Burrito of Peace wrote on Jan 16, 2023, 16:01:
Oblivion was such an amazing game for the time. The Ayelid ruins (sp?) were absolutely amazing to me.

It was everything I wanted Morrowind to be, even if everyone did look like they were about one extra copy of chromosome 21 away from Down Syndrome. Archery actually felt right, the first in any game I'd played up to that point. I loved the system that determined class and skills based entirely on what you did instead of arbitrary points in a spreadsheet.

I'll definitely play Skyblivion if and when it ever comes out.

Just going to Oblivion though the gates was amazing. So different from anything else at the time. Also some of the quests: an entire town of vampires, the ring at the bottom of the well, and so forth. Good stuff.

MisterBenn wrote on Jan 16, 2023, 16:33:
I really loved in Morrowind that NPCs had lots of questions they could answer about themselves and their region along with the special quest lines. Because it was only text it could be pretty open ended, and the act of reading it fed into your imagination somehow. In the past couple games, the prerecorded lines and shortlist of topics felt a lot more restrictive and gamey. At some point when morrowind-style dialogue can be spontaneously delivered in character voice it's going to be amazing.

It was confirmed a few months back that Starfield has more than double the voice lines of Fallout 4, and that's with a silent protagonist (i.e. in FO4 you had both male/female main characters accounting for a load of the voice work).

MisterBenn wrote on Jan 16, 2023, 16:33:
I think the emerging AI text to speech developments are going to help this kind of open world RPG a lot.

God no. Please God no. That would be as immersive-killing as anything could possibly get, and these games thrive on their ability to immerse the player into the world. I suppose that in a few decades, AI text to speech may be able to emulate wooden Bethesda dialogue well enough to be passable, but it will never be able to emulate all of the emotional nuances that a voice actor could. Once we get to that point, I guess it might work for minor NPCs or background chattering. This isn't something I expect to see in my lifetime though.

Yeah, definitely have happy memories of Oblivion. The melee / archery / stealth mechanics felt like a godsend versus Morrowind at the the time. It was also the game that taught me that if you throw in too many mods, you end up with a game that isn't stable! I do think that Oblivion had the weakest overworld of the past 3 games though, Morrowind and Skyrim were both evocative with a lot of regional variety - whereas Oblivion didn't feel otherworldly and it felt like you spent most of the game running around a giant grassy valley in sight on the imperial city.

I think the emerging AI text to speech developments are going to help this kind of open world RPG a lot. I really loved in Morrowind that NPCs had lots of questions they could answer about themselves and their region along with the special quest lines. Because it was only text it could be pretty open ended, and the act of reading it fed into your imagination somehow. In the past couple games, the prerecorded lines and shortlist of topics felt a lot more restrictive and gamey. At some point when morrowind-style dialogue can be spontaneously delivered in character voice it's going to be amazing.

Oblivion was such an amazing game for the time. The Ayelid ruins (sp?) were absolutely amazing to me.

It was everything I wanted Morrowind to be, even if everyone did look like they were about one extra copy of chromosome 21 away from Down Syndrome. Archery actually felt right, the first in any game I'd played up to that point. I loved the system that determined class and skills based entirely on what you did instead of arbitrary points in a spreadsheet.

I'll definitely play Skyblivion if and when it ever comes out.

Oblivion was one of the last games to really hit that sense of wonder for me. I remember watching a roommate play on the 360, and thinking it'd be lame, but then when he first came out of the sewer and the world just opened up, feeling like you could do anything or everything in a fully 3D world.

He ran up a hill and got immediately trounced by a scamp. He restarted, accidentally stole a horse, and got thrown in jails. He was a guy with a huge and fragile ego, and watching him bungle basics in video games never got old.

But man, I'll never really forget the look of the ruins in that game, and the creaking sound of a skeleton somewhere waiting to be killed. It wasn't long until none of that was a danger, but if felt so limitless in 2006.

Lmao, those bastards made me think it was a 2023 release with this trailer!
I'll play it if I'm alive in 2052 by the time it's released.

I really liked the world but hated dodd toward's storyline of Oblivion because it was complete shit once you got there.
It's hard to believe there was a time bethesda's writing was even worst than it is now!

I played through Oblivion 3 times. This could entice me for a 4th

Skyblivion looks pretty cool.