The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (First Details and Screenshots Inside)
 

GameSpy just posted the first details released on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, here's the link to their 5 page article: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Here are some screenshots/artwork:
Screen 001
Screen 002
Screen 003
Screen 004
Screen 005
Screen 006
Screen 007
Screen 008
Screen 009
Screen 010

The game looks amazing, if plays anything like the other Elder Scrolls games, it will be very, very good.

I loved Morrowind. Those screens look awesome! Time to really push the 6800 Ultra. :)

-Lasereth

that's awesome! I hope it is as fun as Morrowind. I love it.

holy mother of god.

I wonder if the graphic artists in that game take a step back occasionally and think to themselves "holy crap. i'm amazing."

I can't wait to play this baby.

I dunno, the last Elder scrolls game was supposed to have amazing graphics too, but it looked like shit when it finally came out. I'm gonna wait to see the game before I say this is gonna be any good or not.

Whaaat? Morrowind had awesome graphics for it's time, and it still looks pretty damn good if you crank everything up with anti-aliasing and Anisotropic filtering...

The anticipation is overwhelming to say the least.

WOW! I cannot freaking wait for this game now! Morrowind was a lot of fun, but this just looks incredible. I'm definitly getting a very large Tolkein vibe off of the concept art and screenshots though.

Pardon waiter.. I'll have 1 drool bib and a bucket please. Thanks.

I cannot wait!

It looks really cool, but I still havn't beaten Morrowind or it's two expansion packs.

Neither have I, and I had something like 250+ hours put into one character, and barely started the main quest.

Holy crap. This will rock. though.. yeah.. I still haven't progressed very far in the main storyline in Morrowind or the expansions. I brought home Morrowind the first day it was out too.. damn you Bethesda!

I've always thought an Elder Scrolls MMORPG would be great, of course they would have to make some of the NPCs invincible or really, really strong to prevent people from slaughtering entire towns, but it could be done, considering how fucking huge Tamriel is.

Hopefully they'll make the Xbox version (presuming there is one?) less buggy this time.
The last game rocked.. but the errors became a bit frustrating.

Did you play the same game as the rest of us? :) Morrowind easily had the best graphics of its time. Hell, even now, years after its release the graphics are still superb.

-Lasereth

I can't wait until this one comes out. Still haven't beaten Morrowind yet, I only got about a quarter of the main quest done and my hard drive died on me.

I doubt it will come out for the Xbox. It will probably be a launch title for the Xbox 2 considering how popular Morrowind was on the Xbox.

It looks like it should be cool. I've spent countless hours on Morrowind. Hopefully this will be even better.

Morrowind was awesome but the characters looked like crap to me. The Armor Detail looked like it had a good design with really shotty texturing.

The biggest thing missing from Morrowind was multiplayer. The world is so huge It's impossible to explore it all before getting bored with the game's slow pace. I played the game for a couple hundred hours and would have played it a few hundred more if I had someone to pass the time with in game.

I hope to god they dont make it multiplayer. other people just ruin games like this. The whole point to morrowind is exploration, I wonder whats over the next hill, I wonder whats in this cave, etc. and if you had a problem with the characters looking crappy you obviously never used one of morrowinds GREATEST assets the user made mods. the Better Bodies Mod was a staple, and there were countless packs for new faces and hair the game was endlessly refineable. Thats the only thing that worries me about making the game so graphically intensive, is that it will be thqat much harder for users to make their own mods. either way it looks to be shaping up to be freaking incredible

edit: on actually reading the article I find that the construction set will be even easier to use this time around

What? The graphics were terrible, the animations looked like they were done with powerpoint, and the entire combat system was weak as heck. THe backgrounds were gorgeous, but their models looked like they were done in crayon on a used diaper.

I truely hope they DO NOT make TES multiplayer, it would result in me sure as hell not buying it.

I did hear they are making a Fallout game on this same engine...

