Worrying Oblivion preview

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Burnov
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Post by Burnov »

Morrowind marathon stream: mms://a812.l1165445721.c11654.g.lm.akamaistream.net/D/812/11654/v0001/reflector:45721

After watching some of this, it actually looks half decent, only this is the Xbox version he's playing I believe. So that means precisely fuck all to me.

My enjoyment of the game, good looking as it is, would depend entirely on how it performed on a PC. They improved the combat somewhat, the lockpicking looked fairly neat.

But... if it does that herky jerky "pause every 10 seconds to load more scenery horseshit". I couldn't play it. Playing a game like this on a gamepad is entirely out of the question.

I'm assuming I'd need to buy a new pc at this point to even consider running it half decently.

The visuals are really good (on an xbox), but that wasn't nearly as interesting as some of the slight gameplay improvements they made. Unfortunately again, this is on a console, so it feels entirely wrong.


I'm finding this webcast to be very entertaining regardless. The guy commentating/playing is rather funny, both intentionally and not.

He had to find some glow dust to summon a deity, and so he started beating on this will-o-wisp type creature and got the dust from it... then accidentally ate it. So I watched him try in vain several times to fight other creatures for the dust and have his ass handed to him repeatedly.

Upon encountering a single wolf or something like that, in the middle of a plain, he whacked the poor thing over the head with a warhammer, watching it convincingly slump over he simply said "sorry rover". I lol'ed. You had to have seen it.

A neat feature of the game was when he raided some mountainside fortress of some cult worshipping mehrunes dagon, he started beating on quite a few before they started to run away, and they actually travel from place to place, enlisting the help of others inside the fortress to come to his aid, or to run away and hide with the others... which he eventually found and slaughtered.

Watching and hearing him get annoyed as he fights a ghost that had an incredibly obnoxious screech was also amusing. After which, he randomly collapses as if he died in a ghost ship, and the camera pans out as his character convulsed violently smacking into the wall and apparently getting stuck on something... again his reaction to it was spontanous and funny. As was his reactions to the other occasional visual anomalies in the graphics.

... Oh, and his Xbox crashed in the middle of the webcast... which was awesome.
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VasikkA
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Post by VasikkA »

Well, the webcast was as choppy as Morrowind, but judging from the first 40 minutes it looks like a mindless hack & slash to me, just in a nice environment. Just like the commentator said, it's like an MMORPG but better looking.

The combat and character interaction aren't much to cheer about.
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Post by St. Toxic »

Oh no! The fire alarm went!
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VasikkA
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Post by VasikkA »

Drama!
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Post by Burnov »

It is a hack and slash, no doubt about it.

The attraction of Daggerfall was that it was essentially hexen/heretic, only with stats and roleplay elements.

Provided the pc version runs as well as the xbox version. I'd buy it. They fleshed out the combat enough that it isn't simply standing in front of an enemy and repeating the same attack with little or no consequence until one of you dies.

Combat is dynamic, you can get knocked about and stunned as your opponents can, a minor feature added was a method to block attacks, they also attempted to a degree to simulate movement while striking with a melee weapon, to give the illusion that you're actually hitting with it instead of simply seeing an arm holding a blade cross your screen. It really does make a significant difference.

Of course if you're expecting some kind of realtime turnbased gameplay... no. You're not getting that, although the benefits of that are debatable. The fact is, there's very little you can do with a realtime first/third person game. It's basically what morrowind should have been. Which is daggerfall, only with modern gameplay features and graphics.

How does this bode for Fallout? I still don't think it's a great idea. The problem with making a real time roleplaying game with guns, is they turn to be REALLY lame.

In fallout since it's turn based, if you have a few guys all running about repeatedly shooting one another, it's a lot less stupid looking than having a bunch of wasteland denizens all just standing in the tens of feet from one another just repeatedly putting bullets in one another. From a realtime perspective. That just looks moronic. It's why I hated Deus Ex so much.

