Oblivion is the next release in Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls series of games. In development for nearly four years, it is expected to be released in March 2006 for Windows and XBox360 platforms.
Oblivion takes another leap forward in graphics and free-form gameplay. Like Morrowind, players can choose to follow the central storyline at their own pace, or to simply explore the vast new world in their own way. As in Morrowind, the player will have the opportunity to join any of several factions and guilds, each with their own quests, plots and rewards.
Oblivion features a cutting-edge new AI system, called Radiant AI, which gives all of the computer-generated characters and creatures in the world the ability to make their own choices dynamically based on what is happening around them. Each and every one of the many thousands of creatures and characters will have its own 24-hour schedule of making decisions to eat, sleep, defend, attack, steal, go to church and so forth. The people in the game world can even hold dynamic, unscripted conversations with the player and with each other, choosing what they'll say based on what's happening and what's being said to them. The dynamic decision-making as well as full speech for all dialogue and full facial animation and lip-synching will bring the characters to life.
The Radiant AI system was not easy to accomplish. Earlier in the development stages, for example, developers would occasionally see remarkable breakdowns of society based on decisions the game characters were making. In one instance, a citizen decided he was hungry, went hunting, and ended up killing one of the king's deer. The guards wanted to arrest him, but he resisted arrest, and put up quite a fight. Many of the other guards in the town went to assist, and citizens began looting the unguarded shops! The developers have worked exhaustively to fine-tune the Radiant AI system, incorporating some certain level of conscience to help control behaviors in a realistic fashion.
As there is not yet an official release date for Oblivion, recommended system specs for running the game have not been detailed. However, since the game is intended to run well on the XBox 360 platform, those specs could be used as a model for top performance and full use of game features. Oblivion – and all future games from other companies as well – can be expected to be heavily multithreaded, making use of hyperthreading and/or multi-core processors, preferably at 3.0GHz. System memory should be 1GB, and video cards such as the GeForce 7800GTX would be best. Oblivion will still run very well, though, on less-capable hardware simply by lowering or disabling certain video features such as antialiasing and anisotropic filtering. Other features in the game – such as trees, plants and grass swaying in response to dynamic weather conditions – will probably be able to be turned off as well, so that Oblivion will still provide an enormously enjoyable experience on midrange hardware.
Take a look at the in-game screenshots provided here, the official Oblivion trailer, and the Making Of Oblivion movie. More information can be found at Bethesda Softworks' Oblivion site.
The full series of movies (available here) provided by the developers detailing various aspects of the game itself and Radiant AI gives a more in-depth look at the game.
(For movies in DivX format, get the free DivX player available here.)
OFFICIAL OBLIVION TRAILER
(84.3 MB - High Definition DivX AVI Movie)
(77.4 MB - Hi-res Quicktime Movie)
(15.3 MB - Low-res Windows Media Movie)
THE MAKING OF OBLIVION TRAILER
(33.8 MB - Hi-res Quicktime Movie)
(17.6 MB - Lo-res Windows Media File)
