So how would you have made the last two Elder Scrolls games?

[Zomg]

Daggerfall is an underengineered prototype for an amazing game no one has made. Maybe Daggerfall with emergent politics, crime, demographics, personalities, "lore".

But those dungeons are just okay, and can be tremendously boring, so don't over-romanticize 'em.

 

[Luzur]

So what does everyone think of Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul?

I thought it was a significant improvement.

a substantional improvement, but still that voice acting and all other stuff....*shudders*

But those dungeons are just okay, and can be tremendously boring, so don't over-romanticize 'em.

i was okay with them, they where better then Oblivions.

 

[Wyrmlord]

Daggerfall is an underengineered prototype for an amazing game no one has made. Maybe Daggerfall with emergent politics, crime, demographics, personalities, "lore".

But those dungeons are just okay, and can be tremendously boring, so don't over-romanticize 'em.

I don't mean to overromanticize Daggerfall dungeons.

I acknowledge them for what they are - large indoor places in which you stroll around so you can kill creatures, and maybe find a certain item you were required to by a quest while doing it.

 

[Demnogonis Saastuttaja]

Take all sound effects, camera, movement, graphics and combat from Dark Messiah. Improve the usefulness of various enviromental spells (think of Metroid. Getting to a new place because of some new power is cool.), and perhaps rip-off that cool spell power system from Wizardry 8 instead of having to create new and more powerful exactly same spells. The character system should otherwise be like Daggerfall. Have small bits of procedurally generated content, but most of it handmade. The dialogue system could as well have a few keywords/parser and dialogue trees. And while I suppose these games are about roaming, I think it would be great if there was at least some kind of way to progress time (ie. what happens in the world - something about a demon invasion etc.) - maybe it could be simply tied to your experience. Lastly, de-pussify it - have some gore, boobs (like in the previous games) and such, don't drown it in shit but add bits of dirt here and there. Oh, and have an engine that can handle multiple people and animals at the same time, so that the cities aren't empty. Like in the Witcher (no I don't mean that engine handled it well, but there was a lot of life to the city). You also could disable speaking to useless people, so you wouldn't have to try dialogue with everyone if you want simply to get a quest.

 

[Eldritch]

This thread is excellent.

I have been playing Daggerfall for the first time for a couple of weeks and nothing else because I'm addicted. Bad.

I'm a person who found Morrowind quite enjoyable thanks to galsiah's character development mod and a few others, coupled with the beautiful alien atmosphere they pulled through in that game. Seriously, the first thing that bothered me even before all the other more important things that should've bothered me when the prince of lies was pimping Oblibion with all the fake features was how they managed to do such a terrible, bland, high fantasy art direction after friggin' Morrowind. And people liked what they've gone for in Morrowind. Some of you guys might not remember but they even had bad stolen concept art from other games. How lame is that? There was even an epic thread about this on the Codex back then when this got "discovered". I'm not knowledgeable too much about the inner workings of Bethesda but I think they might have fired/replaced the art team that made Morrowind along with many others from the other departments. Jesus Christ...

Exploration.

This is the key to understanding TES games.

What sucks you in Morrowind is Exploration. What DEVOURS you completely in Daggerfall is again, Exploration. It is essentially going places, finding phat lewt, pwning things and then getting stronger, Going to deeper dungeons, finding morbidly obese loot, pwning bigger things and by *knowing* the teachings of sucking off the right factions, getting even more stronger...

Everyone who likes rpg games likes Exploration to some extent in one form or another. The sandbox style exploration of TES games can be even more appealing but as we saw from Oblibion it is pretty easy to screw up that formula.

The Exploration has to include challenge. Like REAL challenge. When you face an Ancient Vampire in Castle Necromoghan at level 3 for some random Harpy hunting quest with your shiny new Dwarven Claymore you just bought from the Odd Blades at Daggerfall City you think you can take on the world with brings you to an important realization. I can get pwned. Anywhere, anytime, especially at places with names like CASTLE NECROMOGHAN. This brings excitement to the Exploration because you don't know what to expect, you know you're taking risks when you decide to go some place named Castle Buttrape. In Oblibion, you knew exactly what to expect, everything. From the challenge to even the goddamn loot.

