybody here will disagree with. I don't see why there is a problem with his last sentence there. A storyline is, almost by definition, a linear narrative -- it's hard to maintain any sense of continuity if it isn't. The player has the opportunity to pursue other tasks thoughout the entire game, including the choice to never even bother with the main storyline. How is this is problem exactly?

I think it's pretty disgusting and unfair how dissatisfaction with Oblivion (of which many criticisms are in fact just as prevalent in other games that are highly praised here) turns into personal attacks. It feels like the average age of the more vocally critical posters is about fourteen.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Guess what? It *is* what the kids want. If it wasn't, the game wouldn't be selling like hot cakes, would it now?

You have a problem with logic. Your statement implies that the game is selling like hotcakes because of the voice over, which is not true.

Hm. Let's say that the past tense doesn't surprise me.

I moved up.

I would expect he cashed in his bonuses and got another notch on his CV, which won't hurt with any future projects.

The guy retired. He's 50. He wants to play with toy soldiers. What CV? You still look at this situation from the position from the position of a 25-year old.

A completely different situation than walking off in the middle of a project. Damn, VD, I thought you knew how these things worked!

Once again, I didn't suggest that he should walk out in the middle of the project. He worked at Bethesda for a long time, he knew how things work, and whether or not he was strong enough to be the lead. If he couldn't, he should have passed the title to someone else, without actually leaving. Do I need to explain every little detail?

Then why do you keep saying completely clueless things about it?

*sigh* Yes, I'm clueless and you are a know-it-all guy. I admit. Happy now?

 

[Prime Junta]

Guess what? It *is* what the kids want.

This is the dumbest argument ever. Since when is giving kids what they want a good idea? Since their target audience is literally the "kid" demographic in this case (14-18), it fits pretty well. There's something to be said for not stooping down to the lowest common denominator. And you can't make any assumptions on sales numbers yet, as the only sales we've seen are from the brand loyalty that the Elder Scrolls series built up. Come back with numbers in a year, and we'll see.

You're right, it is. Withdrawn.

I think you're wrong about the sales numbers being only from ES brand loyalty, though. But as you said, we'll see in a year.

 

[Keldryn]

This is the dumbest argument ever. Since when is giving kids what they want a good idea? Since their target audience is literally the "kid" demographic in this case (14-18), it fits pretty well. There's something to be said for not stooping down to the lowest common denominator. And you can't make any assumptions on sales numbers yet, as the only sales we've seen are from the brand loyalty that the Elder Scrolls series built up. Come back with numbers in a year, and we'll see.

How is this an issue of "giving kids what they want?"

I highly doubt that the target audience of Oblivion is the 14-18 year-old demographic. Especially when you consider that you either need a $400 game console or a high-end PC with a $400+ video card to really be able to play it.

Oblivion is still very much aimed at the "hardcore" gamer, regardless of what a vocal minority of RPG traditionalists have to say about the game. It has a massive world with a lot of information to keep track of, and can literally take hundreds of hours to complete. That isn't "casual" and it isn't "mainstream." It's not "dumbed down for ADD kiddies." It certainly is polished and shiny to make it compete in the marketplace with other modern games with high production values, but that is an entirely different issue altogether. It's still squarely aimed at the 18-34 year-old male (with a lot fo disposable income) demographic, just like the vast majority of computer and console games released today are.

 

[Lumpy]

Voice overs aren't a fucking big deal. He didn't like them, but they're hardly a reason to leave a team. Besides, many games have fully voiced dialogue - Gothic, for example.

And as for the linear story - Yeah, yeah, Fallout had a non-linear story. But ever wonder why? Because it's whole main storyline consisted of blowing two places up.
You can't really have a non linear storyline with the complexity of Oblivion's.

 

[Drakron]

Its designed for americans that on adverage at 25 years old have the metal age of a european 12 years old.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Re: Ken Rolston (Oblivion's lead designer) retirement interv

I didn't imply that a lead designer should throw a fucking tantrum when something doesn't go his way or threaten to quit when someone disagrees with him.

You didn't imply anything, you said it outright. "tell other people to fuck off. If you can't, pass the title to someone who can."

