With the Fallout live-action show now out and honestly far better than I was expecting, are Bethesda also brewing an adaptation of their other big RPG series, The Elder Scrolls? Not at present, according to Bethesda executive producer Todd Howard, and he says he'd "probably say no" if approached. Mind you, that was the stance he had until Fallout finally fell into place.
]]>When Bethesda was working out how to turn their popular Elder Scrolls RPGs into an online behemoth to rival World Of Warcraft back in the late 00s, the initial pitch was "Elder Scrolls with friends," creative director Rich Lambert tells me. A simple idea on paper, perhaps, but one that proved to be a lot more complicated in the realisation of it. Zenimax Online Studios was founded in 2007, a year after The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion landed to universal critical praise, but it wasn't until seven years later that The Elder Scrolls Online finally released for PC in 2014. At launch "we were walking this weird line between 'online game' and 'Elder Scrolls game'," Lambert says. "We didn't do either of them particularly well."
Ten years later, though, The Elder Scrolls Online is thriving. At last count, the game has over 24 million players galloping about the plains of Tamriel, and later this June, it will receive its eighth major Chapter expansion, Gold Road, which adds Oblivion's West Weald to the game and wraps up the mystery of the new Daedric Prince that arrived at the end of the previous expansion, Necrom. But the path ESO has taken to get here hasn't been nearly as glittering, with its PC launch in particular generating "a lot of feedback", as studio director Matt Firor told press at the game's tenth anniversary event last week. In fact, it wasn't until ESO came to consoles in 2015 that the game really found its voice, says Lambert. "We had to really figure out what we wanted to be, and we chose 'Elder Scrolls'. As soon as we hit that core pillar of 'It's Elder Scrolls first, online second,' then it really just helped inform everything we've done since." Trouble is, when the thrust of ESO's development straddled the launch of two very different Elder Scrolls games, even nailing down that first part of the pillar proved to be more challenging than expected.
]]>The Elder Scrolls 6 is going to be a mixture of new ideas and RPG systems that go all the way back to The Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, according to Bethesda's former design director Bruce Nesmith, who was lead designer on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and senior designer on Starfield. In particular, Nesmith reckons it will "absolutely" continue with Skyrim's approach to levelling and progression, whereby you improved skills by performing the associated actions. He also thinks the game will "probably" retain elements of the magic system he designed for Skyrim, which broke away from Oblivion and Morrowind in being simpler to understand and more immediately powerful, at the price of flexibility and inventiveness.
]]>According to leaked documents, Microsoft are/were remastering Oblivion and Fallout 3. This is boring. The past decade of innumerable remasters has been boring enough, but remastering these two games is particularly boring. When even bother when all Bethesda have made since Oblivion is Oblivion remakes with added spacesuits or yelling? Boring. But while I think the torrent of remasters is a miserable sign of big publishers just giving up, if they're going to do it anyway: why not Morrowind?
]]>Overnight, in what Edwin called an "unredacted document oopsie" related to Microsoft trying to buy ActiBlizz, two things have been revealed that interest me. Well, three. Firstly, Phil Spencer capitalises "Gaming", which I hate. Secondly, as noted in that linked story, Phil Spencer wants to buy Nintendo and, in pitying also-ran brackets, Valve, which has some of the same energy as me walking into an estate agent and demanding a six bedroom house with a new fitted kitchen and a hidden library. And thirdly, according to a release schedule from a presentation dated 2020, Bethesda and Zenimax have planned out their next few years of games in depressing MCU presentation-style. Boy, are the next couple of years going to be whelming.
As is predictable now, it is largely a list of sequels and remasters, many of them dated quite optimistically, it must be said. This document pegs Starfield for 2021, for example, and obviously that didn't happen. There are also two unnamed games on there for this year (Projects Kestrel and Platinum; 2021's Project Hibiki we know refers to the surprise-released Hi-Fi Rush) and it seems unlikely they're going to appear before the end of the year. We know The Elder Scrolls 6 isn't coming for at least another five years. They're going to remaster Oblivion (but not Morrowind, the weird cousin everyone else likes most, but whose parents aren't sure what job to give them in 2023). And they're going to make Dishonored 3. I'm excited about that! But also fearful.
