Here's another random suggestion. Stop mirroring textures. I'm not entirely sure on this one, but I believe that in Morrowind, there was always a full texture for each face of a house - when indoors, each wall had one texture that covered the entire thing one time. I'm not talking about the support columns or the ceiling beams, I'm talking about the actual stone/canvas/wooden wall. In Oblivion, lots of areas (especially outdoors on the Ayleid Ruins) seemed to have a half-width texture which they mirrored to cover the entire model. Looks terrible, especially now that artists are working at resolutions high enough that let you see every little stain, crack, and piece of grunge repeated 8 times across.


This is going to make some people (Rumpleteasza) really angry, but I don't get the big deal about Sean Bean. I could kind of understand there being some coolness factor in having Patrick Stewart speak to you in person, but I didn't find anything cool about Martin murmuring to you in his gravelly, 30 decibel voice. Then in combat, he starts shrieking like he's constipated and is louder than the combat music.

Characters and voice acting, please.

If the series could go from weakest to strongest in those areas (that area?) I would be very happy indeed.

Other stuff can be modded, and tends to be more easily so, at that. Quality voice actors, and the necessary gear, etc., is just too much to hope for, post-. And things like facial twitches (and so forth - so much potential here!) are probably best hardwired, rather than - attempted to be - added on at some stage.

As much as I love scenery - and I do, what with all the pretty mods I use, etc. - the above would be my priorites, without taking complex, immersive, intelligent, challenging gameplay into account...

I voted grand vistas and sound effects.

Another thing that I've noticed is how Morrowind and Oblivion are (aesthetically) polar opposites in many ways. I've brought this up before, and maybe I'm one of few to really notice it, but it actually almost brings me to the brink of rage sometimes as to just how bad it looks (to me). So here:

Everything in Morrowind felt solid and compact. NPCs were built with very angular features, like Greek god statues. Interiors felt very cold, perhaps in part due to the reduced amount of ambient lighting usage compared to in Oblivion. I really liked this subdued, dreamy feeling. In Oblivion, buildings and NPCs seem so smushy and "inflated" compared to their rigid Morrowind counterparts. The bricks in fortress and city walls look like they're made of plastic or cake icing, whilst Morrowind's looked worn and smoothed after years of exposure to the elements. Whilst wearing armor, both the male and female characters in Oblivion have formless, almost tube-shaped bodies. The field of view must've been smaller in Oblivion or something, because everything felt bigger and closer to the screen. I'm hoping they do away with this in TES V and strive to make things look "edgier" again.

You're the second person I've seen say that, and in fact both games have exactly the same field of view.

I was amazed by the vistas in Oblivion when I first started playing it and I hope to be equally blown away by TESV's vistas.

I think character design has generally fallen by the wayside in favour of detailed environments and sweeping vistas (which I love, but not at the expense of anything else). I'd like to see more realism and variation in NPCs - height, build etc. I know it's a logistical nightmare which would probably involve multiple skeleton options, but I hate how generic most NPCs come to look after a week or so of play.


Well bugger me; I didn't realise I had a reputation.

Art direction is something completely different from technical aspects, but really needs something better than Oblivion. Morrowind was, except for Vampires and Werewolves, really unique looking. A unique, atmospheric art style is definitely something they need.

Lol, Sean Bean. He did a an Oscar worthy job in the LOTR movies, and has otherwise been an average actor. I'd take Liam Neeson back any day thought, he did a great job as your dad in Fallout 3.

Characters and sound effects for me

I just finished playing Enslaved - odyssey to the west and loved all the facial animation there were a couple of scenes that I found very emotive from the facial expressions and no dialogue was used between the characters.

I really want my NPC's to not have plastic hair - GI Joe plastic hair is a real immersion killer for me.

Clothes or armour that move and take damage like Batman's Cape in Arkham - yes please!