And? Does passing the title automatically mean leaving? There are many people who, when offered a promotion or a chance to lead a project, decline because they are not sure they can handle the pressure, expectations, and dealing with assholes on a more "close and personal" level.

All in all, you're passing harsh judgement based on a weak supposition. I'm not sure if you have an axe to grind with this guy, or are just having a lapse of rational thought.

What I've heard about Ken from several different developers doesn't sound overly positive. That's what my judgement is based on.

 

[Voss]

I think you can judge him based on that 'roleplaying will transform culture & stand along side literature' crap. I don't care how young he was when he thought that way... its at the same pathetic level as those stupid kids that think they're superman and can fly out a hotel window.

Any fuckwit that actually thinks that way deserves a severe beating. Just like a Risk player who thinks playing that a lot will make him a master strategist.

 

[obediah]

Guess what? It *is* what the kids want. If it wasn't, the game wouldn't be selling like hot cakes, would it now?

You have a problem with logic. Your statement implies that the game is selling like hotcakes because of the voice over, which is not true.

Of course there is no one reason Oblivion is selling like hotcakes, but I bet money we'd all be sickened if we knew how much the full voice acting appeals to the masses that have bought the game. Think podcasts. Think all the news sites going to video feeds.

 

[Old Scratch]

Voice over did little more than slightly spice up an already dull communication system. As simple as Oblivion's--and especially it's predecessor Morrowind's dialogue were--it would have been a fucking travesty not to have VO.

Guess I'm in the kiddy camp that feels VO should now be a standard, especially in bland games. Facial expressions and lip-syncing for that matter too. If Bloodlines could pull it off so splendidly with their rich dialogues options and life-like characters, there's no reason other games can't pay some attention to those two features.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Wow, this is reaching new lows of closed-minded, one-sided tirades even for this board.

Well, thank God you show up just in time then.

He's pretty clearly lamenting the direction that the modern gaming industry has been heading in, with the emphasis on slick graphics and selling millions of copies vs. selling thousands of copies. I don't think the guy deserves the personal attacks that he has been getting over various aspects of Oblivion's designs that you happen to disagree with

Did you click on the link to the Douglas Goodall's interview that was in the news post right after the paragraph you were so impressed with?

Allow me:
"Ken and I also disagreed on "relativism" and "betrayal," among other things. I appreciate disinformation, but I believe it works best when you know what the truth is. I like to write a true account and then conceal it among carefully designed false accounts. Ken wrote a dozen different accounts, apparently without any personal preference to which, if any, was accurate, and ignored the contradictions. I wanted to have NPCs betray the player in a few quests, but Ken had a "no-betrayal" rule (and some other rules, like "only one coincidence allowed"), which didn't make sense to me. I can't say that I'm right and he's wrong. In fact, I often felt that he was talking past me or over my head. I understood all of his words, but they didn't combine into sentences that made sense to me."

In other words, Ken created dull mechanics and developed his own rules supporting such mechanics, and then complained in the last interview that games are dull and formulaic. No shit.

I don't see how anyone can come to the conclusion that "he didn't seem to fight against fully voiced dialogue very hard" from this quote. There simply isn't enough information there.

His response would have been different then. There is no bitterness, no emotions there. I could be wrong, of course.

...the people who are picking up the $15 million development bill (or whatever it is) are part of the process.

Bethesda is a different case. The people who picked up the bill ARE the people who hired Ken, and judging by the success of MW were happy with his design skills.

I think it's pretty disgusting and unfair how dissatisfaction with Oblivion (of which many criticisms are in fact just as prevalent in other games that are highly praised here) turns into personal attacks. It feels like the average age of the more vocally critical posters is about fourteen.

Maybe that's because some people, being 14 and stuff, foolishly believe that games don't magically appear out of thin air, and when they are dissatisfied with games, they tend to connect people who worked on those games with the state of those games. Mistakenly, of course. I'm glad that being both mature and perceptive I think that Ken is a scholar and a gentleman, and blaming him for Oblivion is a very stupid thing to do.

 

[Section8]

Ken also helped with the Bethesda titles Sea Dogs and Pirates of the Caribbean.

