I'm all for less content (by the measures you're using at least).

I think the skills need merging more, the factions need to be fewer but deeper, and a smaller world would allow more detail in general. I would love a TES game based around one large city with just a few factions if the quests were much more open-ended and non-linear.

Nonetheless, the one city game will never happen because it's not "epic" enough for the current audience.

I voted. Other.

They really did stumble on Oblivion, but mostly because they just added a lot of new technology that had to be developed, and tested in the final few months, because XBox 360 was not ready until then.

This problem does not exist today, so they can test anything as soon as they code it.

But one single fact remains as before.

In Morrowind most of quest dialogs were text only, so they could alter them as they liked and add tons and tons of it to dialogs and quests, and then change and fix them in the last minutes without much ado, and so on...

In Oblivion, they decided to add voice overs, for each dialog line, and some of them were used for all the races, foe men and women.

In this trend they had put a sever limit on the amount of text they could use in a dialog, and it would not be practical to change and fix the texts extensively in the last moment, and so on...

The NPC AI and Dialogs were severely limited and they had to save time and effort for each line added or changed, so lots and lots of detail were reduced from AI responses and dialogs.

And I do not see the trend take a step back and reintroduce text only dialog, and I do not see the trend take a step forward and introduce procedurally generated voice overs, for the texts, as I voted for in http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1108155-xzzz.

So I do not worry about newly introduced technology, but I do hate the current trend of fully voiced dialogs, and the severe limit that it imposes over AI and dialogs.

I predict (sadly) that the trend toward more shiny eye/ear candy at the expense of continuing to (over-)simplify those annoying game-like bits will continue.

I say that hoping they prove me wrong, but what I've seen since Daggerfall doesn't make me particularly optimistic. :shrug:

Wait what? I'm conifent Morrowind had both more and larger cities, but I suppose that is besides the point. Yes it is a consistant tred and I hope they learned from it. Am I worried, me'h..

Honestly not that concerned. Bethesda Studios has been turning out solid games for a long while now. I think that games these days are a lot more complex in terms of technical aspect and to keep up with that, they have had to devote more resources to that side of the project. But, I don't think that is making for a worse game. I'm sure no one would want the game to have inferior graphics and effects, and what not.

That is to say, if you are talking about a perceived reduction in content, then I think this is where it is stemming from. However, now that Bethesda has been dealing with this generation of games for a while now, I feel that they will be able to squeeze a lot more content into Skyrim this go around. In short, I'm not concerned about Bethesda's (the studio) performance at ALL. I've been VERY happy with what they've been putting out.

Omg I agree with you completely. Text only dialog will never happen again, so we have to make the most out of what we have. This is one of the main reasons no other games have even come close to Morrowind (imo). Im just thankful that we HAVE a Morrowind as epic as it is. Skyrim can be good for what it is, but knowing that it'll never reach that point of awesomeness I can hope for the best.

im a bit concerned, but i guess its only because im so hyped about this game already, and afraid it wont meet my expectations. hopefully ill stop being concerned once we get some info about it.

I voted Other.

I didn't play Arena until it was released for free a few years back. Wasn't a big fan, perhaps because I was 10 years late to the party.

I loved Daggerfall. It improved in every aspect of Arena IMO

I was thrilled with the increase in detail and less randomly-generated content when I played Morrowind. The world was smaller, but the focus allowed them to detail the world so much more.

I was disappointed with some of the changes from Morrowind to Oblivion, but happy with others: Radiant AI, though not as advertised, and sometimes ludicrous, was a big step forward; Physics was another big step. Full level scaling was appalling; Persuasion minigame was ridiculous; NPC dialogue was too small and simplistic; The vast reduction in unique loot, dungeons and enemies made exploring much less fun.

If Fallout 3 didn't exist I'd be more concerned. Though it was a different game with different goals, it improved my biggest gripes with Oblivion.

The level scaling was not a problem (until I installed Broken Steel and the world was suddenly full of Albino Radscorpions and Super Mutant Overlords - reminding me of the constant way-too-long battles with Goblin Warlords in Oblivion)

Dialogue was much better and more detailed, and each character was more unique, even when voiced by the same actor

The lockpicking minigame was much better than Oblivion and the Speech and Barter skills were useful instead of being just a way to increase enemy hitpoints.

