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Oblivion first time modded or vanilla

Play oblivion vanilla or modded as a first time player


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DalekFlay

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No, you fuckwad. It's because it contradicts the entirety of established lore on the province (which started for real with PGE1, accompanying Redguard) up until then (which is kind of a running theme in OB) and replaces interesting and original, with stupid, banal, shit, boring and internally inconsistent (another running theme in OB), which is arguably even worse (after all no one really complained about Vvardenfell not being 100% covered with lava and ash).

If you don't think being continuity obsessed isn't an autism red flag I don't know what to tell you. I'm fine with each game having more creative freedom than that, and not sweating the small stuff. I'm not even talking lore in general anyway, I'm talking about Cyrodiil being a jungle. That's a brief line here or there, not some massive obvious thing they retcon'd that changed fundamental aspects of the game and world. Argonians looking like palette swapped humans bugs me way more.

I'm not defending Oblivion, which is a disappointment factory, just saying continuity nitpicks aren't the reason it sucks.
 

Tim the Bore

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Finished half of the game now. Spent so much time doing meta gaming. And it takes the immersion. Magic system sucks cause of the high mana costs and limited mana pool. Cast 4 spells to kill a monster and you are out of mana. Console designed menu and very few shortcuts for map.,spells,inventory makes you weary. Level scaling in this game is really absurd. There is no reason to go to dungeons. Everytime 5 gold 1 lock pick or a crap potion. Spending much more resources than gaining. What were they thinking? Game sold so well cause of the first time rpg players i guess. Console gamers.

Man, you should have seen what was happening in 2006. Everybody, from left to right, were claiming that Oblivion is the greatest RPG of all time, a pinnacle of the genre. I remember some review stating that Oblivion has "the most interesting main quest ever made" (they later chose Oblivion as the greatest RPG of all time). People were gushing over level-scalling (nowadays everybody are making fun of that, but I remember how much honest praise that "feature" get back in the days), over "deep, immersive dialogue system", over persuasion system, over lock-picking minigame, over bland enviroment (majority of people prefered this one over previous title because it was more "Tolkien-like"), over Oblivion Gates ("it's like Mordor"), over everything really. Some folks said that they were crying when Martin died (Spoiler, but come on). It was madness. The only complain that I remember was that "your character never feels special enough". Even the bugs were "charming".
But, late to the party as I am, I think that playing unmodded Oblivion is a very educational thing, since it had its own share in shaping Codex' hivemind personality. Some things are beyond verbal expression.
 

Morkar Left

Guest
I have made the game rock solid with some patches. Also window mod like full screen. Alt+ tab no problem. Locked to 60 fps. No micro stutter no slowdown no bugs no crashes.

I have played a character to level 2. After the sewers and Ayleid ruins dungeon as a full mage and Atronach birth sign. Main atttibutes Wisdom and Intelligence. Major skills are all spell related and alchemy. Birth signs are real shit. No diversity. Need a mod there. I saw how the leveling works and its also shit. So i need to put most of my main skills into minor section and other untelated ones to spells into major section. Wow that is retarded. How did they made a design like this? Cause their intention is to make a good game.

And peaceful monks:


And that's how the endless modding nightmare starts...
 

DraQ

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No, you fuckwad. It's because it contradicts the entirety of established lore on the province (which started for real with PGE1, accompanying Redguard) up until then (which is kind of a running theme in OB) and replaces interesting and original, with stupid, banal, shit, boring and internally inconsistent (another running theme in OB), which is arguably even worse (after all no one really complained about Vvardenfell not being 100% covered with lava and ash).

If you don't think being continuity obsessed isn't an autism red flag I don't know what to tell you. I'm fine with each game having more creative freedom than that, and not sweating the small stuff.
Small stuff is things like whether or not Vvardenfell should be exclusively ashlands. Changing the answer to 'no' is arguably an all around improvement and doesn't really break preexisting lore.
However changing part ancient Rome, part Byzantium, part imperial China and part something else entirely into a bland iso standard fantasy faux-medieval Europe is neither of the above.

