Review Oblivion Review

[Vault Dweller]

... did you intentionally find times when the graphics were looking ugly?

Which ones? The dungeon screens look great, imo, but again, the darkness is the converting from bmp to jpg issue. The views are a mix of good & bad, but that's how it is in the game. Basically, up close and personal everything looks great, anything at a distance looks like shit.

It doesn't seem like the PR screenies were this bad.

Never trust the PR screens.

 

[LaDoushe]

No, I suppose the dungeons do look good, but the romantic opportunity shot looks terrible. The scenery shots look ok, but not as good as FFXI, which came out 2 years ago. Of course, everything looks different in motion, so I wont really know until I play it.

 

[Vault Dweller]

No, I suppose the dungeons do look good, but the romantic opportunity shot looks terrible.

Well, Tamriel is home to some really ugly people, I can tell you that much.

The scenery shots look ok, but not as good as FFXI, which came out 2 years ago. Of course, everything looks different in motion, so I wont really know until I play it.

Trust me, that's the case of "what you see is what you get". It looks kinda godawful unless you are 10-15 steps away. There is no comparison to games like Far Cry, for example.

 

[Solik]

Please, give specifics if you have a problem with the review.

My problem with the review was mostly its structure.

Do you honestly think the game gave you choice?

I haven't done a vast number of quests. However, thus far, two of them had obvious, explicit choices presented to me. One of them was the Pale Pass quest, which VD presented. Another allowed me to choose two methods of dealing with a problem guard captain -- sneaking into his room to get evidence about his actions, or working with an irate townswoman to have him murdered. I think a couple of the others also had multiple solutions, but I'm not sure, as I haven't tried them again with another character. I've also found more than one way to get through those "linear" Oblivion gate dungeons.

Are you saying those portals where they wait for you are the exceptions?

You might notice that I said "often" exceptions instead of "always" exceptions. At any rate, if that particular issue worked as VD appears to desire -- real invasions of demons pouring in killing everything -- the complaint from this crowd would have been that you were forced into the main quest with every character you rolled, no matter what you wanted (otherwise the world would end).

Again, "every gate is more or less the same". Is that also an exception?

Not an exception so much as plain wrong. The Oblivion plane dungeons from the main quest are each solidly different. In some, you'll have to crawl through lengthy, cramped caves; in others, you'll need to visit one or more lesser towers to open gates guarding the main tower; in still others, you can find roundabout ways to access the primary tower directly (especially if you're good at Acrobatics). The last two gates in particular were quite different than all the others. The random gates in the wilderness were generated similar to Daggerfall's dungeons -- piecemeal from the main gates. So, it's understandable if he saw some similarities in there; as with its celebrated predecessor, the random dungeons contain repeated areas connected randomly together.

What about this "I don't really see a reason for a fighter to pick Blade, Blunt, and Hand to Hand skills and spend time raising all three, considering that these skills are practically the same and have the same perks". Is that an exception to the rule too? Are the skills actually so diverse and amazing that once again, VD has merely seen an exception?

Choosing multiple weapon types has the same advantage in Oblivion as in any other RPG -- greater flexibility in using weapons. Fighters have a lot of trouble recharging magic weapons, and charges expire quickly, so being able to use any magical weapon you find is quite useful. Hand-to-hand can serve as an adequate backup if your weapons break (which happens quickly) and you run out of repair hammers (or otherwise choose not to take Armorer skill). Then, of course, there's the fact that your stats increase based on your skills, so it's a useful way to get the stats you want up.

To illustrate -- the character I beat the game with was something of a fighter/thief. I had light armor, blade, speechcraft, mercantile, marksman, block, and security. I also had a high restoration skill, so I was a decent enough healer. Beating the game with this character was extremely difficult -- oftentimes, I had to fall back on my speed and run like hell. In contrast, I'm now playing a pure mage, and having a much easier time with it (except that I'm using some mods that change levelled lists, so the game's difficulty is actually higher... but I'm still better off with this build). The characters are actually relatively balanced, but I didn't take full advantage of my first build's skills (which should have allowed me to always have lots of great equipment).

