Developer Quotes 3

Necromancy

All anyone can say for sure is that Necromancy was legal during the time that the events in TES III took place. Beyond that, who knows?

Oh, wait - I do.

Speech to the forum folk:

It's all good, folks.

I see it this way: MW was a very realistic RPG. It had tons of things that added to the player feeling like it was a fantasy simulation and not just an RPG. It makes sense that the fanatic player would wonder and postulate about what pieces of realism will be put into the next game (news flash: EVERYONE who posts on these forums are fanatics :))

Keep posting your rants, polls, ideas, and so forth. We won't answer most of them, but it's fun to see what aspects of RPG-realism you all enjoy the most (or so says me).

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Powerful NPCs - gods:

How many of you killed Vivec in MW? I know I did!

You make an excellent point. God's should appear to be normal, but have extreme sets of statistics and abilities. I think of the kinds of things that the G-man does to you in HL2 as these kinds of abilities. Things that don't make any sense in the reality of the game (i.e. able to stop time).

In MW, part of me liked the idea of challenging the god Vivec. The rest of my feelings toward the fight were split. I half wanted for him to completely turn me into dust, but the other half wanted to see how cool it'd be to defeat him...and I did just that.

In a game world, it's fun to attempt to kill an enemy when you know full well that you will be thoroughly toasted (which was fun to do in some of the Final Fantasy games). It gives you a sense of where your character lies in the great scheme of the game world.

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Cutscenes:

Think of how lame it would be if everytime any of the Lord of the Rings movies changed gears and showed you what another group of the fellowship were doing, they would say "Meanwhile...."

As to whether or not we will have cutscenes in Ob, I have no statement. As to whether or not we will introduce a cutscene with "Meanwhile...." I solomnly swear to do everything within my power to make sure that doen't happen.

*Meanwhile....Matt prepares the editor to create more content for Oblivion!*

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NPCs - dialogue and added realism:

Making audible NPC dialogue is fun and easy! At least it is while I'm using the editor.

I had to help Emil fill in a bunch of 'testing' dialogue for some of his quests when I first started working here. It was fun, if a bit embarassing! Our office is usually quiet because people listen to music and the game via headphones. I was having to make dialogue for a variety of people (a gruff old man, a snooty elf lady, an imperial, etc.).

With the success of Red vs. Blue and Strangehood (or whatever that sims 2 thing is called), it would surprise me if the TES mod community did not make a beavy of soap operas, comedies, and quests.

Our programmers are amazing. From week to week, our designers may ask "Can we make the NPC's do this? It would be great if we could make them act this way for this quest." ... and a week later one of the programmers has implemented the code to facilitate realism into our characters. :) I'm lucky to work here.

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Forests #1:

Noah's workin' his fingers to the bone to create the forests (oh! Hope also is doin' the same!).

I'm sure they're happy to read that people love the trees. The tools we have for making the environments are out of this world.

Later in the development process, I plan on taking walks through the woods at lunch with a nice bottle of skooma ;)

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Forests #2:

Don't worry, regardless of what you think you want to see, you will all go ape-poo for the forests. There are certain places in the forests where you stand and you can see row after row after row of trees, hills, rocks, etc. I honestly think that many of you hardcore fans will cry when you see the forest when you play.

Speaking of those things... I've got an art meeting to go to!

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Racial traits:

I did want to say, though, that we are currently in the midst of figuring out the statistics, abilities, and perks that each race is bestowed. I agree with many of you that it felt no different to have this elf over that elf, or this human over that human, in MW.

As Data-Entry-Monkey numero uno for the designers, I know first hand that we are doing our best at arguing with each other over what will be the best for the player.

What stinks is that we could have something really great on paper, I'll enter it in, and by time we're in crunch-testing mode we could throw the whole thing out the window if it's not fun, too easy, too hard, etc.

I like to remind people that we dev's are gamers, so have no fear! We plan on making each race different, not only visually, but also statistically.

