Why does Codex hate Oblivion so much?

[luj1]

Mass Effect is watered-down KotOR

 

[Lord_Potato]

Oblivion and Fallout 3 almost single handedly caused the decline of RPGs

Mass effect is equally guilty. It and the Bethesda games caused a split in RPGs, and instead of one cohesive genre, they became either CYOABs or single-player World of Warcraft. Forcing the genre into those two extremes is as much of an element of decline as consolization.

You really want to tell us RPG was a cohesive genre before Mass Effect and Oblivion???

 

[Vlajdermen]

Oblivion and Fallout 3 almost single handedly caused the decline of RPGs

Mass effect is equally guilty. It and the Bethesda games caused a split in RPGs, and instead of one cohesive genre, they became either CYOABs or single-player World of Warcraft. Forcing the genre into those two extremes is as much of an element of decline as consolization.

You really want to tell us RPG was a cohesive genre before Mass Effect and Oblivion???

It was loosely defined, but it was one genre. Dark Sun, Fallout, Jagged Alliance, Morrowind, etc. all offered different experiences, but had common elements (character stats, reliance on chance, etc.) which put them all under the umbella term ''RPG''.

FO3 and Mass Effect distilled that genre into two new, much more rigidly defined genres. FO3 beget Amalur, Dragon's Dogma, The Witcher 3, and Two Worlds 2 while Mass Effect beget Alpha Protocol and nu-Deus Ex. Some of these games are good but the perspective or RPGs as a genre and what they can do was severely limited.

 

[Vlajdermen]

Mass Effect is watered-down KotOR

Which was watered-down Neverwinter Nights. The decline was more gradual than you make it out to be.

 

[Roguey]

Posting in a troll thread but nonetheless

• Why do you hate Oblivion?
• Why do you hate Oblivion?
• Why do you hate Oblivion?
• Why do you hate Oblivion?
• Why do you hate Oblivion?

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

I have op's new avatar ready:

crispy i love you please come back to discord we miss you

 

[Funposter]

I tried to play vanilla Oblivion within the last few months and got bored after 2 hours. So without going into an in-depth, autistic screed about streamlining, removal of features, decline etc. I can happily say that I don't HATE Oblivion, but I do find it to be aggressively bland.

 

[The Avatar]

Oblivion is a game where you are not the hero. An NPC is. You spend most of the game doing fetch quests for said NPC, and at the end of the game, you get to watch the NPC defeat the big bad boss.

 

[Avarize]

I agree, Nehrim is a great game. Maybe even my top 5.

 

[Glop_dweller]

With no real classes, you can do almost anything given enough time and training.

This is the first sin. The PC can do EVERYTHING; can be the leader of what should be mutually exclusive factions—like the fighter and mage guilds...and do it simultaneously. They can become the arch mage without knowing any spells.

Level scaling is the second sin. It gets to the point that the PC can be mugged on the road by a bandit wearing an outrageous fortune in weapons & armor; such that to sell any of it would set them up for life—so why are they camping out looking for travelers to kill?

Being utterly timeless is the third sin. The player can watch Kvatch burn for a year—it never burns down. NPCs will wait indefinitely for the PC to return, picking up their conversation with the very next word—like it was minutes passed instead of months. The player can use a strength potion, and load their PC to the max with loot, then fast-travel across the continent, to barter it away to a merchant—the strength potion expires whenever they get there, instead of the regular few minutes duration.

Forth sin: blank slate PC... The PC starts off in a state that implies that they didn't exist ten minutes before—how did they survive childhood with no appreciable skills, family, friends, or aptitudes; they apparently learned nothing in their entire life...of which there is no history. It's like they popped out of the sky one night, and started wandering around asking questions.

Spoiler

The whole game is absurd, it's literally a let's pretend play-pen where nothing at all matters.

Oh... and the combat AI:

Spoiler

 

[Harthwain]

Mass Effect is watered-down KotOR

Mass Effect was more like an action game with RPG elements. And it had dishonest approach to neutral choices (it's literally "an evil choice, but without evil points").