So I have hope that Bethesda learned from their 'mistakes' to an extent. But I'm still a bit hesitant before hearing more about the game.

Basically, as long as Bethesda still understand that some people want to progress from being a level 1 useless player to a level X god-like player it'll be fun for me. And for the love of God, please don't punish me for making a thief character with Speechcraft, Sneak, Security, Athletics, Marksman, Light Armor and Acrobatics skills.

Are you KIDDING? Games are optimized and optimized to squeeze out the best graphics possible on the consoles, which are still worse than what the PC is capable of without specific optimization BY FAR. If you just look at the PC hardware vs the Xbox 360 hardware...what is the Xbox graphics card? 256 MB? 512 MB? You can have graphics setups of several gigabytes on the PC, and 512 graphics cards are getting to the LOWER end of PC hardware.

Also, I'm pretty sure the PS3 and Xbox 360 don't have processors anywhere near as fast as i5/i7s overclocked which are becoming fairly common on PCs.

Anyway, I am scared that this series (TESV revived my basically dead interest in games for a little longer) is going to follow the same trend as every other good game series has in the past few years from awesomeness to total crap by removing the complexity and making it a [censored] action / graphics show with no depth or GAME. (which is the same thing that happened to movies...sort of. Strange.)

Not at all. First, FNV was developped by Obsidian.

Morrowind has more quests, more NPCs, more dialogue, more artifacts (the majority of artifacts in Oblivion are simply unique items, which are not counted as artifacts in Morrowind), more weapons type, more weapons, more armor, more skills, more spells. Morrowind has more factions (House Hlaalu, Redoran and Telvanni, East Empire Company (Bloodmoon), Fighters guild, Mages guild, Thieves guild, Imperial cult, Imperial legion, Tribunal Temple as well as the Aundae, Berne and Quarra vampire clans: 13 total) compared to Oblivion (Fighters guild, mages guild, thieves guild, dark brotherhood, arena: 5 total). Morrowind has more cities of varying sizes (4 cities, 13 towns, 5 imperial forts (Ebonheart competing Oblivion's cities), 4 major ashlander camps, 4 plantations) compared to Oblivion (9 cities (Kvatch being destroyed), 10 villages (2-3 houses only, Morrowind's towns can be 6 times that size) and a bunch of sole houses and farmhouses I didn't count in Morrowind. Morrowind also had 9 types of dungeons (caves, mines, grottos, ships, velothi towers, dunmer strongholds, dwemer ruins, daedric shrines and ancestral tombs) while Oblivion had 4 (forts, ayleid ruins, caves and mines).

Oblivion was also bigger, thus with much less content it felt much more empty and dead than Morrowind. I didn't mind the big jump from Daggerfall to Morrowind, but that's because Daggerfall was so, so damn big.

I want to believe it will fall somewhere between Morrowind and Oblivion's level of simplicity.

Less content is just a natural consequence of the higher quality expectations. I do believe that if the developers had any time left to add more quests, monsters, lore etc. they would've done it. But it just takes more time than ever to make high quality environments, quests etc.

You just can't have it both ways. Oblivion had a lot of dungeons at the cost of several dungeons looking the same. It looked pretty, but the AI was still not what it could've been. It had pretty long and rich guild questlines, but there weren't a lot of miscellaneous quests to do. All I hope is that they hired some more people, and had enough time with their systems to make the most of the development time.

I'm not concerned. It's become more focused for me. There are less weapons, but I still have my swords and actual use of the weapons feels much better, in my opinion. They have less factions and side quests, but I feel they are MUCH better in each progressive Elder Scrolls game. Arena only had four side quests and no joinable factions, Daggerfall's side quests and joinable factions were quite repetitive and truthfully "copy-and-paste", and Morrowind side quests and joinable factions felt repetitive and lacking, to me, as well. There is a reason old skills were cut (language skills were utterly useless and Oblivion seems more balanced than its predecessors), Oblivion does actually have an equivalent amount of armor sets as Morrowind as well as more clothing options than Morrowind. Oblivion has more unique dialogue per NPC (almost every named NPC has something unique to say in Oblivion, no matter how brief, but Morrowind's named NPCs were mostly the same). I'm very happy with the trend.

