Review Oblivion - The Second Opinion

[One Wolf]

well written, nice job.

if i didn't already hate oblivion from firsthand experience (thankfully at a friend's house), i would have steered clear of it based on the article.

 

[Dark Helmet]

@Dark Helmet- Where abouts in Maine are you from? I am just asking because I rarely find anybody on the net from Maine, especially from gaming sites. Are you Irish? This state is dominated by Irish immagrants and I am the only Whop greaseball who has to fend off the pricks by himself .

I live in Portland... yeah. And here's probably some Irish in me, but I'm mostly Spanish.

 

[The_Nameless_Prick]

Whats with the cute comments? I'm just trying to be friendly pal. Can't a guy be friendly to a person who lives in the same state anymore?

Fuck.

 

[Dark Helmet]

Sorry? Twas a bland response, yeah, wasn't trying to offend ya though.

Nice to see a friendly (nearby?) face of course.

 

[The_Nameless_Prick]

Bah. No offense taken, I am one of the more touchy of the Codexer's, alot of these morons will stick it in if you show a hole so I'm costantly on my guard. One guy here went WAY over the edge though and I cannot forgive that so I am still waiting to battle him in real life, man to man. I am from Rockland, BTW.

Back on topic, is this review some kind of second wave of attack against Bethesda? GREAT, but, the side effect might mean another wave of ESF refugees so more fucktardness.

 

[Section8]

The review is in essence the result of a jumble sale on my hard drives. It was there, so I polished it up a bit, made it looked finished, and pushed it out the door to make room for more arse porn.

 

[crpgnut]

I thought, after reading it, that it was textual arse porn. You should keep it for all posterior.

 

[Journeyman]

I don't mind the scaling, although it's too much, as I can still choose how to evolve my character and it 's much more fun to level and gain more sills.

There are consequences for inaction: Not finishing an assigned quest breaks a tenet in the Dark Brotherhood The Tents are nice but would like subfactions within the guild and the ability to side with targets allot more.

I agree I would like dialog options more akin to Gothic 3. I Want to get it but seems like sandbox faction battle with basic quests to me but after reading some of your review probably will get it.

"Outside of the more direct forms of narrative, there ought to be a solid grounding of fragments to derive from. An example of derived narrative would be taking a look at a cave, it's inhabitants, and their behaviours. Without any explicit storyline directed at the player, they should still be able to infer a certain background story. Fragments of information throughout the game world itself should tell a story. Just ask an archaeologist."

I agree: Finding evidence to the Dark Brotherhood in Uval Alvanis house seemed to lead nowhere. Could greatly be expanded on if they had more consequences within questing.

Sometimes the game feels like Deus EX where you can basically shoot through if you want but doesn't offer much intelligence in the sidequests like Deus EX did.
Multiple endings might make the game more like that.

I just think OBL had all the new graphics and tools and where afraid to insult the XBOX crowd as it was the first real multiplatform game they did. They seem to have everything in place but are too inexperienced to execute it.

 

[suibhne]

I don't mind the scaling, although it's too much, as I can still choose how to evolve my character and it 's much more fun to level and gain more sills.

Two experiences in particular defined the scaling for me:

1. I hit a particular level (18, maybe?) and suddenly found myself leaving a (fairly small) cave near Kvatch with 2 Glass hammers, a Glass bow, several pieces of Ebony armor, and an Ebony sword, all of which had been wielded by common bandits. Uh, lol?

2. At level 20+, I wandered into an inn near the Imperial City and found a group of mercenaries - all of whom had previously been wearing leather armor - decked out in full suits of Glass and Daedric armor.

Total bullshit.

 

[Journeyman]

I know. it gives the game an Unreal Torunament feel. I played and made mods for that, it really does. It's like one step away from UT.

Plus they shouldn't base all consequences on Reputation modifiers alone. I enjoy the faction based rep modifiers that , I THINK, NWN introduced; but they are totally way overused now.

I would rather the quests effect modifiers at every turn, but not as much as Arcanum though.
i think Daggerfall is like that as I'm playing.

Of course to do this they need to make the quests decently hard again.

 

[Risine]

Oblivion makes me think about those questions - with prizes to gain a plasma screen or some money or whatever - we have more and more on TV shows ( during football plays for instance ). Decades ago, the questions were made for "specialist" people, or they obliged people doing some research, and the good ones were rewarded.
Now there is no question anymore in the question sentence, or the answer is provided with the question, the kind of " what is the colour of the blue stone?". And then "Call us at 08... or send a SMS at..." at 10euros per call... The goal of course is clear, making the more people "play" in order to get the more money possible from them with overtaxed SMS.
That's the way I feel with the evolution of CRPG, and Oblivion of course, mainly due to the "obligation" of having the console porting in mind. That's sad, really!
All that to say that as there is no more interesting RPGs out those days, I'm coming back to the good ones. I have started again Fallout, wondering if not playing in real time would be too boring now. But no, this game is still a real pleasure and is really great !!!!

 

[A_Leftist_Pig?]

I don't know, I can't really bother reading it. But to me Oblivion was a perfection when it comes to role playing if you think about it. Sure the dialogue was crap and the game itself was addapted for twelve year old kiddos who can't think or read. But if you can imagine yourself being there and having a true conversation with the thief guildmaster and then deciding if you are to join or not while you have some good mods such as the one which makes you loose stats if you don't eat. Then you restrict yourself from fast-traveling or at least from fast-traveling all the time and... Well Simply by having enough self-strenght to restrict yourself and enough knowledge (doesn't take much) to download the right patches/updates/mods then the game can become quite good.

Still.. the quests... the godamn quests are so stupid and boring at times and it's really irritating that you cannot suffer nor progress cause of your language... well it's always stuck there back in your head when you play the game.

 

[Fez]

LARPing.