SKYRIM "Oblivion Was A Bit Generic": How Bethesda Are Shaking Up The World Of Skyrim
Bethesda's design team discuss how they went about re-inventing the world of the Elder Scrolls.
"Oblivion was a very classic medieval setting, and we felt some of that was a bit generic." Matt Carofano, Lead Designer of Bethesda's up and coming fantasy RPG epic has just dropped a pretty big bomb shell. Speaking in a revealing dev diary podcast, Carofano and his team explain how they have approached designing the world of Skyrim. What makes that sentence a bomb shell is that it implies that Bethesda are working hard to improve upon Oblivion in ways we have as yet, not been privy to. I happen to agree that, while Oblivion was a great game, it was generic in many ways. Oblivion pilfered many things from the fantasy genre and created a cocktail that covered pretty much every convention that fantasy games have to offer. Of course, that is and was awesome, but where do you go from there. Do you sit on your laurels and polish the graphics, add some new fighting and magic mechanics and bring in some big Hollywood names for the voice work? Well that wasn't enough for the Skyrim team and, as the podcast shows, a lot of effort has gone into creating a world that seems believable. According to Concept Artist Adam Adamowicz, the process was "completely blue sky" "Todd [Howard] (Executive Game Director) said, Sit down and draw a bunch of cool, weird shit, and well look at it and decide whats worthwhile and whats really stupid." It is refreshing to see a development team at the top of their game who are not only comfortable with moving away from a successful franchise in terms of design, but also see where they were weak before and most crucially how to make it stronger. From the get go, Skyrim has been designed as "a place thats going to be a lot more brutal and gritty......We wanted to do something that showed a lot more of the culture of the people who lived there." What is great about this is that the team are moving away from other peoples ideas and designs and pushing towards creating their own unique world. However, Skyrim is the fifth Elder Scrolls game and with that comes a rich history and mythos that must also be adhered to. This is most evident in their treatment of dragons. Theyve actually been in Elder Scrolls games before, said Matt Carofano, Lead Designer. There was one in Redguard, and if you look all the way back to Daggerfall I think there were dragonlings. We sort of look at that to remember what was in the series, but then the question becomes, how do we make that fit into Skyrim? The balance of old and new is a tightrope that Bethesda have walked before with the hugely successful Fallout 3 so I have a lot of faith in the studio when it comes to Skyrim. Bellow is a beautiful montage of concept design to finished product comparisons that not only show how well realised the design work is, but how original and beautiful the world of Skyrim will be.
Skyrim will be released on the 11th of November on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC.