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Review Oblivion massacred by Softpedia

Hazelnut

Erudite
Joined
Dec 17, 2002
Messages
1,490
Location
UK
It's not just here though - it seems everywhere opinions have to be polarised, almost like it makes it more valid if it's at the extreme end of the spectrum.. i.e. utter shit / best evar.

I must say I'd not noticed you defending Oblivion Ghan, just trying to be objective about it.
 

Prime Junta

Guest
One Wolf said:
i only played oblivion for about 12-15 hours before uninstalling it, and i couldnt find anything enjoyable about it at all. i played as a rogue and mainly stole shit, but even that got ruined by gaurds that would somehow magically appear even when i hadn't been detected by anyone/anything.

Actually, that goes away after you join a faction. I think they did it to get you thrown in jail so you'd get the offer to join the Thieves' Guild. Doesn't make it any less of a brain-dead design decision though.

plus, i kept trying to murder people, and the gaurds showed up every time, even when i killed my target before it called out for the gaurds.

i didnt manage to join the dark brotherhood, but i guessed that i would never really be able to play an evil character, which is disappointing. plus the overall ambience was so jovial i was generally pissed off and just dying for some murdering.

so perhaps the game improved later on, but i'm satisfyed that i played enough to know that yes, in fact, it is a steaming pile of dogshit.

I would say that it does improve further on, if going from being actually embarrassing to merely boring can be considered an improvement. (And yes, it is possible to become a vampire and play the Dark Brotherhood, but since the NPC's are just about as exciting as painted sticks it feels about as evil as beating up on scarecrows.)
 

Ratty

Scholar
Joined
Mar 24, 2006
Messages
199
Location
Zagreb, Croatia
Voss said:
1) What PA games are you referring to? The handful by independent developers that failed miserably?
Metalheart, Restricted Area, Afterfall, Outcome, Wasteland Wolf, New Dawn, a number of NWN and Morrowind mods... Then there are other, non-PA games that are *heavily* inspired by Fallout setting and mechanics, like Omega Syndrome. Have a look at the news section over at No Mutants Allowed to get a better idea of just how influential Fallout is.

I disagree here. The old Gold box D&D games emulated P&P rules fairly well. So did ToEE. Fallout didn't feel like P&P to me. A fun computer game, yes, but P&P feel generally invovles other people. Interface and visual don't make sense to me in reference to P&P games. Since they inherently lack both.
Gold Box games and TOEE were quite linear and heavy on dungeon crawling. While most P&P roleplaying sessions come down to just that, the roleplaying ideal is a non-linear plot in a fully dynamic world, and Fallout does a much better job delivering that.

As for the Fallout visuals and interface, they were completely designed around the game's P&P orientation. From the isometric perspective and hex grid emulating the view of that old table in your mother's basement with a map and cool plastic figurines on top of it, to the almost total exile of textual feedback into the informative console inconspicuously placed in the bottom left corner of the screen, Fallout practically screams pencil & paper and I really find it perplexing that you missed such an obvious design point.

Eh. I didn't find fallout that open ended. You ran out of things to do, regardless of whether the game ended or not. And frankly, the elder scrolls series has proved to me that open-ended-ness in CRPGs is just a bad thing, and an indication of lack of quality. Its interactivity... eh. About normal for the period. Only limited items could be used, terrain essentially untouchable (with a few exceptions) and a good chunk of the populace just spouted floating text.
In Fallout, quests can be performed in any order and in a number of different ways - or not at all, seeing as practically every quest is optional. Theoretically, you can beat the game in minutes if you know where to go and what to do. Fallout is practically the epitome of open-ended gameplay.

If the Elder Scrolls games led you to believe that open-endedness is undesirable in RPGs, then I suggest you get a memory wipe, because your perception of computer roleplaying has become horribly skewed and completely wrong.

You know, the dialogue didn't strike me as new or innovative. Maybe its the passage of time, but I don't remember a 'Wow, this is the first time I've seen a dialogue interface this cool' reaction.
Diagnosis: amnesia. A typical RPG of that era still had topical and often very generic dialogues. Conversation trees of Fallout's level of complexity and with full dialogue lines to navigate them were fairly uncommon (as I recall, Ultima VII was the most advanced in that respect), and *dynamic* dialogue trees (with different nodes depending on the character's stats, allowing for some pretty amazing stuff like "dumb dialogue") were, as far as I know, non-existent.