<coughs>

Anyway, on to the thread. Personally, I don't think the blame can be pointed solely at Rolston for Oblivion's uniformly bland and mediocre design. It rests squarely on the "decision makers" and project management. Obviously Rolston is a part of that group, but he's certainly not the sole reason why Oblivion fails in all areas aside from sales.

Oblivion to me, seems as though nobody ever imprinted their vision on the game, and as such it's unfocused. Ironic, given that the design seems to be primarily driven by "focus" groups. A name which is in turn ironic, because I doubt those groups could stay focused on anything for longer than about 2 seconds.

Anyway. It's obvious that Oblivion is not only "design by commitee", but also that there are a number of ill-considered feature hooks, typified by the fully-voiced dialogue. First of all, let's consider the "design by commitee" bit.

Ideally, a lead designer should have executive control over all design decisions, even if he's not explicitly designing each and every system. For this sort of title, a lead designer should be an uncompromising, perfectionist bastard, and should be given as much license as possible. For instance, Rolston should have said "look, the system of gearing everything to the PC's level does solve some of Morrowind's problems with difficulty, but it's not good enough. Rethink the system. It needs to be less transparent to the player, and less damaging to verisimilitude." And maybe he did.

It's at that point that the producers/project managers have to be considered. That decision in particular isn't going to obviously generate more sales. It's going to make the game better but the game still works without it. So with a game of enormous scope, and pushing to make milestones, there aren't many producers who would side with the designer in that instance.

And that's why Oblivion ends up feeling like "design by commitee", because it's very inefficient to catch weak design retrospectively. I think Oblivion needed a lead game designer from the outset, who didn't concern themself with any of the narrative, setting or any of Oblivion's very expansive elements. Someone needed to nail down the core gameplay early on, and make sure the implementation was up to speed.

The other big issue is the imposition of hook features, ie "what the kids want". This is basically irredeemable in terms of design, because you're basically talking about ideas conceived as marketing tools without regard or respect for the actual game design.

As a lead designer, this shit is your mortal enemy, but it's almost impossible to fight. It basically comes down to those features being the price you must pay in order to actually work on a commercially funded title. You can't argue that <feature X> flies in the face of your brilliant design and will ruin the game, because it's the reason the game is being made in the first place.

In short, it's almost completely fucked, and probably the biggest problem I have with the games industry. The only real solution is put forward hooks that are saleable, but also solid design, and they're a rare and elusive beast.

I guess the overall point of discussion is "Did Rolston drop the ball?" and I don't think that's a fair question. Bethesda fucked up, and if I were going to point fingers, it would be at the senior staff in general, but particularly the project management. Even so, from a project management perspective, Oblivion is pretty successful. It got shipped after a single minor delay, and has probably already turned a profit. But that's not going to stop the jaded designer in me from vilifying Oblivion as a corporate turd.

 

[Volourn]

"Its designed for americans that on adverage at 25 years old have the metal age of a european 12 years old."

Bullshit, morons. Then again, Europeans aren't known for their intelligence and wisdom either. Afterall, it was Europeans whod ecided that starting two world wars in a manner of decades was such a GOOD idea.

Not to mention that 'reality tv' was mostly their idea.

R00fles!

 

[Zomg]

Man, what's up with these pedant finger-wagging arguments on the Codex lately? At least bryce and Roqua start calling you a cocklash after a couple of posts instead of spiraling out of control into page after page of reiteration.

 

[Hazelnut]

I still don't actually tell people to fuck off.

A figure of speech, obviously. You don't have to actually tell people "fuck off" to tell them to fuck off.

Yes I am aware, and as was my statement. (maybe not so obviously, eh? I should have used quotes probably)

But, the concept of just keeping on fighting for/against something when it's not your decision (as far as the company sees it) far beyond just making sure people are aware of your opinion and rationale for it, i.e. fuck off, is not one that is either reasonable or productive. That is my point.

 

[Prime Junta]

In short, it's almost completely fucked, and probably the biggest problem I have with the games industry. The only real solution is put forward hooks that are saleable, but also solid design, and they're a rare and elusive beast.

Bingo.

I think there's another real solution, though: figure out a way to deliver games with decent production values at low enough cost that it becomes acceptable to take risks in the "hook" department. Such as, license an engine that takes care of the bling-bling including a library of already animated, tweakable character models, and concentrate on low-cost, high-value content such as quest scripts, dialogue, non-animated art assets, music, and skins.

