Would Oblivion IV be a worthwhile RPG game investment?

Looking for an RPG to play, and was wondering if i should start on oblivion iV. I just played Mass effect and felt that it was way too short of a game to me. I want a rpg game with longer game play, bigger sidequest, and a vast world to explore.

Plus I heard that the game looks pretty darn good. Thinking that I'll be able to run it @ full settings with no AA AF @ 30fps 1280x800. If thats possible it'll defintely push me toward purchasing the game.

To those of you who played it, what are some thoughts and comments?

 

Oblivion short? Not a chance. I'm not a hardcore gamer, but I've racked over 300+ hours into the game, and am still finding new quests.

 

Im guessing your playing that game on your laptop.. how well are you running the game and on what shadow, resolution, texture, view distance settings? Distant land on or off?

 

Why not try the Witcher? I don't actually have the game, but everyone's saying that it's pretty much a better Oblivion...

 

A more worthwhile investment would be the Gothic series of games, right from Gothic 1. I've played Oblivion, Morrowind, The Gothic games, and also The Witcher, and honestly, I can rate them in order of best to worse as follows:

1) Gothic 1
2) The Witcher
3) Gothic 3
4) Gothic 2
5) Elder Scrolls IV-Oblivion
6) Elder Scrolls III-Morrowind

I'm basing this on not just graphics alone, but also gameplay, story, immersion, linearity (or rather, the lack of it), choices given in the game and their effect on the gameworld etc.

Oblivion by far was the most linear, exceeded only by Morrowind. It had pretty graphics and a nice story, but the way in which the story progressed (you never really have any true choices as to which side you want to join etc) was really boring and predictable. It was like you were starring in a movie whose ending you already knew.

If you decide to play Gothic, please do so without reading it's story or review or anything about it. When I first played it, I'd never heard of it, but as I started playing it more and more, I couldn't get away from it for the life of me......I was so interested in what would happen next, in what my (or rather, my character's) future held, that I sometimes played 10 hour sessions before my head started exploding from sitting in front of the CRT!

 

Oblivion is wonderful. I just started replaying it. If you do the side quests, the game will keep you occupied for at least 200+ hours.

 

Yup, so much to do in Oblivion, its the most fun and you can rack up 100s of hours easily.

Also get the Game of the Year edition to get the two expansions with it.

Go to Arcane University ASAP and make some badass custom spells to mess with people.

 

Oblivion > The Witcher, purely because The Witcher runs like crap.

I always go to the University to make a Night Eye ring, makes the dungeons 100% easier.

 

I make combo invisibility+charm and make mobs fight each other for me.

 

Well, I had my sneak skill at about 120 and had about 50% chameleon, so I could literally walk infront of monsters and bash them to death without them being able to detect me.

 

ever see an entire town devoid of people.. ?

I got everyone to do a battle royale in the major towns, the guards go after me, I run into a fighter or mages guild, then they battle it out while I am invisible.... LOL. (I'm evil)

 

Isnt't there a way to get enough grand soul gems or whaever and enchant 5 items with 20% chameleon for 100% invisibility? I read that somewhere

 

The problem is, all the side quests are nearly the same (kill the leader of some group, please some God, receive award), and all the dungeons are more or less identical. You fight through waves of enemies to reach the bottom of a dungeon, and the reward items you find in the chests are run of the mill ones that you could have found anywhere else without even venturing inside. A few of the quests are quite different and creative (like the one in which you go to a magician's lair, in which the furniture is glued to the ceiling etc), but those are maybe 1 in a 100.

The Witcher actually gives you choices that change the direction and outcome of the game, besides the quests are far more varied and make you want to actually try them out. It's not just about level farming like Oblivion is.

 

You must have played a different Witcher than I did. Granted the storyline is dynamic, and varies based on user input, but all the quests are still fetch this or kill that.

If you think about it, that's really all a game can ask you to do. What do you want? A toilet-cleaning quest? If that existed, it would just be "go there, smash some toilets with the Mr. Clean weapon".

Oblivion had some of the most original quests that come to mind, the one where you actually enter a painting to rescue a guy, or the quest where you're inserted into a house as part of a "reality show", where everyone thinks that there's gold hidden in the house, but in actuality, your job is to kill everyone without alerting everyone else. That's the stuff of good quests.

 

lol i'm too cheap to go buy the witcher rign now between a monthly wow fee and battlefield bad company coming tomorrow so ill try it alter but i sure love oblivion!

 

I'll also say Oblivion is a must buy RPG. But being the OCD person that I am, I've literally spent hours trying to make my guy look the way I want him to.

I also love how you can literally pour 100 hours into the game and still have like 200+ more.

Delicious.

 

Hmm... Oblivion is fine for the first 100 hours or so. Then you realize how truly broken it can be and don't bother anymore.

Enchanted deadric sword (w/ a stun and soul steal) + that gem which lasts forever = cheap/broken/haxxed. My MAGE had maxed out sword/armor/(insert combat skill) very quickly.

What's fun however is being an archer in dungeons.

Oh and you'll hate how the creatures level with u. Plus the combat is repetitive.

 

I think Oblivion is a great game brought WAY WAY down by two terrible gameplay decisions.

1. Monsters everywhere level with you. Monsters in dungeons might be wimpy goblins. 40 levels later, same dungeon, you are fighting monsters from hell. There is value in creature power being localized in area rather than time (level).

