So I've been playing Oblivion for... way too long now.... and I just realized something last night. In the entire world of Tamriel, there's not a single child. No babies, no toddlers, no kids running around. I met an orphan once (who was a beggar), but he had grey hair. I think the entire nation is going to die off due to a lack of procreation. They're so busy worrying about the Oblivion gates opening up outside their towns (while not actually willing to do anything about them, they're still quite concerned) that they plum forgot to make babies.
While I love the game, I do have to rag on the fact that they screwed the pooch with "willful suspension of disbelief" in this game.
- Fires burn forever. For starters, I didn't realize that stone can burn (so the outside of the castle in Kvatch amazes me). But I'm amazed that the same stone can burn for months on end. Come on guys, put the damned fire out already.
- When I steal something in Chorrol, and the home owner sees me, why do I get stopped by a legion soldier in the middle of the hinterlands for theft? How the hell does he know? Are there some secret cell phones in the game so that the guards can communicate? Are they part of the Borg collective? Ug. It's very, very annoying.
- When I'm walking up a hill, I expect to be able to walk up the thing, no matter how steep. Unless it's vertical, I assume it's something I can climb. I don't mind if I have to go up the hill a lot slower than if I were on flat ground. But just stopping me mid-climb is stupid. I find myself "pushing" along the edges of these climbs while moving laterally until I can climb a step or two higher. That's rather... silly, don't you think?
- Why does every bandit I meet want to kill me? I can talk to them, they can talk to me. Maybe I want to become a bandit. Did you ever think of that? Instead, I walk near a campsite, and they all come out to greet me with axes and then I have to kill them. I think the idea of living with the bandits and doing raids on ruins or caves with them as a group would be a blast... but alas.
My gripe? Ha! That's easy: I haven't got a box that will run the durn thing!
1) Magic Torches!!
2) Magic Talking Armor!!
3) Magic Shoes!!
Seriously, though, this physical model is a bit goofy, but it's the same as Morrowind's. And, frankly, how would you have solved the problem of 'you can walk up x degree angle, but not x+1 degrees' I mean, World of Warcraft does the same thing. Tribes/Tribes 2 does the same thing. Halo/Halo 2 does the same thing... if there's a better way to handle it, I don't know what it is, and I don't think game developers do, either. (Of course, most games design the maps so you don't notice it as much, but games with large free-roaming outdoors areas with, like Oblivion and WoW, pretty much have to have 'seams' like this to make hills and mountains look real. You'll notice that Halo/Halo 2 mostly glosses the issue by surrounding every valley with near-vertical cliffs.
4) Maybe you have really bad B.O. But for the record, not all bandits want to kill you, there are 3-4 camps that are part of quests.
My major gripe is that none of the Khajit NPCs say "Khajit has no words for you!" like in Morrowind. I need to find an MP3 of that, it made me crack up every damn time.
LoL @ James. Btw, I'd solve the walking issue by making it a speed problem. As the angle becomes steeper, you climb slower. Only when the angle is vertical (or slopes back towards the climber) does it become impossible to move -- but then you can visually see a wall in front of you.
Fires can burn forever except when they are on a torch...
I don't like stuck NPCs... but that's a pipe dream.
I wish that dialog menus with NPCs would show you only items that are new. I can't stand looking at a menu and wondering if I've already talked about that subject to the NPC.
I don't like how you can carry a small barracks on your back. Who can carry three claymores, a battle axe, and a full set of arrows and a bow... not to mention 20 potions, 20 ninroots, and full steel armor.
In the Xbox360 version.. the cache gets fragmented and takes a ton of time to load the next grid cell... easily solved using a simple controller button press.
Sometimes it's like you guys are living in your own little world.
@Jake -- I know! I can lug around over 600 lbs worth of crap on my back right now. Cuz that's realistic while jump-attacking trolls.
@Russ -- We are -- it's called "Earth." Welcome! ;-)
On the 360 version, dialog items grey-out when you ask them once, so you can just skip to the highlighted ones to make sure you've heard everything.
But yes, the 360 version cache gets crapped up every 6-8 hours of gameplay, and it is quite annoying to have to restart to fix it. Also the "save" screen gets really laggy when you have more than about 150 or so games, probably loading the preview images for each one.
What really gets me mad is when the game randomly locks up on a loading screen. Seems to happen once a night. I've learned to just save before I open doors.
Oh, also, when you see that message that says like:
"New Topic: Nirnroot Coffee"
It means that next time you talk to an NPC in that city/area, you'll be able to ask about "Nirnroot Coffee" that you weren't before. It's usually triggered by overhearing a conversation between two NPCs.
Until my buddy explained that to me, I thought they'd accidentally left in a debugging message.
Ahh... just in case it was misunderstood, my remark was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek "dry" humor. It may have come across as sarcasm --- that was not my intent.
I should've stuck a smiley in there, methinks.
LoL, no, I understood perfectly -- I gave you my own sarcasm back. ;-)
I think if someone wants to make millions of dollars, come up with a way to convey tone of voice via text. :-P
I believe that the reason for not having kids in the game is because you can kill them and then strip them naked. The rating on such a game, as well as the general public outcry, just isn't worth it. Can you imagine Walmart stocking the game if murdering children was part and parcel of the "experience"?
On a more technical note, you can't simply "scale down" the adult models - it just doesn't look right. You'd need to have a whole new bunch of objects just to model children.
FWIW, Morrowind didn't have children either, but the population of Cyrodiil seems to have endured ;)