 

[Ol' Willy]

I don't hate Oblivion. You know, while I walk on the street and see the piece of dog shit on the sidewalk I don't hate it - I just walk past and try not to step in it. I have very similar feelings for Oblivion.

Average Oblivion fan in a nutshell:

 

[abnaxus]

The only good thing to come out of Oblibon.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Oblivion constituted an aggressive simplification and dumbing-down of game mechanics from its immediate predecessor Morrowind:

• Comprehensive creature-leveling such that all monsters and NPCs are set at the same level as the PC, with weaker types of monsters disappearing after the character gains enough levels, and stronger types of monsters not appearing when the character is low-level
• Comprehensive item-leveling whereby a high-level PC will not only encounter similarly high-level bandits but said bandits will have random pieces of extremely expensive armor and weapons, while a low-level PC will never find weapons/armor of such powerful material; or a weapon on display in a glass case in a castle will be a worthless replica if the PC is low-level but the real thing after the PC gains enough levels
  
• A clunky interface, which was clearly designed for consoles, in sharp contrast to Morrowind's sleek menus.
  
• Reduction in the number of joinable guilds/factions offering many quests from 10 in Morrowind to 4 in Oblivion, keeping the more generic ones (Fighters/Mages/Thieves guilds)
• Factions now centered around quest lines, with 2 of the 4 (Fighters Guild and Mages Guild) being poorly written and boring
  
• Both in-game and out-of-game world maps that offer far less information than their Morrowind equivalents
• Automatic fast-travel to any location that's already been visited
• A quest compass that points to your next destination, the use of which is made necessary by the combination of uninformative journal entries and an inability to ask directions
• Full voice-acting for dialogue, which necessitated a drastic reduction in the amount of dialogue per NPC, most of whom have one comment about themselves or their city to offer and nothing else
• Poor writing in general, with dialogue and books less interesting than in Morrowind
  
• Minigames for speechcraft and lockpicking (and poorly-done minigames, at that)
  
• Elimination of certain kinds of items, such as thrown weapons, crossbows, and spears
• Reduction in the number of skills to the point where axes are considered blunt weapons
• Regenerating magicka, which effectively means that all health can be easily regained after each combat, thus removing much of the logistics that existed previously
• Elimination of different physiques (and animations) for Argonians and Khajiits
• 3D face modelling was a technical improvement but horribly implemented so that the end result was substantially worse
• HDR lighting was a technical improvement but in practice was overpowering and made the graphics worse (though at least HDR was optional)
• A physics model was a technical advancement but its implementation was so wonky that bumping into a table would send objects flying around a room
  
• Lack of aesthetics, especially compared to Morrowind's brilliant art direction
• A generic, medieval fantasy grab-bag setting, without even the coherence offered by Daggerfall's Iliac Bay region much less the spectacular sui generis setting of Morrowind
• A dull, poorly-plotted main quest, with the only plane of Oblivion featured in the base game (except at the very end) being a generic hellscape with little variation
• A half-baked action-oriented combat system so that success in combat depends greatly on the player's physical skill, yet is boring and tedious

Only two-and-a-half years after the release of Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks followed with Fallout 3, a.k.a. Oblivion with Guns, which enraged any Fallout-fans who would not otherwise have been concerned about decline in the Elder Scrolls series.

 

[Feargus Jewhart]

Oblivion constituted an aggressive simplification and dumbing-down of game mechanics from its immediate predecessor Morrowind:

• Comprehensive creature-leveling such that all monsters and NPCs are set at the same level as the PC, with weaker types of monsters disappearing after the character gains enough levels, and stronger types of monsters not appearing when the character is low-level
• Comprehensive item-leveling whereby a high-level PC will not only encounter similarly high-level bandits but said bandits will have random pieces of extremely expensive armor and weapons, while a low-level PC will never find weapons/armor of such powerful material; or a weapon on display in a glass case in a castle will be a worthless replica if the PC is low-level but the real thing after the PC gains enough levels
  
• A clunky interface, which was clearly designed for consoles, in sharp contrast to Morrowind's sleek menus.
  
