Support NeoGAF

[TekunoRobby]

Thanks for the info guys. I do like the GTA aspect where the world is open and I can do my own thing. Krowley, can you tell me specifically what you mean by this?




So say I create the character and distribute his points accordingly, (I have some experience from the Fight Night games lol) what stuff do I need to worry about after the fact. Basically, why would you have these false starts?

edit: crap I posted this before seeing your edit, I see what you mean.

You actually don't even need to distrubute your points, you can go through a series of questions and the game will reccomend you a class type, a prepackaged character with the point allotment already taken care of. The best part of character creation is that it takes place after the extended tutorial where you go through a dungeon and play the game as you see fit giving you a chance to explore what sort of combat you like best (swords/magic/stealth) before you commit to any archetype. I can't reiterate this enough, you play the game with as much or as little complexity as you like.

 

[Mejilan]

Cool, I remember loving the Daggerfall tutorial dungeon, and being bummed that Morrowind started you off directly in a town. Granted, the Daggerfall tutorial dungeon was post-character creation, so this just makes Oblivion all the more awesome.

Well bitches. I've got my PC DVD CE paid for, and my 2gbs of RAM upgrade in the mail. I'm ready. Thank G-d for timely work bonuses and income tax returns.

 

[kaizoku]

There is one worrying aspect for me, on one hand, I want to do everything as honestly and openly as possible, as if the game character was me. On another, I may realise after 30 hours my character isn't so suitable for spell casting or potion making or whatever yet I want to explore that aspect - what are my options then? What if I wanted to see whats its like being in the dark guild but then I want to escape and turn over a new leaf - can I?

I dont want to lose 30 hours of play and restart, and I dont want to spend the next 100 hours as a character class I want to change from, or go through the game missing out on so much.

Can I retrain? Can I just keep stat building? Can I see everything the game has in one play through with one character?

 

[flarkminator]

So say I create the character and distribute his points accordingly, (I have some experience from the Fight Night games lol) what stuff do I need to worry about after the fact. Basically, why would you have these false starts?

This might seem like a sort of convulted answer to your question, but I'm not sure if this has been explained. I think some fellow TES vets have mentioned this in their answers to you but I thought I'd go a little more indepth into it so that you might understand how a "false start" could occur and how its not a BAD thing, but more just an evolution of the game (and also how its not necessarily even required).

In The Elder Scrolls, there are several skills in the game they are basically how you progress.

There are 3 sub-sets of skills (including birth signs as a fourth)

And example of one of the 3 sub-sets would be Combat:
Block
Armorer
Heavy Armor
Blunt
Blade
Athletics
Hand to Hand

When you start the game you are basically fairly unskilled at all of these tasks. Now lets say I ran up to a monster and started swinging my Longsword. As I'm swinging I'm increasing my skill with "Blade". As my skill increase suddenly I'm hitting for more, and also I can unlock certain stronger combo attacks. All of this happens without you having to do anything other than swing your sword.

In this way you basically decide (through your own actions) how your character becomes more powerful. Every time you perform an action, you are increasing your proficiency.

Part of the fun of the game, is that you never really know HOW you're going to play the game, especially if you have not played an Elder Scrolls game before. You may love casting spells, or you may love swinging your sword. So as we can see, depening on how you play, your character may have better skill with a sword, or with spells.

When you are first starting the game, you can basically choose 5 skills that you would like a "boost" in. (You basically start the game BETTER at those skills than any of your other ones) This is usually why you end up restarting the game.

Allow me to give you an example, lets say when I started Oblivion I chose "Blade, Heavy Armor, and Block" as my skills. As I'm playing I discover that I really love sneaking around. There is nothing STOPPING me to from just stealthing everywhere I go and building up my Stealth Skill, eventually it will max out. Or, I could restart the game and choose Stealth as one of my boosted skills (essentially giving me a headstart).

I hope this makes sense. And is not to confusing. =P I gotta get back to work now....

 

[Pellham]

yeah my work bonus hits next friday, already got the game paid in full though.
I just need to figure out what's wrong with my new rig, I think it's my soundcard. Stupid machine croaked this past weekend.