....back to my spread sheets ;)

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Potions #1:

Well, like I've said about many items/things in Oblivion that have multiple statistics: We can change whatever we want to, to bring an answer to game design questions.

Potions too powerful in MW? We can cap their power.

Too many potions at one time? We can cap their quantity.

At the office, we are all aware of the ways we individually exploited systems in MW and will do our best to make sure that Oblivion stays an open, "Do what you want" game. We will also make sure that it has boundaries to keep you from ruining the fun for yourself.

And concerning RPG's that do have potion drinking turns or animations, I think that all those examples are dumb games, and therefore I am right ;)

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Potions #2:

Well, we are striving to make Oblivion (like MW) stand out and be different, but definitely not at the expense of gameplay fun. My point was that from a design standpoint, the use of potions is meant to create an instant stat change in the player character. That is where the fun is (Disclamer: fun is relative to the individual player). We try not to add things to Oblivion that make is less fun, or more frustrating to be fun.

It's like the debate over using ingredients to make potions: Should the player fail at doing this or should ingredients with magical fx ALWAYS create a potion? I don't want to derail the discussion onto my example, but it's an example of something that is a step closer to realism but also a step closer to frustration for the player.

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Potions #3:

I think that an equally fun/useful point to potions over spells is that ANYONE can use a potion, no matter how dumb your nord warrior is. Infact, I think that rule trups the idea of potions being instant stat fixes.

Instant stat changes are not realistic, but neither are potions. I think that something could be done to represent a potion being drunk, but not something as elaborate as an animation that your character runs while drinking them.

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Bloopers:

Little do you all know, we dev's have an on-going list of funny screenshots of NPC's doing stuff and saying stuff that just isn't right.

In many an art meeting, something on screen happens and everyone tells Matt Carofano "Take a screen-shot, take a screen-shot!" :)

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Bloopers #2:

One day, the NPC heads wouldn't stop rolling around on their necks. Almost as if talking to you with their head cocked to the side, then more, then more, until the head was now turned upside down.

How am I supposed to take an NPC seriously when they look at me like that? Funny stuff.

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Quality assurance:

Read the first sentence of the first 3 paragraphs.

Most of our QA guys come from previous QA positions in other companies, and have tested multiple titles. Our QA staff are responsible for testing most Bethesda published titles, not only TES games. So, believe me that we have ample staff to test the game. Asside from them, every designer and producer are testers as well. I'm reminded almost weekly that I need to be playing the game every day. We are hiring new testers every couple of months.

Short answer: We got it covered :)

p.s. Have you read Rules of Play by Zimmerman? Really good read on the study of game and play.

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Smoke-bomb like effects:

If something like that is in the game, there are tons of gameplay questions that need answering. We may have already answered those questions and implemented it, or we have not found good answers and ditched the idea as being to difficult to keep balanced.

Just so you know, I had the same idea a few months back :) Wait 'til the game is released to find out!

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Too early/Too late for ideas to be implemented?:

It's really hard to judge how much of the "base" game is in place. All necessary functionality is in, but that doesn't mean that we don't add other stuff. Heck, we have an on-going thread (internally) about what we all would like to see in the game.

We will be adding to the game until it ships. It's an itterative design process. First you get the game barely done (but completely functional), then mostly done, then completely done, then change existing things in the game and add new things to the game. We also watch these public forums for ideas, so don't quit bringin' the wacky ideas ;)

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More info - E3:

Just wait until E3 hits. We are currently baking some deliscious, golden brown goods that will taste wonderful to everyone (provided that you have butter to spread on such things) ;) But you must wait for the dough to rise. The deliverables will taste wonderful to you all, but only after E3.

Why give you crackers when we can give you crescents? The flakey, butteriness takes time. Wait for the flakey butteriness, my friend :)

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Bethesda, slow development?

Meh, let them think what they want to think. Our dev cycles have always been between 18 months and 3 years. That's standard across the industry for major/multi-platform/international/AAA titles.

