The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
Real Time Controls
Walking
Running
Swimming
Jumping
Hitting (With weapons)
Shooting (Arrows & Spells)
Blocking
Spell Casting
Picking Up Items
Dropping Items
Dragging items
Looting
Open Inventory
Change Equipment
Change Spell Roster
Use Items
Talk to NPCs
Spell Crafting/Enchanting
Shopping
Lock-Picking (minigame)
Persuading/Charming (minigame)
Horse Riding
Every Mechanic above allows for real time control. When any of the above actions is done by a player, the action begins taking place in the game essentially instantaneously. For example (assumine default control scheme on the PC), pressing W, A, S, or D will start moving you character in forward, left, backward, or to the right, respectively. Hitting the run toggle button will cause the avatar to either beginning running (if it was previously walking), or walking (if it was previously running). You can distinctly tell the difference between running and walking, too. Opening the inventory is instantaneous, and whenever you change something there, such as equipment or spells, you can see an instantaneous change. For example, changing equipment causes the clothes on your model to change immediately. The only change that doesn’t occur if when you change rings and necklaces, however, you can still tell that they were equipped, because they are immediately highlighted. The only times in which you lose control are when you are spell casting and during an jump or attack animation. During these times, most of your action will not register until the animation is complete. It is still possible to do things such as opening the inventory screen, though. The only time in the game when you have absolutely no control over your character would be during cut-scenes and during death scenes.
There are even two minigames that you can participate in that help to improve the real-time control aspects, hose being the persuation minigame and the lock-picking game. Both these games allow the player to feel like they are controlling that particular action in such a way that it make it seem more real-time. In fact, the lock-picking mini game, while not the same as picking an actual lock, feels like you’re actually doing something that could potentially resemble lock picking. Your actions have some sort of real time impact in the game world. All in all, I would say the game definitely had real-time control.
Simulated Space
The game has a huge amount of space for one to traverse. There are walls and boundries that can be run into as well as water that can be swum through. The land that can be explored is quite vast. The hit boxes of objects (for the most part) are very good. Things, such as arrows, will bounce off certain objects and stick to other and characters will not go through one another. All the dungeons have well formed pathways that prevent players from getting stuck in spots for the most part and are not infinite in space just as a real cave, castle, or fort is set to a finite size. However, reaching the edges of the main field map simply lead to invisible borders that cannot be passed. Aside from that, the simulated space gives a very good since to actual space.
Polish
This game has a lot of polish to it. The models and particles along are very well done for their time. When something is hit, for example, with an arrow, the arrow will stick to whatever it hit. When you are moving through different terrain, such as grass, pavement, sand, or water, the sounds will change to reflect the medium being travelled on. When someone is hit by a spell, effects will be left behind on that person to indicate that they have been affected by something, such as a glowing effect that remains persistant on characters that have been charmed, or fire particles on characters that are hit by a fire spell. And when attacking depending on what weapon or spell is being used and what it hits, the sound changes. Both the graphical effects and the audio effects work together to create a lot of polish in the game.
Conclusion
Overall, the game makes use of real time controls, simulated space, and polish in such a way that the game flows very well. The player feels in control of the avatar during game play and is able to see and understand what they are doing. Regardless of animation times, There are very few points in the game when the player does not feel in control of the avatar. Both the amount of simulated space and the polish added when interacting with that simulated space allows the player to immerse themselves into the world that the avatar exists inside.
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