 

[SnakeXs]

There is one worrying aspect for me, on one hand, I want to do everything as honestly and openly as possible, as if the game character was me. On another, I may realise after 30 hours my character isn't so suitable for spell casting or potion making or whatever yet I want to explore that aspect - what are my options then? What if I wanted to see whats its like being in the dark guild but then I want to escape and turn over a new leaf - can I?

I dont want to lose 30 hours of play and restart, and I dont want to spend the next 100 hours as a character class I want to change from, or go through the game missing out on so much.

Can I retrain? Can I just keep stat building? Can I see everything the game has in one play through with one character?

I said roughly before, if you're a dumb brute, and you wish to pick up, say, restorative magic, you can. It's not easy, but if you pick up a cheap, low quality heal spell, and use it every chance you can, you slowly will get better at it, and you will have the ability to slowly raise your Int.

About "leaving" guilds, I'm not sure. I don't see what could stop you from simply not taking further quests from a guild, though.

So, yes, you can do it all, in one character, with enough time and dedication.

P.S. I find creating "rigid" characters and playing through them one of the funnest parts of ES. Say, my first character is going to be a stealthy archer. Another character will be a flat-out "good" Knight, no stealing, no quests he deems unjust. Another may be a robe wearing alchemic swordsman. Another all magic. It's one of the things I enjoy about ES, because you see the world in a whole new light each time. But, that's just me.

 

[kaizoku]

thanks for the answers guys. snake - that does sound fun, I just dont know if I'd have time, and also, I like being the ultra strong superhero type who is maxed out at everything lol.

p.s. man you were invincible with the sniper on graw before got me like 9 times or something. :lol

 

[SnakeXs]

thanks for the answers guys. snake - that does sound fun, I just dont know if I'd have time, and also, I like being the ultra strong superhero type who is maxed out at everything lol.

p.s. man you were invincible with the sniper on graw before got me like 9 times or something. :lol

Heh heh, why thank you.

Is it surprising I'm gonna be an archer in Oblivion? :lol

 

[Krowley]

Thanks for the info guys. I do like the GTA aspect where the world is open and I can do my own thing. Krowley, can you tell me specifically what you mean by this?




So say I create the character and distribute his points accordingly, (I have some experience from the Fight Night games lol) what stuff do I need to worry about after the fact. Basically, why would you have these false starts?

edit: crap I posted this before seeing your edit, I see what you mean.

i didn't really explain it well anyway... basicly when you first start the game (and i'm using morrowind as my main example...) you are VERY weak... so the skills that you choose as primary skills will have a strong effect on how you play the game early. it takes a little playtime, playing around with the system to get a feel for what everything does and the kind of effect it has on your character and whether you find it useful or not... and sometimes, things that aren't very useful early become VERY useful later, and playing through the game you will realize that it would be cool if you were able to do that, but you don't feel like spending the time to make a character good at a skill that wasn't part of his initial design.

Also some skills advance at different rates... like acrobatics for example, advances just from using jumps while you're playing, so it's not really nessecary to have that as a primary skill in order to advance it quickly and it can feel like sort of a waste of a slot. you may want to use it as a secondary skill if you enjoy jumping really high (which is fun and can be useful at times)..

Some skills like alchemy are hard to appreciate when you first start. It requires special equipment to get the best results, and it also requires a good knowledge of the game world and where to buy ingredients and find them growing. It's very useful as a primary skill, but at first it doesn't seem that way, so you may get ten hours in and realize that you just HAVE to have alchemy as a primary skill. and you restart. that is how it is for me, and i'm sure that the ballance on skills will be tweaked enough in this one that my knowledge of the early games will not be that much of a help.. and i'm actually looking forward to learning all that stuff again.

It's possible to make your character into an ultimate godlike entity that can do everything well no matter how you started, but the system favors focusing on certain things with each character. and i think it's definitly more fun that way.

