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Elder Scrolls Oblivion Gold 179

Posted by Zonk from the squeee dept.
Gamespot has word that Bethesda's upcoming release Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has gone gold. It is due out on the 20th. They also have a rundown on some gameplay. From the article: "In true Elder Scrolls fashion, you start Oblivion rotting in a jail cell. Don't worry--Oblivion plunges you into the action and story faster than any Elder Scrolls game to date. We'll get into some minor spoilers here, though many of the following facts have already been revealed publicly. Once again you'll play as a character burdened by destiny to save the world, this time from a demonic invasion from the hellish plane known as Oblivion. Before you know it, you'll go from the dungeon cell to exploring a dank underground, killing rats and assassins while also getting some welcome introductory exposition from Emperor Uriel Septim VII, voiced by Patrick Stewart himself." I know I don't normally mention gold releases, but I'm really looking forward to this one. You know a guy is committed when he buys new RAM for a game.
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Elder Scrolls Oblivion Gold More

Elder Scrolls Oblivion Gold

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  • RAM = commitment? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Bradee-oh! ( 459922 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @06:45PM (#14838644)
    You know a guy is committed when he buys new RAM for a game.
     
    Heh - I'm saving up and planning my entire next computer for when Spore comes out later this year. A few dozen dollars worth of RAM aint a commitment ;)

    • A few dozen dollars worth of RAM aint a commitment ;)

      Yep. As we've been conditioned to believe, commitment costs at least 2 months' salary.

  • I've read of many people getting whole new rigs for this one! Personally, I'll be picking it up for the XBOX360, and the street date can not get here any sooner.
    • Personally, I'm waiting until it reaches the $20 price point for the game + all expansions. This has its advantages:

      * Bugfixes. By then, they should have finally gotten most of the bugs out of the game.
      * Modding. Based on my experiance with Morrowind, the modding community should have quite a variety of mods out for the game, everything from user-interface essentials that the developers forgot (readable road signs, labeled potion bottles) to things that make the world really seem alive (non-hostile wildl
    • Word from those who have played the preview recently is that the draw distance and popins on the Xbox 360 are horrible.
    • My wife and I each got new machines. I'm just annoyed that the game was delayed. We could have spent less if we knew we could ahve waited a few months to buy.

      You're better off on the PC. Not much more money, and you can use it for other stuff too. Plus there's the downloadable mods, the higher resolution, the faster CPU (which increases AI distance, etc...)...
      • Dude, don't you know that if you buy a new computer for a specific game, you are ensuring that the game will be delayed? Hell, just my own experiences with this are sufficiently numerous to be statistically significant.

        At least we all know that you are the reason Oblivion was delayed...thanks alot. Bastard.
        • I agree, if you buy the new hardware in advance, the game is guaranteed to be delayed.

          Conversely, if you buy the hardware at the same time as the game is released, the hardware will take longer than normal to get working. Such was the case with my upgrade for Half-Life 2, bought the upgrade the day of release, and didn't get to play the game for a week and a half :D

          And, as I have no dignity, I call this maxim Default Luser's Law (C) (R) (TM), and expect bountiful royalties every time it is invoked.

      • Re:Just New Ram? (Score:5, Informative)

        by ElleyKitten ( 715519 ) <kittensunrise@@@gmail...com> on Thursday March 02, 2006 @09:55PM (#14839838) Journal
        >>You're better off on the PC. Not much more money, and you can use it for other stuff too.

        Not that much more money?!? A PC with the recommended specs will easily cost you twice as much as a 360. I hate it when people talk about PC gaming like it's cheaper than console, because it it quite clearly is not. And yes, while you can use the PC for other stuff, you could also use a much cheaper PC that you don't have to upgrade every year for all that other stuff. Sure, gaming PCs do have benefits over consoles, but don't try to pretend they aren't a lot more money.