 

[Vault Dweller]

I've also found more than one way to get through those "linear" Oblivion gate dungeons.

The towers are always the same, are they not?

At any rate, if that particular issue worked as VD appears to desire -- real invasions of demons pouring in killing everything -- the complaint from this crowd would have been that you were forced into the main quest with every character you rolled, no matter what you wanted (otherwise the world would end).

Well, if one makes a dark game about a demonic invasion ... I mean, nobody in "this crowd" complains that you are forced out of the vault in Fallout, no matter what you wanted, right?

...piecemeal from the main gates. So, it's understandable if he saw some similarities in there; as with its celebrated predecessor, the random dungeons contain repeated areas connected randomly together.

Well, there are few main quest gates and probably close to a hundred random, same-looking gates. Considering that the main quest was always merely a side-dish in TES games, you can see why I focused on the "meat" of the game.

Choosing multiple weapon types has the same advantage in Oblivion as in any other RPG -- greater flexibility in using weapons. Fighters have a lot of trouble recharging magic weapons, and charges expire quickly, so being able to use any magical weapon you find is quite useful.

I thought that my review did mention that you can successfully use any magic weapon with any skill.

 

[miles foreman]

In morrowind's combat system, it didn't matter, I didn't have any choice about what to do anyway, I could swing my axe or swing it in a manner that did less damage. I have more choices in gothic 2, but the enemies have absolutely no variety to their attack patterns.

The three types of melee in oblivion (1 handed + sheild, 2 handed and fistfighting) each have different speeds and blocking patterns, which makes your choices about attacks, power attacks and blocking meaningful.

So oblivion combines enemy variety (like morrowind or daggerfall) with player options in combat (like the gothic games), this makes it different from any of them. It's combat system is still far less sophisticated than jedi outcast, but it's still better than any action RPG to date.

Ok, I see where you were going. I still think you're splitting hairs. Ranged combat vs. melee is really the only real difference, despite varying weapon speeds and what not. If we want to compare first-person melee combat, how about Mount & Blade's system? While not perfect I think it's much better than Oblivion's alternative. Not only that, but the fights in M&B are still challenging even though the enemies do not level with you. A lot of that has to do with the world design which doesn't use magic but "real world" iron or steel weaponry. This also illustrates a point I was trying to make: The equipment in Oblivion is specifically designed to be better or worse depending on it's quailty. Daedric armor is much better than Steel. However, since the game levels all the creatures along side you, you'll never really notice the difference because you're forced to upgrade to keep up with the NPCs you fight. If you don't then you're handicapping yourself.

The game (I would think, anyway) is designed for me, the player, to do the things that the player is supposed to do. I should be getting more powerful as the game progresses, not the other way around.

But if everything's the same at level 1 and level 50, then it *doesn't* matter what tier you're at. Each encounter is different because they're random, the encounter isn't dependant on your level, but why should it be?

It does matter in one aspect, which I briefly touched a few lines above. Because everything is progressing along with you, the player is forced to upgrade his equipment in a linear fashion in order to continue to compete against the computer. In Morrowind, I could run around in Iron or Fur armor at a high level and not feel penalized fighting opponents because I was superior to them in skills and attributes. Why Bethesda took away this from the player I'll never know.

If you do something difficult and feel you should get a balance-breaking UBAR SWORRD, just open up the console and give yourself one, if the gameplay isn't fun in and of itself, how is the game periodically giving you UBAR ITEMS!!! going to make it any better? So you *can* upgrade your stuff 'when and how you feel', but what possible purpose would doing so serve?

Dungeon Siege, Diablo and MMOs all have crap gameplay and people still play them because play time is rewarded with stats going up and PHAT LEWT!11!, if that's what you want out of the game, play them, DS2 will give you all the loot you can handle.

