Oblivion Wallpaper, Screenshots, & More

It seems Bethesda has been busy today, as they’ve updated the official Elder Scrolls website with an Oblivion wallpaper, a handful of screenshots, and a letter from executive producer Todd Howard. A snippet from the latter:

We go back to the main theme of the series — “Live another life, in another world” — and think about how we can make that come alive for the next game. To simply add onto Arena would never have yielded Daggerfall, and to add onto Daggerfall would never have yielded Morrowind. To present the best game we can each time, we must reinvent it for the next generation of hardware and gameplay.

So we reach all the way back to Arena, see what worked then. Replay Daggerfall — what worked well there, and of course Morrowind. We then look at what games of the future could do. Not just RPGs, but what could any game do? What are the key elements that make a great RPG and how can they be done in the future?

There is not a single system that has not gone through a change. Combat, dialogue, exploration, magic.you name it. That change could be a small tweak, major addition, or major deletion. Tweaks include things like rebalancing the skills to get better class progression. Major additions include all new AI, forests, combat, mounts, and more. One major deletion is thrown items and crossbows.