Not to mention that a lot of first person games that have RPG stats tend to warp the reality of firearm handling and performance to the point where not only is it farcical, it's really fucking annoying.

I don't want to play ANY first person shooter in which bullets fly 45 degrees out of the barrel, or have to put a million bullets into one guy to kill him. RPG elements be damned.
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VasikkA
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Post by VasikkA »

After seeing actual gameplay, I'm more convinced now that the Oblivion engine isn't appropriate for a Fallout game. The style of gameplay is too different and you can forget about tactical combat. For a dungeon crawler, like Oblivion, the first person view fits well, but exploring the gameworld in Fallout wasn't about watching pwetty butterflies flying around a moss-covered stump, but rather dealing with interesting people and quests. Memorable scenery in Fallout was almost non-existant, but the rest of the game was just so deep and intense. Thumbs up for Oblivion, but stay the hell out of Fallout. >:(
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Post by Burnov »

Agreed. After seeing some firsthand footage of Oblivion, I feel Bethesda is partly redeemed for the awfulness that was Morrowind, but yeah... Fallout + Oblivion = no.

Some memories courtesy of some guy on 4chan.

Image

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Urizen
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Post by Urizen »

mark my words: fallout 3 = deus ex
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Post by Jesus Christ »

NOT FUNNY!!! :anger:
I have returned! (again)
FIGHT ME!
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Aonaran
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Post by Aonaran »

Ho ho, just got home with my copy.
my vocabulary skills is above you.
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Post by Koki »

I bet it's all sticky by now.
Serious Business.
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Mismatch
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Post by Mismatch »

Aonaran wrote:Ho ho, just got home with my copy.
yeah it'll be all fun and laughs until I find you and snap your mouse arm.
everyone wrote:blahblahblah
what are you people drivelling about anyways?
I do hope that you arent trying to discuss some pseudo RPG in a fantasy setting and godawful writing.
:chew:
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Thor Kaufman
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Post by Thor Kaufman »

swell guy
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Wolfman Walt
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Post by Wolfman Walt »

Image
Flowers.
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VasikkA
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Post by VasikkA »

The flowers looked prettier in Oblivion. :aiee:
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PiP
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Post by PiP »

point (about Oblivion) is, how much impact do the stats have on combat in Oblivion? Do you have approaches other than combat to quests in Oblivion?
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Post by Burnov »

Hmmm... seriously depends. I think it's more heavy on the combat.

The game was always more heavy on the combat to be honest. However you can now bribe just about anyone in the game in hopes of getting info. And from what I've seen, stats do influence combat substantially. They did in daggerfall, there were certain places he went where he simply wasn't qualified to fight certain enemies. He had to come back when his fighting ability was bolstered by a better weapon, or training up his combat related stats.

However the thing I always liked about Daggerfall, is they never took stats to a ridiculous degree, you were always able to use your "deathmatch" skills to some degree to compensate for lacking stats, and some people may not like that, but that's what I loved about the game, I could get a bit extra out of my character if I played it to the maximum of my abilities. Otherwise it would have just been something gay like final fantasy where you spend all your time repetitively watching your saucer-eyed spiky haired androgenous waste of pixels jumping at an enemy, attacking and jumping back a few thousand times until you could gain enough experience.

So, from what I got out of the webcast, involvement of stats is enough that it keeps the game persistently challenging enough, but not outright discouraging that you're forced to play a certain way to meet with any sort of success.
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PiP
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Post by PiP »

cheers for the info.
I've actually tried to play Daggerfall a few times - using DOSBox and some other stuff - but I couldn't get my sword to swing. I kinda liked the char creation system tho :chew:
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Post by Megatron »

i liked it thwen he ate a;ll hew daedra hearts to try adn get his health back lol
:chew:
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PiP
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Post by PiP »

I can't play this 'stream'; I even reinstalled my WMP10 and made sure it has all protocols enabled, set MMS proxy to 'autodetect' (having tired 'no proxy' already), nothing. :?
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