The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion & Game Fantasy
I use GameSpot (http://www.gamespot.com/) now and then to glean information about the video games (mostly PC games 'cause I still don't think I have enough money or time for PS3, XBOX360, that sort of thing) that I ever played or going to play - tracking the recent news of the games that are hot recently, watching the video review of the games that fit my personal appetite, downloading the demo of the games that are heavily advertised and see if I like them by myself or not, rating and sharing my thoughts of the games that I've spent months playing through its blogging service, all that kinds of chores...It is basically the biggest online database of all the games you played on any electronic devices, and the ultimate platform to organize your all-time game collection and meet other gamers who may have the same fetish as yours.
So, on a random check of the recent hot PC games, I found out The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which is accoladed to be "simply one of the best role-playing games ever made". As a hardcore fan of epic RPG games, since the day one when I got to know about anything about computer games, I've played through Black Isle Studio's classic Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale series, Bioware's earlier works (actually also from the Black Isle Studio) the Baldur's Gates series, the more recent Neverwinter Nights original campaign and all its official modules, Blizzard's famous Diablo series, and so on. But after reviewing the video and text reviews of this newly released game both on PC platform and X360, it still blew me away by its profound NPC interaction with extensive voice acting and advanced AI directing, and its ingame graphic details and character modelling to utilize today's hardware capabilities to the full potential.
Some video clips from Google:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion video review from Gametrailers.com. Although the video reviews Xbox 360 version, you still get the feel if you're PC gamer.
This is the first in a series of demo videos, narrated by Todd Howards, that were shown at E3 2005.
This is the fifth of a series of demo videos, narrated by Todd Howards, that were shown at E3 2005.
Since I haven't bought the game and never actually played it (without consulting the technical page I just already knew my PC is way too below the configuration requirement...), I cannot tell anything about besides the main features that we saw in the game review what the game has as its indisputable advantages to those classic RPG games I ever played. But in my opinion, it is truly very hard to conceive new RPG game concepts and elements and to well present them in the gameplay other than what we had already experienced in Baldur's Gates, Neverwinter Nights, etc, because those predecessors almost concoct them to perfect.
The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules and measures that those classic games closely stick to well define the character races, attributes, skills, alignment, leveling, weapon properties, combat damage takes, magic attributes, blar blar blar...And the rules are also developing as new AD&D games are coming out. Imagining that if they are one day simply hauled out from the RPG games you play, and many elements are abridged to basic HP for pretty straightforward physical damage, magic points for several countable spells, and stamina for your ability to accelerate and the gauge for fatigue, for those who previously enjoyed the D&D games very much (I personally think most really do), there must be much fun peeled off and much gaming connotation shrinking off, despite whatever the stunning visual effects and however realistic the vivid simulation thanks to the high-end chip processor is able to bring to us. So what I still believe is that a good RPG game should not be only limited to show the audience what they might directly see on the big screens from the recent E3 Expo, where Sony's high-performance PS3 (the Cell chip can reach 16 trillion calculations per second!), Microsoft's Live Anywhere cross-platform gaming network, and Nintendo's motion-sensing controller dominated the show, but also its sophisticated but easy-to-learn, easy-to-operate behind-the-scene elements fabricated together (such as the AD&D rules), and its immense literature background and thrilling mini-stories with surprising turns as well.
The game industry is a big cake, big tech companies, no matter they are the software maker or the console makers, are unexceptionally pursuing it. It's really hard to speculate what the digital entertainment would look like in the near future. With the increasing ability of the integrated circuits that still follows the Moore's law, the development of High Definition video technology, the wider adoption of broadband internet connection, and integrated e-commerce capabilities where you can just do the same things in the game as what you normally do on game sites in real life, in the electronic world nothing seems unable to be simulated, nothing seems to be having a strict boundary, and nothing even seems impossible.
Here is the scenario that I imagine in the future what a RPG game is looking like: ^_^ just fabricating.
