Elder Scrolls Panorama Shots 99
Johnny wrote to mention new images up on the Panogames.com site, for the Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Enjoy some late-night images of sprawling countrysides and dank dungeons. They also offer images of Half-Life 2 and Need for Speed : Most Wanted.
QTVR = Slow! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:QTVR = Slow! (Score:1)
Re:QTVR = Slow! (Score:2)
That's not ironic, it's just mean!
Re:QTVR = Slow! (Score:1)
previous poster: That word - I do not think it means what you think it means.
myself: Where does this troll come from? It happens all the time on slashdot. Is there a reference I've completely missed or are there really that many idiots who can't read a fucking dictionary?
I accept your apology for misunderstanding my comment due to your poor reading ability. Just make sure it doesn't happen again.
DON'T SKIP (Score:3, Interesting)
I need to upgrade. (Score:2, Funny)
Re:I need to upgrade. (Score:1)
Re:I need to upgrade. (Score:2)
At least yours runs them. Both IE6 and Firefox crashed as soon as I try and pan around them. Click-scroll-crash. Fun!
In any case, these are simply amazing. I recommend everyone who likes these take a look at some videos of the game [elderscrolls.com]. They have some new ones on there I haven't seen yet, but I've watched all the E3 Demo videos and those are amazing.
This game truly blows everything else out of the water in terms of sheer scope and graphical achievem
Nice game, shame about the bugs. (Score:2)
It goes like this.
Re:Nice game, shame about the bugs. (Score:1)
Job done?
Kev
Re:Nice game, shame about the bugs. (Score:2)
Re:Nice game, shame about the bugs. (Score:2)
Okay, stuff like memory corruption can sometimes be found more easily when porting, but this is clearly a logic bug that doesn't have to do anything with the platform it runs on.
Yes I would like to have the game on Linux too. But it honestly, it would be just as buggy there as it is on Windows.
Re:Nice game, shame about the bugs. (Score:1)
Re:I need to upgrade. (Score:2)
Heck no. (Score:2)
Re:Go Out And Waste 400+ Bucks For This??? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Go Out And Waste 400+ Bucks For This??? (Score:1)
I'm in love. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I'm in love. (Score:1)
TESIV:O (Score:2)
Athlon XP 3000+ (Barton 333)
Soyo KT400 Dragon Ultra
Ati Radeon X850XT
2 Gig PC2700 DDRAM 1x1GB, 2x512GB
Re:TESIV:O (Score:2)
Re:TESIV:O (Score:2)
Here's a good question: anybody played Oblivion on a dual-core system yet? Oblivion was supposed to be the first game to natively support dual-core at launch. I want to know if a dual-core system k
Re:TESIV:O (Score:2)
Re:TESIV:O (Score:2)
AMD Athlon 64 3500+
nVidia GeForce 6800GT
1 GB DDR dual-channel
You'll be fine, mostly, but cranking every damn setting up to max will probably bring your computer to a crawl. But you'd notice on
Re:TESIV:O (Score:1)
I've no problem with 30 FPS in RTSes and 2D platformers, but I simply can't tolerate it in first or third person shooters.
Re:TESIV:O (Score:2)
I suppose I have a high tolerance level, too, because I've used older hardware with newer games for long periods of time.
Re:TESIV:O (Score:2)
Re:TESIV:O (Score:2)
If you have anything earlier than a GeForce 6000 series card (I can't name the ATI equivalent), it runs very badly. As for the game itself, I have mixed feelings. Go in with low expectations about the AI and stuff, and you'll probably be fine.
Re:TESIV:O (Score:1)
Just think... (Score:3, Informative)
Gamers on various forums are starting to explore the expansive INI settings available. You can easily crash your game, but there are some promising improvements out there already of things that make the game look even better if you have the equipment to support it.
In case you didn't know, the grass is generated by the game itself based on the climate and terrain type. The floor of a forest will be more sparse and rugged than open expansive plains where there is almost too much grass. When terrain gets too high/steep, the foliage thins.
