Still excited about Elder Scrolls 5, however one thing stands out in my mind that is distasteful in the game: physics.
I know Bethesda used the Havok physics engine, famously used for the 'ragdoll effect' but it always seemed too 'ragdollish', it was pretty silly that when I killed a creature, person, or whatever on a slope (a hill) the body would role down, hit a cliff, jump in the air, and roll further down. It was really silly, it seemed like the hills themselves were made out of ice or something...
Well, to be honest, i thought that fallout's physics were quite realistic. Sure sometimes bodies go flying but a body that rolls down hill then is sent off in the air by a cliff... Sounds pretty good to me. They just need to work on the effects that this whole proccess should create, ie. dust, small stones scattered around etc.
I know it fits into the laws of basic physics but the game seems to fail to take into account the 'friction' of the hill, grass, dirt, stones, etc. and like I said the hill just seemed made out of ice and I always wondered how come I never fell down by going up the hill XD.
Still excited about Elder Scrolls 5, however one thing stands out in my mind that is distasteful in the game: physics.
I know Bethesda used the Havok physics engine, famously used for the 'ragdoll effect' but it always seemed too 'ragdollish', it was pretty silly that when I killed a creature, person, or whatever on a slope (a hill) the body would role down, hit a cliff, jump in the air, and roll further down. It was really silly, it seemed like the hills themselves were made out of ice or something...
Well, to be honest, i thought that fallout's physics were quite realistic. Sure sometimes bodies go flying but a body that rolls down hill then is sent off in the air by a cliff... Sounds pretty good to me. They just need to work on the effects that this whole proccess should create, ie. dust, small stones scattered around etc.
I know it fits into the laws of basic physics but the game seems to fail to take into account the 'friction' of the hill, grass, dirt, stones, etc. and like I said the hill just seemed made out of ice and I always wondered how come I never fell down by going up the hill XD.
Well we can only hope that this new engine might have some more realistic environments i guess. I really want to see realistic dust, stones, grass and bushes. I mean when you walk into a bush in Fo3 its like your walking into nothing. That kind of sucks. But you know, in new vegas they improved the look of the sky and lightning effects so bethesda is definitely looking at these aspects of the games they predouce lately.
Still excited about Elder Scrolls 5, however one thing stands out in my mind that is distasteful in the game: physics.
I know Bethesda used the Havok physics engine, famously used for the 'ragdoll effect' but it always seemed too 'ragdollish', it was pretty silly that when I killed a creature, person, or whatever on a slope (a hill) the body would role down, hit a cliff, jump in the air, and roll further down. It was really silly, it seemed like the hills themselves were made out of ice or something...
I thought the same but then I played Fallout 3 and liked it significantly better. The reason it seemed so unrealistic is simply because it was too limited. You never saw as much as a scratch or bruise on your enemies. Fallout 3 did it much better: individual body parts came off, blood and guts went everywhere.
What would need to be done to make it feel more realistic would be to add some constraints for more interesting deaths. They did this to an extent in TES4: the deaths of ghost-types would dissipate into a drop/puddle of ectoplasm. I think they should mix the two for every enemy.
Another thing I wish they would have done is have grass and bushes move when you go through them. It was done in SPORE and (I think) WoW. It looks really good and makes the world seem more real. This would be great in combination with flying bodies and body parts as well as equipment and items. This could apply to rocks, as well, depending on magnitude of the force being applied (a spell effect, physical hit, body weight, item weight, etc.).
Also, the water in TES4 sucked. It just did. That is really bad considering how much of it there is in the game. Many games from around the same time and earlier had and have better water graphics and physics.
In Fallout 3, while I'm at it, I really enjoyed how diverse the results were for your choices in quests. It felt much better than TES4. I really don't need any cheesy karma system, though. That's just overdone in a lot of "great" RPG's. Just lots of good choices with significant results.
Fallout 3 had specific body part targeting and specific crippling to stay close to the originals of the series. Same for the leveling system. I highly doubt they're going to change the core systems of Elder Scrolls for the 5th part of the series. I expect them to have better random dungeons (or better said random enemies with side-quests), more interesting quest chains (very much like the Dark Brotherhood chain that i seriously LOVED) and a different combat system (Morrowind/Oblivion felt weird bit too easy if you figured out how the opponents respond).
If you were responding to me, I don't believe I specified that I wanted VATS in TES5, only bodies that are able to be destroyed and not flop around like immutable fish.
So, basically, a body that reacts immediately to sword strikes (like chopping off an arm with an axe).
Which I would love to see. I don't care how much the rating is raised. If I can go around, decapitating people and it looks motherfucking real, I won't step foot outside.
Good for psychopaths, no doubt.