Keep in mind that Beth has had a lot of time to familiarize themselves with the hardware of modern consoles, Oblivion was the first game from Beth on modern consoles. And so it suffered a slight lack of content. Many things were missing that were in Morrowind, probably because of deadlines more than anything.

I think Skyrim will be different, mainly because Beth has had more time with the hardware. Couple that with the increase of developers, and I think you've got the making of a great game right there.

I understand wanting to wait before buying though.

Agree with the voiced dialog, it actually caught attention better for me to read the dialog instead of just listening, sure most quests were interesting but the fact that npc dialog was so brief, it left the characters kinda empty. Hope there would be deep backstories for even the lesser npcs and quests, not just " I need slaughterfish scales for a mage but cant get them myself becouse a fish bit my leg" Okay that was an extreme example but you get the idea.

I voted no. But I should have voted other, because I am slightly concerned about this.

I am more concerned with the atmosphere of the game. I want a DARK and MATURE themed game, more like the older TES games. Also, I want to be challenged mentally, not just hack and slash through everything.

And honestly, if the game lacks content, That's what makes MODS SO GREAT. Oblivion doesn't have a lot of empty space even in the forest with the number of mods I have.

Altogether though, the more content and options in a game shows more thought the developers put in the game.

MOST IMPORTANTLY, the developers need to hopefully remember what THEY like about playing games, we as the recipiants of their efforts aren't much different overall.

you know Oblivion is still one of the largest games there is out there along with Morrowind and I think fallout3 may be there somewhere, but I am not entirely sure I haven't checked in a while though

I am kinda glad that they do this, because we can make our own content

Yeah I'm concerned. I can think of three major examples in the journey from Morrowind to Oblivion that rattled my confidence.

1) Soul Gems
It used to be that soul gems contained the name of the soul you had captured. In Morrowind I spent countless hours capturing and cataloging souls... from the lowly cave rat to the infamous Dagoths. Each had a story behind it. When I wasn't adventuring I could return to my lair, look over my tastefully presented library of soulgems and fondly remember how they were collected. In Oblivion, that Grand Soul Gem with the label "filled" might have been the Raging Hellbeast of Terror Incarnate... or it could have been a sickly housepet I put out of its misery. You'd never know.

2) Precision Item Placement
Assuming I had collected a bunch of souls (or any other valuable loot), Morrowind provided an excellent means of displaying it all. Shelves full of books and bottles. Tables arrayed with rare and unique weapons and artifacts. Desks laden with alchemical ingredients both mundane and priceless. Dwemer bowls overflowing with gems the size of Guar droppings. Having it out and on display reminded one of what it took to collect such an array of wealth. Know what happens if you managed to build such a display in Oblivion? Damned pipe-bomb in a pinball machine if you so much as breathed on it.

3) Level scaling
I don't think we need another rant about this, but lets just say that something is wrong if the rarest loot in the game is rusty iron weapons and armor.

Victim: Help me please! My family is missing! Please find them for me!

Hero:

A. I'll find them as soon as possible.

B. How much is your family worth to you?

C. Sod off!!

D. **Walks away**

Option A chosen

Victim: What the...how did you do that? Not a single word came out your mouth? Is this some kind of parlor trick? And why are giving me such a blank look? You touched in the head or something?


Option A chosen again...


Victim: AAHH!! you did it again! What the hell are you?! **runs away** AAAAHHHHH!!!!!


Sorry don't mean to criticize but I figured this was the best way to get my point through, even though I added some exaggeration.

heh, I think you've done this before

You missed out:
More books, greater variety of books, interactive candles, interactive bug lamps, much more variation in NPC attitude towards PC, much more sarcasm, 13(?) clothing slots excluding weapon and shield, more spoons, more forks, more knives, more plates, more pillows (very important this) + the stuff Thungrim mentioned.

In my opinion, lack of content has never been a problem with TES games. The real problem has been the diversity of the content. I love the big worlds in TES games, and all of the things that you can do. However, I really had to struggle with not getting bored with Oblivion. The advantage of a game with 200 dungeons and ruins is that there is always something to do. The disadvantage is that you are doing the same thing over and over.

So, I'm not concerned about the quantity of content, but instead the quality. I would much prefer a strong storyline and good NPC development over having a few extra armors, skills, dungeons, or hooded robes.

