Morrowind: (N)PC evolution

[MrHat]

Subtle touches are what seperates the great games from the good ones.

It has to be good first.

[El Gallo]

When the hell is this damn game coming out.

[Yegolev]

It is a slow, agonizing race between Oblivion and Twilight Princess.  I am betting Twilight Princess hits first, perhaps mid-May, with TES IV surfacing towards the end of June.

[El Gallo]

JFC, I had been hoping Oblivion and NWN 2 would keep me going until the WoW expansion.  Now it looks like I will have to go outside or something.

[Signe]

Please be careful.  The world has changed since the 60s.  There are more holes.   

[Murgos]

When the hell is this damn game coming out.

Sometime in between last November and the November after next.

[El Gallo]

Please be careful.  The world has changed since the 60s.  There are more holes.   

I always knew you cared 

[Dren]

Please be careful.  The world has changed since the 60s.  There are more holes.   

I always knew you cared 

She just doesn't want to trip on you when you fall.

[Murgos]

Please be careful.  The world has changed since the 60s.  There are more holes.   

I always knew you cared 

She just doesn't want to trip on you when you fall.

Specifically, she doen't want any marks on your skin or the meat to get bruised...

[Ironwood]

It rubs the lotion on its skin or it gets the Hrose again.

[El Gallo]

 

[Signe]

You people are so mean.  Don't worry, El Gallo, I care.  In fact, I'd like to hug you to within an inch of your life... or more.

[Murgos]

85 minute interview podcast with Pete Hines:

main page
http://www.gamingsteve.com/

direct link
http://www.gamingsteve.com/podcasts/Gaming-Steve-2006-02-20.mp3

[Raguel]

speaking of ai, this is pretty cool:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20060216/blumberg_01.shtml

[Murgos]

Big mile stone must have passed, there are about a dozen new hands-on previews from different places up overnight.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=244903

The couple that I read mentioned how stable the game was and that everything seemed to be finished and ready to go so I'm guessing a gold announcement soonish and in stores a few weeks after that.


check out the video interview with Pete Hines: http://media.pc.ign.com/media/702/702491/vids_1.html

At the end he pretty much says they will be making a gold announcement in the next week or two.

[HaemishM]

Not all seems well in Oblivionland.

[schild]

I always felt Bethesdasoft was unreliable with lots of luck. They should have just remade daggerfall instead of dicking around with this for 3 years. Then they could've moved on to fucking up the Fallout license.

[Miasma]

That article is the one and only time I actually hoped for one of those annoying sigs which detail a computer system, for all I know he's trying to run it on an old computer.

I wonder if it will run better on a high end computer or the 360.  With the 360 are you able to patch a game using the hard drive and more importantly has that ever been done?  I ask because I know that regardless of its release date there will be quite a few spectacular bugs and if you are unable to patch them it will be very frustrating.

[Sauced]

I got the impression that the preview was on the 360?

[HaemishM]

It WAS on the 360. He never mentioned a PC version in there.

[Bunk]

You had me worried there with the description on that link. If all he is going to bitch about is the draw distance and frame rate on the console versions, then officially I'm still in pre-Oblivion orgasm mode.

[Miasma]

Oh, sorry my mind tunes out for at least a sentence or two as soon as I read the words "the highly anticipated", it's an automatic gag reflex.

In that case I choose to blame it entirely on the 360 hardware.  Yes I know that's not a fair or legitimate stance but I'm going to stick with it so that I can naively hope that the game will run flawlessly when I get it home.  Delusions are perfectly acceptable so long as you recognize them.

[Murgos]

Frequent loading is pretty much always a RAM limitation; it could easily be the 512MB of system RAM on the 360 that's causing that.  See EQ2 for the difference going from 512 to 1024 system RAM makes on loading (I have 2048 so if my machine chokes on loads they have problems.)  Pop in would be more related to video card issues, obviously the 360's video card is high end, but pop in of graphical extra's is not something thats a make or break deal for me, if the individual leaves popping in at 10 meters bothers me then I will disable them, if it's not an option to disable them I might whine a bit.

There are gameplay movies floating around that show little to no pop-in and view distances that go pretty damned far though so I'll keep an eye open for further complaints but it's not really affecting my purchase decision yet.

Oblivion's still a pre-order/day 1 item for me.

[WayAbvPar]

You had me worried there with the description on that link. If all he is going to bitch about is the draw distance and frame rate on the console versions, then officially I'm still in pre-Oblivion orgasm mode.

Yeah, once I saw it was the 360 I felt a bit better. I am not really a graphics whore, but that didn't sound too good in the preview.


I will buy it the day after it comes out, since I won't hear it is out until someone here buys it  :-D

[tazelbain]

I am going to wait on this.  I felt burned by Morrowind.  The high-end graphics plus large mostly static world plus boring combat made the game feel like a chore.  And if I have suffer through another "Chosen One" contribed story-line again, I am gonna go Haemish.

I'll wait to after release and see if any of this AI hype pans out.

