Fourth Age screen shots

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

I must say you are a little harsh in you comments about modern game though, there are plenty of nice ones out there. Personally I do like Oblivion and Fallout 3 a lot.

You picked two examples which illustrate exactly what's he's talking about.

Not that I agree with him.

[Omnirizon]

azeal: i don't think i've ever played daggerfall but from what you say it sounds like this game will be more like it, with most all encounters being randomly generated. i intend this game to be more *hack style rather than *band though. *hack style basically means that once something is generated it is permanent, with a *band things are generated wily-nily and levels change each time you enter them. the names come from two originals in the genre: netHACK and angBAND.

[Aezeal]

hehe sounds like daggerfall, it was the 2nd of the elder scrolls games (latest one is oblivion and you had a HUGE (like 1000x bigger than oblivion) world all filled with like.. trees and more of nothing. a zillion dots all over the map which where towns or dungeons, the dungeons where all randomly created when entered but then stayed like that as in your exmaple (except a few main quest dungeons.) the towns are random too, but most having a few shops and temples and guild. Depending on stats you could join guilds and then there always was a quest giver who had like 5 different types of quest which you randomly got (for mage guild ti was like: kill this monster in this dungeon since it plagues the neighbourhood (and then you'd search the whole dungeon for a weak imp while it was filled with load and load of way more powerfull creatures strangely enough) or wait till night and kill the assassins coming to this guild. etc etc.) you could fasttravel between dots on the map or walk between them (seeing effectively nothing except trees and some random bears once every hour) walking the whole map... well I've never tried it but probably would take a month RL or something.. I lost my copy of the game though (lend it I think) and after I finished oblivion I tried again.. but... didn't facinate me enough anymore to last more than a few dungeons.

Sombre: Fallout and Oblivion sure have great graphics but you can't really say their story or gameplay is nothing.. even this game fully focused on gameplay will have a very hard time beating them.. sure both aren't planescape torment or BG 1 or 2 storywise because they are meant to roam freely and open ended. And some like the setting of morrowind better than the less original setting (acutally same world of course but whatever) in oblivion.. personally I think the games are nearly exactly the same though except a bit better graphs on oblivion.. the quests and story certainly aren;t lesser in quantity or quality. (note I did read your lines that you didn't agree (= didn't disagree with me) so I'm not trying to convince you, more omni if that is really what he thinks)

[MaxWilson]

Daggerfall sounds like Moraff's World to me, with somewhat more complicated quests.

-Max

[Endoperez]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Daggerfall sounds like Moraff's World to me, with somewhat more complicated quests.

-Max

Daggerfall quests:
1) kill 5 monsters that are in the second floor of that shop you've been to 10 times already. Or any other random building in the town. You'll know the right house when you find the monsters, because there are only quest-monsters in towns. Oh, and rat infestations are REALLY common, because that's what the next 4 quests will be too.

2) Kill the assassins that will appear at a spesific time in the spesific place. Go there and wait until they appear from out of nowhere, and kill them.

3) Kill a monster in this dungeon filled with monster. It has to be this spesific werewolf, you don't have to kill the 11 others if you don't want to. Traveling there and back will take 8 days, total, so I'll give you 10 days to go there and come back. When you come to the room where the dungeon separates into three areas not connected to each other and each filled with several days' worth of constant battle, try to guess the right one, because otherwise we in The Guild won't be your friends any more.

Daggerfall quests suck, even by the standards of random quests. *shudder*

The game had good ideas, but it didn't implement them well. For one thing, total randomness isn't all that interesting. Dungeon Crawl does that kind of thing well, for a roguelike: players have made special rooms that can appear in there. You may find a room with water and lava and strange rocks and chasms with elementals in it. You may encounter a room made from strange stones, or another with walls of metal. Some rooms are perfectly circular. Sometimes you find a small temple dedicated to evil gods. Sometimes the statues in there try to fry your brain.

In Fourth Age terms, there should be random statues and walls and such, so that they can sometimes be Gargoyles or Enlivened Statues or Mechanical Men. Swamps and Forests should have with magical streams and ponds you can extract gems from, and abandoned animist's huts protected by vinemen. Planned randomness.