I put hundreds of hours into Morrowind, it was a great game. I'm just going to forget about Oblivion for now, seeing how it is scheduled for a Winter 2005 release. That's to much anticipation for me. However when it does come out, you'll know where to find me for the next few monthes!

Morrowind was excellent but it suffered from a poor AI.

I love pretty games, but a pretty game without a good AI doesn't do much for me.

It would seem that this time, Bethesda are actually putting effort into the AI, which is a blessing.

Hope so, I don't have a ton of time or desire for multiplayer these days, and the AI stuff hasn't gotten much better in the last 10 years.

That was definilty my biggest gripe with Morrowind (besides the all too frequent crashing). The shitty AI really made the NPCs seem lifeless (aside from making enemies really easy to kill after you reach a decent level and making it really frustrating when you had a quest where someone had to follow you).

What I would like to see in Oblivion is a more "life filled" world -- maybe people moving from town to town, going about business, etc. The more people, the better.

I did love morrowind and spent alot of time playing it, thought I never really got into the story. I think the story is the least important part of the game.

I hope for better AI, maybe some sort of multiplayer, better quests, a better quest journal.

And man ; what an awesome musical score!

looks like i dont have to worry about story

I am too anxious for that title. I'm currently playing Elder Scrolls III, trying to finish it (damn it's long)... all I said while looking at those ss were "holy shit" "wwwttff?" and *moan*. I'm definitely going to need to upgrade my comp for this game.

LOL
SO AWESOME!!! :lol:

BTW, you can find an overview and FAQ from Bethesda here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_overview.htm

and here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/oblivion_faq.htm

Oh, boy... quest journal... I forgot half of my quests because I couldn't find the info, heh...

My wallet already hurts from the system upgrades I'll probably have to make to play the game.

While I was feeling the pain, I got a little bit of drool on my chin. Hold on while I wipe it off...

.. And an updated combat system! No more watching my guy imaginary whack/miss/dodge/block anymore, you actually control these instead of D&D style dice throws! And it's so beautiful!!

I just wet myself..

oh my oh my......

I have a feeling that thing will run like Doom3 on my machine (not well...)

Surprisingly, Doom 3 wasn't that bad; it scales quite well if you have enough video memory.

Something tells me that the new elder scrolls game might be a bit more clunky on the programming end.

Now that would be cool.

Well not the wetting bit.

I don't want the game to be an MMO, but it would add a ton more enjoyment if it supported up to 8 players on LAN. I'd still be playing the game today if it had just a 2 player coop mode and I've had the game since it was released.

I hope this game doesn't turn out to be as "good" as Fable. After 10's and 10's of hours of playing fable I finally had to put the controller down and step away from the Xbox.

And to think, Fable cost me about $50..... :hmm:

Scipio

I'm running a mobility radeon 9800 256 mbs....and I still can't get DOOM3 to run much better than medium quality. I love the screen shots on this game, but I cant reconcile in my mind that that game could run with that kind of detail on any cards available right now....

the main thing i'm hoping they improve is the combat... i found the slash/thrust/swipe interface stifling... if they put into that what they've put into the story, structure, and graphics, it'll be mindblowing.... i guess ai has a lot to do w/ that too.

I loved Morrowind. It was the perfect kind of game for me. I loved that they gave you a world and said "have fun, do whatever you want, go anywhere." It had it's flaws but man that was a great game. This new one makes me feel funny in my pants.

heck yeah!
Morrowind is still one of my favourite games... can't wait to see more of this one!

That part didn't bug me too much. It's not how good I am at swinging an axe; it's how good my character is that matters. I'd like to see a more streamlined magic system. The one they had in morrowind was powerful, but quite arcane.

Here's some more delicious screenshots from GameSpot.com

Screen 001
Screen 002

WOW! Those ruins are incredible! I can't wait to explore the world they create... That's definitly the best part of Morrowind -- you never know what you might find by just roaming around.

