It isn't the consoles fault developers choose to go the easy route. Blame the devs.

Yeah no. Xbox 360 makes Bethesda the same or even more than the PC. However, I wouldn't object if the game was made in the PC in mind, then ported to consoles at the same time. That and you're assuming that console players dont want more complex mechanics, typical PC elitist.

No chance, Todd is an Xbox fan boy.

So....basically what I said....most traits come from the mother's side, but some smaller traces of the father's side my be visible.

Also it should be noted that there are plenty of interracial couples in Skyrim (I swear half the blacksmiths are married to some one from another race) and I have yet to hear of any of them arguing about the fact that they cannot have children, and we all know how much couples in Skyrim like to argue . As far as the beast races are concerned I agree, I wasn't even thinking about them in my earlier posts. Mostly I was thinking about human races in generall, although I did choose to use a Nord/Dunmer example.

Too bad that makes zero sense from a technical standpoint.

One does not build a game to run on the most advanced machines, and then scale down, becuase when your systems are designed for the most advanced machines, the likelyhood that they will work on lesser machines dramaticaly decreases.

It's like trying to build a pyramid starting from the top stone, and then working down the layers by lifting every single layer you have built up so you can jam another one under it. The likelyhood that you can lift each layer to jam another one under it decreases every layer you build.

The Witcher 2 did this successfully.

Not really.

thw Wticher 2 was not built from the top down.

Probably won't be long before people start asking if their PC's can run Elder Scrolls VI...

It'll probably be a while, since they're most likely going to do Fallout 4 next, which will likely be a 2014 or 2015 release. TES VI will likely be in the 2016-2018 range, depending on when the next Fallout comes out and when they start actual work on TES VI. We've got a while to wait yet.

Though I suppose there is possibility that another in-house studio or team is handling Fallout 4 while they are working on TES VI, but I kind of doubt that is the case due to TESO, and I don't think they would release a major TES game within a year of another major TES title, unless of course they have some kind of clever promotion planned to encourage people to get both games. I think the idea of TESO's 2013 release is to make it so there's only about three years between the release of TES VI and the last one instead of about five years.

In my opinion it could be best, if the next game took place in real sized settlement (preferrably a big city), with a size, that could rival TES III Morrowind island size.

How to explain being closed in a city? Simple. Some kind of major force is besieging the city. Some capable force like the Thalmor. Player is dragged there as a prisoner among Thalmor army and manages to escape into the city. Shortly after this siege starts.

Almost any huge city would do. Only those can't be used in which only one race is allowed to live in. I am not familiar with most of the cities. I only know about those, what have been in the series from part three. To offer different areas, it could be a de jure part of one province, but another province holds it. That way two cultures can exist in one city or even three, if more provinces have held it some time in history. A city in khajjit homeland between the desert and jungle could provide something similar. Firstly there are the building, that originate from the independent eras. Plus, there are Imperial buildings left over from the reign of the Empire. And now there are also some Thalmor buildings.

When it is a huge city it could have different regions. Slums. Rich people district. Grey area in between. Areas that have burnt down and only rubble remains. Occasional ruined building as a representation that a siege has some effect. Mayby an enclosed area to quarantine some fatal disease.

Depending on culture the city is influenced some climbing could be implemented. Something basic at least. Like climbing ladders with animation. Or like someone else here mentioned. Acrobatics give the player more ways ob moving around. First acrobatics levels character can only jump. As the skill gets more level, more difficult actions are unlocked. If your character is a clumsy two and half meters tall nord barbarian wearing so much heavy armor that even his eyeballs are covered with tough nordic steel, then he would have no business higher from the soil he sends his enemies into. And so also thieves and assassins could have much more ways of approaching their coals. If the sity is going to be like a real medieval city, then the houses should be packed together very closely. Even more need for climbing. This climbing adds a little to NPC dynamics. You could escape from guards by scaling a tall manor and running away along the rooftops and the guard can only look helplessly while he can use only ladders as his acrobatics is not high enough and his armor weighs too much. Whereas, if you manage to piss off somebody who is an assassin, then escaping would be much more serious problem.

Skills should have both perks that you can choose and perks that come default like in oblivion. For example, of a person is low level in one handed weapons then he can only swing his sword and he has no fancy kill-cams. Whereas with mastery one could have the most epic kill-moves unlocked for one-handed weapons. Or like somebody said earlier athletics. At low level character jogs and gets a faster pace as a sprint. At mid level, has a fair pace when running and actually sprints when he sprints. At mastery, sprints as a default run and dashes as a default sprint.

Attributes should be added back. But not as quite as they were before. They should be things that define NPC's and PC. And they can't be affected directly by assigning points. They only change if a skill is used, that is governed by that attribute. That means, that attributes need to me overhauled. Giving skills a governing attribute and mayby some shadow attributes. Like Heavy armor usage increases endurance and at the same time it increases strength. But what it increases more is for the developers to decide.