]]>What does the future hold for ZeniMax and Bethesda? A sizeable helping of the same, if a 2020-dated release schedule leaked as part of today's accidental FTC Microsoft court document blowout is to be believed. The document is from a July 2020 Microsoft presentation about the acquisition of ZeniMax, during the early months of the Covid pandemic - as such, it doesn't reflect Microsoft and ZeniMax's plans today, following global lockdowns and the buyout, and several of the dates are obviously bogus. Still, it's probably a good steer as to current and future Bethesda and ZeniMax projects, which may include Dishonored 3 and remasters of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Fallout 3.
]]>You may have noticed a mounting squabble between Starfield fans and detractors concerning the game's planetary maps, triggered by some leaks or fake leaks over the past week. Said skirmish has now escalated to "-gate" status, with "Tilegate" doing the rounds on forums and even creeping into search results, presumably much to the alarm of innocent, unaligned ceramics company Tilegate Trading Llc in Florida. The nub of the dispute seems to be thus: some people claim the procedurally generated tiles that comprise many Starfield environments actually glue together into complete globes, so that you can see and walk from one to the other and, indeed, all around the equator, while others claim they're discrete maps with invisible walls, similar to those of the astonishing "dreamable" space sim Noctis.
Who knows, we might have an under-embargo Starfield review in the works that will lay matters to rest. In the short term, the uncertainty about whether Starfield's planets are actually planets puts me in mind of comparable celestial angst in Bethesda's Elder Scrolls games, where planets are more properly described as planes of existence, conjured by immortal beings, which sort of orbit the mortal world of Tamriel. I've been revisiting how Bethesda's mainstay fantasy games thought about outer space in the run-up to Starfield, and while I'm intrigued by the new game's portrayals of celestial mechanics (latest discovery: the Starfield starmap represents stellar and planetary gravity as dimples on a kind of galactic tarpaulin, as in old Stephen Hawking documentaries), I'll be very surprised if it offers anything quite as wonderfully bizarre.
]]>The team of modders working to remaster The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in Skyrim’s engine have released a hefty roadmap video, updating us on all the work they have left to do before Skyblivion’s 2025 release window. As well as development updates, the new video (embedded below) contains plenty of glimpses at Skyblivion’s nostalgic landscapes. Come take a look at fancy Cyrodiil down below, which looks exactly how I remember Oblivion looking (until I looked at actual Oblivion again.)
]]>Look at any image of heavy metal horror game The Axis Unseen and you’ll recognise an archetype: the stealth archer. For a certain sort of Elder Scrolls player, it’s the only way to travel through a fantasy open world - perma-crouched, bow stretched lazily across the lower third of the screen. And it’s an appeal that creator Nate Purkeypile understands perfectly, having spent the larger portion of his career working on Bethesda’s RPGs, from Fallout 3 and Skyrim all the way through to Fallout 76.
“It’s probably not the best idea for most people to do a solo open world,” he says. “But at the same time, this is like my sixth one. I’m pretty sure what goes into these.”
]]>The RPS Time Capsule returns for its first outing of 2023, and this time we're casting our minds back to the hallowed year of 2006. Little did we know it at the time, but this is the year we start to see the birth of certain game series that are still alive and kicking today (just about), as well as the nascent beginnings of now beloved studios honing their craft on some of their very first titles. But which of those games have earned themselves a spot in the eternal RPS Time Capsule? Come and find out which ones have stood the test of time, and which, after reading this article, have been consigned to the smog-filled trashfire of future Earth.
]]>The team of modders working to bring The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion into Skyrim has updated us with a new trailer, announcing that they’re targeting 2025 to launch the Skyblivion project. By that point, volunteers will have been hammering away on Skyblivion for 13 years. If you remember what you were doing 13 years ago then you’ve got a better memory than I do. Watch the latest and rather snazzy trailer for Skyblivion below, and wonder whether Emperor Uriel Septim VII sounds more like Patrick Stewart or Sean Connery.
