Five Things The Elders Scrolls V Shouldn't Do

[GameBanshee News]

PC World's Matt Peckham breaks down a series of gameplay elements he'd like to see omitted from the next installment to The Elder Scrolls series.

3. Don't keep the same first-person combat engine. Lay Fallout 3's optional pause-based limb-targeting combat on us. Some of us like to plot our battles in lieu of crash-'n-smash brawling, especially seeing as scuffling takes the lion's share of game time in these games. I'm a lowly level 15 Nightblade currently, and with 39 days under my belt (game days, that is) I've slaughtered over 300 creatures, mostly by wading in and pulling the trigger mindlessly. Add a little more tactical depth than just strafe-slashing or spell-casting. Tailor the game to third-person with a first-person option (instead of the current reverse emphasis) and reboot the combat system Dynasty Warriors style. Medieval hand-to-hand in first-person's kind of bland after you've whack-block-whacked your thousandth foozle. Third-person works infinitely better if you want a truly kaleidoscopic (and thereby more gripping) combat engine.

I'd have to agree that I'd really like to see more emphasis on the third-person viewpoint. In Oblivion and Fallout 3, it's practically unusable.

[Siberys]

I guess no one will ever really say "Emphasis on graphics makes a game suck." No reviewers, no editors, no developers, just people who devs don't even listen to most of the time (blizzard being an exception).

[dragon wench]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Siberys I guess no one will ever really say "Emphasis on graphics makes a game suck." No reviewers, no editors, no developers, just people who devs don't even listen to most of the time (blizzard being an exception).

While it's true that graphically attractive games are often seriously lacking.. I don't think you can categorically say that "Emphasis on graphics makes a game suck."
The problem is that developers often seem to think graphics are a substitute for substance, but it's not necessarily a given.
For example, I thought the graphics in The "Witcher" were beautifully done, and it's a good game as well.

[Xandax]

Well - seeing as Bethesda can butcher Fallout, can't we expect them to do the same to Oblivion and make a Isometric, turn based ROLE PLAYING game for once?

[galraen]

I've no serious problem with the combat system or viewpoint. If you want an isometric/third person viewpoint, play another game that has that.

First person works OK for me, to heck with isometric where unless it's done very well (Bioware style) it cn be god awful. Last thing TES 5 needs is Beth experimenting with a different system and screwing it up.

1. The first 'don't' that occurs to me is 'Don't waste money on ham actors like Stewart and Bean', use the people in house , just give them some time and yu should have enough variety of vices to overcome the extremely flawed use of voice acting in TES 4.

2. Don't splash the cash on pretty pretty graphics at the expense of gameplay and storyline as happened with TES 4.

3. Don't use Oblivion's skill setup, revert to Morrowind at least, if not Daggerfall.

4. Don't use the same tiles over and over again so every cave system or ruin looks like what it is, a crude clone.

5. The final don't in this list is for the reviewers, not Beth. Don't feed us a load of BS about how fantastic the game is only to crawl back a few years down the road to confess that you fed us a load of bull in the first place. Then come up with a crappy list to rub our noses in the fact that you lied through your teeth!

[dragon wench]

There are several things I'd definitely like to see Bethsoft avoid in ES5, but I doubt any will happen..

1. Do not dumb down gameplay. Please, oh please, refrain from stupid popups telling players what to do every step of the way. Or, at the very least, make such features a toggle option. If modders can make those moronic messages optional, then surely Bethsoft can as well.

2. Don't give PC players an ugly console port.

3. Return to Morrowind's greater complexity in terms of skills and attributes. Sorry, daggers and two-handed swords are NOT the same thing.

4. Vary the landscape. Oblivion essentially consists of acres upon acres of trees and grass and not much else. One of the great things of ES 3 was varied terrain.

5. Like Morrowind, ensure that the player character needs to be proficient in various skills in order to advance in the guilds.

Sure, most of the above can be corrected with mods. However, you should not need to spend hours downloading and installing player-made modifications in order to actually create a decent gaming experience.

[Lemmus]

I'm not a big fan of lists from reviewers, and this is a very good example of why. He ignores most of the common complaints about Oblivion to focus on what are clearly his own pet peeves.