 

[GotchaForce]

The strat guide came out today. Big as a phone book, of course :lol I spent my whole break going though it, and inadverdantly spoiled the ending for myself

Something fun to do:
apparently cave trolls gather around their tribal totems. Steal a totem, and switch it with another (or sever other) tribes totems. The whole trible will travel the countryside (they can't teleport, even though you can) and fight the other tribes and anything else in their paths.

Overall looks immensly beautiful and could last forever.

 

[Vark]

The strat guide came out today. Big as a phone book, of course :lol I spent my whole break going though it, and inadverdantly spoiled the ending for myself

Something fun to do:
apparently cave trolls gather around their tribal totems. Steal a totem, and switch it with another (or sever other) tribes totems. The whole trible will travel the countryside (they can't teleport, even though you can) and fight the other tribes and anything else in their paths.

Overall looks immensly beautiful and could last forever.

Goblins?

 

[newsguy]

Tekuno (my boy in MIA) Flark and Krowley, thanks for the info. I may actually start off as a stealth character and see how it goes from there. The hype train for this game seems like it's surpassed GRAW which says alot about it's following.

 

[syllogism]

Q: When the system requirements were released many people were anxious about the minimum requirements. Will the user have to scale down many options to achieve a satisfying framerate, or a system with the minimum specs will run Oblivion without scaling down anything?

A: Well, you know, I can only speak from personal experience, so I will say this. Not too long ago I tested a copy of Oblivion on my home PC, which is pretty modest when it comes to gaming rigs -- a 2.8 processor, 1 GB of RAM, and a Radeon 9800 Pro. The game ran great and looked great using the default settings. Was everything maxxed? No, of course not. But they certainly weren't bottomed out, either. You know, Oblivion is a huge game, and it pushes a lot of envelopes, so your PC needs to have some horsepower to get the best visuals. It's like that with any PC game, really.

From this interview (03/16). Excellent news if accurate.

 

[flarkminator]

Tekuno (my boy in MIA) Flark and Krowley, thanks for the info. I may actually start off as a stealth character and see how it goes from there. The hype train for this game seems like it's surpassed GRAW which says alot about it's following.

Stealth is good, it was rediculously powerful in Morrowind, along with Alchemy. What I used to do is I would map *stealth* to my Right trigger on the xbox controller, I would then stand right next to an NPC, and wrap the controller cord around my trigger button so I was always trying to stealth.

Then i would walk away for 3 hours...

After that it was just a matter of robbing the world blind.

 

[golem]

real or fake benchmarks?

http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=92038&page=2

 

[EviLore]

x850xtpe equivalent to the 7900GT? Damn well better be fake ;b

 

[PanopticBlue]

Found this interesting book from Morrowind at

http://til.gamingsource.net/mwbooks/onoblivion.shtml

 

[golem]

prima has a 10 page sampler of their strat guide.. spoilers warning of course (some thieves guild info, imperial city guide)
http://www.primagames.com/news/article/5341/

 

[syllogism]

That "benchmark" is still as fake as it was several pages ago

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

Well Elder Scrolls fans, we just need to make it through one more long weekend, and our game will be here. Thank god I have GRAW to keep me occupied. I'm nearly through single player, which I need to finish over the weekend, so I can concentrate my attention on Oblivion for awhile. These new videos are not making the wait any easier, but I still look forward to them every day.

 

[kaizoku]

I have to wait til the 24th the days when you guys have it and I don't are gonna be awful !!

 

[Ghost]

Reading this thread next week when i still have 5 days(31st for UK) to wait is gonna be torture :'(

 

[AzureRonin]

Man, I'm so happy I stumbled upon the Elder Scrolls Series. I honestly had no idea what it was about. I was at EBgames one day looking for something to play, I read the back of the Morrowind box and thought it sounded cool. The first time it hit me that the game was awesome was when I took the silt strider to Balmora from Seyda Neen and was welcomed by a dark, almost ethereal city at night.

Who knew I'd end up playing that game a ridiculous amounts of hours, but when I look at it now I'm glad we're finally getting an update.

