A couple quick answers to questions:

-- Does light (sunlight or otherwise) play a factor in the stealth formula? -- Yes, absolutely. When you're sneaking in a dungeon, for example, you'll definitely want to stick to those shadowy corners and avoid the well-lit areas.

-- if you use a spell to open locks, no, you don't have to access the minigame first.

Yipsl -- Generally speaking, the questlines are self-contained. They're generally MUCH richer and much more story driven than they were in Morrowind, but one of the ways we've been able to maintain that richness of story is to have something that can stand on its own, and isn't dependent on what's going on in the other questlines.

And we also wanted to make sure the player could belong to every faction if they wanted. In fact, that's led to some of the coolest playtesting moments. Like, when you're the head of the Thieves Guild, and THEN decide to do the main quest. Or you're the head of the Dark Brotherhood and Fighters Guild, and have completed the main quest, and THEN you decide to join the Mages Guild. :) A development nightmare sometimes to have to deal with all those possibilities, but really awesome for the player to have that freedom.

That's not to say there's not the occasional overlap, because that certainly happens and is very cool when it does.

Several houses have basement entrances, and lots of other places have alternate means of entry as well. Can't get into much more detail, but for the Dark Brotherhood quests anyway, many locations have multiple points of entry.

BroknSpyrl -- Ha! Nice try, but you'll get no release date information out of me! :)

Lockpicking -- you don't actually "wield" the lockpick like in Morrowind, no. They exist in your inventory, and you use them as part of the lockpicking minigame.

Flooring is not part of the stealth formula as it is in the Thief games, so that's a no.

All arrows behave the same way.

No not scripted, but hooked up through radiant AI to a point of hypersensitivity. It was really a showcase to show all the stuff that's possible with the AI system. And, in that case, it's one NPC reacting against another.

The stealth system is generally an NPC reacting against the player, and as far as that goes, the only sound that plays a part is the sound made by the player.

Having a drawn weapon does not affect your sneak skill, or sneaking in general.

Clarification on sound and light as regards stealth -- Mr. Nobuddy pretty much has it right. These things are in the stealth formula, and relate to player being detected. Another thing to consider, though (something NOT in the Thief games) is the fact that sneaking is an RPG skill. Some players will have a high skill, others will have a low skill. So that is certainly a big part of whether or not you're successful.

Radiant AI functionality going haywire (like in the example of the skooma dealer being killed) -- No, we haven't removed any functionality. Those things are generally dealt with on a per-scenario basis. We'd tweak the NPCs, etc. to get the desired behavior.

Gone and back again, like any half-decent assassin... :)

Wow, tons of questions. And, as before, lots of stuff I really can't get into. And let me just reiterate how sorry I am that it has to be that way. I feel like a jerk when you guys post a lot of good questions and I just sit by and say nothing, but that's sort of the nature of this whole thing.

So let's see if there's anything I CAN answer....

Servant of the Builder (awesome name!) wrote:

Quote:
Have the Dark Brotherhood gone from Mephala-worshipping murderers-for-hire to Sithis-worshipping murderers-for-hire? Your Team Diary and previous post on Sithis seems to indicate that. If so, can you tell us anything about why?

Without going into too much detail, let me say that one of the things I really wanted to do with the DB was distinguish it from Morrowind's Morag Tong, which was (obviously) very heavily based in Daedra worship. The histories of the Dark Brotherhood are pretty vague, sometimes conflicting, and I used that to my advantage with writing the questline's background fiction. So yeah, Sithis does play very heavily. But there's a lot more too it than that, and it's really the crux of the whole questline, so I can't really say more without giving away that story.

Questions about Radiant AI: Okay, here's the thing with Radiant AI... If you ask, "Can the NPCs do this? Or can they do that?" They answer is yes, with RAI, they can do a ton of stuff. But the player is unlikely to see some of it for a variety of reasons. For example, if the player hits an NPC with a spell and they get poisoned, would the NPC try to purchase a cure posion potion? Well, no, not likely, because he's going to be too busy trying to kill the player, and besides, the poison probably won't last that long.

And, in some cases, we the developers have had to consciously tone down the types of behavior they carry out. Again, why? Because sometimes, the AI is so goddamned smart and determined it screws up our quests! Seriously, sometimes it's gotten so weird it's like dealing with a holodeck that's gone sentient. Imagine playing the Sims, and your Sims have a penchant for murder and theft. So a lot of the time this stuff is funny, and amazing, and emergent, and it's awesome when it happens. Other times, it's so unexpected, it breaks stuff. Designers need a certain amount of control over the scenarios they create, and things can go haywire when NPCs have a mind of their own.

Funny example: In one Dark Brotherhood quest, you can meet up with this shady merchant who sells skooma. During testing, the NPC would be dead when the player got to him. Why? NPCs from the local skooma den were trying to get their fix, didn't have any skooma, and were killing the merchant to get it!

Mr. Nobuddy asked:
In that summary it is said that the gates to Oblivion are opened by Merhunes Dagon. Now my question: is this true, or an error by the writer, or whatever?

I won't elaborate, but I'm not going to contradict what the writer said, either. :)

Jag -- lots of great questions, but I honestly don't have any answers for you. Truth is, I don't know what it's going to be like for modders once the game is released. Oblivion is obviously a lot different from Morrowind, but the toolset is a lot better in a lot of regards, so there's no way of knowing at this point.

