Topic: Ask Your Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Questions

[Gaming Steve]

Hey all, I am going to get a chance to speak to the devs next week, so make sure that you get me a list of your questions! I can not guarantee that I can ask them all, but I'll do what I can. Just post your questions on this thread, thanks!

[SumGI]

Thank you!

OK...
All the questions I had have been answered already.  I'll wait and see if someone else's post jogs my mind 

[Vivec]

Um..... Can I get one for free?

[Piloteer]

I have a small question: How similar will the PC and Xbox 360 versions of the game be? Will the 360 version be a straight port of the PC version, or are they developing both versions seperatly?

[PatMan33]

Will Oblivion have the same spectacular Mod support that Morrowind had and if so, will it be limited to the PC version and if it is not exclusive to the PC, how will one go about getting a mod on their XBox?

Thank you sir!

[Cobra]

Will I still have to leave my xbox(360) on all night while my character hides inn a corner to get enough mad pickpocket skills to be able to rob anyone?

[Twiggs]

I keep getting a net timeout error when trying to use the quote button.

But pilot4life, they are developing both seperately.

Although there have been several interviews that pretty much answer a majority of the questions.

On minimum requirements on everything low, does the game still run smoothly?

I am curious as to what size Oblivion is compared to the 16 square miles outside of it.

Is the night sky still sexy?  Does the lightning still make you jump. 

Are certain weapon types fleshed out as well as others?  For example, there wasn't as diverse of say, spears as to long blades?(I forget if that's actually true.  The same for armor, I There wasn't as much to medium armor as there was heavy and light.

How impressive are the water effects? 

That's all I can think of...

[Zealousy]

Hiya guys. It's been forever since I've posted. The forum memberlist has exploded over five fold since then! Fantastic job, Steve! 

A couple questions on a couple topics:
1.The NPCs are reported to have dynamic conversations, how long are these conversations expected to go on? Is every conversation designed to provide a quest or dialog option, or are some merely for atmosphere?
2. How many cities or towns will there be? Will inhabited areas run the gamut from small camps to full castles? Will there ever be friendly or 'safe' dungeons? Will more evolved forms of friendly NPCs inhabit dungeons than in Morrowind (such as merchants)?
3. If we can change how a NPC feels about us, is there a way to impact their schedules to a degree where we can form allies for quests or combat, without shifting the emphasis to group management?
4. How will saving work?
5. With such an emphasis on procedural generation of the game world, just how far is the draw distance, and how noticeable will object 'popping' be?
6. Do the developers feel that they have enough hours of recorded dialog?
7. Are they currently accepting applications? (just kidding )
8. How varied/customizable is the horse?
9. The day/night cycle has been reported to be 40 minutes (I think), is there any reason why this span of time was chosen?
10. Is the training of skills going to be more developed in Oblivion? Could I actually spar in the Guild Houses?

I'm sure the devs are tired of answering the same questions over and over again. Hopefully a couple of these are relatively original. I ended up with more than I planned.

[AlabasterSlim]

I always felt that the combat and movement in Morrowind was very "static" and the NPCs moved around in a robotic fashion.  What has been done to make combat feel more "alive" and have the animations of NPCs been improved so that they're movements are more believable?

When I play Chronicles of Riddick, I always thought that the hand-to-hand combat portions were very good and did a good job of showing what it was like to get hit by someone else. 

[Gauphastus]

I lurk at the Elderscrolls.com forums now, since back at that one day some of us were making fun of them for dissing Spore.
I could answer some of the questions above with the information given by the developers coming on to the boards, taking a moment to cease all the whining and complaining about the latest thing to whine and complain about... euh, my point was that I could answer some questions, but I suppose I'll just leave 'em for Steve to get (some of them, once again) the official straight poop on.
Did that sound right? I hate that term.
So... I guess that whole above paragraph really didn't have any point whatsoever.



Anyways, there are two things I'd like to know. Maybe someone here can help me out with the first question.
Is the game, PC version non-collector's, DVD only or is there a CD version?
I ask this because the forumers seem to keep correcting people about the game not using CDs or something. I can't pay too close attention because most of the conversations are trash.

My other question -- does the music have a lot more variety in Oblivion?
I'm hoping there are town themes, battle themes, cave themes.... unlike in Morrowind where you had that one damn piece of music playing constantly. That was another snore factor for me.

Merci.

RETRO EDIT: Gee, thanks for not even trying.

[eXistenZ]

Some great questions already, I'll add a few, and some may overlap:

*How much of the dialog is recorded for both important NPCs and stock NPCs? This of course includes important in-game cinematics used to advance the story.

*How scalable are the visual settings. Will I be able to scale down to make my PIII run a reasonable frame-rate?

*Do they EVER plan on created a game similar to Elders Scrolls or Oblivion with MULTIPLAYER?

*How many hours of play to complete the main storyline?



I suppose that's all. I just want to play the damn thing--I'm a big Morrowind fan.

[Aybraus]

Sandbox/Debug mode?

[Mr. Wizard]

Ask'em why they removed shadows for all objects, when they have made a point of marketing it for the past year. Connected to that, ask them if the loss of shadows extends to world shadows, such as shadows cast by buildings, or if it is only to items.

Ask them to reveal one scripted spell effect(spell effects that are wholly unique), just for your show Steve  .

Ask them how they plan to address continuity errors in the world (example: how the elements that depended on levitation, such as telvanni 'shroom towers which had no stairs, now that those elements have been removed from the universe.)

Ask them if they have gotten any complaints about the characters seeming disturbingly realistic or unrealistic. (That whole "Realism Valley" Thing, where as realism increases, so to does the audiences empathy with them, until they are real enough to look like a human, but not real enough to look like a living human, and looks like an animated corpse. My explanation is bad, so here is a wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley )

Since they have given Radiant AI a name, are there any plans to market it as third party software, like the Havoc physics engine?

[SumGI]

Here http://www.waiting4oblivion.com/developer_quotes.html
It has a bunch of info about quotes and stuff from the devs.

[AlabasterSlim]

I would also like to know if Widescreen resolutions will be available out of the box for the PC with the correct aspect ratios (16:9, 16:10).  Will we be able to select whatever aspect ratio we want or will it tied to our resolution?