They worked on Oblivion for four years...

Oh, i could have sworn i read they had a lot smaller work deadline for oblivion, ah well i thought i had a point for once in my life, thanks for crashing my dreams!! i'm just gonna cry in a corner now and cut.

I make 3D models. When I was finishing a let's say dress model 3 years ago I thought that I made a great job and that a week was a short time to accomplish that, and that it looks perfect. After 3 years my skills have advanced. I am capable of making the same model in under 3 hours, and not only that, but I can see a bunch of not-quite-mistakes and things that could be made better and be more effective in my 3 years old model. That means that I have progressed in my field, and my view of what is "the best" and what time is good, and what can or can not be done in general advance. I sincerely hope that in 3 more years I would think that all my models need redoing yet again
The same is with video games - if they are saying that what they did earlier is not up to their current standards than it means the standards got lifted, and the new plank demands better quality

It's another topic altogether if they will be able to make the jump, and that we will know only when the game comes out

My thoughts exactly. I'm reading what they say about Skyrim and I'm thinking I'm having a deja vu - that's almost exactly the same things they said about Oblivion and contrasted it with Morrowind 5 years ago.
My solution - wait for the game and see how much it's actually worth.

There seems to be this new trend in video games marketing to create a huge hype long before the game is released and then gradually "heat it up" disclosing small pieces of additional details up to the launch date. I don't blame them, it's probably working great (pre-orders, etc.)

I burned myself once with that, I pre-ordered Civilization 5, something I shouldn't have done. Another huge and pretty successful pre-launch hype campaign was Dragon Age: Origins. It's just how they seem to be doing it these days (think: Dragon Age pre-launch character generator, etc. - such things really make you want to buy the game, don't they).

I can understand, you improve with experiance and people and companies progress in time. I don't know how to say it. Bethesda should be proud on what they did with Oblivon, but from what I read, it seems Oblvion was a disapointment for Bethesda to make. It seems they were not happy with Oblivion for what they could do at the time. That would be like Bethesda saying Arean and Daggerfall is crap because they can do so much better now.

Again, when I see Todd talk, it seems inbetween the lines, he wasn't happy with Oblivion.

Oblivion: Six months with final hardware

Skyrim: Final hardware since day one of development

During the making of Oblivion the devs talked to us about the game they were making and we learned of things that were supposed to be in the game and then later they were forced to pull back on some of those things. Then even though they told us honestly that some of those things had to be cut, there was a few people who then went on to call those things lies.

Since that time, they have changed their practice and we hear almost nothing about the game on this forum from devs despite them coming to visit and to chat with us on a more personal level and browsing the forums for member thoughts and complaints and ideas. This time around, they have awaited announcement and information on the game until less than a year prior to release. There are less than 10 months until release. I am betting they are close enough to done to ensure the information they give us is correct.

They are wiser and have learned from their mistakes methinks.

There is a very good reason they are now able to say that about Oblivion. 5 years ago, Oblivion was the top in technologically advanced games. Now, looking back, we can see that the technology of 5 years ago limited it's capibilities. but take a look at fallout 3 and such games that came out after. We are now able to create better games. This will be an epic game. The other games that are coming out around the same time are a good indicator.

This. A hundred times over, this this this.

It was really hyped, and was horrible on release. I didn't buy it either because it got such bad reviews.

I dont find it to be very hyped, so far. They've made sure to tell us only what they have done, as opposed to what they were just working on. That way they don't promise us anything they may not put in the game.

I actually can see why Oblivion was a disappointment for them from modding the game. Oblivion, while working fine and well on the surface had several engine and coding problems that drew away a lot of very talented modders. Since I'm a graphical part expert I'll list the graphic part things:
1. Skeleton - character skeleton was not even symmetrical and obviously made... strange, probably to compensate for some kind of engine problem. Which interfered with animation and to lesser degree modeling.
2. Transparency - there was no way to force layer order expect for something done in Maya that resembled Voodoo practices more than modeling, and was only partially successful on complex shapes. The other way to stop textures from flickering ended up with rough edges on textures - no matter what you did your model and textures never looked good when utilizing multi level transparency. Which is a killer for clothing and hair design.
3. There where "remnants" of animated hair found in the game files that obviously even Bethesda couldn't force to work, so they had to settle for the bulky hair.
4. Rigging on character models required some other form of Voodoo to show up in character creation screen correctly.