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I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
If you were responding to me, I don't believe I specified that I wanted VATS in TES5, only bodies that are able to be destroyed and not flop around like immutable fish.
that's extremely hard to do considering the variety of weapon since every weapon type should have its own effect. Only game i've seen (except for Fallout 3 that didn't impress me on that part) that did a good job showing where you hit well was Soldier of Fortune II. But it only had guns and you just made everything a bloody mess
I think it's at least plausible. Three types of wounds: slash, blunt, and ranged/pierce. Have three different sets of decals that vary in size and hue by in-game functions and better blood particles. After that, base whether or not a body part will be "sliced" off (a clean cut), beaten to guts, or no limb loss by that three-typed hierarchy. That alone would be an immense improvement and, besides some graphics, might be easier to implement than most things.
For fire damage, a simple thing like leaving the body crispy could work. It was done great in a mod. A similar effect for lightning damage, though less extreme. Ice could just leave crystallization and paled skin or something. Poison could leave corrosion decals, green veins, translucent skin.
the way you put it it's doable, but even so, the animations will be boring after a while. unless they have the limbs use a physics engine make sure it looks realistic as they come off.
I would love to see at least some form of limb specific thing in TES with hacking and slashing would be awesome. Or maybe a specific skill of archer characters. It would just obviously enhance the combat system, which in the past was just the same clicking as before. Just making it so that hitting different parts of the character, combined with even the addition of a heavy attack or something, would solve problems in the sometimes boring combat system.
Although in some sense the lack of combat is a purposeful choice by Bethesda (at least in Fallout the addition of VATS makes it obvious they don't want the extreme damage of a FPS), the combat obviously needs to be more complex, or more skill based at least, if its going to appease anyone who really wants combat. But in the past they've shown they focus more on the world and amount of gametime as opposed to combat.
I've been hoping for a new Elder Scrolls for a while. I do hope they take some of the finer points from Fallout. The stuff that makes sense. Especially decapitation, dismembering dead bodies, and nailing people to the wall.
the way you put it it's doable, but even so, the animations will be boring after a while. unless they have the limbs use a physics engine make sure it looks realistic as they come off.
Well, I think the problem is that the more realistic you try to make something, the less it is about the mechanics and the more it is about milieu, plot, and characters. I think that, for the most part, the worlds of Oblivion were engaging (although the Planes of Oblivion got redundant, they were still impressive in many ways, especially with a few texture replacements *cough lava cough*), especially the Shivering Isles and, of course Tamriel's realism made it highly immersive (at least as far as sounds, ambient music, the sky, the trees and bushes and grass, dungeon atmosphere, huge cities, villages/hamlets, wayward inns, etc.)*. The characters all suffered from only a handful of (decent) voice actors rehashed over and over again and very bland facial expressions and body movements. Similarly, many of the quests which defined the characters were effortless, too mechanical, not filled with any emotion or life, or had no significance (plot, relationships, results of choices -- very linear). The plot, while epic, was limited by all of the factors above.
* Seriously. Maybe it was just me, but sometimes when I was out in the woods or the fields and the wind blowed and the music came on just right I felt a stirring in my stomach that I only used to feel when reading good adventure books.
* Seriously. Maybe it was just me, but sometimes when I was out in the woods or the fields and the wind blowed and the music came on just right I felt a stirring in my stomach that I only used to feel when reading good adventure books.
This. This forever.
Oblivion always felt that way to me. I hope Bethesda can recapture that same feeling of wonder and excitement in ES5.
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I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
* Seriously. Maybe it was just me, but sometimes when I was out in the woods or the fields and the wind blowed and the music came on just right I felt a stirring in my stomach that I only used to feel when reading good adventure books.
what made me feel like that was the way i was dragged into the storyline playing the Dark Brotherhood quests and the expansion main plot. I hope they learned from the feedback they got and make the majority of the quests that way. Would make a game of the year for me!
Bethesda updated the Elder Scrolls site, but only the trailer is viewable. If you click outside of the video, you can scroll throughout this big screen, but there's not much to it besides that.
Edit: It all looks very professional, it looks like they put a lot of time into this. Everything from the scale of the background and the way the light flickers, it's just atmospherically haunting. It's beautiful, I love it.
2Edit: A map of Skyrim
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I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
And if you walk over to the official Skyrim forums, you can see they're talking about a whole bunch of nothing and just going at eachother's throats. Pretty sad if you ask me.
Yeah, I'm a little bummed by the lack of gameplay footage. Then again, a lot of games announced at the VGAs don't have gameplay footage yet, so maybe it's just a thing they're still trying to get up or they just don't know how much information to disclose to keep us interested.
So, it's not an MMO, which I was really worried about when rumors popped up that it might.
And, Todd Howard said that the new engine is supposed to feel like "playing a next gen game on a current gen console" (or something along the lines of that, it's as close to the actual quote I could get).
So... not much, but it's nice that we know how much our faces are going to be melted by this new engine.
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I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
I know it fits into the laws of basic physics but the game seems to fail to take into account the 'friction' of the hill, grass, dirt, stones, etc. and like I said the hill just seemed made out of ice and I always wondered how come I never fell down by going up the hill XD.
