Post all your thoughts on Oblivion here.

[Dark Elf]

... otherwise the board will be clogged up with individual threads of Oblivion bashing/praising.

Just so it happens, I belong to the scorned group of wicked individuals that happen to like Oblivion. I'll try to make an attempt to explain why. That said, I also think there are things that could be vastly improved, but my overall impression of this game is very good indeed.

TEH G00D:

Graphics - Goes without saying. Cyrodil looks great, and runs surprisingly smooth (keeping in mind that my rig is hardly top notch).

Quests - Yup, you read right. This was my main gripe with Morrowind, but Bethesda has apparently atoned for their sins since then. I don't want to spoil the game for anyone by using any individual quest as an example, but I definitely feel that a lot more effort has been put into the quest department since TES III. The bleak predictions of shallow quests weren't quite true, it seems.

Facegen - Customizing my character was always my favourite pastime in games. Now, I'm given the option to decide just how I wish my avatar to look, and that's great. Bummer there are no flowing beards (just three-day growth), and I'd love to clotter a characters face full of Maori-like tattoo's, but it's not like I can't live without it either. Compared to what most other games offer in terms of character customization, this ain't shit.

Combat - Is fun. Feels a lot more realistic than Morrowind. Block an incoming warhammer and you'll be knocked back and stunned for a few seconds. Miss a swing with that two-ton motherfucker of an axe and you won't get yourself up to your fighting stance before your dagger-wielding combatant has landed a few stabs on you. All in all, combat is fun, whether you use magic or weapons.

Storyline - Haven't really begun with the main quest yet, so I might change my opinion on this. Let's just say I kind of fancied the introductory dungeon, and the gameworld itself with it's lore and characters. Cyrodil certainly feels like that fantasy world I always wanted to explore.

Less class skills - I know what you are going to say. Oblivion, obviously, has less skills to offer than Morrowind, not to say Daggerfall, had. However, I don't feel this is that much of a problem, especially when considering the fact that you now can only pick seven class skills for your character, whereas Morrowind let you choose ten and Daggerfall an ungodly bunch. This way, each class feels more defined than they did in Morrowind.

TEH B@D

Speechcraft minigame. It's plain stupid. Why speechcraft along with stats like intelligence won't affect dialog options is beyond me. Oh well, I'm playing a pure mage and have access to charm spells so improving NPC disposition isn't that much of a problem for me, but I understand those who play, for example, pure thieves...

Still, NPC:s feel more alive than they did in Morrowind. I guess it's the voice acting. It's a nice touch that they all have an individual presentation of themselves.

Please assrape me for my Drizzt fanboi moniker and for creating this suck-ass thread.

 

[Chefe]

Good: Everything

Bad: Nothing


Words cannot describe how great Oblivion is. I apologize to Bethesda for ever having doubted them.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I like teh minigame to persuade ppl! Its very good!

In reality, when I want my Chocolate Milk and my mum won't give it to me, i always threaten her to kill her and she begins to smile and gives me my milk!!!!

 

[Solik]

I'm really liking the plane of Oblivion. I visited it for my second time (and I think this was the only of the two that was randomized). It was huge and dangerous. Sort of reminded me of Daggerfall's random dungeons, only more wide-open (outside the caves and towers at least) and minus the secret passages and water.

 

[RK47]

after all that hype (both good n bad) i'd be stupid not to try. was thinking of maybe pooling $10 from each of my buddies and burn copies to share with each other.

maybe this week. Yeah.
probably.

thanks for the criticism and praises codexer.
special thanks to those who's sharing their in-game experience. i loved hearing those.

cheers!

 

[Xi]

Good: Everything

Bad: Nothing


Words cannot describe how great Oblivion is. I apologize to Bethesda for ever having doubted them.

Reverse Psychology?

 

[Chefe]

Real psychology. I am truly enjoying this video game.

 

[mindx2]

I know this has been stated before but this is what I have posted as a reply on another forum:

Here is what they were saying:

Well, for us a game gets kind of boring when you become so powerful that you can just gaze at a bad guy and he withers away.

As much as I loved Morrowind once I became that powerful much of the fun went out of it.

Now I doubt if you'll be fighting level 25 rats but other characters, perhaps, will be more of a challenge when they become stronger as you become stronger.

I'd also suggest holding off on getting to ticked off about it until you get deeper into the game to see how Bethesda implements their new leveling up strategy.

