Square...Bethesda has the right approach.

[VeranRamaden]

[SIZE="6"]WALL OF TEXT ALERT[/SIZE]
This is the approach I believe would be best.
imo.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/3..._Of_Skyrim.php

Had to edit to fit.
I made bold what i thought was important.
Before you flame, this is just something I haven't heard
any representatives say. In any of the bold.
I may be wrong, I dont stalk to dev posters but I just
think these are very strong points that create a game.
Alongside a working engine...

http://www.slideshare.net/DICEStudio...nginfrostbite2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pNOxynC1Dc
(yes its for a fps, I know. Purely talking about engine power here.
Crystal engine just isn't up to par :/. We're not blowing things up lol
But If they can do that with the shadows/lighting/etc? C'mon now.)



Gamasutra recently sat down with Todd Howard, design director on Bethesda Softworks' long awaited Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, which is launching this November on PC and high-definition consoles.

Here, the long-time game developer talks about working with the game's all-new Creation Engine, how the studio changed up the Oblivion formula, and whether it's possible to convey the vision of a single designer through such a massive project.

Howard also explains how the studio approaches accessibility (hint: "It's not something that we think about a lot"), and the bugs that manage to sneak into Bethesda's massive, do-what-you-want games.

How hands-on are you with [Skyrim]?

There are a lot of great people who work on the team, we've worked together for a long time. We're focused on one game at a time, so I'm extremely hands on, design a lot of the systems, and play the game every day and give the guys feedback.

But we have a great group -- Matthew Carofano, who's our lead artist and was on Morrowind and Oblivion as well, Bruce Nesmith and Kurt Kuhlmann, are lead designers on [Skyrim]. I worked with them on Daggerfall, so they've been with us for a while.

What's kind of nice about our group is that a lot of us have worked together for a long time. So the amount of time that I have to "manage" is low. We can focus on the game.

When you have a game with so many different components and lots of content, how reasonable is it to expect the game to have a singular vision?

I view the game as -- the first line in the credits is "Game Design: Bethesda Game Studios." I view it as a studio project. It is too big for one person. I don't know all parts of it. In each of the games we did, there are probably three or four people -- from myself to usually the lead artist, lead designer, lead level designer -- you'd have to combine those four people to know everything.

We like to remain very flat as a studio. One of the reasons our games end up so big is we put a high premium on tools, and then we let people run wild. We think that gives us the best game. So the main thing that we try to instill in people is really the tone of the game, and then they'll create content that matches that. And the work will be checked by lots of people, and it won't be me all the time. It often isn't.

What aspects of Oblivion did you look at when planning Skyrim? What did you want to change? I know Skyrim began development a long time ago, so you may have to reach back into your memory banks.

Each game is its own thing. There are certain things that Arena does better, or that Daggerfall does better than Morrowind or Oblivion, or even better than Skyrim. There are certain things, depending on the game you make, that you'll sacrifice to make that particular game. But I think we tried a lot of new stuff with Oblivion, and it was new -- it came out four months after the Xbox launched.

So that was very difficult to get all of those systems running on a console that was still in development at the time. So we sort of came out of it very happy with what we got on the screen, but knowing that there were things we could do a lot better. Some of that we did better in Fallout 3.

But I think the big things for us are still -- and we still struggle with -- are the NPCs, the interaction, and how they act. That's because the game is so dynamic, we don't want to script them, so weirdness can ensue sometimes. So we came out of Oblivion thinking, hey, how do we get more believable characters on the screen who are reacting to you.

I always thought we did environments well, and we want to keep doing it well. But I'd say the characters and how they perform on the screen was probably our number one [focus].

That's something too, that maybe some gamers don't understand when you have a game that big, that there will be "weirdness." Do you think you could ever ship a game that squashes all of those bugs? Would you say Skyrim has less of that "weirdness" going on than your other games?

It matters how you define "weirdness." There's going to be some [weirdness], like the player did X, Y and Z that we didn't expect, and now he's attacking the town, sleeping in this guy's bed, he killed his wife [laughs]... We sort of learn each time how people play these games and experience them. So we get better each time, but we do at the end of the day sacrifice, say, a well-paced story. It's almost impossible for us to do. We'd rather let you go do whatever you want. So that's a sacrifice that we're willing to make.

People give you guys a hard time about bugs. You have very well-received games, but there are also plenty of fun clips on YouTube that originate from Bethesda games.

[Laughs] You know what though? Those things are there, and it's fair that people call us out for them, we've got no problem with that.

How does the new engine handle the world's size in Skyrim? What's the scale of the game?

It's about the size of Oblivion. The scale changes with each game, based on a number of factors. The factor in [Skyrim] that messes with the scale are the mountains. So putting mountains on the screen, they feel like mountains when you see them, but they're at the same time small enough where you can scale them without taking a really, really long time. And they cut up the terrain.

In Fallout 3 or Oblivion, you can cut across the landscape, for the most part. You can draw a line and say, "I wanna go there." But in Skyrim, you can't. You might run into a mountain, and you might have to scale a mountain. In general, we try to make the game harder the higher the elevation you're in. That changes the flow of the game.

As a design director, is there an overarching design philosophy that you follow that has worked over the course of so many games?

We have one for the studio. Our motto is "Great games are played, not made," meaning you can spend a lot of time on paper coming up with great ideas, then as soon as you put it in the game, you're like, "I was thinking wrong." So we try to just bullet point things on paper, then get it in the game, play the game, and get ready to throw your ideas out.

