TES IV: Oblivion Dev interview

P

PhatSaqs

Banned
http://www.xbox.com/en-NZ/e32005/devinterviews/20050518-oblivion.htm

Lengthy. Plenty of good info though.
Xbox.com: How long has the team been working on Oblivion, and how far would you guess you have to go?

Howard: We've been working on it for almost exactly three years, and have the rest of this year left on the game. We spent the whole first year on new technology. New rendering methods, procedural landscape and face generation, lip-synching, and much more. The past two years have been full of content and design production.
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Xbox.com: Cyrodiil, the main setting of Oblivion, is a place new to gamers. If it were a place in the real world, how much real estate would we be talking about?

Howard: It's about 40 square miles—it's big.
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Xbox.com: The screenshots we've seen are stunning. How have you accomplished such realism, style, and downright beauty?

Howard: It's a new piece of technology we have been working on for some time, taking in everything we learned in our past games. It's pixel-shader heavy.

We really got excited by doing the water effects in Morrowind, so now we're taking that kind of care with every surface—whether it be metal, wood, stone, blood, skin, you name it. We also work in several middleware packages like Havok and Gamebryo. The detail level is amazing.

In particular, we're using normal maps for lighting, diffuse maps for color, specular maps for shininess, and parallax maps for geometry detail. There are also specific shaders for skin, hair, and many other things. Parallax mapping is a new and exciting technique that's similar to displacement mapping, but is much friendlier to the GPU.

Xbox.com: How does the game's Radiant A.I. interact with other A.I. characters and the world at large?

Howard: It allows for full 24-7 schedules for every NPC (non-player character) and they also think on their own. So we give them general goals, like "Eat at this city at 2:00 P.M.", and they figure out how to do it. They will find food, find a place to sit and eat, and so forth. They can buy the food, steal it, hunt for it, whatever. But that micro-decision is the NPC's to make; we just provide the general goal.
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Xbox.com: Though the game is single-player only, do you have plans to include Xbox Live™ functionality of any sort in the game? Will there be content downloads or Xbox Live Aware, that sort of thing?

Howard: Yes and yes. Xbox Live Aware, and we're going to go crazy with downloads. We had it working for Morrowind with plug-ins on the Xbox, but it never made it in. We hope to really take that far on Xbox 360.
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interesting. the impression on gamespot said 16 square miles and this one says 40... either way, it's huge.

going to read. i hope we get some oblivion gameplay video this week.
 
i wonder if content downloads will include approved user made pc mods!!!! that would be awesome if they were compatible!
 
a longer video with more real gameplay footage and fewer cuts can be found here . There is no sound. It's the one called "game footage silent". There is a free wmv version (but it probably looks much worse) . a must download if your into this game even though it's not the best quality video..

The combat looks a lot better. Especially the part where he is fighting the golden knight guy. The grass and foliage sways nicley in the breeze. looks incredible.
 
longer video with more real gameplay footage and fewer cuts can be found here . There is no sound. It's the one called "game footage silent". There is a free wmv version (but it probably looks much worse) . a must download if your into this game even though it's not the best quality video..
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Best grass ever! The press release says "Winter 2005". If so..... :D
 
even if the combat is halfassed, the rest of the game will make up for it. I can't wait to see Radiant AI in action. :)
most wanted RPG ever.
 
Wonder if they'll take my dragon/zombie dragon super-sub quest into consideration. It's somewhere on this forum; YOU MAY USE THE IDEA PLEASE USE IT.

A TES game without a grand dragon is not TES game in the eyes of God (God wills it!).

On an off note, that Kingdom of Heaven movie was pretty hilarious.
 
I might get this game, I'm more and more temped :)
Morrowind scarred me as hell though, I was so lost and gave up, maybe I shouldnt of.
 
I wish this game had a little sidekick or something that you could go to and he would give a quick briefing on what's going on in your quests and give you a small hint on what to do next. Morrowind was just to big for me, I went nuts playing it for a few weeks then I took a break but never got back into it because I couldn't remember all the stuff going on in the game and I lost intrest.
 
I'm so excited. It looks like they learned a lot from Morrowind - I know I'm on board, but if they fix the broken journal system (looks like they have), have more lifelike characters (look like they have), and make the game prettier (looks like they have) I'm going to burst in anticipation. This is the must-have game on xbox360 for me right now.
 
The schedules for each NPC is going to add SO MUCH to the world... even an old game like the Ultima series, the world seems much more alive when the people in it are DOING something. It far to many games, its like the people exist only for you to talk to them, or buy something from them. they dont eat or sleep, or do anything.

Mmmm all of this makes me want to play Morrowind again, I LOVED that game.
 
dave is ok said:
I hope they announce a Morrowwind MMO sometime in the next 10 years.
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anything but that please... leave one of the last pure RPGs alone...please
 
The game looks great. However the animation still looks "last generation." The enemies move like claymation. I hope they can smooth that out.

Also, I don't mind open ended-ness of the game. However one thing I didn't like about Morrowind was that at times it seemed like I was just wandering around aimlessly from town to town with no real purpose to it all. After a few hours it just felt as if I was laboring through the game instead of enjoying it. The effort vs reward ratio was not at all balanced. I kind of hope they tighten up the story line just a bit so that with everything you do it the game, it seems to have real purpose to it.
 
There's this thread.

I'm singing the praises right along with you; this is definitely "one of the last pure RPGs". I've been promoting this game along with all the rest of E3 hype during last week to my friends. Hopefully this title brings the series new found popularity and sales.

Although I'm not sure I'm at liberty to say what engine their using (it should be obvious) but it’s definitely a powerful piece of software. Not UT3 powerful from the parts that I have seen but definitely a viable next-gen option.


Pimpwerx said:
Cool. Almost makes me want to reinstall Morrowind....almost. ;) PEACE.
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There's tons of cool new additions to Morrowind which makes a reinstall more than worth it. Especially the graphical upgrades a lot of users have added not to mention the TONS of extra quests/items/characters.
 
The private demonstration we have saw at E3 was really incredible but the animations are always "strange" and the fights are not really dynamic.
After all TES IV is my most wanted game, ooooooh yeah.
 
Cool. Almost makes me want to reinstall Morrowind....almost. ;) PEACE.
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Assuming you first installed Morrowind when it came out... I think you should give it another shot. I installed the game recently on my new laptop earlier this year, and it was really amazing to play it with all graphical effects and on 1600x1200 resolution. I couldn't beat the game when it first came out because it ran and looked like crap on my then computer.
 
SantaCruZer said:
true. That's one reason I look forward to this game.
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You and I both. The Elder Scrolls universe has always been incredibly rich - even when they give you too much to do (Morrowind) I still have a blast with their games. I really, really hope they take their time and polish the hell out of it before release, because I plan on spending this year's GTA-time on Oblivion, ie. every spare gaming moment. :D
 
Nice interview. The animation is a sticking point with me, too. The game looks fantastic, but I hope the animation quality can improve in the final version.

I haven't picked up Morrowind yet, but I may after I play through GTA SA Xbox. I noticed the PC version is 20 bucks now and you get both expansions with it. Should I buy any other game this year after I get the Morrowind chest pack? :lol
 
k.mikaz said:
The private demonstration we have saw at E3 was really incredible but the animations are always "strange" and the fights are not really dynamic.
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I remember Morrowind was the exact same way, while the world was amazingly natural looking the fights and NPC animations always seemed, as you put it, "strange".
 
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