Oblivion out today

It also seems that about 90% of the male and 90% of the female NPCs were given their voice by the same man and woman. It really helps immersion when a Nord beggar, a High-elf alchemist, an Imperial Guard and an ORCISH weaponsmith ALL speak to you with the same voice. Immersive as heck.

Sure, the entirety of the budget for recording voices just had to go to Captain Pickard and Boromir (Who only speak a few lines each). Why bother giving different voices to the other NPCs? It's not like they're imporant to the plot or anything

 

Oh god, that male voice on quite a few of the NPC's drives me absolutely crazy, it's the most annoying voice I've ever heard. I'm tempted to slaughter any NPC who uses the voice as soon as I come across them.

 

Finally got myself into the game

Innitial thoughts:

Pretty good actually. Mainly been doing Dark Brotherhood quests. From entering the guild to finding their main base, it has been really refreshing. The quests are brilliantly thought out, and while the solution is always obvious, its still a hell of a lot of fun (dropping a mounted mouse head on someone springs to mind). I was also greatly impressed with the stealth element, and in the mission where you must infiltrate the prison, i almost felt as if i were playing thief.

Onto the AI. While for the most part the radiant AI nicely adds to the gameworld, i keep finding inexcusable holes within in it. I murder a woman's husband in the night, he is sleeping next to her. Being curious, i wait until she wakes up. She gets up, does nothing. I ask about her husband, and she speaks as if he were alive, when he is clearly lying dead on the bed, not two feet away!

As for Oblivion itself, i meen its okay, but i hardly think keeping it under raps for such a long time was needed. I was actually expecting something different and unuiqe... And then i see pools of lava, spiky towers and a general sense of... burning. I actually found the searing in Guild Wars more impressive.

More as it develops.

 

Free Eye Candy / Spoiler?

Free Eye Candy / Spoiler?





New site to me. Have An Oblivion special!




http://www.panogames.com/

2 to 4 meg Quicktime panorama mov's.



.................


Spoiler?




Taxi Driver

Got curious about an alleged spoiler.
Read it.
On drive to dentist, thought about it. Forgot where i read it, rpg codex?
Googled a bit and got lost in the Panorama Quicktimes.
So.
Somewhere saw a reputed spoiler ........................... truth or lie?


Don't matter.




Man of YOUR dreams?

Get ready to Fed-Ex,





Main quest about chauffeuring the 'little prince'.
Playing gopher with multiple Fed-Ex's
to earn a front row seat at the death of the end foozzle.
First person - looters - intended for the ""ME"" demographic
usually leave the 'cherry' for the pleasure of our inner child.
PC becomes a supporting role,
not the rider,
but the 'horse he rode in on '...





That a sufficient twist in plot, to qualify as dramatic touch , or a tragic douche?
Epic twist on par with FO1 or ""The Swimmer""? Or a one trick pony?

Am I too ego centric not to recall, a personal Deus Ex Amnesia,
that Taxi for hire is one of many cliché's any ""THe Chosen One"" can expect?

Does that spoil the role playing for anyone? Champion side kick to a Radiant AI script?

Don't matter, if the 'sand box' exploration and character construct are the main aim. The 'real' game. Tourist in Magic Kingdom. Bling Bling
promenade.

Leveling .... personal growth .... seems to be fatally flawed.
The main quest story a possible supporting actor's role.

Best Man, or Bridesmaid never the groom, or bride.

Expediting executive assistant. never the CEO.

That a ""spoiler""?






4too

 

I should have said this the first time you posted, but...

...what the fuck are you trying to tell us?

 

Cue the "English, do you speak it?" .jpg for 4too...

 

4too, along with Jarno are NMA's resident examples of why you should never do LSD.

On another note, I've stopped playing Oblivion. If you aren't fearing for the welfare of Fallout 3, now's a good time to do so.

 

Shut up, n00bs.
4too is one of the best posters on these boards.
His texts work on so many different levels, you wouldn't believe it.
It's like poetry, sex and wisdom rolled into one.
One can only be jealous of him.

 

yeah...the radiant AI is utterly unimmersive...I saw two random guild members sleep in the same bed...so I go in a different room, and I wake up with one of those people in my bed...I don't mind waking up to random people in general, but if they are being governed by Radiant AI, I want more consistent logic behind the NPC actions.

Ultima 7 did it well!

 

He makes a good question, or does everybody needs the signs in the compass from Oblivion to get it?

 

OH MAN!!!

I love this thread...so right on.