My feeling about 3rd person 3D engines has always been that they are a waste. Now, granted, I'm referring more to older games (and machines) than current ones. I'm certainly not saying that a game shouldn't have the option for 3rd person, multiple camera angles and functionality really shouldn't add much to the design cost. Rather, I see there as being two functions of 3D, tactics and immersion. For a 3D engine to contribute to immersion, 1st person works a lot better. After all, that is how we see the world normally. For tactics, you need for the "3D-ness" of the world to actually matter. Does the game take slope into account? Can objects block line of fire? Do dungeons and buildings make use of stairs, pits, overhangs, et cetera in a way that could not be duplicated in 2D? Oblivion does both, to some extent, though the last is really only used in the Ayleid dungeons to good effect.

There are bigger issues that Bethesda should likely think about, though, like the way in which factions are implemented. Oblivion really crystallized for me the difference between a game that lets you do anything, and one that lets you do everything. There really is no game reason to ever play Oblivion more than once, even as an old-school gamer I felt that I had to force myself to replay the game with a different character build. I never had that problem with Morrowind, which I've played as recently as this year. Why? Because in Morrowind choices like guilds and house were semi-permanent. Sure you could join all the guilds, but it was almost impossible to do well in all of them. Even the early fighter guild quests would get a thief or mage build character killed quickly. Fallout 3 shows that they are going back to the Morrowind style, at least to some extent. The repercussions of the good/evil choice may not be very in-depth, but at least there's some acknowledgment of the idea that you shouldn't be able to everything with no consequence.

Some other ideas:

A simplified interface is not necessarily a bad idea, but there is such a thing as too simplified. This is especially true when a 1600x1200 graphics resolution has a menu with 7 items listed. If you really want to build that level of simplicity into the game then make the entire interface scalable, perhaps with its own menu option. Users will always complain or want something different, but when there's a UImod available the first week of release, you have a problem.

More is not necessarily better, and stronger is not necessarily more difficult. A difficult dungeon encounter is one where enemies flank you, casters and archers in the back, not one where the bandits wear plate armour. If a bandit could afford good quality armour and a magical weapon, he would not be living in a cave.

Big and empty does not "flesh out the word". The Imperial City and White Tower look gorgeous from a distance, and given the scale of the world you just know that the city must be huge when you can see it from the mountains. So why is there one main street and half a dozen residences? Okay, sure, players don't want to spend 20 minutes slogging through farmland and knocking on doors, but isn't there a better compromise than having the capital city of a 14 province empire being able to fit into most modern town house complexes? Or having farms whose dirt poor owners don't mind your stealing all of their crops?

Realistic motivations means doing something that real people would do, not tweaking the aggression of townsfolk (anyone else remember the AI demo they released in which the NPC set her dog on fire for barking?). The book-educated mage apprentice who wandered into a cave full of zombies makes a certain amount of sense. The alchemist who jokingly asks someone she has no reason to trust about "the other kind of necromancy" doesn't.

Roleplaying means multiple paths, not multiple builds. A levitation spell would let me bypass 80% of the planned encounters in a dungeon? How is that a bad thing? My squishy mage shouldn't go charging into battle, carefully clearing every room and looting every pod. She should race to the end, blast the bad guy, and get out. There are guards on the town gate, but they'll freely let me in despite the fact that I'm covered in blood, hauling 18 weapons, 27 bits of monsters, and have 8 minotaurs chasing me? We need brighter guards.

D&D's been out 35 years, was it really such an amazing game that no one can come up with a 4th role? Let's face it, releasing a game where your play-style choices are fighter or thief or mage really isn't innovative, even when it is actually a choice. What about tradesman, or diplomat, or engineer, or doctor? How lazy have designers become when even an otherwise enjoyable game finds it necessary to qualify Jedi into those three roles. Which of those three does Spider-Man count as? Kirk is a fighter, fine, but what about Picard, or Janeway?

Basically, what I want is more options. Gameplay, graphics, characters, everything. You want to streamline it? Fine, but make give us options with the streamlining. You want to simplify things, fine, but don't forget who your core audience is. A simple game may sell 100,000 copies out of the gate, but an intricate game will still be on shelves in 10 years. That is not a bad thing. Just ask Stardock. Or Blizzard. Or Valve.