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

After spending an insane number of hours playing Daggerfall, which at the time was beyond belief in it's epic size and scope, I couldn't wait for Morrowind. It delivered in bringing a much needed upgrade to the graphics, and even though it was set in a smaller world, it still felt epic and huge. Oblivion looks to be a nother leap in technology, especially with the Radiant AI. The one thing that I felt Morrowind lacked was that the NPC's were so static, but that seems to be addressed now. Hopefully they react to us the way they should. Namely, if I'm a hero, I want them reflect that, and if I'm a bad guy, they should reflect that too. From everything I've read, that will happen. And I'm going to be spending another insane number of hours exploring this world.

 

[bengraven]

Not having the internet for two weeks has been suffering incarnate. Especially with all this new Oblivion news coming out: the videos, new pics, strategy guide spoilers...

I've been watching all the previous videos at least once a day. And the worst part is I'll have to wait until the 23rd to buy it! There had BETTER be some Collector's Editions lying around then. And hopefully a 360 HDD to alleviate those loads. Regardless, less than a week from now I'll be starting my new RPG addiction! To help the pain a bit, other than watching the videos, I'm replaying KOTOR. It's just not the same.

I die now!

 

[eso76]

Reading this thread next week when i still have 5 days(31st for UK) to wait is gonna be torture :'(

Wait, where did you read that ? i've been hearing 24th in europe !
I AM NOT GOING TO WAIT ANY LONGER THAN THAT, DID YOU HEAR ME 2K GAMES ??

 

[Ghost]

Wait, where did you read that ? i've been hearing 24th in europe !
I AM NOT GOING TO WAIT ANY LONGER THAN THAT, DID YOU HEAR ME 2K GAMES ??

Oh wait...you're right, HORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Sp3eD]

Can't wait, only 4 days. I hope they show some Town travelin' in todays video.

 

[kaizoku]

Reading this thread next week when i still have 5 days(31st for UK) to wait is gonna be torture :'(

were you agreeing with me or did we have the same thought/feeling at roughly the same time? @_@

 

[eso76]

Oh wait...you're right, HORAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Never do that again, you scared me : |


edit: just spoke with my retailer, he confirmed the game will arrive on 24; not a day earlier not one day later; there's some kind of agreement for Oblivion and couriers will be fined if they deliver the game on a different date. Oh, and there's some free bag if you preorder, here at least.

 

[Brannon]

Here's a thought; what if the March update were tied to Oblivion?

Now that I have scared all of you and attracted attention, what's the word on underwater cave entrances? They were the bombest in Morrowind.

Bombest is a real word in my mind btw.

 

[Geoff9920]

Have any of you guys messed around with this yet?

For those too lazy to click, it's a character creation page for beginning stats.

 

[Unison]

If someone has been following the forums and has some suggestions about what kind of character would be good, I'll gladly take them.

I usually end up restarting my game in the Elder Scrolls games once or twice because the grass always looks greener on the other side.

Is the overall level up system still tied to your character's primary skills? (i.e. if Acrobatics and Atheletics are primary skills, you level up by running & jumping a lot)

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

Personally, in the past, I've tended to play a Battle Mage, which was a nice mix of melee and magic. But this time, with the new stealth system in place, I'm going to try an assassin/thief, with emphisis on using a bow at distance, and some skill with blade for up close. I intend to be a pretty evil guy with my own interests at heart, but of course, in the beginning, I'll concentrate on building my skills and not getting caught!

 

[syllogism]

Yes, and thus it's better to keep your major skills low during character creation if you don't want to hit the level "cap" sooner (honestly the difference isn't that big, at worst the cap is ~42, at best 53). As long as your attribute modifiers are on average around 3-4 (5 is of course better, but not necessary) you'll be able to max most, if not all, attributes eventually. I suppose it's easier to control your character growth if you choose major skills that do not level up passively (like athletics I suppose).

edit: honestly it won't REALLY matter in the end (you'll be destroying whatever you face), but the powergamer in me disagrees. You'll level up faster if you just choose skills that you use a lot, though.