[Fabricated]

I'm personally guessing Oblivion will be better in a lot of ways, but it'll be buggy as fuck to start, quests will be broken, and performance will be an issue. There will be a good half dozen bugfix patches, maybe some official addons, gameplay/script/quest problems will most likely end up being fixed by fans.

This is the PC version by the way. The 360 version will suck.

As for the blog impressions, that doesn't really surpise me all that much. Flip a coin on the constant loading and severe framerate/terrain pop-in being fixed a small bit by release.

[Yegolev]

A "me too" post, but it is obvious this guy isn't familiar with LOD or "console limitations".  He might not realize it but he's complaining about the 360 rather than Oblivion.  In fact, I have better hopes for the PC version of TESIV, since my optimism allows me to think the PC version will have better performance/shiney if run on a capable machine... meaning it won't be limited by the constraints applied to the 360 version.  PC port to 360, Yeg happy; 360 port to PC, Yeg smash.

[schild]

Despite what that guy says, I still highly doubt the PC version will look as good or run as good as the 360 version. What's more than that, I doubt the game itself will be very good. My faith in bethsoft drops by the minute, rather than the month or day.

[Ironwood]

Despite what that guy says, I still highly doubt the PC version will look as good or run as good as the 360 version. What's more than that, I doubt the game itself will be very good. My faith in bethsoft drops by the minute, rather than the month or day.

Should that be in green, or is it something else we can cast back at you in a couple of months so you can say 'That's not actually what I meant if you read carefully, between the lines, wearing your decoder ring' ?

[schild]

Which part? That the 360 version will simply be better in all aspects or that my faith in bethsoft drops by the minute? I stand by both. The 360 version will sell more copies. They'll put more love into it. Or money. But what's the difference these days anyway? As for the second part, I fear Bethsoft will have a 4-5 year cycle on making the Fallout game and it will suck balls.

[Ironwood]

"Look as Good or Run as Good as the 360 Version.  "

Cool.

Cya then.

 

[Murgos]

The audio interview I posted above has a part two up (with more next week) with this guys impressions from playing the PC and 360 versions for about 6 hours at Bethsoft.

He addresses that bloggers pop-in complaint and says he noticed no such thing in either version (except the emperors hair which flickered in on one of his times through the intro *shrug*).  He mentions that in his opinion the PC version looked and ran better but the 360 controllers seemed to provide a more intuitive play experience from a 'feel' POV.  Finally, he mentions repeatedly that 6 hours with the game has done nothing but make him even more eager to get the game than he was before he got a hands on.  I don't recall him addressing the load times issue but I was listening while working and there are people constantly asking me questions throughout the day and I usually just let the thing run while I answer (I'm not so infatuated that I had to rewind and hear every little detail :)

I have no idea what the guys qualifications are or his history of reviews or with Bethsoft.


edit: He's (gamingsteve) got the GDC video of Spore (35 min) up on his front page.  I had never seen it before but um, wow thats quite the sandbox.

edit the second:

Rockville, MD - March 2, 2006 - Bethesda Softworks® and 2K Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), today announced that the highly-anticipated role-playing game, The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion™ has gone to gold master and will be available in stores in North America and Europe during the week of March 20. Oblivion will be available for Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PC in both regular and collector's editions.

"Our most ambitious project ever is finally done," said Todd Howard, executive producer of Oblivion. "We're excited to get the game into everyone's hands and let them experience it for themselves. We hope they enjoy it. I think it's our best game yet."

Oblivion is an epic, open-ended single-player RPG for the next generation providing gamers with one of the most life-like gaming experiences to date. The powerful combination of unprecedented graphics and freeform gameplay allows gamers to unravel the main quest or explore the vast world at their own pace. Oblivion is the fourth chapter in the award-winning Elder Scrolls series that includes Morrowind® (2002 RPG of the year - Computer Gaming World), Daggerfall™ (1996 RPG of the year -- PC Gamer), and Arena (1994 RPG of the year - Computer Player).

[Fabricated]

Despite what that guy says, I still highly doubt the PC version will look as good or run as good as the 360 version. What's more than that, I doubt the game itself will be very good. My faith in bethsoft drops by the minute, rather than the month or day.

Um, may wanna think about that a bit dude. Oblivion was started a PC title before the 360 version was started. The PC version is getting the toolset. The PC version can also be patched and have the graphics quality adjusted.

Also, the Xbox version of Morrowind was utter shit compared to the PC version in every way.

[Ironwood]

Shhhh, don't spoil it.

[schild]

Ironically, on the PC Morrowind was utter shit as well. It's tough when the bar is set that you have to actually work to make it shittier. Also, the xbox didn't have near enough on board memory (graphics, ram or otherwise) to even be a reasonable contestant for a platform to play Morrowind on. The 360 has it in spades. Also, PC Gaming is dead. Much like Deus Ex 2 was made for consoles, enjoy your new white and silver overlord. Sure, there are exception, but the retailers don't give a shit. Not when Oblivion 360 is out pre-selling Oblivion PC 10 to 1.