New Zelda Scans: 2 to 3 times bigger than OOT

[A Black Falcon]

Well, if we wanted constant boredom we could simply walk across a giant, empty field in real life, this is why games exist.

I am a 'people', so I wasn't excepting myself you know... :)

Real world landscapes are also quite boring for the most part. Ever driven from Amarillo, Texas to Alberqurque, New Mexico? I have, there's NOTHING. For MILES.

True, and games should and do cut down on that, but RPGs are supposed to be digital worlds so the closer they can come to something seeming real (while keeping things still fun), the better...

It works fine. It forces you to plan how the fastest route to an area. Such as one town might closer to the ancient ruins I'm looking for but first I might have to travel to a different town to get a silt strider that will take me to the closer town, or I can go to a town that's not quite a close but I can get their directly. That's the way it is in real life, you can get from Dallas to London without stopping over in New York first.

It's interesting that you have no problem at all with Morrowind's lack of transport, because I know I've heard it mentioned, and not just a few times... it just isn't nice to your players to do that kind of thing! Sure Morrowind is far, far smaller than Daggerfall, but they sure try to make up for it by removing most of the fast travel (and that's more bad than good overall)... As for Oblivion...

GS: We learned that the gameworld is approximately 16 square miles in size. How large is that in comparison to Morrowind's world, roughly? Will we see the same kind of variety in terrain and locales like we saw in Morrowind, which had deserts and mountains and lush forests? Tell us about how this world is being generated, and what the new terrain generation system adds to the game?

TH: The outside world, in terms of square miles, is a bit larger than Morrowind's, but it doesn't feel that way with the fast travel. So each of our games has had a different scale, and we mess with that early on and change it depending on how the game is flowing. So if you had to walk everywhere, I'd make it much, much smaller. In terms of terrain, there are several varieties, from beaches, to mountains, to open planes, to forests, snow, etc.

http://www.gamespot.com/xbox360/rpg/thee...28767.html

Mounted steeds now make an exciting introduction within Oblivion; can you provide us with a little more information about this feature and how it’s implemented within the game?

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: Click for screenshotsYou will be able to acquire a horse in Oblivion, and ride it around to your heart’s content. Horses grant you a nice speed boost, as well as really help capture that feel of being a knight riding around on horseback. There are several different varieties of horses to get, each with varying stats and look. While in town, you can store your horse in the stables, and pick it up when you’re ready to go. NPCs can use horses as well. If you’re not careful, they may even steal yours!

http://www.totalvideogames.com/articles/..._40_60.htm

In Morrowind almost all of the ancient ruins and robber caves are in places that are far from towns, so more often than not you'll have to walk for a few minutes to get to it. There's no teleporting to dungeons and teleporting will only take you to the nearest town or fort. Which is the way it should be, there shouldn't be some spell that will automatically take you directly to the dungeon.

I don't see how you can be defending such a mixed up, hard-to-use teleport system... it wouldn't exactly be hard to explain, either -- say there is a spell (or magic item) that teleports you to town. I know, it's been used many times before in games, but that's because it's a good idea... in this case of course it would let you teleport to one of various towns, like teleporting in some Zelda games (like WW or MM), but the principle is the same... even if your motivation here is not just to go back to town to sell your junk (ahem, Diablo II...), but to go to places without a huge amount of fuss and save yourself a lot of annoying running around places you have gone before and really don't want to have to go through the process to reach wherever it is that you are going again.

It was larger than MP AND they were lazy.

We agree on this, at least. :)