Game News Oblivion Screenshots

[ArcturusXIV]

Actually, I just hope to see more crumbling and imperfect architecture. Even the dungeons have a "just-built" look to the. Real architecture has slight imperfections that are noticeable such as different size/shape/type of stones used to build a house or cathedral, cracks in the walls, etc.

 

[Limorkil]

None of these screenshots look like they are from a real game. I know its in-game art, but they look like paintings. For example, the knight does not look like a character that can move forward, or turn, and the corridor does not look like one you can move down. I remember the original screenshots for Morrowind and they were similar. The finished game did not look as good, although it still looked good.

Show me an in-game movie and I might believe, but right now this just looks like the usual smoke and mirrors.

Daggerfall is better than Morrowind. I am playing both at the moment. It's hard to explain exactly why its better, but it has something to do with the scale and randomness of Daggerfall making it feel more 'realistic'. Morrowind uses a lot of the same ideas but the game world is much smaller, which makes a lot of the game elements that worked okay in Daggerfall work less well in Morrowind. For example: it's kind of okay to be the highest rank in multiple guilds in Daggerfall because the world is so vast and the guilds are somewhat unrelated, but in Morrowind the guilds are practically on top of each other so the idea of being the guildmaster of three guilds that all operate in the same town and compete with each other makes no sense.

 

[Sol Invictus]

Eh? I thought the same thing when I saw Guild Wars' screenshots. They looked too good ( at the time ) to be from a real game. But guess what?

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

They're the real thing, Limorkil.

 

[Mendoza]

Well, the game is a year or two off. And if you look closely at the shots you can see the poly count isn't that high for most stuff, but there's very good use of textures and all the fancy pixel shader effects to make it look really good.

 

[Limorkil]

They're the real thing, Limorkil.

I stand corrected. Awesome. I suppose I've been playing Daggerfall and Morrowind so much that 'modern' games look too good to be true.

Guess I need a new PC then. The one I have now can handle Morrowind very well except for some of the more ambitious mods. On second thoughts, I'll try and wait while the game comes out so that I don't buy something than needs upgrading.

Just hope the gameplay matches the graphics. Morrowind was slightly dissapointing in that respect (combat, dialogue).

 

[whitemithrandir]

Wow, with a graphics engine like that.... I sure hope it remains as moddable as its predecessor was!!

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Fuck pretty graphics. I hope it has better gameplay then Morrowind did. (i.e. - better combat, dialogue, etc.).

 

[Sol Invictus]

What is... wrong, with pretty graphics?

I don't understand. Go play Elite if you hate graphics so much.

 

[Wysardry]

Pretty graphics aren't inherently bad, but there is a trend to expend more effort on creating and/or improving them than there is on doing the same thing with the underlying game.

Daggerfall ran on a 486 with 8Mb of RAM and a 1Mb video card. Morrowind requires a Pentium III 500 with 128 Mb of RAM and a 32Mb video card. Most of the extra processing power and memory is used to display the graphics rather than providing a bigger or more detailed game.

That's what many people dislike about fancy graphics.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

What Wysardry said.

I don't have a problem with pretty graphics, Exit. I have a problem with pretty graphics and mussed up gameplay. Take Doom 3 for example. Beautiful game, but lacking in gameplay. Sure it's just a standard FPS and was meant to be so, but I think they could have done better. I mean, Far Cry on maximum detail is one damn fine looking game and has excellent gameplay at the same time. You don't have to sacrifice good gameplay for pretty graphics, but it seems that's the modus operandi for some companies these days.

And, yes, I still play games like Exile and Darklands, not to mention Daggerfall. I've said it plenty of times on here and I'll say it again:

Good graphics do NOT a good game make.

 

[MrSmileyFaceDude]

Actually Wysardry, Morrowind is CPU bound primarily because of other systems BESIDES graphics. The GPU isn't being taxed much at all (except on older cards). That's why you can change the resolution on decent systems without affecting the frame rate all that much.

As far as good graphics go, ALL next-gen games pretty much have to have stellar graphics just to fit in. For Oblivion, we have a pretty good-sized team working on the game, in fact it's the largest team Bethesda has ever had. So there's a pretty good division of labor. People aren't working on the graphics at the expense of other features.

 

[Mr. Teatime]

I enjoyed Doom 3 a lot more than Far Cry.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

People aren't working on the graphics at the expense of other features.

I'm glad to know that. It just bothers me when people go for the eye candy and forget substance. Look at Freelancer as another example. Beautiful graphics that ran quite well on some low-end systems, but gameplay that bit ass. I've got hopes for Oblivion, but I'm not holding them up as high as I did for Morrowind just to be on the safe side.

As for you, Mr. Teatime, the fact that Doom 3 was a simple "run and shoot everything that moves" just wasn't enough for me. Far Cry has mutliple ways of handling any given situation, with every level chock full of alternate routes you can take, thus allowing for simple run and gun tactics (ill advised on the higher difficulties), stealth, or a combination of both. Heck, every level has means for you to avoid alot of the confrontations outright. It was a nicely designed game that catered to a wider audience than Doom 3 did.

 

[Volourn]

"I'm glad to know that. It just bothers me when people go for the eye candy and forget substance."

You DO realzie that's how many games are devloped - exactly as the Big Smiley says Oblivion is. Why would a graphics artist working on graphics really effect the quality of story or character interaction?

R00fles!