 

[ad hominem]

I think you're wrong about the sales numbers being only from ES brand loyalty, though. But as you said, we'll see in a year.

Perhaps you're right; what I should say is that I hope the sales numbers are only from brand loyalty, but it's very possible that they've opened up more of the teen market and had a marketing push that was wildly successful. If those numbers continue, I guess just the little bit of hope I had left that Bethesda could turn it around are gone.

I highly doubt that the target audience of Oblivion is the 14-18 year-old demographic. Especially when you consider that you either need a $400 game console or a high-end PC with a $400+ video card to really be able to play it.

Maybe some places, but here in America (from all I can tell, their main market) the 14-18 year-olds are the ones with that much disposable income. Hell, my baby brother who's a Sophomore in high school has more consoles and a better computer than I do. Parents can't spend time with their kids so they try to make up for it by lavishing money on them...but that's a different thread, not trying to get (even more) off-topic here.

/edit: fixed html

 

[ad hominem]

Guess I'm in the kiddy camp that feels VO should now be a standard, especially in bland games. Facial expressions and lip-syncing for that matter too. If Bloodlines could pull it off so splendidly with their rich dialogues options and life-like characters, there's no reason other games can't pay some attention to those two features.

Did you see any of the stories about the kids who were so into the Harry Potter books, but then after they saw the movies they couldn't go back and read them any more? Something along the lines of "it wasn't what I imagined, but now it's all I can [imagine]." The human imagination can do things a lot better than any team of designers will ever be able to. That's not to say that VO can't be cool; but when it's a choice between doing a half-assed job at it or not doing it at all, I would much prefer they not do it at all. Bad VO kills immersion (not like Oblivion needed any help).

 

[Hazelnut]

Man, what's up with these pedant finger-wagging arguments on the Codex lately? At least bryce and Roqua start calling you a cocklash after a couple of posts instead of spiraling out of control into page after page of reiteration.

It's called discussion. Look it up. (cocklash )

Now, if only people could not get worked up about posts on a silly old internet forum and write posts where the tone can only be described as "grrrrr", we'd be set.

Guess I'm in the kiddy camp that feels VO should now be a standard, especially in bland games. Facial expressions and lip-syncing for that matter too. If Bloodlines could pull it off so splendidly with their rich dialogues options and life-like characters, there's no reason other games can't pay some attention to those two features.

I am not against voiced dialogue, either full or otherwise, in principle. But for an expansive, sand-box game with ~200 hours of play, and where the lacklustre dialogue of the last installment was a not uncommon criticism, it was IMHO completely the wrong decision. Absolutely disasterous in fact. I personally reckon that the quest simplicity, handholding and built in walkthough were an inevitable consequence of the decision to do full VO. And since they are my main problems with the game, that's makes that decision a rather important reasong as to why I was so disappointed. I don't think for a minute that given a different game, with a different scope and maybe a different dev team as well, that full VO wouldn't be the right decision.

Ken also helped with the Bethesda titles Sea Dogs and Pirates of the Caribbean.

<coughs>

You feeling unwell S8, or is there something I missed...

 

[elander_]

Voice overs aren't a fucking big deal. He didn't like them, but they're hardly a reason to leave a team. Besides, many games have fully voiced dialogue - Gothic, for example.

They are if you want to make a crpg which Gothic barely is. You forgot to read that part of the interview.

And as for the linear story - Yeah, yeah, Fallout had a non-linear story. But ever wonder why? Because it's whole main storyline consisted of blowing two places up.
You can't really have a non linear storyline with the complexity of Oblivion's.

What an insult to one of the best crpgs in history. So much ignorance can only be a very bad joke. Fallout is not about a story but a thousand of stories of personal lifes all interconected to form the great atmosphere of Fallout. The game is a Picasso painting of a post apocaliptic world. Who would complain that you can finish the main quest by just blowing two places. In fact you can do the main by just talking to the Master in a mater of a couple of minutes but does that mean anything?

