I have always thought that one way ES games could increase immersion immediately and without much work would be to add a simple series of animations in front of each door so that when the PC selects a door/ hatch to go through, the appropriate animation shows the character opening the doorway, stepping into the darkness -loading screen of course- and then stepping into the new cell, and closing the doorway.
I know its actually a bit more work with all the different types of entrances/ladders, but I think it would be worth a bit more animating for that extra realism boost. Animations would need to be dependent upon the situation in which you open the door; so you would have a quick animation for when the PC is in combat and uses a door, a regular animation for non-combat situations, and a sneaking animation for when they activate the door in sneak mode/enemies are nearby.
What do you guys think? I'm sure some people couldn't care less about something so mundane, some of you think the development time would be better spent working on whatever game-play element you personally think is more important, and some of you think that I'm a moron for not checking if this has been discussed previously on your precious forums; but I'm a bit more interested in the opinions of you few people that don't fall under those categories... Thanks!

Edit: Food for thought: Couldn't the NPCs at least be seen using real doors? It was always really weird to see NPCs fade away before a closed door in Oblivion...

Edit 2: I have been requested to provide evidence... I don't link cause I don't want to be banned, but:
Check out the short or the extended demos (easily available elsewhere, and we've all seen them already) that Todd Howard did during E3, when the PC enters "Bleak Falls Barrow" there is no animation, just the standard transition between the exterior cell and the interior cell.
Later in the extended Demo we see another wooden door behind a Dragur being slain, which the video cuts away from before entering the next section, confirming that at the time of E3 they didn't have an animation for exterior to interior cell travel, or an animation for interior to interior cell travel.

I can't be annoyed by the lack of something I never expected anyway. There are separate cells, there were going to be loading screens. Unless everywhere in the game is open world, not going to change. And to TES's defence, there is a lot more clutter you can interact with than most games, so separate cells is somewhat forgiveable.

No. Why? Because I never even thought/cared about having them.

We don't need seamless cells to expect a door opening animation. Just have a character open the door, step through (either make this black or white or orange or whatever, depending on time of day), close it behind them and then appear on the other side. This will prevent the silly vanishing act everyone performs when they decide to enter a building.

Like in The Witcher, for example.

I'm not closed to the idea but I've never seen it done well for a first-person view.

In third person I remeber it from Harvest Moon (the character walks into darkness as you suggest). In Resident Evil, they skip from third person to an interval screen showing the door opening.

If we were playing in first-person view and we either walk into a dark abyss or we're shown walking inside in third person it raises some problems.

It's imperfect as it is, with NPCs materialising through doors but I don't see many better alternatives without doing away with seperate cells altogether ala Fable 2. I'm not an expert on the technical details, but I imagine you sacrifice interior details in that case.

This.

Not sure I've ever played a game that had such a thing. :shrug:

(edit: ah, no.... City of Heroes does it. But it's not terribly realistic. Doorway swings open by itself, character springs into darkness.)

Nope

Its like that because most buildings are not open world they are on separate stages like if you go on the ledge in bruma and glitch out the stage you see other stuff but it you can't go there.

Exactly, I know that the cells need to be separate, I just want it to feel a bit more like I'm not teleporting between doors, and boy is it ever annoying to see NPC's fade away at a solidly closed door, only to fade back on the other side...

Hahaa !
Resident Evil the first had a loading screen where you would come approach the door and open it.

Still, the lack of animation won't disturb me.

Either option is "unrealistic". Whether npc fade or we walk through into darkness. Personally I prefer the one which will load faster, which is the way they do it right now

Awesome idea :tops:

The best thing about this idea is that you're accepting and acknowledging the necessity of the loading screens. This is just a mere work-around to assist in immersion. Great idea.

I didn't even think of it before now.

But now that I think about it - I love the idea!

Way, way too much unnecessary work for an open world game like this. Especially since you mention doors like hatches that sometimes have ladders in front of them.

Also, having every interior look like it's pitch black isn't anymore immersive.

Yea I definitely agree. I'd rather have it be the same way it's always been rather than always fading through a black walkway.

No, it would be cool the first time, but anytime after it would only be annoying to have to wait for the animation to finish.

I don't think you're focusing on the right aspect of the suggestion... The point isn't that it has to be black, but that something other than teleportation or dematerialization is occurring... The color could be time of day dependent, or it could be obscured by the camera angle in such a way that you can't see the darkness at all; but the implementation is not what I'm concerned with, I was just illustrating my point with a simple suggestion for how it could be done differently.



Again, the implementation is not the issue here... The next cell could begin to be loaded during the animation so that there is less time on the loading screen, and the same time spent traveling between the cells overall anyway, but it could be done and it could be done differently.

It isn't something I even noticed/thought about haha. Does not matter to me.

I was never bothered by having a lack of animations when I entered new cells.



You didn't read the thread, did you?

I think that it could easily be done so that the loading times are the same... Begin loading at the start of the animation as you can't cancel it, and don't need the resources for the current cell anymore, and begin loading the next cells resources before you even reach the loading screen If the loading takes less time than usual, just cancel the entering animation on the other side and it won't make too much of a difference.

where is the gameplay that shows that there is no door opening animations?

either i missed something in a video that has already been released, or there is a video that has been released that i hadn't heard about. either way, no link you lose credibility and i don't care about door animations.

Doors generally act as a zone transition point in TES. They need to be as fast as possible so I would say no to the door animations. I would have been very annoyed if my <1 second transition time in Oblivion was increased because of some repetitive animation that adds nothing to the game.

This

meh I'm sure you can still open and close some doors

Check out the short or the extended demos that Todd Howard did during E3, when the PC enters "Bleak Falls Barrow" there is no animation, just the standard transition between the exterior cell and the interior cell.
Later in the extended Demo we see another wooden door behind a Dragur being slain, which the video cuts away from before entering the next section, confirming that at the time of E3 they didn't have an animation for exterior to interior cell travel, or an animation for interior to interior cell travel.