I've played every CRPG game produced since fallout except DS2, the diablo series (and diablo clones like sacred), MMOs and H&S (if you consider it an RPG). The vast majority have involved a certain amount of equipment-upgrade bullshit, the worst I've ever played in that regard is final fantasy tactics which has identical items upgrading like clockwork every chapter (just like the TES series), the next in line would be dungeon siege which barrages you with crap to sift through after every encounter. I'd personally like to see the whole stupid system abolished but as long as there are people that enjoy watching numbers go up on a screen, It'll never happen.

I don't understand you. If you don't like "watching numbers go up on a screen," why would you play CRPGs? That's what they do. They're about role-playing a character (or a party of characters) and having them interact and grow with the world they're adventuring in. That includes stat building and equipment upgrades. That's what these games do. That's what PnP RPGs do too. What exactly are you looking for? It doesn't sound like a CRPG to me. Perhaps Adventure-style gaming would be more up your alley, no number crunching or anything of the sort. I think the sequel to The Longest Journey is out, Dreamfall. I'm going to pick it up myself.

 

[don_tomaso]

Nice review.. Also, its fun to read the battle between miles and crichton, always entertaining with a good fight..

So, has anyone any fun ESF links to share regarding the review?

 

[Dhruin]

Well, it's been discussed to death before, so here is a short version. DF had a great, maybe even the best character system supporting very unique and well defined characters with their own strengths and flaws. The game design worked with those skills, so your Thief could actually climb walls - how fucking amazing is that? The gameworld was huge, with 30+ factions, and tons of quests, catering to your build, to do, i.e. a monk could investigate appearance of deities, a mage would be called to cast powerful spells, summon things, etc. You could decline guild quests that didn't fit your character or were of no interest to you. The storyline was non-linear and had 6 different endings, if I recall correctly.

Well, yes....and no. I'm not debating that Daggerfall isn't a much better RPG than Oblivion. It has been discussed before so feel free to ignore this.

What I don't see is the same line that makes Oblivion only an adventure, whereas DF is apparently a brilliant RPG. 30 factions, more skills, more quests..."more" probably makes it better but being an RPG isn't about the quantity.

Anyway, if it had 6 endings I obviously didn't stick with it long enough - I found it dull as dishwater.

 

[Solik]

The towers are always the same, are they not?

Only the small one-room side towers, although it is true that the main towers are quite similar.

Well, there are few main quest gates and probably close to a hundred random, same-looking gates. Considering that the main quest was always merely a side-dish in TES games, you can see why I focused on the "meat" of the game.

Er. The random Oblivion gates only appear if you're doing the main quest.

I thought that my review did mention that you can successfully use any magic weapon with any skill.

I would reply with "that's not what I meant," but I'm pretty sure you are aware and were getting in a minor zing.

 

[Briosafreak]

The review felt a bit thin to me, there's so much more that could be said...

But i like the writing, VD mainly contradicts the PR, and this game is all about the PR, this is a Pete Hines game, in the sense that all it will sell comes from the dream game Hines convinced almost everyone that it was going to be, providing carefull excuses for everything that could be criticised, wich most gamers and reviewers i know fell for it, and creating complete hoaxes, like the Radiant (lack of) AI that the majority seems to fell for it.

This is a Pete production, so it needs a contradictory in the style of VDs review.

A bit thin, but nice read, very interesting, maybe some update could be made later on?

 

[Nog Robbin]

I'd say that's a pretty fair review - or as some may point out, it agrees with my perception of the game overall. I actually liked the inclusion of the dev's quotes - nice to be reminded of the claims when faced with the reality

Overall it's a reasonably enjoyable romp as an action adventure. You can't take it seriously as an RPG in any way shape or form - nearly every quest I've undertaken (or seen undertaken by my 12 year old and 8 year old daughters) have no real scope of doing it any other way than the devs decided - most obviously when it comes to the dialogue sections. You can't lie your way through things, or hide things - and often the dialogue forces you to say/do something without even being able to quit the conversation. A prime example being Baurus at the beginning - you can't even deny knowing about the amulet, or blame another assassin for having taken it or anything. It's all so... rail roaded.

