The Elder Scrolls VI

I know that one. He released two different versions. One where "STOP! YOU'VE VIOLATED THE LAW!" is the full shout, and the other where the full shout is "STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!"

As my "tutorial" on how to mess with mods, I edited both, to where Level 2 (which was silent) was the level 3 of the other. So the orders went:

"STOP!" -> "STOP! YOU'VE VIOLATED THE LAW!" -> "STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!" (this is the one I prefer) and "STOP!" -> "STOP RIGHT THERE CRIMINAL SCUM!" -> "STOP! YOU'VE VIOLATED THE LAW!"

I am SO looking forward to 6. I really hope they are following the current trend of making 3rd person melee focused games play like Dark Souls. Maybe combat will actually be fun in this installment XD

Yeah, I wasn't a fan of melee combat at higher levels. Sure, it was hilarious fun to play as an orc whose entire purpose was to smash thing with hammer, but once you got to higher levels and Draugr Deathlords started becoming the common mook you saw, it got ridiculous. You'd have to whale on that thing for a full minute to kill it, and that's not counting the times it would Unrelenting Force you.

For a minute?

Just smith your weapon to one shot most things! :-P

I could one shot them with my Ancient Elf Sun god Bow. If I sneaked.

But then you miss out on seeing the throat-slitting animation!

.... You could get a throat slit....on a draugr?

That seems, rather uh, counterintuitive.

I'm getting a lot of hearsay that The Elder Scrolls VI will use the gamebryo engine (or, as one very non-dramatic poster put it, "Elder Scrolls VI WILL use the SAME engine as FALLOUT 76!"). Do we have any proper confirmation on that anywhere?

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Nov 25th 2018 at 10:51:05 AM

There's no confirmation anywhere but we know from previous experience that they won't abandon their engine

It's pretty certain, yeah. I was just wondering if there had been any official confirmation, and if they'd confirmed anything else alongside it.

There's this interview going around where Todd says something to the effect of, "We're making changes to the engine for Starfield and then even more changes for TES 6," and folks are concluding from that that TES 6 will be using another "modified" iteration of the same engine Bethesda is using for their open-world games right now. Given their past decisions, it's very likely that this will be the case- which means that it will be a buggy, substandard mess that gives an experience that cannot possibly live up to modern standards.

Honestly, from where I'm standing, the future of these kinds of games looks pretty bleak.

It's kind of disappointing, really. Bethesda doesn't make games that bad, but their absolute refusal to make a new engine has been screwing them over really hard lately, between the last two Fallout titles and the ever-famous issues with Skyrim (anybody remember Dragons flying backwards after a patch?).

How does that actually hurt them though? Gamebryo has been quite good. Fallout 4 was mechanically one of the better ones thus far.

Granted, it plays a bit too much like a FPS rather than an open world-explorer

But open worlds in general have that thing where vertical traversal is either abysmal or unrealistic.

Gamebryo is an ancient, decrepit-ass engine that Bethesda has been adding more and more modules onto and it shows.

I was hoping for something a bit more substantial than another declarative without much justification. Yeah, it's got a reputation for being buggy, but as someone who's put well over a thousand hours between the various Bethesda games, I've never encountered one that was anything other than mildly amusing. Mostly just people swimming instead of walking, or getting stuck in a rock. Which I can fasttravel away from.

Old doesn't a bad engine make. Unreal is old. Havok is old. Dunia is old.

Why is the engine that important? If I'm not completely mistaken, it only provides the graphics, the physics, and such right? Wouldn't a developer sticking with an engine mean there's less to completely relearn every time they release another game?

Sorry about that, I was pressed for time. I can devote more effort into giving you a proper response now however.

I love Skyrim. Steam says I have over 1400 hours in that game, and every once in a while, I still go back and play it- modded to the gills, of course- to this day. However, despite the fact that Bethesda's re-released it about a dozen times, the enjoyment I get out of Skyrim comes in spite of and not because of it's basic game systems. I mod Skyrim so much precisely because I see so much potential in the kind of game that it represents, but the game itself fails to live up to it. The melee combat is serviceable, but it was never particularly good and it comes across as shallow and awkward compared to more modern games. I've come to notice that a game's engine has a tangible effect on how a game feels to play on a basic level- a large part of why I didn't like Fallout 4 was that things as simple as the movement and jumping just felt off to me- something which I don't notice with games with other engines.

