Oblivion on PS3 + PSP with new lame faction

[Human Shield]

[
No, Xbox players complained about the interface that was very much a PC interface.

Yeah the Morrowind interface was pretty PC. VD probably meant more into the phrase.

Dumbing down? Check.

Again, no.

Morrowind actually expanded and even if you can complain about the remove of the backgrounds system and its replacement with the sign system the fact remains they added to the series.

Only thing you can complain is it was more linear that Daggerfall but Daggerfall is hardly the example of non-linerality to start with.

Expanded what? Less number of skills and less interesting ones, removed time limits, less guilds, removed logical limitations for a consistent world.

Oh yes, like Daggerfall had much roleplaying to start with ...

We have been through this before. Daggerfall had greater ability to develop a defined character build (special trait selection has pretty sweet) and to find a guild that you like. The world was more consistent (don't be guild leader for every guil, and you could find a guild that you like. Even the random quests were more interesting and a bunch had more then one answer compared to Morrowind's.

 

[Drakron]

By guilds you mean the religious orders.

Morrowind had the Tribunal, putting the nine divines in seperate orders in Morrowind would be against of how that province worked, the Imperial cult also worked well.

Sure there was no Dark Brotherhood but that was its equivalent (and origin), also they added three great houses so in the end and the Legion.

So we lost 4 "guilds" ... also lets not forget such guilds were no longer giving random missions but flesh out with giving diferent outcomes at the end, I remenber the Fighter Guild had 2 diferent paths and lets also not forget those guilds conflicted so it was possible by taking a mission in a Guild would mean being booted from another (and you could only be on one of the great Houses)

And dont give me the shit about Daggerfall background system, it only good to min-max characters and its as flawed as the sign system (both suck at some degree, the sign system sucks because they are unbalanced) and yes, some skills were removed but climbing on a engine that lacks climbing? sure I missed swimming that sould be in there but most stuff was removed because they were no longer possible, a great diference of Oblivion "lets lump bladed weapons in one skill".

 

[OverrideB1]

There was a distinct shift from role-playing to action with DF to MW, but DF beat MW hands down in the role-playing stakes, simply because there were (gasp) consequences to your decisions and skill-selection.

What was an excellent character-creation system was dumbed down to the eponimous 'birth signs'. Not that DF's system lacked faults, but it was a masterpiece compared to what MW offered. Same with many of the skills, sure -- the MW engine wouldn't support them (climbing in particular). But then you have to ask yourself why Bethesda went for an engine that wouldn't support the excellent spread of skills that DF had. Too cheap/lazy to develop their own? Incapable of doing so? Or just so contemptuous of their fan-base that they couldn't be arsed?

People laud the side quests in MW, but I found them every bit as crappy as the (almost) identical Fedex quests in DF. Go there, fetch this, come back, get your reward. At least DF had the advantage of not sending you to the same place, for the exact same thing, every time you played through.

But Ob is a whole new quantum leap in retardedness. From the ever decreasing number of skills, through the mind-numbing hand-holding, to the tedious and puerile dialogue. No levitation, no Nine Divines (in the very heartland of the religion for fuck's sake), a blatent disregard for their own lore, mammalian lizards with boobies, no thrown weapons despite the highly hyped Havok physics, no crossbows, fewer side quests -- all of which can be solved using Todd's Theorum of Role-Playing*, a MQ that is every bit as much linear as MW's or DF's (even though DF had the 6 possible endings that at least gave the illusion of variety), never-fail spell-casting and never-fail alchemy ('cause we know how frustrating it gets for little boys and Todd when they can't do something first time), missile-firing staves, LOTR wannabe elves.... shit, the list is endless and very, very fucking depressing.

So, DF was a masterpiece compared to MW. MW signalled the future of Bethesda games. MW was a bloody marvel in comparison to Ob. Ob is the light at the end of the tunnel we all knew was an oncoming train...


*Todd's Theorum of Role-Playing
Hit it with your blunt axe, whack it with a short/long sword/dagger type thingy, blow it to shit with a rocket-launch... er, I mean Staff, or snipe it with your super powerful, fully-Havoked, LOTR bow like the wee Legolas wannabe you really are... It's all fucking role-playing man!

 

[Vault Dweller]

NOT AGAIN FOR THE LOVE OF GAWD!!!!
Oh well...

Not sure about the biggest piece of crap, but it was definitely the downfall of the *RPG* series. Consolization? Check.

No, Xbox players complained about the interface that was very much a PC interface.

Who said anything about the interface? Consolization = both lowering game limits and capabilities to make it playable on consoles and appealing to the console crowd. Oblivion suffered from the same fate not only during the design, but even closer to the release when the PC version was toned down (dynamic shadows) to mirror the console version.

Dumbing down? Check.

Again, no.

Morrowind actually expanded and even if you can complain about the remove of the backgrounds system and its replacement with the sign system the fact remains they added to the series.

Added what? You are being awfully vague here. DF had more skills, more builds, including alternative builds, advantages, disadvantages, levelling speed, etc. MW replaced all that with a vanilla system (greatly "expanded" as a concept in Oblivion), and the sign system was just some (often lame) bonuses added to your character for extra uberness.

The character system was well matched by the design and climbing in particular was superbly done as a sound alternative to levitation.