]]>Have you ever been playing a game and craved some pizza? Of course you have. If you're like me, you crave pizza literally all the time. Well, a new mod for Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is here to help. It lets you order a real world pizza delivery from Domino's via an in-game NPC. Magic.
]]>Skyblivion has been in development for ten years and still isn't done, but work continues on the mod project remaking Oblivion inside The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. The latest video is impressive, too, taking a 15 minute tour of areas, enemies, weapons and more that have been rebuilt, while outlining the work still to be done. Watch it below.
]]>You’re going to have to burn your cloth map if you want to return to Skyblivion’s Cyrodiil. The latest update on the The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion remake in Skyrim shows they’re not afraid to make huge changes to the world, building a bigger and bolder looking remake. Let’s take a walk.
]]>Giant modding project Skyblivion, the one that's recreating all of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a Skyrim mod, is beginning to look like a game you can actually play. The team plugging away at this huge overhaul have released another progress video showing that Skyblivion doesn't just look the part, it now plays it too. Quests are being implemented at last and they've proven it by hacking and slashing their way through one.
]]>Yes, Skyblivion is still going folks. A team of volunteers are still plugging away at remaking The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in Skyrim as a mod. Will it ever come to a close? Well, in a new developer diary, we got an insight into how it's looking and where it's headed. In among all the details surrounding UI and clothes and objects, I found one thing really stood out to me. They've nearly completed the 'first pass' of the overworld, and they're injecting some extra flavour into many of the original's dull, empty spaces.
]]>Regicide is once again a topic at dinner, thanks to the release of Crusader Kings III. Your aunt passes you the gravy, and asks about council matters. Your mother comments on the rise in guillotine stocks. Your father, the king, chews his mutton with a rueful and distant glare, probably thinking about war. A cloaked advisor enters and hands you a note on parchment. “The ten worft kingf and queenf in gamef,” it reads. You cough politely, put it in your pocket for later, and continue pushing poisoned food around as if you are eating it.
]]>Ages ago I learned how to lockpick in real life, and ever since I've been so impressed at how video games emulate the feeling of managing to crack a lock open. I think maybe it's the noise, that signature *clunk* that makes it so satisfying. It's a staple of RPGs like Skyrim, where lockpicking is literally a skill you can level up. But loads of games have introduced their own unique minigames to let you unlock things, and now you can see most of them in one place thanks to the museum of lockpicking mechanics.
]]>Oblivion was, of course, the story of how an anonymous prisoner happened to meet the Emperor minutes before his assassination, and went on to fulfill an ancient prophecy by being locked up for over 600 years.
What?
That's the story according to the Unofficial Elder Scrolls Page Twitter account, which twote last night about a character they put in jail for 225,000 days.
]]>Allegations of abuse have been made against multiple games industry figures in the past 24 hours. On Monday afternoon Nathalie Lawhead, developer of the IGF-winning Tetrageddon Games, wrote a post on her website alleging that Jeremy Soule, the composer of Skyrim, raped her while she was working for an unnamed Vancouver-based games studio. Seven hours later, comics writer and indie developer Zoë Quinn posted tweets alleging that Alec Holowka, co-creator of Aquaria and Night In The Woods, sexually assaulted them. Later that same night, Adelaide Gardner posted a series of tweets alleging that Splash Damage tools programmer Luc Shelton sexually assaulted and gaslit her.
(CW: rape, sexual assault, gaslighting, emotional abuse)
]]>Fan project Skyblivion has been rumbling along under the radar for a while, and now it's resurfaced with a new trailer to show off its voice acting and a slew of other changes. The ambitious mod that aims to recreate Oblivion entirely within its successor Skyrim is “finally shaping up to what we can call a proper video game,” say its creators. You can see it for yourself below.
