Hate to admit it, but...

Oblivion's a really good game. A great game, in fact.

While I still stand by my opinion that the art direction is crap and coding is horrible, everything else about the game itself is ridiculous.

When I first played it I was really turned off because it is, frankly, not that great looking a game (pixel shader hell), and I couldn't figure out why everyone was going hog wild on it. But keep with it, because here's the thing:

You can go along with the quests and linear storyline if you choose.

Or you can sandbox it and just go hogwild nuts. Raid some tombs, jack up some skeletons.

This is the most open ended game I have EVER played, compounded largely by the fact that the breadth and scope of it are absurd. You really can do just about anything you want, and aren't terribly limited to just being "an assassin" or "a mage." This is also the first time I've seen the "use it more often and it gets better" skill system actually work properly.

I've been really impressed by the absolute scope of this game and the sheer amount of detail involved. It's bigger than many MMORPGs and in its own ways much more rewarding.

If you didn't initially enjoy the game, keep playing. It improves dramatically.

 

except that i think it looks pretty awesome i agree. i still play it regularly.

 

oblivion is a great game! i am addicted to it lol.......... the graphics are pretty good in my opinion....i play with all settings on HIGH including HDR ut bwith grass and Shadows off @ 1024x786 and i get nice framerates and enjoy the scenery too!

 

I luuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuvvvvvvv
My settings are maxxed out at 1440 x 900 with HDR
the game runs perfect, provided I overclock

 

the day i got my hands on company of heroes, i stopped playing oblivion. i played through the main storyline, dark brotherhood and few other interesting quests but every time i try to get back to it, it feels very boring to keep playing, especially when compared to the sheer amount of fun i'm having with skirmish and multiplayer modes of COH, i agree with pulp about the huge amount of content in oblivion but i understand why it didn't get game of the year, and it was COH instead, nevertheless, oblivion's still a great game, but it has it's flaws

 

Oblivion's skill system? Actually work? You've got to be joking.

Unless you mod it to hell, the only way it "works" is by picking skills you don't plan on using for your major skills, and only actually *use* the minor ones.

Yes, your skills then go up when you use them, but that's not all that amazing, is it? Been done before, and it's sorta crippled by the fact that you may not *want* your skills to go up because of the insanely stupid levelling system.

I also don't see why "open ended" is neccesarily a good thing. yes, it's nice if you're just sandboxing, but it also waters down the story really badly, and means the world feels a lot sparser (because so many NPC's say the same thing and are just there as fillers to give you the illusion that you don't have to follow the storyline).

And of course, because of the stupid levelling system, you may completely cripple your character, not just by getting too high a level, but also by being unable to make many potions because the ingredients don't drop from the monsters that spawn at your level.

Impressively big, yes, but I think it feels a lot like a single-player MMORPG. Huge world that's basically empty and rely on players to fill it... Except here you are only one player. So all you have is a few thousand NPC's that all say the same thing, and a few hundred quests that mostly don't matter.


Oblivion is impressive in many ways, yes. But it's not a well designed game in my opinion. The scope of it, the size of the world, the number of quests and so on are all amazing. But the core gameplay still sucks.

And as you said, it looks like crap from an artistic point of view. Technically, it's amazing (fancy shader effects everywhere, so much HDR you can get blinded by your own character and so on), but the actual art content is mediocre at best.

 

I will agree that the levelling system is confusing.. but it really lets you shape your character into who you want to be. If you level up a lot in sneaking, you will be able to sneak past people better, and you can see these differences. Every time you level up in acrobats, you can jump higher, and you can tell. And there are also the rewards, for archery example, where you can zoom in if you level it up enough. Sure it could be done better but it still succeeds in what it was designed to do, even if it is confusing.

I agree, sometimes you lose the ability make these potions, but you can make new ones with the new drops. I was an archer\assassin character so this never was a problem for me.. I just went around sniping people from behind for massive damage.

I agree... but in some ways this is realistic. You will from time to time feel lonely in the woods and what not.. but at the same time who else wanders in the woods besides animals and hunters? I run into from time to time some random hunter who just shoots a deer right in front of me, runs up to me and says hello. Or when you are in the city (where there are a lot of different NPCs) and you see someone steal something from another, and then that person resists arrest and gets killed by guards.. the AI where it exists is great.
I'm sure you have heard that they actually toned down the AI because it was getting in the way (like NPCs stealing from you!).. which is a shame, I mean the AI is great but I think it would be fun (I would get pissed) if someone stole something from me; I'd have to chase then and hunt them down.. neat. Hopefully in the next Elder Scrolls they will do kind of stuff like this.

I agree that the way scaling works sucks (as in all the enemies level up with you), but the gameplay IMO is great. It is so addictive and fun, you really feel like you are living in a fantasy world. While the scaling does suck, it is necessary so that you can go anywhere at anytime and just kill baddies and do quests. Imagine if they didn't have scaling, so you would have to level like in WoW in the same area for a few hours, then the next.. that would get boring. So I guess scaling is nice that way. And the combat system is pretty good..