• Reduction in the number of joinable guilds/factions offering many quests from 10 in Morrowind to 4 in Oblivion, keeping the more generic ones (Fighters/Mages/Thieves guilds)
• Factions now centered around quest lines, with 2 of the 4 (Fighters Guild and Mages Guild) being poorly written and boring
  
• Both in-game and out-of-game world maps that offer far less information than their Morrowind equivalents
• Automatic fast-travel to any location that's already been visited
• A quest compass that points to your next destination, the use of which is made necessary by the combination of uninformative journal entries and an inability to ask directions
• Full voice-acting for dialogue, which necessitated a drastic reduction in the amount of dialogue per NPC, most of whom have one comment about themselves or their city to offer and nothing else
• Poor writing in general, with dialogue and books less interesting than in Morrowind
  
• Minigames for speechcraft and lockpicking (and poorly-done minigames, at that)
  
• Elimination of certain kinds of items, such as thrown weapons, crossbows, and spears
• Reduction in the number of skills to the point where axes are considered blunt weapons
• Regenerating magicka, which effectively means that all health can be easily regained after each combat, thus removing much of the logistics that existed previously
• Elimination of different physiques (and animations) for Argonians and Khajiits
• 3D face modelling was a technical improvement but horribly implemented so that the end result was substantially worse
• HDR lighting was a technical improvement but in practice was overpowering and made the graphics worse (though at least HDR was optional)
• A physics model was a technical advancement but its implementation was so wonky that bumping into a table would send objects flying around a room
  
• Lack of aesthetics, especially compared to Morrowind's brilliant art direction
• A generic, medieval fantasy grab-bag setting, without even the coherence offered by Daggerfall's Iliac Bay region much less the spectacular sui generis setting of Morrowind
• A dull, poorly-plotted main quest, with the only plane of Oblivion featured in the base game (except at the very end) being a generic hellscape with little variation
• A half-baked action-oriented combat system so that success in combat depends greatly on the player's physical skill, yet is boring and tedious

Only two-and-a-half years after the release of Oblivion, Bethesda Softworks followed with Fallout 3, a.k.a. Oblivion with Guns, which enraged any Fallout-fans who would not otherwise have been concerned about decline in the Elder Scrolls series.

Too long didnt read.

 

[The Wall]

Oblivion is biggest MEME FACTORY! Itz adorably retarded, comfy af with right mods and great starting point for modder/dev's career. Fourteen year old me with 0h in previous Elder Scrolls was amazed by Oblivion. I read entire library of in-game books, built small village on goblin sacred grounds, got trapped inside painting. Hated "all the numbers" at first, when Skyrim released I raged that my game math was gone. She was ok, for first time. Alas, my RPG virginity wasn't claimed by Gothic/Morrowind

 

[User0001]

 

[Thac0]

Oblivion is unironically my favourite Elder Scrolls game. I am not a huge Elder Scrolls fan tho.
That said I havn't played Daggerfall yet, and that might be more up my alley, since Oblivion undeniably has fatal flaws. It just has strengths greater than those flaws.

What Oblivion does well:
- Best guilds in the entire series. Assassins guild is so reverred for a reason, the mages guild is cool with a unique task in each town teaching you the local specific magic.
- Best quests in the Elder Scrolls, best density of good quests. Yes Oblivion has a few awfull quests like the tears of frost. Yes it has a few bland quests which are barely worth remembering. It also has amazing quests like the painted trolls, the stuff with the daedric princes, entering a dream, all of Shivering Isles and the one with the painting in the castle. The peak quests of Oblivion are better than those from any other game, and the average is better aswell.
- Best Cities. Morrowinds cities are just a bunch of buildings which all look the same thrown together without rhyme or reason, Skyrims cities are lifeless and feel severely underpopulated. Each city in Oblivion is unique enough to stand out and feels authentic.
- Related > The Arena
- You are not the hero, you are just a figure behind his back. When every rpg makes you the chosen one it is nice to have a game that is not constantly fellating your dick about that.
- The Oblivion Gates themselves are amazing, there are just way too few of them that are reused way too often.

