Game News Oblivion mage quests (highly intricate stuff)

[Seboss]

Right.

Maybe that's mediocrity and that's part of what the Codex denounces but, I'd rather play some old stuff with fancy graphics and new technology rather than playing the dated original over again.
I don't think it applies to Morrowind to be honest. Playing Morrowind wasn't quite as fulfilling as playing Daggerfall. But Oblivion seems like Daggerfall++ and that's ok for me.

Claiming that Oblivion is THE cRPG of the decade, well that's another story.

Btw, there are some great Ultima remakes around. Anybody checked U5 Lazarus ?

 

[bryce777]

Right.

Maybe that's mediocrity and that's part of what the Codex denounces but, I'd rather play some old stuff with fancy graphics and new technology rather than playing the dated original over again.
I don't think it applies to Morrowind to be honest. Playing Morrowind wasn't quite as fulfilling as playing Daggerfall. But Oblivion seems like Daggerfall++ and that's ok for me.

Claiming that Oblivion is THE cRPG of the decade, well that's another story.

Btw, there are some great Ultima remakes around. Anybody checked U5 Lazarus ?

Have you evenr ead any of the oblivion info? It is nothing like daggerfall.

 

[LlamaGod]

Btw, there are some great Ultima remakes around. Anybody checked U5 Lazarus ?

You should play Ultima 4 first.

 

[Zufuriin]

Have you even read any of the oblivion info? It is nothing like daggerfall.

Some would even say that it is a step down from MW. *gasp*

What does Oblivion have in common with Daggerfall, besides wild animals living in basements?

 

[Seboss]

You should play Ultima 4 first.

Played it on the Apple IIc in the old days.

 

[Seboss]

Right.

Maybe that's mediocrity and that's part of what the Codex denounces but, I'd rather play some old stuff with fancy graphics and new technology rather than playing the dated original over again.
I don't think it applies to Morrowind to be honest. Playing Morrowind wasn't quite as fulfilling as playing Daggerfall. But Oblivion seems like Daggerfall++ and that's ok for me.

Claiming that Oblivion is THE cRPG of the decade, well that's another story.

Btw, there are some great Ultima remakes around. Anybody checked U5 Lazarus ?

Have you evenr ead any of the oblivion info? It is nothing like daggerfall.

I read every piece of info made available to public about Oblivion and even more.
I noticed some similarities between Oblivion and Daggerfall that were missed in Morrowind:

1. Old fashioned fantasy settings ( Vvardenfell was rather alien)
2. Horses
3. Fast travel
4. Larger landscape
5. More interactive combat (you could attack 4 different ways in Daggerfall)
6. Monarch gets killed and you have (amongst other things) to figure out why and who
7. Shops have closing hours
8. You can buy a house

I guess there are a lot more (and surely more relevent) similarities.

 

[NeVeRLiFt]

Right.

Maybe that's mediocrity and that's part of what the Codex denounces but, I'd rather play some old stuff with fancy graphics and new technology rather than playing the dated original over again.
I don't think it applies to Morrowind to be honest. Playing Morrowind wasn't quite as fulfilling as playing Daggerfall. But Oblivion seems like Daggerfall++ and that's ok for me.

Claiming that Oblivion is THE cRPG of the decade, well that's another story.

Btw, there are some great Ultima remakes around. Anybody checked U5 Lazarus ?

Have you evenr ead any of the oblivion info? It is nothing like daggerfall.

I read every piece of info made available to public about Oblivion and even more.
I noticed some similarities between Oblivion and Daggerfall that were missed in Morrowind:

1. Old fashioned fantasy settings ( Vvardenfell was rather alien)
2. Horses
3. Fast travel
4. Larger landscape
5. More interactive combat (you could attack 4 different ways in Daggerfall)
6. Monarch gets killed and you have (amongst other things) to figure out why and who
7. Shops have closing hours
8. You can buy a house

I guess there are a lot more (and maybe more relevent) similarities.

You have a point there.
Can't wait to download Oblivion and give it a try.

 

[Seboss]

Of course, except for the so-called next-gen gfx and overhyped Radiant AI, there's nothing very spectacular in there.
Did they implement a banking system in Oblivion ?

 

[Zufuriin]

Sorry, what does Oblivion have in common with Daggerfall, in terms of meaningful* elements?

*As in, relevant to the topic at hand (hint: this is RPGcodex)

 

[Section8]

Unfortunately, most of those things are trivial.

