Hadn't seen it posted yet so.

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...-cover-revealed-the-elder-scrolls-online.aspx

 

Let's think on this. Apparently the setting is about a millenium before Skyrim - which puts it at around 2E 600ish.

The Seventh and Eigth Centuries of the Second Age are strangely blank, lore-wise, and so I suppose this game will fill the gap. Molag Bal trying to take over sounds neat, although it gives off a sense of repetition franchise-wise considering the story of TES4.

But they could be fudging numbers, and I hope they are - Tiber Septim is believed to have been born around 2E 828. Would be kickass to see him taking names and rising to power.

---------- Post automerged at 02:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:44 PM ----------

Edit by doublepost: PDF containing game info and art that's making the rounds.

 

I'm... not enthused honestly. I hope this doesn't affect the development of Elder Scrolls VI. I'm typically not a fan of MMOs and I think that the core strengths of ES, namely open-world exploration and sheer breadth of content, would be weakened, if not altogether lost in an MMO.

One of the other main strengths is the idea that you, the player character, are some apparently really important person. Your decisions matter - they make a palpable impact on the course of Nirn's history. That doesn't translate well into an MMO setting.

I would much rather that they had simply created a multiplayer component to their games to allow for cooperative play, similar to Baldur's Gate, Minecraft, or Diablo or what not.

If you can't already tell, I'm not really an MMO fan and probably will dislike this game for the same reasons I dislike other MMOs. It doesn't mean it will be a bad game - it just will not appeal to me. That's fine, other people will probably end up enjoying it and there's no reason they shouldn't.

 

I'm actually casually optimistic about this. It's fucking TES - and Bethesda hasn't led us astray yet.

If you'll look at the pdf I linked, they make a pretty good presentation on how they tried to achieve an MMO while still preserving the TES-openworld flair.

We'll have to wait and see until a beta is released to see if their claims are worth anything, but for the moment I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

 

I'll try it for sure.

 

I'm sorry, but I stopped reading right there. How has Bethesda not led you astray? Unless you are solely playing Morrowind, which I wouldn't mind, but we'll just assume that you play everything they release.

Fallout 3 wasn't a pile of shit, but it wasn't made of gold either. It was tedious, and the story was embarassingly simple. It amounted to "WAH, WHY'D YOU LEAVE ME BEHIND, DADDY?!", and then you save the world. Good for you. Except for the fact that your saving the world apparently didn't extend across the wastes to the Mojave, where water is still irradiated and, holy shit, the Brotherhood Of Steel are a bunch of dickbags again.

Oblivion was boring, and the level-scaling made it fuck-stupid to play, since suddenly a fucking sewer rat can put up a fight against me in my Daedric armor.

I haven't played Skyrim yet, and I don't plan to, but what I have read of it sounds like a recipe for disaster.

Starting off simple. Perks. I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that I was playing Sword and Board Fallout. Having the game take place in Skyrim sounded awesome, until it essentially became You Fight Dragons: The Game. Dragonshouts sounded cool, as a concept (wow, this is repetitive, isn't it?) until you basically had three useful ones, a handful that were situational, and a bunch of useless ones. Sprinting is popping up in every game, now, and it's an interesting mechanic, I'll give you that, but it's one that isn't needed. Is this wish-fulfillment for all the fat kids sitting on the couch who won't sprint a day in their life, or something? Also, you are supposed to be this amazing hero, you'd think that you'd be able to sprint further than ten yard bursts.

Oh, and the bugs. But that's every Bethesda game ever. What's the most popular Oblivion mod? Isn't it the one where it solves over one thousand bugs that the developers just left in?

Does Bethesda even have a QA department?

Yeah, sorry for shitting on your parade and all, except I'm not.

 

I would agree with you, but the fact of the matter is I've legitimately enjoyed the fuck out of every single game of theirs that I've gotten my hands on (which is most of them, especially the more recent titles), which is more than I can say for a lot of game devs.