I agree that the invasion of the weakest demons ever is a real farce. I was scared of Daedra in MW - even scamps when I first saw them! Now they're nothing. Less than nothing in most cases. It's also daft that the gates appear and yet nothing really happens - you don't even get a steady stream of Daedra ravenging the countryside (other than a few within about 10m of the gate).

The sneak is useful, but awfully implemented. Very little penalty on what you are wearing or carrying (sneaking with a torch?). You're either seen or not seen - so it's not a marker to let you know how well you believe you're doing based on skill, surroundings, light, noise - just another pyschic alert as to whether you've been seen or not. Also, to top this off, unless you run particular mods (hide and sneak?), once you've been detected there's no escaping their notice - even if you fire and duck out of sight before the missile hit. Yet conversely you can send a fireball to land right next to someones feet, or shoot a wall in front of them and they don't so much as blink.

The levelling reduces the challenge and desire to loot to an absolute minimum - you know you're not going to find anything at all interesting until such point everyone else already has it. Some quests that seem to speak of huge rewards are also pitiful.

The AI is really very minimally enhanced from MW. Sure - now characters have schedules. So instead of seeing them walk the same place for 24 hours, or stand in the same place for 24 hours, you can now often see them walk to a place at a certain time, then either walk about aimlessy or stand staring at nothing for best part of the day, before walking home and repeating before eating and sleeping. Hardly what I would call an immersive and living/breathing world.
On top of that the voice acting whilst being a grand attempt is let down severly by the sheer shortage of voice actors implemented meaning everyone sounds related - even of different races - and that voices can change quicker in a single conversation than you expect from the most severely affected schizophrenic person. To compound this you can complete a quest for someone only to have them gushing about how helpful you've been and how much they like you, only to return a few moments later when they seem to have totally forgotten you and won't tell you something as they don't trust you, or demand you leave them alone. The NPC's have no memory at all, and no environmental awareness.

Odd as this may sound, I am still deriving some pleasure playing it - though I now spend far less time playing it, and more time watching my two younger daughters play it; the 12 year old often commenting on how the conversations are poor and she doesn't get chance to say what she wants her character to say (or do) yet enjoying the dressing up in the different armours as they are eventually unlocked, and the 9 year old joining the guilds to swipe every single thing of value from right in front of them and hock it at the nearest shop. I've never seen emptier guild houses than the ones my daughter has been too.

 

[NeVeRLiFt]

A good review, and far less lambasting of Oblivion than I would have thought from what I've read of VD's opinions of the game.

The style caused a few chuckles -- a sort of Codex debunking of developer's statements that worked well. I particularly liked the screengrabs used -- they illustrated the points you were trying to make perfectly.

ditto :wink:

 

[Crichton]

I don't understand you. If you don't like "watching numbers go up on a screen," why would you play CRPGs? That's what they do. They're about role-playing a character (or a party of characters) and having them interact and grow with the world they're adventuring in. That includes stat building and equipment upgrades. That's what these games do. That's what PnP RPGs do too. What exactly are you looking for? It doesn't sound like a CRPG to me. Perhaps Adventure-style gaming would be more up your alley, no number crunching or anything of the sort. I think the sequel to The Longest Journey is out, Dreamfall. I'm going to pick it up myself.

Dungeon Siege I + II, diablo et all, MMOs, NWN, Morrowind and whatnot all do that too, but as far as I'm concerned they blow.

The things I actually like in CRPGs are -

-Storyline (something actually worth paying attention to)
-Different character possiblities (fighter or mage)
-Choices within the game (ally with the bandits or not)
-Dialog

Some CRPGs also include
-skirmish tactics (ToEE, infinity engine games, Gold Box games)

or

-Nifty twitch combat (bloodlines, Deus Ex, Obilgius, gothic games)

Oblivion has two of the six, twitch combat and character possiblities, this isn't great after all Gothic II has the maximum 5/6, but it's worth playing, DS, Diablo and company have one of the six (character possiblities).

