Why do people hate Oblivion so much?

[Arbiter]

So basically the Codex existing is Todd's fault.

It just works.

Barely.

Just like a Bethesda game.

Indeed, Codex is as buggy as AAA releases, for example I never received achievements for 250 and 500 brofists.

 

[anvi]

I am surprised someone hasn't made a generic RPG called Morrowing.

 

[Lemming42]

I believe that expectations of RPG players after Morrowing were huge. Bethesda instead decided to design Oblivion for 12 year old console players - hence streamlining and horrible UI utilizing huge fonts. In addition to that, Oblivion was marketed as "an RPG for gamers that do not like RPGs". All of this created outrage among hardcore RPG players.

I've said this kind of thing before in these threads but Morrowind was already a huge step down from Daggerfall, and the differences between Morrowind and Oblivion are nowhere near as vast as people tend to make out. They're both games where nothing you do matters, with half-baked poorly-balanced systems, where most of the game consists of engaging in crap combat in copy/pasted dungeons and talking to NPCs who have one unique line of dialogue, they both have level scaling (Oblivion's being far, far worse of course), they both offer no challenge after about level 10, they both typically have ultra-linear quests that are mechanically boring and have to be solved through combat, etc.

Morrowind's obvious major advantage is that the world is extremely interesting and detailed, unlike Oblivion which is deeply boring and generic, but most of the actual experience of playing them is not really a whole lot different. And they both offer the same massive letdowns and total lack of reactivity when you try to do things in a remotely novel way.

 

[Arbiter]

I've said this kind of thing before in these threads but Morrowind was already a huge step down from Daggerfall, and the differences between Morrowind and Oblivion are nowhere near as vast as people tend to make out.

This has already been discussed and most people here disagree with that thesis: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads...line-and-should-be-considered-as-such.132932/

 

[Lemming42]

There's been a very clear change in how the game's perceived over time on this site - older threads from around 2003 show people complaining that Morrowind is barebones, heavily dumbed down, and possesses an empty and unreactive world.

I largely agree with the older assessments; and ultimately I think Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim all have far more common with each other than they do with Daggerfall. I like all three of them but I really don't buy that Morrowind is some kind of high benchmark for RPG complexity while the other two are just retarded action games.

Of interest is the Douglas Goodall interview from 2005 (engagingly titled "Why Morrowind Sucked" here on the Codex):
https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/why-morrowind-sucked-the-douglas-goodall-interview.10408/

The objective of Todd as project lead, and various other devs, was specifically to streamline Morrowind and make it an action game designed to appeal to action game fans and console gamers - and it succeeded, hence why it had a console port that allowed Bethesda to break through into the console market. Oblivion continued the same streamlining process, but if you use Daggerfall as a starting point, Morrowind had already gone most of the way, and fully laid the groundwork for Oblivion and Skyrim. The core gameplay loop is more or less identical in all three games.

 

[Lemming42]

Still playing Oblivion but the usual boredom is setting in. The problem is that there's just no convincing motivation offered by the game to keep going - quests are fairly sparse, and dungeons are all the same (as in literally, I've been through the exact same cave like six times now in ostensibly-different dungeons). My only motivation is to make my stats go up so I can make enemy health bars go down faster, but the combat sucks so it doesn't serve as a motivation unto itself. Could give up and just go to Shivering Isles but I've never enjoyed that as much as other people seem to.

At least in Morrowind and Skyrim you have a constant stream of quests, even if they're almost all completely shit, and a nice-looking world to explore for its own sake. But Oblivion's HDR-soaked Middle Earth blows absolute dick. Boring to look at, boring to explore, boring to talk to NPCs in, boring to learn about. Some of the quests have interesting concepts - far better than the average Morrowind or Skyrim quest - but it always, always ends up being the most boring possible use of the idea. We're trapped in a painting! Fight against health bloat trolls*. We've been captured to be hunted as human prey! Fight three health bloat guys. We're trapped inside a nightmare! Jump over a puzzle and then fight two health bloat minotaurs.