LET THE NAY SAYERS NAY ALL THEY WANT. That's actually GOOD publicity for us for when we hit our ship date on time. I'll make sure to ship a freshly cooked plate of crow for them to eat ;)

In fact, all TES forum junkies should email them after we ship on time and ask "So, how's that yummy crow you've been eating?"

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What's coming after Oblivion?

For all of you wondering, here's my explaination. All of our work goes into the current title. Lets say we have extra time for another title. Lets say that it's something that all the fans have been asking for some time now. Our intentions are to make this game with the same amount of quality as all our other games. Unless you want us to stop work on our current title? Tell you what, maybe you can read into my post and figure out what I'm talking about ;)

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Does Bethesda want more ideas from the fans?

We use your ideas. Sometimes we don't use your ideas. Sometimes your ideas are ideas we had 6 months ago and have put into the game. Sometimes your ideas are ideas that we had 6 months ago that we left out of the game. Having a petition for a single idea doesn't really sway us. We see an idea, it affects how we feel we should develop the game, so we either add that thing or we agree that it should not be done. So petitions are moot, and (as Pete said) just cause trouble.

So for the love of Talos, keep your ideas coming. There was one that was brought up about havok and falling into voids a few weeks ago. I actually brought that point up in the QA meeting :) There. That's a perfect example of a good suggestion that I got from these forums.

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The 3DS Max version used in the development of Oblivion:

The version of 3ds Max that we use (both character artists and world artists) is 5.1

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Can NPCs ride horses? How smart are they, exactly?

You folks are just scratching the gameplay surface of what we're doing with Oblivion. Because we're making the NPC's able to do EVERYTHING that you can do, there are all sorts of problems with adding additional types of weapons, or types of spells, or types of horses. Any cool thing that you think would be neat to do can (in turn) be done to you by NPC's. Fighting, eating, sleeping, riding, casting spells, etc. The NPC's can do it all. Freedom in gameplay is good, but is difficult to balance.

So for all of you thinking that it would be neat to steal something, and then take off on your horse....guess what? An NPC can do the same dirty trick to you as well. :)

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No leveled creatures?

There'll be a variety of creatures whose difficulty is controlled in a multitude of ways. We're developing a few different schemes for controlling difficulty. Some schemes make it so that the creatures will be challenging yet beatable. Some schemes make it so that regardless of your character's levels, the creature is damn near impossible to kill. Some creatures can have a wide scale of difficulty, while others are considered "only easy" or "only difficult" to kill.

As I remind everyone always on these forums. We are gamers. We have given tons of time toward the balance of gameplay. Asside from the designers, artists, programmers, and producers.... our staff of QA testers are extremely good at exploiting our game systems and looking for loopholes in gameplay, or shortfalls in fun vs. realism.

In conclusion, to completely cut out any adjustment to difficulty in enemies would not be fun, just as making all creatures off-set to your level would not be fun.

In response to Luhh's point about better enemy combat as opposed to better statistics: absolutely. The enemies are being given RAI that will give them better ideas as to how to use their skills against your skills. That all goes without saying. The difficulty of the enemy can be adjusted from many angles, all of which work in harmony to create variety in combat. In the end (after all AI combat strategies have been added), the best way to tweak the experience of the combat is to adjust the numbers on the enemy.

In response to Lorkhan, only people that play the game can best judge the game-play. Thus, the designers create designs for the quests and for statistics in the game. The QA team plays the game. As requests from the QA guys are made, the requests are weighed by the design team and a decision is made by the design team. That's the most simple way to put it. It all happens at one time, for the entire time of deve lopment. Things are constantly added/removed/changed and things are constantly being tested.

Some decisions are no brainers and thus require no decision from design staff (i.e. "This is broke. Please change it"). Some decisions are difficult to weigh and require meetings and email threads between designers (i.e. "This only happens once in the game, will the player understand what needs to happen?"). In the end, everyone on the team that play tests the game and give feedback are designers on some small le vel :)

P.S. If everything was leveled then you'd have no fear of anything in the game ("I can beat everything!") We plan on scaring the heck out of the player by higher level creatures. So, as Han Solo once said, "That's great, kid! ....don't get cocky."