Most CRPGs also include

-Level grinding bullshit
-item grinding bullshit

As long as these don't get in my way, I don't care, but character "growth" just screws up the balance one way or the other and adds nothing to gameplay, going from level 1 fighter to level 50 fighter is just a timesink.

 

[AnalogKid]

Most CRPGs also include

-Level grinding bullshit
-item grinding bullshit

As long as these don't get in my way, I don't care, but character "growth" just screws up the balance one way or the other and adds nothing to gameplay, going from level 1 fighter to level 50 fighter is just a timesink.

Holy shit, do you understand that you've just exactly stated why Oblivion swallows such copious amounts of semen? That's also the thing Oblivion has most in common with all those other action games you list as undesirable (Diablo, et al). Going from level 1 to level 50 SHOULD BE MORE MEANINGFUL THAN JUST BEING A TIMESINK. The meaning is derived from being able to overcome things that you previously couldn't. The same holds true of getting better loot. It's only PHAT LEWT if it's meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

If you busted your ass for weeks, staying up late studying for a tough test, and then the school compensated by giving you a test requiring you to prove line-integral theorems, while some dumbfuck who got drunk all the time got a test asking what is 2+2, how much would you feel like you wasted your time? The solution is not to eliminate the concept of character growth, but to actually make it MEANINGFUL by having CONSEQUENCES within the game world.

You sure you aren't a Pete Hines alt? "This character growth is such a boring, get-nowhere waste of time in all these other games, let's not make it better, let's just fucking cut it."

 

[LlamaGod]

I noticed all the dumb kids just showed up.

Mommy must've just brought them home from daycare D:

 

[Vault Dweller]

What I don't see is the same line that makes Oblivion only an adventure, whereas DF is apparently a brilliant RPG. 30 factions, more skills, more quests..."more" probably makes it better but being an RPG isn't about the quantity.

It's not, it's about having many diverse opportunities to play a unique character in the manner that you want. Again, DF developers made a great character system and built a huge game around it. Think about what I just said. It wasn't about the story, although it was better than MW/OB, it wasn't about multiple quest solutions, it was about making a very well defined character, and then finding out that the game has something just for you, giving you very good reasons to be glad you picked those skills. Something like that.

The review felt a bit thin to me, there's so much more that could be said...

Well, it's a big game. When I finished page 7, I thought that I should start wrapping things up, otherwise people would feel that they are reading a fucking novel. It doesn't look like that now, but... Anyway, I believe that 4,000 words is a reasonable length.

A bit thin, but nice read, very interesting, maybe some update could be made later on?

What (areas) would you like to see covered?

 

[Tal]

I liked the review, but maybe you could go a little more in depth about level scaling and how once you reach a certain level almost every bandit in the game starts wearing uber armor that they could buy a house with, yet they still shake you down for 100 gold. :shock:

 

[Vault Dweller]

That's what the picture of bandits in ebony armor was for.

 

[LlamaGod]

What a land when nobility must resort to thievery.

Or what powerful knights managed to get jacked by them.

 

[Crichton]

Holy shit, do you understand that you've just exactly stated why Oblivion swallows such copious amounts of semen? That's also the thing Oblivion has most in common with all those other action games you list as undesirable (Diablo, et al). Going from level 1 to level 50 SHOULD BE MORE MEANINGFUL THAN JUST BEING A TIMESINK. The meaning is derived from being able to overcome things that you previously couldn't. The same holds true of getting better loot. It's only PHAT LEWT if it's meaningless in the grand scheme of things.

If you busted your ass for weeks, staying up late studying for a tough test, and then the school compensated by giving you a test requiring you to prove line-integral theorems, while some dumbfuck who got drunk all the time got a test asking what is 2+2, how much would you feel like you wasted your time? The solution is not to eliminate the concept of character growth, but to actually make it MEANINGFUL by having CONSEQUENCES within the game world.