*the turpentine arrows were cool though

Morrowind and Skyrim are both pretty good at maintaining the lie that there'll be something worth seeing over the next hill, but Oblivion does everything it can to assure you that there won't be. Skyrim in particular is good at masking the fact that the world is copy/paste dungeons by shifting pre-made rooms around, putting little stories in, and giving you flimsily-plotted quests as an excuse to go into your fifteenth consecutive Draugr barrow. Oblivion just presents you with a world with no reason to go explore it, and then when you do explore it, you wish you hadn't bothered because it's the same cave/ruin/fort copied a hundred times.

I also like how I'm leader of three different guilds now. I'm the most important and well-connected person in the entire world and I still couldn't tell you what the fuck's meant to be going on.

 

[Arbiter]

hence why it had a console port that allowed Bethesda to break through into the console market

Morrowind was developed for PC and ported to XBox. Oblivion was developed for XBox and ported to PC, hence the huge font, short dialogs and horrible UI.

 

[Lemming42]

Sure, but the design philosophy behind Morrowind was to make a game that would appeal to action game fans - hence why it plays like an action game (the combat's terrible, but so is Skyrim's, and that was an astronomical success).

I mainly just objected to your suggestion that Oblivion was designed for "12 year old console players" while Morrowind wasn't. Bethesda designed both games to appeal to the mass market. The success of Morrowind's console port is exactly what they hoped for, and what encouraged their consoles-first approach with Oblivion. One of the reasons people on the Codex feared that Oblivion would suck prior to its release is that Morrowind already showed exactly what Bethesda intended to do with the TES series.

In the Goodall interview thread, you can see people in 2005 saying the exact same thing about Morrowind that you're saying about Oblivion; that it's a dumbed down action-adventure game designed to appeal to kids and non-RPG fans, and that it abandoned RPG mechanics in favour of action-sandbox gameplay, and so on. It's not that you're wrong about Oblivion, because you're not, it's just that the exact same criticisms apply to Morrowind.

 

[Butter]

You'll have to explain how Morrowind's shitty combat is an appeal to action game players while Daggerfall's isn't. It's literally the same system.

 

[Lemming42]

The combat itself is pretty bad in every Elder Scrolls game, but Morrowind's error* was in making combat the main focus of the game.

*or winning move, depending on how you regard Bethesda's success with the series after Todd took the helm

To state the obvious, Daggerfall (and even the entirely combat-focused Arena) have the strength of having huge dungeons in which combat is only part of the equation, with the player's main task being to chart the dungeon without becoming hopelessly lost or trapped. Morrowind's dungeons are greatly shrunk by comparison and made far more linear, meaning that what you mainly do in them is get into fights with the residents while walking in a fairly straightforward fashion towards the loot room. The concentration of combat is thus far higher and the non-combat aspects of the game are reduced enormously. Even in a dungeon, several minutes could elapse between combat encounters in Daggerfall; this isn't the case in Morrowind.

Daggerfall also offered the possibility of various types of non-combat play - one obvious one being playing as a thief who breaks into buildings at night, for example. Like every TES game, this wasn't fully fleshed out, but Daggerfall does at least offer a day/night mechanic that allows the player to burgle stores at night, which presents some skill checks - lockpick a door or, if your strength is high enough, try kicking it down at the risk of being caught by guards. And if you do get caught, you then get into the little courtroom minigame where you can hilariously try to speak in your own defence (which is an INT check, I think?) or outright lie (PER check?), which has a permanent effect on your reputation in whatever county you're in, and thus has material consequences in affecting the way people respond to you and how easy it is for you to get info out of people. If your rep drops low enough, you start getting arrested for "criminal conspriacy" even if you haven't done anything, which I think is a great touch and a real consequence for crime sprees.

Morrowind doesn't really offer any of the same opportunities - the world is static and unreactive and most NPCs stand still all day, plus there are no long-term consequences for crime, so playing as a thief who breaks into stores at night is LARPy as fuck and only one step up from playing with carrots and pretending to be a baker in Oblivion.

I'm writing this as a ramble, so to reiterate the main point: the non-combat aspects of Daggerfall are either lost or greatly stripped down, while the concentration of combat is increased. Oblivion and Skyrim follow the same design philosophy, and it's where a lot of their problems stem from.

 

[Kev Inkline]

But Oblivion's HDR-soaked Middle Earth blows absolute dick.

This is a beautiful way to describe how the setting really is, an expression I knew I needed, but have looked for in vain.