Only thing you can complain is it was more linear that Daggerfall but Daggerfall is hardly the example of non-linerality to start with.

Example or not, the game was non-linear. MW wasn't.

Shift from role-playing to HAWT and mindless AKSHUN? Check.

Oh yes, like Daggerfall had much roleplaying to start with ...

Imagine that. You had a trackload of guilds and tasks to choose from. Want to specialize in spellcasting and provide services by casting often hard to cast spells? You can. Want to serve a temple and investigate appearances of deities? You can. Want to offer you protective services and guard people and guild halls? Again, you can. Didn't like a quest? Just say no. Etc.

It's not a Fallout level of role-playing, but it's a role-playing nonethefuckingless.

In Oblivion these "features" that were tested in MW were increased tenfold.

Oblivion is a completly diferent beast and what remains of TES is free roaming and some basic mechanics, a lot of Morrowind players were up in arms because of Oblivion.

In fact the lore players are very pissed off ... Morrowind had a very unique theme and expanded a lot of TES lore with Oblivion only giving contradictions without expanding on anything.

Oblivion takes from LotR, not from Morrowind.

Oblivion may have been an attempt to jump on the LotR train, but the features were tested in MW. MW has shown that shifting the game focus toward the mindless action and simplicity will attract way more people than it would alienate. Increase the dose, rinse, and repeat.

 

[elander_]

Daggerfall was one of the most role-playable games ever made. We can build almost any character and keep playing it to what level we want. They didn't follow the usual scheme to do this. Instead of creating quests with multiple solutions the player goes searching for role-playing opourtunities as guilds and commoners quests apropreate for his skills. It's a sort of self-service system with almost absolute freedom. Theres repeatable quests and unique quests for everyone including stealth quests, combat quests, detective work quests. You can even play the game with a character that has only language and social skills. The only thing that was missing was crafting skills.

On the rep side the game has reputation per kingdom (nobility and law are separate), town, faction, individual npc, diety, social group. Theres a reputation table that connected every single group to every other group.

Not to mention the 1000+ dungeons that were generated and some hand-made to simulate a rogue-like dunegon crawl experience. Everytime you take a quest even a repeatable one you get new dungeon, new npcs, new objectives. Dungeons had an extra dimesnion to rogue-like dunegons. We can access places by climbing pits, swiming under water flooded corridors, solve lever puzzled, avoid pit traps like in the old style dungeon master games.

Theres no way to compare Daggerfall to Morrowind. These are two completely different games. Just one correction, Daggerfall quests are templated quests not random quests. Templated quests are still hand-made but more flexible and dynamic than normal quests.

Truly Daggerfall was a moment a creative madness more than a game, similar to what was done with Darklands and other crazy games. I enjoy crazy and bold atempts at creating new gameplay so Dagerfall interests me and im also interested in remaking it just for the fun and nothing else. I think it was predicatble and even aceptable that they would not follow its legcay. The game is too alien. Instead they have choosen a more familiar model that was Ultima 7 and it would be a good idea, if it didn't come out the way it did because of you know who.

 

[sheek]

As for FO3 and TESV, I still have some vague hope that Todd will get pink-slipped before work starts on either of these in earnest and that we might, just might, get a couple of decent games. Not holding my breath though...

They won't do that. Todd is just a delivery boy who designs his games acording to what the producer who pays his salary wants him to do. He is just a place-holder without any ideas of his own. If is Bethesda the producer that decides what the game is suposed to be they could at least hire someone who can differentiate a crippled game from a functional game, but the comic thing of all this is that aparently it doesn't matter.

Exactly. It doesn't matter who the developer is, the question is who holds the money. When what you have is a bunch of Wall Street yuppies and Democratic Party suits in charge, guys who never played an intelligent game in their lives, don't expect not to wait unil you asphyxiate. Lead developers are just prostitutes, paid to talk a load of nostalgic bull to pull in the more naive geeks. They don't have any power even if they wanted to exercise it.

I can tell you that I did not buy Oblivion. I won't buy TESV and I won't buy Fallout 3. I wouldn't buy them for $5 and I wouldn't download them if I had a T3 connection and a 200 Gb hard drive.

I might buy Gothic 3 and NWN 2, but only if I find them for less than $20.

 

[elander_]

That is not even half the mud that are the relations between publishers and developers. We would expect that with Tim Cain without a job the publisher would see the benefit of having him as Fallout 3 lead designer. But that would mean some guys at Bethesda publisher would stop being useful and loose their jobs because he knows more about Fallout than all of Bethesda employes put together. So we will have Todd boy in there for a long time because he does what he is told and even cleans their shoes with his tong without arguing.

 

[Mr Happy]

Oh yes, like Daggerfall had much roleplaying to start with ...

No ES game was ever the best RPG, but Daggerfall, and to a lesser extent Morrowind, had amazing worlds. Bam.

 

[Lumpy]

By the way, is there any Daggerfall clone out there?

 

[elander_]

I have searched for that myself, but no other game has taken the rogue-like experience to 3d. Diabo did this sort of but it was only 2d. The questing and rpg mechanics is similar to Darklands. Besides these two games nothing else compares. Theres really only about half a douzen of game models that people keep reusing and theres those game models like Daggerfall that are so different from everything we would have to have a classification just for it.