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Quality assurance #2:

You need to have previous game testing exp. (in most cases) to be a Bethesda tester. These guys put me to shame. Their job is to come up with every permiation of gameplay for a game that allows free-form play. They find bugs that I'd never think of. Honestly, the work that they do is fast, efficient, and thorough.

You need to at least qualify as a 7th level ninja monkey to work as a tester for us :)

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MW - on keeping high level characters "interested":

I always saw MW as a kind of Massively Single Player Role Playing Game (MSPRPG), and it was really the only one of it's kind. There've been other FPS perspective RPG's around, but none that dropped you into a world where you walked in every/all directions to do whatever good/bad/neither that you wanted. Because of this, it must have been challenging for the dungeon artists and designers to keep a constant level o f challenge on the player (I assume it was, I was not working here durring any of the TES3 game dev.).

I'm not saying anything about Ob, but I can understand how keeping the player interested and challenged was a problem after lvl 40.

NPCs ragdolled into death traps?

We don't put lots of quest-essential NPCs over big pits filled with insta-death traps, just so you know ;)

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Kathode's counter dumbdown rant:

- Compass:
It's been covered. Try the handy search feature.

- Simple and quick character-creation unlike early ES:
You're wrong. Next.

- Story without requiring lore knowledge unlike early ES:
When have the Elder Scrolls games ever required lore knowledge to enjoy the game, and why would that be a good feature? It's got a plot that involves the emperor's bloodline and an invasion from Oblivion. Sounds like lore to me.

- Heavy focus on graphics and technique in developing and interview:
Absolutely. The graphics are great. You will fail trying to spin this as a negative. Graphics programmers deal with graphics. We have writers and gameplay programmers who take care of other things.

- No romances:
I disagree that the only way to have in-depth NPC interactions is through romances. This is not a bloody save-the-princess game. It's a demon war game. Baldur's Gate 2 is the only RPG I can think of that did decent romances, and even then it was totally tangential to the plot.

- Elder Scrolls is designated as Dungeon-Hack-Party games:
I did not know that there was a genre called "Dungeon-Hack-Party." I have no idea what that genre contains. Oblivion is like the other Elder Scrolls games - you explore, you fight people and creatures, you walk through towns and plunder dungeons, and you talk to people and do quests. If these things are not favorable to you, this is probably not the game for you.

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That tree:

It's just a tree.

It's not the White Tree of Gondor, it's not the SpeedTree logo.

It's just a tree. You may be surprised to find that when drawn in stark relief like that, many trees appear similar to one another.

It is only the symbol of Chorrol. Every town has its own symbol. The Imperial crest remains the same dragon-diamond symbol.

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Blocking with hands #2:

Think Neo grabbing the sword in Matrix Reloaded. Trust me, if you couldn't block in Hand-to-Hand you'd hate it way more.

Fun > Realism for realism's sake

Every time.

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TES Legends mystery game:

razieloakenshield wrote: A while ago, about summertime last year, I remember having read and greatly wondered about a game called Elder Scrolls Legends coming out on the PS2. For authenticity, I read this on Sony's Playstation page after searching for Morrowind (I thought they were going to port it or something). Anyone know what happened to this mystery game, and where it went?

Kathode: The rumor arose purely from a mistake on EBGames' website. It was up there for like two days, and the rumor persists to this day :)

Sneaking - line of sight:

Maia wrote: I still say that 100% sneaking making one invisible and allowing to approach NPCs undetected in broad daylight from the front is a bad idea. Hm... now that I think about it, does orientation of an NPC matter? Is it easier to sneak up on one from behind? I really hope so.

Even if it would be difficult to attain 100% sneaking (and I hope that we won't get stuck with those 100% caps for everything again), "earning" a boring gameplay just doesn't make sense. It would be like MW where you could be "sneaking" or "chameleoned" (please tell me that this spell has been toned down! pretty please) and whale on an NPC without him or any other NPCs being able to retaliate because they couldn't detect the PC.

