The PC and Skyrim - An Issue of Porting

[bentheman939]

As for a game with good voice acting, how about Mass Effect 1 and 2? Doesn't get much better than that. One thing though - ME is greatly helped by the fact there's actual acting going on with the in-game characters, they have great facial animations to convey emotion...etc.

Is that truly a widely held opinion? I have read rave reviews about Mass Effect, and with recommendations on this forum I bought it last year. I can't believe people would consider a game like that to be in remotely the same category as Oblivion. It was a scripted, twitchy action game with TERRIBLE graphics and a stereotypical sci-fi plot. Its awkward console port did not help matters either.

If people would rate what I would consider a boring waste of time like Mass Effect as superior to Oblivion because the "voice acting" was better, I think they have their priorities all screwed up. Oblivion had 60k lines of dialogue and a game world of literally hundreds of square kilometres, every inch of which could be explored and looked beautiful. These games simply cannot be compared, although ME may have had kick ass voice acting or whatever.

 

[Veliko]

I get the feeling I will be bored of Skyrim quite quickly.

I loved Morrowind and played it for months before getting bored of exploring stuff. I liked Oblivion and played it for weeks before getting bored. I played Fallout 3 for about 3 hours before getting bored.

It's the same formula each time. Although the world is large there isn't really much in it.

 

[Martimus]

Is that truly a widely held opinion? I have read rave reviews about Mass Effect, and with recommendations on this forum I bought it last year. I can't believe people would consider a game like that to be in remotely the same category as Oblivion. It was a scripted, twitchy action game with TERRIBLE graphics and a stereotypical sci-fi plot. Its awkward console port did not help matters either.

If people would rate what I would consider a boring waste of time like Mass Effect as superior to Oblivion because the "voice acting" was better, I think they have their priorities all screwed up. Oblivion had 60k lines of dialogue and a game world of literally hundreds of square kilometres, every inch of which could be explored and looked beautiful. These games simply cannot be compared, although ME may have had kick ass voice acting or whatever.

I truly enjoyed Mass Effect, and I like the sequel much better (It doesn't have the generic crappy side missions that the original had that tore out any immersion you had). What was great about Mass Effect was that it was well scripted and well acted. It was mostly linear, or more accurately there were very few paths you could take, but was was polished extremely well. This makes the first short playthrough very enjoyable, but makes subsequent playthroughs almost pointless (since the story isn't going to change).

I spent over 200 hours playing Oblivion, although much of that was spent maximizing my levels after I found that leveling normally made the enemies tougher after each level. So I probably spent an actual 80 hours of so in the game, but I was totally engrossed in it. My roommate used to call the game Oblivicrack, since I spent ever spare minute playing the game. The thing that made Oblivion great was the open ended nature of it, and the lack of generic side quests (even though there are hundreds of side quests, they are all different,a dn have unique plots.) The main story line quest wasn't any better than the hundreds of sidequests though, and the game suffered from that lack of polish.

The autoleveling of the NPCs and the leveling system as a whole made no real sense. I love how you get better at a skill by actually using the skill rather than having abstract "experience points", but the way they tied that to levels made no sense. If they took away levels completely, then the game would be much better. I would rather just get better at the skills I am using, since that makes sense, than have random increases in some abstract "level".

 

[Martimus]

The dungeons were not clones of each other, and I don't even know why you would say that. What 2 were alike? All of the "realm of oblivion" dungeons were kind of alike because you needed to climb the central tower and take the stone, but they were not identical, and frankly none of the others were even similar afaik.

While there were only 6 Oblion Gates, that were repeated over and over again (So there were exact clones), I think what he was getting at is that there were very few textures used in the game, so the dungeons all looked alike. There were maybe 4-5 types of dungeon textures, but since there were hundreds of dungeons, those 4-5 types just weren't enough.

The reason there were so few textures is actually because it was a game for the Xbox360 and PS3, where both only have a total of 512MB of memory to share between all components. You cannot load any more textures than will fit in that buffer. Unless the game is a PC exclusive, you won't see more variety on the textures, because it isn't technically feasible on the current generation consoles.

 

[HunterDT]

That annoying wench that voiced the nord and orc females... argh!!! I will never forgive her or Bethesda for unloading that beotch on us (me). Truly bad.

You shut your mouth when Wonder Woman speaks!!! End of line.

 

[bentheman939]

I truly enjoyed Mass Effect, and I like the sequel much better (It doesn't have the generic crappy side missions that the original had that tore out any immersion you had). What was great about Mass Effect was that it was well scripted and well acted. It was mostly linear, or more accurately there were very few paths you could take, but was was polished extremely well. This makes the first short playthrough very enjoyable, but makes subsequent playthroughs almost pointless (since the story isn't going to change).

I spent over 200 hours playing Oblivion, although much of that was spent maximizing my levels after I found that leveling normally made the enemies tougher after each level. So I probably spent an actual 80 hours of so in the game, but I was totally engrossed in it. My roommate used to call the game Oblivicrack, since I spent ever spare minute playing the game. The thing that made Oblivion great was the open ended nature of it, and the lack of generic side quests (even though there are hundreds of side quests, they are all different,a dn have unique plots.) The main story line quest wasn't any better than the hundreds of sidequests though, and the game suffered from that lack of polish.