 

[Skinwalker]

It seems like part of the Codex culture to hate on Oblivion. I dont get it, why are people bashing this game so hard?

Main arguments I keep seeing are about the 'generic fantasy setting'. So what? Wasnt Lord of the Rings generic fantasy as well? Wasnt Baldur's gate generic fantasy too? As far as Im concerned the majority of old school cRPGs that stood out were generic fantasy. Arena and Daggerfall were 'generic fantasy'. Morrowind took a different twist and somehow everyone feels like the series was meant to be that way...

There is the complain about quest markers apparently ruining the game too. As far as Im concerned the absence of markers didnt add any value to Morrowind, navigating to your destination was just busywork. The game featured plenty of quests that didnt rely on those markers.

People complain about the bad level scaling and leveling mechanics because at level 20+ game balance goes downhill. To me it sounds like those negative Steam reviews saying ''Gaem is gud for teh first 60 hours and then it sux, dont recommend''. By the time you reach level 20 you should have seen A LOT of the game to the point where you should be ready for a re-roll.

Theres also the potato face/potato voice 'argument'. Considering that older cRPGs feel way clunkier on different aspects I dont know why people even bring that up.

In the end Oblivion is one of the better crafted TES games to me, since it features the best side quests of the series, and arguably the whole (A)RPG genre.

Honestly which other RPG delivered side quests with a design on par with Oblivion? What are the competitors?

For some reason I feel like people who hate it the most are the Morrowind fans. Those who grew up on Morrowind and were impressed by its novelty. By the time Oblivion got released they grew up too old to enjoy the type of game that it is (FPS-open world - interactive walking simulator) and are blaming it on the devs. I have never seen Arena/DF fans hate on Oblivion, for some reason...

60 retarded ratings, is there an award for this sort of thing? And if the OP makes it to 100, what does that unlock?

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

You'll have to explain how Morrowind's shitty combat is an appeal to action game players while Daggerfall's isn't. It's literally the same system.

Click to attack vs swing to attack. It's not Ultima Underworld anymore.

 

[Kev Inkline]

It seems like part of the Codex culture to hate on Oblivion. I dont get it, why are people bashing this game so hard?

Main arguments I keep seeing are about the 'generic fantasy setting'. So what? Wasnt Lord of the Rings generic fantasy as well? Wasnt Baldur's gate generic fantasy too? As far as Im concerned the majority of old school cRPGs that stood out were generic fantasy. Arena and Daggerfall were 'generic fantasy'. Morrowind took a different twist and somehow everyone feels like the series was meant to be that way...

There is the complain about quest markers apparently ruining the game too. As far as Im concerned the absence of markers didnt add any value to Morrowind, navigating to your destination was just busywork. The game featured plenty of quests that didnt rely on those markers.

People complain about the bad level scaling and leveling mechanics because at level 20+ game balance goes downhill. To me it sounds like those negative Steam reviews saying ''Gaem is gud for teh first 60 hours and then it sux, dont recommend''. By the time you reach level 20 you should have seen A LOT of the game to the point where you should be ready for a re-roll.

Theres also the potato face/potato voice 'argument'. Considering that older cRPGs feel way clunkier on different aspects I dont know why people even bring that up.

In the end Oblivion is one of the better crafted TES games to me, since it features the best side quests of the series, and arguably the whole (A)RPG genre.

Honestly which other RPG delivered side quests with a design on par with Oblivion? What are the competitors?

For some reason I feel like people who hate it the most are the Morrowind fans. Those who grew up on Morrowind and were impressed by its novelty. By the time Oblivion got released they grew up too old to enjoy the type of game that it is (FPS-open world - interactive walking simulator) and are blaming it on the devs. I have never seen Arena/DF fans hate on Oblivion, for some reason...

60 retarded ratings, is there an award for this sort of thing? And if the OP makes it to 100, what does that unlock?

Well, 37% of his posts reside in the retardo land, that's another rare achievement.

 

[Butter]

You'll have to explain how Morrowind's shitty combat is an appeal to action game players while Daggerfall's isn't. It's literally the same system.

Click to attack vs swing to attack. It's not Ultima Underworld anymore.

