But it almost sounds to be like they want players to be able to quickly switch roles whenever (Two Worlds 2 did that, right?). At least that's the impression I get. I don't personally like that if that is their meaning.

And if they don't get rid of the compass mechanics from Oblivion it won't matter what else they do because it will still be quests on rails without having to even pay attention.

And there's always the trouble of difficulty being balanced well. If they make it that any sort of setup can win, then that suggests the game is too easy. Then again, I've never played the old games with the difficulty slider super high so I'm not inclined to believe that will be an issue yet.

I'll remain heavily skeptical until the game launches.

He basically just described the ultimate goal of game design: maximizing depth while minimizing complexity. If you look at a game like chess, it has a few very simple rules. However, its depth is such that it's still used as a measuring stick for intelligence hundreds of years after its creation.

As long as the leveling/advancement system isn't as retarded as Oblivion's was (making it possible to render the game impossible if you chose the "wrong" major skills and leveled too quickly), I'll be satisfied.

So far it looks like they've looked at how they did Fallout and ESIV, looked at how EA is pushing Bioware to make RPGs for the fraternity demographic and deciding they can do better than piecemeal content and hold the hand of the player.

As long as the level up system isn't as bad as Oblivion I'm down.

@Drakengard I don't think it's about switching roles as much as it is about just becoming what you do the most. It kind of reminds me of when, at the start of Oblivion, when Baurus is telling you to go through the sewers and says something like "It shouldn't be hard for you, you look like a skilled Acrobat to me." The problem was that was too early in the game, especially for new players, to classify what kind of character they wanted to be. In Skyrim we'll instead just get better at things as we do them so things like the name of the role we play is mostly in our head. You can be an athletic guy in heavy armor that uses daggers or you can be a stealthy guy with really powerful spells. Basically every character is a custom class that's constantly either adding/rmoving skills as you progress or constantly getting better at the same skills.

At least that's my take on it.

Afterthe flip out over Fallout 3 and seeing that Bethesda actually did a great job (regardless of bitter fans of he archaic originals) I trust them to get this right. I think every TES game is better than the last. Doesn't make Morrowind or Oblivion bad games, but I see further refinement as a good thing.

*cough*XbawksAsLeadPlatform*cough*

All my RPG eggs are in the Skyrim basket for the year and I'm hoping this doesn't go the way of the Etch-O-Sketch like everything else has over the past 2 years.

Glad to hear it! I hope this means that a respec feature is in game. Any RPG with level by level customization NEEDS this feature. It's easy to become unhappy with a game because you feel you made a wrong choice in building your character.

I don't know about others, but in an RPG without respec I agonize over every little choice during the character building process. It just halts the overall flow of the game in a bad way.

Just want this game in my life so I can forget about all the times my father never hugged me.

As long as the damned thing is finished when it comes out, I'll get it. I'll be in Kuwait in November, so I hope I can play this to kill some time.

"You look at Call of Duty, the most popular game in the world, and that's actually pretty hardcore."

And I stopped right there. Having "RPG elements" does not immediately mean hardcore. You can go up levels and collect items in Facebook games.

Not to say I don't trust what Bethesda are saying. I eagerly await Skyrim. The real test of their RPG making skills to me will be in the scope and variety of their quests, and the level of writing in the game. I want genuinely difficult choices, and moral ambiguity, that doesn't treat me like an idiot. Honestly, Bethesda aren't the best at that, and it really showed when Obsidian made New Vegas. The quests and writing were so much better than Fallout 3.

@Drakengard

I personally love the compass mechanic, it was just sort of broken in Oblivion. I'm sorry, but I absolutely loathe looking at a map every two minutes because I'm trying to stay on the right path to get to a quest. That's all the compass really does... it gets you to where you need to go faster. You can still explore if you want, but you won't get lost on the way to your destination. Divinity II was a good game that lacked a feature like that, which made it difficult to play.

I'm surprised you didn't even mention Oblivion's fast travel system. Again, it's a feature I loved to have. I could travel all the way to where I wanted to go on horseback or on foot if I wanted, but if I felt lazy, it was there to use. I don't see a problem with it.

YEAH BIOWARE

I need to be inside this game. Like...with my penis.

@Vancealmighty

But you're missing a very important element to open world games, let alone, RPGs.

Where's the immersion? Having a magic compass point me exactly in the right direction is dwonright jarring to the experience. It is right about there that I think you'll discover the great divide between the old and new age RPG gamers. The new age want to just do stuff and don't want to hassle themselves into literally becoming the character.

What made Morrowind so amazing was that you stumbled on things naturally. Not just when you were all "I'm going to go in this direction and see what I can find!" but while in the midst of traveling to a quest you would stumble upon things because you didn't know exactly with pinpoint accuracy where you needed to go. You knew you need to head northwest of Gnarr Moc...er...however you spell that Bitter Coast town. And, even more importantly, actually finding what you were looking for was part of the joy of the quest.

That's part of why Oblivion was so dull besides the art and lore direction. Not only was the writing horrific in many cases (Thieves Guild and the Dark Bortherhood actually not sucking completely) because it was all voice acted horribly and usually devoid of information that could actually flesh a quest out from the humdrum fetch quest that it was at it's base. There was no added joy in actually finding locations because the game did it for you.

