Half right. There are credible rumors that they’ll be releasing a remaster of Oblivion soon, which is a separate project from TES 6. And yeah, it’s a major dick move.
How is it a dick move to remake their own game? I would love that and buy it day one, Oblivion is amazing and it’s very constrained by its PS3/360 era memory limits.
A dick move would be sending a C&D to the Skyblivion team and not letting the remaster/remake stand on its own. Attitudes like this are why most developers don’t even bother with modding support.
Bethesda heavily leans on their community to fix their insane amount of issues. When the community comes with a big project, like Fallout London for example, they screw them over by quickly updating the game, breaking the mod, or by releasing their own shitty remake like in this case. They encourage people to work for free for them but they love to screw them over when they do something Bethesda could earn money with or show the shortcomings of that shitty company.
You’re not wrong, they are absolutely within their rights, and Skyblivion shouldn’t preclude others from Oblivion projects (especially not the IP holders). But it still rubs me and others the wrong way. Bethesda doesn’t need to do this; they aren’t hurting for cash. It feels petty to jump on the Oblivion remaster train right as this public (free) project, that has been worked on for like a decade, is nearing the end of its production. It’s just slimy behaviour from Bethesda IMO, but I will definitely give them kudos for not issuing a cease and desist.
How is that a dick move? Bethesda (and other companies) don't owe anything to the very small community of modders of their products, and they certainly aren't doing this rumoured remake out of spite for the Skyblivion team.
Bethesda (and other companies) don’t owe anything to the very small community of modders
Disagree. I bought Skyrim VR (even though I already had the non-VR version) only because mods exist which make the game worth playing in VR. Same for Fallout 4 VR - would not have bought that without mods.
I think Project Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel are the ones.
I’ve not played them, watched a stream play one of them. The tippy part is they go off the OG lore so Cyrodiil is a more tropical/Mediterranean climate which is fun.
I’ve used Tamriel Rebuilt a while back and it was pretty fucking cool. There was only one small patch of the map that wasn’t completed when I played it, and none of it was populated. But they had the landmasses and cities all built and decorated. If they haven’t gotten NPCs populating places by now, I have no idea what they’ve been doing this whole time (it’s been several years now since I checked it out).
The fully lit portions of this map have been fully NPCd and quested. You might have enabled the preview landmass, which includes (or included, not sure if they still distribute it) a bunch of mostly mapped exteriors with partial interiors and typically no NPCs.
The tippy part is they go off the OG lore so Cyrodiil is a more tropical/Mediterranean climate which is fun.
Fucking Thalmor denying the power of Talos of Atmora.
Seriously though, the canon explanation for Cyrodiil being the way it is now as opposed to original lore is that when Talos achieved CHIM he changed it, because that’s a thing you can do with the secret syllable of royalty. All part of the path to mantling Shor/Lorkhan via one of the Walking Ways and forging an empire.
I’ve joked in other places in the past that CHIM stands for “Character Has Installed Mods” because what it allows is roughly on par with the character opening the modding tools and changing what they want to change.
I remember playing both Morrowind and Oblivion with like a ton of notes on how exactly to level up my character, not to min/max but to keep the game from scaling the difficulty too much.
I’d rather see a remake of Morrowind over Oblivion, though. I have the game on GOG but I don’t have the time in my life to go through all the mods to make it playable (especially getting the journalling system up to par with modern games).
The absolute shit mechanics had some kernels of gold though. I loved my Fortify Strength 100 Jump 100 spell and my 10 chaingun lightning amulets. Very few games let you do properly weird stuff with magic.
The level up system was bad. The thrust/chop/slash system for weapons is awkward. Every attack costing stamina is bad for early characters. The excessive number of weapon categories, combined with short and long blades being the only ones that were common. The persuasion system was just bribe people to get what you want, or taunt them for free murder. Run speed being a skill, jumping being faster than running and being a skill as well (combined with the level system this can cause problems). Item durability in general. The encumbrance system, and containers having weight limits. The spell making and enchantment system had some cool things, but it was also trivial to break the game in multiple ways. The quest tracking and journaling was garbage. Alchemy was undercooked. Merchants had way too little gold so selling became annoying by mid level. The haggling quickly got annoying as you could sell at extreme markup or buy for nothing fairly easy. Magicka didn’t regenerate, so being a mage was annoying at early levels until you had sufficient potion access.
There’s also some things that are more bugs I think than bad mechanics. Stealing from a merchant flagged every copy of an item as stolen from them. I once managed to make every redoran guard hostile to me on sight, which got really annoying.
Almost everything you said is why I prefer Morrowind and replay it more than any other Elder Scroll. I don’t like how hand-holdy and forgiving most modern games are.
The AI is obviously dated, some of the systems are underdeveloped, but stuff like the quest journal and athletic skills and how hard it is at the beginning if you aren’t careful or attentive are all major plusses for me. I want the weapon variety, I want the freedom to be anything but without the wishy-washy “you can be everything” style Skyrim has because they’re terrified of locking a player out of any content.