Where it is criticised for wrongly
- Spellcrafting and Enchantment. Oblivion still has spellcrafting and it still is cool and potent. Its just much harder to get, making it feel like a real accomplishment and reward when you finally get accepted into the academy.
- Alchemy. Oblivions Alchemy is better than Morrowinds, especially since it doesnt break the game on your third potion
- Class system. Oblivion still has classes, and if the level scaling wasnt broken they would be pretty good aswell. Making your own class is fun, and the system generally works. The problem is that you want your important abilities in your minors to cheese the level scaling.
- The world. Only because Cyrodil is not as high on shrooms as Morrowind it isnt worse. In fact there is so much more stuff sprinkled into the world I prefer Cyrodil
- the speech minigame. It really wasnt that awfull, especially compared to speech being neigh useless before and after.
- regenerating magica. What fucking logistics? You just quicksave after combat and spam rest before as if this was Baldurs Gate. Regenerating magicka makes full mages much more fun to play.

Where its shit:
- level scaling, breaks the class system and half the game
- removal of armor and weapon categories
- removal of skills
- removal of spells
- removal of stat importance
- Fast Travel
- bad main quest (allies for Bruma)
- Full voice acting
- Graphics

I wouldn't put it in my top 10 wrpgs anymore, that was mostly just provocation, but I see it as 8/10 with shivering isles.
Also the bad stuff is the stuff that can be modded easily, while the good stuff is hard to replace with mods.

 

[Butter]

Mods can't fix the game being a theme park wherein none of the counts or guild leaders acknowledge the Emperor's death, and nobody acknowledges the Oblivion crisis. A good version of Oblivion would've been laser focused on those elements and fuck the disjointed nonsense like Unfriendly Competition or The Forlorn Watchman.

 

[luj1]

What Oblivion does well:
- Best guilds in the entire series. Assassins guild is so reverred for a reason, the mages guild is cool with a unique task in each town teaching you the local specific magic.
- Best quests in the Elder Scrolls, best density of good quests. Yes Oblivion has a few awfull quests like the tears of frost. Yes it has a few bland quests which are barely worth remembering. It also has amazing quests like the painted trolls, the stuff with the daedric princes, entering a dream, all of Shivering Isles and the one with the painting in the castle. The peak quests of Oblivion are better than those from any other game, and the average is better aswell.
- Best Cities. Morrowinds cities are just a bunch of buildings which all look the same thrown together without rhyme or reason, Skyrims cities are lifeless and feel severely underpopulated. Each city in Oblivion is unique enough to stand out and feels authentic.
- Related > The Arena
- You are not the hero, you are just a figure behind his back. When every rpg makes you the chosen one it is nice to have a game that is not constantly fellating your dick about that.
- The Oblivion Gates themselves are amazing, there are just way too few of them that are reused way too often.

Morrowind had better guilds and cities for sure. It's also shameful from someone who has "thac0" in his name to overreact so much

The peak quests of Oblivion are better than those from any other game, and the average is better aswell.

 

[Dyet]

Mods can't fix the game being a theme park wherein none of the counts or guild leaders acknowledge the Emperor's death, and nobody acknowledges the Oblivion crisis. A good version of Oblivion would've been laser focused on those elements and fuck the disjointed nonsense like Unfriendly Competition or The Forlorn Watchman.

Yes, it is so strange how detached the events of the main quest are from everything else. Probably one of the biggest problems of the game (along with the retarded level scaling, but that can be fixed by mods). The main quest itself is just very dull. The only thing that stands out is Mankar Camoran's Paradise.

