14. Indubitably, Oblivion has seen a major shift in priorities where aspects specifically pertinent to cRPGs are concerned. Most apparent in that regard is the transition from a complex -sometimes complicated- game with faction politics, rich lore background and a large quantity of dialog to a game that emphasizes accessibility and above all else pure entertainment. Additionally, in contrast to its predecessors, Oblivion's game world is to be filled with meaning not by the game itself but rather by the player's own imagination. What are your thoughts on this? Do you believe you managed to achieve a proper balance between depth and complexity on one and accessibility and easy entertainment on the other side? What are your goals in this respect for future productions?
This is more of a statement then a question, but I’ll do what I can with it. First, Oblivion has more dialogue and books then our previous games, so I don’t see a shift there. It also has the most complex NPC behavior we’ve ever done by miles. As far as the game world being filled by the player’s imagination, that’s a common criticism we get on every game, and a valid one. I think we did a better job this time, I mean you play the previous stuff and the world is very static. It’s either nameless NPCs or ones that just stand in place all day. So that was something we tried very hard to address, to make the world feel alive. I think it’s getting better, but it’s still easy to think of 100 things to have the world do to make it feel more alive.
In regards to the politics comment, that’s a valid statement, in that Daggerfall and Morrowind both have main stories dealing with a lot of politics, and that wasn’t the story we wanted to do this time. There was a time that the Oblivion main quest featured a ton of that, dealing with the Elder Council, but we did end up cutting it while it was still on paper, in all our story reads, it really defocused the main quest from dealing with the daedra, which we wanted the focus to be. Anyway, I think the lack of actually seeing and dealing with the Elder Council is certainly one of my “I wish it had this†things, as we wrote some great stuff for it that just didn’t make it in. It was the “nobility†faction line, where you made your way up and became “The Duke of Colovia†and sat on the Elder Council. The only remnant of that questline in the dead Duke in Castle Kvatch, which was to be the beginning of that line.
The next part of the question, which is ease of play versus complexity, that’s a harder one. We’ve certainly gotten praised on Oblivion for how well it walks the line, but I wouldn’t say that all the solutions we had are the right ones going forward. Some are; some aren’t. It’s certainly our desire to push on both ends, to make the game as smooth and easy to play as possible, but have great depth. In the grand scheme of games, we’re still on the “insanely complex†end of the scale, so I do spend a good bit of time watching how first time people play the game, what hangs them up and so forth. So that always bothers me, you don’t want basic actions in the game to be difficult or confusing.