On completing Dark Brotherhood quests in a "good" way: Generally speaking, no, you can't complete the quests by being nice to your target. That kind of behavior is completely contrary to the nature of the Dark Brotherhood, especially the way the guild is portrayed in Oblivion. Okay, come to think of it, there is one quest where that's an option (but when testing, I usually tell the NPC I'm not going to kill him and then do it anyway). :)

The interesting thing about the Dark Brotherhood is that, unlike the other questlines, your tasks are generally concentrated on the elimination of certain targets. So if you don't kill them, no the quest doesn't fail... you just haven't completed the quest until you do.

It's also possible to engage in dialogue with just about all of your targets, and they all have unique dialogue if you do. Talking to them is usually optionally, and it's been really cool for me to watch people in-house at Bethesda test the Dark Brotherhood and see the type of route they take. For example, a fellow designer played through the Dark Brotherhood as a "shoot first, ask questions later" type of archer, and would often pick off his targets from a distance before they even knew he was there.

Acrobatics is still strong enough to get you where you need to go. Bruma is a great example of a city where you can do some serious rooftop hopping. Get on a high walkway, make the jump over to a roof, and you're totally mobile. Great sniping position too.

Someone mentioned an assassin/thief doesn't usually like to walk through a front door. Well, there are certainly pelnty of alternate points of entry, depending on the location or quest. You may be able to get into someplace via cellar door or well, or perhaps you're given the key to a locked sewer. Or maybe, just maybe, you are supposed to walk through the front door, because you're expected.

And don't forget that at other times, your target may be on the move, so you can kill him/her wherever you deem appropriate. Maybe they're on a road, maybe they go swimming at a certain time, or maybe they stop at the inn to eat lunch.

Hell, you could totally pick the target's pocket, steal his house key, and then wait inside his own home Mafia hitman style and then whack him there. :)

But I do agree the means by which you gain access is important to role-playing a stealthy character, and that's definitely been considered in the Dark Brotherhood quests (and, in several cases, specifically designed for).

Hey guys,

Sorry, been really busy with stuff. I've read all the questions, and, sadly (as Kaleem mentioned), there's just lots of stuff I'm not at liberty to answer.

Someone asked a question about the racial makeup of the Dark Brotherhood. I'll say that it's pretty racially diverse -- Khajiit, Argonian, Orc, Elf, Breton, Imperial... Yeah, all the major races are represented.

On relationships -- no homosexuality that I'm aware of. But there are certainly more relationships, particulalry family relationships, than was seen in Morrowind. There are brothers, husbands and wives, fathers and sons. And yeah, they do know each other, and care about each other, and react appropriately to one another. Lots of custom dialogue to reflect that too.

For example, there's a husband and wife in the Imperial City... both go to watch the Arena fights. But if you talk to them, you'll learn that the husband is a gambling addict...the wife just goes there to catch him in the act. And they're never there at the same time. So there are lots of things like that... relationships, and unique dialogue and behavior to support it

Also wanted to answer a question Dead_Hand had about appropriate assassin weapons. There's really no "best" assassin weapon, but I personally favor daggers (Blade skill) and a good bow (Marksman Skill). I actually did a lot of playtesting using Hand-To-Hand with a little bit of magic, and that was really cool. It's true that with the bow you can do some great sniping, but some of the Dark Brotherhood quests favor a closer, more "hands dirty" approach.:)

One of the Dark Brotherhood assassins you'll meet is kind of NOT your average assassin, and it's fun to hear his take on the guild, and killing for a living, and how he doesn't use stealth, that type of stuff. :)

Sorry guys, not at libery to say anything about either of those, sorry. Okay, I WILL say this... Dark Brotherhood questline will be consistently challenging regardless of the level you play it at. It's been playtested at everything from level 1 to level 25, and the measures we've taken to scale the difficulty have been incredibly effective.

Yeah, I understand. It's easy to see the list and go, "What?!?!" But really, while playing the game, you're busy doing so much and using the skills you DO have, you don't even take notice of what you don't. Stuff like separating short blade and long blade... you honestly never even notice, especially because most of the best stealth-related weapons tend to be daggers or shortswords anyway (so those are the ones you'll be using).

And the lack of unarmored is more than made up for by the advances we've made to the Hand to Hand skill.

Disarm trap -- plenty of traps in the world (way more than in Morrowind, and way cooler), but they're more environmental based now (as shown in numerous gameplay videos), so you'll have to rely on your own quick thinking and careful eye to avoid them.

Overall, I think you guys will be happy.

Not what I meant... just that, as a style/"feel" thing, most of the blades you get as a thief/assassin are smaller. Sneaking a round with a giant two-handed battle axe just doesn't feel right, so, as a designer, I tend to hand out weapons that "feel" better, and those are usually daggers and short blades.

Yeah, sorry, I'm not at liberty to discuss plugins in any way, shape or form. But don't worry, Mr. Nobuddy, I in no way thought you were implying the piracy of Bethesda games.

As for "real" pirates (the kinds with black hats and parrots), I will say -- Ha! I too have an unhealthry obsession with pirates, and yeah, you will indeed meet a few in Oblivion.

I realized my silence would be construed as... I don't know. Something. So I felt I should respond... even though there's not much here I can comment on.

I feel like I'm being drawn into an argument, and that's not why I'm here.

The skills list was released publicly, and it speaks for itself. We chose the skills we did because we thought they were the most important ones to players, and they were the ones we wanted to spend the time designing and balancing. Again, it all comes back to choosing what you should and should not do... where you want to put your development time.

