General:OXM Shivering Isles Interview

OXM Shivering Isles Interview
(link)
Medium/Format	Video Demo Disc
Interviewee(s)	Mark Nelson Bruce Nesmith Matthew Carofano
Interviewer(s)	OXM
Hosted By	OXM (defunct)

Mark Nelson (Lead Designer): In Oblivion now, when you're entering an Oblivion gate you're entering Mehrunes Dagon's realm. He's sort of a God of Destruction, it's a fiery place, it's a really hellish environment. The different Daedric Princes, who each have their own plane of Oblivion all have sort of a different theme, his is based on based on destruction and that's why we see that sort of more classical evil looking hell type realm; when you go into the Shivering Isles, it's a very different experience! It's still a plane of Oblivion, it's not the "real world" as far as the game is concerned, you're not back on "earth" so-to-speak: you're in this God's realm, but it's not Hell, it's just a different place, it's a very different feel, different atmosphere, and it has completely different experience for the player.

Bruce Nesmith (Director of Design): Shivering Isles is the home of the mad Daedric Prince, Sheogorath. He called it that because it that because that's what he wanted to call it, ha! He probably doesn't need a better reason than that. It's actually a piece of Oblivion, Oblivion being the name for all of the planes beyond Tamriel. And this is his home, he's decided to call it the Shivering Isles, it's about the quarter of the entire game of Oblivion, so we're talking about a substantial amount of gameplay here, it's a very large amount to give you in an expansion pack. Many many many of the other games you see on the shelf don't have as many hours as our expansion pack has! So we feel very very good about that. The main quest, I would estimate is twenty/twenty-five hours, that's assuming you don't get side tract and you don't poke your nose in all the corners. If you were to do all the miscellaneous quests, if you were to look at all the dungeons, easily double, maybe triple that.

Mark Nelson (Lead Designer): Again, the story takes place in Sheogorath's realm, he's the prince of madness. He's pretty much put a call out, saying he needs a Champion, and the player goes into this fairly blind not knowing what's going on. Without going into too much detail, the player meets Sheogorath and finds out there's a threat to the realm that is imminent, it's the end of the era--that's the main quest in Oblivion, it's: "The Emperor is dead. It's the end of an era." Big changes tend to happen in our world at the end of each era, the same holds true in the Oblivion planes as well. And this is about one of those kinds of world changing/plane changing events at the end of an era, so there's a threat to the realm, and Sheogorath, for reasons as you find out as you play through, needs help solving this problem, and who better than the player to take care of that.

Bruce Nesmith (Director of Design): In terms of "being crazy," initially in development we probably swung the pendulum, and realized that it's not a world you can actually play in; that being in a land of the insane or a land of the mad had to have enough touchstones to what is real and what can be worked with in order to have a game there, because if I have everybody just jittering at you all the time because they're insane, what are you going to do? There's no game then. So we had to pull that back a little bit and say: "This is what being a realm of the mad means! This is how it is!" So it's a more subtle and nuanced version of mad. But every character has their own specified and unique idiosyncrasy, I'll call it that, or you could say it's a type of madness and insanity, some are more severe than others. We even do have on guy that just jibbers at you, I actually wrote all the dialogue for that! But they all have unique dialogue pieces, when they're in conversations their dialogue is appropriate for their particular idiosyncrasy, something that we didn't necessarily do in Oblivion, because of the extreme number of characters, they would share dialogue more often. Here they don't share dialogue very often at all.

Mark Nelson (Lead Designer): When we talked about the designing all the areas, the lands of Mania, we wanted them to be bright and vibrant and oversaturated, and really just sort of jump out at the player, and these colors just hit you in the face; one of the first things we thought of, was Alice and Wonderland. You think, there's this fantastical place where things are just a bit askew, everything's a little too bright and a little too loud. We wanted to capture a bit of that for at least half of the world. You know, on the other half we were thinking we want it to be claustrophobic and a little bit scary, and voices coming out of nowhere, and strange mists over the water. And kind of capture that little bit of almost a survival horror type feel to it. Obviously, it's not that kind of game, that kind of atmosphere in the other part of the world. So, there were a number of influences that went into the creation.

Matt Carafano (Lead Artist): Actually a lot of stuff we kind of, this is kind of strange, but we kind of looked back to Morrowind, because we knew we wanted it to look a little bit higher fantasy. We were trying to describe the world of a god, and we wanted to be visually different from Oblivion. So we looked pack to some of the stuff we had done before, that was a big inspiration, we wanted some more colors and some more exaggerated high fantasy feeling. But we also wanted to mix it in with somewhat real world elements, so it didn't feel like too much of a departure from the content that's in Oblivion.

Mark Nelson (Lead Designer): When you play an expansion you want to see new stuff. You know, telling a new story isn't enough, you've gotta have new toys to play with in your sandbox. So there are a ton of new weapons, a ton of new armor sets. We've got a bunch of new creatures, and the creatures all have some variety too, depending on where in the world you find them they're going to look different than they normally would. We've brought back some old creatures that were in Morrowind or all the way back to Daggerfall, and we've got some brand new creatures that we dreamed up just for this new realm that we're dealing with. So there's a nice variety for players, even if you've spent two-hundred hours playing Oblivion already, this is going to be a complete departure; we didn't want to use anything from the main game in this expansion material. We talked about how, the only thing that are reused are things like carrots, you know? We didn't do the "Carrot of Madness" at any point, so you know. Beyond that, it's all new stuff. The creatures are new, the architectures new, the dungeons are new. So it's going to be a completely different experience for the player!

Bruce Nesmith (Director of Design): For potions, we have a bunch of new ingredients. That's probably the biggest area. Because we had all this new plant life, we have a whole bunch of new ingredients that are available, and they work just fine with the old ingredients. Mix-and-match however you want. So most people who are in to alchemy, they're going to be in for a real treat because they also have all this new stuff they can play with. And they'll going to find that some potions are now easier to make then they were before, because they can get ingredients from the Shivering Isles that were more difficult to obtain with the same functions in Cyrodiil. So and then, there are some new spells. The spell system had been expanded pretty well in Oblivion, so there isn't as many new spells as there is say new ingredients. But you can summon some of the new creatures for example, so that's probably one of the more interesting things you can do.

Matt Carafano (Lead Artist): So one of the things from the beginning we wanted to do, was making everything on a bigger scale. You'll notice the trees are huge, the buildings are a lot taller and more imposing. And the creatures follow the new aesthetic, so the creatures are a little bit thicker, and we built spaces around them, so it felt like they lived in this environment, but yeah they are a bit stranger, they come from Sheogorath's mind, so it was a different idea. Oblivion was a lot of "Well what can live in a real world, or in forest?" and that's more classic fantasy creatures, but this was a lot stranger in its setting.

Bruce Nesmith (Director of Design): Shivering Isles is going to be a great cap stone to our game, it's going to be a great way to say: "Yes, I've played all and the best of everything that Bethesda Softworks has to offer." And I think that customers are going to be truly excited by it, and I look forward to getting all the wonderful letters and emails telling me how absolutely wonderful it is!