Having 100% in a weapon skill wouldn't mean a one-hit kill, why should 100% in sneak mean being an Invisible Man?

This "orc in plate armour sneaking up on a master assassin" quote is really intriguing, though. Does it hint on what I think? I.e. that armour would penalise stealth and that NPCs who themselves have high sneak skill can also detect sneaking better? That would be great.

I don't really like that pickpocketing would be function of sneaking again, though. It would just feel weird to be "sneaking" in plain sight of non-target NPCs. I liked the reaction of NPCs to sneaking in Gothic 2 - "What are you creeping around for?" LOL. And pickpocketing through dialogue in that game was also good - you'd know the risks, so it wasn't just a try-reload lottery like in most other games.

MSFD: Nobody ever said you'd be able to do it FROM THE FRONT. Line of sight plays a BIG part in the detection formula.

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New user interface?

The Oblivion UI is *totally* different from Morrowind's.

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Potions #4 - Drinking animation for realism?

What if you have a sword in one hand, and a shield in the other? Should the sword disappear? Should the sword be sheathed, the potion pulled out and drunk, the bottle tossed and then the sword unsheathed?

Realism isn't always the best answer.

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Potions #5:

Luhh wrote: Mkay, but since you'd probably be able to create stronger potions with a high alchemy skill, and alchemy perhaps is governed by attributes... Will the effects be staggering once again?

Are there limits as of yet regarding same type effects, that either are non-cumulative, or counted separately for percentual effects?

MSFD: No, it's just a limit on the total number of potions you can have affecting you at once, regardless of type. Game balance is achieved by governing how powerful potions available to the player are, how powerful the potions can be that the player makes, and exactly what the potion limit is at each skill level. All of these can be adjusted in the TESCS.

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Potions #6:

Suppose as a novice in Alchemy you can only have 3 potions affecting you at once.

You're about to go into battle, so you drink 3 45-second Fortify Strength 5 potions, so for the next 45 seconds your strength is fortified +15.

15 seconds into battle, you've taken a significant amount of health damage. You want to take a restore health potion, but then you realize you CAN'T, because you have to wait for one of the other 3 potions to expire first.

The potion limit provides balance because it prevents the exploit of raising stats by ludicrous amounts, and it adds a new strategic element to potion use in combat, because you now have to manage your potions more carefully so that you can drink the ones you need when you need them. This was not present in Morrowind.

Note also that spells, scrolls, and enchantments do not have these limitations, and so the delay caused by the relevant animations for those is balanced out by the potion limits.

Now, as we play the game between now and release, we'll be taking a very close look at how potion use plays out, and whether it is balanced and fair, and most importantly what its impact on the gameplay is. And it could very well be that things will change. But as things stand, we think the solution we've come up with is a good one in terms of balance, gameplay and fun.

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TM command - Remove HUD:

tm's still in, we use it before we take screenshots.

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Dual wielding #1:

It's not balance, it's not technology, it's not difficulty. It's just that we have a lot of other things to put in the game and decided not to put dual wielding in. It's simply not as high a priority to us as it clearly is to you.

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Dual wielding #2:

duck man wrote: Who is going to pay money for your game? US!

If we all decide to not buy it for dual wielding, then you lose money so it should be based on our priorities not yours.

MSFD: That's entirely possible, and it's the choice we make whenever we consider adding or removing ANY feature. I get the feeling though that there's enough in the rest of the game to satisfy most everyone else, though.

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The TES CS #3:

As we've said many, many times, the TESCS is what WE need to make the game. We aren't making a general purpose RPG builder. The TESCS has everything our designers and artists need to put together an Elder Scrolls game. Statements like "There are several functions the developers need to code in, like the sin/cosine/tangent stuff, getting the height of the ground at a specific coordinate, generating random terrain/items/NPCs on the fly using script, functions that take variables (top of the list)." do not necessarily reflect OUR requirements. Everthing our designers want, we add to the editor. If they needed the things you would like to see, they'd be in.

