The vgchartz ranking game--The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[MikeB]

Slimebeast said:

MikeB said:

Slimebeast said:

MikeB said:
8.1 Fantastic and beautiful huge world, improved port for the PS3 (graphics, framerate, extras) and lots of things to do.

Despite improvements running a tad too slow at times, computerized acting performances not convincing (no convincing emotions for example), issues scrolling down inventory lists like for keys, not so good design decisions in places (like for example, stating you have to go back when going off the map instead of providing natural boundaries like mountains or dangerous seas you can't cross, this would be more convincing. Gets repetitive regarding many side quests and encounters.

What do you mean by 'computerized acting performances'? Do u mean the random dialogues between NPCs?

Well about the invisible walls at the map borders, they had to be there cause the world map was set from the first Elder Scrolls game. They can't add new land mass, huge mountains or water.

The game apparently uses the computer speech synthesis method. Early Amiga speech adventures from the mid 80s also suffered from this, basically they used the standard (at the time unique) say program (used for reading out text for people having difficulty reading), saving a lot of space on the 880KB diskette. The emotion expressions were very limited though. The technology has improved since then, but still doesn't come close to using real actors in terms of expression.

And for the borders, you can already look into the distance you can't reach, it's not impossible to use natural borders instead. Like using deadly sea creatures to make sure someone can't pass, or quicksand swamps too dangerous to cross, or too high or slippery icy mountains, etc.

LOL! Either you really have faith in computer technology, or Oblivion's voice acting was really bad. Oblivion has nothing of that. All the dialogue is recorded by real life actors.

Ok thanks for the clarification and yes it does not sound too impressive:

"Oblivion features the voices of Patrick Stewart, Lynda Carter, Sean Bean, Terence Stamp, Ralph Cosham, and Wes Johnson. The voice acting received mixed reviews in the game press. While many publications characterize its voice acting as excellent, others found fault with its repetitiveness.The issue has been blamed on the small number of voice actors and the blandness of the written dialogue itself. Lead Designer Ken Rolston found the plan to fully voice the game "less flexible, less apt for user projection of his own tone, more constrained for branching, and more trouble for production and disk real estate" than Morrowind's partially recorded dialogue"

So it seems they are using voice modifications instead, probably this is why it sounds so samey and the voice acting isn't that well done.

As for having too much faith in technology, if on a 7 Mhz 1 MB Amiga 500 from the 80s you could have text to speech technology in games like this:

It should be a lot more advanced by now...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afcVG5s6DQU (IMO game'graphics look bad for an Amiga 500 game, but that's besides the point)

With some voice modification:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SloFXZLhozI

Say program from 1984/1985 (can do female, male voice with expressions by using symbols like ? or !, etc, here uses monotone computer voice):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzKNFTZ8if4 (this was advanced stuff, considering for example PCs used single-tasking MSDOS and could only beep).