It would also help not to make the game world to be explored with the size of Disneyland Paris with a similar juvenile, uninteresting, bland content with all the dungeons similar, small and sterile, devoid of any real challenge, again, like Disneyland.

But the kids like Disneyland, and kids buy a lot of games.

Now what would have been really awesome, even more so than just Daggerfall with enriched content, better art direction and other improvements would be to take Daggerfall, and copulate it with Mount&Blade. Keep the Daggerfall sandbox play, huge gameworld, exploration, TES crpg character development "galsiah's cd mod" style and combine it with a properly modified M&B style medieval combat simulation with spells that is both realistic and crazy fun. With outdoor battles including majestic brown horse riding!!!

And the "outdoor" is just an aesthetic term. You could include the risk of getting "bandit" encounters you can duke it out on horseback when traveling places with varying challenges scaled to the REGION flavored with the according fluff of that region. If you're "recklessly" traveling through Troll Country camping it out on the way instead of using inns you get surprise visits from bands of romantic troll gentlemen looking for an opportunity for some "surprise sex" with some yiffy khajiiti adventurer in their lands for example etc. etc.

Or there could be "outdoor" dungeons along with the other indoor dungeons which would be basically dungeon like confined areas with large spaces and set loot, small structures, altars, battlements, set enemies and events etc. you are allowed and encouraged to fight on horseback. They could be large bandit camps, a huge battlefield with battlements and palisades, or even the combined outdoor section part of a large Necromancer's Castle with a courtyard/walls/moat filled with werewolves etc. you have to fight through and then climb OR have the gates open up somehow ( C&C ) and reach the indoor section of the real dungeon inside the castle in which you have to pwn/deceive/cut a deal with the powerful necromancer part of an important questline. The King of Worms awaits thee!!! But you're gonna go through hell to get five inches near him.

Couple all the TES freeform sandbox fun elements with some of Mount&Blade's like running trade caravans, invading places, getting fiefdoms, pwning people and making them your slaves/bitches and selling them. With the game world actually twice the size of Great Britain you will have fun with this game for an eternity even after completing the EXCELLENT main and the important questlines that employ all the innovative elements of the superb sandbox gameplay...

Now tell me how this game would not sell, even to the goddamn kiddies.

 

[Wyrmlord]

It would be an awesome game.

And yes, it will be possible to sell it.

In fact, the commercial potential for alot of things is greatly underestimated. The notion that turn-based combat does not sell is a ridiculous concept, considering that games with turn-based combat, like on handhelds or in strategy games, sell well enough.

Similiarly, there is no reason why the hardcore elements of Daggerfall could not be retained. Actually, who in this world would ever object to wall climbing, levitation, and rooftop jumping?

It's just that developers have the practice of "sell whatever you can make" rather than "make what you can sell".

 

[Eldritch]

Hell yeah it would be awesome. And M&B combat is b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l.

But that was actually a trick question, because I was intentionally waiting for the answer:

-Graphics LOL!!!

You can only make such a huge game that fits on a dvd with only so much advanced graphics. And kiddies like graphics. A lot.

 

[Luzur]

This thread is excellent.

I have been playing Daggerfall for the first time for a couple of weeks and nothing else because I'm addicted. Bad.

I'm a person who found Morrowind quite enjoyable thanks to galsiah's character development mod and a few others, coupled with the beautiful alien atmosphere they pulled through in that game. Seriously, the first thing that bothered me even before all the other more important things that should've bothered me when the prince of lies was pimping Oblibion with all the fake features was how they managed to do such a terrible, bland, high fantasy art direction after friggin' Morrowind. And people liked what they've gone for in Morrowind. Some of you guys might not remember but they even had bad stolen concept art from other games. How lame is that? There was even an epic thread about this on the Codex back then when this got "discovered". I'm not knowledgeable too much about the inner workings of Bethesda but I think they might have fired/replaced the art team that made Morrowind along with many others from the other departments. Jesus Christ...

Exploration.

This is the key to understanding TES games.

What sucks you in Morrowind is Exploration. What DEVOURS you completely in Daggerfall is again, Exploration. It is essentially going places, finding phat lewt, pwning things and then getting stronger, Going to deeper dungeons, finding morbidly obese loot, pwning bigger things and by *knowing* the teachings of sucking off the right factions, getting even more stronger...

