One thing that really annoyed me about Fallout 3 and New Vegas was the huge amount of invisible barriers there were, which completely destroyed immersion in-game for me. Will Skyrim have these or will you be able to go wherever you want? Discuss.

Did FO3 have barriers other than the ones around the border of the map (similar to what Oblivion had)?

You are surely refering to the non-border related invisible barriers? it annoyed the crap out of me to the point hwere I didn't even go near anything that might have an invisible wall. I sure hope that Skyrim will be 100% free to walk at, not having a pile of sand block you before your even close to it.

@ HD: Yes, specifically in the city part of it, all the destroyed buildings and the sand and stone around them had invisible barriers.

Skyrim will probably be completely sandbox apart from the borders.. im guessing walking up mountain will be important in a place full of mountains..

Yeah mostly in the city. It wouldn't let you climb some rubble, climb high cliffs ect.

I think Oblivion did a pretty decent job confining the invisible barriers to the borders of the map. I can't think of any other time where I confronted them. I would imagine Skyrim will be similar.

Yeh that kinda bugged me about NV but its Obsidian... As much as I love the games they "make"(KOTOR2, NV, NWN2) Id rather they put up some invisible walls than trust them to do more bug testing. Im surprised EA hasnt bought them up by now and thrown them in their RPG tank with Bioware, lota potential but they need more direction.

Ive yet to notice invisible wall abuse in a Bethesda developed game though.

Never played Fo3? :/

I think what he ment that we should be able to point to any location, within the world borders, and say " I want to go there" and not have some invisble field not allowing us to traverse it.

Sort of like the rubble piles in the plane of Oblivion; you could walk part way up, and then hit an invisible barrier. Worst part was, you could often see your intended destination on the other side of a heap of broken stone, but couldn't go over the top. Running on the molten lava was actually a lot easier, in some cases.

The invisible barriers around the edge of the OB map that the NPCs could cross and shoot at you from beyond, but you couldn't chase them, were another issue.

I don't think I've ever had a problem with that.

How would you all suggest getting around having invisible barriers?

Maybe they have really strong blizzards at the edge of the map, which means you die after some time if you pass a certain point. :cold:

Invisible barriers around the edge of the province is I believe the best thing you can do, and I never have a problem with this. But putting them IN the province to prevent me from going somewhere, that will annoy me to know end. New Vegas had this problem.

especially when jack and janet went up the hill to fetch a pale of water .. they didnt but they ended up standing on a hill in an unreachable zone.. so i shot them

They don't bother me in the least. :shrug:

(Though it is kind of strange seeing a pinned weapon, or head stuck in mid-air underneath a banister or guard-rail ~where despite 'looking' like open air, it has collision geometry as though it were a solid wall.)

they're only annoying if there's no other deterrents. i was fine with them for the most part in Oblivion because Cyrodiil was mostly a valley, and the invisible barriers were behind mountains that were a massive [censored] to climb in the first place. in Fallout 3 they were just THERE, with absolutely no warning.

solution: tall, impassable mountain ranges on the eastern, western, and southern borders. to the north, make it insanely cold so it's impossible to swim beyond the edges of the map without freezing to death, regardless of frost resistance.

ed oh wait we're talking about invisible walls. that [censored]'s dumb there's no reason for them at all. [censored] 'EM.

The invisible barriers don't ruin the immersion of the game. That's something you just have to accept because it's a video game in one province. You could remove them via the Creation Kit but then you'd just walk and fall off the edge of the world and into the void since there's nothing out there. The barriers don't bother me at all.

Oceans to the north and mountains to the west and south of skyrim which make up natural barriers. The northeast however I'm not sure but I'm sure the devs will have it covered.

Meh, It's not really the ones at the edges I was thinking about. It was more like the ones that were oh so common in Kvatch.

Awesome mod by the way :rock:

Yes there is. They were put there to help control the NPC AI among other reasons. The terrain is complex in some areas, and they needed to have a way to keep the NPCs behaving believably.

Because Bioware is the currently the best developer of non-sandbox RPGs there is and doesn't need Obsidian's help? Smart companies don't go buying other companies just for fun, that's expensive stuff.

Yup, NV had pretty obvious ones, I don't think TES V will have this though.

Did they? I was under the impression that Bethesda did the bug testing.

*In my experience the only bugs I have encountered are ones of a clipping nature, and an obscure one brought about by mods; (where adding more than four components to an ammo type causes a scrollbar in the menu that never refreshes after you click on it).

Yeah I hated that in NV but I doubt Bethesda would do it in TES, setting limits to where you can go in TES is just wrong.