Oblivion will ship March 20th

Kur4mA

Bethesda Softworks and 2K Games Announce
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to Ship March 20

Quintessential RPG for the Next Generation Coming to Xbox 360 and PC

Rockville, MD - March 2, 2006 - Bethesda Softworks® and 2K Games, a publishing label of Take-Two Interactive Software, Inc. (NASDAQ: TTWO), today announced that the highly-anticipated role-playing game, The Elder Scrolls® IV: Oblivion™ has gone to gold master and will be available in stores in North America and Europe during the week of March 20. Oblivion will be available for Xbox 360™ video game and entertainment system from Microsoft and PC in both regular and collector's editions.

"Our most ambitious project ever is finally done," said Todd Howard, executive producer of Oblivion. "We're excited to get the game into everyone's hands and let them experience it for themselves. We hope they enjoy it. I think it's our best game yet."

Oblivion is an epic, open-ended single-player RPG for the next generation providing gamers with one of the most life-like gaming experiences to date. The powerful combination of unprecedented graphics and freeform gameplay allows gamers to unravel the main quest or explore the vast world at their own pace. Oblivion is the fourth chapter in the award-winning Elder Scrolls series that includes Morrowind® (2002 RPG of the year - Computer Gaming World), Daggerfall™ (1996 RPG of the year -- PC Gamer), and Arena (1994 RPG of the year - Computer Player).

http://www.elderscrolls.com/news/press_030206.htm

Zillah

Yay!

JCDenton

Damn!

That's right in the middle of exam season.

I'm ruined!

Ri_Nollaig

oh this is brillant news
anyone going to get the speacil edition version? its on play for about 50eur

Lord Oz

About time!!!

The Free Man

please somebody buy me an xbox 360!

garrethg

Qualified w00t.

TES modders may want to re-cork the champagne. The construction set isn't on the DVD but available as a download, there are also issues, or at least giant question marks, over what functionality may be available in the cs (http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=249910).

Hopefully the modability of this game isn't nerfed; any Morrowind fan knows what a huge factor mods play in the long-term value of the series.

madrab

heres the question, to 360 it or pc it...hmmmm

any views?

muppetkiller

until the 360 gets a mouse and Keyboard i'm not going near any FPS's

garrethg

madrab wrote:

heres the question, to 360 it or pc it...hmmmm

any views?

It really comes down to money. The PC version has all the advantages: fan created mods, construction set, the mouse/keyboard is a superior interface for this style of RPG, faster load times and it's patchable for an improved performance/feature set down the line. However this game is single greatest hardware hog yet released and that means only high spec - and equivalently high priced - PCs need apply. The Xbox on the other hand is considerably cheaper and the game is guaranteed to run out of the box at high quality.

Kiith

PC wins far out...simply because of the mods...oh, and i also dont have a 360 :rolleyes: . it is gonna kill my 9800pro though

koneko

\o/

That is all

December Son

Kiith wrote:

PC wins far out...simply because of the mods...oh, and i also dont have a 360 :rolleyes: . it is gonna kill my 9800pro though

Kill it?? Itll rip its balls off with its bare hands and perform some sort of paganistic ritual smeared in its blood. I have an X800pro and even im bricking it at the prospect of running this thing :eek:

:v:

garrethg

December Son wrote:

Kill it?? Itll rip its balls off with its bare hands and perform some sort of paganistic ritual smeared in its blood. I have an X800pro and even im bricking it at the prospect of running this thing :eek:

Apparently Oblivion was developed on 9800pro systems, which makes me wonder how they got to the point where even (according to some previews) an x1900xt stutters occasionally.

Lex_Diamonds

This isn't meant to be a troll, I swear, but can someone explain to me how this is anything other than a reskinned Morrowind?

What factors apart from the stunning graphics have been added to improve on its predecessor?

Vegeta

How is a reskinned morrowind a bad thing, I am in no way admitting this is a reskinned morrowind but answer me that one? Morrowind was good, i liked it, if all they did was change the story, make a few control changes and bling up the graphics well then i'm happy

garrethg

Lex_Diamonds wrote:

This isn't meant to be a troll, I swear, but can someone explain to me how this is anything other than a reskinned Morrowind?

