Game News Unconfirmed: The Elder Scrolls V to be Announced at E3

[Jaime Lannister]

doesn't popamole refer to a cover system anyway?

 

[Shannow]

doesn't popamole refer to a cover system anyway?

It refers to a game you can play on a shindig. Hurr durr

 

[winterraptor]

*They should dumb down TES further.*

Sure, why not? Personally, I couldn't give a fuck less what Bethesduh does with their pathetic action games. They certainly aren't going to go back in the other direction, so they might as well just jump in the pool of corrosive shit and be done with it.

 

[Donkey Balls]

Oblivion was still better than Fable.

The next TES could be fun as a mindless timesink. Needs more variety/creativity, however. Both Morrowind and Oblivion had really awful copy-pasted dungeons.

 

[CrimHead]

Both Morrowind and Oblivion had really awful copy-pasted dungeons.

JESUS CHRIST DROG DO YOU EVEN PLAY VIDEO GAMES

 

[Clockwork Knight]

If they learned their lesson and wont put level scaling in, this could be good news.

FO3 already had a more tolerable version. There's a chance, yes.

In Oblivion there is no such restrictions and you can be a pure wizard working for the fighters guild.

Not quite, I remember going to a mages guild somewhere with a thief character and the receptionist told me they weren't looking for someone with my skills, or something like that.

edit: Hmm, UESP tells me I'm wrong. Weird. I remember being told to fuck off on the vanilla game.

Oblivion was still better than Fable.

Except for story. The villain actually succeeds a bunch of times.

 

[Sceptic]

And by basic I meant

Ah I see. So you picked the specific mechanics that were in common and pretended all the different ones (such as combat - I'm sure this is a very unimportant and non-basic mechanic in a CRPG. Mondblut will also agree, I'm sure) do not exist. And from the ones you did pick some are so general they are found in a number of non-RPGs, others are just plain wrong (same spells? when the spellcasting systems have little in common? really?).
As I have already said:

Not quite, I remember going to a mages guild somewhere with a thief character and the receptionist told me they weren't looking for someone with my skills, or something like that.

You were not playing vanilla, or you misremember the message and it was something like "the guild of THIS TOWN doesn't need help fuck off" (and after you join and do other missions they suddenly start needing your help after all) because Ob has no discrimination whatsoever. Morrowind's wasn't just for joining btw, but you couldn't climb the ranks (and therefore get the more advanced missions) without high skill levels in the associated skills.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You were not playing vanilla, or you misremember the message and it was something like "the guild of THIS TOWN doesn't need help fuck off" (and after you join and do other missions they suddenly start needing your help after all) because Ob has no discrimination whatsoever.

Probably the second case, since it was on the xbawks smug. I think they all tell you to fuck off until you talk to the receptionist of some "entry" guilds, so that you can start searching for all the shrines, so you can become a full fledged member instead of an initiate.

Edit: UESP tell me you have to search for the head of the local guild, but IC and Kvatch dont have one.

 

[The Ninth Circle]

*They should dumb down TES further.*

Sure, why not? Personally, I couldn't give a fuck less what Bethesduh does with their pathetic action games. They certainly aren't going to go back in the other direction, so they might as well just jump in the pool of corrosive shit and be done with it.

Attributes:
Movement (Agility + Speed)
Shape (Endurance + Strength)
Magic (Willpower + Intelligence)
Karma (Luck + Personality)

Skills:
Hit (Blade + Blunt + H2H + Marksman)
Armor (Block + Heavy Armor + Light Armor + Armorer)
Acquisition (Security + Sneak + Speechcraft + Mercantile)
Magic (Alchemy + Restoration + Destruction + Alteration + Conjuration + Mysticism + Illusion)
Run (Athletics + Acrobatics)

Progress!

 

[1eyedking]

Attributes:
Movement (Agility + Speed)
Shape (Endurance + Strength)
Magic (Willpower + Intelligence)
Karma (Luck + Personality)

Skills:
Hit (Blade + Blunt + H2H + Marksman)
Armor (Block + Heavy Armor + Light Armor + Armorer)
Acquisition (Security + Sneak + Speechcraft + Mercantile)
Magic (Alchemy + Restoration + Destruction + Alteration + Conjuration + Mysticism + Illusion)
Run (Athletics + Acrobatics)

Progress!

