I wonder how many of the announced Skyrim features are innovation not only for Tes as a series, but for the whole gaming industry. I loved how they tried with Oblivion to make a revolutionary A.I. but unfortunately it wasn't as advertised, we had already seen npcs doing daily schedules in Gothic. They added full voice acting back then, mounts, nicer combat, but they were already in other titles.

I wonder if Skyrim has a unique feature that they are trying to push the limits of the industry further with. So far I see among the Skyrim features things that were already in Tes or in other games (dragons, real time dialogue, professions, packs of creatures, perks, handcrafted world, civil war..., you name it...).

So my question is do you think Skyrim has a particular something that will be brand new for the gaming industry, to make it a real milestone in the gaming history (not talking about marketing/sales related accomplishments) or is it reusing (and improving on) the elements that are confirmed to be popular/safe by the previous games? Do you wish they took more risks or you think it's better to take smaller steps for the safety of the business?

I think what they do is astonishing as it is considering they're simultaneously building an open world with fully functioning physics and high graphical fidelity.

And multiplat to boot.

I'm not really concerned if they're pushing back the graphics/game mechanics bounderies, just if they are creating an atmospheric environment, good stories, and plenty of opportunities for roleplayingWho cares if its groundbreaking if its good?

Just one thing I can think of........ Skyrim. It's set in Skyrim! Skyrim OR Tamriel itself isn't in other games that aren't TES... And you can't say that TES wasn't set in ANY Province... cause it was in all of them in Arena.

TES never really has been a series that pushes the envelope in a certain department. The most impressive thing about the games is the combination of everything into a single game of an incredible scale.

You could call that playing it safe as they're not really adding revolutionary features to the game, but I'd argue Bethesda is actually one of most daring company out there. The scale and scope of the games they're going for is just that much bigger than any other developer. Morrowind and Oblivion pretty much dwarfed every other AAA title in the amount of content they had. Sure they had quite an amount of bugs, but considering the scale of the games it wasn't even that bad. I've yet to see another company take the risk of releasing such huge titles that are purely single player games and not MMO's.

Ya they playin safe since Oblivion this is old news I guess. Skyrim as a province is a safe place from a developer point of view, as opposed to Summerset, Elsweyr, Black Marsh. Everything must be user-friendly and digestible for as many as possible.
On the other hand for the fans making safe is good if we want the series continued no matter what, we must care about sales. Valve are pushing because they can afford. Blizzard has all the money in the world and Starcraft 2 was anything but innovative. I think innovation is easier to come from smaller studios that have no failure fear and no publishers pressure and no fans pressure and all the time in the world to make things work. Mount & Blade is one example and it's made in someone's bedroom by a few people.

Generally when a feature is truly innovative it is a central part of the gameplay. For example, when people bring up mounted combat there is one game that is always mentioned, Mount & Blade, and what is the core gameplay component of Mount & Blade? Exactly, and is mounted combat the central gameplay element of Oblivion? Nope.

How is the Elder Scrolls series innovative? In the past it was one of the few games to have a large open sandbox world. By the time Oblivion came out sandbox games were becoming more common but the surge didn't happen until afterward and Oblivion was one of the titles that ushered it in. It is interesting to ask how Bethesda will move this forward now that sandbox titles are gaining popularity, but with discussions of regional economics and generated quests I think they're well set up to keep their central gameplay element innovative. (I realize that Daggerfall had generated quests which involved applying certain templates to dungeons or houses, it sounds like Skyrim will be more sophisticated in this regard.)

The Elder Scrolls is also one of the few sandbox games with highly interactive worlds, most don't let you pick up individual forks or books or what not. This isn't really "innovative" at this point, at least for the series, but it's worth noting for the wider sandbox genre. The Elder Scrolls also includes a wide feature set and while these may have shown up in previous games that doesn't mean these games included all of them. Bloodlines had superior voice acting, plenty of old RPGs (long before Gothic or Oblivion) had NPC scheduling, Mount and Blade did mounts better, several RPGs have featured guides and factions apart from the main quest . . . but how many included all of these?

When you are a big company like Bethesda you must walk a fine line between pushing harder and not wasting what you already accomplished. I think Skyrim is more oriented to please the established community than to awe the general audience. For me the first priority is Skyrim being a good Tes, then a good RPG, then a good game (in general).

Two words: Radiant Story

And I think that these things *are* groundbreaking because to me, they are the only ones doing it and making an entire world where someone can do whatever they want, whenever they want. So far, I haven't found another company doing it like they do it.

Yes, Glorious, Radiant Story...can't wait.

