God, how I missed Oblivion

[buru5]

Eh, I loved Morrowind graphics (including colors) when it came out. I was rather dissapointed with Oblivion's graphics when it came out. Guess it's a matter of the elusive "art direction". Oh and potatoheads.

I fully believe "favorite ES game" is based solely on which one you played first. Vanilla Morrowind NPCs literally look like this.

 

[Carrion]

Er, Morrowind NPCs were wiki articles with very little unique dialouge outside of quest NPCs and important characters. This point is stupid. Oblivion has a shit ton of dialogue. Maybe you should have criticized the lack of varied voice acting instead.

There are two different ways to approach dialogue in an open world RPG like this. There's the Daggerfall/Morrowind route, where you talk to people when you need to (like asking for directions), kind of like you'd do in the real world. The idea is that you can ask anyone about anything, and much of the interaction between you and the NPCs is based on systems. The other way is the Skyrim way, i.e. the typical RPG way, where you've got some NPCs with unique dialogue trees and some with no actual dialogue at all, making the characters stand out more from each other but obviously greatly limiting the level of interactivity in the game world. Oblivion is the worst of both worlds — it's essentially a wiki system that doesn't allow you to get any real information about anything, and while every character is "unique", this only means that each of them has one or two awkward introductory lines and zero depth beyond that.

This kind of sums up why Oblivion is inferior to both Morrowind and to a lesser extent Skyrim: it's the worst of both worlds, way too dumb to be like Morrowind but lacking the good things that could potentially result from streamlining your game mechanics. Aside from completely sucking ass mechanically it also has by far the worst writing, the most painful voice acting, the most boring setting and the most prosperous art style of the three games.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

You're right about the NPC's disposition in the minigame being capped by your Speechcraft skill, but there's no risk in getting there so it's just a matter of how much time you're willing to spend with the persuasion wheel (and fight off the temptation to just get a charm spell). Pissing them off is possible but may also depend on their Aggression (cut off point at where their disposition won't keep them from attacking), most friendly NPCs have a low aggression and high disposition so you're unlikely to run into it by accident.

Speaking of that, there's a famous bug with a couple in Chorrol, the husband accidentally had his aggression set too high and will start attacking his dogs the instant you enter the house.

I remember now. The mythic dawn agent in Anvil attacked me on sight (before the intended time) because my already unlikable bosmer had taken a Personality hit, causing her high Agression to turn her hostile.

She is known for blowing her cover to attack the ghosts in the docked ship, spending the next several days strolling around town in the cult's custom bound armor.

 

[Haplo]

Eh, I loved Morrowind graphics (including colors) when it came out. I was rather dissapointed with Oblivion's graphics when it came out. Guess it's a matter of the elusive "art direction". Oh and potatoheads.

I fully believe "favorite ES game" is based solely on which one you played first. Vanilla Morrowind NPCs literally look like this.

My first ES game was actually Daggerfall. Scope was huge and dungeons really confusing in their 3D layout. Still I vastly prefer Morrowind or even Skyrim.

Yeah, NPCs in Morrowind were mostly ugly. Still much better then Oblivion, where they are grotesque caricatures from some nightmarish cartoon. Prosper vibes were really strong in Oblivion. Gothic 3 from the same year had much better graphics.

 

[Sigourn]

"Skyrim's UI is much better than Oblivion's. And with mods, it's not even a contest."

No, it's really not. Play it again. Skyrim's UI is more consolfied than Oblivion's. So much scrolling. Another huge annoyance is that all the prompts in the game have to be manually clicked "Really quit Alchemy? etc)", you can't simply hit enter or space to quickly leave menus (in Oblivion's case: tab). And yes, it can be fixed with mods. But I don't really consider that a valid point, anything can be fixed with mods. We should be focusing on the base game, because really both games are great with mods.

"It's true that Morrowind's NPCs sucked, but Oblivion's are worse: instead of making meaningfully unique NPCs, I ask a guard to tell me about the Emperor, and all he says is "he will be sorely missed". What the fuck, I wanted to know about the emperor, not how you feel about his death."

Maybe he's a dumbass that doesn't know much about the emperor? If you want to know more about the emperor ask someone who's in a position of power or close to the emperor (the blades?) or read a book. You can't expect all NPCS to have wiki-tier info on things like Morrowind because 1) ultimately it's unrealistic and 2) it's boring (and lazy game design) for the NPCs to say the same things over and over again. And yes, before you respond, Oblivion does have NPCs that say the exact same things, and maybe there is less actually text, but ultimately they were both done in a very lazy way (well, it's Bethesda so...). Morrowind just has more text (because it's so reused) so it seems like more effort was put into it than actually was. I think fully voiced NPCS was a step in the right direction for the type of game Elder Scrolls tries to be, it adds to the world's realism and adds an additional layer of immersion.

