Shivering Isles: Bethesda Interview

Kikizo talks to Pete Hines from Bethesda Softworks to bring you this detailed interview on all things Elder Scrolls as the release of Shivering Isles beckons.

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Kikizo: Have you designed parts of the expansion with different character styles in mind, for example quests that lend to different play styles - sneaky, villain and so on?

Hines: I think we've tried to account for those different styles in designing the quest, but unlike Oblivion, Shivering Isles is the main quest, and lots of miscellaneous and side stuff to do, so there's no new factions to join that are specific to the gameplay styles like you had in Oblivion with Mages Guild, Thieves Guild, and Dark Brotherhood, that sort of thing. I think in terms of what you're doing and how you'll go about finishing any quest, you've got some options there in terms of your own particular gameplay style. You know, in a game where we let you create whatever character you want, we really can't show much favouritism, because you can't ever tell what type of character someone's playing, and if you're showing favouritism towards one style, that probably inherently means that you're disfavouring other types of characters, and that's definitely not something we'd want to do.

Kikizo: Obviously the feedback to Oblivion is Game of the Year and a million awards. But there was still some complaint... how do you feel about some of the negative response towards the level/scaling issues, is that something that you have thought about fixing?

Hines: No, not really, certainly there are probably elements that we could have done better, based on the feedback that I've gotten, there are equal amounts of people who understand it or don't understand it, you know, we get a lot of people talking about levelled rats and other things that simply don't exist in the game. The gist of the game is we try and make sure you're fighting creatures that are appropriate to your level, but the creatures themselves don't level - the only creatures we actually level are the boss creatures to make sure that your boss battles are appropriate.

But the issue for us is if you're going to create a big, open-ended game that lets people go wherever they want and do whatever they want, if you're going to stay true to that, then you can't really stick creatures in there that are, say, really high level that are going to prevent somebody from being able to explore there because they're far too low level. And by the same token, if you don't do anything with those creatures - if you put some really low level creatures in an area and somebody doesn't get there until the 140th hour, then that space is basically wasted, because it's so easy for them and the rewards are so meagre that it becomes an exercise in futility. So when we did the creature and loot levelling for Oblivion, we actually went back and did something that's very similar to the way it works in Arena and Daggerfall, because we felt that it worked a lot better in those games than it did in Morrowind, which is actually the most different of the four Elder Scrolls games in terms of how creatures and loot level. So, we went back kind of to the roots of the series, and tried to stay truer to where we started with that in terms of the challenges the player faces.

So the best I can tell you is that I appreciate that it's definitely a hot button for some folks, but hopefully they will find in Shivering Isles that the challenges are more appropriate, and it's something that we'll definitely look at as we go forward with other projects in terms of how we approach it.

Kikizo: Is the vast space of the new area going to be more dense in terms of people, creatures or activity, as I think some people noted that maybe the population was less active before?

Hines: No, I don't think it's going to be any more or any less than any particular space that you saw in Oblivion. It would be nice to just be able to put put hundreds and thousands of people in any particular city, but our problem is that we're trying to move away from generic. We have people who say, "I don't want generic dialogue for NPCs, I want them to all say something new and different and I want them to all be unique, and I want hundreds of thousands of them", well that's just not... those are goals that are at odds with one another; you can't create hundreds of thousands of people in a city to make it feel like a real city, and then have any of them mean anything - they'll just be a bunch of generic figureheads that are moving around the world, and that's just not at all what we're trying to do.

Kikizo: Are there any other elements that do return from Morrowind?

Hines: Certainly I think some of the art style is reflective of things, it certainly reminds me some of Morrowind. What we've tried to is take the stuff that folks seemed to take to in Oblivion that they liked, whether it be the experiences or the NPCs with personalities that were memorable, quests and quest lines that were unique and different, and to try and focus on those kinds of experiences. So hopefully what folks will find in Shivering Isles is that it's hopefully it's some of the best gameplay that they've experienced in everything they've done in Oblivion plus expansion.

Kikizo: How are you finding balancing the difficulty overall, in terms of the game that console gamers are going to be playing versus PC gamers?

Hines: I think it's a big myth that PC gamers are more experienced versus 360 gamers. We see the number of hours people are playing on 360, and how long they're playing for. And it rivals anything that anybody is doing on the PC side, so I don't think the console necessarily dictates whether you are more or less hardcore, I just think it depends on how much you're into role-playing, how much you're into Elder Scrolls.

We have people I've talked to that have finished Oblivion - every faction, the main quests, have explored nearly every dungeon, and are still playing the game 200 hours in, so I don't think they are any less hardcore than somebody else, so our goal is to make sure that it's balanced, period. Regardless of what platform you're playing it on, that whether you have a lower level character or a higher one, that the challenge is appropriate and you're having fun. At the end of the day we just want you to have fun and feel like you got good value for your money and that it was fun to play and well worth your time and effort!

Kikizo: Do you know anything about pricing yet, boxed version or downloadable?

Hines: Our intent is that there's parity across platforms. We have been very careful about that on downloadable content, I imagine that won't change on PC and 360 for Shivering Isles. So there'll be priced the same and priced appropriately for what expansions are going for these days. But I don't think we've announced the price on it yet.

Kikizo: Can you tell us more about the method of travelling from Cyrodiil to Shivering Isles?

Hines: The only change that takes place within the game Oblivion when you add Shivering Isles is that a door appears in Nibben Bay, it's in the middle of Nibben Bay. One of the things we worried about was where we could do this and not mess with anything that our modders might be working on, because we don't want to put stuff down where somebody else had a big mod going on, so it takes place in the middle of the bay, which is the most harmless place we could think of. And you swim out to this little island and a door has appeared, and that's how you get into the realm of Sheogorath, and that's your portal back and forth between the two. So at any point in Shivering Isles if you decide you want to come back and do some more of Oblivion, you just go right back through the door and all your items that you've gathered and accumulated come back with you as well.

Kikizo: Have you guys been able to look at anything in terms of load time optimisation on the 360 version?

Hines: Hmmm, a little bit. There's a few things, you know, we're planning on doing an update between now and when the expansion comes out, so there may be a little bit of that in that update. But for Shivering Isles itself, the goal was to make sure that it runs just as well as Oblivion did in terms of frame rate, load time and all those things.

Kikizo: So we have a lot of new ingredients and new spells, is there anything in the way of new effects in there as well?

Hines: Yeah actually there's a lot of new effects. I mean from your into the Shivering Isles where you get the wall that dissolves into butterflies, there's a lot of different touches that make the world feel a bit more magical, because it is the realm of Sheogorath. I think as you go around you'll see lots of special effects and stuff we've done for different parts of the main quest; we've got a guy who spends a lot of time doing nothing but graphical effects for whatever magic spells or other effects.

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