I've been playing for a couple of days now and I'm only up to level 3, so I'll wait awhile before forming any hard and fast opinions...well, other than Mrs. TQ and I are both already incredibly addicted to Oblivion.

Dang fine game so far.

Presumably different treasure and items become available at different levels so I wouldnt be advocating u dont level up! Plus, as {the above poster} said, it would be a bit boring and pointless if there was no challenge.

And my response:

That is MY point. The game does NOT offer any real challenge because everything is around your level. By having everything at or around the same level you are means you can go anywhere in the world right away without any fear that there might be something around the next corner that will wipe the floor with you.

Take the GOTHIC series as a good design. When you start the game you have real dread venturing out very far from the roads or cities because you are NOT uber-powerful and many terrifying things in the world will get you. However, as a reward for leveling up (as the game goes on) you are able to venture further out and find that hidden cave holding great treasure but also a real challenging creature. Sure, you can run into that cave at an early level but you would most likely die. In Oblivion, you enter that cave and monsters, NPCs, and treasure all levels to or around where you are now. Where is the "challenge" in that? Why level at all... just go through the game as a 1st level PC since you can pretty much feel safe that you won't run into anything very difficult. This totally takes me out of the immersion that Bethesda touted so much.

 

[Xi]

Real psychology. I am truly enjoying this video game.

Maybe redraft your origional review? I'm curious about your personal Pros/Cons. It seems that everyone finds different things to love/hate. Definitely an Action/RPG, but maybe there was more RPG then some people want to believe? What do you think?

 

[CrashDummy]

It is a pretty good game to me.

 

[Chefe]

Real psychology. I am truly enjoying this video game.

Maybe redraft your origional review? I'm curious about your personal Pros/Cons. It seems that everyone finds different things to love/hate. Definitely an Action/RPG, but maybe there was more RPG then some people want to believe? What do you think?

There's RPG if you dig deep enough. It's developing your character through your actions instead of your words, like the old adage says. People just want to look on the outside, they're not giving it a chance. Not many games give us the opportunity to build our avatar through our own physical choices. It's not about how many dialogue trees you can string together, it's about how you interact with your environment, and that's what Oblivion provides.

 

[Thrawn05]

I made my points in another thread, so I'll just say this: If I have sudden urge to read up on TES V lore, I'll wait for Prowler and his buddies to copy everything to TIL.

 

[Xi]

It's more of a proactionary system then a reactionary one. The game allows you to confront situations from multiple angles, but the outcome, or the reaction, to the situation is generally the same. So, it's linear in that sense, but very non-linear by how you drive your character to complete the goals. There are some different outcomes though, I have stumbled on a few.

Personality/Speechcraft will give different dialog trees too. Usually this will only add a quest or provide more key information, but sometimes it can make a hard quest much easier as an NPC may help you or simply direct you to exactly where you need to go. The quest compass isn't always on(Though it has been most of the time - the game would be infinitely longer without it, good or bad, probably more frustrating at times)

 

[talk2farley]

In reality, when I want my Chocolate Milk and my mum won't give it to me, i always threaten her to kill her and she begins to smile and gives me my milk!!!!

I prefer to just kill her and steal the chocolate milk. Unfortunately, within 30 seconds of the murder a cop shows up in my kitchen demanding I pay a fine or go to jail. Not wanting to spend 2 seconds staring at a black screen and lose 1 point of Block skill, I pay him 10 bucks and he leaves me, and my mother corpse, alone.

 

[Xi]

In reality, when I want my Chocolate Milk and my mum won't give it to me, i always threaten her to kill her and she begins to smile and gives me my milk!!!!

I prefer to just kill her and steal the chocolate milk. Unfortunately, within 30 seconds of the murder a cop shows up in my kitchen demanding I pay a fine or go to jail. Not wanting to spend 2 seconds staring at a black screen and lose 1 point of Block skill, I pay him 10 bucks and he leaves me, and my mother corpse, alone.

You should have stealth killed her.

 

[Schaden]

The "world" that autolevels with you is sooooo annoying...

It's the single biggest thing I don't like so far.

Level 1-5 felt pretty good on the difficulty level.

Now that I'm level 7 things are getting uncomfortably difficult.
I almost shit my pants when I fought my first troll.
That sucker would not go down !
Hit him with at least 5-6 minor fireballs and 10-15 whacks w/ a sword and it comes back for more.