Not that there's any pressure on Omnirizon or any way-too-early expectations. I'd be happy to just see that interesting fighting system you theorized about.

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

Sombre: Fallout and Oblivion sure have great graphics but you can't really say their story or gameplay is nothing.. even this game fully focused on gameplay will have a very hard time beating them.. sure both aren't planescape torment or BG 1 or 2 storywise because they are meant to roam freely and open ended. And some like the setting of morrowind better than the less original setting (acutally same world of course but whatever) in oblivion.. personally I think the games are nearly exactly the same though except a bit better graphs on oblivion.. the quests and story certainly aren;t lesser in quantity or quality.

I wouldn't say it's nothing, I'd say it's bland, derivative and inferior to games that have come before. I think the setting, writing and overall feel of oblivion is incredibly bland and uninteresting. It's like an 80s american renaissance fair. Everyone you meet is an ugly two dimensional idiot too.

Fallout 3 has an excellent pedigree but it utterly squanders it. It's a very good game but it's not Fallout afaic, it's just using the brand to cash in. It's Oblivion with guns and a more cinematic feel. It lacks the character, writing, sense of consequence etc - basically all the strengths of the previous two games (ignoring the ****pile called Tactics).

Fallout 1 and 2, Exile 3, Arcanum and numerous other rpgs are arguably as open ended if not more so than Fallout 3 and manage to have proper writing, interesting characters and locations, a sense that what you're doing actually matters,.. you get the idea. Both Oblivion and Fallout 3 are 'streamlined' rpgs. By that I mean extremely dumbed down.

[Aezeal]

hmm fallout has about same game mechanics as previous settings, definately feels post nuclear and has a lot of background stuff in it and I like the game better than the previous installments. While I agree Oblivion has a somewhat standard setting the mechanics of the game are pretty good and the texts, quests and story in both games are good IMHO personally I couldn't finish arcanum due to it getting pretty boring. Oblivion is not dumbed down compared to Daggerfall I'd say and neither is Fall out 3 compared too 1 and 2.

Hmm I guess we've both made up our opinions on plenty of experience and have had plenty of thought to get to this opinion so we probably won't agree on this even if we talk ad infinitum so we'll just have to agree to disagree in an effort not to hijack this thread (happens to me too often anyway )

But I'd advice both oblivion and fall out 3 too any RPG player.

[JimMorrison]

I think some old fans of Fallout came to the table with the wrong idea..... most had bad experiences with Oblivion, and were expecting to be disappointed with Fallout 3. I'll heartily agree with one particular point - I'm very upset at HOW much they simplified character creation, and the ramifications of SPECIAL. Well, and everything..... armor is vastly simplified, etc.

But on the other hand, it really is an awesome game. Maybe you won't have so much fun if you just grab the main quest with both hands and don't let go until it's done - I was shocked they didn't learn from Oblivion in that regard. However, unlike Oblivion, if you range off into the wilderness in search of interesting surprises - you should be having a LOT of fun, and isn't that why you bought a game?

I think Fallout 3 has some significant (and mostly Bethesda/console inherent) flaws, but that overall it really is quite a good game. Honestly, after 10 years, with none of the original studio working on the project, did you expect it to be identical? It's as if for some people, the game is seeing how critical they can be of the product, rather than just having fun with it as intended.


Still, I think that Fourth Age can eventually be fun, even without SPECIAL, and without first person action, and without most of what made Fallout 1 and 2 great, or Fallout 3 good.

[Aezeal]

Oblivion had quite a load of nice subquest too really and the dungeosn where pretty nice too. I didn't find character creation that much different from what I remember of older fall out games but that might be me. I definately find the feel of being in a post-apocaliptic environment with radiation all around and pure water being scares etc much much better in fall out 3.

In oblivion pplz complained about the scaling of opponents (which I didn't really mind myself) and in fall out 3 that has been changed.

[Aezeal]

Anyway I'd like to know how exactly a person will be visualized in this game. I think it will be of major importance to the gameplay.