Do they really? What passes for the media just seems orgasmic over the latest fad or hype, and the industry clearly has its collective head shoved up something nasty and dark. They certainly aren't using fallout design to shape current projects. Mostly, I just get the feeling that the Fallout love is limited to some old timers on boards like this.
It's really not my fault you don't see the status Fallout has in the media and gaming community.
 

elander_

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,015
Voss what tha hell is the 7th circle and does it has to do with role-playing?
 

elander_

Arbiter
Joined
Oct 7, 2005
Messages
2,015
Prime Junta said:
But from a game design/mechanics POV Fallout wasn't particularly innovative or ground-breaking; it just did very well what had been done before. Its appeal comes from the clever dialogue, characters, and details like Vault Boy, the quirks and perks in the S.P.E.C.I.A.L system, the sheer mass of stuff to do, the twists on the familiar and the unfamiliar, the tremendous range of options for accomplishing stuff, and so on.

Then tell me what other games did what Fallout did before him? I don't recall any other game that for example would show a movie with the outcome of each town based on the player actions in that town. Falout was crpg taken to an extreme. Even the interface and the game manual were done in a role-playing style. The Vault Boy figure of the manual was used to explain security procedures to Vault Citizens. I bet Bethesda will misunderstand it's use.
 

One Wolf

Scholar
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
Messages
311
Location
Planet X
Theoretically, you can beat the game in minutes if you know where to go and what to do[in fallout]

in fact, i saw a video on the net where a guy beats fallout 2 in just under eight minutes.

in regards to oblivion, i suppose the seething rage and utter disappointment i feel for the game made me eager to cast it down as worthless shit, but i suppose that not everyone who enjoys it is as moronic as the majority that sing its glory all over the god damn internet.

ps-tetris rules.
 

pantheon

Novice
Joined
Nov 6, 2005
Messages
63
Location
Putting Old Gods to Bed
Oblivion is marketed as the 'Quintessential RPG of the Next Generation'
They just got the words a bit mixed up.
It should read: 'Quotadian RPG for the Next Generation'
 

Voss

Erudite
Joined
Jun 25, 2003
Messages
1,770
Ratty said:
Metalheart, Restricted Area, Afterfall, Outcome, Wasteland Wolf, New Dawn, a number of NWN and Morrowind mods... Then there are other, non-PA games that are *heavily* inspired by Fallout setting and mechanics, like Omega Syndrome. Have a look at the news section over at No Mutants Allowed to get a better idea of just how influential Fallout is.

So you are referring to a bunch of non-entities that failed miserably. Or mods, even better. Thats influence alright.

Gold Box games and TOEE were quite linear and heavy on dungeon crawling. While most P&P roleplaying sessions come down to just that, the roleplaying ideal is a non-linear plot in a fully dynamic world, and Fallout does a much better job delivering that.

As for the Fallout visuals and interface, they were completely designed around the game's P&P orientation. From the isometric perspective and hex grid emulating the view of that old table in your mother's basement with a map and cool plastic figurines on top of it, to the almost total exile of textual feedback into the informative console inconspicuously placed in the bottom left corner of the screen, Fallout practically screams pencil & paper and I really find it perplexing that you missed such an obvious design point.

Well. Theres a lot here thats a lovely matter of perspective. For one thing, the 'role-playing ideal' has changed a lot over the last decade, and Crpgs started with the same Gygax-oriented dungeon crawl that D&D started out with.
And interestingly, when I P&P a lot back in high school, or even college, hex maps and minis weren't the centerpoint of the game. We didn't use them, actually. On the rare occassion that we couldn't keep track, something was sketched out on scrap paper. And the maps we're generally handled on square graph paper, so no, the hex maps didn't do anything for me. I never actually used hex maps and minis in PnP games until D&D 3.0/3.5, despite having tabletop wargaming as another hobby.

And the poor feedback & tiny text console in Fallout annoyed me, more than struck me as annoying more than anything else.


In Fallout, quests can be performed in any order and in a number of different ways - or not at all, seeing as practically every quest is optional. Theoretically, you can beat the game in minutes if you know where to go and what to do. Fallout is practically the epitome of open-ended gameplay.

If the Elder Scrolls games led you to believe that open-endedness is undesirable in RPGs, then I suggest you get a memory wipe, because your perception of computer roleplaying has become horribly skewed and completely wrong.