As a designer and a gamer, I'll tell you straight-up that Oblivion is a sprawling RPG with tons of skills and decisions to make, and the absence of the skills listed, in the end, add up to very little. People are obviously going to disagree, but I've spent countless hours playing the game, as has everyone else here at Bethesda, and I can tell you Oblivion in no way feels "watered down" or "eviscerated." I am, of course, biased. But I hope people will base their opinions upon a completed game they've played, and not simply jump off the handle after reading a list of skills posted on a website.

Sure, there were more skills in Morrowind. But the skills in Oblivion have been polished and balanced, and have been much more thoughtfully designed. So it's definitely a case of quality over quantity here.

Crossbows and throwing weapons -- Well, short answer is Oblivion is a huge game, and as such creating everything in the game expends resources -- time, money, and talent. When you start making a game you have a schedule, and then you realize what you do and do not have time for. It just made more sense for us to more fully develop the most popular missile weapon -- the bow -- and make it as good as possible, and not spend development resources on things that offer, ultimately, gameplay for what we found was a really small subset of players.

For those of you who love crossbows and throwing weapons -- yeah, that stinks. As a player, I totally sympathize with and understand that. As a designer, I have a clear picture of the other side of the issue, and based on how much stuff is in the game, know we made the right decision.

So the short answer is, the harsh reality is... you just can't have everything. There's simply not enough time to do everything we want. Sure we could add crossbows and throwing weapons, but to implement them according to our standards.... that would add several months to the game's development, and really, nobody wants that. At that point you have to make the tough decisions and do what's right for the game as a whole.

On stealing from/killing guild members. Your feedback is much better in Oblivion than it was in Morrowind. It's pretty hard to do this stuff and not mean it. Of course, maybe you DO mean it... :)

Just to let you guys know, I have been reading, but there have been a lot of game system questions coming in that I'm simply not at liberty to answer right now, sorry.

Bruce Nesmith -- Bruce worked here at Bethesda back in the "early" days of Daggerfall and Skynet. I THINK he did some contract writing work on Morrowind, but he's back in-house now working on Oblivion. I did the original first-draft of the Thieves Guild questline, and then, because I had other stuff to work on, it was given to Bruce. He has since made it his own, so that's his baby now. Bruce has also been instrumental in balancing the various game systems.

Well, you need to understand that there's no dedicated "stealth team" per se. There's the core group of Oblivion designers, all of whom have other duties in additikn to the questlines they implemented. So people like myself, Bruce Nesmith, and Kurt Kuhlmann have all done work on the stealth system. What are we doing now? Mostly playtesting and balancing. And when we're not doing that, we're playtesting and balancing. :) There is, of course, other stuff going on as well, but if I told the DB would slit my throat, and nobody wants that. ...

Not a lot of multitasking, no. The programmers are plenty busy mining code, and the artists have their hands full creating art resources and game spaces. That's pretty much standard in the industry.

The designers are tasked with creating and implementing the gameplay, so that means coming up with the quest or questline's storyline, creation of fiction and lore, and making the quest come alive using the construction set, which includes writing dialogue, doing the scripting, etc. etc. I occassionally get my hands in the level building/set decoration mix, but that's mostly handled by the artists and world builders.

About NPCs and dialogue, and how that relates to quests -- Again, this varies by questline, but as a whole, the questlines are very rich, with their own unique stories, and that may very well involved a conflict within the guild or amongst certain NPCs. The NPCs themselves feel much more believable. Far less generic dialogue, and the fact that the dialogue is spoken goes a long way to making them seem much more "real." For example, if you meet a specific NPC questgiver, and he speaks to you with his unique, spoken dialogue, he feels light years beyond one of the NPCs in Morrowind. The Dark Brotherhood, for example, has a lot of NPCs with very unique personalties, and that's certainly reflected in their dialogue (among other things). Same is true for the other questlines as well.

As for the enchanted "glowy"... see, that SEEMS like a simple question, but any answer is going to be jumped upon, posted in other forums, etc. etc. And that's what I'm trying to avoid. It's one of this touchy issues where any response is going to trigger counter responses and debate. Let me just say that yeah, it was over-obtrusive in Morrowind, and any kind of enchantment indicator in Oblivion (like a million other things) is still being balanced to make it as effective and unobtrusive as possible.

Sorry, not going to answer any questions about skills or skill perks. Also mentioned just about as much as I can about the stealth system.

Thief/Dark Brotherhood armor -- Yeah, you can check out the concept of the Dark Brotherhood armor on the Elder Scrolls page. Awesome stuff.

Contest sound very cool. Don't forsee a problem.

On how "evil" is the Dark Brotherhood -- well, I guess that depends on how deep into man's perversion you want to go! There are some depths that I didn't approach, because there was no reason to. If it fits the story and the theme of the questline, it's fair game. If it's perverted or vile just for the sake of being so, then no, you're out of luck. But the Dark Brotherhood is definitely NOT "steal the princess" evil. They're more like "disembowel the princess and mail her head back to the king" evil. There's certainly a limit to what you may see, but that doesn't mean other stuff isn't implied.

And yeah, I have a pretty dark sense of humor, so some of that has definitely crept into the questline.

HardCode wrote:
I really wish that a Morrowind player could review Oblivion.

Like Desslock?

Pretty sure our artist was using a gargoyle statue as reference. Maybe they have the same gargoyle statue? Our imp is an updated daggerfall imp anyway. He's only about three or four feet tall, and definitely not muscular. The wings I feel like are pretty standard anatomy for flying creatures. I remember him doing a version where the bottoms were normal, and we made him go back and make them more ragged.

