Heaven is an ideal, a perfection.
Every time (Not as often as I should perhaps) I consider the topic of a Heaven, I come to a single conclusion:
Heaven can't exist. Won't exist. Doesn't exist. But damn it, I wish it did.

In this way, the promised Skyrim is like a Heaven to me. Randomly generated quests, dual wielding shields, attractive NPC's, all things that I would love to see happen.
But will it work?
First off, a spoiler: I greatly enjoyed every single Elder Scrolls game from Daggerfall to Oblivion. I have never looked at any advertisemant for any of these games before I played them until today.

I direct your attention to an official Bethesda made-and-released video depicting how AI would work in Oblivion.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRg
For a person new to the series it would seem strange, a bit iffy, but really cool overall; a great foundation for a great RPG.
For a person devoted to the series NOT having played oblivion it would seem amazing, with great voice acting, NPC actions, the AI would truly seem Radiant.
For a person (specifically me) who's played through Oblivion, whether that person enjoyed it or not, why didn't this ever happen. Ever?

Note: That wasn't a description of how the game would work. That was an IN GAME VIDEO. Ignoring the fact that every event had to have been scripted for him to know how to react and set up the video, how come I can count the difference in quantity of voice actors between this part demo and the entire game on two hands. Why are my overheard conversations unrelated to previous statements? (The Summerset Isles have seen an increase in Daedra worship. I saw a mudcrab today, nasty creatures.)

Bethesda, I have beaten wife syndrome. You've hurt me, you've hurt me bad, but I still believe that you have a heart of gold. I still love you and your games. Please, make Skyrim great.
Give me diagonal running, Believable NPC's (I could care less if they were scripted or not), less level scaling, fuller worlds (kill a bear, kill the entire bear population from Chorrol to Anvil), give us consistent lore. Oh Bethesda,

Don't give us promises.

Deliver unto us a game.

"Valhalla"
Brought to you by Bethesda.
It's a shame we had to wait 1000's of years to have a portal created for us.

Haha, nice one.

yeah i get ur point but it hink they will be able to keep alot of stuff.

Maybe someday you'll be able to upload your mind into a virtual world for all eternity, hopefully one created by Bethesda, but definitely not Oblivion.

bliviongate:

dual wielding shields...?

This late in developement I have confidence that what they are promising they will deliver.

Seriously, why is everyone wondering if they can do this?


Oblivion was quite late in development when those videos were originally shown. So Oblivion could always happen again. You never know.

LOL!!
very nice. i agree...but still gonna comment on crap that will never happen.

why not? would be the perfect set up for pansy......i mean pacifist characters. not to mention you can double shield bash.

Aye, I'm giving this game no quarter. the Hype can kiss my glorious shining rear, patience has lasted this long, another 11 months waiting for the game is a pitance to pay.

Bethesda encountered a number of problems with RAI, they even had a few stories of towns getting wiped out after a minor transgression led to a major brawl, so it had to be scaled back. This occurred long before the game was released and was widely publicized; certainly there were a lot of disappointed people (even among those who knew what to expect in the final version) but Bethesda did make an effort to get the word out.

The same thing happened with the shadow system, in the first few videos objects had shadows but this was removed not long afterward.

There is a trade off when it comes to game information - if you get information earlier you're not spending years knowing nothing but there is a greater chance that things will change before release. Oblivion had a few instances of this with RAI and the shadow system likely being the highest profile, it looks like Skyrim is being unveiled even later in its developement (it may already be in beta) which gave us an immense wait before the game was announced but will likely cut down on the amount of publicized content that is changed before release.

People were complaining about Shadows? :confused: :facepalm:



Go outside........ on a sunny day or get a lightsource....


Seriously what is the gaming world coming to? you'd think people would be more inclined to notice and appreciate the intricacy of NPC interactions with each other, the player, the events instead of some almighty shadow casted by a piece of paper.

I understand what you mean by gamers/developers needing to focus on more important things, but if shadows are so trivial, why not have them? I didn't miss them, honestly, but they would be a great inclusion.

Also I understand the NPC's burning down the cities over a stolen apple, or something similar, but you have to understand that the point was "Promised, shown, not delivered." I sympathize with the Bethesda team that had to create this video of an admittedly "divine" RPG and then be forced to not delivered, but then again, this entire thing could have not been unscripted, and this entire thing, scaled back to reduce aggressiveness or whatnot, I still believe that they could keep a single flowing conversation.