And that is only form the graphical point of view - no matter what you did you banged your head in to some kind of limiter that felt like a mistake in programing or engine. Could draw anyone crazy. The obviously either had no time, or no tech to correct thous things, and just avoided them the best they could - by not rigging things on character (like hair) and making models that did not require transparency on more than one layer...
As I understand it similar issues where found in other parts as well - coding, scripting and so on.
I certainly hope that Skyrim woun't have as many mistakes - they had time to re wright any part of the engine that gave them trouble before, if they did it right than Skyrim will be a whole other story. But only if they did it right.

I can't believe Fable was ever even compated to TES. Fable isn't a bad game in my opinion, but it doesn't hold a friggin candle to ANY Elder Scrolls game. I would much rather play Morrowind than Fable 3 any day of the week.

oops! Off topic...

Is Skyrim being over hyped? Probably.

I think a lot of people are filling their heads with delusions that Skyrim is going to be so amazing, and that its going to be some massive technological leap over everything that came before it. What thats going to lead to is a whole lot of "Man, I'm so disappointed" threads the day Skyrim comes out. Will Skyrim be a step up from Oblivion? Sure it will, and some of the new features sound really cool. But remember... the Radiant AI for Oblivion was suppose to be far cooler then it turned out to be. Developers always make their games sound better then they end up, and fans always have far better expectations then they really should have.

For example, the Radiant Story system sounds great, and i have a feeling its going to be something that we hear about again and again. Bethesda is going to tell us its the best thing since sliced bread, and that its going to make our gaming experience amazing. Yet on your first play through, your probably not going to notice it at all. So a whole lot of fans are going to find themselves disappointed when they find out this oh so amazing system is really only amazing on the back end and has a minimal impact on the gameplay unless you play through a few times.

Remember... high expectations almost always result in disappointment. When it comes to Skyrim, expect a slightly more advanced Oblivion. If its more then that, great. If not, your still getting exactly what you expected.

Just want to second this, rather than typing a detailed response that'd be saying exactly the same thing. If anything, Bethesda are being quite humble (by recognising faults of previous games) and coy (by releasing a steady trickle of information less than a year from release, rather than running a bunch of flashy "trailers" with no real insight or explanation).

I think this self-criticism in hindsight applies to almost any form of progression, but especially anything related to computer technology, in which a 5 year gap is practically starting from scratch in terms of what can be achieved. 2011 will give us Skyrim, but just look at what games looked like in 2006, 2001, 1996, 1991... to see how much changes.

I guess Im old

I still think Morrowind graphics are amazing.
Imagine what I felt when I first came out of the sewer in oblivion.

Skyrim is gonna be a meltdown of bliss.

Really these guys said it all. Technology, relativity, and progress. :grad: :user:

Meh, I think you're just unreasonably critical to be honest.

Okay, Radiant AI in Oblivion didn't live up to the expectations, but I was still impressed by what it did do when it came out.
How many RPG's have you played the last 5 years where NPC's just don't stand around at the same place all day? I bet it's pretty much none of them.

Also the stealth improved a lot, they overhauled the combat and it worked more or less and the level of detail was excellent. And off course you could still go anywhere you want and do whatever you like at any moment.
It had a lot of problems, and in many aspects (scaling, magic, dialog options, character diversity...) it was a step back from Morrowind, but I still enjoyed 200-300 hours playing it, which is at least 4 times more than anything else I've played the last couple of years.

In contrast, I was far more disappointed with Mass Effect when they claimed you could explore over a hundred planets (don't remember how much exactly) and then discover that only the handful locations you had to visit for the main quest had a reasonable amount of detail. All the rest was so uninteresting that it wasn't worth exploring at all and I finished that game in 25 hours feeling ripped off, even though I liked it for what it was.

Indeed.

If Skyrim is being "hyped" in any sense of the word it is being done by us the fans and not Bethesda.

It is a little bit deja vu. I guess we have to get the gimmicky stuff out of the way...new graphics engine, snow physics, radient story, havok behavior...blah blah blah yada yada yada. Soooo next gen. Just like speed tree, radient ai, facegen, havok physics, and all that other stupid gimmicky overpriced crap in Oblivion that was overhyped and ended up being either disappointing or irrelevant.

If this is hype I am a dragon!

The game has only been announced for a month. Your question will be valid in September I think.

I was a little taken aback by the design decisions of oblivion v.s. morrowind but I ended up spending just as much time in cyrodil as morrowind.