So true. Which is why if I got this game for PC I would just get a bunch of mods and such. What really bummed me out about this game is the fact that the weapons and stuff, once you get Daedric, suck. I mean once I got daedric set I would just start using a lower level armor because I don't want to wear devil's clothing, or become a turtle (read: glass armor). They really need to have more weapons, instead of just a dagger with a poison effect and what not. This is where you need tons of rare items, like rare armors and weapons... like World of Warcraft. And even the models in for the weapons don't look great.. good but the designs could be much better. They got the cities pretty well down except they still could use more flair and charm. This is the downside of the game, the weak design.

 

No, it does the exact opposite. It means that if you want to be a sneaky character, you *must not under any circumstances* pick sneak as a major skill.

You're right about the effects of raising skills though, those are neat (but again, nothing new)

Nope, you can't always make new ones with the same effects. A friend of mine gave up on the game because it was impossible to make potions for curing his vampirism. The mobs that dropped the neccesary ingredients didn't spawn at his level.

Yeah, so? Since when was "it's realistic" a good thing for a game?
Consistency is important, because if the game doesn't stick to its own rules, it's hard to immerse yourself in it. But "realism"? In a fantasy game? With magic? Screw that.

Again, from a technical point of view, this is really cool. It also fails badly sometimes which ruins immersion from a more practical point of view.
(A friend of mine wrote about game AI in his thesis, and used Oblivion as an example. He'd recorded a small video where this woman invites you in, you both end up in her bedroom, and then she suddenly decides to do some target practice! She goes to pick up her bow, then some arrows, then she shoots at her target a few times (and misses). Then she goes back again, picks up a potion to improve her skill, drinks it, and tries again. Sure, this time she hits the target, but come on? In the middle of a date? In her bedroom?

The AI is technically cool, just like the visual effects are technically awesome. But like the lack of actual art style in the visuals, the AI is also crippled by the actual use of it, where it makes the npc's do not just dumb (which we're used to), but actions that are completely out of context.

And if you didn't notice it was stolen at the time? And if it was a quest item that was stolen? Who would you chase? Where would you find the item that you *needed*?

No, they could do it like *every other RPG on the market*.
After all, there are places you don't go as a low level character, because you have no quests there, and no reason to go there. They can use the storyline to indicate to you where you ought to go.
Or they could put new mobs into an area as a result of certain events. (When an oblivion gate opens, tougher mobs will appear. Later in the game (not based on your level, but on how late in the game it is, how far you are with your quests and the storyline), the mobs that appear become even tougher.
It's basic, fundamental balancing that people have managed in every RPG made in the last 20 years.
Only Bethesda apparently can't do it, apparently.

 

They could have done it like Morrowind, an amazing and immersive game that held my attention for months. I couldn't tolerate Oblivion for more than about 20 hours--what's the fun of playing an RPG where you have to level your character a certain way or you find yourself unable to complete quests at level 20 that other characters can complete at level 10? It completely takes away the open-endedness that has been such a huge part of The Elder Scrolls.

 

Ive been addicted to WoW and Oblivion since December.

 

Oblivion is a good game,
But Morrowind was extraordinary.

I hope that ESV will be as well.

 

Fallout was extraordinary.
Morrowind was less flawed than Oblivion, but also less impressive technically.

But that's just my opinion...

 

Oblivion... The leveling pisses me off to no end, to the point where I find the game about half as fun as I think it would if the leveling system were more like Morrowind. In Morrowind, the world did not level around your character. You could wander around and explore and find neat powerful artifacts and whatnot. You can't do this in Oblivion, as (nearly?) all artifacts sans the Daedric shrine ones are scaled to your level. The enemy leveled lists are scaled to your level (many daedric quests have level reqs too). You can't search the corners of the world and find powerful gear, like glass armor. You have to wait until you're the right level, and then the (rare, expensive) equipment is on every npc in the game. You also never get the same kind of sense of danger. In Morrowind you could very well walk into a deathtrap you were unprepared for. That was a good thing.

Because of the combination of you level / monster level / equipment level, you're far better off doing certain quests at certain levels. Throw stat progression into the mix, and immersion of any kind is killed to death.

The magic system overall is better, but Illusion and Conjuration are broken. (some of the most interesting/fun Illusion spells stop working past level 25, or don't work at all ever (in a practical sense) unless you *only* level Illusion, or have it as a Minor skill and cheat/practice like a madman.) Conjuration is extremely powerful early if you have it high, and past 30~ becomes nearly irrelevant as your most powerful summoned creature gets destroyed effortlessly by your average enemy.

... mmm... I really liked Morrowind. Maybe I'll install it again. ... if Morrowind was better than Oblivion... then maybe Daggerfall is the most fun of all. I should play that.

PS. Oblivion's HDR is ridiculous. Looks great sometimes outside, but inside... people's faces shouldn't do that.