Elder Scrolls Rumor: The Elder Scrolls: Oblivion Remake from Virtuous Games

[d1r]

How would you improve Oblivion?

With mods. Oh wait...

 

[Russia is over. The end.]

Elimination of certain kinds of items, such as thrown weapons, crossbows, and spears

This touches upon the most important sucky aspect of Oblivion is that its combat absolutely sucks.
I've returned to Mount & Blade, Dark Souls and even to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic many times for the sheer fun of combat. Can't say I ever enjoyed killing a single mudcrab in Oblivion. It's so boring, it breaks immersion.

books less interesting than in Morrowind

Half of the books have literally been brought over.
But this touches upon another interesting fact: how often have you gone out of your way to look for 200-300 word stories in real life? They don't exist. Short stories/novelettes range between 1k and 20k words, but 1k word is an outlier. More often it's ~7k or more.

I'm not the biggest reader of speculative fiction, but I've read some, and I actually can't recall a single good short story the length of a Morrowind book, except "They're made out of meat". And it's in form of a dialogue. Maybe if we all pitch in, we'll come up with a list of 10 such stories in all of human history of writing.
Morrowind books range from 200 (!) words to 1,5k. And the problem with them is that they're actually trying to be "books".

Compare to Fallout 1-2. You find a pre-war computer and read some "newspaper articles". You're excited - finally you're going to find out how the world ended. Because you've been playing this game for 40 hours and have no idea - it's an old, forgotten mystery. Or you break into someone's computer in Deus Ex or VTMB and read their "personal email". You find out their dirty secrets, it's taboo, it's fun.

When you've been playing Oblivion, there's no mystery. You don't actually "need" anything from a book. You open one with very little hope for anything, and it's the life of some saint, or an infodump on Telvani, a description of the Nords, etc.
Then, if we delete all this drivel from the game (which the designers should've done), there is a couple of books that are either "useful" or "entertaining".
The "usefulness" in them is they tell you where some shrine is, and how you can summon some daedra that you kill easily and who that drops nothing. It doesn't affect the world or you. Wasted time. Maybe you'll know Morrowind/Oblivion better than me, I'm sure you'll be able to name one example where the usefulness was actually on display, maybe even two examples, but then those are the only two books that should've been in the game.
The "entertaining" ones fail to entertain, because of the format. You can't build an engaging narrative in two words. You can't build it in five hundred words. And especially you can't build one when you're a paid per hour wagie.

Successful examples of "interesting text" are Deus Ex, VTMB and Fallout 1/2.
But even giants like BG1-2 fail with their book selection. Books trying to be books in games are simply a bad idea. You want a book, go pick one up at a library.

 

[Shinji]

Welll I have a soft spot for Oblivion.
I have always enjoyed generic medieval fantasy stuff, and Oblivion had it all: castles, villages, caves, mountains, forests, knights, bandits, horses, fantastical creatures, etc.

I have a lot of fond memories of playing this game, so it has a special place for me.
Kingdom Come Deliverance was probably the only other game that has made me feel this way.

I think Oblivion was a good starting point for a mainstream, casual RPG. It was flawed, but it could be improved upon.
Unfortunately, chances are this is just a cheap remake that will ruin everything that was good, and will not fix what was really bad about the original (or it will completely misunderstand the issues)

If this is indeed a full remake, and not a remaster, my bet is that they're going to casualize the original even further to appeal to the Skyrim crowd.

 

[Hag]

How would you improve Oblivion?

Leave it the same, but speed it up 20%, add the Benny Hill music looping in the background and a laugh track each time the player attacks or casts a spell.

 

[deama]

Elimination of certain kinds of items, such as thrown weapons, crossbows, and spears

This touches upon the most important sucky aspect of Oblivion is that its combat absolutely sucks.
I've returned to Mount & Blade, Dark Souls and even to Dark Messiah of Might and Magic many times for the sheer fun of combat. Can't say I ever enjoyed killing a single mudcrab in Oblivion. It's so boring, it breaks immersion.

books less interesting than in Morrowind

Half of the books have literally been brought over.
But this touches upon another interesting fact: how often have you gone out of your way to look for 200-300 word stories in real life? They don't exist. Short stories/novelettes range between 1k and 20k words, but 1k word is an outlier. More often it's ~7k or more.

