Italy does not have jungles. Not tropical rain forest jungles at least.

However, your point should not be considered null by this fact. Khmer Empire, Mayan Empire, etc. thrived in Jungles.

Ah yes, you are quite correct. Of course, mines were much more important for Morrowind then Cyrodiil.


Personally, I liked the subtler approach Oblivion had compared to Morrowind. Sure, there were not striking differences between the architectual styles in Oblivion, but there are appreciable differences in all the styles. Cheydinhal featured more basic first floors with upper floors dedicated to beds and other comforts. Leyawiin had simplistic lower-class homes that used incomplete walls and draqes to give privacy to sleeping nooks, It's upper-class homes had first floor public areas while dividing upper floors into residential "suites" via walkways. The Imperial city featured huge corner homes in the Talos Plaza district, with attic like reading rooms, first floor public areas, and second floor dining halls and quarters. The town homes favored by merchants featured large public rooms encompassing the whole of the first floor, with all other functions taken care of by the second floor and basemant. Bruma featured homes that were built into the earth, the basemant often being used for sleeping quarters. All of the towns had their own unique architectural styles in the appearance of the buildings and their layouts.

I would have loved to see Imperial City sourounded by dense jungle.

I remember laughing my ass off when reading the guide to the Imperial City. :rofl:

But morrowind wasn't crowded with trees it had as many mushrooms as oblivion had trees and even now some people are only getting 12 fps in oblivions forest's so imagine a jungle,all you are doing is changing the subject from rainforests to morrowind had giant mushrooms so except the truth please.

Did you play Morrowind? There were plenty of giant mushrooms, but as many as Oblivion's trees? Never mind that the majority of Vvardenfell was covered in desolate ashlands. As for people getting 12 fps...the fact that some people don't have decent computers does not mean that game companies should hold back - and I say this as someone who can't play Oblivion on PC at all.

The thing is, in Oblivion we had...dense forest, thinner forest, grasslands (with the same trees), and a half-swamp (with a lot of trees, that were all the same). In Morrowind, we had ashlands, a friggin' volcano, a proper swamp, grasslands, foothills, etc. plus the Azura's Coats and Sheogorad, which were also different. It would have helped Oblivion's case if it actually had interesting creatures in it. Virtually all of the creatures in Morrowind were either completely new, or a standard fantasy race turned on its head (the dwemer for example), and it was an utterly alien world - the animals, the environment, the people, the culture, it was all so different. Cyrodiil is the centre of a continent spanning empire yet the Elder Council are all on holiday, the mines are all infested by vermin, there's a grand total nine churches in the game (ok, ten if you count the temple of the one, which was completely pointless outside of one part of the main quest), and we have trolls, ogres, wolves, bears and oh god its so boring and generic. We got hints here and there (Cheydinhal, Leyawiin, Bruma) of racial tension, but politics and religion were non-existent in the game - a game set where the politics and religion of an entire continent come from.

Don't get me wrong, I actually don't mind Oblivion from a gameplay perspective, and KotN and SI were certainly improvements, but frankly Bethesda was very lazy for a lot of the game (looking at the Oblivion Gates here).

No, the thing is, we had the middle-earth wake to ride us home. Rings was big and everything had to be Alan Lee-ized, so stupid consumers would get the [censored]in memo and buy the game.

The excuse was ridiculous, but you could hardly have a jungle between a desert and a frozen mountain region. It just makes no logical sense, not even in Tamriel. If Cyrodiil was endless jungle, then what would the point in that be? Yes, you could add in a few unique areas and mind-blowing scenery, but not much else outside the towns and cities. And if you think that the regions in Cyrodiil are bland and boring now, what would you think if they really were the same? This moaning over how they changed it is just moaning for its own sake, without any real evaluation of what a jungle Cyrodiil would have been like if it was implemented. The moaning over the excuse is entirely justified, in my opinion, as Bethesda really could have done better. But the scenery itself?

Besides, there is jungle in Cyrodiil. It's far from realistic, but would could you expect from them? They couldn't make the foliage so dense that you had to hack through it. If they did, people would complain...

I'd simply argue this is due to Beth's Gamebryo engine poor optimization.