Anyway it's all rather moot as it was translated into an orthographic pose drawing and then of course into a 3d model. I like that concept quite a bit. Trust me, it will be great

Astromarine wrote:
Man, how I wish that Beth would vary their PR coverage a bit. MSFD or Kathode, don't you guys get tired, if the gameplay and roleplayingness is so awesome as you say, of being constantly bashed in threads like these?

Not in the slightest! Reviled or not, Oblivion is the most popular subject around here. There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about. If we fed you everything you wanted to know, you might start to ignore us ;)

Twinfalls wrote:
And this is why I hope TES in future avoids going down the 'making everything metaphoric for human historical eras' path - the 'Cyrodiil is now Ancient Rome' thing. We need original, fantastical game worlds to flourish.

Someone's a Doug Goodall fan ;)

Quote:
I do have another question: how long will it take Bethesda to match the skills and options present in the decade-old Daggerfall?

A long time! Consider: What was a horse in Daggerfall? It was a 2-d image of a horse head slapped on the screen, and some clip-clop sounds (and it ran over water, which was awesome). If I could slap a 2-d graphic on the screen and call it a feature then Oblivion would have more features than all the other Elder Scrolls games put together! The bar is a little higher these days.

Quote:
So you opted for uber-realistic forests instead of just really-good forests

Yup. Polish > quantity. I love our forests. I think they provide tremendous gameplay spaces, great atmosphere, and really help out with.... with... wait for it!.... wait for it!
IMMERSION! >:D

Quote:
You said in that the least of your worries is the player being entertained. The player, the consumer, being entertained by your product means he or she enjoys it and has fun. Therefore, by saying entertainment is the least of your worries you are saying that you're more concerned with getting the thing shipped and the cash in your pocket, right?

No way, that is one heck of an interpretation. I am saying I am confident in it being a fun and entertaining game. I am saying I am confident in the vast majority of players sharing my opinion.

DarkSign wrote:
Your mistake in this analysis is that we didnt say money fixed problems, we said that it produced more products. But while you're at it, more money would pay for either a higher level of Q&A or more testers. If you deny that, you'd have to have as your fundamental premise that your Q&A workers cant do their job. Merely using the fact that games have bugs doesnt prove that money doesnt produce more product.

Roqua wrote:
Its like if Rodan started to sculp round balls and everyone was getting excited about it. Or if a great composer who desided to make a teeny bopper song to get into the top 10 charts.

It's more like if ten years after you played a game you looked around and said things like "everything was better when they were just screens full of text." You and I would then proceed to agree to disagree and that would be that. At least I would hope.

I don't know if we'll put Daggerfall out or not. I think the issue is that there's some licensed components in the engine, but I'm not entirely sure. We had to wrangle the lawyers quite a bit to put Arena out there. They're quite good at being wrangled, too.

Vault Dweller wrote:
The game is shorter because the enhanced graphics will require more time while the development time and budget remained the same
Todd Howard, circa Sep 2004

I think you would have to try pretty damn hard to stretch that one-off quote into him saying "Money solves every development problem." I know you do try hard, though. I admire you for it.

(note: part of this post is a lie. You get three guesses).

micmu wrote:
Reality is, they are selling it as an action game on the primary xbox site: http://www.xbox.com/en-US/games/catalog.aspx?st=Oblivion (Site has an RPG section.)

Quote:
Genre: Action

Yeah, I'd noticed that too. Dunno why. We're certainly developing Oblivion and marketing it as an RPG.

Balor wrote:
And, again, same was in MW.
"Other times, the list contains responses to something the NPC asked or told you about, or questions you can ask the NPC. There can be one choice or multiple choices, and they can be WHOLE SENTENCES, omgwtfbbq."
Yea, right. But how often it happends?
I suspect this priviledge is reserved to main plot quests, unkillable NPCs, and even then it will be used sparingly... I'd be glad to be mistaken, though.

You are mistaken.

galsiah wrote:

MrSmileyFaceDude wrote:
None of the formulas -- and I do mean none -- have hardcoded values. They ALL use Gamesettings for the constants in the formulas.

Hang on - what exactly does "none" mean there?
I hardly think there's going to be access to graphics engine formulas through the CS. How about physics formulas? Havok (is it a 'c' or a 'k'?) will have internal values, but are all the constant values passed to it GMSTs? Are any? How about AI formulas - if RAI is based on fuzzy logic or something similar, is it possible to influence the randomness through GMSTs?

Obviously formulas that are in 3rd party libraries like Havok are out of our control. I thought that would have been self-evident.

When someone says something to you, as they're speaking, the text of what they're saying appears on the screen below their face.

After they're finished (or if you press the button that skips their dialog) you get a list of things you can "say" or "ask about".

Sometimes this list contains topics you can ask about, like "Rumors" or "Directions". If the NPC offers services such as selling things, reparing armor, teaching you spells, training, etc., there are icons below the list that let you request those services. You can also persuade them at these times.

Other times, the list contains responses to something the NPC asked or told you about, or questions you can ask the NPC. There can be one choice or multiple choices, and they can be WHOLE SENTENCES, omgwtfbbq. And they can either affect how the NPC feels about you, the progression of a quest, whether they'll help you with something or give you something; or not. It all depends on the circumstances and how the designers intended the dialogue to progress, and how it is supposed to affect things.