Old fashioned fantasy settings ( Vvardenfell was rather alien)

Many people sing the praises of Morrowind's alien art direction. In fact, for me personally, it's one of the highlights. Since exploration was MW's key feature, the fact that the world was almost entirely unfamiliar is a big plus.

Horses

Who gives a fuck? They're like the Boots of Blinding Speed without the blinding bit, and not much else. Even Daggerfall had a more features to its implementation of horses.

Fast travel

This was in Daggerfall to facilitate travelling around a fucking enormous game world. Why is it in Oblivion? For the gamer who has no patience whatsoever. Morrowind's systems of fast travel are sufficient for a gameworld the size of Oblivion. And then there are intervention spells and Mark/Recall as utility spells that fit within the setting. But no, those are out too, in favour of a metagaming utility.

Larger landscape

Again, trivial. I don't have numbers, but "3x bigger than Morrowind" pales under comparison with however many dozens of times bigger Daggerfall is.

More interactive combat (you could attack 4 different ways in Daggerfall)

I'll give you this, combat does look slightly improved, but it should be able to bear comparison to similar games, and Mount and Blade outdoes it in nearly every way, with a huge amount of variation and depth to its system.

Or you could compare it to a contempory game, like Dark Messiah, and the few short clips we've seen of it in action put it to shame.

Monarch gets killed and you have (amongst other things) to <s>figure out</s> follow the bright flashing arrows to why and who

Fixed, but really, not a feature in any way shape or form. In fact, when it comes to plot lines, different is better. I don't hear anyone saying "Never Say Never Again is excellent because it just reuses the plot from Thunderball!" Instead they say, "What's the fucking point? It's completely superfluous!"

Shops have closing hours

Well, yeah it's great that everything runs on a schedule again but it's not really a "make-or-break" feature.

You can buy a house

Which sounds to me like a fairly thoughtless money sink because you're probably going to earn more money than you can handle, just like Morrowind's horribly broken economy.

 

[bryce777]

Right.

Maybe that's mediocrity and that's part of what the Codex denounces but, I'd rather play some old stuff with fancy graphics and new technology rather than playing the dated original over again.
I don't think it applies to Morrowind to be honest. Playing Morrowind wasn't quite as fulfilling as playing Daggerfall. But Oblivion seems like Daggerfall++ and that's ok for me.

Claiming that Oblivion is THE cRPG of the decade, well that's another story.

Btw, there are some great Ultima remakes around. Anybody checked U5 Lazarus ?

Have you evenr ead any of the oblivion info? It is nothing like daggerfall.

I read every piece of info made available to public about Oblivion and even more.
I noticed some similarities between Oblivion and Daggerfall that were missed in Morrowind:

1. Old fashioned fantasy settings ( Vvardenfell was rather alien)
2. Horses
3. Fast travel
4. Larger landscape
5. More interactive combat (you could attack 4 different ways in Daggerfall)
6. Monarch gets killed and you have (amongst other things) to figure out why and who
7. Shops have closing hours
8. You can buy a house

I guess there are a lot more (and surely more relevent) similarities.

These are minor things. The whole character system is changed for the worse. Shit, there are a million things that have been listed out that are worse just from mowwowing

 

[crufty]

The quests must be of really epic (tm) proportions for all of them taking 8 hours to test. I am sure many quests only take about 5 mins, which makes it possibly to test it in clearly less than an hour and then pretty extensivly. From what we see it seems questions are just A->B in form which means there is only one solution which in turn makes it even more easy to test.

Well, that's where I was going with that. Not talking about testing Oblivion's quests (not knocking them--they seem fine to me), but about testing out uber complicated ones. W/multiple solutions, multiple paths, involving multiple character builds. Testing from start to finish, including bug fixes, tweaks and restests, conversations with designers, etc...I could see that taking 8 hours. Which is a pretty high load. So that's probaly why we see simpler quests.

However, generated quests with automatic testing is a pretty interesting idea.

 

[Kuato]

Ok, maybe I'm being overly critical here, but here are my thoughts.

Quest 1: The guildmaster is worried about a missing mage, who's walking around being invisible, because he's a prankster. The guildmaster can't detect him and, obviously, has never heard of the invisibility spell. If that's not the stupidest thing you've ever heard of, I don't know what is. At least, a fedex quest is simple, but not stupid.

Quest 2: Same, but slightly tweaked idiotic design. The guidmaster lost the amulet and seeing ghosts. Obviously, she's never heard of conjuring. How these stupid people become guildmasters, I'd never understand.

