The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PS3/Xbox2/PC) Screens

[RainOfTerror]

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion is a single-player game that takes place in Tamriel's capital province, Cyrodiil. You are given the task of finding the hidden heir to a throne that sits empty, the previous emperor having been killed by an unknown assassin. Oblivion is another leap forward in role-playing with its combination of freeform gameplay and cutting-edge graphics.

In keeping with the Elder Scrolls tradition, players will have the option to experience the main quest at their own pace, and there will be plenty of opportunities to explore the vast world and make your own way. Numerous factions can be joined, such as the thieves or mages guilds, and each contains its own complete storyline and the chance to rise to the head of the faction and reap further rewards.

Check out these awesome 3 new The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion screens (http://www.worthplaying.com/article.php?sid=26904) (from the X360 version) over at WorthPlaying.


Release Date: U.S. 11/01/2005 (PC (http://www.gametab.com/pc/elder.scrolls.iv.oblivion.the/3407/), Xbox (http://www.gametab.com/xbox360/elder.scrolls.iv.oblivion.the/4227/))

[Sion]

I hope they get the naked mod for this out fast. It's the only way to play.

[Blue]

Alright, everybody into the glowing vagina.

/barry ween

[Paltry]

wow tis beautiful

[Com_Gaunt]

Since when is it coming out on the PS3?

[bapenguin]

man....when do we get to see the shadow tech?

[Heretic Machine]

I just want an Oblivion version of the Mog*Mog... Get to work, Ian!

[Hugenex]

How come when i want to look at screenshots over at WorthPlaying they open in tiny little window. On topic: Can we see some UI

[Varsity]

It's high detail, sure, but is that high detail being put to good use? The portal one was OK, but this (http://www.worthplaying.com/press/185/tes4e3LegionFight.jpg) is positively bad. Such a damn waste. :(

[ldi222]

According to this months Game Informer, Oblivion was cancelled for the PS3.

[EL CABONG]

According to this months Game Informer, Oblivion was cancelled for the PS3.
good that way I can use my PS3 for what it was really meant for grilling hotdogs and hunting kangaroos with its controllers and then grilling kangaroo dogs.

[TrackZero]

How come when i want to look at screenshots over at WorthPlaying they open in tiny little window. On topic: Can we see some UI

Because they believe some people still run at 640x480 prehaps?

[snubber]

Ok, this game looks good, but it better:

1) have good AI
2) have a world that feels alive...swaying trees, wind rustling, people moving about
3) have fun, interactive combat where it feels like you're actually DOING something.

Now, it sounds like they actually addressed all the above, so I'm tentatively excited, but I'm just crossing my fingers it comes out as hyped.

[mister_slim]

This game is really going to depend on the AI. If they manage to hit their target, should be quite good. If the AI continues to have people light their dogs on fire I will be quite disappointed.

[Draft]

How would this game work on the hard drive less PS3.

[bobbler]

How would this game work on the hard drive less PS3.

The same way every other game will work without an HDD (outside of some MMOs). Believe it or not, an HDD isn't required unless you plan on having lots of patches (or downloadable stuff).

The only thing this would require is a save card (the saves will probably be pretty decent size - 30MB or so - maybe less with some half decent compression).

[Morrolan]

Wow, that helmet in screen 2 looks seriously dopey.

Otherwise, looks great. I really don't need any more convincing that this game will be beautiful. Hell, I didn't need convincing of that, even before the first screenshot was released. I've heard a lot of promises, with regards to gameplay, and the specific claims made sound very encouraging. I'm very hopeful.

[Draft]

The same way every other game will work without an HDD (outside of some MMOs). Believe it or not, an HDD isn't required unless you plan on having lots of patches (or downloadable stuff).

The only thing this would require is a save card (the saves will probably be pretty decent size - 30MB or so - maybe less with some half decent compression).
I believe they are going to have downloadable stuff.

I just figured with all the things you can change, a HDD is required. Can't really think of any other games with huge open worlds like that, especially one where I can pick up a knife in the north, drop it in the south, and it will stay there forever.

[bobbler]

Remember this generation an HDD for speed is not going to be a huge gain -- the DVD drives in the consoles will be 5x the speed of the PS2/Xbox DVD drives while the HDDs are going to be roughly the same speed as Xbox1's, so the differences become less pronounced.

But yea, If they want to do a lot of optional and downloadable content, that is where an HDD is required (unless users want to play with huge 1-2gb memory sticks). I think I heard that they wanted to do stuff with the microtransactions on Oblivion also (like downloadable skins/items/etc). It seems to me Oblivion was never announced for the PS3 to begin with, there might have been talks early on but when it was announced for Xbox360 it wasn't for the PS3 -- that was a while ago now. It wouldn't surprise me to see a port later on though (after Microsoft has reaped the benefits of having it on Xbox360 exclusively for a while). Not holding my breath either way.

Huge open world is quite doable without an HDD. Look at the GTA series -- those are pretty big cities, and once you got a decent streaming engine going the world size is only really limited by your disc size and artists/developers time. Anything like having a knife on the ground is going to be stored in ram anyways, most likely (at least things that will be used a lot) -- you aren't going to be touching the HDD for much besides streaming the world, NPC information would almost need to be in ram. If the world is set up where NPCs have daily routines, they'd need to be running constantly on some thread in the game engine and thus would need to be in system ram so (the information to hold all that would probably fit in a few megs uncompressed anyways. Anything you can stream from an HDD you can from a disc (with almost the same seek times if you set it up the disc right). Something like the location of a knife is going to take only a few bytes -- which, when you are finished playing can be stored on a save card or something similar in the save file (it'd take several thousand items, conversations, npcs, etc to fill a save card of a decent size -- that is if you don't bother compressing it also).

[Twigz'N'Berries]

Thanks for the explanation. I wasn't sure why the hd was important. I think it will be extremely easy to port to the 360 because of the hard drive. It was developed for high end pcs and it will be easy to develop for the 360. Both have harddrives and Bethesda wouldn't have to worry (or invest) in learning how to offload some of the work to the SPE's. (But, this will probably be just a simple single thread game so it doesn't seem as if it should be a difficult PS3 port)...

Ok, I have no idea why they wouldn't port it over to the PS3.

[bobbler]

Ok, I have no idea why they wouldn't port it over to the PS3.

A little cash from MS? or maybe bethesda is completely happy not delving into PS3 -- the audience is slightly different, they might have done some polls and found out most of the PS2 audience that didn't have an Xbox didn't want Morrowind and figured it wasn't worth the trouble? A bigger audience doesn't always mean sales will end up worth the time. Bethesda, in the time it takes to port it, might be able to make a quick game better suited to the Sony audience and be better off? Maybe they just didn't want to deal with not having an HDD because they want to offer a lot of content after the game is released? There are lots of reasons.

Seems to me like some money was behind it. A little money never hurts.

[CapnS]

I suppose its too much to hope that they will take advantage of Live in some meaningful way.

[bobbler]

I suppose its too much to hope that they will take advantage of Live in some meaningful way.

I'd be surprised if they didn't. At least I'd be surprised if they didn't offer some extra downloads (like additional items and maybe even additional areas in the world).

[Twigz'N'Berries]

I'd be surprised if they didn't. At least I'd be surprised if they didn't offer some extra downloads (like additional items and maybe even additional areas in the world).

Sounds like a good idea to me! I bought the original and GOTY edition...that was pretty much the same as a download. I do know that they said they would never make the Elder Scrolls into a MMORPG. I really don't blame them. This game works well as a single player experience.