Wouldn't sound bad if they made you pick only 2 skills (separating Magic into two) and completely block the others from raising.

 

[Mister Arkham]

*They should dumb down TES further.*

Sure, why not? Personally, I couldn't give a fuck less what Bethesduh does with their pathetic action games. They certainly aren't going to go back in the other direction, so they might as well just jump in the pool of corrosive shit and be done with it.

Attributes:
Movement (Agility + Speed)
Shape (Endurance + Strength)
Magic (Willpower + Intelligence)
Karma (Luck + Personality)

Skills:
Hit (Blade + Blunt + H2H + Marksman)
Armor (Block + Heavy Armor + Light Armor + Armorer)
Acquisition (Security + Sneak + Speechcraft + Mercantile)
Magic (Alchemy + Restoration + Destruction + Alteration + Conjuration + Mysticism + Illusion)
Run (Athletics + Acrobatics)

Progress!

I'm not convinced that this isn't a step in the right direction for a now RPG-lite franchise like TES, but it also isn't quite what I'm getting at. With the emphasis that devs are putting on the concept of choice in character build and immersion in the setting--and given the fact that many people seem to replay these games again and again just to try different things--I'm surprised that they aren't pushing more towards having your build choice mean something.

Think about Oblivion, or even Morrowind. It's essentially a classless system, but in theory you're supposed to eventually progress in one of three directions: Fighter, Mage or Thief. There's no real need to though. You can just run through the countryside stacking plates and dry-humping NPCs and being a general fuckwit, and along the way you just take points in whatever you want. By the end, unless they're fans or obsessive compulsives who have set out to do something very specific with their build, most players' characters end up being a mess of half-completed skill trees and bizarrely proportioned stats. This is a player's prerogative of course, especially given that TES is traditionally open-world, but the inevitability of it also requires that the developers make a great many concessions in how they build their gameworld and write/pace their story. And in a franchise that claims to have both some of the most well-designed worldspaces and the biggest, best stories in the? well, anyone who has played Oblivion knows exactly what programming with the Jack-of-All-Trades character in mind does to both of those elements.

So, where am I going with this? Well, I'm actually not proposing that they just dump stats right out the window. I'm proposing that they build their world so that it can be played in in three or four relatively general ways, rather than a million big, broad ones. An opeworld RPG isn't a GTA title, this is much more detailed than that in a lot of ways, it requires a greater degree of interactivity with the same dedication to tone and a legitimate sense of space. That tone and proportion is maintained in GTA by really only giving the player one or two ways to get their character from beginning to end, and regardless of what they do on their way their, the game is programed to react in a certain way to the player. When we start offering more ways to play though, the system breaks down, eventually the game will be put into a situation where it doesn't have the capacity to react correctly so it just reacts stupidly.

So, what if Bethesda were to put together a TES game that had a number of set paths from beginning to end? This seems like railroading when said as such, but please allow me to elaborate: It is railroading, but only from a standpoint of character development. You keep the open world thing, and give the player a couple of levels/quests to learn how the game works and how the world reacts to him. And then you start putting the story in his way, and as he progresses through the story, the game offers him with a set of choices. Based off of these choices and the character's base statistics, the game can then open up or lock down certain skill paths, group affiliations, and specialty quests, or alter character reactions, encounter tables, and the way that the story develops.

Example:
If early on the player takes an escort job with the Mages' Guild and his character's stats allow him to use an artifact that he is tasked with guarding at a vital moment, then the wizard he is escorting notes his latent ability and invites him into the Guild. If he accepts then he goes through an initiation procedure he becomes a registered member and is expected to act accordingly. From this point, he has obligations and duties to the Guild that he either has to uphold or abandon outright, leaving him to learn his magic on his own. Regardless, the player was given the opportunity to check out his options, and when he chose magic his character was tied to it. From this point out, the game has a clear marker by which to identify the character. As a mage, NPCs will expect him to behave in a certain way, encounters can be redistributed to accommodate his play style, and the main quest can continue as though the character is a mage and have the player deal with the benefits and consequences of the path that he chose.

