Alright, here's my view on this:

Ken Wasn't on Daggerfall, which was a great game. (While I don't know that much about Daggerfall, just about everyone who had played it say it's a great game so I'll just take the community's word for it)

Ken Was on Morrowind, which was a great game. (Despite the combat system. And I wouldn't blame that on age, but just a bad decision... unless you actually liked that horrible button-spamming)

And on Oblivion I'm getting mixed signals... The bio linked before said he had worked on Oblivion, and yet all I hear are posts saying that he Didn't... Anyway...

Ken Was/Wasn't on Oblivion, which was a great game. (Despite some sad sacrifices made to make the core gameplay more entertaining and the game overall more mainstreamed)

And now Ken Isn't on Skyrim, which will probably be a great game. (Unless someone screws up horribly.)

... So no offense to a probably very good game designer, but I really can't see how his impact alone could make such great difference unless he was given a free leash to do as he wished on previous games... Which I really doubt he had.

The poll responses make me sad. All TES fans should know that name! Ken Rolston is awesome, and he will be missed by many. That being said, Skyrim could still be a very special game, just in ways that are different from what made Morrowind special, at least in some respects.

God I hope they get their act together and reverse the direction of the series.

If Oblivion to Skyrim is as much of a change as Morrowind to Oblivion was, ES VI will be some type of Angels vs Demons FPS.

http://www.imperial-library.info/sites/default/files/inter_beth_team3.jpg

Now you know.

Less old man smell around the office can only be a good thing.

(I kid, I have no idea how Ken Rolston smells, nor do I wish to know)

I just hope they don't decide to base this next game on whatever fantasy film is popular at the moment.

Oblivion was highly influenced by LOTR...what will Skyrim be heavily influenced by?

Harry Potter? Twilight? The Elder Scrolls?

Yea, in Skyrim vampires will sparkle in direct sunlight ^^

What if Kojima quit metal gear and it still went on?

oh, so basically he was responsible for the product of morrowind, and his absence was responsible for oblivion..and now hes gone *sigh*

I'm a glass-is-half-full person. Until I see evidence to the contrary I'm going to assume that the team working on Skyrim is more talented and visionary than the team that worked on Daggerfall or Morrowind.

Hopefully you still saw my point.

Pete admitted to being heavily influenced by LOTR when it was a pop culture mainstay. The game suffered for it.

I wonder where he'll be drawing his influence from now, and I doubt it will be the Elder Scrolls.

It's somewhat depressing reading about certain developers leaving, and other developers being inspired by 'Movies of the Moment'. I love Tolkien's work, but I want it kept as far away from TES as possible.

It's only been 3 weeks and I'm put off, and I haven't even seen a screenshot.

Go Forums.

Meh.

For all it's faults Oblivion was plenty fun. It wasn't as good as it could have and ought to have been, but it was still pretty good.

I'm hopeful but wary. If the people who made Oblivion learned from our complaints, their work on Fallout 3, and Obsidian's work on New Vegas then Skyrim ought to be incredible. If they didn't pay attention to any of that and instead draw their inspiration from whatever the kids were watching when development started...not so good.

Only time will tell.

honestly?
every single thread on this whole forum is filled with "The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is the greatest game in the history of the universe.! I hope skyrim is more like morrowind" (this thread included) and then when someone says they're sick of the spam you tell him he's flaming?
alrighty, just checking



on topic: game developers come and go from companies constantly and game in series usually never experience drastic changes, I think it will still have the same quality of all the elder scrolls games regardless of who worked on what and who's come and gone

The difference is that he was attacking the people making the posts. I'll state my issues with certain games, but I'm not going to (or at least I'm going to try to restrain myself from) making it personal.

fanatic/cultist is flaming.

Okay, let's try it this way...

The report button is your friend. If you, or anyone else, thinks something is spam, report it and let the mods deal with it.

You can disagree with someone's post/theory/idea without attacking the person. Calling someone a cultist or fanatic because their opinion doesn't match yours is flaming.