That's a matter of the controls, not the underlying mechanics. Both games feature directional attacks, dice roll accuracy, a lack of good feedback, a variety of weapon types, a variety of offensive and defensive spells. Daggerfall has more mechanical depth than Morrowind overall, but as Lemming42 highlighted it's related to things that aren't combat, like playing as a thief.

 

[Cat Headed Eagle]

You'll have to explain how Morrowind's shitty combat is an appeal to action game players while Daggerfall's isn't. It's literally the same system.

Click to attack vs swing to attack. It's not Ultima Underworld anymore.

That's a matter of the controls, not the underlying mechanics. Both games feature directional attacks, dice roll accuracy, a lack of good feedback, a variety of weapon types, a variety of offensive and defensive spells. Daggerfall has more mechanical depth than Morrowind overall, but as Lemming42 highlighted it's related to things that aren't combat, like playing as a thief.

I understand that, but you'd be surprised as to how a single change in paradigm can also represent that you get access to a whole new universe of potential customers. It's also the reason why Daggerfall Unity has a component that allows for click to attack as well.

 

[Morality Games]

Wasnt Lord of the Rings generic fantasy as well?

Fucking apply yourself, nigger.

The fantastic/magical elements of LOTR are too mysterious and uncommon for it to qualify as generic fantasy, where the magical/fantastic elements are normally regarded as an ordinary part of life. Ergo, Raise Dead in most D&D settings is often a pretty bureaucratic affair, at most an expensive luxury for the rich like treatment at the Mayo Clinic.

Magic is common enough in the Legendarium that most people in Middle Earth believe that it exists, but not common enough that the vast majority of them ever experience it in a direct, tangible way. When they see it, the majority of people react to magic the same way people from our world would.

 

[Lemming42]

Occasionally looks nice at least.

I think my playthrough is nearing its natural conclusion. It's not been all bad, some of it's been fun, but the game is mostly just irritating in how it simultaneously boasts great ambitions and constantly settles for less. I'm glad I've finally managed to see it through to a near-100% completion playthrough though after many years of trying and giving up after a couple of hours.

To say some nice things about it:

rare oblivion praise

The game had a pleasing sense of character progression (despite the level scaling doing everything it could to undermine that), and I enjoyed exploring some parts of the world. I think the game does a handful of things better than both Morrowind and Skyrim. Despite the infamous AI, Oblivion NPCs actually have far more reactivity than Morrowind's pathetic unmoving dummies or Skyrim's dimwits. Yes, it goes wrong basically every time and people end up acting like schizo fuckheads, but it's still ambitious and impressive. Stalking people to learn their routines was a lot of fun, and something you can't do in Morrowind (where stores are open 24/7 and nobody enters or exits cells, lmao) or Skyrim (where everyone follows the same dumb simple routine every day).

I think the combat, while shit, is less unacceptably dogshit than Morrowind's and more satisfyingly stats-based than Skyrim's, though it's still ultimately crap and the game makes you do it every five seconds.

Ideas for quests are almost universally better than MW or Skyrim too, even if they often ended up linear and disappointing. Some quests were actually good; the Mage's Guild recommendation questline was great, though sadly the actual guild quests after that point were bad. I didn't like the Dark Brotherhood questline as much as everyone else seems to but I did appreciate that the devs actually trusted the game's systems for once; putting the objective as "this NPC must die" and then letting you do it any way you desire was a refreshing change from the usual ultra-railroaded shit.

The game also deserves praise for starting the stealth archery playstyle - yes it's completely broken and is basically godmode but at least it's fun, which is more than you can say for every single other possible playstyle except magic. There's a reason you end up as a stealth archer in this and Skyrim every time you play it.

It also looks beautiful at times (with my very minimal modlist), despite the setting itself being very generic.

Overall though it's all undermined by recurring lazy design, unrealised potential, and the extremely dull intepretation of the TES setting. That last point is the real killer - if Cyrodiil had been portrayed as it had appeared in Pocket Guide to the Empire, I would have forgiven everything else. I would have probably loved the game and I bet a lot of other people here would too. I can forgive the fact that absolutely everything in Morrowind completely fucking sucks - godawful combat, nonexistent AI, no reactivity, virtually no C&C, terrible quest design, boring wiki dialogue, useless stealth, cramped and boring copy/pasted dungeons - because the setting is so much fun to explore. I would have easily been able to similarly overlook all Oblivion's annoyances and shortcomings (many of which are the same as MW's) if it had taken place in a detailed and unique world. But it doesn't, it takes place in Middle Earth For Wankers, and so the disappointments pile up until you don't want to play it anymore.