Everyone who likes rpg games likes Exploration to some extent in one form or another. The sandbox style exploration of TES games can be even more appealing but as we saw from Oblibion it is pretty easy to screw up that formula.

The Exploration has to include challenge. Like REAL challenge. When you face an Ancient Vampire in Castle Necromoghan at level 3 for some random Harpy hunting quest with your shiny new Dwarven Claymore you just bought from the Odd Blades at Daggerfall City you think you can take on the world with brings you to an important realization. I can get pwned. Anywhere, anytime, especially at places with names like CASTLE NECROMOGHAN. This brings excitement to the Exploration because you don't know what to expect, you know you're taking risks when you decide to go some place named Castle Buttrape. In Oblibion, you knew exactly what to expect, everything. From the challenge to even the goddamn loot.

It would also help not to make the game world to be explored with the size of Disneyland Paris with a similar juvenile, uninteresting, bland content with all the dungeons similar, small and sterile, devoid of any real challenge, again, like Disneyland.

But the kids like Disneyland, and kids buy a lot of games.

Now what would have been really awesome, even more so than just Daggerfall with enriched content, better art direction and other improvements would be to take Daggerfall, and copulate it with Mount&Blade. Keep the Daggerfall sandbox play, huge gameworld, exploration, TES crpg character development "galsiah's cd mod" style and combine it with a properly modified M&B style medieval combat simulation with spells that is both realistic and crazy fun. With outdoor battles including majestic brown horse riding!!!

And the "outdoor" is just an aesthetic term. You could include the risk of getting "bandit" encounters you can duke it out on horseback when traveling places with varying challenges scaled to the REGION flavored with the according fluff of that region. If you're "recklessly" traveling through Troll Country camping it out on the way instead of using inns you get surprise visits from bands of romantic troll gentlemen looking for an opportunity for some "surprise sex" with some yiffy khajiiti adventurer in their lands for example etc. etc.

Or there could be "outdoor" dungeons along with the other indoor dungeons which would be basically dungeon like confined areas with large spaces and set loot, small structures, altars, battlements, set enemies and events etc. you are allowed and encouraged to fight on horseback. They could be large bandit camps, a huge battlefield with battlements and palisades, or even the combined outdoor section part of a large Necromancer's Castle with a courtyard/walls/moat filled with werewolves etc. you have to fight through and then climb OR have the gates open up somehow ( C&C ) and reach the indoor section of the real dungeon inside the castle in which you have to pwn/deceive/cut a deal with the powerful necromancer part of an important questline. The King of Worms awaits thee!!! But you're gonna go through hell to get five inches near him.

Couple all the TES freeform sandbox fun elements with some of Mount&Blade's like running trade caravans, invading places, getting fiefdoms, pwning people and making them your slaves/bitches and selling them. With the game world actually twice the size of Great Britain you will have fun with this game for an eternity even after completing the EXCELLENT main and the important questlines that employ all the innovative elements of the superb sandbox gameplay...

Now tell me how this game would not sell, even to the goddamn kiddies.

fap fap fap fap OH GOD IM CUMING!!!!!!!!!!! UUGH! *fountain of life*

 

[JarlFrank]

You can only make such a huge game that fits on a dvd with only so much advanced graphics. And kiddies like graphics. A lot.

I have one legally bought game in my collection [Medieval 2] that has 2 DVDs. You can also make it 3 DVDs, maybe. Actually, back in the time of CDs games had at least 2 CDs, some like Baldur's Gate 2 even had 4. Sometimes I'm torrenting games where the isos are 19 gigs in total. So I don't see any problem with size.

 

[Eldritch]

Well, I was using "on a dvd" figuratively there, I didn't mean just one dvd now there's no need for the assburger literalism here is there? :wink:

I am no expert but I think making such a huge game with relatively kiddie attractable 3d graphics with such a cyclopean world and content would take... a LOT of space.

But yeah, maybe it would be possible by properly downsizing the game world a little bit without killing anything too important while maintaining a somewhat Mount&Blade level of graphics. Some kind of 3d engine and a basic physics engine would allow a lot of good stuff with such a gameplay.