Dark Brotherhood (Score:4, Informative)
Even in the most open-ended of games, and this is surely one, you can run into stuff the developers didn't plan for.
Game Reviews (Score:1)
Re:Game Reviews (Score:1, Offtopic)
I didn't notice it before hand, but they never show you more than a few meters around you in their screen shots? There's a really good reason for that...
I'm not saying it sucks, I've not even played it (I will buy it, eventually). But I did play some of their other games.
Morrowind got into a playa
It's brilliant (Score:1, Interesting)
Unlike Morrowind, it also actually has gameplay. All sorts of little things that never made sense in Morrowind are fixed here. You can tell which of your goods are stolen. You can tell which things you're not legally allowed to touch, so that when you go for them, you at least sneak first. There's a visibility meter. The s
Re:It's brilliant (Score:2, Funny)
When i got Morrowind and played for a few hours i thought i'd gonna love that game but all that stupidity about stealing totally ruined it for me. Add to that all those crates in open places, you could legally take stuff from most of these, but take from some others and you had someone shouting 'Thief'. Yuck! If they fixed that i might give it a try. Hmm, maybe i should try a pirated ver
Re:Game Reviews (Score:2)
>> positive "reader reviews" showing up within an hour of daybreak on the east coast aren't a good sign
>>either.
Actually, it is a very very good game (though it has its bugs, like all Bethesda games).
>>I didn't notice it before hand, but they never show you more than a few meters around you in their screen
>> shots? There's a really good reason for that...
Thats because the
Re:Game Reviews (Score:3, Informative)
I can relate to that, but it's actually good (Score:4, Insightful)
"I didn't notice it before hand, but they never show you more than a few meters around you in their screen shots? There's a really good reason for that..."
The biggest slow-down on my machine was the grass, and I suspect that's the really good reason there: grass makes for great screenshots, but really _kills_ frame rates unless you lower the rendering distance. On the bright side, you can turn it off, which helps performance a _lot_. (On the even brighter side, turning it off makes all the alchemy plants much easier visible.)
And that's just one option. There is really plenty of room to tweak the graphics even more than that. You can turn it all down to really low res and polycounts, or play with the render distance, or whatever. Heck, you can easily turn it into something that's lighter on the graphics than Morrowind was. (Not that it'll look much better, but you won't need much better hardware either.)
"I'm not saying it sucks, I've not even played it (I will buy it, eventually). But I did play some of their other games."
I understand why someone would want to extrapolate from previous experience and take (semi)informed guesses when making a personal decision (e.g., buy it or not), and indeed we all do all the time. Unfortunately, that doesn't really offer any guarantees about Oblivion. In the end, it can be good, or it can be bad, or something in between, regardless of what the previous games have been like.
"Morrowind got into a playable "ready for release" state about the time the first expansion came out. "
Morrowind had many problems, yes, but Oblivion isn't Morrowind. It's not just that it doesn't have the same technical problems, it also doesn't have the bland NPCs and generic quests, etc. In other words, if you consider the first expansion what Morrowind should have been, well, then you might actually like Oblivion. It's far closer to Tribunal than to Morrowind in most aspects.
"Daggerfall, never did become a workable title."
Oblivion isn't Daggerfall either. Heck, even Morrowind, for its other problems, wasn't anywhere _near_ the Daggerfall disaster.
"This is, I think, the kind of game Bethesda would release if it weren't for Microsoft's hand in the mix."
I don't know if it's MS's hand or not, but that's OK, because I don't really care. All that matters is whether the game is any good or not. Exactly how much of it is MS's merit and how much is Bethesda's, is a best an academic exercise, but in the end it doesn't really matter. Either the game is fun or it isn't, and in the end that's all that matters.
But if you want to talk about the games Bethesda did release without MS, those include releasing a FPS actually _before_ Wolfenstein 3D. It also featured driving vehicles and outdoors city scenes. Long before the big name FPSes featured any of those. And, yeah, you could run pedestrians down with the car long before GTA2. It just wasn't textured, but it was in every other aspect a better game than Doom or Quake that came _years_ later. Or they include stuff like Terminator: Future Shock, which invented full mouse-look. In effect, they invented the interface every single modern FPS uses. Etc.
