http://www.xboxyde.com/leech_1719_1_en.html I can't even explain how I felt as I watched that clip. As a big TES fan, I just couldn't believe some of the things being demonstrated in that clip. It's amazing what you can do. Even the combat doesn't seem too bad, and I saw barely any text (all voice dialogue, even by unimportant NPC's). The whole bookstore scene left me speechless...except for the bit of chuckling I did. Overhearing conversations for new topics looked awesome, as did the last battle, where it seemed like you could team up with others to fight enemies. The best thing about this is that I think this is 5 months old and running off of the PC, so it should get even better by Christmas (or whenever the release it).
I'm not too impressed with that vid maybe b/c I've never played any of TES, but with that saying, I still like the latest screen shots and I'm expecting the choppy animation to improve. I'm always changing my mind between this or PGR3 to buy on launch day. The new PGR3 is surprsingly good despite running at 30fps but the detail is astounding and considered its running on one core makes the frame-rate forgivable for a first gen title.
I suppose if you don't know what to look for, then it may be harder to be impressed by the video; show someone the graphics of GTA:SA w/o explaining the type of gameplay, and they may not come away impressed. FWIW, some people at other boards that are familiar with the TES world seem just as amazed as I am. In a way, Oblivion will be like a GTA-esque game. Giant worlds with tons of stuff going on. The thing that impressed me about the town and bookstore scene was that the clip showed just one random house in one random town at one random time in the game. In other words, there could be several, several variations of those scenes (and I'm using the word "several" conservatively). I got real excited when he mentioned something about vampires (maybe werewolves too); I'm just getting excited about the possibilities the Radiant AI could bring. Wouldn't it be cool if that woman in the clip turned out to be a werewolf and transformed right when you least expected it? And again, that was just some random NPC, not some specially created NPC. You could probably do the same thing yourself. To me, it looked like they improved some of the strong points of Morrowind while also improving some of the weak points. Since I loved Morrowind, I can't help but be excited. As for this or PGR 3, two completely different games that are hard to pick from, IMO. Granted, this was a 5 month old PC build, but chances are that the graphics/animations won't get much better for Oblivion on the 360, and especially won't match PGR 3. However, the fact that Oblivion looks that good is amazing, IMO, given the scope of the world (forest scene was amazing). For me, I'd get much more satisfaction from Oblivion over PGR3, but like I said in my review of Morrowind, some people may find out Oblivion isn't for them after a few hours of playing it. Of course, that's assuming both games make the 360 launch. Despite how hard it will be, I think I'll try to hold off until maybe next summer or so before I get the game. That's mainly because I want to get it for the PC, and it may be a little easier (and cheaper) to build a PC around that time that can handle the game. In the mean time, I may get to play it a few times on the Xbox 360.
That's one impressive game. I think Valve's source engine does better faces, but everything else is sweet. I didn't like the glossy look of everything (too much AA) but they spent a lot of effort and money into this. Though I expect games like these to come, I'm worried about the skyrocketing budgets to make them and about the retail price they're going to ask for it.
Hehe...yeah, that reminds me of those face mods for Morrowind that basically replaced the ugly faces with more acceptable faces. As much as I like Bethesda, faces aren't their strong suit. Although to be fair, I think the faces will have the ability to age, so maybe they could have made them a little better looking if they just stayed that way.