And yet, which approach is popular, which is selling, and which is being produced more and more often? Thats right. My 'skewed' view of computer roleplaying is essentially all you can get from mainstream developers. One of the major reasons I've lost a lot of interest in the industry.

Diagnosis: amnesia. A typical RPG of that era still had topical and often very generic dialogues. Conversation trees of Fallout's level of complexity and with full dialogue lines to navigate them were fairly uncommon (as I recall, Ultima VII was the most advanced in that respect), and *dynamic* dialogue trees (with different nodes depending on the character's stats, allowing for some pretty amazing stuff like "dumb dialogue") were, as far as I know, non-existent.

You're possibly right on this one. But sadly, all its lead to is the
1) good choice
2) a 'request for more info' loop that leads right back into the choice
2) hesitant choice ANNNDD
3) evil but accepting it choice.
All of these flavors, of course, lead to the same outcome.

So it hasn't progressed much beyond Ultima in any meaningful way, has it?

It's really not my fault you don't see the status Fallout has in the media and gaming community.

It certainly doesn't show in the games that actually get made, and really, thats the only thing that matters in the end. A small group of people can chew some theoritical status like festering cud all they want, but if nothing comes of it, its pretty meaningless. And, now, we're at this lovely point with Oblivion- crappy products that I have no desire to buy. Because really, a Bethesda made Fallout 3- do you really think its going to be more like Fallout 1, or more like Oblivion?

Thats right, they're going to go with their own formula that sells significantly more copies and they can easily bribe the gaming rags into over hyping it. Even if it is complete shit.


@elander- 7th Circle is the guy back on the first page of this thread who was trying to explain simple concepts like analogies to you.
 

Ratty

Scholar
Joined
Mar 24, 2006
Messages
199
Location
Zagreb, Croatia
Voss said:
So you are referring to a bunch of non-entities that failed miserably. Or mods, even better. Thats influence alright.
Half of those games are still in development, dude.

My point is that pretty much every PA project nowadays is Fallout-inspired or claims to be Fallout-inspired, simply because Fallout has such a unique and amazing PA setting that it has influenced PA subgenres to such an extent that "post-apocalyptic" is practically identified with "Fallout".

Well. Theres a lot here thats a lovely matter of perspective. For one thing, the 'role-playing ideal' has changed a lot over the last decade, and Crpgs started with the same Gygax-oriented dungeon crawl that D&D started out with.
Games evolve. Early action games were simplistic too, and nowadays you can't play Red Orchestra without going through a boot camp first.

CRPG design has progressed as well, towards the ideal roleplaying experience I mentioned. Fallout is an important milestone in that evolution, because it takes all the achievements of its predecessors in the fields of open-ended design, storytelling, interactivity, combat mechanics and other elements, combining them into a fleshed out whole. Simply put, it is a paradigmatic CRPG and will remain such until some capable team springs up and takes the genre to the next level.

And yet, which approach is popular, which is selling, and which is being produced more and more often? Thats right. My 'skewed' view of computer roleplaying is essentially all you can get from mainstream developers. One of the major reasons I've lost a lot of interest in the industry.
It's not secret that CRPGs are dead as a mainstream genre. That's beside the point here.

You're possibly right on this one. But sadly, all its lead to is the
1) good choice
2) a 'request for more info' loop that leads right back into the choice
2) hesitant choice ANNNDD
3) evil but accepting it choice.
All of these flavors, of course, lead to the same outcome.
In BioWare games, maybe.

I'm curious, have you actually played Fallout?

It certainly doesn't show in the games that actually get made, and really, thats the only thing that matters in the end. A small group of people can chew some theoritical status like festering cud all they want, but if nothing comes of it, its pretty meaningless. And, now, we're at this lovely point with Oblivion- crappy products that I have no desire to buy. Because really, a Bethesda made Fallout 3- do you really think its going to be more like Fallout 1, or more like Oblivion?

Thats right, they're going to go with their own formula that sells significantly more copies and they can easily bribe the gaming rags into over hyping it. Even if it is complete shit.
Again, beside the point. There are barely any space-themed 4X games out there these days. Does that make Master of Orion inconsequential for the genre?
 

One Wolf

Scholar
Joined
Sep 27, 2005
Messages
311
Location
Planet X
"When war becomes literally continuous, it also ceases to be dangerous. When war is continuous there is no such thing as military necessity. Technical progress can cease and the most palpable facts can be denied or disregarded."

1984?
 

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