One thing that would make my day is a set of quests that are obscenely difficult. Becoming godlike is should be just as fun as being godlike.

It will be awesome..... Morrowind was a great game (though I played it on XBOX so I missed out on the editor) also Oblivion will be coming for XBOX2 and with the Live service being so popular I hope they integrate a level editor in the console version as well.

morrowind was a fantastic game, had a few glitches and a couple of areas that needed a lot of improvement (more spells!!!), but all in all its one of the best around... thx for posting and getting me stoked for teh 2nd one!

IGN posted some new screenshots. See 'em here, or at Bethesda's website.

I am now....saving up my addiction points.

I am going to load Elder scrolls III tonight.....just to beat it again, and dwell on the possibilities.

Does anyone else think they're going to cut down on the world size to make it less daunting to casual players? My only worry regarding this game. Other than that, this is just going to be awesome

Wow, that game looks stupid good.

Wouldn't surprise me a bit. Daggerfall (eldar scrolls II) was waaaay bigger than morrowind ever was, and morrowind is still seen as huge. The downside of such huge areas is that you need to build a lot of different castles/houses/dungeons/whatever. In Daggerfall, you eventually got bored of walking through the same dungeons over and over again. Morrowind mostly solved that problem, and I doubt Oblivion will go back to the old system.

So I guess that Oblivion will be smaller than morrowind, unless it comes on multiple DVDs. All that eye-candy has to go somewhere, after all...

I played the last one for Xbox and at that time I was loving the graphics. I loved morrowind, but it was a little to free roaming at times. Then came Fable, Fable was great but it was a little constricted at times. If we could find a medium between Morrowind and Fable it would be unstopable. They will need to revise a couple gameplay elements to get the game perfect. So all in all I CANT WAIT!!!!!!!

If there is one thing I loved about Morrowind, it was the fact you could go exploring or "treasure hunting". I dont like the fact that the next one will be smaller, but man is it pretty.

One of my friends brought Morrowind.. was telling me about it and I went and looked it up, my draw dropped. I haven't been able to find it for the same price he got it yet, so I'm still looking.

I agree Cybermike, a MMO is not needed of this, my friend and I both agree that it does just need a basic multiplayer system (me and a couple of friends get together and play NWN every couple of weeks). Either just through Direct connect or Lan, MMO would ruin this.

I went to the Oblivion forums and the people that asked about multiplayer seemed to get flamed saying that it will never be Multiplayer. I prefer playing an RPG with friends (abit of a dice and paper man myself) than spending hours by myself, heck I would even buy my girlfriend a copy so we could play over LAN together. Abit of a let down, but oh well.

I looked up the reasons why they couldn't make Oblivion multiplayer, apparently they would have to rebuild the engine from scratch because the engine actually revolves around the player.. 0 on axsis X,Y and Z at the players point.

Perhaps they will make the Next one Multiplayer.. but.. NWN 2 will be out by then and I'll be playing that with my buddies ;)

I want this game so bad, I just hate the idea of having to wait for so long to be able to see the thing in action. I was reading the other day about a problem they had that I thought just sounded cool:

"In fact, one of the interesting problems that the team has had to face came about precisely because the AI is so good. According to Howard, the AI has caused guards to decide to eat and go hunting deer, only to get themselves arrested for attacking something. When they fight back against the arresting guard, the other guards see a fight and try to join in. In not too much time, every guard in the town was involved in the scuffle, which left the rest of the town open to thievery by other NPCs, resulting in empty stores."

Its like Shenmue on crack. Having NPC's with their own agendas brings about all kinds of interesting events.

I'm not going to even touch on the graphics of this game. Next gen all the way...

Here's some new screenshots I found on elderscrolls.com:

http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/a...v/obliv14B.jpg

http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/a...v/obliv13B.jpg

http://www.elderscrolls.com/images/a...v/obliv15B.jpg

I'm definetly goin to need a new Vid Card... Lol @ the minotaur.. now all he needs is some weapons...

