Ha! I totally agree with this.
If they don't put this in the game (FOR WHATEVER REASON!?!?!?!?!),
then make a big immersion DLC with survival/hardcoe mode, transportation system, seasons, compass, or whatever you can come up with.
I would definitely buy it for like 10-15$.
They should at least be able to do that, even if none of these things are options in the first game. It would really surprise me if they didn't take a hint from New Vegas and include the kinds of immersion us hardcoe players want (and maybe even new players) just as a higher difficulty level.
On a side note, I suggest that instead of doing away with fast travel altogether, there should be a teleportation spell. It makes way more sense than having you instantaneously travel a large distance without losing health or stamina and never encountering any opposition on the way. Also, if it is a spell, or a dragon word, it could be left as a later-game spell on higher difficulties. Or it could be scaled, from teleporting to mage's guilds, to any human settlement, to any map marker, as the (alteration?) skill slowly levels up. I think that would deal with travel frustration in the late game when there are far too many scattered quests in everyone's journal, and too much valuable loot to drop.
Also, the way they described the map in the GI article, it's actually just a overhead version of the actual terrain that you can zoom in and out on and mark, like it is some kind of spell rather than a map itself. This leads me to think a compass would not be necessary, as instead you would be more likely to plot out your journey based on looking at the actual terrain and landmarks on the way. Which would be a huge improvement, matching the exploratory nature of Morrowind with the facility of Oblivion. Maybe a Prince of Persia-esque glowing trail that you plot would be better than a compass as well? I always thought that the Oblivion compass was generally obnoxious and useless to casual players anyway, since you try to look at it and go by it when there are far too many mountains and landmarks on your way, and it never considers setting paths by actual roads like in GTA IV. I'd imagine we will see some sort of improvement to the map that encourages players to actually be immersed in the world and plan their course by landmarks they can actually see, rather than squiggles on a piece of paper or an arrow with limited versatility, but we just don't know what it will be yet.
I'm going to point out that the main problem with Oblivion was not the ability to fast travel itself. It was that the immersion and sense of exploratory progression that we felt strongly in Morrowind was lost. While Morrowind certainly frustrated me at times when I had to sell off stolen loot to a crab, or find a daedra, or do a quest in the north, the main reason why the world felt so huge and it was such an adventure to explore even a short distance was due to the way you were forced to travel the entire way, using mainly the physical markers available to actually learn the lay of the land. You felt tied to the land, because you couldn't just instantly bypass it. In Oblivion, when you go on a quest you do your best to avoid foot travel. Instead of traveling from the city you are in, to the closest big city to your destination, to the closest settlement, and to each destination along the way, experiencing the environment and the distance firsthand, you simply teleport to the closest discovered location to your destination.
Where's the exploration in that? Where is the interconnectedness, in that you'd travel instantaneously to a hostile cave instead of going to the closest settlement first? There was no tie to the world and the terrain itself, because the geography was irrelevant to your actions. There was no point to having a house in more than one town since you could travel instantaneously. There was no point to learning the geography and experiencing the cohesive environment and physical beauty, when you can get to your destination instantly. Honestly, a lot of the time it felt like a hub-type design where each quest location was mostly separate, rather than an open-world game, unless you intentionally made up your mind to explore (which inevitably resulted in discovering a cave or fort, spending an hour there, and forgetting where you actually were or where you were going).
I think that Bethesda has spent far too much time on the unique geography of this game to squander the sense of exploration described in the GI article. I really, really hope they have a solution for the immersion-shattering nature of Oblivion that made it so, to this day, I have barely learned the roads or remembered the terrain types surrounding the various cities. Keeping the world cohesive and real means keeping the player's feet planted on the ground, at least for most of the time. Isn't that the point of an open-world game?
» Wed Mar 30, 2011 6:40 am 
bliviongate: 