When we are talking about KR we are talking about someone who isn't new to pnps and even crpgs:

Ken is best known in paper gaming for his standout work as the first line developer for the darkly satirical science-fiction RPG PARANOIA, originally published in 1984 by West End Games. Set in a future underground city ruled by an insane Computer, PARANOIA casts players as Troubleshooters charged to hunt traitorous mutants and members of secret societies -- but each player is, himself, secretly a mutant and a secret society member. The game turned traditional roleplaying on its head by motivating players to betray each other at every opportunity. Ken established a sardonic, high-spirited tone for PARANOIA that made it a huge bestseller throughout the 1980s.

So i think it would be fair to give him a bit more credit. Bethesda game studios is not an independent game studio. They are owned by Bethesda publishers and are their employes and that means that if they don't what the publisher wants they loose their jobs pure and simple. Standing in their decision would not change anything. Publishers prefer to have a complete idiot designing a game than to acept their money making sacred ideals to be contested.

 

[Drakron]

YOU GOD DAMN RETARDED, BETHSOFT IS THE EXACT SAME FUCKING COMPANY, BOTH AS DEVELOPER AND PUBLISHER

Jesus Crist, how many FUCKING TIMES so I have to go with this until you MORONS get into your FUCKING EMPTY HEAD that Bethsoft is EXACTLY the same as Interplay back when they developed and published games, they have a development team.

Bethsoft softworks is owned by Zenimax media inc.

 

[Keldryn]

Well, thank God you show up just in time then.

You're welcome.

Did you click on the link to the Douglas Goodall's interview that was in the news post right after the paragraph you were so impressed with?

Yes, I did, and I read that interview a long time ago as well. I didn't find anything in it to be particularly damning.

Allow me:
"Ken and I also disagreed on "relativism" and "betrayal," among other things. I appreciate disinformation, but I believe it works best when you know what the truth is. I like to write a true account and then conceal it among carefully designed false accounts. Ken wrote a dozen different accounts, apparently without any personal preference to which, if any, was accurate, and ignored the contradictions. I wanted to have NPCs betray the player in a few quests, but Ken had a "no-betrayal" rule (and some other rules, like "only one coincidence allowed"), which didn't make sense to me. I can't say that I'm right and he's wrong. In fact, I often felt that he was talking past me or over my head. I understood all of his words, but they didn't combine into sentences that made sense to me."

Well thank God you showed up just in time to quote it for me.

Still don't seen anything damning there. Different approaches to design. And wasn't Rolston being slammed elsewhere in this thread for not using his role as Lead Designer to use his authority to make design decisions when they need to be made? We've got two designers here both with strong opinions on how things should be done... not an uncommon situation. I don't agree with everything that Rolston thinks about game design, but neither do I agree with all of what Goodall thinks either.

In other words, Ken created dull mechanics and developed his own rules supporting such mechanics, and then complained in the last interview that games are dull and formulaic. No shit.

I think it is dramatically over-generalizing to equate his "dull mechanics and rules" for whether NPCs are telling the truth and whether or not they can betray the player to his opinion that modern games have become dull and formulaic. That's really taking a huge leap there... you're comparing apples and... a side of beef.

His response would have been different then. There is no bitterness, no emotions there. I could be wrong, of course.

Or maybe he's just behaving like a professional and not bad-mouthing the company and people that he worked with for years. I could be wrong, of course.

Bethesda is a different case. The people who picked up the bill ARE the people who hired Ken, and judging by the success of MW were happy with his design skills.

I'm well aware of this. That doesn't mean that the people who hired Ken and who picked up the bill don't have their own ideas of what a game needs to compete in today's marketplace. And I don't think there is anything wrong with wanting the game to have full voiceovers. When you have a game world represented in meticulous graphical detail, with a fairly interactive environment, it is somewhat jarring to have text bubbles floating around above characters' heads. Perhaps the voiceovers weren't as well done as they could have been, but that is a different issue. Both KOTOR games and Jade Empire had a lot of dialogue, and I think all three games benefitted from full voiceovers. In part because all three games are (appriopriately) heavily inspired by the cinematic tradition.

Maybe that's because some people, being 14 and stuff, foolishly believe that games don't magically appear out of thin air, and when they are dissatisfied with games, they tend to connect people who worked on those games with the state of those games.

Where did I imply that games magically appear out of thin air? Or that the people who worked on those games are not resopnsible for the end product?

