Review Oblivion tickles RPGDot's fancy

[DarkUnderlord]

Tags: Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

<a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/">RPGDot</a> have slapped up their Oblivion review after presumably being one of the first review sites to actually play the game for more than 3 hours (logging 70+ hours so far). Now here's a carefully selected piece taken from the review designed to interest you enough to <a href="http://www.rpgdot.com/index.php?hsaction=10053&ID=1217">go over their and read it</a>:
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<blockquote>Fact is, that Oblivion is an incredible, satisfying experience for me; fact is furthermore that I would certainly rate this game highly myself if I hadn't decided to NOT do a numerical rating at the end of the review. Yet beyond all the amazing things in Oblivion there are others that are bad - design decisions taken by Bethesda that might have been taken with good intentions but backfired. I consider the game rather unenjoyable for me the way Bethesda shipped it. This is said from the perspective of someone who is an old school role player and has good knowledge of the The Elder Scrolls (TES) lore. It's of course not unplayable in a technical way - it's just that... it doesn't feel right.
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So: On the one hand, I think this is an outstanding game, and on the other hand I think it fails to deliver? Am I nuts? No. Let me explain.</blockquote>
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... and explain he does.
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Thanks <b>Rendelius</b>!

 

[Elwro]

An interesting review, but either I missed something or it doesn't say anything about dialogue, which for me is an essential part of RPGs.

 

[Micmu]

An interesting review, but either I missed something or it doesn't say anything about dialogue, which for me is an essential part of RPGs.

There isn't one.

 

[Brother None]

An interesting review, but either I missed something or it doesn't say anything about dialogue, which for me is an essential part of RPGs.

Nope, you're right, nothing.

I guess Rendelius thinks having stunning graphics is more important than having dialogue of any sorts.

Also, seeing this opinion expressed again kinda annoys me; the opinion that Oblivion is a diamond in the rough "but that's ok 'coz the modders will fix it."

Modders fixing up a hugely flawed game does not make it ok. Shit.

 

[bryce777]

An interesting review, but either I missed something or it doesn't say anything about dialogue, which for me is an essential part of RPGs.

Nope, you're right, nothing.

I guess Rendelius thinks having stunning graphics is more important than having dialogue of any sorts.

That's actually pretty funny.

 

[Greatatlantic]

An interesting review, and it follows a trend I'd like to see more of (less emphasis on numerical ratings). I also like how he says the game has flaws that should have been obvious to anyone who played it right from the get go, or should have become obvious within reasonable play time (bandits with epic armor).

Personally, I thought the game needed comments on dialogue and combat.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

...no point-rating-system... pretty odd...

 

[TalesfromtheCrypt]

...no point-rating-system... pretty odd...

I think it's a very legitimate way to go.

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

A good and balanced review, but I was also surprised by the lack of comment on the dialogue.

 

[HardCode]

The next thing you get is the most impressive AI in a CRPG by now.

Is this guy on crack? What a fucking load of horse shit. I guess he only every played TES. "Impressive AI" is AI that stares at the walls, or makes short, random, meaningless, illogical conversation? Or doesn't care that you just killed their friend/partner or barged in their house at night?

Gothic II's AI is 1000% better than Oblivious.

I am really starting to think that game companies and game reviewers have a Politician-Lobbyist relationship going on.

 

[mckracken]

Once the awesome graphics wear off, you are left with repetitive combat and a boring main quest.

Running around in the wilderness and finding dungeon XY with tileset XY and 3 chests with 40 gold in them is not my idea of fun when it comes to that overhyped non-linear approach everyone is preaching since years.

I myself hope to finish this game soon and move on.
It is good enough to play through once, Ill say that much.

Oh and those, like 2 guys they hired for the entire game's dialogue is really dragging this thing down unnecessary.

 

[aweigh]

I am really starting to think that game companies and game reviewers have a Politician-Lobbyist relationship going on.

ORLY

 

[GhanBuriGhan]

The next thing you get is the most impressive AI in a CRPG by now.

Gothic II's AI is 1000% better than Oblivious.