Engines are important because they are the functional bedrock for everything that game can do. Engines need to be built with the intention of supporting certain game features, and while you can tweak them to an extent, advances in industry technology can render modules substandard or obsolete such that you might as well build an entirely new engine from scratch because doing so will take less time and effort than retrofitting your existing one.

Me and a lot of other people are worried about Bethesda's future games because, if they use the same engine, Starfield and TES 6 will inevitably inherit all the same things we hate about the technology of those games- performance issues, physics bugs, input lag- because that's exactly what happened with Fallout 4. Even if it takes them longer, it's in Bethesda's interest to try something new. I don't want TES 6 to just be Skyrim with slightly improved graphics and a new setting, like Fallout 4 was to 3. I want Bethesda to actually push their formula forward, and that will require new technology.

I HAVE noticed a weird input lag with Fallout, but only with a controller. My mouse/keyboard PC version doesn't offer this issue, and in fact seems to be a bit more responsive than my Fallout New Vegas. It may be because I got a fancy powerful pc between playing those games. Consider uninstalling the HD textures pack. It's stupidly massive and the changes it makes are trivial at best. I also really enjoy Fallout 4 weapons crafting. I also rather like the more personal/less political plot.

I suppose I'm just part of the problem. I just don't have enough of a problem with the occasional physics bugs I encounter to have a problem with any of it. I only mod Skyrim because I despise the native crafting setup, where crafted items weigh considerably more than the ingredients you used to make it, or how you need a full bar of iron to sharpen a sword. Where the hell is that iron going?

Edited by blkwhtrbbt on Nov 25th 2018 at 12:28:17 PM

New technology doesn't have to mean throwing out decades of evolution on en existing engine either. The degree to which modders have been able to fix up and beautify Skyrim proves that the the engine is capable. If Bethesda would step up their QA and art game.

Engines are definitely more than just graphics and physics. as said, your engines by default defines what is possible to do with a game unless you go out of your way actually add the missing functionnalities after.

A simple example would be EA's frostbite engine. that thing initially didn't allowed for permanence inside levels. You couldn't make something as simple as a quest (talk to a npc which makes ennemies spawn, kill ennemies which needs to stay dead through subsequent trips to the level, change interactions with the quest giver to get reward.) with it, because that engine was made for shooters and fifa.

And then THEY MADE A MASS EFFECT WITH THAT. While not the main factor (the engine had been tweaked to allow that some time beofre they got to do andromeda), some people posits that the transition from unreal engine to frostbite is part of the source of the problems with andromeda.

Although, to be fair, there's good points to make in favor of keeping an engine, because the knowledge and experience of your team with one engine never transitions perfectly to another engine so you have to take time to relearn the whole thing.

On the other hand I agree everything I love with skyrim I do so in spite of the engine and I hear it has troubels doing simple things such as a character picking up an object in the world and holding it, soooooooooooooooooooo maybe it's time for a change rather than a workaround.

Edited by Yumil on Nov 26th 2018 at 9:34:55 PM

I posit that TESVI should be made in the Breath Of The Wild engine.

So long as they remove the weapon degradation system from Bo TW, I agree.

Eh, I feel weapon maintenance is a good mechanic provided it's PART of your character tree and not just another gameplay loop; so it makes use of a character skill, thus providing a bit of deeper choice:

You're an epic warrior but do you then spend time smithing to get better at weapon maintenance, in order to reduce the amount you pay blacksmiths AND to get more use out of various maintenance tools (oils and sackcloth for bows, whetstones for blades and polyfiller for warhammers...)

If it's just a money sink then it's dull.

Like I said, so long as they remove the specific weapon degradation mechanic from Bo TW, it'll be fine. If it has one like Dark Souls', Diablo II's, or Fallout New Vegas' weapon degradation systems, it'll be fine.

I mean, I'd rather it didn't have one at all, but that's a personal preference.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Dec 26th 2018 at 5:51:34 PM

I just want to be able to hoist myself up into the ledge that's just slightly too high to jump.

Just invent the Hookshot. I know why it wasn't included, but I'm still miffed it wasn't a late-game pickup and/or DLC like Majora's Mask.