In a way this does take a level of control out of the player's hands, but it also puts a lot more choice there. If the choices that can be made are tiered properly and create results that are both satisfyingly logical and occasionally surprising, isn't that better storytelling in the long run, and doesn't it make for a more immersive and personalized game experience? At the very least it allows the game to eventually categorize the player in a broad way, which allows for a more intuitive and reactive game world. And making the game subtly class-based takes a lot of the guess work out of the design aspect of the game, giving the developers more time to make that world richer and more detailed and giving the writers more time to craft and refine a better story.

 

[winterraptor]

Attributes:
Movement (Agility + Speed)
Shape (Endurance + Strength)
Magic (Willpower + Intelligence)
Karma (Luck + Personality)

Skills:
Hit (Blade + Blunt + H2H + Marksman)
Armor (Block + Heavy Armor + Light Armor + Armorer)
Acquisition (Security + Sneak + Speechcraft + Mercantile)
Magic (Alchemy + Restoration + Destruction + Alteration + Conjuration + Mysticism + Illusion)
Run (Athletics + Acrobatics)

Progress!

And each task can utilize a stat and a skill so you can have:

Karmic Armor
Magical Hit
Shaped Acquisition
Moving Magic
Magical Magic

The imagination runs wild!

Wouldn't sound bad if they made you pick only 2 skills (separating Magic into two) and completely block the others from raising.

And call them 'Tag Skills'?

 

[The Ninth Circle]

*They should dumb down TES further.*

Sure, why not? Personally, I couldn't give a fuck less what Bethesduh does with their pathetic action games. They certainly aren't going to go back in the other direction, so they might as well just jump in the pool of corrosive shit and be done with it.

Attributes:
Movement (Agility + Speed)
Shape (Endurance + Strength)
Magic (Willpower + Intelligence)
Karma (Luck + Personality)

Skills:
Hit (Blade + Blunt + H2H + Marksman)
Armor (Block + Heavy Armor + Light Armor + Armorer)
Acquisition (Security + Sneak + Speechcraft + Mercantile)
Magic (Alchemy + Restoration + Destruction + Alteration + Conjuration + Mysticism + Illusion)
Run (Athletics + Acrobatics)

Progress!

I'm not convinced that this isn't a step in the right direction for a now RPG-lite franchise like TES, but it also isn't quite what I'm getting at. With the emphasis that devs are putting on the concept of choice in character build and immersion in the setting--and given the fact that many people seem to replay these games again and again just to try different things--I'm surprised that they aren't pushing more towards having your build choice mean something.

Think about Oblivion, or even Morrowind. It's essentially a classless system, but in theory you're supposed to eventually progress in one of three directions: Fighter, Mage or Thief. There's no real need to though. You can just run through the countryside stacking plates and dry-humping NPCs and being a general fuckwit, and along the way you just take points in whatever you want. By the end, unless they're fans or obsessive compulsives who have set out to do something very specific with their build, most players' characters end up being a mess of half-completed skill trees and bizarrely proportioned stats. This is a player's prerogative of course, especially given that TES is traditionally open-world, but the inevitability of it also requires that the developers make a great many concessions in how they build their gameworld and write/pace their story. And in a franchise that claims to have both some of the most well-designed worldspaces and the biggest, best stories in the? well, anyone who has played Oblivion knows exactly what programming with the Jack-of-All-Trades character in mind does to both of those elements.

So, where am I going with this? Well, I'm actually not proposing that they just dump stats right out the window. I'm proposing that they build their world so that it can be played in in three or four relatively general ways, rather than a million big, broad ones. An opeworld RPG isn't a GTA title, this is much more detailed than that in a lot of ways, it requires a greater degree of interactivity with the same dedication to tone and a legitimate sense of space. That tone and proportion is maintained in GTA by really only giving the player one or two ways to get their character from beginning to end, and regardless of what they do on their way their, the game is programed to react in a certain way to the player. When we start offering more ways to play though, the system breaks down, eventually the game will be put into a situation where it doesn't have the capacity to react correctly so it just reacts stupidly.