        • Re:Just New Ram? (Score:3, Insightful)

          by ivan256 ( 17499 ) *
          I hate it when people talk about PC gaming like it's cheaper than console

          Good for you.

          you could also use a much cheaper PC

          My video card cost less than a 360, and is faster than the 360's video. It's the only difference between my machine and a machine I would use for work. Again, not saying it's cheaper...Just smarter unless you play a lot of games and don't do much work. (Personally, I buy the consoles too)

          that you don't have to upgrade every year

          I hate when console gamers talk about how PC games have to u
          • "My video card cost less than a 360, and is faster than the 360's video."

            I'd like to know what this magical video card is. The ATI card in the 360 is on par with the X1900s that just came out. That's a $600-700 card, twice as much as the core 360.

            A crap $250 card won't cut it for much longer anyway. I love when these people buy nVidia 6800s and last year's ATIs and think they're on top of the world. They're not.
        • Well, but for a PC you can get a pirated version of Oblivion for free and spend the saved money on hardware upgrades!
          *ducks*

        • Re:Just New Ram? (Score:2, Insightful)

          by infiniter ( 745494 )
          That's frequently true, but in a lot of cases it is more economical to buy a PC to suit your serious needs as well as your recreational needs. For example, my classes require that I use programs like MatLab, Cadence/OrCad, and Maple. In order to use these programs, a powerful computer is a virtual must, as the processing times on slower processors are unbearable.

          So, the coincidental benefit of having a powerful PC to play games on is definitely there.

          Also, were I to want the same picture experience on

      • Re:Just New Ram? (Score:2, Interesting)

        by Schitzoflink ( 949390 )
        Yes and if you had waited like me (cuz I'm poor, not cuz any planning) then you could get the new Gforce 7900 series of Video Cards, or at least the 7800 will be cheeper because of it.

        Oh and for all you "Xbox is cheeper" it aint, to get the HD resolution that you'll be getting on a computer, you need to buy the X360 and an HD tv.
        • Yes and if you had waited like me (cuz I'm poor, not cuz any planning) then you could get the new Gforce 7900 series of Video Cards, or at least the 7800 will be cheeper because of it.

          Actually, I got lucky. The X800XL I had bought just died, and NewEgg gave me a full retail price credit because they don't make it anymore. So I got a 7800GT plus $20 back. I'm not happy with the heat and the fan noise compared to the ATI card, but it makes up for it in framerate.
  • ....I was going to really get some awesome work done this quarter.

    I didn't really want to graduate anyways, I guess.

    (You have created a Potion)
    (You have created a Potion)
    (You have created a Potion)
    (You have created a Potion)
    (Your Alchemy has increased to 90)
    (You should rest and meditate on what you've learned.)
    • Don't worry, no more potions of fortify intelligence 1585 for 32684 seconds. You can have only a few potions in effect simultaneously so you can fortify int only so much and make only so kickass potions and no more. Unless they missed something again.. :)

  • Will Oblivion fix Morrowind's bland NPCs? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jagasian ( 129329 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @07:03PM (#14838783)
    The NPCs in Morrowind are sparse, bland, and they do not engage in typical daily activities, but instead they just wander around the same area doing the same thing no matter what time of day it is. There are a few mods that fix this issue in Morrowind, but does Oblivion fix this? I really hope that Bethesda payed close attention to the popular Morrowind mods, so that the features in those mods could be incorporated into Oblivion, straight out of the box.

    • Re:Will Oblivion fix Morrowind's bland NPCs? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tukkayoot ( 528280 ) on Thursday March 02, 2006 @07:22PM (#14838927) Homepage
      This is one thing they are definitely addressing in Oblivion, with their vaunted Radiant AI [wikipedia.org]. To summarize, NPCs will have goals and will have various means of achieving those goals. The most often mentioned example is that of an NPC getting hungry, and going to the store and buying some food. Or they might steal it, or go hunting for it.