Quest 3: "...suddenly the murderer appears out of the tavern and runs to you and shouts that hes going to kill you and steal all your money!" I hope he shouts "I'm going to kill you. With death!" or something equally dramatic and fitting the moment.
"...the nervous mage girl (who was so afraid of teh murderar!) from the tavern rushed out and helped you out, she blasted and charred the mage to hell! and instantly killed him". :shock:

None of that crap makes sense, if you think about it.

If the name of the game is Oblivion, I would expect its not going to be very memorable

 

[Twinfalls]

More interactive combat (you could attack 4 different ways in Daggerfall)

I'll give you this, combat does look slightly improved, but it should be able to bear comparison to similar games, and Mount and Blade outdoes it in nearly every way, with a huge amount of variation and depth to its system.

Or you could compare it to a contempory game, like Dark Messiah, and the few short clips we've seen of it in action put it to shame.

Or you could even compare it to Daggerfall, which featured analogue control of weapons.

Monarch gets killed and you have (amongst other things) to <s>figure out</s> follow the bright flashing arrows to why and who

Fixed, but really, not a feature in any way shape or form. In fact, when it comes to plot lines, different is better. I don't hear anyone saying "Never Say Never Again is excellent because it just reuses the plot from Thunderball!" Instead they say, "What's the fucking point? It's completely superfluous!"

Again, Seboss doesn't compare this with Daggerfall (not played DF?) for doing so will doubtless yield a shaking head at how a game whose early precursor had a sophisticated, branching storyline, gets dumbed down to shit.

You can buy a house

Which sounds to me like a fairly thoughtless money sink because you're probably going to earn more money than you can handle, just like Morrowind's horribly broken economy.

And you'll be carrying your pile of gazillion Septims around with you - because unlike Daggerfall, gold is now weightless. And unlike Daggerfall, there are no longer any banks in Tamriel.

Edit: And this:

Fast travel

This was in Daggerfall to facilitate travelling around a fucking enormous game world. Why is it in Oblivion? For the gamer who has no patience whatsoever. Morrowind's systems of fast travel are sufficient for a gameworld the size of Oblivion. And then there are intervention spells and Mark/Recall as utility spells that fit within the setting. But no, those are out too, in favour of a metagaming utility.

- is yet another very good point. But it's even worse than that. Daggerfall allowed you to FT only to a fixed number of places - outside the front of cities, towns, tombs, etc on the map. Oblivion will let you FT to any point anywhere on the map you've been. After a while, playing the game will be hopscotch-around-the-map, especially since horses are so fucking useless and annoying.

Unless, of course, you put on your Wizzard-Lord Hat and use that legendary discipline that Beth-groupies keep invoking to defend any dumber-than-shit design failure by Todd and his dinglings.

 

[Seboss]

Hey I wasn't arguing whether Oblivion will be better than Daggerfall or not. I was just pointing out some similarities between them, features that are TES exclusive -except for Gothic.
That's all. Please stop brandishing the fanboy flag every 5s.

 

[Seboss]

After a while, playing the game will be hopscotch-around-the-map, especially since horses are so fucking useless and annoying.

Well that's exactly what happened most of the time when I used to play Daggerfall. And the carts and horses were as useless, except for carrying around millions of septims.

 

[Excrément]

Right.

Maybe that's mediocrity and that's part of what the Codex denounces but, I'd rather play some old stuff with fancy graphics and new technology rather than playing the dated original over again.
I don't think it applies to Morrowind to be honest. Playing Morrowind wasn't quite as fulfilling as playing Daggerfall. But Oblivion seems like Daggerfall++ and that's ok for me.

Claiming that Oblivion is THE cRPG of the decade, well that's another story.

Btw, there are some great Ultima remakes around. Anybody checked U5 Lazarus ?

Have you evenr ead any of the oblivion info? It is nothing like daggerfall.

I read every piece of info made available to public about Oblivion and even more.
I noticed some similarities between Oblivion and Daggerfall that were missed in Morrowind:

1. Old fashioned fantasy settings ( Vvardenfell was rather alien)
2. Horses
3. Fast travel
4. Larger landscape
5. More interactive combat (you could attack 4 different ways in Daggerfall)
6. Monarch gets killed and you have (amongst other things) to figure out why and who
7. Shops have closing hours
8. You can buy a house

I guess there are a lot more (and surely more relevent) similarities.

you forgot the dungeon beginning and the moving NPCs.

Oblivion looks like a better daggerfall because it would be less repetitive and more immersive due to better graphics, better gameplay and RAI.

But he may loose some depth because of the character creation system and the storyline.