Sometimes there are topics you can click on. Sometimes there are specific questions you can ask, or responses you can make when asked questions. Their brevity or verbosity and number all vary depending upon whom you are talking to, when, their disposition towards you, and under what circumstances and conditions the conversation is taking place.

None of the formulas -- and I do mean none -- have hardcoded values. They ALL use Gamesettings for the constants in the formulas.

Gamesettings aren't included in the game save, that's why you can't permanently modify them via scripts. They're just saved in .esm and .esp files. It's just not something we've found a need to do.

Vault Dweller wrote:

Ok, I'll bite. What stat/attribute governs it and how? What's the gameplay difference between a poor swimmer and a great swimmer?

The speed at which you can swim is based on your character's speed attribute, atheltics, how much you're carrying, whether or not your weapon's drawn or sheathed, etc. The amount of time your character can hold its breath underwater is based on endurance (and there's a water breathing spell available).

There are thousands of game-related websites out there, and most of them contact us anyway, from the largest to the most obscure. Our time is limited; we aren't going to trawl the Internet trying to find someone to ask us specific questions when they're already asking us. That would be a waste of time & resources.

But that doesn't mean that you couldn't contact the Respected Individual of your choice and suggest he contact us for an interview.

You're making an issue where there isn't one. Seriously.

Twinfalls, in general game developers don't ask websites to interview them -- the websites ask the game developers for interviews.

Context, Naked_Lunch, context. It's an interview asking questions primarily about graphics technology on a website devoted to graphics technology. I'm sure that Beyond3D's readers are VERY interested in the interview. I suppose you'd rather Gavin either not give the interview, or insist that this graphics-oriented website ask questions unrelated to graphics?

Yeah, I'm biased, and I don't expect anyone to take my word for it -- but I think Oblivion is one of the most amazing games I've ever played. I think that even the doubters are going to be surprised, though they may not admit it out of stubbornness ;)

I post in the Elder Scrolls forums quite often. I also post here, and in a number of other forums. The Elder Scrolls forums are much, much more active than RPGCodex, and so I can see how it might be harder for you to find topics in which we do post in the TES forums than it is to find them here or in another less-active forum. There's really not much we can do about that.

The game is being demoed by Microsoft representatives at the Consumer Electronics Show. They're showing the press a few of the significant Xbox 360 titles that are being released this year, since Xbox 360 is Microsoft's primary consumer electronics device. Neither Bethesda nor 2K Games are exhibitors at the show.

Twinfalls wrote:
Yes, but go to a dungeon early on in the game, and encounter some creatures.

Go there again later in the game, and there will be different creatures in there.

That is retarded.

That's not necessarily true, though, not in every case. When, eventually, creatures in a dungeon respawn, they may just be tougher versions of the earlier creatures. And why not? Are you planning to go repeatedly into the same dungeon over & over again for some cheap, easy skill boosting?

Achievements are not part of Oblivion's gameplay, they are an effect of it. When you gain an achievement, a notification pops up (which is part of the Xbox 360 UI, not part of the game's UI) and that's it. They are not part of the game itself. Think of it as a separate application monitoring your progress and then ticking off checkboxes as it sees you complete them.

The leveled creature stuff doesn't have to be "At level 5, you get a level 5 creature." It can be "At level 5, in this particular instance you get a 50% chance of a level 5 goblin, a 40% chance of a level 2 rat, and a 10% chance of a level 10 troll." It can also use offsets from your current level. There can and will be super-easy encounters as well as extremely difficult ones. Some dungeons may start out easy and then get tougher and tougher the further you go -- and it's still all based on your character's current level.

Every Xbox 360 game has to be Live-aware (you can voice chat with others in ANY game, even single player, and send & receive text messages, among other things). They all have to use the built-in software keyboard for text entry, they all have to represent controls in certain ways both visually and textually. There are a lot of feature requirements that Xbox 360 games have to have, and Achievements are one of them.

Achievements are an Xbox 360 Live feature, but they're not really a part of Oblivion's content, which on PC has no Achievements.

No dual wielding. I don't know where the guy got that idea, but since the demos at CES are being given by Microsoft representatives, it's possible they just assumed you could do it.

As far as reading goes, every line of dialogue is also present as subtitles. If you read faster than the NPCs say their lines, you can even skip the rest of the voice. There's a huuuuuge amount of text in the game to be read.

Achievements are "awards" Xbox Live members get when they reach certain goals in a game. Every Xbox Live member has a "Gamer Card", which lists their gamer score and what Achievements they've reached for the games they've played (each Achievement awards a certain number of points that get added to the player's gamer score). You can add other Xbox Live players to your friends list, and compare Achievements for different games.

What exactly the achievements are depends on the game. The game I find myself playing most on Xbox 360 so far is Hexic HD, and addictive puzzle game by the guy who made Tetris. Hexic's achievements range from the trivially easy to the nearly impossible.

Every Xbox 360 game has achievements, and has to. Oblivion, being on the Xbox 360, of course will have achievements too. Now that doesn't mean that the achievements are catered towards collectathons or powergaming -- for example, you might get an achievement for becoming the head of a guild, or completing the main quest -- things people will do anyway.

Yes, it's bragging rights. But since Xbox Live is an online community, that's no less appropriate than parading around as a level 75 warrior in World of Warcraft.

Is Microsoft dictating content? Heck no. You have to have achievements, but they have no say as to what those achievements have to be awarded for. And no, there are no achievements awarded for the PC version -- achievements are an Xbox Live thing.

Dreagon wrote:

Revasser wrote:
I don't see why leaving in to-hit rolls had to impact on the kewl visserel kombatt!

