Anyone else feel that Todd Howard answered our questions with a lot of "It's being worked on and we are seeing how it goes into the game...but I don't know.."

I can't wait to listen to this podcast in November after the game is released and see what has changed. Anyone else feel like this? (Not really sure what the feeling is)

He doesn't want to overhype the game. Have you seen the way people turn on Peter Molyneux after every game Lionhead make?

Now that I think about it I'm glad how he answered. Left a lot of wanting but not NEEDING if that makes sense.

So true. Also he doesn't want another Oblivion fiasco again. Smart move on his part. A comapny that actually learnt something from their releases. Lets just hope it's not a bug fest as well. :wink_smile:

Yeah I don`t think it`s so much "Todd doesn`t know" as more "Todd doesn`t want to give too much info at this point".

Agreed. Plus I believe they made a mistake with over hyping Radiant AI in oblivion, so they are trying to say little to nothing about things they aren't 100% sure are in the game.

Stiiiilllll waiting on some gameplay though lol

What I took away from that is quite positive - I think they're either implementing features in the most detailed, robust and fun ways possible, or not implementing them at all. The stuff they're "experimenting" with and unsure of seem to be non-essential but relatively high priority features to them, and they just don't know if they can do them justice or not in the development time left.

I sure hope they can.

Edit: Or, he's more confident of them than he admits, and doesn't want to overhype or give away information too early, yeah. He did mention that they have a plan for when and how certain information is released.

Yeah, he's making the right call. They overhyped Oblivion enough and look what happened. You need to promote your game to ensure good sales (Unless you're Blizzard, in which case millions will buy your game on day one no matter what you make ) but being as tight lipped as possible is normally the best call, it creates tension and anticipation and it also ensures that people aren't dissapointed. Lowering expectations without making your game sound like crap also works.

I think he did a great job with the interview, he's making an effort not to make any promises which may turn out that he can't keep.

Lol just from looking on here a lot of people don't have high expectations for the game. So i guess hopefully they will be surprised. I have high expectations but i don't nitpick games to every little extent, i also don't worship some games and no matter what comes out it's not as good.

Appears to me like it's lost of work to do, spears was a clear no.
mounts was undecided, same with spellmaking.
I can understand spellmaking as it's mostly a balance and how spells works, pretty simple to tweak with and pretty easy to add or take out things.
Forum complains might help here
Mount on the other hand require lots of work and animations, far more than spears, it's not something you tweak a lot except animations. You decide on a pretty early stage if you want to continue with or axe it. Mounts is in but will not talk about mounted combat makes more sense.
Overall I'm far more optimistic after the interview.

Yeah, as others have said, he didn't want to oversell it. Also, there's still nearly a year left until release, it's not too late for some of these things to be put in. We may yet see spears or something like that. If the game was ready to be released now, they'd release it now, but there's still more being worked on and more being added. Who can say for sure? Not even Todd Howard.

Am I the only one who saw this thread title I started hearing Scotty Doesn't Know from Europtrip in their head, but as, "Toddy doesn't know! Toddy doesn't know! Don't tell Toddy! Toddy doesn't know!" Lol.

It's quite a shame, because the Fable series is quite good but always falls short of the massive hype Molyneux creates. He is, in a way, dooming his own game. I'm glad Todd isn't hyping up Skyrim too much. Besides, I'm plenty hyped for the game already.

You weren't the only one. I was expecting a youtube video with a Todd version on the first post.

Yes, I really appreciate his openness and honesty. Just saying "I don't know, some of my guy's are still working some ideas and we'll have to see how it goes" is a lot better answer that the standard bs PR answer.

LOL but you cant say he does not know :jammasterjay:

Dynamic lighting was cut that's it. Radiant ai wasn't as fully fledged as they hyped it to be but it still was there in some form. So what were all the other things cut from the game?

I hardly find it surprising that there were a lot of questions to which he didn't give a concrete answer, after all, the game is not finished yet, so Bethesda may want to be cautious about promising anything they aren't sure they can deliver, which sounds like a wise choice, considering how many times players have been dissappointed with games because the developers failed to deliver all that was promised. And some things maybe are done already, but Bethesda feels they're best left to a later time to answer. Listening to the podcast, I got the impression that Todd was being quite careful not to give out more information than Bethesda is ready to give or make any promises that could potentially not be fulfilled.

Myself, I'm glad that we did get some new information from it, and more detail on some things that we weren't sure of before. Some of the information was pleasing to hear, some of it less so (The lack of spears probably the highlight of the negatives to me.) But I'd rather be told the truth of what Bethesda is doing with the game than only what would please me about it, and the way those parts were worded still left open the possibility that those things players want which currently aren't in the game might be implemented later on, so Bethesda can still turn around and say "Actually, we decided to put spears in after all."



To be fair, since they've been able to get as far as Fable 3 already, it seems to me that despite each game producing dissappointed fans complaining that it failed to live up to the hype, they series still enjoys a fair amount of success, and I'm not talking a minor niche market success, Fable is the kind of game that's constantly being hyped up at major events.

I think it's more of either.

We don't wanna release too much info at once

or

We don't wanna look stupid when we say that their will be mounts in the game when come November they might not be in the game and then that would make us look stupid because we said that mounts would be in the game back in February.

Sorry that he's not Peter Molyneux, eventually leading you towards disappointment.

Every TES game goes like this in pre-release Interviews and Podcasts.

That's funny, I didn't get that. And I watched Eurotrip again last week!
/disappointed in myself

I think part of it, is not wanting to overhype the game with 9 months left to go before release. He has to hold some exciting elements close to his chest to continue to wow, surprise or even disappoint us as the year goes by, but I think the other half of the reason, of why he stays so tight-lipped about things, is the hyper-critical, mob mentality that the community of fans develop, when he gives info about a gameplay element that doesn't end up being polished or perfected enough, to make it into the final version of the game. Radiant A.I for Oblivion is a perfect example of this. Perhaps if we had been more understanding, in the past, about the problems they face as developers, then maybe we would have received more info on mounts, or on werewolf/vampire/etc. transformations. Now he won't even begin to discuss any gameplay element, that isn't 100% in the game. And you know what? We have only our abrasive, reactive, overcritical selves to blame for his unwillingness to divulge these details.

He was being cleverly coy and managed to dance around some of the questions like mounts and werewolves. I guarantee that mounts and were-somethings are in the game. Spears however were clearly a NO although halberds, glaives etc..are a possibility.