I think I've played this game before... my character had mastery in sponge bathing.

I hadn't seen it before, OP, thanks for posting.

It has some interesting stuff in there. I honestly don't think that Todd meant anything to be read out of that CoD reference. I'd say anything they got from CoD was probably a few minor things.

"hardcoe" means different things in different idiolects. It seems clear to me that in Todd's idiolect, "hardcoe" means something different from what it does in your idiolect. You might think that this makes it a poor choice of words on Todd's part. On the other hand, you might think that a bit of charitable interpretation reveals that all Todd was saying was that CoD has a dedicated fanbase used to fiddling around with, and making choices from, a decent amount of features. That bit strikes me as true, even if one thinks that CoD isn't an enjoyable game.

:rofl:

Thanks for sharing I guess even though it's not new I hadn't seen this until now.

He was just saying that CoD is popular even though it has a fair amount of RPG elements, and that this is a development he regards as beneficial for RPGs because even shooter players begin to enjoy the complexity of an RPG nowadays. I think that's a well-founded statement. His point was that they get to make the game they want without having to fear that nobody will buy it, and not that they will try to get closer to CoD.
However, I would think that Fallout 3 is an even better example for this. I mean, the game was a huge success, wasn't it? (I can never find numbers about things like this.) And many people who loved it came from the First Person Shooter crowd, yet the old-school RPG aspects everywhere didn't put them off, they liked them as well.

In any case, it's a nice little interview. Some answers were quite honest and direct, like when he said that the story can not be well-paced in a game like this, or that earlier games did certain things better than Skyrim will. It also got me excited about the Creation Kit once again, I'm looking forward to exploring the possibilities.

I think it can be said fairly that Todd Howard's not all that great of a communicator or showman. He should really get somebody else to do those walkthroughs and interviews. Somebody who can say things that have more significance than "there's lots of details and dragons are pretty groovy."

i was late to the party thank you

I think he's inconsistent. Some of the Skyrim interviews I've read/watched/heard have been quite good. There was a German one I recall being fairly impressed by. He can be articulate when describing features, give good motivation for their design decisions, and so on. But other times, I agree, his comments come across as a bit hokey. I think he might be overthinking how he should play to the different audiences/demographics.

Something that is overlooked is that Todd Admited that they exchanged in having a huge open world for a lack of a good story. I personally think you could do both easily, have a huge open world and a story that is excellent too.

I think he does alright. After all that is pretty much the kind of response you get from anyone talking about there own product on or before its release. Look at any release of any piece of hardware or software and I guarentee you will see at least 5 trillion "this product is just amazing"s.

I think he's poison and he should've been fired after Oblivion.

There. I said it.

You sound like such a nice guy.

Can you say that about any of the video interviews? You must to take into consideration that written interviews are largely verbatim and not a word for word transcript of Todd's words.

He said well-paced. And I believe the story will actually be well-paced if you start with a level 30 character or so and then do nothing but the main quest, and use fast-travel to get around and all that. What he was talking about was that the way the game should be played is the opposite of that - you take a lot of breaks from the main quest to do exploring and other quests and leveling up.

Since this thread didn't selectively choose a possibly flame-bait out of context quote to start the discussion, you can try to keep it open. Keep in mind though that the forum rules still apply.

I think it's a lot easier creating an amazing storyline if the game is linear instead of open. With a linear game, you have much more control over the player and what they see and do. You can also pretty much craft all of the game environments around the storyline.

That said, Oblivion's storyline was fairly poor even for an open-world game, and there's certainly room for some improvement with Skyrim. They shouldn't focus on that aspect too much though. For me, TES games are more about all the side stuff you can do in the gameworld.

Ha, I was joking about TES:6 being an arena beat-'em-up where getting 25 kills lets you call in a tactical dragon and win the round before I read this.

One wonders how much of Oblivion was Todd and how much was Ken Rolston.

Not this again... :nope:

I like that Todd mentions that they have focused on the characters alot this time round. Although we have known for some time that the conversation system was changed to feel more natural it's still good to hear that it was a big goal of theirs to achieve with this game.

I think this time we will have a larger selection of memorable characters due to more natural movements and more voice actors

"One of the reasons our games end up so big is we put a high premium on tools, and then we let people run wild".

I love that people are aloud to express themselves when designing the game in order try and get the best ideas, rather than it all coming from 1 person.

......and Todd doesn't know everything? My Illusions are fading..................

Fantastic answers. Really illustrates the design philosophy at Bethesda and why it is so great.

arma 2 is hardcoe. CoD is not hardcoe. people have to remember that todd plays alot of xbox so his definition of "hardcoe" is based on console games.

the only thing that made me scratch my head was the part about removing confusion. how could anyone possible be confused by any of the TES games. sure you might not like you build but that could still happen in skyrim as well 20 hours into the game. unless they decide to introduce full respec, God forbid, you could still make a character that you arent happy with after awhile.

Console games can be hardcoe *cough*demon souls*cough*

My apologies. Disregard this post.