You can be almost everything in Morrowind, just like Skyrim. If anything Skyrim actually locks a chosen play style in more due to talents. There’s a few more exclusive guilds in Morrowind, but they aren’t major for the most part. Just because you have spent the time to learn how to avoid the rough edges doesn’t mean they aren’t there.
Don’t run everywhere (keep fatigue bar at least half full). Don’t use weapon skills that are less than 40 (train them - there aren’t restrictions like in the later games).
It’s closer to D&D than an action RPG. Your swing is like a “to hit” roll. The game cares about your character’s skill - not yours.
I like Morrowind a lot mechanically - I like that the game will happily allow you to kill anyone you want (and with Taunt - you can do it legally!) You can complete the main quest after slaughtering everyone on Vvardenfell bar one person (the thread of prophecy might be broken - but a larger theme in ES lore is that we make prophecies happen).
I like that the game is designed around the lack of fast travel. When I complain about fast travel in Oblivion and Skyrim, I hear “just don’t use it” but it isn’t really feasible (playing a Survival run in Skyrim and life just sucks if I have to go to Morthal).
Morrowind’s world is just real and thought out in a way that I haven’t seen in a game since. The towns are designed around food sources, there’s a lot of thought into to the economies of plantation slavery, and it’s all used to enhance the world building.
The fact you have to start your comment with multiple don’t do X things proves my point. As a story it’s great, but as a game it’s got a lot of problems.
The game tells you these things though. You have to pay attention.
It’s an RPG before it is an action game. The mechanics align with that - you just might not like traditional CRPGs - which is fine, most don’t which is why Bethesda basically dropped the pretense of their games being RPGs by Skyrim.
Edit: if you want the easiest time in Morrowind - a Redguard. Adrenaline Rush will get you through tough spots. If you’re impatient and willing to sacrifice optimization for speed (which isn’t really that much a big deal), take the Steed as your sign. The Lady is better for optimization and will save you money on bribes.
If you want cheese: steal the lime ware plate on the shelves in the Census and Excise office right as you start the game. Drop it before the guard confronts you, pick it back up after he chews you out. Sell to Arrille, buy equipment matching your best armor skill/weapon skill. Hop over to Addamasartus, clear out, grab the moon sugar, sell to Ravirr in Balmora for one of his “Daedric weapons.”
But really the purpose of the game is that you should be a low level dweeb for a while. Pacing is slower - if you’re going to do the Mage’s Guild - you should be capable of magic. Lots of those early quests are no combat/easy.
It’s an experience about immersion. The gameplay and mechanics are built to facilitate this. You’re supposed to suck at first - that’s why Caius basically tells you to fuck off at the beginning of the game. You do end up with your god power fantasies at the end - by the time you’ve killed two gods and a pretender, you do get to run around one shotting everything. (Better than Sheogorath him-fucking-self getting ganked by a troll because its health pool is in the triple digits.)
A positive thing to let you experience the consequences of your actions. You are ignoring the fact that the game explicitly tells you when this happens, giving you the choice to continue if you like or reload a previous save if you don’t. It’s actually more forgiving than dying in most RPGs, which would force you to reload from a previous save.
Yeah, it’s a more immersive and interesting world. I also prefer the quest journal over map markers, make you actually read and interpret shit instead of fast travelling to the nearest pip. You also can’t just be the boss of every faction, they have incompatible goals.
And it does say when you break a main quest so you can revert your save. Just don’t be a murderhobo.
Wow I’m really surprised to hear people actually played with vanilla Morrowind and Oblivion leveling. I modded both games to fix that issue almost immediately after realizing how bad the system was.
I don’t think it was a problem in Morrowind, iirc there was no scaling at all, NPCs just existed at a set level so different areas of the map opened up to you naturally as you leveled up. It’s been a minute since I played through it so I might be mistaken but I don’t remember it being a problem, as opposed to OPblivion
Scaling in Morrowind wasn’t really a problem because almost every enemy was hand placed. You don’t have hordes of generic “Bandits” (in glass fucking armor at end game) - you have Tunipy Sharmirbasour, who has a reason for being where she is and a set level. Barring like guards and some of the humanoid enemies in Tribunal and Bloodmoon - everyone has a name.
Leveling only really comes into play when it comes to some of the generic loot that can be rolled, what some shopkeepers might have, and generic creature enemies. Even then, the scaling isn’t ridiculous - going from rats to Kagouti doesn’t feel uneven. Unlike Oblivion, you also will continue to see lower level enemies generated.
Oblivion even levels the quest rewards - so your Daedric artifacts and faction completion rewards will be useless once you level.
Leveling in Oblivion also affects enemy stats, and a lot of time it’s a flat bonus. Late game ogres and Minotaurs are not fun to fight, because they’re just massive health pools.