They should expand the personality system. Give each person collection of personality traits, what define how their value sliders are set. This would allow for Radiant AI that actually has diversity. Lets say that two people have high lawfulness value. One gets it from a trait "Coward". He is afraid of guards and other NPC's, but if he is not afraid of a certain parson, then he might do something to him. Other one gets his lawfulness from being "Kind". "Kind" as being more thoughtful for others. So, when guards or threatening people go away, he/she still won't result to violence.

With the personality thing, some more things could be implemented. True faction or group systems. If you belong to a group and people in that group think good of you, then they might not report a crime you commited right under their eyes if it brought harm to a non-member. And I also would also encourage adding generic NPC's. And removing the name tags. So that when you hover you cursor over someone, you can't see their name written anywhere. They can either tell you or look for example the name or their shops name. This has been funny aspect since beginning. Player character somehow could always know what name anyone had at any given time. Also belonging to a certain faction could provide one with special services, that non-members can get. As a minus, being in one faction could create conflicts with another..

In my opinion, all of this could work best in a closed off area such as a city.

If people want dungeons, then under the city could be a system of sewers and under that older abandoned sewers. In sewers are thugs and other people. Mayby at some point Thalmor might try to sneak in by digging into the city sewers. At some parts of sewers somebody has torn down sewer wall and dug into nearby closed off dungeon. In that case dungeons should be huge as they can't be many. If there can't be many, then they might as well be huge. They could contain entire quest lines. Like mages guild unveiling a secret in a huge dwemer underground city. But player can't get to everything immediately. Some parts need to me excavated as a part of quest to get inside, as some passages have collapsed and need to be cleared. Example quest could be a task to steal an artifact from mages guild excavation in a dungeon. Mayby have multiple groups fighting over the owenership of a dungeon. Mages wanting to study dwemer mystery and local noble wants to get powerful tools to end siege. This allows for different results. Although the general ending of main story should stay the same.

Development for TES games usually starts taking place immediately after the release of the latest one. That was how it was for Oblivion, which was started right after Morrowind's release, and the same for Skyrim, started right after Oblivion. The way Bethesda did it for Morrowind/Oblivion was that half the team went to building the code for the next game while the remaining half, mostly artists and writers, stayed behidn to do the expansions for Morrowind. I imagine that something similar is happening now. Bethesda already has the location and setting planned and being worked on. They probably have an overall plot figured out too. WIth that being said, we won't see it for like another 6 years simply because TES games are such a massive undertaking.

Oh, I was just being sarcastic, lamenting the fact that some people have a tendency to ask the specs for something that is years away.

Sure the other developers don't make games as large as TES,that's a given. But even a TES can be made to look visually amazing. Seeing how the engine handles the loading of the world,it could manage better visuals. The thing is that while there is no loading screens when you walk around Skyrim,it isn't the whole world loaded when you are there,just the closest grids that surround the player. In the distance you only see blurry terrain without much detail because creatures,npcs,trees,shadows and statics aren't loaded there yet. Overall Skyrim's landscape is far larger than a Crysis 1 map. But the mass of the world that is loaded by default each single moment in Skyrim is less than what it is on Crysis. What does this example means ? That while Skyrim's world is bigger than the worlds in which you can walk in most games,the amount of stuff that is loaded at a certain time is less than in some other games. That means that a part of RAM is free for other uses,and that the processor doesn't have to process that much data. And that leaves some resources open for use elsewhere. Skyrim could have looked better than Crysis if Bethesda wanted so.

@LukeSkyrimmer : I hope what you say is true.

@ALTADOON GHARTOK PADHOME : That's not always the case. In fact it has been the usual in the past,at least for some certain aspects,that developers would develop their assets as best as they can,and they would then decrease the fidelity and quality,for the game to run on less powerful platforms. This has its own explanation. Take textures for example. What modern studios do is to get outside and start taking pictures with cameras of various surfaces,which are then processed and imported in to the games.
So basically the ground texture that you see in Skyrim is nothing more than a real photo of real ground,that had its resolution reduced,so it could be rendered by the weakest hardware the game would be released for. Any modern camera,even the cheapest ones at 70$ can capture 4096x4096 pictures. Acquiring high quality textures so isn't hard for a developer studio,it's just a few button presses away from getting low resolution textures. After the developer has the high quality 4096x4096 textures,all that is needed for them to be turned on a lower resolution,like Skyrim's 512x512 default is a single program like Microsoft Paint or Photoshop,where you put the picture and change its size,its just a 2-3 mouse button clicks procedure.

As with the textures,it is also usual that 3d models are also made with high polygon counts in mind and then they have their polygons reduced. Go browse a pro 3d model shop. You will find out that the detail on most models ludicrous. A single toaster might have more polygons than a whole dungeon. The thing is that 3d model shaping tools have a function that allows you to automatically reduce polygons in any 3d model if you want so. But there is no opposite equivalent,to automatically increase poly count. So its always better to make high poly models,because in case you need to cut some polys,you just have to import the model on the program and with some clicks it's ready for use. But if you have a lower poly model,you can't just import it and raise its polygon count with 2-3 clicks. It's way more harder and time consuming than this.