I'm not even talking lore in general anyway, I'm talking about Cyrodiil being a jungle. That's a brief line here or there, not some massive obvious thing they retcon'd that changed fundamental aspects of the game and world.
NO.
This is not a throwaway line and it's pretty much the entire existing worldbuilding for the entire province swapped out for the blandest and most generic shit imaginable, not just its climate zone. People have been fucking murdered with hacksaw for less


Argonians looking like palette swapped humans bugs me way more.
Argonians look like inflatable potatoes just like everyone else, in a game that, coincidentally, can only be played by someone who is an inflatable potato himself or at least has an IQ of one.

Apart from that, continuity pr0n is glorious and only sucks when the continuity in question itself sucks.
 

DalekFlay

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Apart from that, continuity pr0n is glorious and only sucks when the continuity in question itself sucks.

I'd rather a good game with fresh creative decisions than a game that sticks to every aspect of continuity for the aspergers nerds. Unfortunately Oblivion is neither, so we're both fucked.
 

Butter

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Wrye Bash is the gold standard for Oblivion. You need a bashed patch in order to make Better Cities work.
 

Funposter

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can I use mod organizer for oblivion? or is there a better mod manager for this?

Yes. It works perfectly fine with the exception of some older mods that use a format made for OBMM, but you very rarely run into those nowadays. I think Wrye Bash might have the ability to unpack them properly.

Wrye Bash is the gold standard for Oblivion. You need a bashed patch in order to make Better Cities work.

You can run Wrye Bash from inside Mod Organiser, allowing you to create bashed patches in Wrye Bash and then have them show up in the Mod Organiser load order. There's technically no need to do this, but I much prefer the Mod Organiser UI and the ease with which it displays conflicting/overwritten files which is huge help if you are doing a lot of mixing and matching of texture packs or mesh replacers. Relating to the above, I'm not sure if you can run Wrye Bash or OBMM from within Mod Organiser to make use of older mods using the OBMM format. I seem to recall that it was possible, but it seemed like a big hassle for some minor mods from 2008/9 that had largely been superseded by better, more modern mods.
 

JarlFrank

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Apart from that, continuity pr0n is glorious and only sucks when the continuity in question itself sucks.

I'd rather a good game with fresh creative decisions than a game that sticks to every aspect of continuity for the aspergers nerds. Unfortunately Oblivion is neither, so we're both fucked.

I mean, the big problem with Oblivion isn't just that it broke the lore, but that it replaced really fucking cool shit with the most bland and unimaginative drivel you could come up with.

That's pretty much the exact opposite of fresh creative decisions.

Imperial legion used to wear Rome-inspired armor, their civilians looked like renaissance Italians. Now the legion wears the most generic iron armor possible and civilians walk around like generic renfaire visitors.
Cyrodiil was supposed to be a jungle with many different environments. Oblivion gave us lush forest, swampy forest, dry forest, snow forest. All the cool environmental variation teased in the pocket guide was gone.

It is the largest region of the continent, and most is endless jungle. Its center, the grassland of the Nibenay Valley, is enclosed by an equatorial rain forest and broken up by rivers. As one travels south along these rivers, the more subtropical it becomes, until finally the land gives way to the swamps of Argonia and the placid waters of the Topal Bay. The elevation rises gradually to the west and sharply to the north. Between its western coast and its central valley there are all manner of deciduous forest and mangroves, becoming sparser towards the ocean. The western coast is a wet-dry area, and from Rihad border to Anvil to the northernmost Valenwood villages forest fires are common in summer. There are a few major roads to the west, river paths to the north, and even a canopy tunnel to the Velothi Mountains, but most of Cyrodiil is a river-based society surrounded by jungle.

That sounds a lot more visually interesting and varied than what we actually got, doesn't it? It's funny how they managed to portray an entire province in Oblivion but made it look way more uniform in environment than Morrowind, which only portrayed part of a province (and when you look at the size of the Tamriel Rebuilt mod's landmass, it's not even half of the province) but had a huge environmental variety. Ashlands, grazelands, tiny rocky islands in the north and southeast, swamplands of the bitter coast, farmlands around Vivec, sparse mushroom forests. Besides, the landscape is designed in a way to give it character and noticeable landmarks. You have to navigate around mountain ranges, and the mix of steep mountains/flatlands/gentle hills makes even environmentally similar regions feel somewhat different.
Oblivion is rolling hills everywhere. Not even the shape of the landscape has any character to it (except the mountainous area in the north, bordering Skyrim).