I couldn't care less about playing some hero doing some heroic things- I play Bethesda games to experience the world they've created and immerse myself in the lore and culture, just like I would if I were reading an engrossing book series. It just so happens that the company's chosen medium is an interactive one. If they were releasing their content solely in written format I'd still enjoy the fuck out of it.

 

It sounds as if you honestly don't enjoy Bethseda's games at all.

Which is perfectly acceptable, people have different tastes... But you aren't making sense.

When Nintendo comes out with a new Mario game, I don't accuse them of being a letdown. They might actually be a letdown, but I don't really know. First, because I don't enjoy any Mario games, and so my opinion of what is a letdown is not relevant. I can't make a fair judgement on if it's bad, because to me they're all bad.

If I hated game 1, 2, and three, chances are I'm going to hate game 4. If I'm in the majority, and the game does really poorly it's fair to say it's probably a bad game. If I'm in the tiny minority, then it's fair to say that I don't enjoy the direction they've gone in. I'm not part of the target audience.

You don't like Assassin's Creed, you hate Assassin's Creed 2... When you hate Assassin's Creed 3, chances are that it's you, rather than the developers letting you down. There was never any indication that they are going to suddenly change the game to what you like.

TL;DR: ...???

 

Yes and no. I enjoy aspects of every game they release, but there are glaring problems that I can't overlook. For instance, there was an incredibly common bug in New Vegas where enemies would be trapped underground and you couldn't do anything to them. You never exited combat, because they were always right behind you.

The biggest thing for me, though, is that Bethesda shit on Fallout's lore with Fallout 3. New Vegas was actually made by people from Black Isle (who were the guys who made Fallout 1 and 2, for those who were wondering who the fuck Black Isle were), but they were rushed in creation of the game (Dragon Age II comes to mind), and there were things that got left in, or left out.

Morrowind was great. Easily earned its status as GotY when it came out. Oblivion... didn't. Same with Skyrim (or any other Cowadooty game that's earned that title), because there were simply better games available.

Don't get me wrong, the Elder Scrolls series is fine, but my opinion of the franchise itself is colored by my experiences with it as well as the practices of the developer. It's sort of like how I refuse to buy anything EA or Activision make, because of what the developers have done.

And, honestly. While I understand that making a game that big, you're going to encounter some problems, you should not encounter a glitch that can be replicated, and every player should not have to come across it. That Oblivion mod I mentioned? It shouldn't exist.

Bethesda used the same engine across three games. Which is fine, because Unreal is used as the engine for hundreds of games, but Unreal is not a buggy shit-pile. Gamebryo is. They did nothing to fix it across those three games, and they cut corners in development wherever possible. Textures from Fallout 3 and Oblivion were re-used in New Vegas. Character models and so forth got the same treatment. That's lazy. That's not re-using applicable resources, because God knows you could speed up a Vault's creation by using cookie-cutter pieces like stairs, windows, balconies, doors, etc. Stuff that every single one has. It becomes inexcusable when I run into the exact same NPC I just talked to an hour ago, except wearing different clothes and with a different name.

 

I don't think TES without mods are that great tbh. It's the mods that make the games awesome.

MMO = no mods = sadface

 

New Vegas was developed by Obsidian Entertainment, Bethesda just published it. They did the same shit with the rushed Knights Of The Old Republic II. Bioware made the original KOTOR, Obsidian made KOTOR II and put Bioware's name on it.

Putting that aside... Seriously, you've never even played the game and you sound legitimately upset about it. Again, if I hated Assassins Creed 1 & 2, I'm not going to be complaining that number 3 let me down. Especially if I haven't played it.

Why not just go play a game that you actually like? Or just say that you don't enjoy Bethesda games.

I don't understand how you can accuse them of letting you down... Or more specifically, how you can accuse them of letting everyone down-

- when the only one upset is you, and that's because you hate all of the games they release. The $450 million in launch sales disagree with the fact that the game let everyone down, as well as the incredibly generous reviews.

I mean fuck, it's fine to hate it. You're not alone in that. You even sound like you have somewhat legitimate concerns. It's fine to even hate it when you haven't played it at all.