]]>A corner of the world of The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has arrived in Skyrim with the launch of Beyond Skyrim: Bruma [official site], a mod set around Cyrodil's city of Bruma. Unlike the still-in-development mod remaking Oblivion inside Skyrim, this mod is telling new stories set around the time of Skryim - 200 years after Oblivion. As well as recreating and updating the Bruma region, it brings new quests, characters, weapons, armour, music, and all that, plus a whopping 24,000-ish lines of voiced dialogue from a cast including professional actors. Fancy! Here, check out this trailer:
]]>Skyblivion [official site], the huge fan project to remake The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as a Skyrim mod, is picking up pace. We had a peek at their progress in December and, the dev team say, that video helped them recruit a load more help. "We have made more progress in the 2 months after the release of our update video than we have in the year prior to it," they say. Crumbs! So let's take a look at a new video showing what they've done in those two months:
]]>As another year ends, it's time to reflect on all that's been done and all that's still to come. So they tell me, anyway; I try to drink away any concept of the past or future. But bless 'em, the gang remaking The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion have worked hard and are proud of their work. A new trailer shows off Skyblivion [official site] as it stands now and yep, that's looking a lot like Oblivion rebuilt in Skyrim.
]]>There's an unbelievable amount of mods available for The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim from the obscene and naughty to the absolutely ridiculous and nonsensical. Dedicated fans of the game have even released entirely new lands and stories to rival Skyrim's original in breadth and scope. TESRenewal is attempting to do a sort of inception within the framework of Skyrim's Creation Kit and answer the question, "what do you get when you mod an Elder Scrolls game into another Elder Scrolls game's engine?" The answer they're working on is Skyblivion [official site]. Check out their progress in this new video:
]]>Today marks the twentieth anniversary of the release of one of the greatest roleplaying games ever made. Set in a world so vast that you could combine almost every open world game released since and cram them all into one of its regions, and allowing the freedom to buy real estate within that world, it remains one of the grandest games of its type.
It is The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall [official site] and I have loved it for two decades.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
A bit of a dirty word in some quarters of the roleplaying community, given that it marks the beginning of once-revered series' ongoing drift into all violence all the time, and directly led to Fallout's controversial divergence from its former cRPG path. Good god, Oblivion was exciting at the time, though. Probably the most excited I've ever been a RPG ahead of playing it.
]]>I must confess, since finishing Siege of Dragonspear the other week, I've not actually fired up any RPGs. It's not for want of them to play. I'm particularly looking forward to finally trying Final Fantasy IX, which I missed back in the day, and Beamdog's recently announced interquel, Planescape Torment: The Nameless One And A Half. (It's very similar to the original, only now whenever someone asks "What can change the nature of a man?" a furious little goblin pops onto the screen to yell "#notallmen!")
The problem has simply been timing - not having a nice satisfying chunk of time to really settle down for an epic experience. So instead, I thought I'd take a look at a few speed-runs, and see how fifty hours suddenly becomes a minute and a half... provided you don't include the hundreds of hours to get to that point. Here's a few of them I dug up to make your completion times look like crap, from RPGs old and new.
]]>A reader in the comments yesterday pointed out that it was Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion's birthday. Bethesda's RPG is now ten years old. It's the less celebrated of the series' modern iterations - less weird than Morrowind, more awkward than Skyrim - but its my favourite in the series.
Happy birthday, potato men!
]]>I used to like total conversions not only for those few which were released, but for watching the development process in action. Untextured weapon models get a bad rap, but I like watching a plan come together or even partially together.
Skywind, then. It's an attempt to re-build Morrowind within Skyrim's engine, with re-build environments, textures, models and more. The latest update video shows just how far the project has come, while aiming to recruit more members to help finish it.
]]>Few game mechanics right now make me 'urrrrrrrrrrgh' quite like crafting. Bloody, bloody crafting. I hate crafting. I hate that just about every game I pick up can't wait to introduce its crafting system to me, with its long shopping lists of finnicky items to find, and about as much care for being believable as all those shotguns and medikits Lara Croft used to find littering ancient tombs. Crafting is the worst, and unlike something like the escort missions of old, it manages to be the worst regardless of how much it actually ends up wasting your time.
]]>The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind [official site] was released in 2002. It's testament to how highly regarded the now 13-year-old game is that folks are still determined to keep it alive. OpenMW is one such effort: an open source "engine re-implementation" of Morrowind. It's still some ways from being finished, but the released build has just received an extensive update.