So, what if Bethesda were to put together a TES game that had a number of set paths from beginning to end? This seems like railroading when said as such, but please allow me to elaborate: It is railroading, but only from a standpoint of character development. You keep the open world thing, and give the player a couple of levels/quests to learn how the game works and how the world reacts to him. And then you start putting the story in his way, and as he progresses through the story, the game offers him with a set of choices. Based off of these choices and the character's base statistics, the game can then open up or lock down certain skill paths, group affiliations, and specialty quests, or alter character reactions, encounter tables, and the way that the story develops.

Example:
If early on the player takes an escort job with the Mages' Guild and his character's stats allow him to use an artifact that he is tasked with guarding at a vital moment, then the wizard he is escorting notes his latent ability and invites him into the Guild. If he accepts then he goes through an initiation procedure he becomes a registered member and is expected to act accordingly. From this point, he has obligations and duties to the Guild that he either has to uphold or abandon outright, leaving him to learn his magic on his own. Regardless, the player was given the opportunity to check out his options, and when he chose magic his character was tied to it. From this point out, the game has a clear marker by which to identify the character. As a mage, NPCs will expect him to behave in a certain way, encounters can be redistributed to accommodate his play style, and the main quest can continue as though the character is a mage and have the player deal with the benefits and consequences of the path that he chose.

In a way this does take a level of control out of the player's hands, but it also puts a lot more choice there. If the choices that can be made are tiered properly and create results that are both satisfyingly logical and occasionally surprising, isn't that better storytelling in the long run, and doesn't it make for a more immersive and personalized game experience? At the very least it allows the game to eventually categorize the player in a broad way, which allows for a more intuitive and reactive game world. And making the game subtly class-based takes a lot of the guess work out of the design aspect of the game, giving the developers more time to make that world richer and more detailed and giving the writers more time to craft and refine a better story.

This would be well and good, but the fact remains that they're intent on catering to a demographic that wants to accomplish everything the game has to offer on the first, and likely only, playthrough. The average console player will not sink 20-40+ hours into a second playthrough for an RPG. Choices, ones that have an affect, are not what they want. This allows chance to miss out on something. Do you think the average console gamer could make a tough decision knowing the rest of their gaming experience hangs in the balance when they were the same gamers unable to find Caius Cosades, thus resulting in the infamous quest compass in Oblivion. They want you to point them to the next quest and tell them what to do. It's that simple.

 

[Old Degenerate Priest]

"By the end, unless they're fans or obsessive compulsives who have set out to do something very specific with their build, most players' characters end up being a mess of half-completed skill trees and bizarrely proportioned stats."

I do not see that as wrong in itself, though maybe badly used so far. Like, when was the last time you met someone who wasn't what you just described? Having the character build react to your playing and, then, your playing react to the character build would be another way to add choice and consequence to the mechanics instead of by artificial means. A well balanced game, by lacking scaling as much as by being carefully designed, can have consequences, both benefical and not, to both focusing too much or focusing too little without the need to script either, and getting better by using skills instead of leveling up, as long as it is not half assed and puts all kinds of requisites and limitations, is actually a cool idea that would be closer to simulate the way some try to make it work in pen and paper.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Attributes:
Movement (Agility + Speed)
Shape (Endurance + Strength)
Magic (Willpower + Intelligence)
Karma (Luck + Personality)

Skills:
Hit (Blade + Blunt + H2H + Marksman)
Armor (Block + Heavy Armor + Light Armor + Armorer)
Acquisition (Security + Sneak + Speechcraft + Mercantile)
Magic (Alchemy + Restoration + Destruction + Alteration + Conjuration + Mysticism + Illusion)
Run (Athletics + Acrobatics)

Progress!

And each task can utilize a stat and a skill so you can have:

Karmic Armor
Magical Hit
Shaped Acquisition
Moving Magic
Magical Magic

The imagination runs wild!