One nice weekend morning, I gets up and click on a handset screen, which serves as my personal manager and on its root menu shows the main calendar of my daily works, and it reminds me that today is the scheduled gaming day, so I click the screen again to confirm and activate the schedule, and it sends signals to the big screen in the living room where the game is auto loaded simply from the server side and from the last time I save it online, waiting for the appearance of the main characters. After some necessary devices equipped on or off my body (the similar eyeglass for Polarized Motion Pictures with a build-in microphone with instantaneous voice recognition capabilities, the motion-sensing gauntlet and armor with customizable quick buttons, the fitness treadmill for me to control my pace and direction in the game, etc.), I am actually sent to the virtual ancient magic world where I keep on my adventure quests recorded on my online journal/blogs, say, this time, rescuing a girl, kidnapped by an elvin sorcerer allegedly coming from a mysterious cult, who is still confined under an geographically unknown castle replete with unforeseeable amount of imps, deadly traps, and unidentified creatures.
So after evaluating the difficulty of the task and my current skill level, I decide to risk my life for some heroic feats, but first I need more information on whereabout of the castle. So I walked around the town (on the treadmill) to meet the local folks, instead of using my own hand with the motion-sensing device to virtually click the 3D-protrusive dialogue that may appear out from the screen, I just talk to the NPCs with some screen hints (instant language translating if I speak non-default language maybe?), as long as I'm not talking about anything irrelevant to the game plot (in this case, the NPC may just say 'I don't know what the hell you are talking about.'^_^), they will gather the information I provide and find the relevant pre-stored words from their dialogue database and reassemble them in proper grammar and response me in his particular tone/accent with what they know as to what I ask. They will also have various reactions on my talking attitude and may offer help depending on my charisma represented in my talking. Verbal abuse and body harassment, even some heathen murder on innocent people, are well regulated according to the law enforcement built in the game. So if you decide to be evil in the game, you may also need to find your way circumventing the NPC law enforcers or even human-player boycott.
Having known that the danger of the task may far exceed what I initially cogitated, I suddenly realize that even for a gutsy adventurer like me I may still need a henchman or a company as the indispensable aids on my side. So I need a human-player who wishes to volunteer his service or, of course, for a reasonable amount of commission. After checking the buddy list of those who also logged in the game server and entered the same game, I initiate an ingame video conference or a VoIP call with another gamer who is the friend of mine that I invited, or whom I ever collaborated with, or whom I just feel comfortable to interact with after several words, and ask about where he is currently approximately located in the game's big map so that we can arrange an easy rendezvous just in the game. Ha, this may, however, violate the common sense that neither in the mythical world nor in the real world of several centuries ago do those folks have any sort of instant communication tools ^_^.
After "miles" of traveling through the freezing land (simultaneously decrease my actual armor temperature to notify my body that it's now blizzard time maybe???) and several random wild predators' inroads, we finally meet in a cozy tavern where we negotiate the terms, draft our plans, buy some drinks, potions and weapons, meet other NPCs for our respective branch quests, or trash talk for whatever we like. Because we are orally chatting live online, we can just ignore the restrictions of talking to NPCs, and do what we would normally do in a real online chatting. If we feel bored, before we are heading for the murky underground "the next morning" we can just sit behind, each pay 50% of the VOD fee and watch a newly released 3D movie online together just in the game without bothering jumping out of it.
The negotiation result is that, as I'm the one on the quest and he is only helping me out, he is not going to risk his life fighting in a stinky place like the one we are going to just for my own glory or righteousness, he needs some real money to back up his mind. So I said okay, it's even easier done than said. Following the trading panel bumping out and several simple virtual clicks, my 'bank balance' in the game associated with my real bank account is already debited and credited to this pal's account in a confidential and secured way, just like on real C2C ecommerce sites where we use all kinds of instant peer-to-peer e-payment methods to make fast deals. After that, we equipped ourselves with the weapons and armors that we bought using gold points in the game from NPC dealers, or additional magical clokes and boots that we trade on the "black market" using real dollars, and then we start for our destination.
It is in the castle that the battle really begins and we could release our lust for tons of buried treasures. All the actions in close physical grappling against those monsters are controlled by the motion-sensing gauntlet we wear, magic are controlled by predefined simple gestures or those little buttons on our outfits, which are also used to switch weapons, gulp down bottles of potions, choose quick-launch magic, and so on. We can also talk to each other at anytime to timely adjust our tactics in various high-tension back-to-back situations. We also need to use thief skills or spells to detect and disarm those unfriendly traps, if we don't have those skills listed in both of our profiles, we can try to jump over it to see whether in this risky way our bodies can still withstand the HP penalties. Before we meet with the abductee and the final boss, we again need an elaborate plan and then well prepare our spells and weapons that are presumed specifically effective to the villain mage we are going to facing. Those experiences are learned from former combats and finally rewarded to both the characters' leveling in the game.