      It sounds promising. In the official Oblivion forums I read one of the anecdotes shared by the developers while testing/tinkering with NPCs. They created some NPC that had it as part of his daily schedule to sweep his porch (or something like that), the problem is they didn't give him a broom. So what does this enterprising NPC do? He goes inside his house, gets his trusty axe, and murders a fellow townsperson who happens to have a broom, takes the broom and proceeds to sweep his front porch.

      Obviously at that point the AI required a bit of tweaking, but even in this "blooper" it demonstrates some of the game's promise in the area of NPC intelligence and behaviors.

      I don't think there's much doubt that this is going to be a good game that many people will become obsessed with. The question is, will it live up to the hype? Arguably, Morrowind did not, due to a laundry list of deep flaws, not the least or greatest of which (in my opinion) were the bland NPCs. They have to figure out a way to make the game fun as opposed to just plopping the player down in a vast world and expecting him to be happy to wander around awestruck by the environments they're surrounded by.

      The main issue I had with Morrowind is that it was too easy, and seemed almost designed to be exploited. I suppose this is a difficult problem to avoid in an open ended game where the player is supposed to be empowered to do any number of things any number of different ways, but it really weaken the entire game experience. I really hope they fix this in Oblivion.

      • I remember similar stories about many a game where the AI was supposed to be something hot. It never seems to pan out. Either they are lying, or it was a fluke, or they somehow never bother to actually put it in the game because the CIA has confiscated the code.

        I don't know but so far AI seems to be 'okay' at dodging in a well designed enviroment but coming close to intelligence?

        Silent Storm has the AI picking up dropped weapons. Great, so your civilian decides to be a hero, runs out to some dropped weapo

        • Yeah, that's what I was thinking too when I read that tall tale. I can't exactly remember the games where I've read that (B&W has been mentioned already, but there were more than 1), but yes, there was this deja-vu sensation. I had read the exact same bullshit a couple dozen times before, for more than one game.

          In fact, the first time I've heard that kind of a claims was in the early 80's, about some program in a book where a dot would randomly bounce around a box or maze until it found the way out. I d
    • Why thank you for the setup question, fellow Bethesda employee. Let me take this opportunity to tell you about the glories of "radiant AI". Radiant AI will allow characters to behave in a manor that's...oh, forget it. It doesn't work. We got nothing.

      -Eric

  • Can you download free user-made content for the 360 as easily as you can on a PC?

    If not, I plan on advising my fellow TES fans to upgrade their PC for this.
    • No. Bestheda will be producing mods that you'll be able to purchase for a small fee, but the TES construction set will not be included with the 360 version, and to my knowledge, no player made mods will be usable on the 360.
      • This is why I plan to play through it first on the Xbox 360, and then down the line when it's available with all expansions in a "Value Pack" or "Game of the Year Edition" or something like that, I'll buy the PC version. Hopefully by then my PC will be capable of running it cleanly at 1680x1050 (my LCD's native res).

        This plan worked great for Morrowind, so I expect it to be just as good for Oblivion.

        Of course if they crap up the PC version with StarForce or anything like that, I'll just skip it entirely an
    • What if you didn't want to?
  • Oh can't wait. This game looks really cool.

    For such a traditionally innovative game though, starting off in a dungeon and spending the first bit of the game underground is extremely unoriginal. Why is it that so many modern fantasy RPGs start the player in an underground dungeon where it is necessary to navigate numerous monster filled tunnels to get to the surface, can't anyone think of anything else?

    One thing I always wonder is how on earth do the respective captors reach their dungeons without constantly
  • Is that something like Fish Brain Robot? Or Purple Monkey Dishwasher?
  • Maybe someone can help me out with this question:
    Why does the Elder Scrolls series get so little attention? Everytime I read or hear talk of an RPG, a big single player game, detailed games, whatever these games have, Morrowind NEVER gets mentioned. It's like outside of a select set of RPG enthusiasts, nobody has ever heard of Morrowind (or Oblivion for that matter).

