bozia2012 said:
That is untrue, mister!
"In the furthest and darkest caves" you'll fight vampires and in oblivion plane you'll fight dremoras (fully armored) and other deadra spawn, but what is "interesting" they're extremly weak and don't have any loot (that is if you would call "a carrot and a few septims" loot). Pathethic at best.
I must've got the gimped version of Oblivion.
The best I've had so far are imps (with rats in the same cave) shooting fireballs at me causing a massive 1/1000th of damage to my health bar. I mean, that's one whole hit point! I'm afraid here! How dare they actually attempt to provide any sort of challenge to me? They should just die when I look at them!
The same mentality that was behind Morrowind is clearly behind Oblivion though. You encounter an exciting new cave thinking "Oh wow, got to go in and check this out" and instead of finding a Dragon, the fight of your life and a bounty of ph4t loot to make it all worthwhile (think 10,000 in gold coin, 100 rubies and a flashy new sword), you're instead lucky if you encounter a rat guarding a chest with 17 gold in it and a spoon. A spoon? What's the point? Why am I doing this? Why am I even bothering with these caves when all I walk out with is 50 in coin and a handful of skulls to add to my collection? Okay, so I admit that the skulls are definitely worthwhile but the rest..? I've already found the guys who'll give me 250 gold for every dead vampire. Why should I even bother with 90% of the caves I'm visiting?
This is the same feeling Morrowind gave me. What's scary though is that I've maybe only done 20 or so(?) caves and already I'm wondering what the point is. At least in Morrowind I didn't get that feeling until after I'd finished the main quest and wandered over every inch of the island. With Oblivion, I seem to know that I've already seen everything the game has to offer. I have to say the voice changes are irritating the crap out of me too. I talk to a beggar who's fully voiced(!) except she changes voice 3 or 4 times if I'm lucky AND has absolutely nothing to say. It's either the same rumour about the fighter's guild or the Gray Fox (and while I'm at it, there seem to be an awful lot of "Gray" something or other's in the Imperial City, like "Gray Tongue") and I give them a coin and I'm on my way. Sure, the lists in Morrowind were information overload but it's like someone moved the lever right back to the other extreme of the spectrum. Hey Bethesda, somewhere in the middle beween the two if you don't mind, you might get lucky and find some balance somewhere in there. I doubt it though.
I like the "life story in 3 seconds" aspect too. I walk up behind someone to pass them but they jump me with a "How are you?" so I decide to talk to them and I get their entire life story delivered to me in the opening 3 lines. "My name is Aracius Marcellus and I'm an expert in stealth. Damn good too. I have a wife and we just bought a house in the market district". And what can I ask in return? "Uhhh.. RUMOURS?" I especially like the ones that add "idiot" or "moron" to the end of their speech, just to give it that authentic feel. Bethesda must've known they were on to a winner with that one.
The graphics are the other thing bugging me. I've got a 2.4 Ghz Pentium IV, 1 Gig RAM and (used to have) a Radeon 9200 SE graphics card. This machine has had no problems displaying the beautiful people in Half-Life 2. It ran Bloodlines without a problem. I chewed through Doom 3 in a few days with it all looking good. Unreal Tournament 2004 with its long view distances wasn't a problem for it and neither was Far Cry, which had some beautiful tree filled forests and absolutely huge viewing distances. Battlefield 1942 and Battlefield Vietnam both run fine, both with their huge viewing distances and the latter with its quite involved forests, grass included. Sure, I wasn't running these on full settings but somewhere in the mid-settings range. But Oblivion? Nope. I needed a new graphics card just so I could play it (I got the "why is everything white" problem). So with a new Radeon 9550 SE (el-cheapo, the decent one will come with the new PC sometime next year) what do I see in Oblivion? I have to turn the grass off, the trees are right down to the lowest value which makes them look like utter crap and it runs... well, it's playable but it looks like crap and there are times when it could be better. How come Far Cry looks so much better and can run fine yet Oblivion can't handle it? Where's all the processing power going? Does "Radiant" AI suck up that much? Hell, even the forests in IGI 2 look better with the game running better and that has the same long-range viewing distance as Oblivion.
I have to admit I am some-what enjoying the combat now though. Emphasis on the "some-what" due to the lack of challenge and the fact that I seem capable of taking fireballs to the face without harm nor injury. Actually, the combat is almost like the lockpicking and persuasion mini-games. Once you figure out the rhythm and the pattern, there's no challenge. Block. Block. Block. He swung at me and is stunned, power attack. Block. Block. He's swung and is stunned again so deliver 2 quick blows while I can. Block. Compare that to the lockpicking game. Knock pin up, the click sound isn't right, knock pin up, ahah that's the right click sound I'm looking for so I'll quickly click that one in place. Move on to the next pin. The sad thing is that the lockpicking game wouldn't be half-bad if there was actually some challenge to it. Make wiggling the pin into place harder, there should be a whole aspect there with wiggling the pick around in the lock and moving the mouse just carefully enough to get it into place, get the right sound and lock it in. As it is I can tear through a "Very Hard" lock in all of about 3 seconds. Of course, all I find is 3 gold and a pair of clogs but hey, it was worth it...
Oh wait, no it wasn't.