Went into a cave and ran across a cannfear runt for the first time ?
It killed me at least 6-7 times before I finally holed up inside a room w/ just one door
and managed to beat it in the door jam by holdning my ground w/ ranged spells and
power attacks.

I've cleared out 6-7 dungeons and my best magic weapon is a bow of shock +5. Big whoop. If they expect me to fight the crap it's throwing at me, I need better equipment.
In the beginning I would have 1-2 close calls w/ death per dungeon.
Now it's getting to the point where I'm in serious jeopardy of dying after every single
encounter. Clear one room and kill something. Cast 10 restorations spells to get my health back. Wait an hour. Go on ahead and clear another 1-2 rooms. Cast restoration spells...wait an hour..... (you get the picture)

 

[Lord Chambers]

I'm not very far in the game at the moment, but here's my take on the leveling/difficulty issue.

My first character was supposed to be a Nord barbarian type. Swing a big thing. Fur armor. Know how he did in combat? Poorly. I had to run away often while trying to clear the first gate, and then died (without a recent save) after trying to clear up Kvatch. So I retired that fellow.

With my next character I decided to powergame. I would make a fighter who could heal himself. And isntead of pussy armor I would use the heavy shit. Now I'm just a tank. I don't need heal spells because my rusty iron equipment stops pretty much everything. Plus I have a shield to block attacks.

So it would seem at these low levels, knowing Oblivion is mostly all about combat, that building a character who is the best at combat is the way to go. Stealth is cool, but not the best way to win at combat. Marksman is cool, but not the best way to win at combat. Hand to hand is awesome, but not the best way to win at combat. Clearing gates is all about tanking and healing up during/after.

 

[SlavemasterT]

Real psychology. I am truly enjoying this video game.

Maybe redraft your origional review? I'm curious about your personal Pros/Cons. It seems that everyone finds different things to love/hate. Definitely an Action/RPG, but maybe there was more RPG then some people want to believe? What do you think?

There's RPG if you dig deep enough. It's developing your character through your actions instead of your words, like the old adage says. People just want to look on the outside, they're not giving it a chance. Not many games give us the opportunity to build our avatar through our own physical choices. It's not about how many dialogue trees you can string together, it's about how you interact with your environment, and that's what Oblivion provides.

You're terrible, Chefe.

 

[Thrawn05]

Clearing gates is all about tanking and healing up during/after.

I got that impression too. It's like they stole the Hell level from Doom 3. Flameball throwing Imps/Scamps galor! Just rush in quick and take them out with your shotgun/blunt axe.

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

I just finished the tutorial...god all the dialogs were so cheesy...
Patrick Steward, did you feel no shame speaking those embarrising lines?
Though, I guess he was used to it from Star Trek...

 

[VenomByte]

Someone please do something about Chefe. It's disturbing. I'm almost starting to believe him...

 

[Micmu]

I just finished the tutorial...god all the dialogs were so cheesy...
Patrick Steward, did you feel no shame speaking those embarrising lines?
Though, I guess he was used to it from Star Trek...

It will get worse. Much worse.

 

[Excrément]

Someone please do something about Chefe. It's disturbing. I'm almost starting to believe him...

yeah me too....

on-topic :
am I the only one to find the stealth and alchemy system excellent? (the "eye" system is good, the fact it depends on your boots weight, your sneak skill, your armor, the NPC vision, the night, the darkness... and the alchemy system is really good : much more balanced than in Morrowind, more intuitive, and the fauna/flora is a big success)

and am I the only one to find the world too small? (when they put the fast-travel option, I thought it was because the world was too huge, but in fact it's not I am pretty sure you can cross cyrodil in a 20-30 minutes horse riding...)

 

[Lumpy]

What's up with Chefe? It's like he suddenly turned into Evog, only more fanatical.

 

[Nog Robbin]

and am I the only one to find the world too small? (when they put the fast-travel option, I thought it was because the world was too huge, but in fact it's not I am pretty sure you can cross cyrodil in a 20-30 minutes horse riding...)

I think this was one of the biggest things people complained about when the game was being developed - the idea that fast travel was necessary when it would take a relatively short amount of time to travel between locations anyway. This is why it really seemed a gamey feature - ensuring you can get straight to the action without anything inbetween. Thankfully, it is optional. I still would have preferred in character fast travel services than out of character free from hassle and no cost teleports.