Developer Quotes II

Telvanni in Oblivion?

As an entity, the Telvanni are only found in Morrowind. That's not to say individual members might not be found in Cyrodiil, but the Great House has no real footprint there.

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Is Billy the Dremora? (gamestar video reference)

Billy is not the Dremora. Billy is new. Billy scares me. Fear the Billy.

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Brevity of NPCs

I would agree that the NPCs in Morrowind were too long-winded. The problem, however, wasn't with the amount of information they contained, but with the manner in which they conveyed it.

As one of the guilty parties responsible for this, I apologize (and hide a smirk, because it doesn't bother me (i)that (/i)much). For Oblivion, there's a very concious effort to avoid too much random information spewing by NPCs. Fear not--there's still the same amount of info to be found in the game. In fact, the NPCs probably have more than ever to say; it just makes more sense for them to say it.

All in all, it should satisfy both sides of this debate. My hope is that it will allow you to spend more time playing and less time reading.

Quote of the year

43% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

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The console - get rid of it?

Console commands are essential not only for us making the game, but for modders testing out their work. They won't be going away any time soon.

Comparisons with Unreal 3 engine and Interior/exterior cells

The Unreal 3 demos are EXTREMELY nice but you've got to remember that they're demos, not games. Plus you're just viewing them in a vacuum and you have no idea what kinds of tricks they're using to achieve that, or what kind of machine they're running it on. I could do a fan-freaking-tastic demo that takes up a full 2+ gigs of RAM but that's not really a viable commercial product. Every engine has positives, every engine has negatives. It's not until you really start messing around in the guts that you realize just how complex some of these features actually are, and you start to realize that you do actually have to make sacrifices to get things working right. There's no silver bullet to game development. It is a lot of hard work no matter what middleware you go with.

As I've said a million times before, the reason we split up to cells is that we can make both interiors and exteriors more detailed. People love to compare us to Gothic, a game I enjoyed and played quite a bit of, and that didn't do the interior/exterior breaks. But honestly folks, with all due respect to the great work those guys do, that is like comparing a 05 Corvette to a 79 Gremlin. If you want us to fill out our interiors with 20-poly chairs, cube crates, and empty rooms, then sure we could do seamless very easily. The fact of the matter is that even MORROWIND's environments were several orders of magnitude more detailed than anything in Gothic 2. That is a lot of data for the game to hold in memory and spontaneously render when you come around a corner, if you want to do the seamless thing. Maybe this distinction doesn't mean much to you, but it's the way we do things and we think it goes along way to creating a more immersive experience. Again, no disrespect intended to the Gothic guys - they did some amazing things but visually it was and remains a much more simplistic game than anything we've done.

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Disabling RAI?

It's very easy to get an NPC to do whatever you want him/her to do. That's kind of the point of the system. They only go looking for food when you tell them to go look for food.

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Quests, and the quest compass #X

The quests are definitely not shorter. No one ever said that (see the dangers of the over-extrapolation you guys have going on here?) You can't get shorter than some of Morrowind's quests. "Hey, here are some clothes. Take them to this dude and get rewarded." All right! Oblivion's quests are longer, have more multiple paths through them, and have much better developed characters.

The quest compass is not Satan incarnate. So far, no one who has played the game has looked at it, and covered their eyes screaming out "THIS IS RUINING MY IMMERSION!!!" It is not a bright neon arrow pointing you exactly where to go. We have total control over it and can turn them on and off for every part of every quest, so if we want you to SEARCH for something, you will have to search for it. If said searching is just going to be an annoying pain (i.e. Caldera witch quest, i.e. a guy who moves around all over the place) then we can turn it on. Some quests might have MULTIPLE targets. You will not be able to play the game with blinders on, only looking at the compass.

Breaking freedom would be forcing you to follow these indicators constantly. We're not doing that.

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Thrown straight into main quest?

You can explore any time. I don't even know how we would prevent you from doing that if we wanted to.