Oblivion's NPCs actually feel like residents of the world they're in as well. Most have complex schedules. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, daily activities, many even travel the whole map to chill with friends in another city. NPC shopkeepers have schedules too, and actually close up shop. They feel like they're actually living in the world, compared to Morrowind which literally has NPCs standing in the middle of town 24/7, shops never close, etc. Why does Morrowind even have beds? No one sleeps. Oblivion is much better in this regard, and it's better than even Skyrim's NPCs too I'd argue, which are almost as bad as Morrowind's, while some have minor schedules there's nothing in Skyrim that compares to Oblivion in the NPC department, it's a total downgrade.

So while Morrowind may have more text than Oblivion, quality is not always equal to quanity. And that's not the only factor deteriming the quality of the NPCS either.



"It takes away from the RPG aspect of the game when it's your player skill that makes the real difference."

No it doesn't.

Most RPGs actually rely on player skill for everything, you just think they don't because it's hidden behind stats and the like.

And your point only applies to lock-picking, which is still incredibly hard at low skill levels if you don't know what you're doing. Disposition caps out if your skill level is too low, so speechcraft is still dictated by your skill level. Like I mentioned earlier, in Morrowind you simply bribe people to raise disposition (and this does not have a cap) or just click intimidate over and over again. It's shit.

"You can choose not to exploit Morrowind's system. In Oblivion, there's no logical reason not to take advantage of it: Magicka simply regenerates and from an in-game point of view, it makes sense to keep healing yourself. In Morrowind, there's no logic to acting like a narcoleptic all the time."

I get your point, but you can choose in Oblivion too. Pick Atronach, lol. Or simply don't fuck around waiting for magicka to regen (the developers didn't intend for you to run in circles for 2 minutes waiting for your bar to regen in the same way they didn't intend for you to abuse the rest system or quicksave feature in either game). If you're using a freewill argument then I can too. This was a game mechanic choice by the developers, and it's not necessarily any better or worse than Morrowind's, ultimately it comes down to personal preference. The magic regen point, while I responded to it, is not really a huge problem. Go play Oblivion again and see how far waiting on magicka to regen gets you when you're surrendered by 3 ogres early on, and good luck. It only becomes "broken" when you're high level and your intelligence and wisdom scores are close to max (when it takes about 30 seconds to fully regen all your magicka despite your total magicka score). At that point in Morrowind you're already plowing through absolutely everything, even with the difficulty slider at max (I know this for a fact because I am currently replaying Morrowind and I'm heaving a very easy time at max difficulty). Morrowind is easy as fuck, much easier than Oblivion (especially if you're not min-maxing). Access to OP items early on, alchemy, enchanting, etc. Most of the mechanics in Morrowind actually end up breaking the game's challenge.

"In Oblivion, they went for generic high-fantasy in the most generic way possible. You can make generic look good, but Oblivion simply looks awful, it's greenery everywhere."

Generic? Yes, I addmited this. But you not liking it is an opinion. Morrowind is not 100% unique either, and like I mentioned before, people need to stop pretending that it is. Oblivion looked amazing when it came out. Morrowind, base game, is brown with fog everywhere. Technical limitations, I know, but vanilla Morrowind looks like utter shit compared to vanilla Oblivion. Concept art doesn't really matter when it's not accurately portrayed in the game.

"I really liked Vvardenfell"

Me too but I don't let that blind me to the problems of the game. That being said, Oblivion has major problems too. They're both imperfect.


I think one of the most legitimate points against Oblivion is the leveling problem, although you're probably not familiar with that since you admittedly played very little of the actual game.

Shit, this is too long for me to divide point by point, so I'll just keep it short:

