ES4: Oblivion Podcast--50 minutes with Pete Hines!

[VictimOfScience]

Very interesting and informative interview. Some new stuff, some old. A great listen if you are interested in the game itself or the development process behind it. Enjoy!

Find the podcast here.

See below for the highlights:

- The 3 month delay of the game was because they weren't finished. They wanted to polish it and finish everything.

- If they were given another 3 months they wouldn't have anything else to add or really even improve on.

- He went over the Minimum requirements for PC

- Oblivion will take advantage of Dual Core chips in a few things, but not in much.

- The game looks MUCH better actually playing and controlling it than it does in the movies and pics.

- The shadowing was NOT toned down so PC graphics would meet the 360 abilities. They did it because they changed engines completely.

- They went through 3 different combat systems before they got one they liked.

- They use HDR in a number of different ways. There is almost no technical aspect that is available for games that isn't used in Oblivion

- The engine they are using now is a combination of different engines. They use a HEAVILY modified Gambryo engine, and Havok for physics, also a modified Speed-Tree for tree Creation.

- They don't know if there will be a "Use best setting for my PC" button yet. He thinks it's something they are doing, but not positive.

- Explain the Radiant AI: "It is a system they came up with because AI was something they wanted to do better. It's a system where they do not script individual actions for NPC. They give them a general set of Goals they figure out how to accomplish based on different paramaters and levels of responsibilites....... differnt money...... etc. They don't script an NPC to go at 12:00 to do specifics. They tell him to eat at 12:00 and they decide where to go, what to get, where to sit and eat, etc."

- There were rumors about having major problems with RAI lately, but there isn't truth to them. RAI has no issues.

- To go through each Race and give individual bonuses would take too much time. They might upload it to their website at some point, but right now it's just a lot of unneeded time that would be taken. But they will try to get it up before the game is released He said it's not exactly like it was in Morrowind as things have been tweaked and balanced.

- NPC's do get punished for committing crimes in games. They don't really have NPC's steal things because it makes the game look broken. But if you are attacked by an NPC the guards will help and take care of the problem.

- They didn't change the leveling system much as to how it was in MOrrowind. They changed a bit such as there are only 8 attributes, and each attribute governs 3 individual skills.

- NPC's in the world have Pets, but they didn't add Pets in the world for you to have. There might be some animals that will follow you due to it's AI, but it's not really a pet.

- They decided to eliminate spears and combine the long and short blade skills due to a few factors. It was a major issue of balancing. They wanted to make everything even and work better. Combining blades was decided because it helped you not waste leveing multiple skills to do the same things. The removing spears was because it just didn't make sense to have a little stick to poke someone with if you could throw a massive explosive fireball and destory a massive area.

- There are not marriage and relationships in Oblivion. They don't like to focus on the domestic. They like to focus on the Heroic.

- It will not officially be possible to import faces from things such as FaceGen. They are confident that their Character generation utility is more than enough. People spent over an HOUR just making their own character at X05

- There are 3 different stages of character creation: Picking the race, Picking birthsign, and picking your class. When you have made your final decision you cannot change. But there is a good little amount of playing before you have to finally decide what you want. You can change multiple times in the "test zone" before finalizing.

- There will be more official plug-ins than just Horse-Armor and Holidays, and they are looking at them already, but he can't go into specifics. They do have 3 or 4 already being working on right now.

- They will support the standard conventions that Xbox360 supports. There will be updates, downloads, achievements, etc. And any d/l Content that is on PC WILL be available on the 360 version.

- The expansions isn't really talked about right now. They are focusing mostly on the actual game now.

- They are not using Starforce for any products from Bethesda. He is all for anti-piracy however, obviously.

- He didn't want to comment on anything about Vampires. They would rather people experience it for their own.

- ALL cut-scene movies are in-game engines.

- There are NO dragons in the game.

- The PC and 360 version will be released at the same time.

- The will release the US AND EUROPE version at the same time.

 

[Cole]

- They will support the standard conventions that Xbox360 supports. There will be updates, downloads, achievements, etc. And any d/l Content that is on PC WILL be available on the 360 version.

Thats only Bethesda though. They already said that they will release there modifications that they made to the Xbox 360 on and I quote "The marketplace"(Basically buying Modifications via Live, which also screws over the Pc user as they have to be bought for Pc users to). Thats not new news.

Just wanted to confirm that for everyone.

 

[PriNcE oF SpAcE]

the excuse for not having spears in this game is lame and dissapoints me. if spears seems ineffective compared to a fireball then what about a sword? or bow and arrows for that matter? the more likely reason for spears not being in the game is that they couldn't figure a proper way of getting it to work with the new more free form combat system....seeing as spears rarely lent themselves to other than stabbing unlike swords where you can hack and slash(doing spins and what not)...so spears would be hard to make exciting and still believable in the new fighting/combo system...

 

[phantomdesign]

Thanks for the info.

Thats only Bethesda though. They already said that they will release there modifications that they made to the Xbox 360 on and I quote "The marketplace"(Basically buying Modifications via Live, which also screws over the Pc user as they have to be bought for Pc users to). Thats not new news.

Just wanted to confirm that for everyone.

For some reason, I think MODers on the PC will be producing the best content - I don't see why we won't be able to access those MODs.

 

[CptStern]

a few new screens (didnt want to start new thread)

btw excellent read thanks for the info

http://ve3d.ign.com/articles/689/689193p1.html

 

[VictimOfScience]

NP. Egad that screen is sweet! In the interview Pete says that running this on a 1900 is "the bomb." I wonder how great it'll be with a, x850XT PE? HDR in Source games kills my fps, so I don't think I will take full advantage of the splendor of this title til I upgrade (after DX10 cards, PPUs, and Vista release unfortunately). Still it will be nice to come back to an even more beautiful game next year .

 

[Mr. Redundant]

thanks a ton for the info and synopsis Victim of Science duly appreciated

edit: oh and thank you CptStern for the pics, the faces look terrific.