The Elder Scrolls

When they say "Where were you when it happened?"...I'm gonna say "When what happened? I was playing an Elder Scrolls game!!!" Not ready to try playing Arena again, couldn't get too heavy into Daggerfall's graphics...but Morrowind...ah Morrowind. And finally got the graphics extender to work!


What ya mean I gotta ride a giant bug for fast travel?!


Remember the first time one of these jumped out at you?


Lookie what the graphics extender did for the water! Reflections!!


Wow...major increase in view distance. Nice! (and maintaining my preset 50 frames per second!)


Ooooh...evem reflects a little when the rain is falling...
(more to follow...)

I don't want to turn this into a "morrowind was the best because..." thread, cuz Hitler already took care of the main topics there. I do wanna say though, something should be done with lockpicking in Oblivion and Skyrim, and any future Elder Scrolls titles. I mean, there's ups and down for each system, but in Oblivion and Skyrim, when you select the lock, you go INTO lock-picking mode, and everything else freezes. Take your time, enjoy yourself. Granted it's a little more in depth, to the point of being a mini-game in each title, but as long as you're "hidden" before you start, you can pick that lock all frickin day.

Morrowind. Look around. Nobody. Actually PUT YOUR WEAPON AWAY and unequip it! Equip your lockpick! Sneak. When you get the hidden icon, start picking....which is just basically the motions of stabbing the locked item with your pick, while the game engine takes your stats and rolls the dice for your success or fail. You could still break lockpicks. YAY! BUT, the BIG difference...somebody walks around a corner (Guard: Enter stage left), your hidden icon goes away, and your still actively picking....WHOOPS! If it's an automatic enemy, unequip the lockpick (put it in your backpack?), re-equip your weapon or spell, draw or ready said weapon or spell...meanwhile bad guy is charging you with weapon drawn!

Imagine Skyrim, when you're zoomed into the lock, but in the blurry background the world keeps moving...maybe allow the use of the controller tilt (does 360 have that?) to glance around while your picking. Regardless of whether you WERE hidden or not, somebody comes around the corner...POOP!

My fellow Elder Scroll adventurers, I don't think Bethesda had any idea what they were doing to the world of gaming when they gave us Oblivion and the Construction Set. After slipping Morrowind back in and saying "Ahhhhh..." I debated throwing Oblivion back in so I could decorate my castle again, and this time actually save some screenshots for posterity... so I looked into the mods again. SO...my experience says Oblivion was playable without mods, but there's just so much that can be added with them! An example is Hoarfrost Castle, which added new scripts, spells, and a damn nice place to hang out. Another mod I really enjoyed was the mannequin mod, which allowed you to put a mannequin somewhere in your house, and equip weapons and armor on it, as a way to display your treasures without just throwing them on a shelf. And of course, I like my games real, and I'm a guy, so it goes without saying I had to throw in every nude mod I could find. A minotaur charging at you is bad... a minotaur charging at you with swinging bull meat is downright scary! Okay, on to the stuff Bethesda should have seen coming, but apparently didn't.

All my time searching mods for any game, it NEVER occurred to me that other cultures might be making their own game mods, and because of translation we might never see them. As I enjoy all things anime and manga from the Japan isles, it was sheer luck and coincidence I stumbled on a site displaying Japanese Oblivion mods. So much anime-themed goodness in the Oblivion game world! Then....then I had to keep searching.... I now give you a link to a site which has 70 images taken from Japanese mods. They are labeled as 'Sexual and Bizarre' and for obvious reasons. If you're easily offended, don't click! **LINK**

And last for now... and a bit more 'safe for work'...there's a ton of animation mods coming out of Japan that add some pretty wicked mobility to the characters in addition to making them either more realistic or even more cartoony. This... if Bethesda had known their game engine could do this, and somehow incorporated more realistic motion into their characters... this is awesome animation, done with Oblivion....

Shadowcrunch wrote:

A minotaur charging at you is bad... a minotaur charging at you with swinging bull meat is downright scary! Okay, on to the stuff Bethesda should have seen coming, but apparently didn't.

Oh my!!!!

Heh...for those who have seen 'Your Highness', we know minotaur bull meat is to be avoided at all cost! But makes a nice trophy!

UGH

At least with the bull meat it can be worn around the neck, making for a great conversation piece. Wonder, could one equip it and use it as... say... a blungeon? Just imagine the laying of the smackdown: fap fap fap fap fap.

That's what I get for teaching Mike a new word. (yeah, MIKE...nobody's gonna join so might as well...). Makes me wonder though, with Oblivion reinstalled, could I modify the Minotaur, making bull meat a lootable item that also works as a blunt weapon?! Good god I can see the model in Blender already!

Or make the bull meat into a special magic arrow. i can see the character pulling back on the string, cocking the, err... TWANG! Do a slow motion camera shot following the meat, watching it wiggle in the air as it speeds to its target. It would make for some great screen shots, depending on where it struck!

Now, what if the meat had the dangles? could it be a double headed flail? A mighty war hammer? Must be two handed... wouldn't be as impressive if it could be held with just one.

...

Regarding the video. That one female is rather, umm, bouncy, isn't she? I swear I saw her in Soul Caliber. Taki's long lost sister?

Elder Scrolls points to ponder. First off, I just want to get out of the way, if you're a Skyrimmer, and let the bugs and load times stop you from finding Blackreach, you are not a Skyrimmer. There are a few locations in all of the games since Morrowind that I have actually stopped and just stared at for awhile... The view from the lighthouse of Seyda Neen during a thunderstorm, the ocean west of Anvil at sunset, the trail up the Red Mountain, some of the numerous waterfalls in Skyrim... and Blackreach. If they took the Skyrim out of Skyrim, and just made more stuff going on in Blackreach, it would still be awesome... it's that big... and that awesome.

Now, I've been thinking a lot about this upcoming Elder Scrolls Online MMO. The first MMO I would gladly pay a monthly fee too play (within reason). Two important things to consider, can Bethesda make it NOT buggy as hell, and will it actually stand out from other MMOs for more than just being Elder Scrolls? What I mean is, I first heard the rumor of an ES MMO in 2011, and now they say it will be out in 2013. With that kind of time frame, I have to wonder if they didn't just buy someone else's MMO engine and start adding their own stuff... which would work for graphics and combat and such, to make it unique, but after the fact wouldn't it still just be a clone of the other MMO? I suppose that wouldn't matter if I didn't play that other MMO. I guess what I'm getting at is, I would want ESOnline to play LIKE an Elder Scrolls game, with the ability to run into other players... NOT play like an MMO (i.e. buttons across the bottom for fighting!) with Elder Scrolls elements thrown in.

I'm a little rusty on my lore, but 1,000 years before Morrowind, I'm thinking the Dwemer might still be around too!

AND... I started thinking about things they might include... like M'aiq the Liar, who has been in every game as a sort of Easter egg. Or, just as a joke, will they actually include your character slowing down after taking an arrow to the knee? Well, I guess that wouldn't be a joke, but you know what I mean.

And that made me realize another thing they got wrong in Skyrim. "oooh, an arrow hurt my knee so I can't go running around the countryside anymore like you do...." Yeah, all the guards are crippled... but they see you pick a lock, steal an apple, or FusRoDah some preteen down the street and HOLY SHIT can those guards run!!!!