- Skyrim's UI is much more INTUITIVE than Oblivion's. Seriously, I get that it would have taken me a very short while to get used to the UI, but the fact that for some reason they decided to use icons instead of words is annoying as hell.
- I didn't even ask a random guard, I asked a Blade. One of the guys protecting him before he died. I'm not saying he shouldn't say that, but Bethesda needs to know the difference between "barks" and "conversations". A bark is something you used when you don't want to engage the player in a conversation. Like The Witcher's generic NPCs, which say something if you talk to them. Engaging in conversation is only useful if there is a conversation to be had, not when the NPC repeats stupid one liners. Expecting a Blade to talk to me about the Emperor is hardly "unrealistic".
- Let's not pretend Morrowind wouldn't have AI schedules if it had been in 2006. I'm being as fair as I can, comparing games logically. Gothic had AI schedules in 2001, it's true, but it was also a much smaller game.
- I never said Morrowind's disposition system is good, I think it is shit because instead of being more like Fallout: New Vegas' (skill checks) it basically uses hidden dicerolls that can be easily abused. NPC doesn't comply? Repeat until he/she complies. This could have been EASILY fixed by giving the player a limited amount of attempts, meaning he had to think carefully what he was going to do. Oblivion's system, again, is worse: it relies entirely on player skill (unless there's an "auto-lockpick" mechanic I haven't heard of, then again why even bother).
- You can't compare "waiting" to fucking sleeping. Real life doesn't work like that, you literally need to wait seconds for Magicka to regen in Oblivion. Imagine casting spells is taking a piss in real life. Every time you take a piss, you must sleep before replenishing your pee supply. It's impossible to sleep that often.
- Vanilla Morrowind's landscape looks much better than Oblivion when using a simple "remove fog" mod. It's not a matter of fog or draw distance, Oblivion's landscape is really fucking uninspiring. Skyrim's is so much better in comparison. FFS there are mods for Oblivion that redo the landscape in its entirety because it sucks so much in its vanilla form, and not because of the textures or meshes, but because of how bland it all is.

Forget for a second about the folliage and just look at the amount of shapes.

 

[anvi]

There aren't enough modders in the world to fix that piece of crap.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

What I'm not getting is...

Why not just play all 3 games with their quirks, up and downs and everything, instead of replaying your favorite oldie over and over and over again and trying to justify just how obsessed to the point of autism you are on some online video game forums??

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

Some Oblivion screenshots for comparison:

 

[buru5]

It's really no contest.

 

[Haplo]

It's really no contest.

Indeed. Poor Oblivion never stood a chance...

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Oblivion's system, again, is worse: it relies entirely on player skill (unless there's an "auto-lockpick" mechanic I haven't heard of, then again why even bother).

There's an auto-attempt option but it gives way less Security XP and breaks more picks than you would unless you're hopeless with the minigame or can't hear the sound cues for some reason. Useful if you have the Skeleton Key since you get infinite tries.

 

[Fargus]

Well after all the years of decline even Oblivion don't seem so bad anymore.

At least sometimes it made me smile with it's goofiness.

 

[sullynathan]

oblivion is pretty boring. THe first time playing it in almost a decade. You guys were right, Gothic 3 was better

 

[circ]

Well. I'll say one thing for Bethesda. Skyrim, not counting SSE, runs a lot smoother than Oblivion ever did, and after about a dozen bug fix mods wasn't all that crash prone either. You might think you can run Oblivion with a recent i7 and a 1080 gtx, think again.

Oblivion on the other hand - introduce more than a few NPC's and the latency goes to hell, and despite 'stutter removers' 'pbr cleaners' and whatever else, crashes after a while of playing were expected. Also the dungeon design oh god. The crypts weren't that bad, but oh shit were the ayeleid ruins boring, along with caverns. Just clinical, morgue-like empty spaces.

 

[Lilura]

You guys were right, Gothic 3 was better

Modding both is like placing a cherry atop a turd.

 

[Drog Black Tooth]

 

[Taka-Haradin puolipeikko]

 

[octavius]

"I reserve my bed for seamen". :D

 

[RNGsus]

 

[buru5]

Don't forget the Hackdirt cultists

 

[mbv123]

Is Pewdiepie, dare I say it, /ourguy/?

 

[Lambach]

This thread reminded me that, despite all the shit thrown at Oblivion, it still holds the All-Time Top 3 spot when it comes to soundtracks, right next to VtMB and KotOR 2. You may not like it, but this is what peak vidya musical performance sounds like:

 

[anvi]

The soundtrack is bad in all ES games. And most American games in general. Skyrim especially was torture for me.

 

[Lambach]

The soundtrack is bad in all ES games. And most American games in general. Skyrim especially was torture for me.

I'd rather call the soundtrack mediocre in ES games (other than Oblivion, obviously, which is brilliant) and as for other American games.... excuse you. It's fucking phenomenal when it wants to be.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

The soundtrack is bad in all ES games. And most American games in general. Skyrim especially was torture for me.

Morrowind had a good soundtrack with an excellent title theme ("Call of Magic" a.k.a. "Nerevar Rising"), keeping in mind that the music was kept intentionally in the background. For that matter, even Daggerfall, with the limitations of the midi format, had a few good tracks, in particular "Snow". I always loved entering the city of Daggerfall in winter while it was snowing and that track was playing.