We will never know, and can only hope that Skyrim is every bit we hope it will be.

P.S.
To all you duel wielding shields naysayers, I strongly and heartily dislike you.
http://img228.imageshack.us/i/dwsield2cq9.jpg/sr=1
My argument stands

you've clearly never seen shadows done right in a game. it's not just fluff - good dynamic lighting can do a hell of a lot more for immersion than good animations and conversations between NPCs.

Really?

I'm sorry but this made me laugh.

I can understand it being somewhat important but more than NPC dialogue and animations?

Amen to that! Everything sounds so good so far, and they sound really confident on that release date... I just really, really hope some of the great things we've heard and are going to hear are empty promises.

Perhaps not quite as important depending on your perspective, but good dynamic lighting can add loads to a game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L20ssgSTKVs

Because it would be the ultimate character. Apart from maybe healing spell + shield.

Sure, but no one is complaining about Oblivion's AI because NPCs never got in fights or stole things. People complain about the AI because every single character just stands around all day long, maybe goes to a tavern at night, and then goes to bed. And throughout all of it they spout off ridiculous canned responses that never quite makes sense as a dialogue between two people. I really don't think the presence of safe guards preventing town obliteration was the problem here.

They never meant to lie to you on that with oblivion, if you go to the twitter, somewhere on there they explain that that actually wasnt in game at all, that was set up in a very short time frame and the radiant AI just wasnt working the way it was intended by launch time for the actual game, NPC's would attack each other over food, beds, even the use of a rake left laying about, so as amusing as it would have been for a short period, they knew they had to leave it out to ship the game on time as they had promised.

In all seriousness, I'm not going to take EVERY word that they say in previews to be true. Obviously, that's just a bad idea. I'm cautiously optimistic that this will be a great game, though.

I don't think people realize how much shadows drain a system. They aren't that hard to program, until you start to try and create better engines to run shadows more efficiently on the system, which is still more than plausable, in fact many modern games do it. BUT, even with an absolutely fan-freakin-tastic engine to reduce the load on the hardware and still look good, most systems are gonna have a hard time crunching numbers for shadows AND crunching numbers for animations AND crunching numbers for stats AND crunching numbers for rendering distance etc.

It would be nice, but honestly, I don't think people realize how much grander games would be if we'd stuck with, say, ps2 graphics (and yes, even I shudder to think, but i'm making a point here) I mean, for one think Oblivion boasted how their was 16 in game square miles or so to explore... if graphics hadn't taken over the gaming industry in 2003 or so we'd be having a skyrim thats 160 square miles of shear exploration, physics engines that would be, oh, say fully destructable enviornments including terraforming (not really what I want to see in TES, but I'm making a point about gaming in general) and real running water plus amazing particle physics, fire that spreads, plus God literally only knows how many other gameplay elements to add.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those luddites who wants 3d games to go back to super star-fox level graphics, in fact I don't want them to go back at all, the standard has been set, period, but graphics need to take a back seat for a while to let everything catch up and get a breather. Even Bethesda is a little guilty of glossing over missing gameplay elements with eye candy, there are hundreds of small, subtle, almost imperceptable examples when you compare Morrowind to Oblivion. The subtly of it proves how masterful Bethesda is at hiding it, but its there if your paying attention.

So shadows are cool, especially if, say, hiding in real-time shadows actually effected sneak, day or night, but that is such a drain on hardware (not the biggest useless drain out there, so i'm not bashing shadows, I think real time shadows SHOULD be in) but since all those other useless graphics-related visual eye candies aren't going anywhere I just think shadows are gonna have to wait for the more gameplay centric elements to be fully functional first.

go play STALKER, bro.

wait until you find yourself trapped in an attic at night during a thunderstorm, armed with nothing but a knife and an old, rusty Soviet handgun, while angry Russians sit downstairs trying to coax you to come down, their flashlights throwing shadows all around you, fully prepared and willing to riddle you with holes should that light fall upon you.

wait until you're hiding in a room in an abandoned elementary school at night, watching the wall outside the room, praying to god that the shadows of those mutants don't suddenly turn and start heading for your sanctuary.

wait until you're wandering through the woods and you see the shadows of three dogs eating the shadow of a guy you bought a tin of meat from a few minutes ago before you doubt the power of good lighting.

Sorry but discussion of heaven in anyway is viewed as religious discussion here and not allowed not to mention that it draws folks out to flame which is also not allowed.