» Tue May 17, 2011 1:46 pm
topgun227, firstly, from Arena to Daggerfall, TES built outwards, from then on, through Morrowind and Oblivion, TES has gone inwards. Morrowind was a smaller world that was already affected by the rise of the 'graphic hores' and the rise of the 'multiformat market'. To the extent that from Morrowind onwards Bethesda starting thinking console has affected the TES series enormously. Morrowind is only seen as deep and complex against Oblivion, but when compared to Daggerfall, it too was a dumbed down game. With Oblivion Bethesda took the console market more into account than the PC market, marking a huge change. I am very very scared for Oblivion V, I would say there is at least a 30% chance of it not even coming out for PC.
The best decision Bethesda has made in the last decade was releasing the Construction Set for Morrowind. With the literally 100,000's if not 1,000,000's of mods that have been released for it, right up to today. This added many features to the game to make it more Daggerfall in concept, the conversations were made more varied, addition armour and weapons became available, Daggerfall creatures not included in Morrowind were added, weather effects were improved and on and on and on.
This goes even more for Oblivion,it would have been very hard for Bethesda not to have released a Construction Set for Oblivion, and the millions of mods made for it have been phenomenal. It would be fair to say that most PC players of Morrowind and Oblivion play incredibly different games from their console counterparts. In fact, on PC, I would say most positive comments about both Morrowind and Oblivion are in part due to the 20-100 mods those players are running with the game!
For example, like many people, I didn't have a PC powerful enough to warrant buying Oblivion. I thought I was going to get it, so watched the movies and read the reviews, etc. What I saw worried me,what PC gamers were saying in the threads was also worrying, so I started checking out what mods were being written. I think my number one issue, like with many, was the way creatures levelled with you, so I checked modsin that area. I found a mod called Martigen's Monster Mod. I followed with interest as it got bigger and included more third party mods, becoming a 'standard' mod. By the time I upgraded my PC and was able to buy a copy of Oblivion, this MMM mod had gone form 0.7 to 2.0. What this mod did was completely change the spawn points and made creature AI much more sophisticated. With vanilla Oblivion, if 2 wolves were spawned nearby they would both automatically attack you. With MMM, 1-3 wolves could be spawned, but one may be diseased, one jst eaten and healthy and one starving. The healthy wolf wouldn't be interested in you, the starving wolf would attack you, and the diseased wolf could attack you or the other two wolves! With MMM amuch more reasonable levelling system was put in place too. Where near towns and roads, creatures would tend to be weaker, on the basis the patrolling guards would keep their numbers down. Same with the caves, etc near major towns or on the roads. Again MMM said those caves, etc near towns would be regularly cleared out. But as you wnt into the wilderness, where fewer people - and guards - travelled, the creatures would get stronger and more powerful. As a level 4 gamer, on the road or in a cave near a road you might meet creatures and bandit from level 2 to level 6. In the wilderness, still asa level 4 you might meet level 10 creatures. This one mod made the game much more dynamic, scary, tougher and more immersive, As it grew from an 8mb download to a 300mb download,it added resized creatures,meaning bigger and smaller creatures with the AI recognising size so a large wolf, on average would be a tougher wolf. It continued to add new TES Lore creatures, refined the creature AI to perfection. In addition it had lesser spawn esps, if the numbers were too large for you or your PC. This one mod, let alone the other 50 I installed made Oblivion totally different, with much more content, much more varied and sophisticated gameplay and a more truer 'real' RPG. As timewent on,.mods became more and more sophisitcated, adding whole land masses and and self contained 20 hour plus quests. Some fully voiced.
Without the Construction Sets then, I think many PC gamers would have given up on Oblivion a long time ago. Sure they would have put 80 hours or so into it, but that would have been it. It is purely because of mods that PC gamers today are still playing Morrowind and Oblivion. The Morrowind Graphic Extender alone,with it's DX9 graphic features and infinite view possibilities along with real water reflection, etc make the game look fantastic! Then you have the 100's of graphic upgrade mods for clothing, armour,faces, weapons, landscapes, houses, towns, cities, you can end up with a much better looking game, and yet with still all the depth that Morrowind offers!
If Arena or Daggerfall had come with Construction Sets, I doubt they would have been offered for free, because I think they still would have been on sale like Morrowind and Oblivion still are,years after the initial release! On the upside though, they would have been graphically improved and unofficial patches would have fixed most, if not all the bugs! (The unofficial patch for Oblivion fixes over 5,000 bugs!).
So as long as future TES games actually come out for PC, and as long as they come with Construction Sets I don't worry unduly. But the trend is toward console and toward micro-transactions and DLC. None of that works well with Construction Sets. So time will tell. I must admit, given that an Elder Scrolls V will not be out until 2011 at the earliest, I wonder what PC gaming will be like by then, given the move away from PC gaming over the last 2-3 years.
Lastly, you mention indie games. But an indie company isn't going to do a large open world, non linear 3D RPG. They take too long and are too expensive for what the indie company would likely see in a financial return. There's a question mark over whether even PC roleplaying fans would accept an RPG like that from an indie company that could only manage Morrowind graphics.
So enjoy Daggerfall and Morrowind and Oblivion (with mods!) because that may be it. The warning I give is Bioware. Who would have have thought, in the heyday of Baldur's Gate and Planescape Torment that within a few years Bioware would be releasing games like Jade Empire and Mass Effect, much more linear, action-orientated games and almost the opposite of those Baldur's Gate's and Planescape's! .