It's not reskinned Morrowind; it's reskinned Gothic

What you're asking is "does Oblivion bring anything new to the table"? The major changes are Havok physics, voice acting throughout, an improved combat engine and realistic NPC scheduling. For all that the core game play is still be the same, just as the core gameplay for every RTS, FPS or racing game is fundamentally the same. Oblivion is a genre game.

Karl Hungus

Well, I for one am pleased. Not too long to wait now.

steviec

I never got into Morrowind, bought it and had really good impressions of it but never liked spending the amount of time sitting at a desk that it required and never got far. So the simple fact that its on 360 is good enough reason for me to get this one

To be honest I don't know that much about the improvement in features, but isn't it meant to have some really revolutionary AI? In that all characters are fully active and realistic, going about their daily business and talking to eachother and reacting to eachother, instead of just reacting to you. Or something like that. I'd imagine that'd go along way to making it more immersive.

Sand

To be honest I don't know that much about the improvement in features, but isn't it meant to have some really revolutionary AI? In that all characters are fully active and realistic, going about their daily business and talking to eachother and reacting to eachother, instead of just reacting to you. Or something like that. I'd imagine that'd go along way to making it more immersive.

Thats not revolutionary. Gothic 2 did it years ago, and its clear Oblivion took more than a passing glance at Gothic 2 when it came to game design. Which isnt bad, because Gothic 2 was quality.

garrethg

Steviec wrote:

In that all characters are fully active and realistic, going about their daily business and talking to eachother and reacting to eachother, instead of just reacting to you. I'd imagine that'd go along way to making it more immersive.

Nail -> head. RPG fun factor is 80% immersion. Although it’s not revolutionary, that’s the developer’s marking bull****. Hell, in many ways there are C64 games which achieved what TES 4’s RAI does: Knight Orc springs to mind as does Valhalla.

Sand wrote:

Thats not revolutionary. Gothic 2 did it years ago, and its clear Oblivion took more than a passing glance at Gothic 2 when it came to game design. Which isnt bad, because Gothic 2 was quality.

Gothic 1 did it five years ago, Gothic 2 merely added a few extra animations. Gothic 1 was an incredibly ground breaking and intelligently programmed game, everything from the AI to the graphics programming was years ahead of it's time - everything except the control interface. It easily breezes into the top five most overlooked and underrated PC games of all time and owns TES on every level except sheer scope. Gothic 1 achieved graphical effects that Oblivion has failed to do - and one 10th the system spec.

Oblivion will be a great game, but Gothic 3 will be genuinely revolutionary with a fraction of the fanfare. Better environments, better storytelling, better graphics and all not crippled by console memory limitations.

steviec

garrethg wrote:

Nail -> head. RPG fun factor is 80% immersion. Although it’s not revolutionary, that’s the developer’s marking bull****. Hell, in many ways there are C64 games which achieved what TES 4’s RAI does: Knight Orc springs to mind as does Valhalla.

Haha Valhalla. 'Thor throws food at Loki'

Those were the days, fantastic character interaction there! I loved that game.

ionapaul

Should I even bother to order with my X800XL 256mb card, or would I be wasting my time? As an illustration, COD2 plays very well at medium settings on my machine, as did HL2 and Doom3, but I just couldn't get FEAR to play at an acceptable level....

Oblivion looks great...

Ri_Nollaig

whats the rest of the specs?

from the elder scrolls website->
Recommended:

* 3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
* 1 GB System RAM
* ATI X800 series, NVIDIA GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card

i plan on playing this on a a64 3400+ 1gig and a 6800gt
ive heard that it has actually been brought down abit and some extra graphics features will be locked away (undoubtly to b opened up again with a mod 5 seconds after release)

ionapaul

I have a A64 3000+ and 1 Gig enhanced latency ram...but it is the X800XL 256mb that scares me...still have no clue why FEAR proved unplayable on my system.

_CreeD_

FEAR wasn't well optimised (IMHO). It had some nice effects but they did not justify the horsepower it consumed. Besides your vid-card remember some games are also more CPU reliant than others, going back to FEAR as an example it had a lot of CPU dependant freatures (Physics etc.). Don't use it as your most reliable benchmark. You just have to look at the performance differences vs. visual quality between Doom3 and HL2 to see how much well optimised code can make a difference.That said I think Oblivion will be a system killer, large open spaces with the type of FX (even without complex shadows etc.) being show will put a strain on any system. Still it leaves room for improvement as your budget allows.

