That means nothing. The number of people putting together the dungeons mean jack unless they have multiple kit sets.

I think what they meant (but stated it incorrectly) is that they have 8 different guys making multiple dungeon sets.

The cause for repetition in oblivion (and morrowind..) is the fact that these kit pieces need to fit together like puzzle pieces, ergo they need to be symmetrical and seamless. Even with 8 guys designing the set pieces you're going to see repetition between dungeons.

Well obviously you didn't pay attention while playing Oblivion because no two dungeons were the same and they definitely weren't repetitive. With that said, Skyrim is the first TES game where every dungeon is completely hand built and unique from each other down the the last rock. Of course, I'm just going off the comment that all the dungeons would be unique from each other of course.

I highly doubt that. That's simply not economically feasible. If this is the case you're also going to see a huge decline in mods because people will need to build and import their own dungeons.

Don't get your hopes up. Though they may have done a better job on the kit pieces themselves, there's still going to be kit pieces, and there's still going to be repetition.

Check out user mods to see how even with the same pieces you can really make different feeling dungeons, Nehrim is a great example of this. With only one guy for dungeons on OB you get to see one persons tendency, he will do something a certain way, similar kinds of traps and design methods will be used,etc. With 8 people you will get much more variety in "feel" even if textures are use over again.

8 different designers means...EXCELLENT!

Plus, I can't wait to try out modded dungeons.

4 years with 8 dungeon designers to make 120 dungeons. That's 2.5 dungeons for 8 designers to make each month. Completely within reason to make. Not to mention that it has already said multiple times that each dungeon is completely unique and don't look alike.

I just want them to do away with Dungeon Warehouse Cells, where basic dungeon rooms and clutter-clusters are created once and then copy-pasted in varying combinations to form arguably "unique" wholes out of repetitive parts.

Why were all forts in oblivion abandoned?

That's a bit of a random question, but it's because Cyrodiil has been the homeland of the Septim empire for about 433 years during Oblivion, I would say. Why have active forts in a peaceful, mother province of the empire while your troops are spread so thinly around Tamriel that you don't even have the troops to adequately protect your cities from an Oblivion invasion? Who would maintain such useless relics? Cyrodiil's had a turbulent history and has witnessed the Alessian slave revolt and an Akaviri invasion. I would assume Cyrodiil's forts were from the second era and perhaps the early third era. Inevitably, someone's going to ask "Then why where they active in Morrowind?". The reason is that Morrowind is an occupied province, not the homeland of the occupiers.

If only one guy made all the dungeons in Oblivion, then he did a pretty good job.

Sure, I know why people say they are repetitive, and to a certain extent I agree.
They are kind of modular, and you see the same hallway or room every few dungeons.

But, there are often also lots of little details. Ceratinly not as much as Id have liked, and not as much to give each dungeon a unique feel, but there were little things here and there.
A childs skeleton or an overly large skull, a campsite or a hidden room leading to a pirate shipwreck.

So its not as if there was no effort at all made to make them stand out.

That being said, I cant wait for how Skyrim will deal with dungeons. Eight dungeon designers, wow.
Now if only levitation is in to allow for 3d explorable environments, not being stuck on a flat surface like in Oblivion, I would be over the moon.

I agree. Bethesda's world-builders had a very limited tileset to work with. Within those constrictions I thought they did a marvelous job of making each dungeon feel a little different than the others.

It's the trendy thing to claim: "Oblivion dungeons are copy pasted." But take a look at Dungeons on the Oblivion Wiki. You will find floor plans for each dungeon there. I defy anyone to find two dungeons with the same layout.

I know they weren't the same, but a lot of them felt very similar after a while, and there wasn't much reason to go in them. Generic baddies, only 4 styles (I think. I only remember mine, cave, fort and Ayleid ruin), not much to do. Maybe this is partially the point of dungeons and I'm just not a dungeony person, but at least what I would like is to have more styles of dungeons and more unique enemies, and the addition of puzzles sounds good (I think there was about 1- 3 dungeons with puzzles in Oblivion).

As for style, we so far have

- Nordic catacombs
-Ice caves
-Dwemer ruins

And I presume we will also have at least earth caves and mines, probably forts, which means probably at least 6 types, which will be an improvement.

EDIT: Also, the Ayleid ruins were supposed to be ancient cities, but there was never any real evidence that someone had lived there. Shouldn't there be chairs, tables, houses or something? I dunno, but they kind of felt like ruins with no purpose other than to kill whoever came into them.

I had great fun with those dungeons. I spent hours exploring them. As others said though, they've put more work into making them different this time thankfully.

I'll admit once I knew about leveled loot they became less exciting. When I was ignorant to how the game worked though, I spent hours exploring and having a great time! I guess as the saying goes ignorance is bliss.

Ignorance is bliss~ I'm with you. I just found it entertaining to wander around in caves and stuff, leveling up my hand to hand skill on the side. If you really weren't looking for anything specific, it was fun. I remember one cave that was full of summoner's, I ran through the whole thing till the end, turned around, pulled out my sword, and hacked my way through all the demons and other things that were conjured up. It was said that my sword skill grew three sizes that day.

And they all ready told us that each place is going to be more unique this time around. With level scaling fallout 3 style, puzzles, traps, and more people working on them, the underground will be even more fun this time around.

