Morrowind had a lot of great levitation and no loading when you went into cities but oblivion had a lot more open space for running through forests which I liked a lot. I really enjoyed morrowinds fast travel options as they were more a part of the role playing experience rather than going into the menu and doing what basically felt like cheating in oblivion.

Oblivion had a great system of followers and essential NPC's. I like people who can go with me on dangerous missions and not die in the first three seconds. The followers who ressurected were great but the followers who just became unconcious were gold, the mix was important I think because I could morn the loss of a battlehorn guard but it wouldn't hinder the gameplay like it would if Mazoga the Orc died.

Morrowind had a lot more factions you could work for which made everything more intriguing and it had a wierd landscape which was really cool but oblivion was just...gorgeous. Fallout 3's bland environments hopefully won't show up anywhere around Nirn (not that F3 didn't rule) but what wasn't bland were the effects they pulled off in that game. It would be pretty amazing to do some magical mini Nuke while being attacked by trolls or something and the fire effects were kick ass! You know that shock and Fire spells are going to look great but it'll be interesting to see what effects and lighting each of the spells give off.

I wan't to be able to cut off vampire heads! Dismembering zombies in dark dungeons will be cool but Hitting someone with a telekinesis spell that knocks them down and then stacking it with a huge fire spell that turns them into ashes then turning around and freezing somebody and shattering him with some ax or blasting him with a new string of "earth" related spells, maybe a meteor or a falling boulder, would be amazing.

Oblivion is my favorite game, I've added it up and I've spent 56 full days playing it between nine characters all on the 360 with all the official mods (even the crappy horse armor). All they would have to do to make me happy is copy it, update the physics, graphics, add a few more quests, add more creatures (good and bad ones), add more options in the start menu like the ability to customize the HUD more and take out the compass, bring in a "hardcoe mode" option like New Vegas is getting, ad a bunch of randomized encounters, travelling merchants and a ton of non important (generic citizens or wastelanders) NPCs like F3 especially in the large towns and cities, add a few ownable businesses and few more items/weapons/armor/ownable homes and maybe a couple new materials (wood and stone? Some magical substance possibly hard light or organic like bone or some large beasts tooth and scales) and finally, add random repeatable missions at the end of each of the guild mission strands so it doesn't feel like you beat it and now the guild doesn't really do anything anymore but sit and talk about you.

One last thing... Let me turn anyone into a follower if they like me enough or I pay them enough and allow me to trade with them so they can have better weapons and armor to use. I want to control an army (six-seven people at a time while I make the others wait in various places).

Thanks for Reading

I would like them to redo the sound system. In Oblivion people talking in a room far from you or upstairs sound like theyre right next to you and spam the same dialogue that makes no sense. So I think they can improve on that alot. And the the music needs to be a bit more dynamic, like make the music quieter when your talking to some one or actually play in a fight instead of just when your near the enemy.

I was actually gonna mention that. There were a bunch of different unnamed NPCs in that game in the cities, making the cities seem more alive dispite that (for the most part) the cities were actually tiny.

But while I felt that particular thing was good in FO3 if the do it again for TES5 they really ought to give the Generic NPC's a random name generator that way all the generic characters (even those bandits and what not) all have actual names.

i like the way Assasins Creed did it. with HEAPS of nameless NPCs just to make the citys feel more alive.

I don't know, I would like it to be somewhere in between. Assassin's Creed style just feels like a bunch of mannequins walking around, but Oblivion's cities felt deserted, friggin ghost towns.

If they could find that sweet spot in between those it would be great.

At first, I thought so, too. The combat felt a bit more fluid because it is centered more on my abilities as a player rather than my character's. I was always able to hit when I meant to, and I had full control over blocking, regardless what my character's skills happen to be. Overall, it was more appealing to the senses than Morrowind's system, and thus, more exciting. That is, until you reach level 20 or so. By then you've discovered the pattern of combat that works for just about every enemy (block, attack, attack, repeat). Things that used to take a reasonable amount of hits to kill can now take a ridiculous amount of damage, which makes battles with high-level enemies more tedious than fun. In contrast, Morrowind's combat system was abhorrent to look at (for some), and thus became a source of irritation. However, the mechanics worked just about right. It was very gratifying to slowly improve your skills and watch your character become stronger and stronger. If Morrowind had animations and/or sound effects to represent what was going on behind the scenes, it would have been a near flawless system. I think that they might have been aiming for something like that in Oblivion. But, rather than keep the combat mechanics of Morrowind and 'remodel' them by adding better animations and such, they decided to 'rebuild' the combat system by focusing more attention on the visual/visceral aspect of combat, while horrendous mistakes were made in terms of the mechanics. That's the way I see it, anyway. And that's why I would choose Morrowind's (or even Daggerfall's) combat mechanics, but Oblivion's improvements over the visual aspects of combat (i.e. animations, sound effects, et al).





Point taken, and agreed. That is why, given a selection between the choices represented, I chose Fallout 3 instead of Daggerfall (can't speak for Arena - never played). But you're right. As far as graphics are concerned, I feel they simply need to 'remodel', as current graphics are pretty satisfactory by my standards, and I rather they spend the time working on something else. However, I don't really see how it would be possible to screw up in this department, so I would be fine if they wanted to 'rebuild'. The only mistake they could make as far as graphics are concerned is if they fell into the uncanny valley. Oblivion teetered dangerously close to the ledge of the uncanny valley with their NPC faces/face-gen. Everything else was quite beautiful, though, so I'm not too concerned about graphics.

agreed I was just playing through Assassins Creed to see how good Bethesda could make their animations and I started to think how so many random NPCs made the citys fell alive but the sad part was how none of them really mattered to me at all.

I think the only thing that has been consistently getting better over time in Bethesda's games (aside from graphics) are the stealth mechanics.

Weren't graphics covered in the Eurogamer interview? At least for the current project (whatever that may be)
Something about looking like next gen?

I think he said that it "felt" next-gen. And I think that was Quakecon. Maybe he meant appearance. Saying something (along the lines of) "feels like you're playing a next generation console" could mean anything.

By Next Gen probably he means this Gen. Hes building hype. I wouldnt read to far into that im sorry. Were still on the current consoles and the only thing that could make it look Next Gen is if it was in Next Gen. Oblivion looked like it was make for the previous gen and so did morrowind. So bringing it up to Next Gen would mean it probably looks like the top games of this gen. E.G. Crysis.

Yes.

Interior weather sounds is a must. Mods have done this but it needs to be in vanilla by now.

And if you make your own custom house they aren't there.

I don't want to come off as a control freak or anything, but I'm getting the impression that a lot of people didn't bother reading the OP (either that, or didn't understand it). The topic wasn't meant to be a suggestion thread. We already have one of those. Instead, I was hoping to have a discussion about what people thought worked well in previous Bethesda games, and/or whether or not people think Bethesda should abandon their 'rebuild-from-the-ground-up' approach for a 'build-off-of-existing-infrastructure' approach. Just in case, I'll re-post the OP.