I would have been a lot happier with this approach myself. As it is, its just a little to "arcade" for my tastes.

Opponents know when you are attacking, and that increases their chances of blocking or dodging. Ends up effectively working exactly as you describe.

TeamXBox Preview wrote:
For starters, the game encompasses roughly 16 square miles of terrain, some of which will be new each time a player enters. The forests in Oblivion are randomly generated, using the power of the Xbox 360, so settings will be different upon each quest.

That's not true -- the forests were randomly generated once, in the editor, and then are the same for everyone and each time you play.

Balor wrote:
Place an activator 2000 units above the target.
Cast lighting from that activator at target?

You can have just about anything cast a spell at just about anything else. And imagine the possibilities of combining script effects with the new trap system...

Wow, you don't really know too much about the magic system in Oblivion, do you? ;)

Want defensive magic? Silence is a good. Paralysis. Demoralize (or Turn Undead depending on what you're fighting). Calm is pretty powerful on enemies in combat. Heck you could cast Dispel on an opponent and get rid of their buffs & shields. Frenzy might make enemies fight each other instead of you. There's also Command. Need to get away in a hurry? Cast invisibility. The AI will react realistically. In addition to summonings, there's also Reanimate -- raise your own army of the dead to fight for you. You can also poison opponents. And of course there are buffs -- elemental shields, resistances, fortifies, reflect & absorb magicka, etc. Tactical stuff like Detect Life and Night Eye. I think the magic system allows for a tremendous amount of strategy and variety. It's not all about inflicting damage.

Oh, and it's not "scripted effect", it's "Script Effect." A Script Effect is a magic effect that runs a script on the target of a spell. Our designers have done some pretty far out things with it.

Yeah, it's a magic effect, like Fire Damage or Paralysis. When you in the TESCS make a spell containing one (or more) Script Effects, you decide the cost and school of magic, give the effect a name, and even pick out the visual effects for each one.

You can't do it in game, but you can definitely do it in the editor. The PC never "learns" script effects, so if you get a spell that has one, you can't use it in spellmaking or enchanting.

And if the script effect is on area, the script runs on each target.

Very simply -- Script Effect runs the specified script on the target. There are conditional blocks you can check that are called on the first frame, last frame, and every frame of the spell, and the target reference is already designated for you. Very simple, very easy to use, but very powerful. Our designers have had a lot of fun with it

Balor wrote:
The Script Effect is the shit, while possibility existed in MW, it would be so much easier and much more useable now.

And you guys thought we didn't care. ;)

Section8 wrote:

Staffs don't require any skill to use, unless you're blocking with them. They're like scrolls in that effect, though they of course can be used multiple times. Rate of fire is based on the duration of the animation. They have a certain max amount of charge, and each time you use it the charge is drained by the cost of the attached enchantment. Once you've exhausted the charge, the staff is useless until you recharge it.

Does this happen over time, or does it require soul gems (or equivalent)? Can a mage specialise in some way that enables more regular use?

You need soul gems to recharge. Soul Trap is alive and well. There's also another type of rare stone you can find that will recharge your magic items for you without having to "populate" it with a soul.

Another one, does invokation of the enchantment applied to a staff lead to advancement in that particular school of magic? ie Will a destruction enchanted staff advance my Destruction skill, or is use of a staff wasted opportunity as far as skills are concerned?

Nope -- staffs (and other enchanted weapons) can be used by anyone. You get no skill usage for casting the enchantment, and the enchantment's effectiveness is not altered by any skill you possess.

Staffs are useful for mages because you can do things like cast offensive spells with the staff and restorative or defensive spells with your free hand very quickly. Other archetypes can use staffs, but a thief might be better off in general with poisoned and/or enchanted bow shot, and a warrior might be better off with a melee weapon. Since the staff takes up the weapon slot (and you use the attack key to cast it), a weapon user limits his or her options when a staff is equipped. But they can come in handy, especially if you assign a staff to a quick key.

Don't forget, spells you cast that aren't "cast on self" do not affect you. So you wouldn't need the fortify.

Reflect Magic is a chance to reflect, so there is a die roll when you hit. It's definitely not overused. That said, it's probably a wise idea to have a resistance to the kind of spell you're casting, or to cast "softer" spells at the start of combat with a new enemy until you find out whether or not they have reflect magic.

Staffs don't require any skill to use, unless you're blocking with them. They're like scrolls in that effect, though they of course can be used multiple times. Rate of fire is based on the duration of the animation. They have a certain max amount of charge, and each time you use it the charge is drained by the cost of the attached enchantment. Once you've exhausted the charge, the staff is useless until you recharge it.

Of course each staff only has one spell, so you have to make sure it's not one an opponent is resistant to. And if the target has Reflect Magic you could be in trouble.

Overall staffs are pretty rare -- and some are unique artifacts.

Archery has lots of advantages over staffs: arrows are relatively easy to obtain, you can enchant bows (the enchantment gets applied to the arrows you fire), you can poison shots fired from bows, you can do more damage and gain skill perks as your marksman skill increases, you can't get an undetected sneak attack bonus with a staff, etc.

Script Effect is awesome. Our designers have come up with all sorts of surprising uses for it. I'm sure the mod community will, too.