]]>Skyblivion! Graham contends that Skywind has the best name of old Elder Scrolls games being remade in Skyrim, but the Oblivion remake feels more fun on the tongue to me. Skyblivion! Remaking a land that took a whole professional studio to build the first time around is no mean feat, but the modders behind Skywind and Skyblivion [official site] are still working away.
Recent videos show many, many minutes of progress on Skyblivion, trotting around the province of Cyrodiil, leaping into Oblivion gates, and pottering about the Shivering Isles. It looks a lot like Oblivion but in Skyrim, which is sort of the goal of the whole thing. Skyblivion!
]]>Speaking personally, I find The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to be the weakest game of its storied lineage, but that doesn't mean I think it was bad by any means. The prospect of exploring its world of idyllic countrysides, tastefully mudcrab-dappled waters, and screaming fire eyeball portals to hell remains an attractive one, and I'll be especially keen to do so if Skyblivion sees the light of day. Like TESRenewal compatriot Skywind, Skyblivion is an attempt to remake Oblivion in Skyrim's engine. Want to see how it's coming along? Check out the trailer below.
]]>Yes, yes, Oblivion has long stepped aside and given Skyrim the spotlight, and Prequel - also known as Making A Cat Cry: The Adventure - has been around for a while. It's been brought to my attention that not everyone knows about it though, so here's why you should check it out.
]]>The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the sequel to Oblivion, launches tomorrow. I've been playing the PC version of it during every waking hour of the last three and a half days, and most of the non-waking hours too. I'm still not really ready to tell you what I think. I will anyway.
]]>Bethesda haven't officially documented all the various skills, abilities and perks due to crop up in their now not-too-distant game of roles, but keen-eyed Men Of The Internet have been poring over every screenshot, preview and public demo (including last week's Eurogamer Expo, at which Skyrim was drawing mega-queues) they can lay their meta-hands on in order to compile this long and growing list of how you'll be tailoring your own personal Dragon-born. Also covered are the game's various Racial Abilities. I'm particularly glad to hear that the Khajit will be retaining Night-Eye, which means I'll doubtless be playing Skyrim in a very similar see in the dark cheeky but non-murderous thief fashion to Oblivion and Morrowind.
I've listed all that's known so far below, but you should know it originated at fansite theelderscrollskyrim.com and you should keep an eye on that original post for further updates.
]]>Bonus for people who don't like reading: new footage and some video comments from Todd Howard also await you below.
Elder Scrolls games have many, many merits, but being a great spectator sport perhaps does not number amongst them. While I am personally very excited to see an hour of Skyrim being played as it is intended to be played – from the start, exploring and making it up as the player goes along – it's a stark difference from the massive fights with massive dragons and crazy spell combinations I'd been shown previously. What I'm seeing today is Bethesda's Pete Hines rummaging through corpses' pockets for loot and doing mental arithmetic about weapon stats - demonstrating that Skyrim is at least as much about calculation as it is about combat. Watching someone compare swords sure isn't as much fun as watching someone shoot a dragon out of the air. It is, however, more important - because here he's playing Skyrim you or I would play it, showing off its proudly nerdy roleplaying heart rather than its crowd-pleasing flashy face.
]]>While Minecraft creator Marcus 'Notch' Persson remains an avowed fan of Bethesda games, the legal argy-bargy between the Elder Documents publisher and Notch's company Mojang over its forthcoming second game 'Scrolls' doesn't look like dying down any time soon. In fact, the big B has stepped up its efforts, announcing its intention to sue Mojang in a Swedish court, as well as a demand for money. In a blog post explaining a little of his side of things, Notch reveals that this all happened shortly after Mojang tried to trademark 'Scrolls', which rang alarm bells for the rights-holders of The Elder Rolled-Up Papers. Common sense has had us all thinking the situation is simply ridiculous - one word within a title hardly equals the same title, right?
Well, it may not be that simple. In other words- Bethesda might well have a case, regardless of how you might feel about it.
