It’s been over five years since Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion first released, and the role-playing game genre has evolved and changed over the course of the half-decade drastically. As a result, Bethesda’s Todd Howard has revealed that Skyrim will take more inspiration from their other RPG powerhouse, the more contemporary Fallout 3, rather than from the aging Oblivion.
Talking to PC Gamer, Howard said:
[Skyrim]’s a lot more like Fallout 3, where as you level up you are going to see harder things, but the easier things stay around as well. You’ll still run into the weaker stuff and you’ll just decimate it.
Oblivion‘s conversation system has also been overhauled to be more like the one in Fallout 3:
There’s very few completely random conversations. We’ve gone more towards a system, like we did in Fallout 3, where they have a specific conversation with a specific person about various topics.
Finally, he also talked about how Skyrim will also have a lot more environmental storytelling, something that was a success in Fallout:
We realized in Fallout 3 that that kind of environmental storytelling, where you come upon a little scene, is really good. And so we’ve tried to do it a lot more.
With Skyrim out on November 11th, Bethesda’s marketing campaign has kicked into full gear with a fantastic live action trailer.