The autoleveling of the NPCs and the leveling system as a whole made no real sense. I love how you get better at a skill by actually using the skill rather than having abstract "experience points", but the way they tied that to levels made no sense. If they took away levels completely, then the game would be much better. I would rather just get better at the skills I am using, since that makes sense, than have random increases in some abstract "level".

Fair enough! Good criticisms, much better than "Oblivion was garbage and below average in every respect"

 

[jfunk]

Look, if you think Oblivion was one of the best games ever you should have no problem with "console ports", of Skyrim or anything else for that matter.

As a fan of the series since Arena, Oblivion completely broke my heart (although it was still an enjoyable game that I didn't feel ripped off by or anything). But it's like the poster child for taking what used to be a PC game and "consolizing" it.

If you liked Oblivion that much, you like console stuff. Don't worry about whether it's ported...in fact it may be better for you if it is.

edit: BTW, Morrowind was my second least favorite Elder Scrolls. It was ambitious, but the world was completely dead and boring to me. I felt like Arena and especially Daggerfall were superior (despite their numerous and sometimes gamebreaking bugs).

 

[skace]

Everyone has personal taste and some people like Oblivion and some hate it, but this is the first time I've ever seen anyone put it smack dab at the top of their games played list. I'd have to assume that list of games play is probably somewhat short. Oblivion vs Space Quest 2? Oblivion vs Quake? Oblivion vs Final Fantasy 6? Oblivion vs No One Lives Forever? Oblivion vs Sim City 2000? Cmon...

As for the main question of this thread, I would expect Skyrim to be more consolized. However, considering how buggy Bethesda games can be, consolization may actually improve their quality.

 

[jsmith65]

I'm actually a bit embarrassed because I hate what consoles have done to PC gaming, but I was unaware of the port-like nature of Oblivion. It was my first Bethesda style RPG and I absolutely loved it, not to mention I've heard similar things from other fellow PC gamers and in reviews of the game.

If you guys don't mind, what exactly about the leveling system was so suck and what did the OOO mod do to fix that? And if Oblivion was such a suck console port then give me an example of a great PC game (port or made specifically for PC).

 

[RampantAndroid]

I think we can all agree that The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion was and still is one of the best games ever created.

No, we can not all agree. Plenty of people have voiced it as being boring, monotonous...and some of the skyrim previews even bring that up claiming skyrim fixes that. I never finished Oblivion...likely never will. Fun at times? Yes...but it got boring, fast.

 

[RampantAndroid]

While there were only 6 Oblion Gates, that were repeated over and over again (So there were exact clones), I think what he was getting at is that there were very few textures used in the game, so the dungeons all looked alike. There were maybe 4-5 types of dungeon textures, but since there were hundreds of dungeons, those 4-5 types just weren't enough.

The reason there were so few textures is actually because it was a game for the Xbox360 and PS3, where both only have a total of 512MB of memory to share between all components. You cannot load any more textures than will fit in that buffer. Unless the game is a PC exclusive, you won't see more variety on the textures, because it isn't technically feasible on the current generation consoles.

Sorry for the double post;

No - the limitation isn't in the VRAM, you're right the game lacked textures, but the limit was what they could fit on the DVD. Load screens between the world and the gates was entirely possible.

 

[PhatoseAlpha]

I'm cautiously optimistic. Morrowind was flat out bad, requiring a huge number of mods to be considered a good game. Oblivion improved upon Morrowind but still needed lots of mods to be considered a good game. Fallout 3 improved upon Oblivion but still needed at least a few mods to be really great.

I certainly don't expect perfection out of the box - Bethesda's game mechanics designs tend to have fundamental problems - but it should be fun, at least.

 

[pathos]

Look, if you think Oblivion was one of the best games ever you should have no problem with "console ports", of Skyrim or anything else for that matter.

As a fan of the series since Arena, Oblivion completely broke my heart (although it was still an enjoyable game that I didn't feel ripped off by or anything). But it's like the poster child for taking what used to be a PC game and "consolizing" it.

If you liked Oblivion that much, you like console stuff. Don't worry about whether it's ported...in fact it may be better for you if it is.

edit: BTW, Morrowind was my second least favorite Elder Scrolls. It was ambitious, but the world was completely dead and boring to me. I felt like Arena and especially Daggerfall were superior (despite their numerous and sometimes gamebreaking bugs).

Well, technically the worst elder scrolls game is Battlespire, at least for me By a pretty large margin.

2nd worst would be Redguard. not because it's a bad game, but because it was 3 hours long.

but yeah, for the main core of games, I'd rank them Daggerfall (even with all the bugs) > Arena > Morrowind > Oblviion.

I like all of them, but Oblivion really needed alot of mods to make it a really good game.

 

[gothamhunter]

I played Vanilla Oblivion and thought it was fantastic. Yes, the Oblivion gates were all very droll and copies of eachother, but everything besides the main quest was amazing, and I enjoyed feeling engrossed in the fantasy world it created for me.

On another note, the only thing really Skyrim would have benefited from DX11 would be the shaders. They're using a whole new engine, and from the looks of it so far, it looks like it can handle itself even in DX9.

Idk, from what I've seen so far, I'm not that worried about it being "ported"