We can only hope for that. However Todd Howards idea of perfect fantasy game is "raiding on horse back and killing things with a sword" witch isnt most visionary thing I can think of, and Oblivion felt like that to a large extent.

Lets call it Skyrim New Vegas you with me!



Anyhow who evers idea it was to make a game world like Morrowind and Oblivion as intricately detailed, realistic, and freeroaming yet full of quest with things to do, that general idea that we get from Tes games. Thank you, and dont change it in anyway!

In the case of FO3 though it contains design elements that built on what was in Oblivion. Lets remove the different character systems and the post apoc/ fantasy settings, how the following was implemented will have an impact on TES

1) level scaling
2) Fast travel
3) dialog and NPC's
4) placed items vs random items (some hope Skyrim will have placed items)
5) General quest design and structure (same people will be making Skyrim quests)

And there is more, but these are just some of the things that Fallout built up from Oblivion. Your preference of oblivion over fallout is important unless of course its the fantasy over Sci fi as I think its a pretty safe bet Skyrim will be fantasy. Beth are not going to make radically different games FO3 is just as much a beth game as Oblivion. I didn't mean to come across hostile its just every time a comparison is made the old apples and oranges come out and usually the person saying it is not applying it correctly

Well first off prior to Oblivion's reimagining of Cyrodil it was a Romanesque empire and the climate was more Romanesque, that is to say jungle like.

Then you have a bunch of Knights from various nearby towns (Gondor and uh...the other one) coming together to fight the great evil. The great evil is clad in black and red, has a bunch of massive towers without something eerily similar to the Eye of Sauron in each of them, need I go on?

Besides, Pete (I think it was Pete, may have been Todd, they're on in the same to me) admitted to being greatly influenced by the LOTR....of course he only did this after the game came out.

Once again, hopefully this time Bethesda will draw their influence for the next ES Game from the ES Series instead of whatever was popular at the time production started.

I like the original concept for Cyrodiil, where no single people has dominance. Between the Keptu, Men of Ge, Kothringi, Nede, etc., the land is, in fact, an amalgam of many races, nations, and tribes. There in is the miracle of Reman Cyrodiil, he united many people - so many savages - and conquered Tamriel.

Plus, who the hell calls an entire race "Imperials?" I could understand its use in a derogatory vein, but even the Cyrodilics call themselves Imperials. It's cheesy, and I hope their (the Imperials) mothers burn for it...

anyhoo

I said it would hurt, but only because I think he would add value to any RPG. With that said, there are still very talented folks at Beth and I hope the game will be just fine.

Ken's an old man! He actually retired from Bethesda part-way through the Oblivion development process, but then was lured out of retirement to go to Big Huge Games. (For those who don't know him, he's a "legendary designer" famous for Dungeons & Dragons stuff among others. His face is one of the first you see in Morrowind, since they based a character on him.)


Hey, you missed out DoctorSpooky (Erik J Caponi)!

I know that SJML is the new Fizzbang, but I'm not sure who the sultan of snark is to replace DoctorSpooky.
It does seem to be a case of like-for-like replacements, so when they lost the famous Ken Rolston, they got the much-lauded Emil Pagliarulo (from the Thief games). It's an excellent team.


Nope. The common thread through all the games from Daggerfall is Todd Howard, who AFAIK has a very hands-on management style and directs the games like a movie director makes a film (i.e. a Todd Howard game is as distinctive as a Tim Burton film).

I think people are confusing Pete's role - he heads up the marketing side, and does not design the games. Pete is responsible for stuff like packaging, the little booklet that comes with the game, what the collector's edition comes with, plus advertising and promotion.

Lets not overstate Todd's role in Daggerfall which by all accounts was minor. Daggerfall is not a Todd Howard game, it is a Ted Peterson game, Ted designed the character system, and most of the general concepts, so even in a Todd Howard game the underlining system is not Todd's.

Morrowind has more Todd in it but has Ken stamped all over it

In fact there are only two games that have the Todd mark all over them Oblivion and Fallout 3 and it shows in terms of where they went backwards and what went forward again in the next game . Meaning that Skyrim will be Todd taking the lessons from the two games and the feedback he agrees with, but Oblivion and FO3 are the only two out of the BGS games that share a common philosophy to such a large extent

Indeed.

We certainly miss many of the staff members that have left the team, but BGS has really been building up since Fallout 3's launch. On the Bethesda Podcast, Todd noted that the team has approx 25 more superheroes since the launch of Fallout 3.

We've got a pretty great team working on the game.