That's entirely different than making personal attacks on the character of one of those people because you happen to disagree with his perspectives on design. That's neither mature or professional.

Mistakenly, of course. I'm glad that being both mature and perceptive I think that Ken is a scholar and a gentleman, and blaming him for Oblivion is a very stupid thing to do.

He was but one of many people involved in Oblivion's creation, and ultimately doesn't get to make all of the big decisions by himself. He comes across as quite professional and polite in his interviews, and he came across much the same way the one time that I met him (I had a press pass at E3 2001 and got in on a private demo of Morrowind).

 

[Keldryn]

Its designed for americans that on adverage at 25 years old have the metal age of a european 12 years old.

So exactly what is the adverage metal age where you come from?

 

[Keldryn]

Voice over did little more than slightly spice up an already dull communication system. As simple as Oblivion's--and especially it's predecessor Morrowind's dialogue were--it would have been a fucking travesty not to have VO.

Guess I'm in the kiddy camp that feels VO should now be a standard, especially in bland games. Facial expressions and lip-syncing for that matter too. If Bloodlines could pull it off so splendidly with their rich dialogues options and life-like characters, there's no reason other games can't pay some attention to those two features.

I completely agree with you. Facial expressions and other more subtle non-verbal actions can reveal much more about a character's reactions than several hundred words are often able to. The same goes for sub-verbal communication -- cues you pick up from tone, inflection, rate of speaking, and other aspects of speech that are not simply the "content" of the words spoken.

Why NPC schedules and complex dialogue trees (which are pretty artificial) are given a higher priority by a lot of RPGers is beyond me. That isn't to say that these things aren't important in creating an immersive world, because they are. But so are other factors. It's like the "perfect RPG" in many peoples' minds suddenly switches from being a visual experience into a novel as soon as an NPC interaction begins. I find the transition a little jarring at times. When a game's world is represented more abstractly -- with a detached overhead view, small non-detailed character sprites on the screen, multiple scale maps and the like -- the transition feels more natural. But when you have a more visually immersive game, when you are much closer to the action (1st person or perhaps over-the-shoulder view), with highly detailed, realistic graphics, and most of the game's events unfolding in real-time, the transition to a very book-based paradigm just doesn't feel as natural.

That isn't to say that there is anything wrong with games that seek to provide an experience more akin to a good fantasy novel than a more cinematic experience. I don't have a problem with reading long dialogues. But as 3D graphics improve and become more and more realistic, electronic gaming is become more and more a visual and aural form of expression. And I don't think that it is inferior because of that -- but it is different. And the more traditional text-heavy dialogue systems don't really fit into that paradigm and mode of processing as well. We all seem to want our NPCs in RPGs to be "realistic" and believable, but real conversations do make use of non-verbal and sub-verbal cues. Real conversation tends to be very brief -- nobody speaks the same way that characters do in a novel. If we did, we'd all be passing letters to each other instead of speaking. If somebody actually spoke to you they way they do in Ultima VII: The Serpent Isle, you'd tell them to get on with it in short order.

 

[Zomg]

I don't think the artistic depth of unvoiced dialogue trees was ever exhausted. It's cheap, and it puts good writing front and center without having to pass through the filters of animation or voice acting. You can present a substantively different texture (pardon the pun) of experience with unvoiced text.

It's a common Codex cliche to paint the move from text to voiced (or anything brought on by the modern VG era) as progress when it's merely change. I think it's simply a failure of imagination to consider an emphasis on a "cinematic" or "realistic" mien as positive without very good argument.

Here's an example of something you could only do with text that's come up a few times just since I've registered: Attach context-sensitive descriptions to objects in the gameworld. Say there's a vase - you mouse over it, and a description pops up. This description is dependant on your character;

If your character is an idiot, you might get: It's a flower pot.
If your character is streetwise, you might get: It's a classy glazed vase. It's probably worth a good bit.
If your character is well-educated, you might get: It's a worthless reproduction of an Xth century Y vase.

There's no other way than text to create a sophisticated layer between the character and the player. There will never be another solution, unless you're willing for someone to read the above to the player. That's only an example, of course, not an argument that all games should be text or something silly like that, but you get the idea.