And as for Fast Travel, I'll admit that I've always hated it in Oblivion until I played RDR and realized why it was used. It wasn't used just because it was boring traveling across the entire map. It was used because the world just utterly boring and empty of any real life. Sure, it was filled with random dungeons, but they all looked the same and were filled with worthless crap 75% of the time.

Morrowind actually at least felt like it possessed character and the dungeons were crafted by hand and made them mysterious especially because a low level character could get slaughtered if they wandered into one without thinking.

Plus, Morrowind's travel system once again held onto immersion. You could only travel from settlements to other certain settlements. And by using various means you could get anywhere you needed to just as fast all while never feeling out of the actual game. You didn't just magically somehow get somewhere while avoiding encounters. You were on a Stilt Strider high above dangers or on the water in a vessel where nothing would likely attack you.

@Drakengard

I agree that the writing in most cases was terrible, and yeah, the dungeons did look rather samey when you play the game for along period of time. I just feel like with Oblivion, Bethesda were trying to make a more accessible game, and a hardcore RPG at the same time, and they kinda bungled it.

The fast travel was there so you if you didn't want to waste time, you didn't have to. The compass was there for you so you wouldn't get lost.

I guess the point I was trying to make was that you didn't really have to use these things if you didn't want to. You could still get completely lost in the game's world, if you wanted to. I mean, the compass was broken anyways, and sometimes pointed you in the completely wrong direction. At the end of the day, it was something to make the game more accessible to people not really into searching for a certain person for hours.

I'll admit that with a compass it kinda took away the feeling of having found something you had been searching for, but it didn't really take away the immersion for me. I could still randomly find stuff on the way to do something, or encounter something I had never seen before. It just made it easier.

And don't even get me started about RDR... that game was fucking BORING, and without fast travel, I wouldn't have finished it.

@ Drakengard

I have to agree completely. Morrowind was superior in many ways to oblivion. The traveling in Oblivion was convenient yes. But there was a disconnection when doing so. I hope that in Skyrim you have set up camp to actually sleep and eat or something. And hopefully the world has a more variety of creatures. Bears, Wolfs, Lions and deer are like the only actual wildlife you encounter.

The compass was useful for finding people. And other specific things. For locations I believe they should have taken more of a "Pale Pass" approach. And actually telling you USE the compass. (Ex. Go west when you get to Dragon Claw Rock) Talking to people was great to find locations. "Theres a Shrine North of Anvil Let me mark it on your map." Certain people you talked to only knew about these things. And it gave you a purpose to talk to everyone.

And they better take their fucking time with the Dungeons. Morrowind there was so many different kinds of Artifacts, Rare items, and enemies to find it was awesome. I remember when I stumbled upon the Frost Blade of the Monarch. (My favorite weapon ever btw.)

In Oblivion the loot was random. And although I'm a fan of Random loot. Every exploration of a Cave, Ayleid Ruin, Mine, Fort, and Oblivion gate was the same each time. Most of the time they looked the same as every other Dungeon respectively. (Morrowind had it's repetition also. But nothing near as bad as Mass Effect 1 and Oblivion.) I lost interest in Plundering Oblivion gates because they were EVERYWHERE and knowing that it was pointless to close them.
I started a game where I avoided going to the Priory because I didn't want the Oblivion gates to even show up.

Also not every random enemy should be wearing the Highest Quality Armor in the game. That is retarded. The Shivering Isle system of aquring the Amber/Madness armor was awesome. Running into a cave full of Daedric wearing bandits was just bad. Obtaining higher quality items should "Pay out" when you finally obtain them. Give you some sentimental meaning. I experienced that when I finally got the Grandmaster Set of Alchemy Equipment.

But Oblivion had it's moments of greatness. Like with the random quests you'd stumble upon after discovering a particular item. I remember going to this random Farm and finding a note on a table which started a quest. And even the Unmarked quests like the one at Fort Sutch, and the Hill of Suicides, was really awesome.

The bugs/glitching/freezing was horrid though. When you look at the overall bugs Oblivion had there were waaayyyyy to many. I understand it's a big game and their is a lot of ground to cover. But at least AT LEAST fix the glitches that prevent you from finishing the main quest line.

tl:dr
Fix the Loot, Make more unique areas/people/items/quests, And pound out them bugs.
I just hope they continue to evolve and fix things even after the games released.

AMAZING.

Skyrim will be Call-of-duty-erized, I knew all FPSes were trying to copy cod, but RPGs too?

TRULY AMAZING.

That last quote scares me.

Um...alright. Morrowind was confusing as fuck and Oblivion often left you in the dark, so I guess it's about time they started getting their shit together.

"how EA is pushing Bioware to make RPGs for the fraternity demographic"

I'm curious, how many members of fraternities do you actually know? Of the stereotypical fratheads I know, their likelihood to pick up Mass Effect 2 over the first (or DA2 over the first) didn't change: still ~0%.

@ Korolev - This site is done now. You have ruined us all with your perfection.

More like morrowind less like fallout 3 i say, I dont have much hope though