:facepalm:

Don't waste your time Hircine. :wacko:

Oh, and 200 hours of gameplay? That's hardly anything for an open sandbox world RPG. I'd expect that from a sandbox action game, like Grand Theft Auto.

What. Please let me know what version of GTA you're playing that has 200 hours of unique things to do.

... The point is, Oblivion really lacked a lot of potential content because of the space taken up by, I believe, voice files.

You mean you didn't like (the change that made it not like Morrowind?) it as much as Morrowind right?

Because if you didn't like it at all you're a moron. Sorry! But if that's the case, then you are.

This is exactly what I call quantity over quality, because although it might seem some of Oblivion's quests were more detailed and longer than average Morrowind quests, they lacked the intrigue, under current, rivalry, and gray morality that was interwoven in the Morrowind's quests. Except for example the dark brotherhood quest-line and some misc quests, I know.

The reason that a lot of people like Morrowind over it's predecessor and successor is that it was different, from any other experience that we had in any other game, it was dreamy, intriguing, hard to start, but utterly more satisfying to conquer. It was a surreal life never experienced before or after, not as generic as Daggerfall's randomly generated environment and encounters, and not as bland as Oblivion's repeating landscape and encounters.

Not as overwhelming and hard as Daggerfall's world and game-play, not as underwhelming as oblivion's environment and the deeply rooted hand-holding in every aspect of the game design, and cut down quest meats because there was not enough resources and man power to make a lot of voiced dialogs, so that made the core of the game-play a shallower experience.

Just a perfect middle point for any of those aspects, except that for some people it was hard to get into, as they were not prepared to the game mechanics, and did not know the tricks of the trade in such an open ended game with so much pitfalls.

I do not say that in every aspect it was a better game than the others, but I say it had a better overall experience from the combination of those aspects, and had less compromised elements.

They still had 552.96 MB of space left on the DVD. The amount of space for the mesh for the huge Cathedral in Bruma? 2,657 KB. Which is the equivalent of 2.59473 MB. That means they could have made 213 new meshes that big if they reuse the same textures.

Meshes are really small space-wise and they re-used a lot of textures for different things in Oblivion. The actual .esm with all of the quests, scripts, NPCs, world-spaces, AI, and everything took up a whopping 264 MB. They could have fit almost a whole entire new game using the same meshes and textures with the space they had left.

They had the space, they just didn't use it for whatever reason. DVDs can fit 4.7 GB, they used 4.16 with Oblivion. Voice files took up a lot of space, but not the whole disc.

Personally, I think there are going to be a bunch of "voices" in a menu that they'll choose from for more generic NPCs. But then important ones will have a unique voice, but won't say the same stuff everybody else does. That's what they did in Fallout 3. Only thing is I hope we'll be able to talk to NPCs in the next game, unlike all of the Megaton settlers who would talk with each-other about stuff, but not you.

Even though Voice files take a lot of space, nothing else takes up a lot of space. An elephant hinders the number of other elephants in the room, but it has no influence on the amount of ants that can be there. This is essentially why I believe that Voice Acting is not limiting the amount of content.

Even though Voice files take a lot of space, nothing else takes up a lot of space. An elephant hinters the number of other elephants in the room, but it has no influence on the amount of ants that can be there. This is essentially why I believe that Voice Acting is not limiting the amount of content.

But what if I like elephants? I don't just one one elephant, I want a lot of elephants, because more is often better. Quality often = quantity.

Like I said in a post earlier today. They could have had 4 more voice actors in the CD uncompressed if they wanted. They just didn't.

You do realise that they don't know exactly how big every file in the game is going to be, don't you? They leave space for leeway. Obviously, they didn't have time to fill in this space... Deadlines are important, you know.

But what if I like elephants? I don't just one one elephant, I want a lot of elephants, because more is often better. Quality often = quantity.

Oh, and if there were just baby elephants (Morrowind style voice acting), I could make room for many things. I could have 50x the amount of ants. I could have penguins, lions and hippos, if I so please. Please, don't try to tell me that voice files don't hinder the possibilites of the game.

You can right click on any folder and see how big it is VIA Properties. Down to the last byte of information.

But what if I like elephants? I don't just one one elephant, I want a lot of elephants, because more is often better. Quality often = quantity.

Oh, and if there were just baby elephants (Morrowind style voice acting), I could make room for many things. I could have 50x the amount of ants. I could have penguins, lions and hippos, if I so please. Please, don't try to tell me that voice files don't hinder the possibilites of the game.

Maybe some Werewolves can fit in there, too.
Of course that wouldn't take up a lot of space normally. Just a few extra graphics.

The question is, Why didn't they keep all the stuff that the majority liked?

What was it about Oblivion in that it had to lack... stuff?

@Camoran: Well, I'm still playing Morrowind and doing many of the vanilla quests, and I haven't even started on most of the guilds, today after 7 years of owning the game. And even that is lacking in content. And Daggerfall... don't even get me started.

You say that Morrowind is lacking in content? How you can you be satisfied? Morrowind was probably the biggest game for its time save for Daggerfall which was all randomly generated content. Do you want Elder Scrolls 5 to be completed randomly generated? Daggerfall is too big for me. I like the feeling of completing a game.

But without word from Bethesda, anything we say, including that it's because of voice acting, is just speculation. We don't have "solid facts" on why Bethesda did what they did, only they know.

Morrowind is my favourite game ever. But, I can admit it. It has flaws. The lack of content in such an open world is a let down. Unlike certain people I see around here, I can admit these things. Even Daggerfall, the legend of TES, is flawed in many ways. Even Zelda: OOT, a legend of RPG's, has flaws. Don't for one second think that a game doesn't have a flaw. Every one, at least so far, has one. But, I don't hate them for it. The devs are human, afterall.

Even Super Mario Bros, a legend of a game, has its flaws.

The animals are metaphorical, incase you're thinking otherwise

Until someone else can answer this question with solid facts and reasoning, I'm sticking to cuts for space caused by voice files.

You say that Morrowind is lacking in content? How you can you be satisfied? Morrowind was probably the biggest game for its time save for Daggerfall which was all randomly generated content. Do you want Elder Scrolls 5 to be completed randomly generated? Daggerfall is too big for me. I like the feeling of completing a game.

Lack of content? In Morrowind???

Why did they send the Nerevarine to Akavir? Why did they send the CoC to SI? We know why they done these things (probably), but Bethesda never actually came out and said it.