What Oblivion does well:
- Best guilds in the entire series. Assassins guild is so reverred for a reason, the mages guild is cool with a unique task in each town teaching you the local specific magic.
- Best quests in the Elder Scrolls, best density of good quests. Yes Oblivion has a few awfull quests like the tears of frost. Yes it has a few bland quests which are barely worth remembering. It also has amazing quests like the painted trolls, the stuff with the daedric princes, entering a dream, all of Shivering Isles and the one with the painting in the castle. The peak quests of Oblivion are better than those from any other game, and the average is better aswell.
- Best Cities. Morrowinds cities are just a bunch of buildings which all look the same thrown together without rhyme or reason, Skyrims cities are lifeless and feel severely underpopulated. Each city in Oblivion is unique enough to stand out and feels authentic.
- Related > The Arena
- You are not the hero, you are just a figure behind his back. When every rpg makes you the chosen one it is nice to have a game that is not constantly fellating your dick about that.
- The Oblivion Gates themselves are amazing, there are just way too few of them that are reused way too often.

Where it is criticised for wrongly
- Spellcrafting and Enchantment. Oblivion still has spellcrafting and it still is cool and potent. Its just much harder to get, making it feel like a real accomplishment and reward when you finally get accepted into the academy.
- Alchemy. Oblivions Alchemy is better than Morrowinds, especially since it doesnt break the game on your third potion
- Class system. Oblivion still has classes, and if the level scaling wasnt broken they would be pretty good aswell. Making your own class is fun, and the system generally works. The problem is that you want your important abilities in your minors to cheese the level scaling.
- The world. Only because Cyrodil is not as high on shrooms as Morrowind it isnt worse. In fact there is so much more stuff sprinkled into the world I prefer Cyrodil
- the speech minigame. It really wasnt that awfull, especially compared to speech being neigh useless before and after.
- regenerating magica. What fucking logistics? You just quicksave after combat and spam rest before as if this was Baldurs Gate. Regenerating magicka makes full mages much more fun to play.

Where its shit:
- level scaling, breaks the class system and half the game
- removal of armor and weapon categories
- removal of skills
- removal of spells
- removal of stat importance
- Fast Travel
- bad main quest (allies for Bruma)
- Full voice acting
- Graphics

I wouldn't put it in my top 10 wrpgs anymore, that was mostly just provocation, but I see it as 8/10 with shivering isles.
Also the bad stuff is the stuff that can be modded easily, while the good stuff is hard to replace with mods.

Now this is an unpopular opinion. I'll just add that the dungeons are shit even in comparison to the other two "modern" TES games, and the unpopular opinion that the combat is pretty decent with some changes (which I used mods for when I last played it years ago). 8/10 is...a bit high, but I found the game bearable with a few key mods to fix Bethesda's mess.

 

[jackofshadows]

- Class system. Oblivion still has classes, and if the level scaling wasnt broken they would be pretty good aswell. Making your own class is fun, and the system generally works.

Except it doesn't. When the system is asking you to choose primary and secondary skills and you (if you know better) want to put your desired skills away and pick the most useless instead means that it's broken beyond any reason. Not to mention that you wouldn't want level up at all. And this system is the core, the basis of the whole this so called role-playing game. You cannot separate it from level-scaled world, it would've worked just fine in vacuum (although atribute sub-system would be stupid even there), sure, but not in the damn game.

Mods might fix or rather replace this system, however they cannot fix nonsensical world where you have vast, vast territories between small towns filled with either fucking nothing or generic copy-pasted themed dungeons (still best experience the game has to offer imo). Mods also cannot fix the abysmal writing and VO (except for Sean Bean's work of course and few other bits) or the fact that, as was just mentioned above, nobody except for a few plot-related NPCs acknowledges existense of Oblivion crysis and its gates because game's design should allow every quest's execution regardless of the main plot progress. You're saying that it's nice to be just a "figure behind NPC back" while in fact it's still you who the center of the universe and if you wish you can even make this particular mighty NPC your bitch and order him around as long as you like.

