The Elder Scrolls V
Morpheus17
Barrie, Ontario, Canada
Bethesda has recently announced that a fifth addition is in the works for The Elder Scrolls series with a projected release date of 2010. Very little is known about this title except that Online play is being looked at as a major feature in this new title.
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Check out the Bethesda homepage and look at news releases, there should be a mention of it in there. (i cant remember the exact site i read it from because i was working around the school boards internet blocks so all the major names were locked)
Is it called Fallout 3?
lol, no its not called Fallout 3, in the announcement that i read where they mentioned The Elder Scrolls V they were very clear that they were not going to make too much of a deal out of it at this point because of the release of Fallout 3 and they didnt want to take away from its hype.
Not really true! Dragon Age Origins is single-player. Saw it at PAX .... looks fun as hell. Fear not.
(Fallout 3 was only 1/2 an Obsession 80Hrs vs 180Hrs)
This DOES look amazing.
Continue with the character genreation presented in Oblivion, but add in the childhood playthrough from Fallout 3 only have it be a little more action based, similar to Fable 2's intro.
Expand the magic creation system Morrowinds was much more engaging and freeing.
Graphic update not needed, but I wouldn't complain.
They have made great strides in keeping the story in the forefront in Oblivion and even more so in Fallout 3. That's a great direction for them to go in. Of course the freedom to explore is also needed, but a strong storyline is critical to make the game feel like there is a purpose.
NPC interactions Fallout 3 did a good job of making NPC's conversations interesting, keep running with it. Have some random dialogue that NPC's have access to like a news/rumor section that changes as your progress through the story. Perhaps have them randomly chat with you about your exploits as if they didn't realize it was you doing them. "Oh did you hear about the hero that...." etc.....
GUI Fallout 3's gui is really easy to navigate but the map could be improved a bit.
Multi-Player. Please don't make that a core part of the game. It's the single player let me explore at my own pace style that makes those games so fun. Focusing around multiplayer will kill much of the charm and you'd miss out on a lot of the experience.
Some ideas for multi-player though. Fable 2 has a pretty nice little multi-player addon you can basically just invite a friend(s) along for the ride. Something like that would work pretty well in Oblivion. Another option would be multi-player zone concept like Guild Wars. Have central hubs in oblivion, major cities perhaps, where you can join an online community. But soon as you (or you and a group) leave the city you are back to a single player experience essentially.
Difficulty scaling. Fallout 3's zone scalling works pretty well, but still could be improved on. I found that fallout 3 started to get easier some time around level 10 and much easier around level 15. Though that does largely depend on the choices and play methods you've used to get there. But still Fallout 3's scaling is infinitely better then what was done in Oblivion and they show that they've learned from their mistakes. Morrowind's difficulty model was also pretty good but again you could easily build an insane character by about level 20 IIR that could breeze through any challenge in the game if you wanted to.
Yeah youve pretty much summed up what they should and shouldnt do to make the game a huge hit. The one thing that i worry about is that they might fall to the lure of making it possible for players to create and join guilds made completely of players, because those often have no story whatsoever but instead they focus on achievement goals for the guild to reach. I completely agree with the whole zoning idea because it wouldnt take away from the base on which the Elder Scrolls are built, single-player freeroaming and character building. If you make it too open to Muliplayer involvement then you will end up with a bunch of guys waiting in the woods or fields for another player to come along and then you end up dead and they take all your stuff.
OH HAI Bioware
GTA was originaly a multi-player game, and they screwed it up when they took that part away. :P That said: I think GTA IV has the strongest single player experience of any GTA game yet.