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Blocking with hands

Blocking with your hands doesn't soak up damage. The reason you want to do it though is that it if you do get hit the opponent recoils. Recoils are important as they leave your opponent open to attack. NPCs are also smart enough to know when you're recoiling, and will wail on you when you do. (actually, there's an AI setting that dictates how aggressive they are when you recoil).

Multiple size suits (armor)

Generally, I think it would be more frustration than it's worth, aside from development concerns. And assuming drops are handled similar to Morrowind's "what you see is what you get," it would also mean that the only way you'd get new armor from a drop would be by killing your own kind; otherwise it'd have to be almost entirely store bought stuff.

I see where you're coming from; you're just shooting for realism. But I think I'll stick to worrying about whether or not my pants fit in reality, and leave it out of my games. ;)

Quest compass

Beast_Slayer wrote: Was there a compass in Morrowind? Did you spend 20 hours searching for an NPC there?

Did NPC's in Morrowind have schedules that sent them all over the game world?

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Enchanting and applying poison to bows

If you enchant a bow, the enchantment transfers to arrows fired from the bow. If you apply a poison with a bow equipped, the next arrow you fire from the bow will contain the poison.

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Why the TES CS didn't ship with console verions

Why didn't the TESCS come with the Xbox version of Morrowind?

The TESCS is a Windows program.
The Xbox doesn't run Windows.

Therefore no TESCS on Xbox.

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Spells affecting the Player

Remember though, this is magical fire you're casting. Like all magic, it's not necessarily going to follow rules of the mundane world.

In TES games, spells you cast on others do not affect you. That's the way it has always been. If it didn't work that way, then having a Touch spell with an area of effect would never get used because you'd harm yourself. How much sense does THAT make?

Oh, it would be very, very easy to make area effects apply to the caster. One minor code change and it's done. But I'm still not enamored with the idea.

The problem is that it eliminates touch spells with area effects. Nobody's going to cast them if they can hurt you as well, so they might as well not exist.

And I don't like the "cone area" idea either, because a) touch spells require you to be within touch range of the target -- they're like a laying on of hands type of thing, and B) area effects are meant to be omnidirectional. You want EVERYONE (except yourself) within the radius to be affected, not just people behind the target.

Besides, like I said before -- it's magical fire, not "real" fire.

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HDR lighting - tweak

Oblivion IS using HDR lighting. The amount of the effect is configurable. The screenshots you've seen are not only several months (and several versions of the shader code) old, but also have the effect turned way up. Also, the "bloom" effect isn't always there. The brightness, size and opacity of the effect varies over time and as you look around. Basically though, the game isn't done yet. We'll be tweaking the visuals continuously until release.

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MSFD's counter-dumbdown rant

First of all, buying or not buying the game is entirely your prerogative, and I won't stop you if you've made your decision. However, allow me to correct a few misconceptions you have about the game.

Stats don't matter, player skill with rapidly clicking mouse does
Actually, combat is tuned so that button mashing will NOT be an effective combat strategy. Yes, Oblivion -- like Morrowind, Daggerfall, and Arena before it -- strikes a balance between stats-based gameplay and player control. That is a hallmark of The Elder Scrolls RPG's. But while you, the player, do make decisions when to attack, when to block, and when & how to maneuver, it is your character's stats that determine the success and effectiveness of those decisions. Just as it has always been.

Running doesnt drain fatigue
But casting spells does. And performing attacks -- especially power attacks -- does. And the lower your fatigue level, the less effective your attacks and cast spells will be. If you run while in combat, your fatigue will not come back, and you could be in serious trouble.

Ability to teleport to places you've been without using magic
You cannot teleport ANYWHERE "without using magic". Fast travel is NOT the same thing as teleportation. Time passes (albiet quickly). If you're poisoned and you fast travel, your character may die before you reach your destination. Also, you can't initiate fast travel if you're in an interior, or if you're in combat.

Having to aim with a sword in order to "hit" a guy. Your stats should do it for you
How is this different from any other Elder Scrolls game? It's not like you have to be precise -- you just have to have your target in view, and within the reach of your weapon. If you're referring to the fact that you'll no longer completely MISS in those circumstances if your skill is low, that has been addressed by the fact that your low skill level will mean that the amount of damage you can deal out is much, much lower.