And for pities sake let my character emote - let them smile or snarl but please don't leave them looking wooden. (dancing is optional)

Morrowind came in the era of 4:3 monitors which 75 FOV is normal. When Oblivion came, widescreen LCD screens were popular and 90 FOV suits more to widescreen monitors. Oblivion was still using 75 fov. To set widescreen resolutions in Morrowind, you should use utilities like MGE or FPSO which have FOV setting nearby resolution setting so you can easily fix it. Oblivion didn't offer any FOV related settings in its menu. This is common though with most games and especially with console ports. And most games are console ports these days.

I can never understand how they can't include something that easy in game menu. Do they really hate us(PC gamers) that much?

I honestly don't see why people see the need to increase the vertical FOV on account of widescreen. Of course, even 75 is borderline uncomfortable to me due to the fish eye effect, and 90 is unplayable.
On another note, changing Oblivion's FOV is a simple matter.

I play Quake with a FOV of 110 degrees. I'm sorry, but it wouldn't hurt to account for everybody here.

That was a side comment. That high FOVs are bad was not part of my point, only that I don't see why people believe that an increased horizontal resolution should bring with it an increase in vertical FOV.

Sean Bean was great in Sharpe! And he wasn't bad in Oblivion - far better than Terence Stamp, who sounded like he was doing a read through in his lunch break for the part of Mankar Camoran. It's probably the directors fault though.

I'd vote for NO voice acting if it were an option. I'd rather have text boxes. Then characters can be fully fleshed out with a proper back-story, without the need for 500 GB of sound files and lacklustre voice talent.

The poll is rather one-sided. There's no video option for "I want it to look like it was made way back in the 20th Century".

Seriously though, I'd rather have a modest improvement in overall graphical "quality", but a better and more varied set of interior and exterior tiles for the developers to work with. There were too many cases of obvious repeats, where every fourth floor tile had the same crack in it, or every staircase had a broken step in exactly the same place. Give me something in between Morrowind's claustrophobic fog and Oblivion's infinite view that showed you just how small the map really was, or else make the map big enough that it doesn't present a problem.

Voice acting would be far more important to me than music or sound effects. I generally turn the music down to a bare whisper anyway, after the first few hours of play. The QUALITY of voice acting is semi-important, but the VARIETY is much more critical, in my opinion. OB's limited stable of voice actors weren't able to convey a sense that the various races of mer were different from each other, or create any sense of individual identity from character to character; they all sounded alike and said exactly the same things in exactly the same words. I don't want to hear some big name actor chew up the budget to do one or two parts, and then hear another actor have to do 300 characters of several different races.

If I had my choice, I'd make the next game "mostly voiced", with most routine conversation and major quest topics voiced, but more in-depth information and background details presented as text boxes, for those relatively few players who really care to find out. That way, the "action" players can just play and probably not even see the text boxes more than once or twice in the entire game, but the depth and diversity will still be there for the RP and loremonger crowd who want to dig deeper.

didnt vote, you have to have a good balance between all of these, focusing on two or three and blowing off the others makes the game look and sound like it was made in two weeks by a bunch of potheads sitting in their garage with a windows 95 PC.

the orchestra in Oblivion was just awsome, and morrowind was the same, if even a bit better they need to keep that. and they really do need to improve on lighting system, shadows are hardly existant, and when they are they are messed up

Neither used an actual orchestra, they were both computer generated :dead:
Not saying that it sounds bad necessarily, just that right now a live orchestra still sounds better.

[quote name='gloops' timestamp='1289304381' post='16654314']
Sean Bean was great in Sharpe! And he wasn't bad in Oblivion - far better than Terence Stamp, who sounded like he was doing a read through in his lunch break for the part of Mankar Camoran. It's probably the directors fault though.

I'd vote for NO voice acting if it were an option. I'd rather have text boxes. Then characters can be fully fleshed out with a proper back-story, without the need for 500 GB of sound files and lacklustre voice talent.

Do you know what, I'd love that! Back to text boxes, never gonna happen though! Sean Bean is Awsome but must've been expensive. I also think name actors detract from the characters in the game. You can't help but think great it's sean bean or patrick stewart or liam neason. Why not just have great voice actors who you don't already associate with other characters! I think in Morrowind they spent so much money on Sean Bean that they could only afford one other voice actor who made nearly every NPC sound like wallace out of wallace and grommet!