Multiplayer would still rock of this..
:)

pretty good character changes....as you can see here:

http://home.wnm.net/~bgriff/MW_BretF.html

Am I the only one who preferred the expansive, open-ended nature of Daggerfall to Morrowind? Now, mind you, Morrowind was a vastly superior game overall (Daggerfall's random dungeons - SHUDDER) but I really enjoyed seeing a monstrous amount of Daggerfall's world. Now, mind you, I might be reminiscing too much, but, whaddayathink?

I hope the fighting scheme is umm way better than the last one cause that sucked!!

They are totally redoing the fighting mechanics of the game, so it should be much, much better. I simply cannot wait! :crazy:

If you took "mobility" out of this sentence, it would suddenly sound ok. Notebooks and games really don't go great together :(

edit - it seems to run fine on ultra quality on gforce thingy...

I have always loved these games, there's always tons to get into.

I wouldn't say the combat system was going to be completely revamped, however it definitely sounds superior to morrowinds "click the attack button really fast."

This game looks like pure porn.
I recall being impressed by Morrowind's water. Still some of the best water effects I've ever seen.
I found the combat system to be absolutely pathetic tho, and ultimately the reason I didn't play the game for more than a couple of days.
I'd like to see Oblivion's water, pity its not in any of those screenshots.

holy shit i'm all giddy now. I think I need to play morrowind for a bit to get my fix

Anyone have a chance to read the new article in PC gamer? I am really interested and if anyone could post a link that would be great.

Don't get too distraught over not having a good enough computer. Bethesda is using SpeedTree to generate their grass/trees.

I shouldn't post this... it will only make you guys more anxious for the game to come out but....

http://www.idvinc.com/

Download the SpeedTree demo (http://www.idvinc.com/html/pangaea_downloads.htm). I think you'll be surprised at what your computer can handle...
There should be more demos on the website. This is the most recent and spectactular however.

Thanks Robaggio I check out those demo's!!

The terrain is amazing in these screenshots. I can't believe my eyes.

following the graphics and screen shots of this game, it looks like THEE SHIT but next gen machines are gonna cost a ton. The story line better be really good cuz i Morrowind was a HUGE disappointment.

Here are 3 new screenshots that were released today:

001
002
003

Random bit with IDV Inc. Two friends of mine are currently interning there (they're headquartered here in Columbia, SC), so they get to play around with stuff over there, including that SpeedTree program. IDV apparently works solely on rendering stuff like trees and other vegetation as realisticly as possible (they hire/intern computer art design students from USC as well to do the visuals) but with as much speed as possible. Seems that coding vegetation to look real is extremely taxing.

I have to say I'm happy to see them going back to a more Medieval European look in Oblivion. The bizarre psuedo-alien landscape and culture in Morrowind kind of put me off. In fact, Morrowind was a pretty big letdown for me. I played the shit out of Daggerfall back when it came out, I really enjoyed the game. I was very excited by all the things they were promising for the third installment. I remember when they said things like you would be able to become the ruler of a kingdom, or the captain of a ship, lead armies in to battle, etc. They basically promised the world, then they released this amazingly pretty game, yet the features were quite anemic.

There has definately been a trend in the Elder Scrolls games to decrease the size of the area you can play in. In Arena, you could travel anywhere in the continent. The catch was, most places were the same, with slightly different tileset applied to it. Therefore, a wood elf city looked the same as a bretonnian city. Daggerfall focused on the northwestern corner of the continent, and there was a bit more variety, however, most things were still made off of templates. Morrowind takes place on an island, and nothing is random, everything that's there was placed by hand. I would guess that Oblivion will continue this trend towards a smaller yet more diverse playable area.

This game looks so promising. I put hundreds of hours into Daggerfall, and even more time into Morrowind and a thousand mods and all the addons. Oblivion looks like a strong contender for all the rest of my time.