IMHO it's a trend within the industry and not just bethesda. 10 years ago you didn't every piece of dialog to be voice acted. You didn't need hd graphics and real life physics. Games are just more complicated now. It just takes more time and money to put them together.

Also with the advent of dlc's most companies are chopping off 10-15% of the content to release it later.

Let's add some facts to the "reduction in content".

Daggerfall had the most skills (35), followed by Morrowind (27), and then Oblivion (21).

DFSkills = Alteration + Archery + Axe + Backstabbing + Blunt Weapon + Centaurian + Climbing + Critical Strike + Daedric + Destruction + Dodging + Dragonish + Etiquette + Giantish + Hand-to-Hand + Harpy + Illusion + Impish + Jumping + Lockpicking + Long Blade + Medical + Mercantile + Mysticism + Nymph + Orcish + Pickpocket + Restoration + Running + Short Blade + Spriggan + Stealth + Streetwise + Swimming + ThaumaturgyMWSkills = DFSkills + Alchemy - Archery + Marksman + Armorer - Backstabbing + Block - Centaurian - Climbing + Conjuration - Critical Strike - Daedric - Dodging - Dragonish + Enchant - Etiquette - Streetwise + Speechcraft - Giantish - Harpy + Heavy Armor - Impish - Jumping + Acrobatics + Light Armor - Lockpicking + Security - Medical + Medium Armor + Mysticism - Nymph - Orcish - Pickpocket - Stealth + Sneak - Running + Athletics + Spear - Spriggan - Swimming - Thaumaturgy + Unarmored                    OBSkills = MWSkills - Axe - Enchant - Medium Armor - Spear - Unarmored - Short Blade - Long Blade + Blade

Daggerfall must be the best game since it has more skills (i.e., content). But, actually look at the skills that were lost and gained between games. Does anyone really miss the language skills like Centaurian? Or, is anyone really bothered that Pickpocket and Stealth were merged into Sneak?

I think most of the skill mergers and removals make sense and lend the system a nice balance (i.e., 3 skills per attribute except Luck). Because of this balance, I don't think we will lose any skills without gaining an equal number in future TES games.


When not counting minor factions (e.g., the Aundae in Morrowind or the Order of the Virtuous Blood in Oblivion), DF has the most factions, followed by Morrowind, and then Oblivion.

DFFactions = Fighters Guild + Mages Guild + Thieves Guild + Dark Brotherhood + Host of the Horn + Knights of the Dragon + Knights of the Flame + Knights of the Hawk + Knights of the Owl + Knights of the Rose + Knights of the Wheel + Order of the Candle + Order of the Raven + Order of the Scarab + Akatosh Chantry + Order of Arkay + House of Dibella + School of Julianos + Temple of Kynareth + Benevolence of Mara + Temple of Stendarr + Resolution of Zenithar+ Order of the Hour+ Knights of the Circle+ Order of the Lily + Knights Mentor + Kynaran Order + Maran Knights + The Crusaders + Knights of Iron MWFactions = Blades + Fighters Guild + Mages Guild + Thieves Guild + House Hlaalu + House Redoran + House Telvanni + Imperial Cult + Imperial Legion + Morag Tong + Tribunal Temple             OBFactions = Blades + Fighters Guild + Mages Guild + Thieves Guild + Dark Brotherhood + Arena

Daggerfall obviously must be the best game since it has more factions (i.e., content). However, if you have actually played all three, you know that's not true. In my opinion, Oblivion has the best faction quests when you actually compare them.

For example, compare the final quest in each Thieves Guild. The DF Thieves Guild has no final quest since all the quests are generic, the MW Thieves Guild has you killing the Fighters Guild leader, and the OB Thieves Guild has you stealing an Elder Scroll. Which quest out of these three seems most fitting to the Thieves Guild?


Overall, I prefer Morrowind to Oblivion but it's not because Oblivion has less "content". It's the type of content which is far more important than quantity. Oblivion's world was more bland and less quirky so I prefer Morrowind.

If quantity of content was the most important thing, DF would be the best TES game out of DF, MW, and OB but it's not....

I must say that I do not care so much ... They gave us construction set, and people make so much mods. Mods will add much more stuff that Bethesda never added and I am fine with that.