One thing I noticed in Fallout 3 is that even though it's a big open world, it did a lot of "herding" you in certain directions, especially in the downtown/D.C. area.

It was rather frustrating having to walk for 15 minutes in a huge circle all the way around some unnatural barrier they made just to get into a certain area, or having to go down into the subway in order to emerge in the proper place on the other side.

It was times like those when it started to feel a bit like a first person shooter, navigating through a controlled course to the next part of the story.

Oblivion was kind of the opposite end of the spectrum. You could pretty much walk in a straight line anywhere in the world.

I hope Skyrim's environment is somewhere in between. I don't want to have to be wandering around for 15 minutes looking for an "entrance" to an outdoor area where my quest is supposed to be taking me. (Edit: In other words, if I can't find a quest location on my own and I eventually cave and look at the marker on the map, I want to be able to get there at that point. Not be jumping around yelling, "It's right there! But these stupid cliffs are blocking my way in all directions and I can't find a way through!")

But I also don't want to be able to just press the auto-walk button and sit back while my character strolls all the way across Skyrim unimpeded, like in Oblivion.

Somewhere in between would be nice. Some good, unique landscape and terrain detail, but not enough to where you feel like the game is directing you exactly where to go.

It is kind of similar

Have you played TES games? Maybe you should compare Skyrim to one of them. Yes, Bethesda makes other games! But they're not all going to be designed with the same intent.

It actually made alot of sense in Fallout 3. The urban ruins of a big city would obviously limit movement a great deal. Plus, it gave them some "interior" cells, so they could have more building details/etc.

Right.op fallout wasn't created by bethesda it was created by some other company and they wrote the lore for fallout.bethesda was just recreating it.but to be truthfull I'm not to sure my self?.

It didn't really make sense. When you are first trying to find the radio station there are like 100 buildings around it, and in between each of them just so happens to be a perfect, vertical wall of impassible wreckage and rubble. To me, that just seems like a cop-out.

If they want to make realistic, explorable environments, they shouldn't be sitting around saying, "We want the player to enter *here* for dramatic effect, so let's block off all other potential means of approach."

I stopped playing FO because of those DC sections. They were awful and it completely ruined the game. I hope to hell no sections will be like this, though some of the mountain passes I fear may be.

And don't forget invisible walls. [censored], I hate invisible walls.

Glad someone else feels the same way.

It's almost like you want to be able to activate fly mod because you don't want to scale a mountain that was intended in the game. It's like, I need to get to the beach, but OMG, I have to drive around the mountain and not through it. This is absolutely silly. If you understand what I am trying to say. :mellow:

No, you don't understand. I don't mind having to go around mountains in my path to get somewhere.

What I *DO* mind is having only one possible approach to an area, due to the developers wanting to "herd" the player somewhere, like this:


M = mountain
Q = next quest location



MMMMMMMMMMMM
M...........................M
M...........................M
M...........................M
M............Q.............M
M...........................M
M...........................M
M...........................M
MMMMM....MMMMM


That makes me feel cheated, because it's supposed to be an open world environment to explore, but in reality they are actually choosing exactly where you enter an area.

This. The subway in DC was absolutely horrible. Forcing me to go down there for an hour just to get to a spot I should easily be able to reach...

Yes. Thank you.

This is driving me crazy. It feels more like Half Life 2 than an open world RPG.

So you want a completely free-roaming game that restricts you and doesn't let you walk anywhere you want?

Fallout 3 was the middle-ground; it was an open world that didn't let you auto-run in a straight line right past everything in the game if you felt like it. Sorry a lot of you got confused and angry navigating the rubble in DC, but it wasn't all that difficult or annoying.

You can't have it both ways, either you're so free-to-roam that you can run a straight line to each key location and finish the game in an hour or there will be structural boundaries to keep certain things off-limits or difficult to reach. I prefer the latter.

So what is your resolution, somewhere "in-between" is a vague solution. Curious to hear your idea.

I would think there would be issues with people getting stuck if they just let you jump through the rubble and rebar laying around everywhere. I am just trying to picture if in a real world scenario, in the same environment. Getting to a destination, would I rather walk or jump through concrete and rebar or go around it where the path is easier. I am just trying to understand how you think it should be. As far as Skyrim or Oblivion, it is irrelevant in my opinion as it wasn't a direct path and there were actually many alternate paths and trails and some actual mountains had short cuts by jumping up the mountain.

*Sigh* You are probably not going to understand either way at this point, but I'll try to explain anyway.


M = impassable mountain or barrier (such as rubble and buildings in Fallout 3)
Q = quest marker
. = open ground

Here is Oblivion:

..................................
..................................
..................................
...............Q................
..................................
..................................
..................................
..................................


Here is Fallout's DC area:

MMMMMMMMMMMM
M...........................M
M...........................M
M...........................M
M............Q.............M
M...........................M
M...........................M
M...........................M
MMMMM.....MMMMM


Here's what I want from Skyrim:


MMMMM...........M....
................................
................................
...................MMM.....
.....M.....Q....MMM.....
......M............MMM....
................................
....MM..................M..
................MM...........

See my above post for my desired solution.