Now let's take a look at how they butchered the Imperial city. It was essentially a mix of Venice, Rome and Constantinople, a massive city erected on several islands connected by bridges and with gondolas ferrying people to and fro.
Its culture and military strength centered in the sacred Nibenay Valley, a grassland expanse with a vast lake at its heart. Several small islands rose from this lake, and the capital city sprawled across them, crisscrossed with bridges and gondola ferries. Rivers connected the city-state to both its profitable outlying territories and the friendly inland ports of Skyrim and Pellitine. Rice and textiles were its main exports, along with more esoteric treasure-goods, such as hide armor, moon-sugar, and ancestor-silk.
Refayj's famous declaration, "There is but one city in the Imperial Province,--" may strike the citizens of the Colovian west as mildly insulting, until perhaps they hear the rest of the remark, which continues, "--but one city in Tamriel, but one city in the World; that, my brothers, is the city of the Cyrodiils." From the shore it is hard to tell what is city and what is Palace, for it all rises from the islands of the lake towards the sky in a stretch of gold. Whole neighborhoods rest on the jeweled bridges that connect the islands together. Gondolas and river-ships sail along the watery avenues of its flooded lower dwellings. Moth-priests walk by in a cloud of ancestors; House Guards hold exceptionally long daikatanas crossed at intersections, adorned with ribbons and dragon-flags; and the newly arrived Western legionnaires sweat in the humid air. The river mouth is tainted red from the tinmi soil of the shore, and river dragons rust their hides in its waters. Across the lake the Imperial City continues, merging into the villages of the southern red river and ruins left from the Interregnum.
The Emperor's Palace is a crown of sun rays, surrounded by his magical gardens. One garden path is known as Green Emperor Road-here, topiaries of the heads of past Emperors have been shaped by sorcery and can speak. When one must advise Tiber Septim, birds are drawn to the hedgery head, using their songs as its voice and moving its branches for the needed expressions.

Doesn't that sound fucking cool? Rivers that are stained red by the soil, homes erected on the sides of massive bridges, a city spanning several islands, moth-priests covered in big moths as if they were a robe, dragons taking baths in the rivers, a magical garden.

And most of this would have been technically feasible for Bethesda at the time. They claimed dragons would be too hard (but they did manage to implement them in Skyrim), but they could just have down-sized river dragons to not be giant flying reptiles but more like the size of a cliff racer or a cow. Absolutely technically feasible and nobody would have complained about the size difference. The city of Vivec in Morrowind showed that a massive city made of interconnected islands is possible, and it would probably have been way more navigable than Vivec with all of its confusing interiors.

Not to mention that all the intricate politics is gone, too. The lore spoke of cultural differences and political machinations between dukes. What we got instead was a country where politics are barely existant (despite the fucking emperor just having died, leaving the throne vacant and a temporary government of chancellors and ministers bickering about what to do about the Oblivion crisis) and the only cultural differences are that the one northern city has some Nord influences, the western city has Redguard influences and the eastern city has Dunmer influences, but Cyrodiilians themselves are monocultural. Oh yeah and the city guards of the different cities have different emblems on their uniforms.

What Oblivion did was the exact opposite of being creative with their source material. They had a whole hoard of creative ideas to work with, but decided to discard all of it in its entirety and replace it with the most bland, generic, unimaginative fantasy you could ever pull out of your ass.
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

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It's still got better combat than Morrowind, Jarl. And combat is the most important aspect of RPGs.

Sure, if you're a lore-fag or want a hiking sim, Morrowind is better. And if your idea of gaming is derping around gaping at scenery, Morrowind is better.

But if you want a game, Oblivion is the least worst TES due to its level scaling and combat mechanics. Also, Radiant AI is quite amusing.
 

JarlFrank

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I utterly despise the level scaling due to its artificial inflation of hitpoints and high-end gear.