Even in the "The Elder Scrolls" category, Arena was pretty stable and a fun RPG (plus it had some amazing technical stuff, like having 80 _million_ square km of terrain, not counting the dungeons), and they had stuff in there that debatably wasn't even an RPG. E.g., Redguard or Battlespire. I.e., it included more than Daggerfall and Morrowind to base an extrapolation on.
Heck, they even made at least one Mario game.
So basically it's pretty hard to accurately paint Bethesda with a one-liner wisecrack. The stuff they did was really extremely diverse,
Re:Game Reviews (Score:2)
I'm enjoying the game immensely despite that quirk,
Opinions of Morrowind/Oblivion? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, is a familiarity with Morrowind a pre-requisite to playing Oblivion?
Re:Opinions of Morrowind/Oblivion? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Opinions of Morrowind/Oblivion? (Score:4, Informative)
Familiarity with Morrowind is not necessary for Oblivion. All of the Elder Scrolls games share a common world, but take place in different areas and have independent stories. If you've played the previous games you'll likely get a bit more from the story, but it's not required to enjoy it.
Re:Opinions of Morrowind/Oblivion? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Opinions of Morrowind/Oblivion? (Score:4, Interesting)
Serious question, no sarcasm.
You're trying to beat the proportions (Score:5, Interesting)
In Oblivion it's different. If you just pimp out your attack stats, your enemies are going to be stronger in proportion. This has to happen because the world is so wide open. They don't know where you're going to go, and they can't put the stronger enemies "later" in the game.
However, as your non-attack stats go up, you have more options open to you. Speechcraft and mercantile make it easier to get potions and equipment. Learning spells opens up new tactics. Most importantly, learning new alchemy recipes allows you to make excellent potions.
The alchemy thing is *huge*. In many games, even if you know the combination for a lock or the recipe for soup, you're not allowed to make the soup or open the lock until a character tells you how. In Oblivion, if you know how you can do it anytime. Your stats will affect how long this takes, but they won't stop you as such.
What's rewarded is therefore learning about the game world, not pimping your stats. Once you've read enough recipe books on people's shelves, learned about the history, figured out the enchantment system, etc, you can really trounce anybody you run into. Put another way, if there were PvP in the game, an educated player with decent stats would win against a novice player with maxed stats every time.
Of course, if you look at a strategy guide this whole progression is toast, because it's inside you rather than enforced by the computer's dice. I like that. It annoys me that even if I know all the answers in Final Fantasy, I have to spend 45 hours pushing buttons. In Oblivion if I know all the answers, I can go straight to the places where the best weapons are stored, brew up potions, go to the master trainers.... It's my competence that determines my fate. So I stay the hell away from forums and strategy guides, and on the official Elder Scrolls forums the admins enforce the separation between the hardware, bug, and story discussion rooms with an iron fist.
It's not perfect, but that's because they really are the only ones out there doing this kind of game. Trying to combine total world freedom with a decent gameplay progression is damn hard. GTA avoids the issue by mostly dumping the idea of progression. Final Fantasy dumps the freedom. Elder Scrolls tries to combine both, and they're getting closer.
Re:You're trying to beat the proportions (Score:2)
Re:You're trying to beat the proportions (Score:1, Interesting)
This is kind of how I feel. It is obvious that the key to success and enjoyment of this game is to interact with the characters to collect knowledge of the game world. But to me, the characters are not appealing and the game world is straight off the cover art of some cheap fantasy novel. Since I'm not into reading cheap fantasy novels, I'm left with
Re:You're trying to beat the proportions (Score:1)
Re:You're trying to beat the proportions (Score:2)
I've done the Squaresoft-esque thing, though. And while I know I like it, I also know it's a bit limiting and gets a bit old after a while. I also can't help but step back every once in a while, and realize how incredibly stupid the whole exercise is sometimes.
Most games are, ultimately. I'm up for a new brand of stupidity every once in a while.
