This is a developer diary for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The original diary can be found here.
Emil Pagliarulo - Designer
People often ask me, "Emil, how does your beautiful auburn hair maintain that lush, natural sheen?" Whoa now. There are some secrets I'll take to my grave. But if you want to know how to kill a man with one quick dagger thrust to the neck while remaining shrouded in shadow, well… you just can't shut me up. That's probably because I've had an unhealthy obsession with stealth games and stealth game design since I first played Thief: The Dark Project. That obsession was only strengthened when I went to work as a designer on the Thief series at Looking Glass Studios and Ion Storm Austin, and is still with me today as I help incorporate what I learned into the Elder Scrolls series here at Bethesda.
For me, the most fascinating thing about designing stealth gameplay in TES IV: Oblivion is trolling the Elder Scrolls forums and reading suggestions from the fans. More often than naught, the ideas I see presented are exciting, ambitious… and inspired greatly by the Thief series. And that in itself is the great paradox of designing stealth gameplay for a massive computer role-playing game like Oblivion -- how do you create great stealth in a game that isn't just about stealth?
If the player character in Oblivion accepts a quest to kill an NPC, there's no guarantee he or she is going to slink through the shadows and try to take out the target with a stealth kill. Sure, it's a possibility. But so is charging in headlong with a two-handed sword and swinging away like a psychopath. And hey, some players like to get their Gandalf on and hurl fireballs from two-hundred feet away. So while our game is about sneaking and stealing and stabbing in the back, it's about so much more, too. We've got magic systems and combat systems, alchemy and bartering, skills and stats and so much else that the Thief series never even came close to touching. When your entire game is all about a career criminal who hides in the shadows and takes whatever isn't nailed down, the entire design process revolves around making that experience as memorable as humanly possible. In Oblivion, stealth is only one of many different styles of gameplay, and we have a responsibility to our fans to make sure all of them are equally well developed and enjoyable.
So what will the stealth gameplay in TES IV: Oblivion be like? Will it essentially be the same type of gameplay featured in Morrowind? The simple answer is: not even close. In fact, the stealth systems in Oblivion have been completely redesigned in order to accommodate the gameplay fans want and expect. So yes, light and shadow will affect your ability to sneak. Yes, NPCs will react believably -- in both speech and action -- to the player appearing and disappearing before their eyes. And yes, lockpicking now requires quite a bit more than just selecting a tool from your inventory and activating a door or chest.
Here's what really gets me excited, though. The more I work with Bethesda's unique design tools, namely the Elder Scrolls Construction Set, the more I realize how much more flexible a role-playing game like Oblivion is when trying to craft unique, exciting stealth gameplay scenarios. Elements that initially might seem like they have no place in a stealth game -- spellcasting, advanced melee combat, persuasion of NPCs -- actually serve as the perfect compliment. I never realized how fun it could be to hide in the shadows and kill a monster not with an arrow, but with a well-placed spell. Or to break into a building, get caught by a guard, and then resist arrest and fight to the death using a dizzying combination of special attacks. Or, best of all, to actually threaten an NPC through dialogue and have his behavior affected by my particular choice of words.
In fact, I've been getting a lot of practice experimenting with exactly the types of scenarios I've described as I implement the quests for the Elder Scrolls Series' venerable assassin's guild -- the Dark Brotherhood. In Morrowind, players could join the Morag Tong and commit government-sanctioned acts of murder. In Oblivion, I wanted to take a different, decidedly more evil, approach. Gone are the writs that essentially served as "Get out of Jail Free" cards you could simply wave in front of a guard's face to walk away with cold-blooded murder. No, make no mistake, in TES IV: Oblivion, those who join the Dark Brotherhood will operate on the wrong side of the law. When you kill, you kill for the family, authorities be damned… and Sithis be praised.
So naturally, it's been my goal from the beginning to incorporate every stealth gameplay element available in Oblivion into the Dark Brotherhood questline. What does that mean for players? Well, they'll just have to wait and find out. What does that mean for the hapless NPCs populating Cyrodiil? To be honest, I really have to pity them.
Oh, poor Rufio… you shouldn't have slept so soundly. Roderick, lying there unconscious with fever… they really should have locked up your medicine. And Baenlin, old Baenlin sitting there in your chair… I could have just slipped in and eliminated you silently. But the alternative was so much more satisfying…