At some point its all a matter of scope and what things you have to sacrifice from it unfortunately... At least in our present level of technology, in the future, who knows what shit would be not only possible, but also trivial. :twisted:

 

[JarlFrank]

Also, what about re-using 3D models? You don't have to model every tree and every house, you can re-use some models. I don't know anything about what takes how much space and why, but if you would make Oblivion twice as large without adding any new models and textures, I guess it wouldn't be that much larger in gigabytes. I have no idea, though, but I guess it would be logical.

 

[Squeek]

In hindsight, Daggerfall was aimed at the sweet spot. No one may have been aware of it at the time, but project-Daggerfall was an attempt at a perfect shot at a perfect time, at the culmination of the great DOS-games era.

Looking back offers perspective not available then, one where it's easy to ignore how Daggerfall never actually scored a victorious home run. That doesn't matter. What matters now is that Daggerfall is testament to the fact that the perfect shot can be attempted, and not just by fans desperate to fulfill a pipe dream.

More than anything else about it, what needs to be appreciated about Daggerfall was its promise that the player could take part in an enormous muddled drama unfolding around him in a world full of mystery and adventure waiting to be discovered. It was the sandbox promise, the one at the crux of this genre.

 

[Luzur]

but you have to admit, they came close, tantalizing close.

 

[Eldritch]

Now imagine the story/main questline content of my game in a world including emergent politics, crime, demographics, personalities, "lore" with the M&B hybridized gameplay aspects allowing you to take part of huge outdoor battles at a crucial part of the story, raiding places with a lot of nice scripted events, owning a castle and running it with interesting set events again linked to the story like getting friggin sieged or sabotaged or finding a gate to oblivion in its basement, the concept of slave trade making you take stances about it maybe linked with certain racial demographics having C&C attached to who you're screwing up and who would screw you up in the future as a result, the introduction of massive trader factions and their political intrigues and the ability to attack entire cities/factions at some points and buttraping their capital & killing their doodz etc.

All of this with the super fun combat.

I came.

 

[JarlFrank]

It would be like sandbox RPG meets strategy game. Interesting, indeed.
Especially if you have the choice whether to get a castle and become a lord or not. Mulitple ways to finish the game. Deep complex politics. Awesome.

 

[phanboy_iv]

I don't mean to overromanticize Daggerfall dungeons.

I acknowledge them for what they are - large indoor places in which you stroll around so you can kill creatures, and maybe find a certain item you were required to by a quest while doing it.

I'm kinda with Wyrmlord on this. Daggerfall's dungeons *should* be boring, I keep telling myself that I ought to find them so, but everytime I tell myself "OK, I'll just enter and play for a few minutes", I end up playing for hours. I still don't know why, I don't even like dungeon crawlers.

 

[Eldritch]

@Jarlfrank

Doesn't even have to be THAT strategy game like in gameplay, you don't need to lead entire armies maybe other than some mercenary companions for hire and summonable cool creatures with some of them only allowed for the outdoor dungeons and random encounters on the way, slave raiding expeditions etc.

Take this for example;

"-the ability to attack entire cities/factions at some points and buttraping their capital & killing their doodz etc."

You could have risen in position considerably after doing a lot of quests for the A faction in the main storyline and in the "Siege of the B faction" you are "teleported" into a handcrafted section which is a small but crucial area in the epic siege accompanied by some soldiers of the A faction you're serving, you duke it out possibly on horseback on the way to the castle which is the "indoor" dungeon, after completing the "outdoor" dungeon which has the main objective of "somehow" (choices) reaching the inner castle, there you have to leave your comrades behind and proceed inside the castle to kill the faction leader dude of the B faction. You play the indoor dungeon more traditionally alone and its designed like that while the outdoor dungeon is more M&B like trying to get past a small army to reach the goddamn castle somehow.

I came. Again.

 

[Eldritch]

If you trust your swimming skill you could "try" swimming through the horrid high-tier enchanted moat filled with mutated slaughterfish and tentacle beasts with a magical undercurrent constantly pulling you down to finally reach some kind of drainage/hole that leads behind the castle walls.

Or if you're a VERY powerful mage character you could bypass the powerful magical shields protecting the castle set by the Royal Wizards, allowing yourself to cast levitation, only this time having to brave all those archers on the walls and maybe some trained Royal Griffins looking for prey spawned when you reach too high up in the sky.

Or you could try storming through the well protected gates with your horse if you trust your horse riding skill along with your fighting and/or other combat/offensive/buffing magic skills.