The only way to have leveling have consequences in the game world is to give it an effect on game difficulty (i.e. make the game grow easier as your character becomes UBAR). Many CRPGs implement this, but it's nothing to their credit.

Take G2 for example, in the beginning, the very weakest creatures are decent fights, anything else is darn near impossible without NPC help (balance problem). As you spend time leveling (TIMESINK) your charcter gets stronger and so those weaker enemies become mere KOTOR-style speedbumps (balance problem), some enemies move into your power range and you can have a decent fight with them, some are still too tough (balance problem). Eventually, after grinding ~40 levels (TIMESINK), everything is in the speedbump catagory (balance problem).

Now imagine that there were no levels, PB could simply set the weaker enemies to be weaker than your character, set the normal ones to be about the same and set the strong ones to have somewhat of an edge on you. As it stands, which is tougher, fighting the young wolves on the road to khorinis or fighting the dragons? Answer: the wolves because you're fighting them at level 1, whereas you'll fight the dragons ~ level 25. It's likely that you'll be stronger than the dragons by the time you face them. That's right, the same dragons that everyone is huddled in fear in, that weigh 5 tons, fly and breath fire, and your 180 lb guy with sword has more hit points and hits harder than they do. WTF kind of sense does this make?

If you couldn't simply grind into being a demigod, then it might be a hard fight and require a certain amount of skill, as it stands, all you need to do to win is "work hard" by doing a bunch of tedius grinding, i.e. by spending TIME leveling. Obligious keeps the grinding in there for people who like watching numbers go up, but it does what it can to keep the balance so that you don't have to grind if you don't want to. Naturally all the MMO kiddies are in an uproar over not being "rewarded" for their time.

 

[MacBone]

Great review VD! I thought you it gave it a fair shake, but did you intentionally find times when the graphics were looking ugly? !

I haven't played Oblivion yet, and probably won't for a few years, but I've yet to see a nicely-rendered NPC head in a screen shot. Morrowind's heads were even worse, but the independently released head replacers gave much better alternatives. Seems like Bethesda completely ignored the modders' work. Or, perhaps, they'll be releasing thier own head replacer (for only a modest sum, of course).

 

[LlamaGod]

The idea for Gothic 2's monsters were to actually be fearsome and hard. At level 1 you're on par with the farmers, not even the city guard. As you should be since you're level one.

What they fear, you fear.

It's alot more immersive to have realistic monsters like that, i'm tired of this bullshit where monsters should always be able to be defeated by the player whenever. It doesn't cause you to be afraid of them or try to avoid them and it makes the NPCs sound like idiots when they scream about them.

 

[Crichton]

It's alot more immersive to have realistic monsters like that, i'm tired of this bullshit where monsters should always be able to be defeated by the player whenever. It doesn't cause you to be afraid of them or try to avoid them and it makes the NPCs sound like idiots when they scream about them.

And does it stay immersive when you're level Googelax and more HP, do more damage and whatnot than the monsters? If a man can grow stronger than orcs or dragons by practicing, why doesn't everyone do it? And you'll notice the higher level NPCs do. Why send you after the dragons if Lars and Xardas have more hit points than the rest of the world combined and hit hard enough to punch through steel?

That's why my favorite "immerision" game is actually star wars battlefront. I'm just one more little robot, if I fuck up, I get blown up and have to take control of another robot, but the world doesn't end, because there are 50 other robots in my platoon and they can struggle on without me for a little while.

 

[LlamaGod]

Gothic 3

 

[Jung]

And does it stay immersive when you're level Googelax and more HP, do more damage and whatnot than the monsters? If a man can grow stronger than orcs or dragons by practicing, why doesn't everyone do it? And you'll notice the higher level NPCs do. Why send you after the dragons if Lars and Xardas have more hit points than the rest of the world combined and hit hard enough to punch through steel?

Not everyone can be the chosen one.