Having the game cater to your class SPECIFICALLY
Don't mistake a feature that CAN be used for one that's used for every single facet of the game. There will be plenty of stuff that anyone can find regardless of their class, skill level, race, etc. It's an optional feature that will be used where appropriate.

Turning it into a LOTR Crap Game (White Tree of Gondor anyone?)
Yeah, our Trolls look just like LOTR trolls. One white tree doesn't make the entire game LOTR.

No fricken mounted combat
You make it seem as though we're glad we're not doing it. Do you honestly think we make decisions like that to dumb the game down? To make it cater more to the masses? That we don't want to make Oblivion the best game we can possibly make? Please, give us more credit than that. We've devoted years of our lives to making these games. Why would we deliberatly do a bad job?

No crossbows, No throwing weapons
Like all features, everything's prioritized. There's only so much time and money to get every feature in the game. Believe me, we'd like to have these things almost as much as we'd like to include mounted combat. But there just isn't enough time to do it RIGHT. And we're NOT going to slap in features that don't work well just to say we have them. At least we were up front about saying they weren't in the game.

Having trees that follow you (Don't ask, Speedtree does it...)
You haven't seen the trees in motion. If you still think it's a problem after you do, then you are one seriously jaded gamer. There are alternatives to not billboarding textures -- but they all dramatically include polygon counts and would just slow the game down. Trade-offs have to be made. We COULD lower the polygon count of everything in the game, reduce texture size, not use shaders, and have a quarter the number of trees, and then do something to avoid it, but do you honestly think it's worth it? I don't.

Moving barrels all into one place of a dungeon
I have no idea what you're talking about. I wasn't aware you'd played through any of our dungeons yet.

Having a more linear story...
Again, this one seems to be coming out of thin air. You don't know the story of the game. You don't know any of the quest lines. How can you possibly know the story is more linear than that of any other Elder Scrolls game?

Destroying the concept of "payed for by looking" with shiny dots on your map
Knowing exactly where the Bottle of Beverage is by following the shiny dot
Not having to ask people for directions (Shiny dot)
You're making assumptions about the maps and compass when you haven't seen them yet. You haven't seen how and when they're used. You don't know what they look like. You don't know under what conditions they may appear.

By all means, if you don't want to, don't buy the game. Like I said, that's your prerogative. But don't make your decision based upon your own assumptions about things that you know very, very little about.

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Fast travel, again

You can't fast travel if you're in combat.

You can't fast travel if you're in an interior (or a dungeon).

You can only fast travel to places you've already been to.

Time passes when you fast travel, so if you're poisoned for example, you may die before travel is completed.

And finally, you don't need to use it. At all.

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About a Quote from Gameplay Monthly with Ashley Cheng

Knight777 wrote: Most people want to get to the end of the game? I want the game to be as long as possible!

What he MEANT was that people want to get to the end of the main quest. And so there are always ways to quickly find out what you're supposed to do next on the main quest. Doesn't have anything to do with any of the faction quest lines, side quests, etc. You've selectively left out another part of the same interview, where he says that we measure game time in hundreds of hours, not tens of hours. Your concern is misplaced.

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Lore Changes - Where are the jungles?

What's more important -- staying true to history, characters, peoples, and major events, or staying true to a blurb about flora written many years before a particular game began development?

Besides, whole cities were moved around for Morrowind. Heck, the whole island of Vvardenfell isn't supposed to be surrounded by endless ocean, and yet that's how the game was shipped.

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Does the camera switch to 3rd person in combat?

Nope, that's still under your control.

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Shields and dual wielding

Nah, the shield is always in your left hand, and one-handed weapons are always in your right, just like in Morrowind. No dual wielding. But remember, you can cast spells even if one or both of your hands is full. If you have a shield equipped, that's what you block with, otherwise you block with whatever weapon you have equipped (or your hands if you're weaponless).

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Why shields when all weapons can block?

Oh that's easy. Shields are far more durable and effective at absorbing damage. You don't want to spend too much time blocking with a more fragile weapon, because it will break and become useless if it gets damaged too much.