Why try and say that they let down everyone or "led them astray" when it's rather blatantly obvious they haven't? You are alone in that. Probably because that's observably false.

 

Bethesda games promise you a unicorn but give you a donkey with a cardboard horn. Now it's a really nice donkey, it's very friendly and you end up having a lot of fun with it, but every time it brays you're going to look at the lump of cardboard strapped to it's face and imagine the unicorn they promised you.

I... don't know quite where I was going with that analogy. But Bethesda are like Lionhead in that they constantly disappoint me.

 

I'd disagree. I'm never really disappointed with Bethesda games because I don't expect them to be perfect. What I do expect from them are brilliant story lines, interesting characters and lore shit out like they'd had a really bad curry the night before. In those things alone Bethesda is probably my most highly rated developer, and only lags in second overall because Paradox is just that awesome.

 

And both New Vegas and KotOR II were leagues better than their predecessors, I should add, despite Obsidian being severely constrained by the publishers for both games.

Anyway. MMOs on the whole don't interest me that much. This game's going to have to do some things very differently if they want me to play it.

Can't be as bad as TOR, right?

 

Nothing will ever be as bad as TOR-Tanic.

 

The official announcement trailer.

I don't know what to think of this announcements. On one hand, I have never played any mmo for a long amount of time, but on the other hand it's The Elder Scrolls.

Also,KOTOR 1 was much better than KOTOR2 in every way.

 

I think it's because people expect Betheseda's games to be the end all, be all game for them. Morrowind's explosion into the scene probably has a lot to do with this. It's the fact that their games hold so much potential and at first, are immensely immersive that people are disappointed once glaring flaws set in.

People expect their games to be a high fantasy simulator i.e. immensely realistic and while Bethesda has created some truly large worlds and places to explore, one should not deny that Bethesda games such far have suffered from a number of severe flaws. One of the biggest ones is storyline and character development. Storyline was often poorly imparted or simply not that interesting. Bethesda's character development was also nowhere the caliber of, say, the Witcher or Deus Ex, or Baldur's Gate, or what have you.

Another big issue is combat. Bethesda really needs to work on a way to improving their combat decisions. Combat is generally flat and uninteresting in their games. Players want to actually feel as if they are doing more than just clicking a few times when using their sword or mace or what have you.

And of course Bethesda's issues with bugs. That kills the immersion like nothing else.

Don't get me wrong. I've enjoyed every single Elder Scrolls game back since Arena. But I recognize them for what they are: a deeply flawed, but incredibly deep experience.

I think if you were able to get Bethesda to handle the world creation and exploration aspects of the game, Bioware or CD Projekt to handle the story and character development, and had either Talesworld, From, or Platinum Games handle the combat, you'd probably have the best RPG in existence. Unfortunately, Betheseda only does some things well (exploration, depth and extent of content, player choice, world creation, good leveling system) and does other things relatively poorly (combat, story, bugs, etc).

 

Bioware flashbacks.

 

While true, that is irrelevant. He was referring to bugs, as was I. The game quality itself isn't particularly important.

KOTOR II probably had the highest number of game crashing, save killing bugs that I have ever seen. It was that game that began my habit of constantly saving in a new save slot every few minutes.

And New Vegas was buggy as shit too. I was merely saying it isn't fair to blame Bethesda for bugs in a game they didn't produce. I enjoyed both of them.

 

What disappoints me the most about Bethesda games, and The Elder Scrolls in particular, isn't the bugs or the combat or anything. It's the way that they make this tremendous effort to craft a massive open world with tons of lore behind it, but do such a piss poor job of filling it with memorable characters to bring that world to life. I've been sitting here for half an hour and I still can't remember the name of a single NPC in any Bethesda game, despite having a couple of hundred hours spread across Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Skyrim. All I can remember is that Captain Picard voiced some royal dude you fail to protect in the Oblivion intro and that there's a mental shopkeeper in Megaton(?) who looks more like a chimp than a woman.

I just want the world of Skyrim to be more like the world of San Andreas.