Though to be honest, what I'd REALLY like to see is someone releasing a windows version of Daggerfall that I can run without dosbox and with some of the crashes fixed. The only reason I stopped playing Daggerfall was that it was made impossible through computer upgrades.

Diversity/size is something that no-one is going to get completely right. The Elder Scroll series and any game by Warren Spector usually manage to get it right (though I remember with sadness a couple of Elder Scroll crashes and burns - anyone remember Battlespire?), nomatter what the actual proportions are, so I'm pretty excited about Oblivion.

Here's an interview with Ashley Cheng (Senior Producer of TES4:Oblivion) about the AI, Construction set, and more from WarCry Network.

http://www.warcry.com/scripts/column...102&colid=6611

It's starting to look like I'm going to have to upgrade again heh...

Heh, Battlespire. *ralph*

Thome and Whocarz got it right. I really lamented the "shrink" from Daggerfall - Morrowind. You say in Arena you could travel the entire continent? That's crazy. I thought Daggerfall was staggeringly huge, albeit every dungeon was the same. As was every small town. But still, they were there!

Man...This kindled my love for Morrowind...
Which i intially completed with the help of those lovely online guides... :P

New screenshots:

screenshot 01
screenshot 02
screenshot 03

More new screenshots:

screen01
screen02
screen03

I downloaded from torrentspy a 20 minute video of GAMEPLAY that is apparently from this past E3.....WOOOOOOOOOW!!!

If you haven't seen this video, you should seriously check it out. It's absolutely amazing to see it all in action! (Not to mention the few issues I did notice, such as skipping every now and then, will surely be fixed between E3 and this winter's release)

This game alone may make me pick up an Xbox 360, unless the computer specs are something my machine can handle. I probably put over 300 hours total in Morrowind on my Xbox and later my computer. I could never get enough of that game, its like an MMORPG w/o all the assholes.

With how much the XBox 360 will cost, you could probably just as easily upgrade your computer instead ;)

That game makes my PC cry.

I think I'm going to have to get it for xbox360. There is no way in hell my comp could handle it.

BTW, anybody hear about it getting pushed back until december?

That would be funny if it weren't true. $400 will get you a top of the line graphics card that can handle anything you throw at it. It won't the best graphics card money can buy, but it will be pretty damn close.

By the way, that gameplay video was fucking unreal.

It saddens me to say that I read that just last week they pushed the release from launch to early December.
While i am glad they are fixing problems (I hope) I was gonna buy this on launch day.

sigh

This game so awesome hopefully they will improve marrowind's weaknesses.

I played morroweind on XBox. But my disk got messed up when I was near the end. I dont think my system has the specs to play Oblivion.

The thing that impressed me the most about the TES games were the easter egg features like vampirism and lycanthropy or stubling across covens in arena. In morrowind it was liitle things like the Comfy pilow quest that changed your sleep message.

So has any one actually beaten Morrowind? I've played for countless hours and have gotten no where close. Granted I haven't played to just beat the game but, wow it's long. I hope to see the new game though. I'm sure I'll have plenty of time to play.

im one of the many who completed the main quest along with a lot of the side quests
i expected the final battle to be tough but it was easily copmleted with a few spells and my enchanted sword

I remember beating it and becoming....well....pretty much God. It was kinda fun to go around and Kill every person/guard/merchant/dancer...I could find.

I just watched this. I think I had a big shit eating grin on my face the entire time. Man oh man I can't wait for this.

some more leaked screenies :D
meduim qual shots but imagine it running on a latest rig (feel free to drool now)

http://photobucket.com/albums/b186/Rew_Klip/Oblivion/?

Wow, those are badass.

Does anyone have an updated release date for this puppy?

Last I heard was march'ish

:(

Ok, that nighteye spell looks insanely badass!

I need to play this game asap.