...Game fantasy never ends. Hope in a very soon future the technology could easily give us a ride to that height, maybe by that time, it will have turned out to be so hard for the poor players to differentiate the reality from all of those mere fantasies @_@.
So, on a random check of the recent hot PC games, I found out The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, which is accoladed to be "simply one of the best role-playing games ever made". As a hardcore fan of epic RPG games, since the day one when I got to know about anything about computer games, I've played through Black Isle Studio's classic Planescape: Torment and Icewind Dale series, Bioware's earlier works (actually also from the Black Isle Studio) the Baldur's Gates series, the more recent Neverwinter Nights original campaign and all its official modules, Blizzard's famous Diablo series, and so on. But after reviewing the video and text reviews of this newly released game both on PC platform and X360, it still blew me away by its profound NPC interaction with extensive voice acting and advanced AI directing, and its ingame graphic details and character modelling to utilize today's hardware capabilities to the full potential.
Some video clips from Google:
Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion video review from Gametrailers.com. Although the video reviews Xbox 360 version, you still get the feel if you're PC gamer.
This is the first in a series of demo videos, narrated by Todd Howards, that were shown at E3 2005.
This is the fifth of a series of demo videos, narrated by Todd Howards, that were shown at E3 2005.
Since I haven't bought the game and never actually played it (without consulting the technical page I just already knew my PC is way too below the configuration requirement...), I cannot tell anything about besides the main features that we saw in the game review what the game has as its indisputable advantages to those classic RPG games I ever played. But in my opinion, it is truly very hard to conceive new RPG game concepts and elements and to well present them in the gameplay other than what we had already experienced in Baldur's Gates, Neverwinter Nights, etc, because those predecessors almost concoct them to perfect.
The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules and measures that those classic games closely stick to well define the character races, attributes, skills, alignment, leveling, weapon properties, combat damage takes, magic attributes, blar blar blar...And the rules are also developing as new AD&D games are coming out. Imagining that if they are one day simply hauled out from the RPG games you play, and many elements are abridged to basic HP for pretty straightforward physical damage, magic points for several countable spells, and stamina for your ability to accelerate and the gauge for fatigue, for those who previously enjoyed the D&D games very much (I personally think most really do), there must be much fun peeled off and much gaming connotation shrinking off, despite whatever the stunning visual effects and however realistic the vivid simulation thanks to the high-end chip processor is able to bring to us. So what I still believe is that a good RPG game should not be only limited to show the audience what they might directly see on the big screens from the recent E3 Expo, where Sony's high-performance PS3 (the Cell chip can reach 16 trillion calculations per second!), Microsoft's Live Anywhere cross-platform gaming network, and Nintendo's motion-sensing controller dominated the show, but also its sophisticated but easy-to-learn, easy-to-operate behind-the-scene elements fabricated together (such as the AD&D rules), and its immense literature background and thrilling mini-stories with surprising turns as well.
The game industry is a big cake, big tech companies, no matter they are the software maker or the console makers, are unexceptionally pursuing it. It's really hard to speculate what the digital entertainment would look like in the near future. With the increasing ability of the integrated circuits that still follows the Moore's law, the development of High Definition video technology, the wider adoption of broadband internet connection, and integrated e-commerce capabilities where you can just do the same things in the game as what you normally do on game sites in real life, in the electronic world nothing seems unable to be simulated, nothing seems to be having a strict boundary, and nothing even seems impossible.
Here is the scenario that I imagine in the future what a RPG game is looking like: ^_^ just fabricating.
One nice weekend morning, I gets up and click on a handset screen, which serves as my personal manager and on its root menu shows the main calendar of my daily works, and it reminds me that today is the scheduled gaming day, so I click the screen again to confirm and activate the schedule, and it sends signals to the big screen in the living room where the game is auto loaded simply from the server side and from the last time I save it online, waiting for the appearance of the main characters. After some necessary devices equipped on or off my body (the similar eyeglass for Polarized Motion Pictures with a build-in microphone with instantaneous voice recognition capabilities, the motion-sensing gauntlet and armor with customizable quick buttons, the fitness treadmill for me to control my pace and direction in the game, etc.), I am actually sent to the virtual ancient magic world where I keep on my adventure quests recorded on my online journal/blogs, say, this time, rescuing a girl, kidnapped by an elvin sorcerer allegedly coming from a mysterious cult, who is still confined under an geographically unknown castle replete with unforeseeable amount of imps, deadly traps, and unidentified creatures.
