Gavin Carter describes wanting the player to 'see for miles' when exploring the worlds they make.
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GamesFirst!
GF!: Even without multiplayer, we here at GamesFirst! have this feeling of awe just talking about Oblivion. How has the game become grander than Elder Scrolls III?
GC: In many ways. For one, there’s not a single game system from Morrowind that we haven’t taken a critical look at and tried to improve upon. Skills have been rebalanced, combat totally revamped to be more exciting and fun, and our NPCs have fully voiced dialog and a completely new AI system. Every NPC in the game has a unique face. The game world itself is larger than Morrowind, so you’ll be able to spend a great deal more time traversing through forests, plains, and mountains, looking for new and bigger monsters to slay and dungeons to plunder.
We’re really going all out for a sense of “epic feel” in all our environments. We’ve pushed our view distance extremely far out, so you can see for miles - mountains, towns on the horizon, grand forests in the distance, everything. We’re also pushing multi-level environments to a higher degree than we did in Morrowind. For example, we’ve built cavern environments with narrow paths that circle around massive pits and crevasses. You can leap down, fight some monsters and collect some loot, then discover a tight, winding tunnel leading up to the surface. Varying the environments like this keeps things fresh and interesting as you explore.