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Is having a player move and THEN push the attack button a bad move?

Oh it's very quick -- if you do a power attack (by holding the attack button down briefly, around a second) while a movement key is being pressed, a power attack for that direction is performed. You can do it fast enough so that your character doesn't even start moving in the direction you're pushing before the attack starts.

Besides, you're likely to be moving around a lot anyway.

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Power attacks and NPC strategy

Power attacks burn a lot of fatigue, and the lower your fatigue the less effective your attacks are. In addition, power attacks can take longer to perform than standard attacks, possibly leaving the attacker vulnerable. NPC's are aware of this and so will use them wisely.

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Knockdown

You can't cause yourself to fall over. Only enemies can do that, by damaging your fatigue BELOW zero. Actions you perform will only bring it down as low as zero, but not below it. If your fatigue meter's too low, you simply won't be as effective. In combat, that means you won't do as much damage as if your fatigue was full.

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Disarming

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. If you have a high enough blocking skill, there will be a chance you can disarm your opponent when you block. :)

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Spinning attacks - camera movement

The camera DOES move when you perform spinning attacks in first person, it just doesn't spin. So it's not like the camera is completely stationary.

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Cast spell button

Right now we're using the C button to cast the current spell. Very convenient to WASD for movement.

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Key-mapping - lefties?

You'll be able to re-map the controls to other keys. I'm not sure what more could be done to accomodate lefties than that...

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Power attacks

All the power attacks can do the same amount of damage -- doing a power attack applies a multiplier to the damage you'd normally be doing. You have 5 power attacks at a time. There's one for each of the cardinal directions, and one for if you're not pressing any direction button. The power attack animations are different for each weapon type -- so a two handed sword's power attacks are different from a blunt weapon's which are different from a dagger's, etc. As your skills improve, you get new power attacks that replace the old ones.

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Combat style (AI)

Combat Styles apply to creatures as well as NPC's.

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About Luck

As mentioned, Luck is an attribute. It's used to modify your skill level whenever a skill is included in a formula such as calculating attack damage, calculating how effective your armor is in absorbing damage, etc. There are cases where the skill level is not modified by Luck, such as determining when you get skill perks like new power attacks.

Anyway, that's how Luck is used.

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Broken Items

Shields, weapons and armor all take damage until they're unusable, at which point they can be considered "broken". But they don't fall to pieces, and you can still repair them.

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Multithreading

Oblivion uses multiple threads even more extensively than Morrowind did.

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Potions #1

Drinking of potions is instant. However, for Oblivion, You can only have a specific number of potions affecting you at once. That number is determined by your alchemy skill. So no more drinking hundreds of potions at once.

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Potions #2

It's not just a start, it's the way it works. Drinking potions is instantaneous with no animation. The effect or effects in a potion will start right away. Potion effects will still stack, but the fact that you can only have a certain number of potions affecting you at once will limit your ability to buff up to ridiculous amounts. Plus, if you fill up on buffs, you won't be able to drink any health potions until they wear off. So the solution:

• Prevents exploits
• Encourages strategic use of potions
• Saves memory and speeds up performance by limiting the number of effects you can have on you at once

Instantaneous drinking of potions worked just fine for Morrowind -- it was the ability to exploit unlimited stacking that was the real issue.

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About this screenshot

That's Elven armor.

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Potions #3

The limit is *ONLY* for potions. Spells, enchantments, scrolls, etc. that are affecting you are not counted. And how is popping up a message saying you can't drink any more potions immersion breaking if you've got the menus up anyway?

And remember -- the limit increases as your alchemy skill improves. It's a skill perk, just like learning new power attacks are skill perks for combat skills. We've got to communicate skill perk info for all the other skills -- it won't be any different for Alchemy.

If you want a roleplaying rationale for it, the analogy made earlier to The Princess Bride (i.e. having spent years building up an immunity to iocane powder) is apt. As you become a better alchemist, you are better able to tolerate the effects of magical potions, and so can "stomach" more of them at once. The novice simply can't do it. If you think about it, it's really not all that different from in Morrowind, where you could only "see" a certain number of an ingredient's effects, depending on your Alchemy skill.