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Did I say anything about the graphics artist doing other stuff? No. Stop being a moron. They pump more money into the production of the graphics engine and then when their funds are low say "Get it out the door NOW!" rather than wait and tweak gameplay more. Therefore gameplay suffers because most of their budget went into developing pretty graphics.

And I didn't say everyone does this, but it does happen.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Stop being a moron.

I think it might be easier to get world peace instead. Just sayin'.

 

[Volourn]

"Did I say anything about the graphics artist doing other stuff? No. Stop being a moron. They pump more money into the production of the graphics engine and then when their funds are low say "Get it out the door NOW!" rather than wait and tweak gameplay more. Therefore gameplay suffers because most of their budget went into developing pretty graphics."

Did I say you did? I'm sure that when gameplay is made poorly it has very little to actual budget but more to dow ith how the budget was used.


"I think it might be easier to get world peace instead. Just sayin'"

Says the troll who used to refer to me as 'intelligent' and my arguments were 'worthy'. It's sad seeing how quick that can change just because I put you in your place.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

I'm sure that when gameplay is made poorly it has very little to actual budget but more to dow ith how the budget was used.

Ummm.... that's pretty much what I said.

 

[Volourn]

Umm.. no.

You said: "Did I say anything about the graphics artist doing other stuff? No. Stop being a moron. They pump more money into the production of the graphics engine and then when their funds are low say "Get it out the door NOW!" rather than wait and tweak gameplay more. Therefore gameplay suffers because most of their budget went into developing pretty graphics.

And I didn't say everyone does this, but it does happen."

I said: "Did I say you did? I'm sure that when gameplay is made poorly it has very little to (do with) actual budget but more to do with how the budget was used."


My point was if a game's gameplay sucks; it has very little to do with the budget pie it got; but the kinda game play it went with. Afterall, many games have low budgets but have great game play and decent graphics (for their time). So, we are only 51.5 - 45.5 on different sides here. Enough for a debate I say.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

Okay. Let's analyze this then.

I said: Therefore gameplay suffers because most of their budget went into developing pretty graphics.

Meaning, and I now quote you, "it has very little to (do with) actual budget but more to do with how the budget was used"

Exactly my point. Sheesh.

 

[Volourn]

Maybe I'll blame myself for our failure to communicate. What i meant so say is that say that the gameplayd partment (lol) gaets $1 mil spend as opposed to $5 mil. That doesn't mean nothing if they spend their money wisely. If the gameplay sucks for a agme; the game play would liekly suck no matter the amount of the overall game's budget was given towards gameplay?

Is that clear(er) now?


R00fles! :D

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

If the gameplay sucks for a agme; the game play would liekly suck no matter the amount of the overall game's budget was given towards gameplay?

No.

Why you ask? Well, the answer is simple.

Let's look at Rollercoaster Tycoon 3 as an example.

Atari shells out dough for the game. Well, it's going to be 3D now so obviously we need to pump more of the budget towards graphics, especially if we're going to allow people to ride all the rides. Blam! Done.

Atari: So, Mr. Gameplay Departement, are the inner workings of the game done?

Mr. Gameplay: Yes, but you didn't alot us enough money to playtest it properly, so if you could pull some more money from that fat wallet of yours so that we may playtest and make sure everything is running smoothly, we would rightly appreciate it.

Atari: No! We're greedy! Get it out there NOW!

End result: Bugs, bugs, and more bugs with everyone targetting Frontier for the problems and not realizing it was Atari doing what they do best and fudging things up just because they're a money sucking conglomerate with no real care for us gamers. Sure, a patch was released to fix some of the bugs, but it shouldn't of had to been released in the first place.

It all boils down to use of budget, yes, but it also boils down to some big company getting impatient and not wanting to wait a moment longer because they want more money and can't comprehend that possibly by putting more money into gameplay testing and such they just might make more money in return. Instead they get this mentality that graphics sell and nothing else so that's where most of the money goes. Yes, pretty graphics are nice, but awesome gameplay is better in the end.

So pump some more money into the gameplay departement, even if it exceeds the agreed upon budget. Because in the end, it will pay off more than if you didn't.

 

[Volourn]

"Yes, but you didn't alot us enough money to playtest it properly, so if you could pull some more money from that fat wallet of yours so that we may playtest and make sure everything is running smoothly, we would rightly appreciate it.

Atari: No! We're greedy! Get it out there NOW!"

Your scenario was going well til this aprt. Those in the GP department should have allocated some of their funds for the playtesting phase. Afterall, I'd presume Big Bad Atari was assuming they'd would sicne that's the intelligent thing to do.

That's the same error that Troika made. Atari gives them x amount of money and assumed they'd use that money for play testing; but Troika didn't and assumed that Atari would fork over MORE money later to cover it. Very bad.

Like I said, use the finances properly, and with better deisgn skillz, and just ebcause the graphics got more money; the game playe shouldn't suffer so horribly that's it crap.

 

[Otaku_Hanzo]

No. The publishers should KNOW that when signing up a game and alotting the budget for it that there is no way in hades to be able to determine just exactly how much money is going to be needed for it. Therefore they should realize that they may be required to fork over more dough at some point.

Part of QC's job is to make sure things are going at a steady pace and that any future requests for more money are thoroughly justified and that people aren't just wasting the funds.

You don't just shell over a certain amount of money and then expect to not be asked for more later down the road. That's just common sense.