:tes:

Kingdoms of Amalur may be the first AAA open world rpg not released by Beth. I am really looking foward to it. While open world games are indeed becoming a lot more popular, open world rpgs are still rare. And as of yet none of the others offer the same level of open world freedom that Beths releases have. Kingdoms may finally break Beth's strangle hold on this segment of the marker. Its got a big budget. All star team including, R.A Salvadore(NY times Best selling fantasy author) creating the backstory and consulting on the game, Todd Mcfarlane(award winning comic artist, creator of Spawn) doing art design. And the real key to the game, Ken Rolston is leading the team(lead designer for MW and OB). Plus they got the leader of the Shivering Isle team and at least one other significant ex Beth employee.

Check out the trailer and other info http://www.38watch.com/forums/showthread.php?1821-The-Media-Compilation-Thread

Every feature will have been implemented in other games to some extent but the scale of them is where bethesda stands out.

I dislike Amalur's art direction altogether. It tastes reheated Oblivion to me, all stale and gummy, but with colour overcompensating for its lack of freshness. There is some poor animation work for display too.

It could all change by the time the game is actually finished, but as of now, it's a major let down.

I heard about that one...it has former Bethesda people on the team. I'm hoping they'll do it as well or better...maybe push the envelope. At Bethesda, it seems to me the entire team is on that page and not just a few people. Time will tell about how really open and free Kingdoms it will be.

:tes:

Them's some big warhammers. Not sure I like that, but if it's an open world RPG like Skyrim, I'd love to try it when it comes out.

Yeah I agree, kind of strange art design, too out there. But will give it some time in the sun I guess, see how it goes.

I think there are some features that have potential to be revolutionary: the radiant ai(again, hopefully this time its as presented in the e3 demo) the radiant story, the lack of pre-defined classes. Maybe other games will copy the free class system if it proves efficient.

I think it's highly unrealistic to hope for any kind of Artificial Intelligence. Such thing does not exist, npcs can not have "needs". It's all scripted, the only difference is how many packages you add for each npc. If Bethesda can pull off a true A.I. that's not just a revolution in the video games industry, it's also a revolution for cybernetics, medicine, astronautics and pretty much every aspect of our lives. I think we're asking too much. I'm expecting more variation in scripts for npcs, but nowhere near the level of complexity shown at the E3 demo.

^ honestly compared to the hype on Skyrim, and knowing TES in general.. i wasnt too impressed with this game.

imagine if that happened.. ALOT of people would rethink if games are "rotting our brains"
lol

Its less about them doing something first and more about them doing something better. that was what drew me into the series.

The Oblivion Incident.
Yeah...that..was hard to swallow.

What's revolutionary is the sheer breadth of features we'll be getting in a single game. I frankly don't expect any other new game to match the scope of Skyrim until BGS puts out their next title.

As for one feature standing out, it sounds like radiant story will be the big new factor, but we really won't know how much of a game changer it is until we get our hands on it.

Its hard to make a judgement on that without some gameplay videos.

The Elder Scrolls series innovates by bringing an unprecedented level of interactivity to a believable world that focuses on the details. While you may not get the smear of area in something like, Grand Theft Auto IV or Red Dead Redemption, the overall depth of the Elder Scrolls worlds make more volume by depth. That's why I always think the Fast Travel System in Oblivion is a travesty against the very developers who put it in. Almost everyone I talk to, who's played Red Dead Redemption, Never use the Fast Travel option, but as great as the New-Austin territory is in that game, it lacks the detail and depth of even Morrowind.

Other than that, The Elder Scrolls innovates by bringing staggering amounts of Content to the table. For all it's size, there really isn't a whole lot you can do in Grand Theft Auto IV, and even fewer ways you can do what you're given.


On the Subject of A.I. In gaming, AI is a blanket term for non-player-character behavior, but it's not actually AI in any way. The greatest minds in science have yet to create a true AI, a Machine capable of thinking and learning independently of human input. The "AI" Demonstrated in the infamous Oblivion demo, was not AI at all, ever. The "Basic Needs" just function as a variable for a complex series of scripts, which in theory, aren't particularly hard to pull off once you create the universal suite to host them (Radiant AI). Radiant AI as we saw in the Oblivion Demo, is actually possible in Oblivion, But it seems Bethesda didn't have the time to properly test and observe how it behaves, and the reprecussions it would have on the player's experience. It sounds great in theory, to have an NPC who has no gold, need to steal to buy food, but then the Guards react, Kill the NPC, then the NPC's friends react, and attack the Guards, and you have a full-blown Civil war. I imagine playing with Radiant AI was one of the most hilarious and entertaining times Bethesda had.