I enjoy games for both the gameplay and the immersion/atmosphere, and Oblivion fails spectacularly at both. The combat system might be, at its core, better than Morrowind, but only barely. On the other hand, the stats and skills were dumbed down, the amount of different weapons reduced (now you only have "blunt" and "blade" and bows, where previously you had long blade, short blade, blunt, axe, marksman (which contained bow, crossbow, thrown weapons), spear), the equipment slots radically cut down from 16 to like 4 or 5, spellmaking and enchanting dumbed down, permanently hand-placed unique items replaced with full and thorough level scaling (it went so far as scaling unique quest reward artifacts to your level, so a legendary ancient sword would be weaker if you got it at level 1 than if you got it at level 20), etc etc etc.

I will grant you that combat on its own is better (but it still has stupid shit like blocking with a shield only reducing instead of completely negating damage), but you can't divorce the combat system from the rest of the game. And the rest of the game is an amalgamation of the worst design ideas ever, lumped together into one huge mess.

The way the scaling works also means you can exploit the systems: make all weapon and magic skills minor skills; only major skills contribute to level ups. Never use your major skills, keep raising your weapon skills. Do ungodly amounts of damage with high level weapon skills vs level-scaled level 1 enemies. Yeah, great fucking system design right there.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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Jarl, I've called Oblivion one of the worst games ever made. But it's still better than Morrowind because its level scaling keeps the challenge up, and its combat is better. Morrowind is challengeless and therefore meaningless to those who don't play RPGs for ripped-off Tolkien lore / hiking.

In Oblivion, the game can still be a challenge at 30th level. Not so in Morrowind or Skyrim.

Also, Oblivion questing is not as poor as Morrowind. I cite Dark Brotherhood. Moreover, Shivering Isles is 10 times the expansion Tribunal and Bloodmoon are.
 

Azdul

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Imperial legion used to wear Rome-inspired armor, their civilians looked like renaissance Italians.
Morrowind broke the lore first, you can thank Ken Rolston for that. In original source material imperial guards were not Roman Legionnaires, Bretons were never French, Cyrodiil settlers were not Italians, and Khajiits were not Jewish.
Maybe designers of Oblivion watched Lord of the Rings too many times - but it is still better than obvious and transparent real world inspirations of Ken Rolston.
 
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Lilura

RPG Codex Dragon Lady
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but you can't divorce the combat system from the rest of the game.

You can, though. You can play it as a dungeon-raider. Just go from dungeon to dungeon, hacking, shooting or bombing shit to pieces. And that's another thing: the dungeons facilitate tactics more than Morrowind ones. Not just the traps but the layouts. The 'Dex got it wrong, too: Oblivion is better than Gothic 3, not worse.
 

DalekFlay

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Apart from that, continuity pr0n is glorious and only sucks when the continuity in question itself sucks.

I'd rather a good game with fresh creative decisions than a game that sticks to every aspect of continuity for the aspergers nerds. Unfortunately Oblivion is neither, so we're both fucked.

I mean, the big problem with Oblivion isn't just that it broke the lore, but that it replaced really fucking cool shit with the most bland and unimaginative drivel you could come up with.

I agree with that 100%. You'll see me bashing Oblivion for lots of reasons, and a bland world with bland quests and stories is definitely one of them. I even said once they replaced a crazy interesting setting in Morrowind with something "that looks like what's outside my bedroom window." It's maddening. However I would still say sticking to continuity when you have an actual great idea that requires changing it is a silly thing to do. Make the best game you can. Bethesda just failed to do that.
 

Farewell young Prince into the night

Guest
I even said once they replaced a crazy interesting setting in Morrowind with something "that looks like what's outside my bedroom window."

*looks outside bedroom window*
latest
 
Self-Ejected

Lilura

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I agree with that 100%. You'll see me bashing Oblivion for lots of reasons, and a bland world with bland quests and stories is definitely one of them. I even said once they replaced a crazy interesting setting in Morrowind with something "that looks like what's outside my bedroom window." It's maddening. However I would still say sticking to continuity when you have an actual great idea that requires changing it is a silly thing to do. Make the best game you can. Bethesda just failed to do that.

You are so passionate about your popamoles... but not just any popamoles, TES popamoles. Meanwhile, you admit to having not played Jagged Alliance 2, ToEE or Silent Storm; not even IWD2.

Popamolers deserve not only to be "maddened", but to incur a stroke.
 