So after evaluating the difficulty of the task and my current skill level, I decide to risk my life for some heroic feats, but first I need more information on whereabout of the castle. So I walked around the town (on the treadmill) to meet the local folks, instead of using my own hand with the motion-sensing device to virtually click the 3D-protrusive dialogue that may appear out from the screen, I just talk to the NPCs with some screen hints (instant language translating if I speak non-default language maybe?), as long as I'm not talking about anything irrelevant to the game plot (in this case, the NPC may just say 'I don't know what the hell you are talking about.'^_^), they will gather the information I provide and find the relevant pre-stored words from their dialogue database and reassemble them in proper grammar and response me in his particular tone/accent with what they know as to what I ask. They will also have various reactions on my talking attitude and may offer help depending on my charisma represented in my talking. Verbal abuse and body harassment, even some heathen murder on innocent people, are well regulated according to the law enforcement built in the game. So if you decide to be evil in the game, you may also need to find your way circumventing the NPC law enforcers or even human-player boycott.
Having known that the danger of the task may far exceed what I initially cogitated, I suddenly realize that even for a gutsy adventurer like me I may still need a henchman or a company as the indispensable aids on my side. So I need a human-player who wishes to volunteer his service or, of course, for a reasonable amount of commission. After checking the buddy list of those who also logged in the game server and entered the same game, I initiate an ingame video conference or a VoIP call with another gamer who is the friend of mine that I invited, or whom I ever collaborated with, or whom I just feel comfortable to interact with after several words, and ask about where he is currently approximately located in the game's big map so that we can arrange an easy rendezvous just in the game. Ha, this may, however, violate the common sense that neither in the mythical world nor in the real world of several centuries ago do those folks have any sort of instant communication tools ^_^.
After "miles" of traveling through the freezing land (simultaneously decrease my actual armor temperature to notify my body that it's now blizzard time maybe???) and several random wild predators' inroads, we finally meet in a cozy tavern where we negotiate the terms, draft our plans, buy some drinks, potions and weapons, meet other NPCs for our respective branch quests, or trash talk for whatever we like. Because we are orally chatting live online, we can just ignore the restrictions of talking to NPCs, and do what we would normally do in a real online chatting. If we feel bored, before we are heading for the murky underground "the next morning" we can just sit behind, each pay 50% of the VOD fee and watch a newly released 3D movie online together just in the game without bothering jumping out of it.
The negotiation result is that, as I'm the one on the quest and he is only helping me out, he is not going to risk his life fighting in a stinky place like the one we are going to just for my own glory or righteousness, he needs some real money to back up his mind. So I said okay, it's even easier done than said. Following the trading panel bumping out and several simple virtual clicks, my 'bank balance' in the game associated with my real bank account is already debited and credited to this pal's account in a confidential and secured way, just like on real C2C ecommerce sites where we use all kinds of instant peer-to-peer e-payment methods to make fast deals. After that, we equipped ourselves with the weapons and armors that we bought using gold points in the game from NPC dealers, or additional magical clokes and boots that we trade on the "black market" using real dollars, and then we start for our destination.
It is in the castle that the battle really begins and we could release our lust for tons of buried treasures. All the actions in close physical grappling against those monsters are controlled by the motion-sensing gauntlet we wear, magic are controlled by predefined simple gestures or those little buttons on our outfits, which are also used to switch weapons, gulp down bottles of potions, choose quick-launch magic, and so on. We can also talk to each other at anytime to timely adjust our tactics in various high-tension back-to-back situations. We also need to use thief skills or spells to detect and disarm those unfriendly traps, if we don't have those skills listed in both of our profiles, we can try to jump over it to see whether in this risky way our bodies can still withstand the HP penalties. Before we meet with the abductee and the final boss, we again need an elaborate plan and then well prepare our spells and weapons that are presumed specifically effective to the villain mage we are going to facing. Those experiences are learned from former combats and finally rewarded to both the characters' leveling in the game.
...Game fantasy never ends. Hope in a very soon future the technology could easily give us a ride to that height, maybe by that time, it will have turned out to be so hard for the poor players to differentiate the reality from all of those mere fantasies @_@.
posted by ZZ at
2:17 a.m.
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