Ri_Nollaig

well thats strange as i know people who played FEAR perfectly on 9800's nevermind a X800XL...
still there is no real way to be sure that oblivion will actually run well on what they say are the required specs, can only wait and find out. if all else fails u will be seeing my pc copy on the for sale section as i go out to get the 360 version

Pugsley

Ri_Nollaig wrote:

well thats strange as i know people who played FEAR perfectly on 9800's nevermind a X800XL...

FEAR ran perfectly for me on a 9600XT, looking forward to oblivion but my 9600XT is somewhat wetting itself at the prospect, I wonder how low the graphics go

_CreeD_

Pugsley wrote:

FEAR ran perfectly for me on a 9600XT, looking forward to oblivion but my 9600XT is somewhat wetting itself at the prospect, I wonder how low the graphics go

Be subjective....ran perfectly = what level of performance? At what resolution? With which FX? Saying something ran perfectly on X hardware is pointless when you don't say at what level.
I dont remember the individuals but Texture quality was 2nd highest, and the rest about 2/3 maxed, 1/3 medium. REs 1280x1024 with softshadows off.... The same machine hist 5100+ on 3dMark 2005 and flies on maxed out Quake4.
But alas, ****s it's mighty self on 3dMark 2006....

Laguna

Did people really have so much trouble getting FEAR to work on their systems?, I've an AMD 3700+, a X800GTO and 2gb of RAM and my machine didn't so much as flinch playing it on top settings...

steviec

_CreeD_ wrote:

Be subjective....ran perfectly = what level of performance? At what resolution? With which FX? Saying something ran perfectly on X hardware is pointless when you don't say at what level.
I dont remember the individuals but Texture quality was 2nd highest, and the rest about 2/3 maxed, 1/3 medium. REs 1280x1024 with softshadows off.... The same machine hist 5100+ on 3dMark 2005 and flies on maxed out Quake4.
But alas, ****s it's mighty self on 3dMark 2006....

Ran perfectly = perfectly playable.... I don't see the point of running 3d mark and spending a fortune on a graphics card to run games at 2000 FPS in ridiculously high resolutions that make little difference on a typical sized monitor anyway. If FEAR doesn't work on your hardware because you refuse to lower the detail settings then it's your fault not your hardware's.

I have a 9600XT, ran Fear grand on low to medium settings. Not so on high settings. Although I couldn't tell how anything looked better in high settings anyway, it just looked slower.

Laguna

steviec wrote:

Although I couldn't tell how anything looked better in high settings anyway, it just looked slower.

I ran low and high settings on my computer to see what the fuss was about, to be honest, FEAR on high settings isn't that impressive, not much more so than what it is on low to medium, I personally thought the character models, scenery and effects were pretty generic and low key for such a graphically lauded game.. Half Life 2 is prettier IMO..

Pugsley

_CreeD_ wrote:

Be subjective....ran perfectly = what level of performance?

I run all games newer than Half-Life1 on minimum pretty much

_CreeD_

steviec wrote:

If FEAR doesn't work on your hardware because you refuse to lower the detail settings then it's your fault not your hardware's.

I have a 9600XT, ran Fear grand on low to medium settings. Not so on high settings. Although I couldn't tell how anything looked better in high settings anyway, it just looked slower.

You missed my point. My first post pointed out that FEAR was not a good metric for gaming performance as it's visuals did not justify the horsepower it required - of course I could lower my settings , but that was not my point, the actual performance of the game is irrelevant as I was discussing it's RELATIVE performance to similar titles. To make it nice and simple if you compare it to Quake4 (only because they were released at the same time and ignoring the actual game play as that's irrelevant) - Q4 ran at a nice solid 60FPS or so with everything turned on at the same resolution and while it lacked some of FEAR's sparkle it had much richer and more colourful environments, FEAR had some very sharp detailed models and superb particle fx but the environments were very simple from both a visual and a model/geometric complexity standpoint yet it ran at about half the speed of Q4 - so the tradeoff here while hard to quantify is maybe a 50% reduction in speed for a 5% improvment in visual FX. Hence to me it's not a good metric. I agree on benchmarks and they were only mentioned to show that the system I'm running it on is not slouch in general terms, hardly top of the range but still a decent rig, it saves one of the 'My penis is >insert PC specs here< this big' posts. 3dMark 2006 however seems to use a lot of the type of advanced lighting/shader and shadow fx being shown in upcoming 'next gen' titles and would provide a better metric imho...not a perfect one, just better than looking at a current title.