Well we can only hope that this new engine might have some more realistic environments i guess. I really want to see realistic dust, stones, grass and bushes. I mean when you walk into a bush in Fo3 its like your walking into nothing. That kind of sucks. But you know, in new vegas they improved the look of the sky and lightning effects so bethesda is definitely looking at these aspects of the games they predouce lately.
I thought the same but then I played Fallout 3 and liked it significantly better. The reason it seemed so unrealistic is simply because it was too limited. You never saw as much as a scratch or bruise on your enemies. Fallout 3 did it much better: individual body parts came off, blood and guts went everywhere.
What would need to be done to make it feel more realistic would be to add some constraints for more interesting deaths. They did this to an extent in TES4: the deaths of ghost-types would dissipate into a drop/puddle of ectoplasm. I think they should mix the two for every enemy.
Another thing I wish they would have done is have grass and bushes move when you go through them. It was done in SPORE and (I think) WoW. It looks really good and makes the world seem more real. This would be great in combination with flying bodies and body parts as well as equipment and items. This could apply to rocks, as well, depending on magnitude of the force being applied (a spell effect, physical hit, body weight, item weight, etc.).
Also, the water in TES4 sucked. It just did. That is really bad considering how much of it there is in the game. Many games from around the same time and earlier had and have better water graphics and physics.
In Fallout 3, while I'm at it, I really enjoyed how diverse the results were for your choices in quests. It felt much better than TES4. I really don't need any cheesy karma system, though. That's just overdone in a lot of "great" RPG's. Just lots of good choices with significant results.
Those are my major gripes about the game.
Which I would love to see. I don't care how much the rating is raised. If I can go around, decapitating people and it looks motherfucking real, I won't step foot outside.
Good for psychopaths, no doubt.
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
that's extremely hard to do considering the variety of weapon since every weapon type should have its own effect. Only game i've seen (except for Fallout 3 that didn't impress me on that part) that did a good job showing where you hit well was Soldier of Fortune II. But it only had guns and you just made everything a bloody mess
For fire damage, a simple thing like leaving the body crispy could work. It was done great in a mod. A similar effect for lightning damage, though less extreme. Ice could just leave crystallization and paled skin or something. Poison could leave corrosion decals, green veins, translucent skin.
Although in some sense the lack of combat is a purposeful choice by Bethesda (at least in Fallout the addition of VATS makes it obvious they don't want the extreme damage of a FPS), the combat obviously needs to be more complex, or more skill based at least, if its going to appease anyone who really wants combat. But in the past they've shown they focus more on the world and amount of gametime as opposed to combat.
But I'm sure they'll step something up in TES5.
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Well, I think the problem is that the more realistic you try to make something, the less it is about the mechanics and the more it is about milieu, plot, and characters. I think that, for the most part, the worlds of Oblivion were engaging (although the Planes of Oblivion got redundant, they were still impressive in many ways, especially with a few texture replacements *cough lava cough*), especially the Shivering Isles and, of course Tamriel's realism made it highly immersive (at least as far as sounds, ambient music, the sky, the trees and bushes and grass, dungeon atmosphere, huge cities, villages/hamlets, wayward inns, etc.)*. The characters all suffered from only a handful of (decent) voice actors rehashed over and over again and very bland facial expressions and body movements. Similarly, many of the quests which defined the characters were effortless, too mechanical, not filled with any emotion or life, or had no significance (plot, relationships, results of choices -- very linear). The plot, while epic, was limited by all of the factors above.
* Seriously. Maybe it was just me, but sometimes when I was out in the woods or the fields and the wind blowed and the music came on just right I felt a stirring in my stomach that I only used to feel when reading good adventure books.
This. This forever.
Oblivion always felt that way to me. I hope Bethesda can recapture that same feeling of wonder and excitement in ES5.
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
what made me feel like that was the way i was dragged into the storyline playing the Dark Brotherhood quests and the expansion main plot. I hope they learned from the feedback they got and make the majority of the quests that way. Would make a game of the year for me!
Edit: It all looks very professional, it looks like they put a lot of time into this. Everything from the scale of the background and the way the light flickers, it's just atmospherically haunting. It's beautiful, I love it.
2Edit: A map of Skyrim
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
And if you walk over to the official Skyrim forums, you can see they're talking about a whole bunch of nothing and just going at eachother's throats. Pretty sad if you ask me.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/forum/118-skyrim-general-discussion/
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence
Edit: More info
http://www.vgrevolution.com/2010/12/skyrim-is-not-an-mmo/
So, it's not an MMO, which I was really worried about when rumors popped up that it might.
And, Todd Howard said that the new engine is supposed to feel like "playing a next gen game on a current gen console" (or something along the lines of that, it's as close to the actual quote I could get).
So... not much, but it's nice that we know how much our faces are going to be melted by this new engine.
I hate the way you cling to ignorance and pass it off as innocence