It's certainly more effective in portraying a living world. However, there is no denying that Gothics schedules are much more railed and rigidly scripted than what RAI does. It just doesn't end up looking all that impressive. Conceptually RAI really IS pretty cool. It grants the NPC a lot more autonomy in how to achiev goals. E.g. you can schedule an NPC to do marksman practice at this specific hour. How he gets a bow and arrows is actually up to him, but the visible effect in the game is dissapointing - if he has been given bow and arrow he will just go and practive (which is nice but not WHOA!). If you don't, chances are all you see of the NPC's effort is a) he pickpockets someone and gets killed by guards 9and you will never know that it was about the bowshooting) or b) He goes and buys one, for which there are no animations, even if you were lucky enough to be in the shop at the time. So it's just not impressive in the end result.
Nevertheless, while I would agree that it's not the best attempte at "living NPC" that price goes to Ultima VII and Gothic, it doesn't quite deserve all the knocking - it works well enough in adressing the complaint regarding MW's static NPC's to a considerable degree - just by seeing NPC in different places and doing different things (eating, sleeping, reading, mixing potions, practicing, walking the dogs, patrolling, changing guard, traveling). What does deserve knocking is the hype that Bethesda created over it - it's just not that cool

 

[HanoverF]

The reviewer sounds a bit like an abused spouse, bruised, beaten, and bloody with a couple broken ribs, still saying Beth is a good man, and didn't mean to hurt her.

Plus I refuse to believe anyone who had actually used the stealth or archery would say they were a good alternative to hack-n-slash, or well implemented.

 

[Naked_Lunch]

In oblivion, bows = fucked

I didn't like the melee combat at all, so I decided to try a sneaky archer and the bows are just waay underpowered. It takes even a couple of hits to take down goblins (and I'm using a mod that gets rid of the leveled world) and they're a pain in the ass to use in dungeons and cramped places where a lot of enemies come and swarm you, leaving no other option besides hack 'n slashing.

 

[elander_]

Two final thoughts: First, some people feel that Oblivion has been dumbed down during development. That's one way to see it, and if you compare Oblivion with the complexity Daggerfall offered, a legitimate one. On the other hand, you could also phrase it positively: Oblivion has been streamlined, and in my opinion, this works out pretty well.

Long post ahead. I think this short paragraph as a lot to commnet about.

The problem here is that they failed in streamlining the game. You seam to imply in a certain naive way that streamlining is allways a good thing but it's only a good thing when it is done right.

Your review contradicts itself in the end when you mention that streamlining was positive and at the middle of your review you mention how raising levels and skills doesn't feel right and how leveled items also don't feel right. You also mention how other skills besides combat look worthless because most problems are solved by combat.

All these problems where solved in Arena and Daggerfall. It's obvious that Ken Rolston, the designer of Oblivion, is not grasping the system that was innovated with Daggerfall. He doesn't wan't npcs to betray the player because it's not fun. He doesn't wan't templated quests in the game because they are too repetitive. He doesn't like the advantages/disadvantages system (that is an heritage from GURPS) because the player can screw his own game if he is dumb. He likes linearity and to have linear plots for the player to follow and progress in guilds.

This was all ok if his solution solved these problems. In fact it is exactly the oposite. Oblivion UNIQUE quests are barely such a huge improvement from Daggerfall ones. Just add more templated quests and more developded ones to that old game and it would easly match Oblivion. Templated quests or unique quests what maters is quest writing talent, variety and some idea of what rp is about. Templated quests mater for use based skill systems a lot.

Oblivion UNIQUE dungeons are too repetive. In fact Oblivion was made from blocks just like Daggerfall was. So theres nothing unique in them as they repeat these some blocks in every other dungeon. So they are hand-made and sometimes they provide a suprise. Anythig remarkable in these suprises? There were hand-placed suprises in Daggerfall dungeons too. But you couldn't make 1000+ dungeons all by hand. The point is this uniqueness argument is another hype design idea that is falling like all the Fable hype did. Don't expect to see a lot of unique dungeons in Oblivion. It looks like a good dose of random content and hand-made content is the best option.

So the new Oblivion system is idiot proof? Think again. About 99% of Oblivion quests are about combat and because of the use based skill system if the player doesn't use his combat skills intensively and levels-up using other skills like Alchenmy, Speechcraft or Sneak the game will become unplayable as monsters will be leveling with the player and he won't be able to beat them with low combat skills. So we get lots of idiots complaining on the ES forums that the game is too hard because *gasp* they were trying to role-play something other than a fighter.

In this case Oblivion can be corrected with mods. I supose it's just pure amateurism and lack of understanding of the Daggerfall system and use based skill systems in general that they didn't balanced this right. Claiming that a game is a dungeon crawl with ridicule size dungeons or a combat oriented game and an rpg at the same time is not having a clue how things work. An action oriented rpg it may be as long as they replace tb with action combat but still provide other role-playing material to level-up solving problems using the other skills.

In other words to make Oblivion idiot proof they should have forced the player to pick up at least one combat skill and make leveling strongly dependent on that combat skill with other skills working as support skills only. The point remains Oblivion skill system can be easly broken if the player tries to role-play.