    What gives?
    • What gives? Mention it and everybody will say they played it, they loved it, it was cool. They will mention the same bugs, the same problems, the same fixes, they will praise the game for detail, and after 5 mins you will see there's nothing to discuss. Neverwinter Nights sucked in so many ways that it's a good subject for an argument. WoW has so many flaws some consider features that you can argue for hours. Morrowind was so close to perfection that you already know almost all that was to be known about it
      • Neverwinter Nights sucked in so many ways that it's a good subject for an argument.

        I'd never played until I picked up the platinum edition a week or so ago. I think it's pretty sweet, native Linux client and all.

        Did it used to suck more but they fixed problems, am I missing something, or do I just have a real high threshold of "suck" compared to you?

        • 1) if you were just casually playing it over the last week, you don't feel its suckiness. I dumped it after good 2 weeks of gameplay when I didn't see any improvement in playablity. At first I thought "just pass the first dungeon and it will be better", then "just exit the first city and it will be better" but it didn't. It was just getting more boring afterwards.
          2) if you have a good machine, it doesn't suck so much. It has ridiculously high system expectations in comparison to what it offers. If you can,
          • if you were just casually playing it over the last week, you don't feel its suckiness.

            I was.

            then "just exit the first city and it will be better" but it didn't.

            I just finished Chapter 1 ;-)

            if you have a good machine, it doesn't suck so much.
            Opteron 175, Geforce 6800GT, 2 GB
            Being behind the game curve rules ;-)

            If you can, get the "camera hack" to see why -

            I'll try it. Thanks.

            D20 systems are good for pen&paper RPG,...

            A friend at work was talking about that when I told him I got it. He bought it when it
            • Well, I won't go on, but we get to that special point, where you see: it sucks in a lot of ways but not "totally", just between "mildly" and "strongly". If it sucked in every way possible, there would be no point in arguing: It sucks. If it ruled in all or almost all ways, there would be no point in arguing: It rules. But because it's such a horribly flawed marvel, with so many great features that get completely lost due to such horrible misfeatures/bugs, people keep arguing about NWN.

              For you D20 with its c
    • I always liked Daggerfall better than Morrowind.
    • Huh? The Elder Scrolls series 'gets so little attention'? Morrowind and Oblivion couldn't have been/be more hyped. Multiple covers on major gaming magazines? Slashdot posts? Multiple Penny Arcade mentions? And, frankly, everybody's played them at this point, unless they're some mouth-breathing frat boy who thinks all the X-Box is good for is Madden and Need For Speed. And nearly everybody that's played them worships the ground they tread on.

      That said... I hated Daggerfall, hated Morrowind, and am ant
    • "Everytime I read or hear talk of an RPG, a big single player game, detailed games, whatever these games have, Morrowind NEVER gets mentioned."

      Well, we could mention it, in the form of "Well, and then there's Morrowind which sucks in every single aspect compared to these other games I've mentioned. In fact, it's the prime example of how _not_ to make a big game: having barely enough material for a small game, and dilluting it to cover a hundred square miles of computer-generated terrain and copy-and-pasted
      • Excellent points all, and well argued. It's nice to see someone put some actual thought into an argument on /.

        On the other hand, you're a STUPID HEAD!

        -Eric

      • Morrowind or as I liked to call it: Boringwind. Getting anywhere or doing anything in the game was such a complete and total grind that I gave up on the game after only a few hours. When you weren't spending 10 to 15 minutes just trying to get somewhere and wandering pointlessly between places you were wandering pointlessly between places being attacked by glorified bats.

        And talk about slow: I had a good system for the time and the stupid thing absolutely _crawled_.

        RUN RUN RUN...rest WALK rest WALK rest..
  • "See!!! It is cheaper to play games on the PC."

    Too bad building a PC with 3 3.2ghz processors and an equivilent ATI video card would be pushing 2 grand.

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