Instead of say 150 dungeons in Oblivion there are going to be 50-75 Dungeons but the ones in Skyrim should all look unique and honestly 75 different dungeons is good enough for me

Uh, there were over 200 in OB and will be about 120 in Skyrim.

I don't care if there are "only" 75 unique dungeons, but I would really enjoy having several hundred "dungeons", and a thousand "locations". I make a game of exploration, and I'd like to have mapped out most of them before even starting the main quest. On the main map, I don't clear them for the sake of clearing them. Unfortunately, I think the game world is far too small to support that...

I dont care about the layout or uniqueness of the dungeons in skyrim, as long as they keep their promise about there beening 120 dungeons and as long as most of the dungeons have respawning enemies that will respawn after 2-3 in game weeks then i will be over joyed.

Looking at a game such as two worlds 2 it has only around 50 dungeons (maybe less) and not one of these dungeons has respawning enemies, which equals ZERO longitivitly. If bethesda take the same route as two worlds 2 i will be DEEPLY DISAPPOINTED :toughninja:

how can I forget :facepalm:

It depends what you want out of the game. If your only interest is in combat, then non-respawning dungeons might equal zero longevity (which is the word you're looking for). But for a roleplayer, non-respawning dungeons can add to the game's longevity. Non-respawning dungeons allow a roleplayer to use the dungeon as a home. In Morrowind many of my sneakier characters would clear out a cave and then use that cave as a base of operations.

What made Oblivion dungeons incredibly repetitive to me was the fact that even with 'puzzles' the dungeons had pretty much only 1 way through them (I know there are a few exceptions, but there were only A FEW). Only 1 path through a dungeon negates a puzzle because you will see the pieces as you naturally walk through it. The elf ruins had the most unique layouts and the rest felt pretty much copy/paste. I know they were not exactly copy/paste, but the repetitiveness of the wall textures made everywhere I went feel the same. I tend not to look at maps and this caused me to get confused more than a few times because the similarities between dungeons (deja vu). I still enjoyed plenty of them and my only real gripe is that the time spent making the 'boring' ones could have been spent on personalizing the better ones.

Meh, I need to sleep so I probably make no sense with my ramblings.

Q: "Remember the repetitive dungeons in oblivion?"

A: No, they were pretty forgettable.

Half of the problem was that Bethesda went with a somewhat more "modular" approach than in MW. Rather than having a few dozen small segments and objects, and building everything up from them, they went with a relative handful of larger "modules". While it allowed for much faster construction, it also allowed for less variation from one to the next. That's why we got the "broken tile" on every third or fourth stair, the recurring loose floor tile every so many strides, and the walls that felt like "cookie cutter" construction. It wasn't bad, it just removed any sense of uniqueness to the site.

In Morrowind, there were minor shifts and variations, and not everything went together in exactly the same way from one place to the next. Stairs sagged on one side, platforms had boards missing, the walls weren't completely square in some places, etc. The massive amount of development time that required might have been better spent in some cases, but a LITTLE of that hand-tweaked variation is essential to making places feel unique. At the very least, making a few variant sub-pieces and overlaying them onto the appropriate parts of the "modules" could provide that "natural" chaotic element that OB lacked.

The worst thing about Oblivion dungeons was not the repetitievness...It was the smallness.

I think the problem with Oblivions 'dungeons' wasn't the layout, each dungeon had a different layout, it was the fact that every cave had the same textures and colours, every fort had the same sort of stone, the same colours/textures etc. Like Todd said in the podcast everything the same age looked. Hopefully this time we'll have, for example, forts that are clearly new and forts that have been abandond that use different building materials or are in a different style.

Except Oblivion's dungeons weren't small. At least not compared to Morrowind's. The problems were the linearity, lack of claustrophobic spaces as well as massive chambers, and the way lighting caused the dungeons to feel smaller, as well as the ease of running making it too fast+Easy to get through a dungeon. I hope they add wandering monsters (Through AI), less ability to "See" the entire dungeon, creatures that actually move through the dungeon, a demonstrated dungeon ecology, and a lot of "Old School" and tabletop RPG dungeon designs, with numerous ways to explore the area, and ways to be surprised by the denzines.

Limited interaction with the dungeon also caused problems, which is an inherent problem with CRPGs. Daggerfall's ability to climb and kick down doors (Alas, I don't think either option is coming back) made the dungeons more fun by giving a variety of ways to explore them and recover from mishaps. And kicking in doors is always fun. They should add a mechanic to allow you to blow a door off its hinges with a well-aimed kick (Locked or not).

Without the ability to climb, pits need ramps out of them, which require them to be larger, and it breaks versimilitude. Having side-passages that required skill to reach are also great for dungeoneering.

...I hope every designer has a copy of the D&D Dungeonscape supplemental, since a lot of the ideas in Tabletop RPG dungeon design can be applied to CRPG dungeon design.

Favorite dungeons from Oblivion were Sideways Cave and Vilveren. While both "Newbie" dungeons immediately accessable out of the Imperial Sewers, they both had excellent design features implemented into them, and they really fit into the world. The notes in both of them also made them feel "Real." In fact, the only part I didn't like about Vilveren was the "Return to Entrance" door at the end, which completely destroyed the sense of "Descending Deeper" into the dungeon.

A shame Vilveren was only good because it incorporated all the unique qualities that show up, with no other dungeon prior to the Mehrunes Razor DLC (One of the better ones, even if I couldn't really care about the artifact itself) having the same depth and variety.