Frankly, I don't give a damn.

I think Bethesda will. We xboxers are a large part of the market. They're not going to leave us behind because PCs have gotten better. I can appreciate how frustrating that might feel, but it's just the reality. *shrug*

Frankly, I don't want cells to be handled at all. If they haven't done a pretty major reconsideration of how they've been handling their game worlds in terms of interiors and exteriors (and obviously, in terms of the way the two connect or overlap), I'll be very disappointed - Bethesda is already well behind the curve on this one.

The consoles did not receive a hardware upgrade, and if this game is going to be even more graphics intensive than Oblivion... :shrug:

It's a shame the consoles could be holding us back on this one but there's not much that can be done about that. Other than modding it open again, that is.

Can you be more specific? I don't really know what 'curve' they're behind in terms of this... Maybe action games have more impressive ways of handling transitions between the two, but I hardly need to point out that action games limit the player to confined, linear areas. Any game that has anything close to the amount of sheer free roaming of a Bethesda RPG handles their interior/exteriors in a similar way from what I can tell (even ones that are far more linear in design like Bioware games). Anything large or complex requires it.

I think the gaming world needs to try and push forward and get rid of the separate cell system. If games were one-world cells, there would be no loading times. Although frames per second would probably be in the hundred thousands. lol But like that movie with Jack Nicholson, something's gotta give some time or later.

I'd like the cities to be open (set in the exterior world space). They could still be walled off mind you, but with a gate that actually opens. Also, I'd like to be able to walk over the city walls.

For buildings and dungeons I'd prefer it they still use interior cells. That allows them to add more detail to the interiors without affecting performance too much. Most (or all) games with that don't use interior cells have a complete lack of detail in their interiors.

Check your knowledge.

The Unreal 3 engine (as FPS-y as you can get, and free to get and mod and even program in nowadays) has a max "map" (what Oblivion's engine would call a "cell") size of 10km in each direction - bigger than Oblivion's map is. Those "maps" can also be seamlessly strung together and streamed in from disk on-demand to form even bigger play areas, limited only by your disk space. Obviously, for performance reason you can also reduce each "map" to roughly one Oblivion cell, exterior or interior or a mix of both, and still have on-demand streaming from disk and seamless transitions between them.

You hardly need to point it out because it isn't actually true anymore. Open game worlds are becoming the norm pretty quickly.

As for the rest, see Khadirgro's post, he's answered it well. Also see the fact that other open world games in general nowadays tend to be considerably larger than Bethesda's (since the size is often a selling point for this sort of project), and tend to offer more "sheer free-roaming" than Bethesda's games do, sometimes at a greater level of complexity overall and still without the kinds of issues Bethesda sees with this sort of thing (or in general, aside from pop-in being a pretty common problem with most of them).

To answer the OP: Well it depends. I want cities to be in the exterior, but I also want homes to be too because I hate not being able to see through windows.

I think Bethesda is always going to try to go for a smooth game. So if there are exterior homes and cities, than we should expect less detail in the both of those. That is unless they've built an engine that successfully integrates exterior cities and houses with still being able to give us the same amount of detail as past games.

Caves I think should still be interior though, at least the majority. I think with their engine (if it's close to their old one) the atmosphere won't be handled well in a cave if it's in the exterior.


It's not really the size of bethesda's worlds that are the problem. That's not even really a factor when considering fps and smooth gameplay, and the need for exterior/interior cells. It's the detail. For instance in an Oblivion city there are many things bogging the game down; AI packages, constantly running scripts, Interactive objects (with havok data), and high detail meshes.

They don't just make big open worlds, they make big interactive open worlds.

Oh my lolz! It's true Gothic 3 has no loading doors, BUT: in Gothic 3 almost all the objects are PAINTED on the tables and shelves, they aren't actually there! Gothic 3 has like 2% of the amount of objects you can interact with compared to Oblivion!

To the point, I would also like no loading at all if possible.

A completely seamless world would ofcourse be to prefer, but is it possible with todays technology? Maybe, but it will take long, hard work to achieve and will in some cases only be worse than if it had been interior and exterior cells.

I want to see cities returned to external cells, a la, Morrowind. I found that made the world feel more real, more seamless. In Oblivion it was more tricky to sneak in and out of cities as a wanted thief when I have to go through a fixed gate. I'm not against walled cities, Balmora and Caldera were both mostly walled but they were still a part of the world.

I also have no problem keeping buildings as internal cells, and I don't mind keeping dungons as interiors too. Smaller caves can be external, or if possible have some seamless transition... or have a small fence gate, or a branch covering the entrance, so it's not a typical door.

Ideally I'd like whatever is the most seamless gaming experience that balances what the new engine can handle with keeping load times reasonable. I'm okay with more quick loads then fewer long loads.

So do other developers. From how they talk about it, Radiant AI isn't a big drain on a larger scale (it's only updated something like once every thirty seconds beyond a certain distance), so it's mostly the AI performing locally that's a concern. Keeping that in mind, Red Dead Redemption has all of the things you just mentioned... and does all of them at a far higher level of complexity. The one exception is the physics-enabled clutter, but even that's something that shouldn't be such a problem with well-optimized design and a well-built engine - if an object isn't visible because it's in a house on the other side of town, completely out of sight, there's no point to be processing anything involving it other than just storing where and what it is.

The hardware exists, the technology exists, and there are games that already achieve similar things. If Bethesda can't do it, the problem isn't that it can't be done. The problem is that it can't be done by Bethesda.