The Script Effect is something I've been dying to talk about for months & months. I'm very glad the "veil" has finally been lifted

I'm not going to post a dissertation on how every formula in the game works, for a variety of reasons (not the least of which is that we are constantly tweaking the formulas). At some point, you're just going to have to play the game and see how it feels. As I've mentioned before, we have a lot of people playtesting the game and they have all been providing feedback on how leveling and skill advancement feels, and we've been adjusting things accordingly. But I know that you won't take my word for it -- so you'll just have to wait to play the game, or wait for someone whose opinion you trust to play the game and let you know.

galsiah wrote:
In Morrowind, a stat is stored as BASE + BONUS rather than BASE + FORTIFICATION - DAMAGE

This lack of differentiation between a character with strength 60 + 20 - 10, and one with a strength of 60 + 10, is the largest source of skill / attribute related bugs, and makes mods like GCD a lot harder to make.

Yeah, that's pretty much how Oblivion works (total = base + fortification - damage), though there's a little more to it.

galsiah wrote: Also, direct script access to the base part of a skill/attribute would be extremely useful. Getting the base of a stat in Morrowind is really annoying.

Not any more! :)

HardCode wrote:
A very simple solution is to effect the level-up immediately when your 10th skill increases. More realistically, as soon as you are out of combat mode. Resting to level up is kind of a stupid premise to begin with.

If you reach the level up point multiple times before you get a chance to rest and level up, when you DO rest to level up you'll get the appropriate bonus multipliers for each level up. That's because the governing attribute counts are stored in a queue and then reset to 0 each time you advance 10 major skills. No more holding back on leveling up to get x5's in every attribute -- you can't do it for major skills because of the queue, and it takes a very long time for minors.

Kuato wrote:
I beleive Morrowind sales and highly overated reviews were due to the lack of other games in the same genre for the xbox at the time

That wouldn't explain the high review scores and sales numbers the PC version received. If the game had been a poorly reviewed flop on PC, you might have a point -- but neither is the case.

Kirkbride hasn't worked for Bethesda for about 5 years. I think he's on the West coast somewhere.

Editor's note: Michael Kirkbride, known as MK on the official forums, is one of the authors of the books found in Morrowind and Redguard. Even though he no longer works as an employee of Bethsoft, he has authored a number of additional books for TES: Oblivion.

Regardless of whether a skill is major or minor, you get the same amount of "usage points" when you use the skill. To advance a skill, the formula does indeed account for a skill being major or minor, and in addition it accounts for a skill being within your class's specialization (combat, stealth, or magic). So it will take more skill uses to advance a minor skill than it will a major skill. In addition to these factors, your current skill level is used in an exponential formula to determine the total number of skill uses required to advance. And so as any skill improves, it will take longer and longer to advance to the next level.

Training is still in the game, but it has been altered so that it is not an exploit (there are limits to the number of times a trainer will advance your skill, among other things).

bryce777 wrote:
9.02 times? So if I use it 9 times and then think of using it twice I go up? *laughing*

Perhaps you only get 0.02 usage points every time you use the skill. Some of the "automatic" skills like Athletics are that way, you get a very, very small usage amount for every second you run.

Deacdo wrote:
Better that as an exploit than the having to go through the tedious process of tossing fireball after fireball after fireball etc. to raise your magic skill and whatnot. Oh wait, that's just the way the crappy system works. Never mind.

Except that you don't get skill usage for casting destruction spells -- only when you actually hit something.

If you own the horse, it'll stay where you leave it when you dismount. Otherwise, yeah -- the horse'll run back home. Price you pay for being a horse thief. Of course you could always put it in a corral when you're not using it, and then it won't be able to get away. There are farms & settlements all over with fenced-in paddocks & such.

It'll run all the way home. If it gets unloaded because you're too far away, it'll go into the low processing level list and move there over time.

And yes, there are stables outside of every major city where your horse stays while you're inside.

On the other hand, why BUY a horse? I mean if you can just steal one, escape, then go & get someone to pay off your bounty (or just try to avoid capture altogether), there's absolutely no reason to raise the funds to buy one.

Not really being defensive, rather providing you with rationale as to why it works the way it does :)

We did consider pre-loading interiors as you approached them, but when you have a city where you can enter every building, predicting when to do that can be problematic. You might be walking straight towards the tavern but veer at the last minute towards the bookseller next door, for example. Plus, as you move around in exterior spaces (like cities) the game pre-loads cells in the distance as you move towards them, and that's a higher priority.

When we can, (as in if there's enough memory) we cache spaces you've been in, so if you go into a shop, you can leave without the exterior having to be re-loaded, and if you then go back in the shop is still loaded. It's all dynamic and configurable.

How detailed were those interiors in Gothic and Dungeon Siege, anyway? How much stuff could you interact with? How much clutter was in them? Would you have ever seen something like this in Gothic or Dungeon siege? Libraries with shelves full of books, each individual objects that you can pick up & read, carry away, move around? Tables with place settings and food?

It's not "pre-historic" tech. It's a deliberate decision to populate spaces with lots of stuff, rather than having them be barren, minimalistic areas with few if any interactive elements. It's part of making the game world seem more real.

Now, if you want to argue that none of that is essential to making it a roleplaying game, that's a different story, and one that has nothing to do with a level of technology. We (obviously) feel that having more realistic interiors with lots of interactive objects in them is more important than having interiors that are part of the exterior world space.

micmu wrote:

MrSmileyFaceDude wrote:
It's balanced so that that does not happen. We're not sitting here in a vacuum, plugging in numbers and hoping they work out -- we've had a lot of people playtesting the game for months, providing lots of feedback. We've tweaked and balanced the system based on that feedback and are happy with the results. It works very well.

Ok I believe you.