Funposter

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It's still got better combat than Morrowind

Sick of this meme. Morrowind's implementation of dice-roll real time action combat is bad, but Oblivion's floaty damage sponge combat is worse. At least when you hit in Morrowind it manages to do a decent amount of damage. Oblivion may have a continuous feeling of "challenge" thanks to bloated health bars and poor balance which encourages powerlevelling of non-class skills in order to max Endurance as soon as possible, but it also lacks any sort of feeling of progression. There is no arc for your character, they never overcome anything, they somehow manage to remain static in a world that continues to change around them. Morrowind becomes exponentially less difficult with each level up, but at least that imparts a feeling of progress and encourages you to actually go out and do things because there's a reason to do things.

Jarl, I've called Oblivion one of the worst games ever made. But it's still better than Morrowind because its level scaling keeps the challenge up, and its combat is better. Morrowind is challengeless and therefore meaningless to those who don't play RPGs for ripped-off Tolkien lore / hiking.

Except Morrowind is more difficult at the beginning of the game than Oblivion is, especially without metagaming knowledge. To imply that Morrowind's itemization somehow makes it easier, as I expect you to, is essentially the same as saying that reading the strategy guide for a game makes it easy.

In Oblivion, the game can still be a challenge at 30th level. Not so in Morrowind or Skyrim.

Unless you include the expansions, which you talk about below. Also Skyrim can be perfectly "difficult" at Level 30 in the exact same way as Oblivion, especially since Skyrim's levelling curve is explicitly different to Oblivion's, as is Morrowind's. Vanilla Morrowind arguably caps out at Level 23, as this is the highest value found in any of the levelled lists for equipment or monster spawns, applying to the ranom spawning of Ascended Sleepers in Sixth House cells. Golden Saint and Winged Twilight spawns in the overworld are set for Level 22. The spawns for Daedric Warhammers, Claymores and Dai-Katanas on Dremora Lords is set for Level 18, and that is the very tippy-top for equipment. Oblivion does indeed cap out at level 30 as best I remember, with most new enemy variants remaining static as Level 22ish, and then only having increasing health pools etc. and the best variants of items spawning at level 30. Skyrim is totally different, with a levelling curve set up for an endgame PC level of around 50. Basic levelled items top out at level 40+ in lists, but the strongest enemies such as Dremora Valkynaz do not spawn until level 46, Volkihar Vampires at Level 48, Ancient Dragons at level 50, Falmer Shadowmasters at Level 54. So to compare Skyrim at Level 30 to Oblivion is comparing apples and oranges, since Glass weapons have only just begun spawning on enemies, the equivalent of a Level 12 weapon in Oblivion.

Skyrim also has the advantage of being technically more difficult at the beginning of the game, with certain encounter zones such as all Dragon Priest Lairs being set up for a minimum PC level of 24, and Falmer caves and Dwarven ruins being set up for a minimum PC level of 16-18. Giants and Mammoths also exist in the overworld, with the former being able to famously one-shot players until the mid-game, and the latter being able to team up alongside Giants to actually kill wild Dragon spawns until well past the mid game. The only equivalent in Oblivion is the ruins containing Umbra. Morrowind also has a lot of this, with static NPC levels and some static creature spawns in places like Ibar-Dad locking off locations that are only meant to be for mid-late game.

Honestly, you're talking out of your ass. I get the feeling that you haven't spent a significant amount of time with any of these games, because it appears that you do not understand any of their intricacies.

Also, Oblivion questing is not as poor as Morrowind. I cite Dark Brotherhood. Moreover, Shivering Isles is 10 times the expansion Tribunal and Bloodmoon are.