It'd be a different story if we were marketing the Oblivion technology and construction set as a commercial game engine, a la Valve's Source engine, but we're not. We built the tools we needed to make the game, and then pass the tools on to the mod community.

It has also been mentioned, many times, that the TESCS for Oblivion has many new features and capabilities, which may or may not address some of your concerns. But they definitely meet our designers' requirements.

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The TES CS #4:

I will make one more attempt to make this point as clearly as I possibly can:

Bethesda does not market the Oblivion engine to other companies. If we did, the Construction Set would offer far more features enabling licensees to create games vastly different from Elder Scrolls games. But we don't, and so the Construction Set, as an internally developed tool for internal use that we packaged with Morrowind and will package with Oblivion (on PC of course), contains what our designers need.

On the other hand, the biggest problem here is that the people complaining don't know what's in the new TESCS. They don't know how the dialogue system works. They don't know how the conversation system works. They don't know about conditions. They don't know how to make AI packages or what features they offer. They don't know how the new quest system works. They don't know what the new script functions we've added are, or what they will do for them. They don't know much about the region or landscape editors. They don't know what new forms we've added, and what new settings and capabilities we've added to forms they're familiar with. Folks outside of Bethesda simply don't know any of these things, other than what little information we've provided about them.

And yet because it looks like they might not be getting a set of very specific features -- some of which may very well be addressed in some manner by new features we HAVE added -- all of a sudden the Oblivion Construction Set has been written off as somehow WORSE and MORE RESTRICTIVE than Morrowind's, and because of that, the developers "lack vision".

Look. The mod community has made some pretty impressive mods. They've done an amazing job. And I absolutely guarantee that they'll be able to make mods that will completely blow away anything we saw for Morrowind, using the new Construction Set.

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Die-rolls:

P&P games have die rolls out of necessity -- you're not actually trudging through a dungeon, searching for treasure and battling nasty creatures. Except for perhaps a map and some figures, if that, the entire game exists in the minds of the GM and the players. So in order to keep everything honest, any time you attempt to do something you make die rolls against skills and stats.

On a computer, a new element is added -- visuals. You can SEE your environment. You can see enemies. You can interact with them in a realistic fashion. The level of interaction depends on the kind of CRPG you're playing, but in particular with Elder Scrolls games, the level of immersion is high, and interaction realistic. Even more so with Oblivion than preceding games.

Why have a die roll to accidentally knock something over if you bump into it, if it can just happen because you moved your character into it? Why have a die roll to see if your attack misses if you can SEE that your sword clearly passed right through your opponent?

For physical, visual things, die rolls aren't always necessary or even desired in a CRPG, in particular one with real-time combat.

Now, most of the other things you mention actually can already happen, based on randomness, character stats, and/or other conditions. An friendly animal may run up to you, based on the detection formula and a check of their disposition towards you. An NPC may sneeze or cough if the Idle Manager gives them the animation and the conditions under which it might happen. An NPC's responses to you can be based on their c urrent schedule, as well as their disposition towards you. And a skill perk for the Block skill will allow a chance of disarming an opponent.

It's an oversimplification to say these things rely on a die roll. Some of it is random, some of it is based on whether or not certain conditions are true, some of it is based solely on stats and disposition.

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Character progression and race balancing #1:

What makes you think we "just" started thinking about character progression and race balancing a couple weeks ago? Not only is Oblivion the fourth game in the Elder Scrolls series, we have also been working on it for over 2 and a half years. While I appreciate the effort you've put into this, you can be assured that we have given these issues a great deal of thought -- and not just for the past couple weeks :)

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Character progression and race balancing #2 - Character levels:

In addition to levels being used as an input for leveled lists, there are other reasons to have character levels. First of all, people like the sense of accomplishment that comes with leveling up, they like being able to say that their character "is a level 39 Warrior", for example. In addition, leveling up is the only opportunity you have to make permanent increases to your basic stats.