Wouldn't sound bad if they made you pick only 2 skills (separating Magic into two) and completely block the others from raising.

And call them 'Tag Skills'?

...Fuck, this actually sounds interesting.

 

[Konjad]

Actually good idea would be to allow other skills to raise (though slower) but there should be limitation.

Like you choose 3 main skills that you can raise to 100%, 5 'bonus' (or whatever) skills you can raise to 75% and other skills can be raised up to maximum 50%. Similar to Morrowind but with skill limitations, so when you are mage you can become powerful one but if you decide to fight with sword you can become mediocre fighter one at best.

 

[winterraptor]

Actually good idea would be to allow other skills to raise (though slower) but there should be limitation.

Like you choose 3 main skills that you can raise to 100%, 5 'bonus' (or whatever) skills you can raise to 75% and other skills can be raised up to maximum 50%. Similar to Morrowind but with skill limitations, so when you are mage you can become powerful one but if you decide to fight with sword you can become mediocre fighter one at best.

Even better:

Choose 3 skills out of a total of say...18 or so. Percent-based. These skills you get an initial decent bonus on, then, in the future, raising them gives double the normal expenditure, which for other skills is one for one.

Obviously level-dependent, and you get your points for skills based off of your 'mentalish' stat, each level, to distribute how you so choose.

Stats? Eh...6...7, maybe? These stats will help determine the base for the skills as well, regardless resulting in a lowish base without increase.

 

[The Ninth Circle]

Actually good idea would be to allow other skills to raise (though slower) but there should be limitation.

Like you choose 3 main skills that you can raise to 100%, 5 'bonus' (or whatever) skills you can raise to 75% and other skills can be raised up to maximum 50%. Similar to Morrowind but with skill limitations, so when you are mage you can become powerful one but if you decide to fight with sword you can become mediocre fighter one at best.

Even better:

Choose 3 skills out of a total of say...18 or so. Percent-based. These skills you get an initial decent bonus on, then, in the future, raising them gives double the normal expenditure, which for other skills is one for one.

Obviously level-dependent, and you get your points for skills based off of your 'mentalish' stat, each level, to distribute how you so choose.

Stats? Eh...6...7, maybe? These stats will help determine the base for the skills as well, regardless resulting in a lowish base without increase.

I see what you did there..

 

[KalosKagathos]

Remove level scaling, get the lore right, make dialogue work like it does in Fallout 3 instead of wiki words, split weapon skills again, reintroduce spears, throwing daggers, teleportation and levitation magic, and I'll be happy.

EDIT: Weapon skill affecting accuracy and fatigue giving a random chance to fuck up a spell would be nice too, but I don't expect those.

 

[ksjav]

~

Basically that wall of text could have been replaced by "Gothic 1/2"

 

[Achilles]

No Skyway yet?

Great post by DNY though, I agree with most of the things he said.

 

[oldmanpaco]

What is irritating to me is that even after Oblivion and FO3 I still am looking forward to this. I know there is a 90% chance that it will be shit but I can't help myself.

Basically - god dammit.

 

[The Ninth Circle]

What is irritating to me is that even after Oblivion and FO3 I still am looking forward to this. I know there is a 90% chance that it will be shit but I can't help myself.

Basically - god dammit.

Shit, at least FO3 was fun for about 10 hours. At least they're moving in the right direction.

Jesus, I sound like a Beth apologist.

 

[Jaesun]

What is irritating to me is that even after Oblivion and FO3 I still am looking forward to this. I know there is a 90% chance that it will be shit but I can't help myself.

Basically - god dammit.

Did you actually Play and enjoy Oblivion and Fallout 3 oldmanpaco?

 

[Luzur]

it will prob be even more dumbed down and smaller then Oblivion.

Elder Scrolls 12 will be just one very nice looking room with a table in the middle.

all in glorious HD and bloom.

 

[Micmu]

I'll completely pass this one, too. Just like I'm doing with Fable XX and Failout XX etc
By completely pass I mean never reading anything about it, not even a fucking screenshot. Not interested in this genre.