]]>If you're looking to take your mind off impending global catastrophe this weekend you could do worse than checking out the v1.0 release of Oblivion mod Dibella's Watch. It's a new "continent" for Oblivion, which includes "a major city, castles, towns, villages, farms, monasteries and all the good stuff that makes up a Medieval landscape." It's a pretty huge Oblivion mod put together by a single person, and, while not as ludicrously as full-featured as total conversions like the almighty Nehrim (yes, I am still meaning to come back to that one day), it's a really impressive piece of work, and worth a look if you just want a new landscape and some fresh quests for Oblivion itself.
]]>Are you listening, Blizzard? ARE YOU? Here are three minutes of why PC gamers deserve the option to alter their games, and why the world is a better place for it. Madness, beauty, comedy, juggling, land-swimming, flying horses and most of all modding await you in this completely, gloriously batshit Oblivion machinima.
Why am I posting it? Why didn't I post it sooner, more like.
]]>This is it. The end. This column you are about to read will be the last ever Mod News. Sniff. It’s been a pleasure, guys.
But no, really, it has. Over the past year, I’ve had a fantastic time as RPS’ mods guy, and it’s been a real honour to write this column every week - even if it is essentially just a roundup of all the latest happenings on a particular gaming scene. I can assure you that the end of Mod News coincides with the Hivemind’s bigger and better plans for mod coverage in the months ahead. You’re being left in very safe hands.
So, folks, would you join me for one more dance? Here’s the last and final week in mod news, including stuff for Half-Life 2, Neverwinter Nights, Oblivion, Morrowind and Stalker.
]]>It's been an unusually quiet week in the world of mod news. Perhaps all our humble developers have been scurrying away in front of their PCs actually getting some work done, and that's why we've seen very few items of news but another collection of new releases and updates, ready for you to play right now. This week: the first Portal 2 mod, a new version of Action Half-Life 2 after several years, fan creations for Oblivion, Fuel, Battlefield 2 and - goodness me - a bunch more below the jump.
]]>In the week of Portal 2's release, it seems apt that Valve's games should dominate the mod scene's output. While the range of titles you can mod these days is impressive, and so many of the tools are easy to learn, I've still yet to come across a moddable engine that's quite as intuitive and flexible as Source. I can't wait to see what people can do with Portal 2 when we're able to mod that. It's going to be very interesting to see the results. Onwards, then...
]]>The re-thought Elder Scrolls levelling, skill, attribute and perk system in Skyrim is already proving divisive (as witnessed in comments on the last post), but I fear at least part of the reason for that is it's not been explained terribly well as yet. And, to be honest, that's partially because there's only so much of it I can explain until I've had proper hands-on time and experienced it rather than been told 'it's better this way'. I like the sound of it, because I always thought Oblivion's system was fussier and more opaque than it needed be (in terms of what it actually achieved), but I certainly don't want a reduction in depth any more than the next Morrowind nut. For now though, here's all the quotes on the subject I've got from Bethesda's Todd Howard, which hopefully clear things up a little more - plus offer some extra detail on how the stealth and persuasion mechanics work.
]]>Well, there's an awful lot more than 20 reasons to be helplessly nerding out about the next Elder Scrolls game, but a nice round number is a good place to start, right? Let me be clear: I love Morrowind, quite like Oblivion and really didn't get on with Fallout 3. I am what you might call a doubter. Nonetheless, I am impossibly excited about Skyrim, having recently been shown an hour of it (and listened to a bonus hour of lead dev Todd Howard answering questions about it). Here are just a few reasons why...
]]>You haven't really been playing Minecraft for the last two years or so. You've just been imagining it - a wish-dream of an amazing free-form building/aventuring game that might one day exist, if only fate is kind enough. All those months, clicking hollow-eyed at hillsides that weren't there, screaming about green monsters no-one else could see. You've made a fool of yourself. You should be ashamed.
The good news is you can stop pretending this November, when the game known as Minecraft is finally released. On the same day as Sykrim, in fact...
]]>Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. Todd Howard, lead blokey on The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, has fessed up that last game Oblivion ditched a bit of the wonderful oddness of its marvellous predecessor Morrowind - and that this is something Bethesda hopes to correct in Skyrim.