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On Broken weapons and armour:

Broken shields and weapons are automatically dropped (and they clatter to the ground using Havok physics). Broken armor stays on, but is ineffective (and you'll know if you're wearing broken armor or not).

You can pick up broken weapons & shields later and repair them.

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On Skill perks/levels:

Skill perks in Oblivion are not the same as in Fallout.

In Oblivion, every skill has discrete levels -- Novice, Apprentice, Journeyman, Expert and Master. As you attain each of these levels, you are granted perks such as new power attacks for combat skills and an increased potion limit for alchemy. This is different from standard skill advancement, which basically just lets you get better at using the skill. What perks you get (if any) will depend on the skill being improved -- but sorry, we're not going to talk about the other skills for now. :)

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On luck:

Luck already affects every skill. Whenever a skill value is used in a formula, it is modified based on your luck. That was true for Morrowind and is again true for Oblivion.

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On dismemberment:

No dismemberment or decapitations, sorry. Has nothing to do with censorship or ESRB ratings. The game's just not set up to handle body parts becoming detached and bouncing around. But there'll be blood. And you can hit the corpse of your slain foe with your weapon over & over if you want, too, and watch the havok physics at work.

Copy protection:

As far as Oblivion goes, I don't believe any protection scheme has been finalized. We will choose whatever system works best for us and will cause players the least problems. Another solution, of course, is to buy the console version when it comes out.

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Giant creatures:

Actually the reason a lot of games don't have giant creaturs is not necesarily because they take more computing power. It is because of factors related to game design:

1.)Creatures in most games have collision boxes around them that are used to determine hits and such. Well if you have a huge creature, the collision box will be giant as well, so you get a situation where you can swing at the empty air between a giants legs and still hit him. Imagine a giant invisible square placed over the creature, that would be his collision box, and as long as you strike somewhere on that box, you get a hit.

2.) Giant creatures have real issues navigating through dungeons and towns made for regular sized creatures. Again the whole square collision box thing comes into play, and they tend to get stuck on landscape objects, doorways, etc.

3.) Giant creatures have issues with attacks. Since they are massive compared to players and npcs around them, they have to be animated to attack downward at their feet. A lot of games solve this by just having the massive creatures use magic attacks instead, or have a generic attack that just clip randomly through objects by moving the limbs/tails outside the collision box. But this gets confusing as the player ca n be trying to attack a dragon's tail for instance and since it's outside the collision box, it will do no damage. (You can see this kind of thing in games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft when fighting huge creatures)

Eventually technology will improve and the way collision is detected will change as well. If this happens and collision boxes as we know them are done away with, then I think you'll see a lot more large/giant sized creatures in games. Until then, giant creatures have to be specially placed and scripted to work in an environment and this is far more time consuming. That's why they are usually restricted to boss crea tures in games.

On "Oblivion rocks overall":

When you guys see the quality of the artwork, story, AI, combat, etc. in this game, you will fully understand why we drop a feature instead of hurrying and smashing all kinds of half-hearted features into Oblivion. The quality level of this game is going to blow your minds. I'm impressed every time I load it up to test my quests.

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Damage everything?

You guys do want this game to come out this decade, right? :D

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Max out skills #1:

While I cannot go into detail, rest assured that even players who max out a bunch of skills will discover challenges in this game. We didn't leave you guys out :)

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Max out skills #2:

Galsiah wrote:

But why must we "Max Out" things??? Do you think it's the only way to achieve balance? The easiest system to debug? I really would like to know on what basis these decisions were made.

Slateman:

I think you define "max out" different than I do. I'm talking about higher level characters in general. The original poster of this thread made a point that in MW, when your character was high enough in level, there would be nothing to do because you are uberpowered. All I'm saying is we've addressed that in Oblivion.

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On dialogue:

WillyBubba wrote:

We will (in all probability) be able to turn on subtitles, and we will still need limited text interface to talk back to NPCs. I saw a screenshot in a mag (I think) that showed a woman talking and there were subtitles right under her face. They just kinda floated (weren't contained in such an obtrusive box) but still fulfilled the purpose.