It's all about making the skills more meaningful.

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The TES CS

All I can say is, it's "The Elder Scrolls Construction Kit", not the "Generic RPG Construction Kit". There's a tremendous amount you can customize and modify, but when it comes right down to it the intent of the tool is to build Elder Scrolls games, and so the ability to use the TESCS to make a completely different game is going to have its limits.

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The TES CS #2

Another thing to remember is that the Half-Life engine (and the Unreal engine and the Doom III engine) are commercial game engines that are licensed as products to other companies who make games based on them. Thus, the tools to make content for those engines have to be fairly generic, because they have to support a wide variety of titles in a wide variety of genres.

This isn't the case with The Elder Scrolls. As Sentinel said, we use the TESCS to make Elder Scrolls games. As such, the TESCS doesn't include any features we don't use. It doesn't need to be generic, because we're not selling an engine like Valve and the other companies do. Since that is the case, making the TESCS more generic, adding features we don't use, etc. would be a waste of money that we could otherwise spend on making sure the GAME is as good as possible.

Go ahead and keep making suggestions, though -- there's nothing wrong with that! :) And as far as longevity goes, in a couple months it will have been THREE YEARS since Morrowind was released, and not only does it still have a thriving mod community, people are still buying the game.

The tree logo

Hungry Donner wrote: This has been brought up before. The symbol from the concept art is heraldic, Europeans have been slapping it on sheilds and tabbards for centuries. :) It may be that they were inspired by Speedtree, or trying to make a small tribute, but it's still an heraldic symbol.

What Hungry Donner said.

No shadows in screenshots?

Short answer...we are still working on shadows.

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THE TES CS

The TES Construction Set is a development tool we are using to create the game. The fact that we are releasing it to the public is just a side benefit. It's amazing the types of things that Modders did with the Morrowind TES Construction Set, and I'm sure equally great things will be created with the Oblivion one, but the first priority here is to the game itself, not making a universal construction set.

Slavery and real eastate/ways to spend your savings

Slaves to own would be a touchy subject at best. Not to say we won't mention them like in Morrowind, but it has to be handled in a delicate way. Can't say anything about owning real estate, but don't worry, there'll be plenty of fun ways to spend your money :)

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Merging interior/exterior cells

You have to remember that the more poly faces there are, the slower the game runs. Every single piece of clutter inside a house, down to the smallest candle, has a bunch. If interiors and exteriors were merged into one cell, the game would run so slow it would be unplayable. Remember, you have NPCs, clutter, building geometry, shader effects, AI, game system, menu system, etc running. Outside adds even more load (sky, weather, etc.) And when you are outside, obviously more than one cell is loaded (otherwise you couldnt see very far at all).

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Easter egg hint

I threw a few eggs in here or there in my quests. I hope you guys figure em out :)

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Leaning buildings? Camera perspective

The buildings don't lean. There, I said it :D

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Use any item as a weapon?

You do realize that for each and every item and weapon that can be picked up and equipped, it takes additional art and animation right? If you want the game to come out this century, we wouldn't be able to allow you to use absolutely anything in the game as a weapon in that manner. :D

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Cutting corners for faster development

Nottheking wrote: True dat, but I think that perhaps corners can be cut in some areas where they really aren't noticed; I'm not quite sure who remembers, but one of the things I learned about the art of game-making (as well as GPU-making) was that the goal was to fake as much as one could, because after all, the game isn't real anyway. It merely looks real, and as such, the efforts should be focused on making more believable, rather than actually close to real, as possible.

We try not to cut corners, and sometimes "faking" stuff is more trouble than doing it right or it just looks plain awful. We'd rather spend our time getting all the clutter to look good and making the environment match the visuals than worrying about how one would weild a bowl and do 1 point of damage. Each and every weapon needs formulas, art (multiple passes) and gametesting to make sure they work properly and don't look wonky. It's just not worth it on that scale. We don't like faking it.