I will admit due to the direction Skyrim is the first TES game that I won't be buying on release day but waiting for gamer feedback and youtube videos. But I am very interested to see new beths development as a studio despite the lack of respect for canon in FO3 I could see some movement forward from oblivion, but if Skyrim still contains certain elements from past games without being outstanding in others (outstanding to me) then its a no sale. I dislike things in all TES games but I-III are so stunning where they shine it doesn't matter it remains to be seen if Skyrim has the same effect.


things New beth always get right
Construction set
Free Arena
Free Daggerfall

Releasing Daggerfall for free kept me interested in Skyrim I was going to abandon TES after IV (yeah I dislike it that much) but the FO3 (and I'm of the bad bad bad FO sequel, ok reset crowd) and then free Daggerfall kept my interest

how taboo is it to say that i liked the ATMOSPHERE more in Morrowind?

i mean cmon, HDR and bloom aside, there was nothing in oblivion that made u stop and go 'woaaaaah man what the [censored]?' except for maybe a waterfall around chorril or something.
in morrowind its like that stuff was everywhere, from ghostgate to the first taste of ash storms...

oblivion lost all geological potential, lost all characterization (seriously, where were my librarians and my blind moth priests?) and not only that, but the DAEDRA. WTF man, in a game about the GATES OF OBLIVION opening, the only shrines to daedra were a statue and some benches. i understand that the 9 r a way more prominent source of faith in Cyrod, but look at the crazy designing of morrowind's daedric temples. so much lost potential, and even then the chapels to the 9 were boring, and where just buildings, no interve, no complexion, no crazy aurora....just a dumb statue and some ook looking stained glass. bleh.

ken's gone, it svcks. but who knows, MK is back on the team (at least in a small way), so theres some hope for skyrim to have a bit more character. also they really need to bring back classic looking dunmer, and beats races. where's the ingenuity in an argonian that walks upright and isnt at leats somehat pressured by his enviornment? they all walk around like they own the place, every NPC really. lame lame lame.

I agree with you entirely sir.

Thats the main place Morrowind shines for me, Daggerfall had the atmosphere in its dungeons Morrowind had it all over, it made up for the worse combat, the factions interacting a bit and the exploration that no other TES game has had to the same extent made up for the sub par (compared to Daggerfall) character generation

I don't think it's taboo at all. A lot of folks feel similarly. I just don't think you can attribute all the success or all the changes on one person, be it Ken or Todd or anyone else for that matter. They work collaboratively as a team. So while we had much love for Ken and it is a shame he's moved on, I still think the talent pool is at Beth and can produce a great game. Now, if Skyrim continues down the path of Oblviion, then perhaps your position gains more credibility. I have faith they'll turn it around with Skyrim and make it more similar to DF or MW.

That's a good point.

I've been massively disappointed with Bethesda games since Morrwind, I feel that was their high point, but Oblivion and Fallout 3's faults were not any one persons fault, just as Morrowind's positives weren't because of any one single person

I still remember the feeling of sneaking around in DF and when you'd open a door, how loud it was. You'd be cringing at how loud it was, relative to the music being played in the background. The music, more than anything, really set the tone in DF. I still believe that's their best game to date. Obviously graphics aside.

well dont get me wrong either, but look at even the concept art between oblivion and morrowind and DF. sure, some things dumbed down from daggerfall (really, character creation was a pastel of amazingness, so much pc on npc interaction, crazy way to imagine ur character, regeneratige or stuned abilited in sun or dark or water or over certain terrain)

im also not putting it on one person. u need the right balance. u need the people who wear the suites to the office and want to look at the face of things, then u need the people with their long hair who r puffing on blunts in the break room who just kind of adhere a kind of 'look underneath all of the text and realize that ur only really one leg on a scarab that needs to fully function to push the sun across the sky, to fulfill the prophecies that have long been covered in ash, to hear the whispers of the dead and find courage onward, even in the darkest of times', u need a good mix of both for an enjoyable game.

we'll see. my expecations thus far r skyrim will be ok if they know what they're messing with (durr, throat of the world, atmoran prejudices, mountains made of bone that bleed out prophecies into the snow, whats that all about?), and like i said MK was giving us tidbits back a while ago, most of us lore experts knew it was going to be skyrim over 2 years ago. lol

just all depends, time and influence together and make great things come of nothing, or nothing come of nothing.


EDIT: also, yeah if jeremy soule isnt on board for the soundtrack, im opted to just say [censored] it. the guys got amazing talent. music is a huge part of atmosphere.

Personally I think this Kingdoms of Amalur game looks like a turd. Pardon my French.

Now, whether that's all Ralston's fault, or simply because it's an adaptation of R.A. Salvatore's work, I couldn't tell you. Either way I'm not saddened by the loss of him, regardless of how much influence he had on Morrowind.

He actually posted on the DaggerXL forum not to long ago.

http://daggerxl.50.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=462&start=30

In my opinion this guy is a legend and hopefully he imparted some of his creative genius to those who now lead the cause. I'm thrilled to see what he can make of BHG's Amular.

Why is this guy Ken Rolston leaving on us doesn't he love us? Or the series I mean one can't leave from Tes to go to a smaller game it's like flying a cessna after 20 years of f15.

Didn't he leave something like seven years ago? It might be a bit late to ask this.

This thread is from 4 months ago? Let Ken wallow in his soon to be flop with Curt Schilling.

Hes a great name in RPGs whos done good work over the last 30 years. I especially loved Paranoia. I'll be interested to see what Kingdom of Amalur is like. Still hes only 1 person. I still have big hopes for TES V.