I listened recently to Bethesda's podcast on the production of Oblivion, and one thing they mentioned was struggling to get all the dialogue onto one disk, and they had to cut out, for example, the having an arena in every city idea (I think it was a good one, that many is unnecessary, but still) and that was only 180 lines, so they must have been really tight on space. I was kinda hoping we'd have a LOT more in Skyrim, since it would mean more quest content, and a more real world. On the other hand, I've heard they are making an XBOX disc with an extra gigabyte or so of space (XBOX is the only console where this is really an issue), but I've also heard this may simply be used to waste extra space on privacy protection, which would mean no more space. None of the base game can be installation required since some XBOX's have no hard drives, but I was wondering if maybe they could add some side quests/smaller questlines to an additional installable disc so that the game will run fine without it but you'll get more dialogue and quest content if you can install it. Another issue is that more voice actors will mean more rerecording of basic rumour and conversational dialogue will have to be done.

That was a bit of a rant, but is my concern necessary here?

Its a shame too because I read xbox 360 (which is the current max size they have to appease) is about to get a larger disc and then they would have been able to make the PC and PS3 games bigger

I think its a legit concern, but who knows with the new engine, maybe they found ways to be efficient with their compression methods?

Also, doesnt adding more voice actors make the need for more space because they use to be able to reuse a lot of dialog with just two VA per race

I feel for ya.

However it has been confirmed that there will be a lot of filler NPCs in towns with 1 liner dialogue (pretty much like rumors.)

So that should save some space.

Not really, they always had those.

I dunno if people would agree, but maybe removing some of the lines of aspects of the main quest that aren't important, I feel they always give the MQ quite a disproportional amount to the other questlines.

I wouldn't so much worry about how much dialogue there is but rather the quality of dialogue. Bethesda games are really not games I go for when it comes to storyline and dialogue. It's just not one of their real strengths :shrug:

I think Fallout New Vegas had quite a bit of dialogue compared to Fallout 3/Oblivion (though I'm not sure what the actual comparisons are and if I'm even correct). If they had that amount of dialogue I'd be happy (especially if it was quality dialogue).

Hopefully there is a better way to compress files now. That would mean everything is smaller in size, thus getting more of everything.

Which 360s don't have hard drives, those old, scarcely-seen (anymore) arcades? Why did they release such a useless version of the 360?

I don't understand their reasoning for this, because Oblivion didn't max out the DVD.

Oblivion is 4.6GB

As a comparison, Red Dead Redemption is 6.7GB, so they basically had 2.1GB left at least.

Sorry, I don't know, it's what they said in the podcast. Maybe the capacity has been increased since that time or they only had access to a certain amount for some reason. If they can now add much more, I will be very pleased with it.

If I had to guess, than they were worried about overload, so they cut something out, for things that had yet to come, and then they ran out of time before they could add everything intended. There was a lot of stuff that was supposed to be in OB which didn't get there, not because of size problems, but because of deadline constraints.

In any case, Oblivion was one of the first games for xbox 360, first rpgs anyways, they probably had loads of problems we don't know about.

I have a question why not use dual layer DVD or put game on two DVD or use installation of some game archives to HDD instead of reducing features of game just for fit single standard DVD?
Does Xbox360 incapable to use such format of disks?

I don't know about dual layer. Aren't they already doing it? As for multiple DVDs, that can't work because there is no order in which you have to experience the data in the game, since it is open world. HDD install can work how I said, to have additional quests that way, but they can't do a compulsary install (not legally allowed), because Microsoft was stupid and released one version of the XBOX years ago without a HDD, so those people with that console wouldn't be able to play it.

Yes but you could initiate a conversation with every person in Oblivion. In Skyrim there are people you can't talk to. Like Fallout, where they will just say something when you click on them and that's it. That should save some space.

As far as we know they recorded 50 hours of dialogues, I don't know how much there was in Oblivion.


EDIT : btw I know it's off topic but I just registered and I mixed up username and display name, do you know how I can change my display name ? :/

isn't it enough if they dont fit into the disc..........but they will most likely update the ammount of dialogues via patch

This is doubtful. They can't expect all of their cosumers to be connected to the internet. They'd still pay full price for the game, and receive less content.

Everything has to come in one package.

I am very afraid of cut content too , the only way to have all the space they want on the 360 is by installing 2 DVDs , and i am sure they won't do that

They've also said that they can now compress audio data better, so we'll get more and better voices.

Also I'm sure Fallout 3 had more voice actors, and it had more vocal lines overall...

Todd said that with the 5+ years of experience with the current hardware they gave learned a lot of compression techniques. Audio shouldn't be a problem this time around.