 

[Pimpbaa]

I dunno about you guys, but if the AI is as good as they claim, I'm gonna be messing around with the NPCs more than playing the game. I'm gonna make their lives a living hell! :lol

 

[DenogginizerOS]

I dunno about you guys, but if the AI is as good as they claim, I'm gonna be messing around with the NPCs more than playing the game. I'm gonna make their lives a living hell! :lol

You burned ants with a magnifying glass growing up, didn't you?

 

[Pimpbaa]

You burned ants with a magnifying glass growing up, didn't you?

Beetles too. I also used to put ants on top of a hot closed bbq grill to watch them dance.

 

[DenogginizerOS]

Beetles too. I also used to put ants on top of a hot closed bbq grill to watch them dance.

PETI is coming to get you.

Spoiler

People for the Ethical Treatment of Insects

 

[Dr_Cogent]

You burned ants with a magnifying glass growing up, didn't you?

I have to confess to this, and I feel bad about it now.

I was just a stupid kid. I guess thats my excuse.

But I won't hesitate to fuck with the NPCs though. Although I may save the game before I do it.

 

[DenogginizerOS]

Ok. I accidentally killed a squirrel when I shot it with my BB gun. It was getting into the birdfeeders and I just wanted it to go away. I buried it. A wreath of wilted flowers stares blankly at tear filled eyes on occasion when I gaze upon it from my cold, kitchen window.

 

[vatstep]

But I won't hesitate to fuck with the NPCs though. Although I may save the game before I do it.

I'm thinking that the game might auto-save frequently to prevent people from doing this. It might eliminate some of the immersion/realism factor if we were just allowed to fuck around with no consequences. It would be fun, though, yeah.

Any comment on this, SteveMeister?

 

[Kung Fu Jedi]

I never reload when playing an RPG. Part of the fun for me is making a decision and sticking with it, no matter how it impacts my ability to play the game. Sometimes it makes for some interesting hurtles to overcome.

 

[Karg]

I'm thinking that the game might auto-save frequently to prevent people from doing this. It might eliminate some of the immersion/realism factor if we were just allowed to fuck around with no consequences. It would be fun, though, yeah.

Any comment on this, SteveMeister?

Most games that have auto save usually allow you to turn it off, no?

 

[DenogginizerOS]

If no consequences, me thinks Pimpbaa is going to create a spell that acts like a focused beam of sunlight and go War-of-the-Worlds-Tripod on some NPC ass.

 

[syllogism]

Radiant AI is probably 90% hype, so I would tone down your expectations in that regard

 

[vatstep]

Most games that have auto save usually allow you to turn it off, no?

In the past, yeah, but not necessarily on 360. Kameo forces auto-save (there's actually no ability to manually save), and I believe Condemned and COD2 do, as well.

 

[Vyse The Legend]

Radiant AI is probably 90% hype, so I would tone down your expectations in that regard

You can certainly mess with the NPCs. While the devs toned down some RAI aspects to keep the NPCs from going crazy, the construction set lets you make an NPC with whatever agenda you want. Todd said you could literally make an NPC with 2-clicks of the mouse that has the sole goal of securing all the gold in a town. That NPC will then go running around murdering and pillaging at his own discretion.

 

[SnakeXs]

Radiant AI is probably 90% hype, so I would tone down your expectations in that regard

Care to go on?

Maybe judging by your own personal expectations it is, but the facts are the facts.

Each NPC has his own agenda. Each NPC has requirements that they fulfill, each differently based on their personality. The world goes on without you. Thieves steal, guards persue, people talk.

Is it perfect? No. We already know NPCs don't know if you've talked to them 100 times or never before, and some of the conversations they have, which is done in a manner never done before in a game, can be a little awkward. But how does that turn into 90% hype?

Like it or not, it's a huge leap for AI, and a larger leap for creating a living, breathing world.

 

[Vyse The Legend]

http://media.xbgl.com/files/xbox360/elderscrolls/tminus4/Countdown4days.wmv

Video 4 is up! GO GO GO!