*laughing*

You don't have to take my word for it, but balancing this sort of thing has been a major, major focus of the last few months of development. We've spent a significant amount of time making sure systems like this work well. We're happy with it -- and hopefully most of you will be, too.

At low levels you SUCK. If it took the same amount of time to advance from 5 to 6 as it does to advance from 55 to 56, why even give the player minor skills at all? You'd never get any better at them.

GhanBuriGhan wrote:
It still seems to me that this curve means that skills I use little will quickly increase to mediocre levels, while it is very hard to increase something beyond the mediocre level. So how is class more important if its only defined by your starting skills, when the initial difference is quickly depleted as the game progresses?

It's balanced so that that does not happen. We're not sitting here in a vacuum, plugging in numbers and hoping they work out -- we've had a lot of people playtesting the game for months, providing lots of feedback. We've tweaked and balanced the system based on that feedback and are happy with the results. It works very well.

For every skill advancement -- 5 to 6, 20 to 21, 60 to 61, etc., a formula dictates the number of uses required to advance the skill. This formula is exponential, which is a change from Morrowind's linear progression. When you reach higher skill levels, it begins to take longer and longer to advance the skills.

The curve starts out pretty flat. It's fairly similar to this image.

So while your miscs will advance slightly faster than your majors at the start, it's not such a huge difference that you'll "catch up" to your majors unless you really, really work at it. And because you're significantly better at your major skills to start with, doing so isn't really in your character's best interest. Class is much, much more important than it was in Morrowind.

Like I said in another thread -- we have a lot of people playtesting the game. This has been tweaked and tested, balanced and rebalanced, and we've received a lot of feedback about level progression. We're pretty happy with it -- it's a much better system than Morrowind's.

ExMonk wrote:
Thanks. I don't suppose you can give some sense of the typical load time on the pcs you are using?

Nothing specific ExMonk. But even running in the debugger I have no complaints. Of course, it depends on what kind of HDD you have, too.

HardCode wrote:
WTF Pete? What about a comment about the game on PC? Can I bind these actions to the keyboard? Who dares say that the game isn't MicroBox360 oriented?

Pete wrote:
It's also where we came up with the idea of Quick Keys, where you can bind just about anything to a direction on your D-pad and use that during combat to switch weapons, active spells, use items or potions, etc.

Quick keys bind to the number keys on the PC.

You've only seen a few NPCs so far. Check the screenshots at elderscrolls.com, too. Now, there ARE baselines for each race -- so individuals start at the baseline and then have variances from that. Those variances include changes to the shape, proportions and positions of the parts of each face, age differences (smooth skin to wrinkled), complexion and color tint. There are over 1500 unique NPCs in the game, all with different faces.

Well, we didn't rebuild the graphics engine -- we used NetImmerse 4.1 for Morrowind, and we're using Gamebryo for Oblivion. Gamebryo is what NDL re-named NetImmerse a while back. It's heavily modified, though, and we're also using several other third-party API's (SpeedTree, FaceGen, Havok, etc.) There are elements that carried over in one form or another from Morrowind, but lots of the major game systems were re-written, and almost everything that WAS carried over from Morrowind has been modified heavily.

Chefe wrote:
You still have to implement the thing and playtest it to iron out the bugs and make sure it works and is balanced.

Yep. We've had 50 or so people playtesting the game nearly continuously for the past several months. And QA has been testing the game pretty much since there was anything to test. Lots of feedback, lots of balancing, gameplay tweaks, performance enhancements, and of course, finding & fixing bugs.

There's a gamesetting that indicates the distance at which the compass icons becomes visible. Set it to 0 in a mod, and no compass icons. But even then, they're really not that obtrusive. I rarely find myself looking at the compass, and when I do, I'm glad for it.

There are gamesettings for pretty much everything in the game.

Vault Dweller wrote:
That's impossible in Oblivion.

Wrong. You WILL get lost. You WILL wander around aimlessly trying to find things. It's not like the compass points you to every last thing of interest in the game -- and often the markers aren't EXACLTLY on the thing you're looking for anyway. It is not as obtrusive or oppressive as you make it out to be. It's helpful, but it's not the hand-holding dumbing-down all-encompassing device you think it is.

Well, 2 of the NPCs that came within visual range were both Redguards, so there'll be somewhat of a racial similarity anyway, but in general every NPC's face is different.

And GhanBuriGhan, yes, there are definitely "I don't like you enough to tell you more" types of dialogue.

Oh another thing that's not shown in that video, is that topics you've already discussed will be gray. If they have more or new info about a specific topic, it'll appear in gold, just as if it were a new topic. In addition, you'll see questions you can ask and responses you can choose from in the topics list, too, so it's not always just one word.

Once again I have to spell it out. The point is, the number of things an NPC has to say to you depends on a large number of factors -- her disposition towards you, faction membership, quest status, etc. Factors that can and will change as you play the game.

Actually the number of NPCs walking around in town varies tremendously. Sometimes it'll be pretty busy -- sometimes it'll be quiet like it was when Pete was walking around in Skingrad. It depends on the NPC schedules. There are also certain events where there'll be more people around.

As to the woman and her rumors topic. Maybe if she liked your character more, she'd have more to say. Maybe if you were in a certain guild, or had a certain level of fame or infamy, she'd have a quest for you. Maybe if you'd completed a certain quest, or talked to someone else first, she'd have additional things to talk about. Or maybe someone else will give you a quest that leads you back to her, and then she'll have things you can ask her about or confront her with.