With Skyrim, the dragon's design was a one-pager. "Those are gonna work." A couple bullet points was what we were going for. One of our other rules is "define the experience." With dragons, it was more about defining the experience we wanted to have as opposed to "here is the feature set and technical design, etc. etc."

As far as Skyrim, what is the experience? It's the experience you had with the other Elder Scrolls, in that you be who you want to be and do what you want, but the tone of Skyrim involves a more rugged world, a more lived-in world, where magic is more low-fantasy world. There is more violence in it, not for gore's sake -- there's not a ton of gore in the game -- but it just seems like it would be a more violent place.

When it comes to game features, we are more about iteration. The only area we're document-heavy in is the content of the world. We have to be, with all the people, quests, items. We're very document-heavy and we have a really slick wiki at work, and have an interactive map and you can see who's building what today.

But when it comes to game features -- the more time you spend on paper, the more incorrect assumptions you're making, and it's just going to pile up on you.

What about accessibility -- making Skyrim a game that's inviting to people who might not play RPGs as much, and also the hardcore people who have been playing The Elder Scrolls since the beginning?

Honestly, it's not something that we think about a lot, in that we've found that we're getting a pretty big audience making a game that we want to make. We want to make it for whoever it is -- even if you've played Elder Scrolls before, you haven't played this one, so you don't understand what a skill does yet.

... We want to remove confusion, that's what I'd say. As opposed to making it more accessible, we'd like to remove confusion for anyone who's playing. What we're trying to do now is lead you into it more... In our games or others' games, they give you a character menu and say, "Who do you want to be, what powers do you want?" [Players think,] "I don't know, I haven't played yet!"

What happens in Oblivion is you start the game, play for three hours, and then think "I want to start over, I chose wrong." So we'd like to sort of alleviate some of that. I also think the controls work better [too] ... it's more elegant.

You look at Call of Duty, the most popular game in the world, and that's actually pretty hardcore. At the end of the day, it's a hardcore game, has RPG elements in multiplayer, making classes, picking perks. I think the audiences are there, and we tend to make our game more for ourselves and other people who play a lot of games.

[Jynx]

Bethesda also releases some of the buggiest games known to man.

[VeranRamaden]

Bethesda also releases some of the buggiest games known to man.

As stated in the post.
They know it, but they get fixed.
Im not a fan of them, but the way they go about work I agree with.

[Jynx]

I can't say I agree with releasing a game full of bugs and "Fixing them" a year down the road.

[VeranRamaden]

I can't say I agree with releasing a game full of bugs and "Fixing them" a year down the road.

Im not saying releasing a game full of bugs and waiting to fix.
That's not something I agree on.
But, we are on the FFXIV forum lol.
Which we all know how it released.

[Jynx]

Square Enix has also released one of the "Larger" MMO's on the market. FFXI, I don't think they need to take hints from Bethesda on how to make a MMO.

I understand your intent, I just feel it's not information SE would find usefull or informative.

[Azurus]

Square Enix has also released one of the "Larger" MMO's on the market. FFXI, I don't think they need to take hints from Bethesda on how to make a MMO.

I understand your intent, I just feel it's not information SE would find usefull or informative.

If it was one of the "larger" mmos on the market, and they dont need any advice on how to make mmos, how come this one sank so bad? I think there is alot of things SE could learn, cause ya they may have been able to do well back in 2003 when the market wasn't saturated but nowadays their archaic approach to mmos has definitely hurt them. They didnt build a strong foundation. Bugs and stuff aside, cause ill take bugs if the foundation is solid, FFXIV is running on a sub par engine, it was supposed to be such a next gen mmo and they wanted to do so much with it but the engine they decided to use has really cost them.

edit: and fixing some bugs a year later is alot better then ripping up and putting in a new foundation a year later.

[Rentahamster]

FFXIV is also one of the buggiest games known to man.

SE made a decision to release the game in September and fix it with patches later.

Even with all the FFXI experience behind them, they still managed to create a horribly designed game.

I'd say they need all the help they can get at this time. They've lost their way.

[Jynx]

FFXIV is also one of the buggiest games known to man.

It may not currently be a good game, but for the most part they had a rather smooth launch bug wise. Compared to most MMO's they have few at all.

as for all the "FFXIV flopped teh lulz" other comments, mistakes obviously happen. I can't imagine Tanaka would say FFXIV was ready for release when it was forced onto the market. If they had a bit better overall direction and SE wasn't making a thousand different games at once. Things may be different.

I don't doubt SE has the tallent, knowledge, skills, to pull this game from the brink. But as a company they are spread too thin IMHO. So yes I will reiterate my statement that they don't need to take "Protips" from other developers in the MMO space from a developer whos only foray into the MMO world ended in a massive lawsuit.

[Physic]

well reading what they said about bugs, and itertations, that may have in fact been the big issue. Some sources suggest that the engine they used to make the game wasnt in its final build till like 2009, if so, most of the game was built in pieces, and while they may have had a long time to plan, and a long time to create assets like animations, charachters models etc, they didnt probably didnt have a lot of time to test, or do iterations.

The people upstairs probably figured they could build it as they went, and adjust it, which theoretically might have worked, IF they had not billed it as a full release, AND they had actually done rapid updates.

one of the big issues is, if you want to start with a super rough game and form it to perfection you have to you know actually make big fixes and changes in fast time periods. I dunno whats going on, but this is one of the slowest bug fix/development cycles i ve seen in a long time.