Or you could try climbing the extremely high castle wall if ur some sort of spiderman after passing the moat with "water walk" only to be met by some hot boiled love being poured down below and having to later fight in the overcrowded upper wall battlements without much space to move around.

Or........... Teh list could go on each with their own kind of challenges to be overcome by your characters certain mad skillz you can't easily max ALL of them at once.

This is just for the outdoor dungeon to reach that castle which is the inner dungeon which could have a more traditional and good old rpg gameplay. Including fewer really powerful high level enemies and other challenges suited for a lonely classical dungeon-crawler gameplay.

Now that would make for some epic endgame super dungeon. :twisted:

 

[1eyedking]

Ah, a wishful thinking thread.

How quaint, and productive.

 

[Squeek]

If you were to name the one thing the past two Elder Scrolls games ought to have done differently, it would be the same thing that needed to have been done differently with Daggerfall. There needed to be more...much, much more. Instead, Bethesda decided to go in the other direction by creating simpler games that were progressively more refined.

To their credit, Bethesda did offer fans the opportunity to do the right thing instead. Modders did what was needed to the best of their ability, and the mods they created greatly improved the next two games. To my way of thinking, computer role-playing games ought to be developed more that way in the first place. They should be made in modular pieces to exploit the fact that single-player games run on individual platforms that are each entirely capable of hosting individual versions (as modders have been making abundantly clear for years).

I don't want have to worry about any of the reasons why the RPG I'm playing can't be as big or complete as I really want it to be. Instead, I'd like access to a reservoir full of game reactions, a honeycomb oozing with rich RPG goodness, a fat bank account I can tap into to be provided with consequences of choices I make as I blaze my own individual trail through a deep seemingly-endless imaginary RPG world.

That's what I think of when I imagine Daggerfall done right.

 

[Eldritch]

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, a wishful thinking thread.

How quaint, and productive.

Suck my cock.

 

[Captain Obvious]

Daggerfall is an underengineered prototype for an amazing game no one has made. Maybe Daggerfall with emergent politics, crime, demographics, personalities, "lore".

But those dungeons are just okay, and can be tremendously boring, so don't over-romanticize 'em.

 

[Jaime Lannister]

This is gonna piss off the Daggerfall fans, but here goes:

--- A smaller, more varied, yet more connected world.

--- Gothic is a good example, there's something different around every corner instead of "walk through a dusty valley, kill cliff racers" or "walk through a forest, kill a wolf"

--- Add secret passages, more connections between dungeons, make every room and hallway have a purpose. Again, see Gothic. Smaller world, more detail.

--- Oblivion's combat was good for an action RPG, but could be improved by having a Gothic 2 style parry system when you don't have a sword out. Other than that, more physics objects and better AI would be nice but not necessary.

--- Fewer sidequests, more branches in the main quest, have the sidequests affect the main quest in small ways.

--- Areas that don't open up until you do certain quests, which would allow...

--- A world without level scaling.

 

[Wyrmlord]

While I like Daggerfall as it is, I must admit that your idea for an Elder Scrolls game is still more feasible and workable in some ways.

 

[Turjan]

Oblivion would have been a completely different game, given the name. There's not much salvageable stuff in there. There were two decent guild quest lines and one or two cool side quest ideas, and that's about it. A game in the Cyrodiil of old, as described in the original "Pocketbook to the Empire" would have been nice, keeping up with the exotic feel of the world.

Morrowind is a different case. The basic world concept and most of the factions are full of potential as they are. The main story has lots of potential, too (the execution of the endgame leaves to be desired, though). The engine would have to be optimized, so that much more from the concepts would have been possible (Vivec City from the concepts looked gorgeous). I also liked that many quests had nonviolent options to solve them. The two good faction storylines from Oblivion already showed how to make faction quests better, just keep Morrowind's nonviolent solution options. And make those factions more relevant - no career in the Tribunal Temple and the Imperial Cult at the same time. And make gaining influence in those factions tangible in game. The NPCs should react to that.

The rest has to do with making the world more lively. Small touches like those wandering merchant mods and some of the changes Bethsoft tried to - poorly - inject into Oblivion are steps in the right direction. A properly modded Morrowind showed lots of possibilities how the game could have been better - and it showed the engine limitations . Yes, I think Morrowind could have easily been better, because all the promise is already there.