I'm not the biggest reader of speculative fiction, but I've read some, and I actually can't recall a single good short story the length of a Morrowind book, except "They're made out of meat". And it's in form of a dialogue. Maybe if we all pitch in, we'll come up with a list of 10 such stories in all of human history of writing.
Morrowind books range from 200 (!) words to 1,5k. And the problem with them is that they're actually trying to be "books".

Compare to Fallout 1-2. You find a pre-war computer and read some "newspaper articles". You're excited - finally you're going to find out how the world ended. Because you've been playing this game for 40 hours and have no idea - it's an old, forgotten mystery. Or you break into someone's computer in Deus Ex or VTMB and read their "personal email". You find out their dirty secrets, it's taboo, it's fun.

When you've been playing Oblivion, there's no mystery. You don't actually "need" anything from a book. You open one with very little hope for anything, and it's the life of some saint, or an infodump on Telvani, a description of the Nords, etc.
Then, if we delete all this drivel from the game (which the designers should've done), there is a couple of books that are either "useful" or "entertaining".
The "usefulness" in them is they tell you where some shrine is, and how you can summon some daedra that you kill easily and who that drops nothing. It doesn't affect the world or you. Wasted time. Maybe you'll know Morrowind/Oblivion better than me, I'm sure you'll be able to name one example where the usefulness was actually on display, maybe even two examples, but then those are the only two books that should've been in the game.
The "entertaining" ones fail to entertain, because of the format. You can't build an engaging narrative in two words. You can't build it in five hundred words. And especially you can't build one when you're a paid per hour wagie.

Successful examples of "interesting text" are Deus Ex, VTMB and Fallout 1/2.
But even giants like BG1-2 fail with their book selection. Books trying to be books in games are simply a bad idea. You want a book, go pick one up at a library.

Short stories should be easy to make now, AI can do a good job given a good prompt.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Half of the books have literally been brought over.
But this touches upon another interesting fact: how often have you gone out of your way to look for 200-300 word stories in real life? They don't exist. Short stories/novelettes range between 1k and 20k words, but 1k word is an outlier. More often it's ~7k or more.

I'm not the biggest reader of speculative fiction, but I've read some, and I actually can't recall a single good short story the length of a Morrowind book, except "They're made out of meat". And it's in form of a dialogue. Maybe if we all pitch in, we'll come up with a list of 10 such stories in all of human history of writing.

Ernest Hemingway's shortest story:
For sale: Baby shoes. Never worn.


Fredric Brown's 1948 story "Knock" begins with a reference to a two-sentence horror story:
“The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock on the door…”
Although this was apparently preceded by a similar, albeit somewhat lengthier, story.


"The Answer" by Fredric Brown, 1954:
Dwan Ev ceremoniously soldered the final connection with gold. The eyes of a dozen television cameras watched him and the subether bore throughout the universe a dozen pictures of what he was doing.
He straightened and nodded to Dwar Reyn, then moved to a position beside the switch that would complete the contact when he threw it. The switch that would connect, all at once, all of the monster computing machines of all the populated planets in the universe -- ninety-six billion planets -- into the supercircuit that would connect them all into one supercalculator, one cybernetics machine that would combine all the knowledge of all the galaxies.
Dwar Reyn spoke briefly to the watching and listening trillions. Then after a moment's silence he said, "Now, Dwar Ev."
Dwar Ev threw the switch. There was a mighty hum, the surge of power from ninety-six billion planets. Lights flashed and quieted along the miles-long panel.
Dwar Ev stepped back and drew a deep breath. "The honor of asking the first question is yours, Dwar Reyn."
"Thank you," said Dwar Reyn. "It shall be a question which no single cybernetics machine has been able to answer."
He turned to face the machine. "Is there a God?"
The mighty voice answered without hesitation, without the clicking of a single relay.
"Yes, now there is a God."
Sudden fear flashed on the face of Dwar Ev. He leaped to grab the switch.
A bolt of lightning from the cloudless sky struck him down and fused the switch shut.

 

[Larianshill]

It's going to be funny so see how it compares to this Skyrim-Oblivion fan remake that comes out next year.