Dungeon Crawling

[o-seven]

After playing my fair share of Morrowind, I have to say my favourite parts of the game all take place in the cities and the grandiose landscapes. Interacting with NPC's, doing city quest, exploring wide-open beutifull settings (I still crank open the opening sequence on the boat in morrowind just to "breathe" in the atmosphere, I've never done that in a game before...)

 

But dungeons, I don't see the charm in dungeons. When I have to complete a quest in a dungeon, go fetch something or other, it's always a duty - not something fun, as it should be.

 

I was just wondering if I was alone in this opinion? I read that there are going to be 200 dungeons in oblivion, but everytime I hear something telling about great experiences in morrowind, it's never in a dungeon... what do you say?

[Povuholo]

Yes the dungeons are so... you know. You can't look very far, and it is ussualy dark. It gives a more depressing impression than the big mountain paths outside. The good thing about dungeons is that they can be scary, and i'm sure i'm going to like dungeons in Oblivion, since there are things like traps.

[Guest]

I find that dungeons, especially the dank ones, add an entirely new level of depth to a game. In my opinion there is nothing as rewarding as having been creeping through a dark, wet cave or tomb, expecting to be jumped at any moment by some big clawed thing, searching for some ancient mystical pwnage device and, after locating and retrieving it, emerging triumphantly into the sunlight... and realizing that your pupils are dilated before covering your eyes and screaming in pain. Okay maybe the getting blinded by your monitor part isn't as rewarding as the rest of it, but the point of this post was that dungeons, while they can be a bit depressing, are as much a part of the overall feel of the game as say, the NPCs themselves.

[Malchik]

When is a dungeon not a dungeon? MW has mines, caves, grottoes, ancestral tombs, dwemer and daedric ruins and strongholds. They all classify as 'dungeons'. Together they come to more than 300 even without the expansion. Plenty of variety and not every 'dungeon' is necessarily hostile. Going into a cave to defeat smugglers is not vastly different from going into a house to do it IMO.

 

Perhaps what you don't like is the relative sameness of each cave or tomb in terms of colour, content and layout. There is an element of 'seen one, seen 'em all' about the types of dungeon. Neverthess, given the time it takes to play MW and the make up of most quests you are unlikely to be going into too many one after the other.

 

Perhaps in MW there were rather too many that had no real purpose or excitement. There should be a few of those but most should have something special - lead to a quest, yield a unique artefact, have a difficult monster etc. It would have been more interesting to visit the grottoes if each had a piece of a treasure map for instance.

 

I really don't mind how many there are as long as there is a fair variety of quests that are not dungeon crawls (I preferred the plotlines of Bloodmoon to Tribunal for that reason). But I would like most dungeons of whatever kind they are to have some purpose.

[Mercbird]

Yeah I'm not too hot for things described as "dungeon romps" all that pointless crawling in the muck and guts and hell do I get lost, recent forays into morrowind got me in the nightmare that is Sargon a fighters guild quest you get from Ald Ruhn. I just kept wondering if I had socks on and in what state they must be...

 

I did appreciate the caves and dwellings in bloodmoon more than those of morrowind, the snow just seems ... cleaner.

But one of my all time favourite pet hates are the sewer crawls in Tribunal, someone from the Temple sends you down there repeatedly and then comments on how you smell like the sewer! :huh:

 

And generally the lightning tended to scare me more than anything I've ever found in a hole, exept those bone wolves in Bloodmoon that was, gross, and all you see coming are to little red lights....

[o-seven]

Perhaps what you don't like is the relative sameness of each cave or tomb in terms of colour, content and layout. There is an element of 'seen one, seen 'em all' about the types of dungeon. Neverthess, given the time it takes to play MW and the make up of most quests you are unlikely to be going into too many one after the other.

 

Perhaps in MW there were rather too many that had no real purpose or excitement. There should be a few of those but most should have something special - lead to a quest, yield a unique artefact, have a difficult monster etc. It would have been more interesting to visit the grottoes if each had a piece of a treasure map for instance.

 

I really don't mind how many there are as long as there is a fair variety of quests that are not dungeon crawls (I preferred the plotlines of Bloodmoon to Tribunal for that reason). But I would like most dungeons of whatever kind they are to have some purpose.

 

For me, you hit a lot of points right on the nail.

 

Variety is a keyword - my feeling was that every dungeon in Morrowind was the same - utterly random clash of grey, dark green and brown corridors, with a monster here and there - I'm probably wrong, but I ended up avoiding dungeons, so I never got proven wrong.

 

For me this is just plain boring. Purpose is another keyword. Each dungeon could have a "feel" of its own; this one is controlled by a renegade dark elf and his minions; this one is made of strange blue metals; this one is a giant open underground lair - games have been doing this a long, long time - I remember a classic like Ultima: Savage Empire; one cave was a myrmidex lair; this one a passageway to dinosaurs; a third one, an ancient forgotten city of forbidden technology =fantastic! => in other words, something that left you with a feeling of "Wauw, I've never seen that before!"

 

@ Knight_Killer => I see what you mean, and maybe I can get some of my answers from your reply as well. See, I don't enjoy the scary bits, I don't like the adrenaline-fear-pumping stuff. Oh, I'm a wuzz, a scaredy-cat, no argument (you're talking to a guy who got 1½ minutes into Halflife before quitting and playing something appropriatly scary - like pacman or Who wants to be a millionaire).

But the fact remains, I don't enjoy it...

[Guest]

I personally really enjoy the dungeon aspect of the game. Wondering when I will find the next one, what or who I will find inside. Vampires, ghosts, skeletons, bandits, all the possibilities are what keep me excited.

 

Now I agree that I would like to see more variety in the looks and layouts of all the dungeons, as this would definetly help greatly in keeping things fresh two and three months down the line, but as long as there is another tomb or cave out there, I'll always have somewhere to go.

 

By the way, who the hell keeps all those torches lit in all the tombs and dungeons out there?

[Povuholo]

I hope the oblivion dungeons will be less of the generic thing. Look at ancestral tombs, except for a few involved in quests and infested by vampires, most were almost the same. Urns here and there, maybe a door, a little burial at the end and a skeleton and ghost in it. *yawn*

 

I want excitement! Like when i went in this ancestral tomb, found it leading very deep, with a little maze, and eventually got to a cave, with a boat loaded with gems and other goodies. Or the ancestral tomb going to anudnubia (or something like that) the dungeon going from tomb to daedric to cave was cool. I hope dungeons in oblivion aren't just one style, i hope they are also mixtures of them. We will just have to wait and see i guess... 2 weeks for release, prolly 2.5/3 weeks till i got it...

[gretzky99]

I can remember the dungeons of ARENA. I liked exploring them because they were big. I would like OBLIVION to have some larger ones, just like ARENA.

[Ancalagon]

I do believe the dungeons of Oblivion will be uniquely different. Though I am skeptical towards the "every dungeon will have a trap" sort of poilcy (believe it was stated on one of the Dev diaries). That may become redundant, or the novelty of it may wear off after the sixth surpirse.

 

But yeah, I loved those crawling eps when I found that Viking tomb, or when the tombs went really deep into the earth. There was more of an adventure element to it I suppose.