By the way, Knights of the Nine was the worst thing ever. I think the Horse Armour DLC is less of a ripoff than KotN. I'll play Shivering Isles to finish the playthrough I guess.

 

[scytheavatar]

Wasnt Lord of the Rings generic fantasy as well?

Lord of the Rings is the mother of all fantasy, it became generic fantasy because fantasy fiction since then has been ripping off it. Not a fair comparison.

Criticism of Oblivion being generic is basically saying Morrowind and Skyrim did a way better job in standing out and not being generic. You can see why Bethesda is not in a rush to make TESVI cause they know it will be a challenging to find a place in Tamriel which on one hand is not generic and yet on the other hand isn't going to be super exotic and unsellable like Black Marsh.

 

[Lemming42]

Pocket Guide to the Empire (1e) acts as a pretty solid guide for writers of future TES games. Redguard demonstrates that you can set a game in the more "boring" locations like an island of Hammerfell and still have it be alienesque and interesting, arguably even more than Morrowind was.

Cyrodiil, annoyingly, would have been perfect, if portrayed properly - it's grounded enough to appeal to the average gamer who just wants a fantasy hack-n-slash, but it's alien and complex enough that fans of the lore would have a lot to dig into. Turning it into an English countryside to cash in on LOTR's success in Oblivion was rather inexcusable, and really they've shot themselves in the foot long-term by locking themselves into generic fantasy - boring viking shit for Skyrim, and nowhere left to go after that.

Perhaps their problem is in insisting upon showing full nations like Cyrodiil and Skyrim, rather than focusing in on specific areas as past games did with the likes of Stros M'Kai or Vvardenfell. Representing the whole of Black Marsh is a tough task and the result is something that might alienate the average gamer, but focusing on a small section of it (or the border between it and another country, like the Iliac Bay was) with a specific theme or plot is ripe for any kind of game they'd like to make.

 

[KörangarTheMighty]

Graphical advances aside, Skyrim's generic viking setting is less interesting than Oblivion's pseudo-Ostrogothic Renaissance imo.

 

[Skinwalker]

Lord of the Rings is the mother of all fantasy, it became generic fantasy

It didn't.

 

[Wayward Son]

Occasionally looks nice at least.

I think my playthrough is nearing its natural conclusion. It's not been all bad, some of it's been fun, but the game is mostly just irritating in how it simultaneously boasts great ambitions and constantly settles for less. I'm glad I've finally managed to see it through to a near-100% completion playthrough though after many years of trying and giving up after a couple of hours.

To say some nice things about it:

rare oblivion praise

The game had a pleasing sense of character progression (despite the level scaling doing everything it could to undermine that), and I enjoyed exploring some parts of the world. I think the game does a handful of things better than both Morrowind and Skyrim. Despite the infamous AI, Oblivion NPCs actually have far more reactivity than Morrowind's pathetic unmoving dummies or Skyrim's dimwits. Yes, it goes wrong basically every time and people end up acting like schizo fuckheads, but it's still ambitious and impressive. Stalking people to learn their routines was a lot of fun, and something you can't do in Morrowind (where stores are open 24/7 and nobody enters or exits cells, lmao) or Skyrim (where everyone follows the same dumb simple routine every day).

I think the combat, while shit, is less unacceptably dogshit than Morrowind's and more satisfyingly stats-based than Skyrim's, though it's still ultimately crap and the game makes you do it every five seconds.

Ideas for quests are almost universally better than MW or Skyrim too, even if they often ended up linear and disappointing. Some quests were actually good; the Mage's Guild recommendation questline was great, though sadly the actual guild quests after that point were bad. I didn't like the Dark Brotherhood questline as much as everyone else seems to but I did appreciate that the devs actually trusted the game's systems for once; putting the objective as "this NPC must die" and then letting you do it any way you desire was a refreshing change from the usual ultra-railroaded shit.