It's a horrendously designed game and the fact that despite its design and some other particular aspects broad audience fucking loved it making hatred towards it actually justified.

 

[Thac0]

Morrowind had better guilds and cities for sure. It's also shameful from someone who has "thac0" in his name to overreact so much

Overreact is an odd choice of words, given that I need to write a defense of Morrowind extremely detailed, lest the hivemind tears me to shreds.
As for the guilds: Only good guild questline Morrowind has is the fighters guild. Interestingly that is the worst guild questline in Oblivion.

As from the context I meant within the Elder Scrolls. Oblivions quests aren't groundbreaking for a genre veteran, but compared to Morrowind and Skyrim they are the best of the three.

Now this is an unpopular opinion. I'll just add that the dungeons are shit even in comparison to the other two "modern" TES games, and the unpopular opinion that the combat is pretty decent with some changes (which I used mods for when I last played it years ago). 8/10 is...a bit high, but I found the game bearable with a few key mods to fix Bethesda's mess.

Oblivions dungeons are worse than Morrowinds dungeons, but I found them better than Skyrims dungeons. Skyrims dungeons are just so dreadfully predictable, every single dungeon is built as one big loop. Follow a straight path, at the end loot the chest and flick the hidden lever to get back to the start. Oblivion at least has a bit more finesse, and some of the handcrafted dungeons aren't half bad. A lot of semi-randomly generated mess tho.

Except it doesn't. When the system is asking you to choose primary and secondary skills and you (if you know better) want to put your desired skills away and pick the most useless instead means that it's broken beyond any reason. Not to mention that you wouldn't want level up at all. And this system is the core, the basis of the whole this so called role-playing game. You cannot separate it from level-scaled world, it would've worked just fine in vacuum (although atribute sub-system would be stupid even there), sure, but not in the damn game.

Mods might fix or rather replace this system, however they cannot fix nonsensical world where you have vast, vast territories between small towns filled with either fucking nothing or generic copy-pasted themed dungeons (still best experience the game has to offer imo). Mods also cannot fix the abysmal writing and VO (except for Sean Bean's work of course and few other bits) or the fact that, as was just mentioned above, nobody except for a few plot-related NPCs acknowledges existense of Oblivion crysis and its gates because game's design should allow every quest's execution regardless of the main plot progress. You're saying that it's nice to be just a "figure behind NPC back" while in fact it's still you who the center of the universe and if you wish you can even make this particular mighty NPC your bitch and order him around as long as you like.

But whats broken here is not the class system, it's the fact that more levels are worse. If the gameworld was static, and more levels were a pure benefit to you, then the system would work bona fide. So I attribute the blame to the level scaling, not the class building.

It's a horrendously designed game and the fact that despite its design and some other particular aspects broad audience fucking loved it making hatred towards it actually justified.

Now this is interesting so far as I didnt really thought of the game design consequences of Oblivion, and more of the game as a standalone entity. What it definitly did is normalise DLC in a single player game, and as such it can justifieably be hated for the infamous "Horse Armor".
I am not sure if it can be blamed for bringing level scaling to the west, as rudimentary concepts of level scaling already existed in Morrowind. Also Oblivion botched its level scaling so atrociously that it even put off normies, and gave level scaling a bad name in the rpg industry, which is nice.
If you attribute the blame for level scaling in western rpgs to Oblivion however, it is absolutely just to hate it.

 

[luj1]

As for the guilds: Only good guild questline Morrowind has is the fighters guild.

Fake news

 

[Thac0]

As for the guilds: Only good guild questline Morrowind has is the fighters guild.

Fake news

What other questlines are good? Maybe I just missed/can't remember all the good stuff.
I still have a replay save, although I am already ungodly OP on it a few hours in due to Morrowinds broken systems. Suicidal assassins from the DLC gifted me the second best light armor in the base game, and tons of gold from selling extra copies. Summon bound bows is like equiping a laser rifle in the early game, ludicrously OP.