Dreams in Skyrim

Post » Fri May 27, 2011 7:56 pm

Given the fact the character needs to sleep once in a while (for leveling up, for recovering health or just for roleplaying purpose) I find would be interesting if sometimes we get a dream. The dream may be a cutscene or just a static screen (like the level up screen, with a short description of the dream and maybe some relevant artwork and sounds).
I think dreams could add a lot to imersion in the atmosphere/story/roleplaying with very little programming (considering they are not in the actual game, but when the game is paused).
There could be many types of dreams, here are a few exemples:

-memories from the hero’s past;
-recent important events (memorable images from quests already completed);
-nightmares (for exemple if you have an identified enemy in the main quest, you dream fighting him and you wake up when he almost killed you);
-visions from the future (hints for active or future quests, hints for hidden treasures, etc);
-random dreams, just anything that can be related to the hero: romance (dreaming a beautiful girl you saw at the local tavern can do no harm, eh? ;) ), professions, politics, celebrations, etc.

Of course the dreams shouldn’t trigger everytime you sleep so as not become too repetitive. Maybe have an invisible counter that makes sure you only dream once per week no matter how many times you sleep.
Would be neat when you wake up to get a message that expresses how you feel after what you saw in the dream.


Share your thoughts, would dreams be a good adition to next Tes?
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Laura Wilson
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 8:01 pm

Hmm, they could be story related like in Morrowind, or maybe you can play around in the dream like come sort of training room. ''Meditate on what you have learnt'' You can perform a challenge in your dream which will give you bonuses in your stats if you succeed.
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Josh Dagreat
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 5:43 pm

I don;t like the idea of dreams from the past, that would have a negative effect on role playing.

Though i suspect that i'm reading too much into something that was an example, i think random dreams and nightmares would be cool if bethesda felt like adding in something if they had the space, though i wouldnt exactly scream at them to go and add it.
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Latisha Fry
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 9:22 am

I think that it would be a bit too iffy because if you are playing an evil character and you have a dream telling you how good you are, well that would be weird. I do like the vampire nightmares from Morrowind though, those added alot. Maybe specific dreams for a few plot things could work, but overall, no.
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kirsty williams
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 4:55 am

Naw on the dream and naw on all ya suggestion. In more ways than one, its ganna screw up the player's toon and his/her perception, like showing the past, which in this case already break the toon's background of how the player wanted. Dream that forward the plot is a bit iffy, like Morrowind, but I had a Extra Comfy Pillow to remove that part entirely. Dream is really not needed in the game.
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Killer McCracken
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:42 am

Yes to cinematic dreams. Text dreams will have some people complain because text hurts.
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Spooky Angel
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 8:41 am

It could work, as could anything.

And as with anything it would depend on how well they did it, and what they did. This is one of the very few things that would be easily toggle-able.

Unlike fast-travel, and other game-changing things, toggling Dreams won't really effect the game much; but would be nice if you want them, and their absence would be nice if you didn't want them.

I don't think dreams should imply a character's personality or anything about them really, though. Maybe just memories and the occasional ambiguous dreams. If you have dreams about future quests, then you're psychic and have magical powers so strong they work while you're asleep or were born under the sign of the Ritual. If your character is a mage-hunter or just hates all things magical in general, that would be very problematic.
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Budgie
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 11:12 pm

I really don't see much point in this, think it's maybe a bit of a waste of time.
Not to mention, we'd all end up as creepy as Uriel Septim IV.
:(
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Joanne
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:52 am

Only if they're story related. I don't want to have random dreams, that's lame.
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Jessica Lloyd
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:42 am

I like the idea of a dream that allows you to move around while you are sleeping in game; I would like an option to turn dreams on and off, so you wouldn't always have to do a mini-dream-quest when you want to rest.
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Rebecca Dosch
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 5:58 pm

My gut reaction was no, as it would not help with roleplaying. Remembering the past would be restrictive, and replaying past battle/quest images would get boring pretty fast I reckon, and a message saying how the character felt would also not be best suited for RP'ers. If you could just skip them, then it wouldn't bother me too much.
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Heather Kush
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 1:01 am

I really don't see much point in this, think it's maybe a bit of a waste of time.
Not to mention, we'd all end up as creepy as Uriel Septim IV.
:(

Lol, very true. If random NPC X ran through my dreams 50 times I'd assume they were important for some reason and regard them differently.

