The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Interview

The Elder Scrolls is a series as much renowned for its ambition as for the games that execute said ambition, and Bethesda Softworks is in no position to change that anytime soon. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, due out next month for both the PC and the Xbox 360, looks to be one of the most ambitious games ever made, so we here at eToychest took the chance to sit down with Bethesda's Pete Hines to see what's waiting for us in Tamriel.

First off, now that you're in the home stretch, how's it feel to look back on all the days and weeks and see what Oblivion has finally turned into?

That'll probably be something we can do once the game has gone off to the manufacturer, or maybe not until it's out and on store shelves. At this stage you really can't afford to lose focus and think you're "done." So we aren't getting nostalgic just yet. Our focus continues to be to get the game to manufacturing and make sure there's nothing we missed.

Oblivion allows for instant travel between major cities- does this mean we can expect a lessening of the kinds of roadside encounters that helped define so much of Morrowind? Are there any incentives to walking from place to place anymore, instead of just click-porting everywhere?

Well, the only places you know about in the beginning are the major cities. However, that leaves out more than a couple hundred other places you can't fast travel to. And you can only get to those places by walking (or riding a horse) there. So we haven't done away with exploration, far from it. What we've done away with is the need to walk back and forth between the same two locations 500 times. You can still do that, if you want, or you can fast travel if you don't have the time. But we send you out into the world for all kinds of quests, and so you'll be doing plenty of discovering and having lots of roadside encounters as you go out into the wide world.

Oblivion's reported system requirements are quite a mouthful- were you guys forced into that by the scope of what you wanted to accomplish, or did you just assume gamers would be willing to pony up for new hardware because, hey, it's The Elder Scrolls IV?

You can see our full min and recommended system specs on our FAQ.

I would say that to get the game to run full tilt, yes, you need the latest and greatest. This is a game that pushes the limits. But, if you look at our supported cards and min specs, they are far from outrageous. In fact, you've got some cards on there that are at least a couple years old, so we did try to scale back the requirements so that you could play the game on older hardware, even if it doesn't allow you to turn on all the bells and whistles.

One of the more useful (some would go so far as to say broken) features of Morrowind was the ability to enchant weapons with different effects and to create your own spells. Will this ability be in Oblivion, and if so, to what extent?

Yes, enchanting is still in the game. Instead of it being a skill, it's something that any player can do provided they join the mages guild and gain access to the Arcane University in the Imperial City. It's still very useful and very powerful, but has been modified slightly to avoid exploits and things of that nature.

I know a big question on a lot of player's minds relate to the modding of the game. One could cobble together passable objects and environments with a modicum of skill, but how can anyone short of a professional recreate the kinds of models and effects in Oblivion? Will there be any kind of wizard of other assistance to Oblivion's inevitable mod community?

I think we've seen some really great stuff come from our fan community, some of which has landed people a job on our development team. We have some things planned that will hopefully enhance the modding community and provide a better resource of information and updates. Beyond that, it's a really easy tool to use and the only way to learn it and get better at it is to get in there and try things. We don't have any kind of "modding for dummies" that we can make available.

We've seen in the demo movies that the citizens of Tamriel have schedules and being in the right place at the right time can open up new quests for the player. My question is, are there any mutually exclusive quests because of temporal differences, or will the player eventually be able to "see" everything given enough persistence?

We tend not to lock off content from the player like that and, given enough time, you can pretty much see and do just about everything in the game. That's not to say it won't take quite a bit of time and effort to do so. It's a very, very big game.

Where exactly do those Oblivion Portals lead, and how much time will the player spend there?

They lead to Oblivion, which is another plane of existence. You'll spend some time there as part of the main quest, but beyond that how much time you spend there is up to you. Random gates will continue to appear in the world as long as the main quest goes unfinished, and you can choose to enter those random gates, or not.

How much will combat physics be integrated into the game? We've seen evidence of booby traps in the demo videos, but what about non-scripted opportunities? Could a player strategically chop a tree to have it fall on a patrolling guard, or roll boulders down a hill into an unsuspecting bandit camp?

Physics don't work on every item in the game. Things like trees can't be cut down. We don't do deformable terrain. But, in addition to traps it works on every object in the game that can be picked up, moved, or killed. So it affects NPCs and creatures in combat. It affects every item in a room when set off a big spell effect: books, plates, cups, food…all kinds of stuff can go flying around the room.

How will Oblivion's story unfold? In Morrowind, your dialog choices usually amounted to "Yes", "No", and "Yes, but it'll cost you". Will Oblivion's interactions be more robust?

We've changed it quite a bit from the way it worked in Morrowind. So it's much more of a dialog tree system and less one that centers around only picking topics out of a list. How the story unfolds is up to you and many times we give you more than one path through a conversation and it's up to you to decide how it proceeds.

Finally, I know our readers would lynch me if I didn't at least ask: Anything you can tell us about Fallout?

That it's in development and we still aren't talking about what we're up to. When we're ready, we'll let folks know.

Feb 24, 2006 - 8:13 am | 0 comments
Ryan Sharpe