"Jashin: “Bigger, longer, more content-saturated than Morrowind�… With such a beefy graphics engine, how would you make good on the promise of surpassing Morrowind?
kathode: Yes, Oblivion is bigger as far as land mass goes. On the art side, it is a challenge, as higher fidelity art does take longer to produce; we have developed several specialized tools to help us with these problems. For instance, we have tools that can procedurally generate landscape based on parameters we provide, which just beats the pants off of doing it all by hand like we did in Morrowind. Adding lots of really talented artists has helped a lot too.
Emil: I think with Morrowind, one of the biggest criticisms was that the NPCs felt a bit stale. There were so many of them, and they weren't unique enough. With Oblivion, we're really taking pains to imbue the NPCs with specific personalities. That includes facial expressions, specific dialogue responses, stuff like that. That's really just ONE way we're exceedingly what Morrowind had to offer. Another area of the game that has really gotten a stellar treatment is that of cities. When you look at the cities/towns of Morrowind, like Seyda Neen...they pale in comparison to the cities in Oblivion...."

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., April 1, 2005 -- Electronic Arts (NASDAQ: ERTS), the world's leading interactive entertainment software company today announced the completion of negotiations with Bethesda Softworks® LLC, ending month long talks over the acquisition of the multi-million dollar The Elder Scrolls® brand and all associated technologies and materials.

First released in 1994, The Elder Scrolls® is widely recognized as a catalyst for the open role playing genre. Since its inception, the franchise has been one of the industry’s best-selling RPG series on both Windows® PC and Xbox®. "We couldn't be happier" said Mark Kelly, EA Senior Vice President and General Manager. "This is a very important move for us, The Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion� is one of the most anticipated releases on any format - its acquisition will allow us to penetrate into more advanced areas of the PC and console role playing markets".

This agreement reinforces EA's commitment to bring quality interactive entertainment to the broadest possible audience "it will now be possible for us to re-write and scale back the existing technology to better suit a more general audience, allowing it to run on the greatest number of platforms" said John Spinner, President and Chief Operating Officer at Electronic Arts "we will now release on Playstation®2, with ports on Windows® PC and Xbox® to follow shortly thereafter", "we also plan to add several new games to the franchise such as Vivec Street� 2006 and Cyrodiil Street� 2006 to further bolster our sports line up this fall".

About Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA), headquartered in Redwood City, California, is the world's leading interactive entertainment software company. Founded in 1982, Electronic Arts posted revenues of $2.5 billion for fiscal 2003. The company develops, publishes and distributes interactive software worldwide for video game systems, personal computers and the Internet. Electronic Arts markets its products under three brand names: EA SPORTS�, EA GAMES�, and EA SPORTS BIG�. EA's homepage and online game site is www.ea.com. More information about EA's products and full text of press releases can be found on the Internet at
http://info.ea.com.

About Bethesda Softworks®
Headquartered in Rockville, Maryland, Bethesda Softworks LLC is a premier developer and publisher of interactive entertainment software and has produced numerous award-winning titles, most recently with the 2002 PC and Xbox® Game of the Year and RPG of the Year, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrrowind®. Among Bethesda’s more popular franchises are The Elder Scrolls® series, Fallout®, and the IHRA Drag Racing series, as well as its licensed property, Pirates of the Caribbean�. Its product line spans the sports, racing, RPG, strategy, and action genres. Bethesda Softworks is a subsidiary of ZeniMax Media Inc. For more information on Bethesda Softworks’ products visit
http://www.bethsoft.com/.

There have also been reports of fans in some cities in the UK going into game stores and burning EA products, no doubt IMO the first of a long backlash against EA for what they will do to Oblivion. One angry 22 year old from Yeovil, UK said "I've seen the leaked screenshots of EA's Oblivion they've wrecked it - Daggerfall looks nice in comparison".

Also in an interview earlier this afternoon Mark Kelly is quoted as saying in reply to some questions of the quality of leaked screenshots (being far far worse then that of Morrowind) "We as a company always try to put the consumer first, we believe by allowing more consumers to enjoy this product we will ensure the continuing success of the Elder Scrolls brand".

"The series is known for its huge game-worlds, which results in many hours of gameplay. Can you give us a rough estimate of how many gameplay hours Oblivion will have?

This question is actually pretty irrelevant to an Elder Scrolls game. We measure our gameplay hours in the hundreds of hours, not the tens. However, the majority of gamers do not have the time to spend hundreds of hours. But they love the fact that the content is there, that they could spend hundreds of hours playing Oblivion (or any Elder Scrolls game) if they wanted to.

But we are finding that most people want to get to the end of the game. They want to know how the main storyline ends. So, we’ve focused on tightening the gameplay experience without sacrificing the open-ended content. You should always know exactly where to go and what to do to complete the next step in the main quest. You still have the option to “do anything you want,� but we’ve made adjustments to point you to the fun and to make sure you don’t have any downtime. For instance, right now we’re working on our dynamic compass that will show you how close you are to dungeons while you exploring the outside world, or where the person is you need to talk to make a quest progress."

"GF!: I love single player, but one of my biggest hopes is for the ability to join up with a friend and play the quests together, fight alongside another person cooperatively - even if it's just one person. It's probably not going to happen, but could we maybe see this happen in, say, an expansion to Oblivion, or maybe in Elder Scrolls V?

GC: You won’t see any multiplayer functionality in Oblivion. As I mentioned, we’re focused on providing the ultimate single-player experience. Doing a multiplayer component opens up a whole new host of technical and design issues and would seriously detract from the single-player experience. We’d rather focus 100 percent of our efforts on doing a fantastic single player game"

"While Cheng was just a wee bit vague about the game's plot, he was more than happy to get into greater detail regarding the game's design. "Technically, Oblivion is larger than Morrowind in terms of landmass," he told us. "The content itself is richer and deeper. We're spending much more time designing, implementing, and playtesting each quest for the game. Our dynamically-created landscapes and forests allow us more time for handcrafting the cities, settlements and dungeons." And the oft-maligned AI of the NPCs that populate these cities, settlements and dungeons? Taken care of, apparently. "We completely revamped our AI systems and the interface in the Construction Set so we can quickly implement robust, 24/7 scheduling with dynamic conversations. Our NPCs are living entities with their own lives."