Roshambo, take them to task...I can't get enough of your beligerence on this topic. Please, tell me you are working on a game for all of us types who want a real CRPG!

Mortiz, your descriptions of character interactions has been very helpful...it was a vibe I had gotten from the game, but I have spent most of my time digging through dungeons all the time not aware that levels affected loot and stuff. But I'm a thief mage...but what I'm trying to say is that I haven't had a chance to interact with that many people, but what I have observed is very similar to your musings and based off of past experience it was what I was expecting.

I want Richard Garriot to kick them all in the nuts...and then redo Ultima 9. I want the original design, which looked like Ultima 7, you know, overhead with the ability to zoom in and out. And what would be unbelievable is if you incorporated certain dungeons to play like the UW series. Kinda like the first Ultima. Oh man...my fondest memories were of UW, Ultima, Fallout 2, System Shock. Why do these excellent IPs have to be abused so horribly...and why do other crappier IPs get fellete so often?

Anyway...love the thread, I'm going to be hanging here for the next few weeks.

Kharn...I'm with you...I am looking forward to getting a notebook and taking notes as I slowly explore the world of Britannia again as I battle the Guardian and the Fellowship. That and playing some Fallout and meeting the Master for the first time.

 

Quoting for emphatic agreement.

 

Re: Free Eye Candy / Spoiler?

I see Uriel Septim VII got a facelift and grew all his hair back between Daggerfall and Oblivion.

 

4too is the Nuka-Cola to most wasteland threads.

Not as often, but they were pathed for nearest bed closest their home designation. They could be tricked into "plus one" bedding quite often, good observation.

I also find it ironic that in terms of immersion, Pirahna Bytes still has it done better on all levels (except for combat) than most other action-adventure games of this type, with the Gothic series.

<offtopic>

I can't publicly say much else, but three years is a long time for just writing and refining a nearly free-form pick-your-path adventure book story arcing over three games, developed around the same time as each other. I might as well say TB combat, P&P rules and simulation, I think well over two dozen planned endings (I haven't counted the new batch being written conditionally in, the dead end endings that do show consequences of your actions that you did up until your death), and some pretty fucking imaginative people would be inherent to this design. Then, after the engine is complete, to also help fund updates and futher engine development for refinement, we plan on making a space shooter that should theoretically employ multiple squadrons of fighters and other ships in space, each one led by a player for up to 64 squadrons or more. It will be mostly a shooter, but with some team objectives and plan on the engine handling planetary to outer space simulation, as that will be our true technical test of the engine. The rest of the RPG is planned, worked, being put into code (already have the coding style set, so our storywriters are working it into scripting without any programming knowledge required - I love logical scripting styles, as flow charts and logic gates make everything so much easier), and the rest is in the works and not to be announced until it's done and can be said it's in the game. We're not shooting for anything technologically steller in graphics, look for a game that favors gameplay more so it will look a bit more like Tron meets The Last Starfighter than the latest OMFG!POLGONS! simulator.

</offtopic>

Anyways, back to the topic.


News Flash!

Bethesda's Poor Design Kills off Captain Picard!


We can all recognize that you were a paltry level nothing when the poor Capt. met his fate. Little do most people realize that it is due to Bethesda's poor balancing that the enemy was so easily able to fell this otherwise enduring monarch. Really, this fellow has been through some serious shit in the past, and one blow takes him out as you're downloading through several patches in your pants.

The scaling system has killed Captain Picard.

You, at level nothing, means that effectively that he was:

Emperor Captain Picard (lvl 0 Emperor)
Base Damage: 0 - 0 (Flailing Like A Sissy)
Special Attacks: Shit Pants (Stun Self VII)

Thanks for killing off the Emperor, Bethesda. We hope you take better care of your monarchy in the future and hope you learn how to refrain from having your crappy combat and balancing systems kill off key figures so easily...just license the movie rights to Uwe Boll and the dog squat will be complete.

 

Huh? What's with the avatar Rosh?

 

Too many complaints from Bethesda employees (and banned members with a grudge), so he was de-admined. Never thought it would happen, but I guess with Fallout 3 on the horizon they carry a lot of weight on the boards now.

 

I'm shocked...

EDIT: Oh shit, April 1st, haha.

 

Ahhh that inventory is really X-Box crap, a shame. I'm just starting the game, had two CTDs, wich isn't nice and far from usual in my comp, but besides the fact everyone seems so cool about what happened to the Emperor things are going well, even if the game doesn't work as brilliantly as Quake4, for instance, too much soil erosion i guess