_CreeD_

Tempting...tempting .....

Zillah

Niall - Dahlia wrote:

...so! Anybody like me doing a full HD reformat just so your computer is in tip-top condition for Oblivion?!

Thats just crazy. I will be doing a defrag though.

grimloch

So long Leaving Certificate!

Even though I won't able to actually buy it for another week or so, I am rather excited about this.

As soon as I'm able to get it, a townward expedition will be launched.

Lord Oz

grimloch wrote:

So long Leaving Certificate!

Even though I won't able to actually buy it for another week or so, I am rather excited about this.

As soon as I'm able to get it, a townward expedition will be launched.

I'm really going to have to find some way of balancing this with the leaving cert. Or dump one of them, and it's not looking too good for the leaving cert. In fact Oblivion could consume my whole life...I just hope it doesn't crash.

grimloch

Lord Oz wrote:

I'm really going to have to find some way of balancing this with the leaving cert. Or dump one of them, and it's not looking too good for the leaving cert. In fact Oblivion could consume my whole life...I just hope it doesn't crash.

This is just some rough mathematics off the top of my head:

I reckon an hour or an hour and a half each weekday is enough to make a fair bit of progress through the game.

So, taking that into account I reckon that I could get up to six hours work a day after school if I'm efficient and don't ass around wasting time.

Now, granted it won't work out that way but all I'm saying is thats it is far from impossible to play a moderate amount of the game without sacrifing your school work.

DingChavez

My new x1900xt will be waiting!

nix

Hummm im seeing alot of fuss about this game, excuse my ignorance but is it another MMO? If not whats so good about it? =D

Dooom

nix wrote:

Hummm im seeing alot of fuss about this game, excuse my ignorance but is it another MMO? If not whats so good about it? =D

Google. GOOGLE. GOOGLE.

DingChavez

nix wrote:

Hummm im seeing alot of fuss about this game, excuse my ignorance but is it another MMO? If not whats so good about it? =D

No, it is not an MMO.

*hands flame shield*

Ri_Nollaig

its not a mmo
its a huge non-linear rpg, sequeal to morrowind which was a brillant game
screenshots ->http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=58045
its got hours of dialogue too and with some voices by patrick stewart , u really need to watch the videos as the screenshots just dont do it justice

nix

Spike wrote:

Google. GOOGLE. GOOGLE.

I'm in a little thing called work, which has game sites restricted. Maybe you will think of that next time you decide to play the smart man role.

Thank you Ri_Nollaig, most appreciated.

nix

Dooom

Ah apologies. I'm not one for thinking of Sunday as a work day. But google wouldn't give out all game sites..such as this one.

Roen

In the same boat meself Nix, anyway it's the fourth installment in the Elder Scrolls series, all of which were fairly epic RPG's. They are all stand alone games, although they are all set in the same world.
I reckon I put about 1000 hours into Morrowind (the third game) so if you like your rpg's non-linear and absolutely massive in scale this lad won't dissappoint.
I've had it on pre order on Play.com for about 5 months now but unfortunately the release date has been pushed back several times. I'm happy to hear that I'll finally be getting my hands on it at last

nix

Ah no probs, sorry for coming off a bit "hostile" as i am working a sunday i am a bit stressed =0D

I'll have a look into later at home, but i doubt ill buy it as im addicted to Everquest2 and CSS. I've bought many single player games over the last few months and just never get around to playing them =(

Beecher

Got 93% in PC Gamer! I cannot wait for this!

Ri_Nollaig

its going to be released week of 20th
new games are always released on a friday in the eu so expect it out on the 24th

The Free Man

did anybody read the PC gamer review? it goes through some of the random missions that they played, my god they sound amazing! if anybody wants to buy me an xbox360 or a decent graphics card, i will love them forever