 

[Seboss]

you forgot the dungeon beginning and the moving NPCs.

Right. I forgot about that. The Privateers Den (or whatever the dungeon was called) is really something I wish to forget about Daggerfall.

Oblivion looks like a better daggerfall because it would be less repetitive and more immersive due to better graphics, better gameplay and RAI.

Well, we'll see in a few weeks. I don't give much credit to what I have heard so far , good or bad.

But he may loose some depth because of the character creation system and the storyline.

That's for sure.

 

[Twinfalls]

After a while, playing the game will be hopscotch-around-the-map, especially since horses are so fucking useless and annoying.

Well that's exactly what happened most of the time when I used to play Daggerfall.

And should Bethesda therefore not try to improve a shortcoming from a game made 10 years earlier?

This comes up time and time again.

Beth fan: Tell us why Oblivion is not so great

Codex: Well, if you look at Daggerfall, then you'll see x, y, and z key features which have now been trashed, in favour of dumb flash.

Beth fan: BUT DAGGERFALL HAD THIS PROBLEM!! AND THAT ONE!!111

Codex (sighing). Yes. And why couldn't those be improved, instead of being thrown out/dumbed down/flat out made even worse?

Beth fan (gets replaced by new clone from the TES hive)

AND REPEAT!

 

[Twinfalls]

[Daggerfall] was an immense world with tons of procedural content,

Or, in the words of the Imp who usurped control of the series, 'tons of procedurally generated garbage'.

This comment tells us why, while the likes of the Toddling and Old Man Rolston are in power, it's unlikely we'll see procedurally generated quests from Bethesda ever again, despite MSFD expressing interest in that once, on these boards. .

and it was pushing in directions the industry hadn't really taken on such a massive scale. Morrowind took that basic potential, and scrapped it in favour of taking the same fucking direction every other game takes - high-end graphics.

Even worse. Not only did Morrowind fail to expand on any of the great potential of Daggerfall, or do justice to the vision and ambition of its makers, it was actually worse from the key perspective - roleplaying. You can roleplay a whole variety of types in DF, in interesting ways. Much, much less so in Morrowind. Let alone the much shittier storyline, etc etc.

 

[Seboss]

And should Bethesda therefore not try to improve a shortcoming from a game made 10 years earlier?

I never considered it a shortcoming. Nobody forced me to hop from one end of the map to the other every 5mn.
I can't remember if Daggerfall had random encounters when fast travelling. Oblivion don't for sure. Sucks.

 

[Cloud Ruler]

Again, Seboss doesn't compare this with Daggerfall (not played DF?) for doing so will doubtless yield a shaking head at how a game whose early precursor had a sophisticated, branching storyline, gets dumbed down to shit.

It's been a long time since I played Daggerfall, but the only branching in the storyline I recall is at the very end when you can decide who you give the Totem thingy to. And then the story ends with one of X endings. That doesn't strike me as either sophisticated or really much branching at all (since there wasn't any gameplay after you made your choice).

Am I forgetting some RPG goodness, or is this just the "golden haze" factor that fondly remembered games fall into after about 10 years?

 

[Seboss]

I'm not sure but I know that nostalgia plays dirty tricks on our memories.
I fire up the Amiga emulator once in a while, eager to revive fond memories of wintry afternoons playing Deuteros, Realm of Arkania or Legend of Valor. But I promptly shut it down after a few minutes wondering how I could have spent so much time on them.
Imagination was doing half of the work then and now everything has to be 'in the game', has to be visible. Drawing the map was half the fun in Eye of the Beholder or Dungeon Master.
I simply cannot play a roleplaying without an automap and auto questlog anymore.

And I certainly could not play for long, a game like Oblivion without fast travel/teleportation.

 

[Excrément]

you forgot the dungeon beginning and the moving NPCs.

Right. I forgot about that. The Privateers Den (or whatever the dungeon was called) is really something I wish to forget about Daggerfall.

Oblivion looks like a better daggerfall because it would be less repetitive and more immersive due to better graphics, better gameplay and RAI.

Well, we'll see in a few weeks. I don't give much credit to what I have heard so far , good or bad.

But he may loose some depth because of the character creation system and the storyline.

That's for sure.

It is funny the differences between this forum and the ESF.
In the ESF all the good aspects of the game are "for sure" and the bad aspects are minimized.
In tthis forum, every people are sceptic about the good aspects of the game and are in the other hand certain about the bad aspects.

 

[Vault Dweller]

The bad aspects are confirmed facts, the good aspects are developer's promises. Make your own conclusions.