That's all anyone talks about in Oblivion - the Dark Brotherhood, and it really is a very nice questline, but it also plays out exactly the same every single time and in exactly the same order. People also only talk about the Dark Brotherhood because the other questlines are fucking dreadful. There's also only four of them in total, compared to ten factions in Morrowind, all of them catering to slightly different character archetypes and allowing for different forms of player expression and roleplaying~! House Redoran, the Imperial Legion and the Fighter's Guild all fulfill the role of melee combat-based factions, but they are also three radically different factions with differing political and ideological outlooks. The Tribunal Temple and Imperial Cult exist as counterparts for religion-based characters, also mixing into the realm of the magical and the martial. House Hlaluu, the Thieves Guild and the Morag Tong are all technically stealth-based, but they are radically different, offering opportunities for players interested primarily in commerce and speech, in thieving, or in assassination. And finally, Magic is represented by the diametrically opposed Imperial Guild of Mages and the nativist House Telvanni, who bitterly dislike each other, with members of each suffering the largest Disposition hit in the game with members of the other. Members of the Mages Guild dislike Telvanni as much as the Temple dislikes Vampires, and vice versa.

So the quests themselves in Morrowind are fairly basic, but there is a larger variety of them, and they are no more basic than many of the quests in the Fighters or Mages Guild in Oblivion. Oblivion's only avenue for player expression is the choice between the Thieves Guild and the Dark Brotherhood for stealth characters. Of course there's no reason not to do both, since there is no interaction between factions. Oblivion is obviously a game made for people to play through every little bit of content available to them with a single character, hence the lack of skill requirements for guilds or interactions between them (remember in Morrowind how an early Fighter's Guild quest can lock you out of the Thieves Guild? Remember how you could only join one Great House?) Morrowind's lower effective level cap is eased by the fact that you probably want to create multiple characters to experience the different factions, since even completing a couple of them alongside the Main Quest will probably only have you at about Level 20 or so by the end of things.

The only thing I would agree without about is that Shivering Isles is better than Tribunal and Bloodmoon, but that's only because Tribunal and Bloodmoon are preludes to the design decisions which define Oblivion.
 

DalekFlay

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Sick of this meme. Morrowind's implementation of dice-roll real time action combat is bad, but Oblivion's floaty damage sponge combat is worse. At least when you hit in Morrowind it manages to do a decent amount of damage. Oblivion may have a continuous feeling of "challenge" thanks to bloated health bars and poor balance which encourages powerlevelling of non-class skills in order to max Endurance as soon as possible, but it also lacks any sort of feeling of progression. There is no arc for your character, they never overcome anything, they somehow manage to remain static in a world that continues to change around them. Morrowind becomes exponentially less difficult with each level up, but at least that imparts a feeling of progress and encourages you to actually go out and do things because there's a reason to do things.

Oblivion's melee combat really is terrible. It's the same whacky-whacky with no feedback on enemies, but without the at least moderately interesting stat aspect. That said I vaguely recall archery and magic being somewhat better. Archery is pretty good in Skyrim, everything else aside.
 

Funposter

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Sick of this meme. Morrowind's implementation of dice-roll real time action combat is bad, but Oblivion's floaty damage sponge combat is worse. At least when you hit in Morrowind it manages to do a decent amount of damage. Oblivion may have a continuous feeling of "challenge" thanks to bloated health bars and poor balance which encourages powerlevelling of non-class skills in order to max Endurance as soon as possible, but it also lacks any sort of feeling of progression. There is no arc for your character, they never overcome anything, they somehow manage to remain static in a world that continues to change around them. Morrowind becomes exponentially less difficult with each level up, but at least that imparts a feeling of progress and encourages you to actually go out and do things because there's a reason to do things.

Oblivion's melee combat really is terrible. It's the same whacky-whacky with no feedback on enemies, but without the at least moderately interesting stat aspect. That said I vaguely recall archery and magic being somewhat better. Archery is pretty good in Skyrim, everything else aside.

Archery is better since you can collect misfired arrows as well as reliably connect with sneak attacks. Indeed, I'd argue that consistent sneak attacking is the primary benefit of Oblivion's 'always hit' combat. Magic is better insofar as quick casting allows hybrid classes to function more effectively and magicka regeneration lets you use it more easily as your primary method of dealing damage, but there are less available spell effects and therefore less imaginative combinations available to the player. The lack of slowfall/jump/levitate also ends up making dungeons far more boring, since they're all navigable by every type of player and there's never any sort of roadblock that can stop you from being able to progress. Well, I guess there's one or two grottos that might require waterbreathing. Morrowind never really took advantage of this either, to be fair.
 

anvi

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Elder Scrolls games EWWWWWWWWWWW!!
 

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