Finaly plots and guild progression. Well in this area i see some advantages in the way things worked in Morrowind. We all know dialog was a joke and most quests were writen with someones ass holding his pen. But imagine for a moment that dialog was great, character personalities were great, faction inter-relations and reactions in general were great if not at least reactions that didn't break immersion in a clumsy way.

Morrowind had many guilds and the same guild was present in different places offering alternate paths to raise in the guild. In Daggerfall guilds offered refusable quests but the menu of quests was basicly the same everywhere. Daggerfall offered quests that respawn and Morrowind offered a lot of similar quests (just image these were well writen for a moment). I realy don't know what to think in relation to this maybe a mix of the two would be the ideal. Also a plot is good but it doesn't have to be mandatory or linear. It could have different outcomes depending on the player class, skill and reputation. Oblivion just reduced the number of guilds and number of quests available for different classes so the outcame was the predictable one: people complaining in the forums. And there would have been more unless for the simply reason that whatever the player does he barely has to use his brains to play this game.

 

[mckracken]

In oblivion, bows = fucked

I didn't like the melee combat at all, so I decided to try a sneaky archer and the bows are just waay underpowered. It takes even a couple of hits to take down goblins (and I'm using a mod that gets rid of the leveled world) and they're a pain in the ass to use in dungeons and cramped places where a lot of enemies come and swarm you, leaving no other option besides hack 'n slashing.

Nope, I'm an expert archer and a journeyman blade, but the bow is waayyy more effective.
Especially since you don't have to heal at ALL with a bow, if you play somewhat smart.

I do more damage with a bow as well. (of course you have to have high attributes as well)

 

[bryce777]

The problem with procedural content is that it takes programming talent. Not synching up animations talent, not figuring out directx talent, and certainly not modding someone else's engine or level design talent.

All the areas that require computer science knowledge and programming talent in this game fail miserably. Just look at the AI (which should have been pretty easy) and the pathfinding (even easier) and the physics implementation (time consuming, but easiest of all).

These guys just fucking suck, plain and simple. Daggerfall was buggy, but as a professional programmer and former game programmer I was pretty damn impressed back then. Amazed, more like.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

Plus I refuse to believe anyone who had actually used the stealth or archery would say they were a good alternative to hack-n-slash, or well implemented.

Stealth and/or Marksman can't really be alternatives (playing the whole game with only them could be annoying/hard?), but they fucking rocked as my secondary dependancies (my primary combat tactic was to use Blade & Heavy Armor).

I've recently restarted a game with "Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul" (vanilla OB is way too easy), but in my first game, I had a stealth/heavy combat hybrid. I rocked the house.

I had (near the end of my first game) Sneak at 100, Blade at 100 and Marksman at 75... I killed about 75% of my enemies with the bow. Where as in the early game, I killed most things with a blade, because then, yes, those skills just weren't good enough, yet. Sneak & Marksman get better the more you play (I could literally get in front of monsters' faces in dark caves, and they wouldn't notice me -- heavy armor didn't even give me any negative effects on my stealth, because I had overcome those with the Sneak perks).

 

[bryce777]

The next thing you get is the most impressive AI in a CRPG by now.

Is this guy on crack? What a fucking load of horse shit. I guess he only every played TES. "Impressive AI" is AI that stares at the walls, or makes short, random, meaningless, illogical conversation? Or doesn't care that you just killed their friend/partner or barged in their house at night?

Gothic II's AI is 1000% better than Oblivious.

I am really starting to think that game companies and game reviewers have a Politician-Lobbyist relationship going on.

He is just a moron/fanboi. He has fallen for the hype, which positions bugs as features. I can't decide if it's more funny or sad.

Also, it shows his ignorance or rpgs as a group to think this is good behavior.

 

[Rendelius]

The next thing you get is the most impressive AI in a CRPG by now.

Is this guy on crack? What a fucking load of horse shit. I guess he only every played TES. "Impressive AI" is AI that stares at the walls, or makes short, random, meaningless, illogical conversation? Or doesn't care that you just killed their friend/partner or barged in their house at night?

Gothic II's AI is 1000% better than Oblivious.

I am really starting to think that game companies and game reviewers have a Politician-Lobbyist relationship going on.

He is just a moron/fanboi. He has fallen for the hype, which positions bugs as features. I can't decide if it's more funny or sad.

Also, it shows his ignorance or rpgs as a group to think this is good behavior.

Why do I even bother, bryce? Well, maybe because I mean what I said. And I can explain it.

I love both Gothic. And I acknowledge that the scripts for NPCs there are very well thought out. But in no way the AI there is 1000% better. Why? Because the NPCs have a much more narrow set there. Yes, the set is more elaborated, but what Obvlivion does for the first time is to give NPCs a certain amount of freedom as well. Furthermore, their system is expandable, and it won't take long before the first modders combine theAI packages present in Oblivion to create extremely interesting things.