Maybe the dreams should be left up to the roleplayers (me included) who control the entire way a character reacts to things.
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Claudia Cook
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 12:28 am

I vote No because It will get repetitive and its pointless.
Spoiler
If they add dreams add http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dethAVCe41U

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Kayla Keizer
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 8:00 pm

Dreams worked very well in Morrowind, although they were simple MessageBoxes that you could read when you awoke. But still, they were spooky and added depth.

There are a few mods that add dream sequences, and they looked really great! I think they would work in Skyrim if they were part of the Main Quest, otherwise it would just seem silly to throw in dreams just to make it "realer."
(the dreams in Morrowind all had specific reasons for happening)
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Paul Rice
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 11:34 pm

Yes! Especially if they were CRAZY dreams (heavily scripted, of course). Could provide a fun diversion - kind of like a minigame, I guess. However, it would be neat if events in-game manifested themselves in some dreams - NPCs, dialog, items, places, etc.

But, that might be too complicated to do, it would require a lot of labor to make that, and I wouldn't want it to turn out like those four or five "Oblivion" realms in TESIV that each OB Gate could lead to. Bo-oring.

However, maybe instead of actual playable dreams, there could be a lovely bit of prose, and still-frame artwork (to make the dream really starkly different from in-game appearance). Examples of games where this works: Warriors of the Lost Empire, The Mark of Kri, Majesty, and other old games.
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Anna Krzyzanowska
 
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Post » Fri May 27, 2011 10:08 pm

I think we should dream :D It would be really cool if the game randomly recorded your game for a random amount of time that could span maybe 5 - 15 seconds, and then when you had dreams the game would pick 3 clips randomly from those recorded clips and play them on the screen in gray/brown with blur at the sides of the screen and would put the clips in a random order.

So maybe I fought a Clannfear three days ago and two weeks ago I was maybe sitting at a campfire and yesterday I was maybe at a merchant, then perhaps it would first play the merchant clip that would maybe be 8 seconds, and then 5 seconds of campfire and maybe 6 of the clannfear.

You should always have the option to toggle dreams on and off though.

Edit, perhaps to keep it non-repetitive the dreams could be deleted from the file they go to after recording after you see them, and there could be a max of maybe 15 dream-clips in the folder at once (enough for 5 dreams).
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Flash
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 3:43 am

Sounds to me like a definite modding community job though. :shrug:

Something that won't change much, and probably isn't possible within the budget/timeframe.

I'll add it to my list of things. (I actually have one..)
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Holli Dillon
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 3:17 am

I just want text dreams, cinematic dreams have become a bioware cliche
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^~LIL B0NE5~^
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 8:48 am

I think Bioware is gaining a lot of ground on Bethesda in terms of story telling and connecting players to their characters and the world around them. TES has always been about open worlds and literal freedom to do whatever you want, but if they want to draw players into their characters and elicit emotions from characters they need to use more tactics. Eliciting emotion through vivd scenery and connecting a player to a character via dreams is cliche, but not in a bad way (So long as its not a revelation that 'it was all a dream' at the end), and it could have a positive impact on gameplay if incorporated correctly.

My fear is once again that while this is a really cool idea, in order to work properly there would be limited instances of such things, and it would probably be more about streamlining the game, as there's no practical way given current technology and development time to incorporate something like this into the game with the sort of dramatic effect it would need to get results. while maintaining that feel that everyones game is unique. AKA everyone who plays will have the same dreams, or one of three or some such, and they'll be closely related to a plot event, and thus not an actually feature of the open ended game, but an addition to the already linear, portion of the game, adding nothing to the role-playing aspect for many gamers...

With Bioware their games are almost all linear to some extant, so they make dozens of cut scenes, the same is true for final fantasy and similar RPG's, thus they can have cut scenes that you only get under certain circumstances, and have variety, but they spend a great deal of effort and development time on these cut scenes, I don't want that much of the development effort put into this project, at this stage in the technology its just not worth what they would have to trade in potential content to have this intriguing feature added.

None the less, it is a good idea, and I would strongly urge that in future TES games when the technology makes such cut scenes, rendering, and programming (Rather procedural or not), easy, and possible on a mass, that this idea be incorporated into future series... Until then maybe some sort of small thing maybe a couple hours of voice-acting or something, but not too much...
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Jesus Duran
 
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Post » Sat May 28, 2011 7:15 am

I think it's a really cool idea, but it would just take too much out of the rest of the game for a really small feature.
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Symone Velez
 
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