Re:Opinions of Morrowind/Oblivion? (Score:2)
Not at all. And the graphics of Oblivion are much more lively than those of Morrowind (on the other hand, the plot not being set in Morrowind helps a lot, Tamriel's a lot more friendly country)
Nice while it lasted (Score:2, Insightful)
Two years ago I couldn't even load a single panormara without QT crashing, so I guess they're making progress...
Re:Nice while it lasted (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Nice while it lasted (Score:2)
Re:Nice while it lasted (Score:2)
QuickTime on Windows x64? (Score:1)
play it on linux (Score:1, Interesting)
Beautiful crates! (Score:1, Redundant)
Whoohoo! Crates!
Re:Beautiful crates! (Score:2)
I know this is terribly disapointing, but I thoguht I should tell you before you ruin your weekend.
Re:Beautiful crates! (Score:2)
Re:Beautiful crates! (Score:2)
You can't break crates in oblivion.
In fact, you just about can't break any item in oblivion. Except when it's worn by the guy in front of you and you're warhammering his head with all your might.
Re:The cat ruined it for me.... (Score:1, Insightful)
I'd say that there is nothing vague about the quests. So far they've all been totally sensical and a decent number of them had some kind plot turn or something unexpected.
It definitely feels like it's own genre of game. The way all enemies scale up their power based
Re:The cat ruined it for me.... (Score:2)
Re:The cat ruined it for me.... (Score:1)
Re:The cat ruined it for me.... (Score:1)
Re:The cat ruined it for me.... (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the main things they've promised with Oblivion is that the NPCs have their own lives and go about their business - they're not just placed somewhere for the sole purpose of meeting you.
Even morrowind wasn't really like that - NPCs didn't move much like they're supposed to in Oblivion, but they also weren't all there to give you a quest. Quite a lot of them just told you to get the hell out of their way, or would just say "hi" pleasantly as y
NPCs (Score:3, Insightful)
So it's only taken them fourteen years to catch up with Ultima VII [wikipedia.org]?
Re:The cat ruined it for me.... (Score:1)
The RadiantAI system is streaks ahead of Morrowind, IMO. The towns and cities are more or less empty at night (except for the guards and a few beggars), the shops are closed (doors have various levels of locks on them). The NPC's have conversations with each other, get in to fights etc etc.. The world is a lot more dynamic as well, like killing a bandit on the edge of steep mountain there's every chance the killing blow will send him over the edge and you'll never find the body to loot it..
There are a few
Sure wish I could play (Score:2)
Athlon XP 3200+
1 Gig DDR RAM
GeForce FX 5700 w/ 256 RAM
etc and sundry.
The worst part is my motherboard was of the last generation be
Re:Sure wish I could play (Score:2)
Re:Sure wish I could play (Score:2)
XP 3400+
1 gig ram
ati 9800 pro 128mb AGP
and my MB was the last generation before PCI express as well (they had a few intel ones out, but I wanted AMD). CPU is at 100%, so more CPU should help. And to be honest, the game for me is at least playable, but at 800x600 resolution, which sort of blows for a 2006 game. Turn the max view distance on and you can really see the difference.
I'm sort of wishing I got an xbox360 and a VGA adapter (no HD TV yet). It would be cheaper th
Re:Sure wish I could play (Score:2)
FWIW I'm running the game on an AMD64-3500+ with 1gig ram and and ati x800xt aiw with all the eyecandy on (except hdr lighting, the x800 don't do that) and only get noticeably low frame rates (the occasional brief stutter) in crowded situations, and those usually improve after half a second or so as the game (I assume) adapts.
My brother is doing fine with only mar
Re:Sure wish I could play (Score:1)
Bob
Re:Nice game, Dumbed down Interface (Score:1)
I really love the game, but it has some fucking annoying issues. The game levelling as you go is the major one. Gothic 1 and 2 (and hopefully 3) had no qualms about making all areas accesible but many suicidal until you were sufficently strong enough to tackle the creatures in that region. As it stands at the mo
Gamespot (Score:2)