]]>Eurogamer.dk (via VG247) which suggests that the new game is not only in development, but is a direct sequel to Oblivion. An Elder Scrolls game had previously been touted for a reveal at this year's E3, but did not show. Of course that doesn't mean it's not already a long way into development. Bethesda boss Todd Howard has already mentioned that two new games are in the works and we're going to speculate that one of those has to be an Elder Scrolls game. The big question for many people has been whether the technology would move away from the Gamebryo engine - the recent id acquisition probably wouldn't have provided time enough to base the game on id tech 5, but we can still dream - and a quote in this interview suggests that it is that familiar engine: “That's our starting point - the Fallout 3 tech,” said Howard. “The new stuff is an even bigger jump from that." Perhaps we'll get something concrete about the release in the new year.
]]>'Tis the day for impressively strange videos. This time, it's a man requesting that Bethesda make a new Elder Scrolls. Requesting via the medium of rap.
You probably think it's going to be rubbish, and amateurish, and oppressively nerdy. You're wrong. Well, mostly.
]]>The gigantic Oblivion total conversion Nehrim: At Fate's Edge was release a few months back in its native German. The colossal four-year project is a remarkable undertaking, both revamping the standard Oblivion mechanics (improving skills by use being massively toned down, for example) and creating an world of its own, complete with lore and quest lines. The mod features a hand-crafted "continent-sized" map and a core storyline that could last over forty hours. Boonfully it has now been translated into English, so that all the UI and quest text is in English, and the German voice-acting is now subtitled. Clearly, Oblivion owners are going to want to consider this. But what should they expect? Some thoughts below.
]]>Certain game experiences seem to suggest other, older games, and leave me longing for them. Age Of Conan, which I've been playing a great deal for the PC Gamer review, somehow left me longing for Oblivion. There was something about the way that Age Of Conan tantalises you with elements of single player gaming that left me quite hungry for a proper RPG romp, and so I reinstalled the last Elder Scrolls game and plunged in.
To tell the truth, I'd been meaning to go back and play Oblivion a some point this year after being reminded of it in PC Gamer UK's Top 100 meeting. Tom Francis had talked about the moment he'd be most fond of in replaying the game: coming out of the underground tutorial into the bright, beautiful gameworld. “You get this incredible feeling of freedom,” he said. “It's wide open and it feels like anything is possible.” It's a feeling that, in some ways, is only possible in a game of Oblivion's calibre. That kind of feeling could be an antidote to the pressures of real life, and definitely an antidote to too many hours in a traditional MMO. I wanted to recapture that, although I had wondered whether Francis' was simply being hyperbolic. Was Oblivion better than I remembered?
]]>After Kotaku's highlighting of Age of Conan's Best NPC Of All Time (above) I was reminded to ask Tom Francis at PC Gamer UK to post his account of what is probably the Second Best NPC Of All Time, Thedret The Exaggerator. Possibly my favourite story of an in-game bug, ever.
]]>I'm not quite sure what I think about the debate over "games are dumbed down for consoles". I think games are made more accessible, certainly have their controls simplified, but I'm not convinced this means the game necessarily becomes more dumb. It seems that Bethesda agree, and while there's always a sizeable baying crowd who will squeal, "Oblivion was rubbish because it was also on 360!/wasn't identical to Morrowind!/I didn't play it but I love having an opinion!" they have rather proven they can make a dumbed-up game for multiple formats.
Bethesda's Emil Pagliarulo, project lead on FO3, certainly agrees, after the jump.
]]>More rumour-mumblings from within the home of Bethesda, ZeniMax Media, regarding a forthcoming MMO.
]]>I'd be lying if I said we had started RPS for any other reason than funding secret cabal designed to rule the world by manipulating heads of state and undermining morality across the globe. Part of that plan would involve procuring a suitable headquarters where our sinister agents could be trained, briefed and deployed on complex espionage missions. We've got Castle Bran in mind, but apparently the electrics are out and the roof needs some work. It's going to take us 15,000 years to save up enough money.
]]>This editorial over on the PC hardware site PC Perspective considers the age-old issue of why PC gamers stick with their format, rather than opting for the ease of consoles. It covers many tired old routines, such as the flexibility of the PC's options and scaled resources, as well as the complexity of mouse/keyboard controls systems. One thing it comes up with that I've not heard before is this:
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