And of course we mustn't forget that many effects can be toggleable,and be turned off and on with just a click. But this isn't really always the case,it depends on the game's engine. Cryengine 3 is very good on that. If there is a thing better for it than the visuals it can produce,it's that it has modular effects that can automatically make a game's world look better,just by turning them off or on with a few clicks. But of course not every engine is Cryengine.

Textures and polygons are a on and off situation, which I do admit happens, but overall game design is a bottom up siutation becuase it is easier, and conseibly more efficint.

Also, your right in saying that not every engine is cyengine, but then again, most engines run better then cryengine. Cryengine's power comes at the cost of needing to get super nerfed to run on consoles, and it running likecrap on even somewhat high settings unless you have some godlike PC.

It's surprising that you say that,because on my computer I get better frame rates on Crysis at Ultra than in Skyrim at Ultra.
What is killing the performance in Skyrim is the way the Creation Engine handles shadows. Instead of taxing them on the graphics card,it taxes them on the processor.
And processors aren't ideal for rendering graphics,that's why graphics cards were invented in first place. Considering though that Bethesda has been using the same engine for 10 years (after all the Creation Engine is Gamebryo with some face lifting) I still have some disbelief that they will create or license a new engine. Gamebryo has started to show of its weaknesses too much.
It can't make use of more than 2 processor cores,and it isn't 64 bit. Skyrim has low frame rate even of top-tier machines not because it needs lots of processing,but because it has software limitations that doesn't allow the hardware to work on it.

Bethesda should really make a new engine or do even more drastic changes to the one they have.
The new engine should at least:

* Make use of any number of processor cores.
* Be on 64 bits,so it can produce versions of both the game's exe and the editor's exe on 64bits.
* Make it so more than 6 ground textures can applied on a single exterior quad.

Of course other things like tesselation,parallax mapping,soft water shaders etc are always welcome.

Creation Engine 2, coming 2016.

Gamebryo Engine 22

Here we go again. Creation is not Gamebryo, it only includes Gamebryo code. Bethesda has worked hard modifying Gamebryo for each installment. The latest modification was the most radical one (which can be seen in the game) and it's safe to say Creation is a new engine made by Bethesda on top of the previously Bethesda modified Gamebryo.

Gamebryo is an old drive-in movie theater that was demolished to make way for the shopping mall that is the Creation Engine. Same foundation, but totally different.

Finally, a perfect way to describe how something isn't what it is but what it was!

I think it's bad that I'm able to memorize every animation in Skyrim. They need more animations or some dynamic animation system.

I think the amount of change you think it was applied is too much. Have you played around with the Creation Kit ? If yes,didn't you discovered the game messages in it that where used on Fallout 3 ? That's right. If you open the 'Creation Kit' you will find out that it has written messages from Fallout 3 like a Pipboy tutorial and explanation of how the Hacking skill works. These aren't used of course (thankfully) in Skyrim,but are still there,because nobody bothered to remove them,to make at least the "Creation Kit" feel more like a new thing than G.E.C.K. with a different name.

It isn't as simple as snapping your fingers and, boom! Dynamic multi-threading! Doing this requires revisiting nigh every bit of code of the engine and looking for opportunities for parallel execution, or a complete revamp of the whole engine's paradigm. And then there's the testing nightmare...

As silly as it sounds, a lot of people are still on x86. Why? Because they get their OS pre-installed as OEM and never bother to check whether it isn't the case of a 32-bit OS on 64-bit hardware. So in this case progress is being stalled by the retailers. (You can't really expect the general population to get smarter, can you? )

That requires a new generation of graphics chips that have more than 8 texture coordinate registers. Because right now 6 of them are being used for the textures and the other two for alpha and bump maps (this is conjecture, of course. I can't say for certain without seeing the code).

That requires hardware, or more specifically - a hardware cycle. Skyrim did not deliver in that department only because it was made for the current hardware cycle, which is in its twilight years. So have faith.

I didn't said they should snap their fingers. They should start working on it then! Yep,work on a new engine. Or get a license for another one,if they don't want to spend time in making their own that is. And while perhaps the majority of people who just have PCs have 32bit operating systems,according to Steam the majority of Steam users (who are also the potential costumers) have 64 bit systems. And Skyrim wouldn't be the first one that is running 64 bits. Many games including Crysis and Far Cry does. And that's today.
By the time the next Elder Scrolls will come out (3-4 years) the number of players having 64bit OSs will be even more,as also the games that will be 64bits will be more.

After all Skyrim already has needs as a game that exceed the limitations of its engine,it could really use more than 4gb of RAM and 2 cores I tell ya!
Easy example: 4 times the draw distance of things,13 ugrids instead of 5,shorter loading times,no lag at Riften,more NPCs on screen at the same time (could make epic battles of hundreds NPCs at civil war),more light sources and shadows... And that's even without mods! Adding mods later on should also rise the requirements.