As I wrote, RAI does things wrong as well, but the concept is really a big step into the right direction.

Because it was asked why I didn't write more about dialogues: I found the ones belonging to the quests amusing and well done most of the time. I am a little bit handicapped there, english isn't my first language and maybe I fail to see subtle nuances that others would find disturbing or boring, but for me, they were nicely written and, most of the time, well performed. The glitches (like change of tone) are there, and they are understandable when you look at the scope of the project. These things are recorded in pieces and put together later on, so inconsistencies have to happen - a human voice is dependend on how the speaker feels. I am talking about something I know from my own experience, I do a lot of voice recordings for commercials as studio director - that's part of my job. I am working with professional artists, and sometimes, even if the recordings are just one day apart, it is impossible to get the two pieces fit together perfectly. Voices change a lot.

 

[bryce777]

The next thing you get is the most impressive AI in a CRPG by now.

Is this guy on crack? What a fucking load of horse shit. I guess he only every played TES. "Impressive AI" is AI that stares at the walls, or makes short, random, meaningless, illogical conversation? Or doesn't care that you just killed their friend/partner or barged in their house at night?

Gothic II's AI is 1000% better than Oblivious.

I am really starting to think that game companies and game reviewers have a Politician-Lobbyist relationship going on.

He is just a moron/fanboi. He has fallen for the hype, which positions bugs as features. I can't decide if it's more funny or sad.

Also, it shows his ignorance or rpgs as a group to think this is good behavior.

Why do I even bother, bryce? Well, maybe because I mean what I said. And I can explain it.

I love both Gothic. And I acknowledge that the scripts for NPCs there are very well thought out. But in no way the AI there is 1000% better. Why? Because the NPCs have a much more narrow set there. Yes, the set is more elaborated, but what Obvlivion does for the first time is to give NPCs a certain amount of freedom as well. Furthermore, their system is expandable, and it won't take long before the first modders combine theAI packages present in Oblivion to create extremely interesting things.

As I wrote, RAI does things wrong as well, but the concept is really a big step into the right direction.

Because it was asked why I didn't write more about dialogues: I found the ones belonging to the quests amusing and well done most of the time. I am a little bit handicapped there, english isn't my first language and maybe I fail to see subtle nuances that others would find disturbing or boring, but for me, they were nicely written and, most of the time, well performed. The glitches (like change of tone) are there, and they are understandable when you look at the scope of the project. These things are recorded in pieces and put together later on, so inconsistencies have to happen - a human voice is dependend on how the speaker feels. I am talking about something I know from my own experience, I do a lot of voice recordings for commercials as studio director - that's part of my job. I am working with professional artists, and sometimes, even if the recordings are just one day apart, it is impossible to get the two pieces fit together perfectly. Voices change a lot.

The only extra things it does are wrong things.

The truth is that what you really need for a game is verisimilitude, an appearance that the NPCs have lives that make sense. Instead, oblivion delivers jarring idiocy - sure, characters are doing stuff, but the stuff they are doing is by and large laugh out loud stupid. It may be better than morrowind, but it is hardly a step forward for the genre....

 

[Licaon_Kter]

...no point-rating-system... pretty odd...

I think it's a very legitimate way to go.

i've said that before reading the review...
after i've read it my first thought was "sheess this is like the 'Oblivion blow job competition', but Bethesda hit some teeth"

this way fanbois can say: "he said 0bl1\/10n RULLLLZZZZ" and codexers can say: "he did a good evaluation, he played and he told the world that (the) Oblivion (hype) is flawed"

so, now i think he should use this no-points system for every other game that he reviews from now on... or those/the other games are not worthy of comparison?

 

[bryce777]

...no point-rating-system... pretty odd...

I think it's a very legitimate way to go.

i've said that before reading the review...
after i've read it my first thought was "sheess this is like the 'Oblivion blow job competition', but Bethesda hit some teeth"

this way fanbois can say: "he said 0bl1\/10n RULLLLZZZZ" and codexers can say: "he did a good evaluation, he played and he told the world that (the) Oblivion (hype) is flawed"

so, now i think he should use this no-points system for every other game that he reviews from now on... or those/the other games are not worthy of comparison?

I think it just allows us to judge a review on its merits. I always look at why a game supposedly sucks or rocks. In most reviews it is for idiotic reasons, if they give any reasoning at all.

 

[Diogo Ribeiro]

It doesn't matter how many things a game tries to do. What really matters is how well it works. Radiant AI may be a step forward in theory but in application its incredibly backwards.