Morrowind has the same “inefficient” leveling problem (like, endurance is something you want to upgrade as early as possible, because it effects how much health you get every level up) - but in Morrowind you aren’t permanently fucked because you spent your first ten levels training acrobatics and speech craft or something.
Oblivion’s scaling was so wonky. Especially compared with what I really believe to be one of the worst leveling systems of all time. Anyone defending the leveling in Oblivion is nostalgic or thinks things are good just because they’re complicated. Being able to both under AND over level was such weird design.
I really dislike any game with difficulty scaling. It might make some sense, if you fight random bandits in the middle of nowhere, since they had time to level up a little, but in most places it’s just annoying.
I’d rather have my character level up and be able to literally destroy everything with one hit when I spend a shit-ton of time making it stronger. See: Gothic games or classic RPG’s.
I did play it! But I found the significantly lower usage of level scaling made it much less of a problem. Like... it is still a car crash of a system, but I don't have to compete with the fact that every enemy in the world is scaled to challenge me if I a) levelled perfectly and b) put every level into combat skills
The random hit chance thing is a separate issue though
It did. You’ll start to see “mudcrabs” become, like, “diseased mudcrab” and other various divider names as they scaled up with you, the same as they do in Oblivion and Skyrim. It has the same problem of “oh no, I leveled up to 25 by only jumping and now everything is too strong for my wimpy combat skills to handle.” Though because the game is already tougher from the start, it may not be as noticeable.
I am a spreadsheet kind of guy and the old system is for that, but it isn’t very intuitive. Without a guide you have no real idea what you should be doing, which wouldn’t work for mosr people who would love the game otherwise.
A remaster for the first two wouldn’t be enough, I figure. I played daggerfall unity and it just does not hold up. A full on remake would be interesting, but they’d have to go hard, and reconceptualize a lot.
I think Avowed is the smoothest (strictly comparative) game on UE5 I've played in a long time. I get 120fps locked on epic and no shader compilation stutters (1440p, 7900XTX and 7800X3D, FSR quality) outside of cities. As soon as I enter a city and move my camera/character, it dips to 50fps with my GPU barely being used and CPU spiking, which really doesn't make much sense to me considering the aren't a lot of NPCs in town and they don't move/have routines
The issue there is 4K, even with upscalers it's a massive rendering job for GPUs. Realistically, only the 4090 and 5090 could run in high settings at 4K (with or without upscaling). I had a 4K monitor with my 7900 XTX and decided to dial back to 1440p (and got a n OLED screen too) so I could run my games at max on 120 or 144 FPS, because at 4K I would get anything between 50 and 100 fps with a mix of high and medium settings
Even if they do, I feel like both projects will have different enough approach to things to avoid making the other obsolete. Maybe… possibly.
I’ll certainly take the unofficial remake over the Bethesda one due to lower requirements and lack of Creation Club. That, and I’m just more interested in the fan interpretation of Cyrodiil to be honest.
I really hope so! It seems like such a no brainer, get a studio to remake the bulk of it and keep creative control. I came into TES world in Skyrim and would love to go back through them but I’m a snob for a modern looking game now.
I hope they manage to get it complete, and good. Giving Oblivion another try (this time exploring the rest of the world instead of focusing on the boring main quest) has been on my list for a while, and improved graphics would be welcome.
That font, though… not a good choice for quickly delivering information. Mods to the rescue?
Funny, for me it’s the other way around. I probably played a couple hundred hours of Oblivion back in the day: modding, exploring and restarting. Never once finished the main quest. I’m thinking Skyblivion might be my chance to finally do it.
Which, ironically, was why I only played the main quest in Starfield vanilla. Running around empty, boring planets, with copy-pasted dungeons (there’s only, what, 10 varieties?), felt like nothing but a colossal waste of time.
So glad I didn’t pay for it (Gamepass, with apologies to my Linux friends).
I got through about half the main story before the load-door-load-fastravel-load-door-load made me just give up. I learned later you can directly fast travel from the map but for some reason when I tried it initially it didn’t work and thought you had to go to your ship everytime.
So sad that Rockstar now too is “one of those”, but that is what always happens when small companies making great products grown into large corporations. Gta6 will be shit, it will ring in the end for Rockstar and nobody at the exec level at Rockstar willl care because they will have filled their pockets and can jump ship.
GTA 5 was so lame for me already (I just can't relate to predefined characters, especially when they're THIS unlikable) and GTA Online ruined the rest of it for me. Now that they decided to also block Linux I'm seriously questioning why I should even bother with GTA 6 at all? Or this company in general? There's enough games out there I can buy for that money that can keep me busy for longer and with less annoyances.
Hate it or love it, GTA has become one of the world biggest brand. GTA6 might be one of the biggest mainstream game. And you just don’t make the biggest game without the biggest parachute to get every share holders on-board.
I don’t think so personally. Without a story campaign, there is just not enough force to push the launch sales. I think that’s why since Black ops 4, all cod has a campaign.
Just hope they don’t make the campaign need online connection too, lol. Rockstar launcher is shit enough as it is.
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