DarkOutlaw49

I'm having an issue where occasionally after entering a new area my frame rate plummets. The only thing that fixes it is Alt - tabbing out of the game and back in, where my frame rate goes back to normal. I noticed this starting a while back when I installed the HD texture pack form Bethesda. Recently I disabled its .esp and have been using a High Res texture pack mod + ENB. Those mods work fine, but switching to them *seems* to make the issue happen more frequently. I am not having game freezes or CTDs. Anyone know what the issue here could be?

I'm going with Nord not because of the story of the game itself, but because I love the "Viking" sort of flavor, plus their lore.

Look, we all can agree that this ain't no Bioware release and probably never will be. Bioware titles as well as many JRPGs of the past were extremely well-written, comprehensive, and believable--they sucked you into the story with excellent dialogue, voice acting, and atmosphere. BUT THIS ISN'T A BIOWARE RELEASE! That kind of writing and story would detract from the amount of freedom that American RPGs tend to focus on. Bethesda made a conscious choice to focus on freedom of movement, choice in questing, opinion in decision-making, all things that are lacking in your traditional RPG, which tend to be extremely linear. Bethesda makes non-linear games. A bit more emotion and enhanced conversational AI from street NPCs would be great; I could see that really drawing you into their world and their concerns. But the question that that raises is how immobile do you make the player while this is happening? How long should a conversation be if you want to hear its entirety? How long is the player meant to wait? Some people would gladly wait to hear background, others want to get on their way ASAP. Bethesda games allow this, a more free-flowing open-world aspect to your standard RPG set. Plus, the main conflict and drama in any Bethesda game has always revolved around the main storyline, the MAIN storyline--everything else is just a time-filler. So summarily, TES games focus more on freedom of action than storytelling. As we all know, TES stories are extremely weak (I posted about this awhile back) and really should be improved for the sake of immersion. Some may mention Bioshock as an example of an excellent first-person experience with an excellent story--but then again, that is a Bioware release so it comes full-circle. But as we all know, Bioshock is also...very linear, not much freedom of action. In my book it's either one or the other. At least, that's what we've seen up to this point. Perhaps in the future the melding of the two successfully will come. And maybe even in a TES game! This is getting a little off the topic. If you'll go back and re-read what I've been saying, I haven't actually complained about the writing in Oblivion at all. I've never compared their story-crafting abilities to any other studio for one simple reason: I don't feel like their ability to write a story is that bad at all. Only their ability to tell it with emotional conviction. And yes, as I already stated, there is a sliding scale of payoff between immersion and freedom. And, as I also stated, I'm currently perfectly happy with the balance that Bethesda has struck. There are only two things that I have actually critisized Oblivion for: The inability to create or adjust any sort of appopriate tone or atmosphere for a given story, and lackluster NPC dialogue / voice acting performances / character personalization further hampering the game's ability to seem realistic and genuine, or interested enough so that you just "had to see what was next." Neither of those two things relate to making a game free versus linear, so it's perfectly reasonable to hope that they are improved upon in future games. And to clarify even further, I'm not really complaining that much about Oblivion. I only bring it up in terms of Skyrim because this game's setting is drastically more dramatic than Oblivion's initial setting. Wheras that game began in the beautiful, peaceful, prosperous glory days of the Empire in the secure capital province, this game takes place in a world that is currently in the midst of turmoil, war, and cataclysmic, world-shaping events. So, getting back to my original point, I hope that Bethesda makes me feel like that is the current state of the world. As I stated initially, this darker and more challenging setting could be very interesting to explore as long as Bethesda makes it believable.

Not true. How many times during conversations with NPCs did a character mention the siege of Kvatch? Or one NPC speaking to anther NPC on the street to marvel at all the daedra pouring forth? Countless times for me, why I remember this. While I agree perhaps the physical landscape could have been more drastically altered or destroyed due to the Oblivion summonings, I felt the characters in the game were aware of what was happening. But they still had to eat, sleep, work, converse, fend off enemies, and live. Isn't that what you would do? Still gotta live As for the Empire disintegrating, eh, that's just another chapter in history. Empires crumble. Every single one has and every future one will too. And then new Empires rise to take their place. I want to clarify a little, because I don't think I did a good job making myself really clear. I don't have a problem with the main quest not being able to drastically change the landscape or other quests. Games like Oblivion and Skyrim are meant to be exploratory more than they are character and story-driven, and that means that things need to have a certain level of separation and distinctness. I wouldn't change that at all, because in my opinion the slight lack of cohesion is more than made up for by the giant world full of things that I can do in my own order. My problem comes from this: I agree with what you say about all of the characters talking about the crisis and the siege of Kvatch. What I didn't see was any character development, personal conflict, or any overall tone. It was just characters talking, and not doing a very good job at it considering that Oblivion's cast of voice actors was shallow and there was rarely any emotional power put into those lines of dialogue. The characters were relatively flat, and the dialogue / voice acting kept them flat. I don't want them to change the formula of the game at all. I only think that it would be nicer if the main quest, which makes up the "story" of the entire game, was pulled off with a little more conviction.

Personally, I think that the new, darker story could be really intriguing... ...if they convey it in a meaningful way during the game. Oblivion started out rainbows and sunshine, and I'm perfectly happy with that. But once the world began to crumble and denizens of hell seriously threatened to enslave humanity, the tone of the game never changed. We never saw it affect anything. Characters talked about the effects of the assassination and the Oblivion crisis, but it seemed like all of this was happening in secret somewhere and we, as the player, were outside looking in. :psyduck: I realize that having the tone and atmosphere of a game change accordingly is difficult when you're rendering a massive world with oodles of NPCs, so I'm more than willing to except a little bit of fudging here and there. I just hope that if the Empire is broken and the world is plunged into a chaos that is changing the face of the world, we'll be able to see (and maybe even influence!) a little bit of it. :wink:

My computer: Processor - Intel Core 2 Duo 2.66Ghz Overclocked to 3.25Ghz Ram - 4Gigs Video Card -Nvida EVGA 470 GTX I KNOW that my system can run this game well. What I have is a slightly different question: How much benefit would I see from upgrading that processor to an i5? The proc is the next piece of hardware I want to upgrade, but it's going to cost me a lot to do it. If it will make a big difference in Skyimr's performance (plus extended load from mods), then it's worth it to me.Otherwise, I can wait a little longer. I understand that Skyrim is likely going to be very processor-intensive, so I thought I would ask opinions on this subject.