I like to call that magic 'The Lefay Factor', and they'll never recapture it because it just isn't profitable anymore.

I don't think you can compare Kojima to Ken. I think you can compare Kojima to Todd. Anyway, until reading some posts I really had no idea that Ken was not all that involved in Oblivion. With that being said I don't think it will make any real difference on the game.

Personally, I think the only thing the game can do it get better. I am sure they have learned from some of the mistakes in Oblivion and are striving to make another game that blows everyone away. I would like to say Oblivion was better than Fallout 3 but that is like comparing apples and oranges. They are both great games and I am sure Skyrim will go above and beyond all expectations.

I say no, it will not make the slightest difference. While I loved Morrowind far more than Oblivion he was also one of the developers pushing the extensive level scaling of Oblivion. He makes a pretty valid point for it. But I disagree with it.



-http://www.hardocp.com/article/2006/05/23/oblivions_ken_rolston_speaks/2

Perhaps I'm missing something, but outside of the both of them being fantasy/vaguely-medieval in their aesthetics, how exactly is Oblivion like The Lord of the Rings? Aside from a royal living as a commoner who eventually has to fulfill his destiny yadda yadda yadda, I really can't think of anything. People seem to keep bringing this up and complaining about it - TES no longer attempts to have the whole world in one game, so each game can focus on a particular region. What is so wrong with how Cyrodiil was presented?

The Imperials were his idea. They're not my cup of tea.

I don't bemoan anyone who's left. It's the spirit of what I perceive as TES which matters. As long as that's there, I don't give a [censored].

To some older fans its not even Todd, see below for the The Lefay Factor. For me its Ted who basically created the system still in use today

Ken did a lot of not so good things with his silly rules.
A paranoia dev saying no betrayal? How many quest options does that cut out?

But wait it gets worse no lying to the character if the NPC had been honest before - wait what

Everything having to have a real world counterpart - not that bad per say French Britons - Roman imperials - but it needs to be a constant in other games and in some respects it ignored canon

which brings us to --- Ignored lore and canon and directly contradicted even himself

Gutting the character system

Replacing a perfectly good combat system with a shockingly bad one

there are others but to me theres where the man offenders in Morrowind

Pushing level scaling -----lets not go there, they could have just made sure there was playtested content for high levels with the best gear or how about challenges that are not about combat stats and gear

Ken has done some good stuff in his time, interestingly his part of the enemy Within is considered the worst part (it is hampered by following Power behind the throne - which is the best RPG adventure module ever) because it was a paranoia hose job for Warhammer - looks like he took it too far by removing it all not understanding that its not a hose job or betrayal that is bad but an over the top paranoia style really only works in Paranoia and we see this trait again in Oblivion not taking the middle ground but taking some criticism and using a sledge hammer OTT solution because the criticism is not always fully understood

Edit: Oranges and apples are both fruit, an orange's color is really a one dimensional thing hence its name where as an apple can come in many shades of red, green or yellow. Both are covered in skin, in an orange this is referred to as a peel and is too bitter for most peoples tastes, the apple skin is much less bitter. both are seed containers in their natural function, the cases in both are edible, the flesh of both is quite sweet although in the case of apples the sweetness can vary. The point- you can validly compare anything to anything especially two games made by the same company and designed with the same philosophy "comparing apples to oranges" is a faulty premise to brush off unfavorable comparisons especially when said comparisons are valid (as a side note the phrase is "chalk and cheese" and while that makes more scene they can still be compared). Without comparison between games cross genre even games will not improve

I'm not into the Imperials either. If they're going to add a race, they should have made them look Korean or something, not another group of white people.

Lead designer huh? Not to bring him down but for all we know most of the bad design decisions came from him. Just saying it's just as easily a good thing as it is a bad thing.

What I meant by that was if I want to compare Oblivion to something I would prefer another medevial based RPG not a Sci Fi RPG.