Fixed.


http://www.tanzaniaparks.com/kili.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Kenya.

Also, Skyri isn't an immensly cold reagion. It's a high and mountainous region. I believe further south is actually colder, due to the higher mountains. North is warmer. Not sweaty warm, but a britain like climate.

That doesn't really prove your point as the jungle is up against the sea from the mountains in those cases, though there is desert on the continent. Remember though that Tamriel is the size of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mauritania.

Dude, I lived in Africa, and you had deserts, hills, and jungles really close to each other. I am sure Cyrodiil could have a rainforest, scrubs, and mountains on the same plain.

The MT. Kenya picture just proves my point. In Kenya (where I lived) you had rainforests, then one ft later, you had a desert or some scrubs.

Well even with a good engine expecting a rain forest back in a game back in 2006 which started development in 2002(or 2003)which was also interrupted by early fallout 3 development with above 20 fps until 2008(because computers were better in 2008 than 2006 obviously)is stupid.

Hmm. Well now Green Emperor Way looks a bit crap.

Hehe...like to living in denial, don't you?

Thanks alex, Africa is a wonderful place. But I've accustomed to some people here being stubborn even with proof in front of them.

Anyway, the whole point of this thread (started by OP) was to discuss the reason Cyrodiil became a forest in TES:IV and not jungles. I'd think there could be some technical reasons, perhaps some of the experienced Beth staff already left when TES:IV is in development and thus the people that still work for Beth were forced (they had no choice) to create something new that could still meet timetables. I ever had discussion about this and some experienced (or at least creative) staff did left the company some times between TES:III and TES:IV development. It could be that Bethesda in early day of TES:IV development did want and create or attempt to make jungle environment but when the artists and staff skilled on the task gone, they chose to switch to the most simple solution: make forests.

Just my thoughts.

I think your right. ZeniMax is really pushy about its deadlines. I am sure a forest is easier to make than a jungle.

I don't think any sort of technical limitations were involved. It's just scenery after all and most of the work seems to be offloaded to SpeedTree. So it might be good reiterate Lady N, removing the rain forest is just one element. At very iconic element but still just one element and giving it all the focus hides the real issue.

From the top of my head, there was an interview in which the argument was made that weird subversive stuff doesn't sell but just alienates people from what they want to do. No link, no details. I'm sure some one can dig it up though. The effects of this design vision were exaggerated by the rather limited amount of speech time and a greatly expanded team that forces chunks of the world be be developed in isolation of others.

Believe me, I've tried to find that interview. I remember reading it back in the pre-Oblivion days but now it's nowhere to be found. But that is the 'real issue," not specifically the forest vs. jungle, but the familliar to strangeness balance that I thought they had fine in Morrowind, but veered too far into familliar in Oblivion.

Was there any strangeness balance in Daggerfall or Arena, or was Morrowind their first step into the bizarre?

Off of that, at least Bethesda made Shivering Isles to give fans a bizarre experience in TES IV. Heck, I'm convinced they made it as a result of feedback from people wanting more "bizarreness" in TES IV.

I am sure thats why they made SI lol.

I'd say Section 31 has the best answer, and he said the fewest words of all.
And here's my two cents, a pox on the gambryo engine!
For those that are in favor of cyrodiil as a jungle, like me, the team over at Province Cyrodiil is leaning towards the jungle version for their creation.

And to answer Crimson Paladin, DF and Arena were very bland as they were randomly generated. Every dungeon, house and tavern was the same for the most part. But I still love Daggerfall as it was the first game I got into.

A rainforest/jungle would have been fantastic if they had a really good engine. Just look at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gF6Ea2E8BXU!

why don't you listen to my point look I'll make it even easier to understand for you:Bethesda don't release games that can't be played until at least two years after it was released.

It's been a long, long time, but I thought I saw (heard) something along those lines on the companion DVD that came in the Collector's Edition of Oblivion. They wanted to give the public something familiar, something that was popular at the time, because LoTR was a big success. I'm not positive, but I seem to remember seeing it there. Too bad I let my brother-in-law borrow my edition or I'd check.

http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/426/426475p1.html

That interview made me cringe. I don't want the common setting, I want exotic!!