The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles Team Q&A #5

RPG Vault is offering up a fifth team Q&A with various members of the Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles development team.

Q: Excluding anything you personally worked on, what are some things you regard as particularly fun, interesting, cool or otherwise notable in The Elder Scrolls IV: Shivering Isles?

Adam Adamowicz, Concept Artist: The sounds rock. Going into the dungeon areas is a lot different from Oblivion because they reflect the general swampiness of a terrain riddled with ponds and lakes.

The city ambience of Crucible is sticky and oppressive, and the Mania side is like stepping into sunlight with tinkling fountains as much from the sounds as the textures. Standing in a field or swamp in game is like standing in a field or swamp and saying “Brrr, chilly, looks like rain.”

The Shivering Isles was meant to combine all of the best elements of Oblivion. A kind of best hits or espresso shot of what everyone here thought was cool and what everyone out there who played thought was cool. Then the ante got upped with the whole dream / madness theme. It became a no holds barred idea explosion that someone apparently reigned in enough to fit on the disc.

One of my favorite experiences comes from our weekly meetings. I was designing the Elytra, the crazy bug with the hallucinogenic ichor for blood. I spread out all my marker renderings on the boardroom table. There’s this silence, and then Todd Howard jumps up on a chair, and he points at one of them and he says “What the **** is that?” and I say “That’s the spirit!” That really sums it up for me.