2. The leveling system + attribute bonuses. For someone OCD like me, the game became more about maximizing +5 +5 +5 attribute bonuses at each level and less about gameplay.

In the end I became overwhelmed and just stopped playing.

 

sounds good, I dont really mind the monster lvl mechanic, makes the game more challenging anyways. I dont mind doing sidequests as long as they add something to the game world or story line. and from the sound of it, sidequesting in Oblivion will at least be better than ME. how longs the main story plot line?

how well did you guys run this game on your system?

 

a current mid-range card should be able to play it on native resolution at high settings.

 

I have a system very similar to yours and I am able to run it with a mixture of mid-high settings (you know, shadows and that sort of settings have to be a little down to avoid sttutering, but otherwise...).

Also, the sidequests are good and have some variety (like the Brotherhood's quests).

 

Oblivion pretty much set the standard for RPG games though I've never played it before. RPGs aren't really my thing.

 

Oblivion is the type of game that you love for a certain amount of time (for me it was about ~60-65 hours) and then go cold turkey on it right away. Once you get past the gloss you realize the game is very repetitive and the monster leveling system starts to get to you.

I would recommend The Witcher because it is more story driven and the choices you make in conversations are actually meaningful. Oblivion had its share of good side quests but most of them were lame. The Witcher has some hilarious side quests that have amazing dialogue in them as well...the autopsy in the hospital and the drinking contest with the owner of a house after you clear out his 'garden problem' are incredibly well written.

 

I just picked up new copies of the collector's edition + shivering isles + guide for $20 on ebay. Can't wait for it to arrive.

Monsters that level with you sound potentiallly highly annoying and repetitive though.

Still, I'm a junkie for side quests. I would say it's a worthwhile investment for the amount of time you can spend on the game. Particularly now as prices for it have dropped.

 

I'm on second replay. Runs fantastic on my current 8800 set up. I'm one mean sneaky Monk For me, the Dark Brotherhood quest is very good on the original game.

I've got the grass set short. The "world" looks like a golf course from hell with great looking environmental effects like sun sets. IMHO, I hate bloom and have it turned off but it's there if you like it.

enjoy

 

You need a good processor, my ATI X1950 GT + Intel Dual Core 3.6 ghz, can run Crysis @ high, but can't run Oblivion smoothly at low...

 

For me there's nothing like Oblivion. It bothers me saying "Oh I played for about 100 hours then realised how repetitive it was". Dude, most games don't last half that. It's amazing for such an experience.

There really is nothing like it. Except Morrowind. Those games just have a sense of "being" that nothing can match.

 

My favorite quest was the one where you get sucked into a painting and get to explore the world inside of it.

 

For me, Oblivions story isnt engulfing enough.
If you wanna have endless RPG fun, download a GBA Emulator and find some ROMs(of ur legally owned games ofc )
For story, check out Dreamfall and The longest Journey.

 

Gothic is indeed a fantastic series, but it can also be buggier than a Bethesda game on a bad day and the combat has never really been worth a damn. For a specific group of people the games offer more than Oblivion could ever dream, but for most they're just too unpolished for the rewards to be worthwhile.

 

I tried the longest journey but it had Starforce. MY drive didn't work properly while it was instaleld.

 

Same here, I did enjoy game but did not finish due to bugs.

 

Oblivion has given me the best experience that a game could give. Don't listen to all this "It's too repetitive" "Monster leveling is awful" crap people go on and on about.

The pure beauty of oblivion is, if you don't like something, change it. Use the construction set bethesda gives you and make your own stuff. Build that dreamhouse you always wanted, make that new faction, develop a new questline, make a new race to play as, more skills to use, the list is almost quite literally endless.

And if your not good with the construction set, then download other peoples mods they've made. There are thousands of user made mods out there on sites like planetelderscrolls and tesnexus. Anything from a new weapon or house, to a whole new questline, to new game mechanics. Overhaul mods like OOO and MMM literally change the way the game runs and plays.

The list is endless, and with mods, the game can virtually be never ending and last forever.

So yes, I think you should definitely check out oblivion. I agree that vanilla oblivion is a bit linear, but with mods, it can be the most non-linear game ever made.

PS-If you do get it, check out tesnexus.com and planetelderscrolls.com for mods (their free, their user made) and google optimizing oblivion. Their are lots of mods that make oblivion run better and get more fps, at no sacrifice to the graphics.

 

any recommendations to graphical tweaks that improve looks and tweaks that improve fps?

 

I gave some suggestions here:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=119160

 

Get the game, you'll be able to achieve the settings you've mentioned in the first post, its very worth it, and after playing the game for a long while, i still play it even just to see the eye candy

 

First, I would like to establish that i haven't played oblivion in ages.

But I do recall quite a few issues with mods when I played. Specifically, putting the mods together. It fun and all to go down one mod but when it was done, i dnt recall being able to add on other mods with the same ease.

Has it changed?

 

Check this site: http://www.tweakguides.com/Oblivion_1.html

 

Turn off v sync. Rise the resolution and turn off AA. Having shadow quality set to high is a FPS killer.

Beyond that, nothing that I know of. It's beyond my area of expertise.

 

It looks like you should be able to run it. I have had the game for XBOX 360 and it was fun. It has a lot of gameplay, a lot of good sidequests, different functions like creating spells and learning how to talk effectively. I did not finish it because I sold my 360 and do not like to repeat games, but I would definitely recommend the game.