The game also deserves praise for starting the stealth archery playstyle - yes it's completely broken and is basically godmode but at least it's fun, which is more than you can say for every single other possible playstyle except magic. There's a reason you end up as a stealth archer in this and Skyrim every time you play it.

It also looks beautiful at times (with my very minimal modlist), despite the setting itself being very generic.

Overall though it's all undermined by recurring lazy design, unrealised potential, and the extremely dull intepretation of the TES setting. That last point is the real killer - if Cyrodiil had been portrayed as it had appeared in Pocket Guide to the Empire, I would have forgiven everything else. I would have probably loved the game and I bet a lot of other people here would too. I can forgive the fact that absolutely everything in Morrowind completely fucking sucks - godawful combat, nonexistent AI, no reactivity, virtually no C&C, terrible quest design, boring wiki dialogue, useless stealth, cramped and boring copy/pasted dungeons - because the setting is so much fun to explore. I would have easily been able to similarly overlook all Oblivion's annoyances and shortcomings (many of which are the same as MW's) if it had taken place in a detailed and unique world. But it doesn't, it takes place in Middle Earth For Wankers, and so the disappointments pile up until you don't want to play it anymore.

By the way, Knights of the Nine was the worst thing ever. I think the Horse Armour DLC is less of a ripoff than KotN. I'll play Shivering Isles to finish the playthrough I guess.

I agree on a lot of this, in particular the praise section. One thing that has made Oblivion a lot more fun has been installing a de-leveling mod (optional) and restricting fast travel (or just not using it at all)

 

[Elttharion]

Occasionally looks nice at least.

I think my playthrough is nearing its natural conclusion. It's not been all bad, some of it's been fun, but the game is mostly just irritating in how it simultaneously boasts great ambitions and constantly settles for less. I'm glad I've finally managed to see it through to a near-100% completion playthrough though after many years of trying and giving up after a couple of hours.

To say some nice things about it:

rare oblivion praise

The game had a pleasing sense of character progression (despite the level scaling doing everything it could to undermine that), and I enjoyed exploring some parts of the world. I think the game does a handful of things better than both Morrowind and Skyrim. Despite the infamous AI, Oblivion NPCs actually have far more reactivity than Morrowind's pathetic unmoving dummies or Skyrim's dimwits. Yes, it goes wrong basically every time and people end up acting like schizo fuckheads, but it's still ambitious and impressive. Stalking people to learn their routines was a lot of fun, and something you can't do in Morrowind (where stores are open 24/7 and nobody enters or exits cells, lmao) or Skyrim (where everyone follows the same dumb simple routine every day).

I think the combat, while shit, is less unacceptably dogshit than Morrowind's and more satisfyingly stats-based than Skyrim's, though it's still ultimately crap and the game makes you do it every five seconds.

Ideas for quests are almost universally better than MW or Skyrim too, even if they often ended up linear and disappointing. Some quests were actually good; the Mage's Guild recommendation questline was great, though sadly the actual guild quests after that point were bad. I didn't like the Dark Brotherhood questline as much as everyone else seems to but I did appreciate that the devs actually trusted the game's systems for once; putting the objective as "this NPC must die" and then letting you do it any way you desire was a refreshing change from the usual ultra-railroaded shit.

The game also deserves praise for starting the stealth archery playstyle - yes it's completely broken and is basically godmode but at least it's fun, which is more than you can say for every single other possible playstyle except magic. There's a reason you end up as a stealth archer in this and Skyrim every time you play it.

It also looks beautiful at times (with my very minimal modlist), despite the setting itself being very generic.

Overall though it's all undermined by recurring lazy design, unrealised potential, and the extremely dull intepretation of the TES setting. That last point is the real killer - if Cyrodiil had been portrayed as it had appeared in Pocket Guide to the Empire, I would have forgiven everything else. I would have probably loved the game and I bet a lot of other people here would too. I can forgive the fact that absolutely everything in Morrowind completely fucking sucks - godawful combat, nonexistent AI, no reactivity, virtually no C&C, terrible quest design, boring wiki dialogue, useless stealth, cramped and boring copy/pasted dungeons - because the setting is so much fun to explore. I would have easily been able to similarly overlook all Oblivion's annoyances and shortcomings (many of which are the same as MW's) if it had taken place in a detailed and unique world. But it doesn't, it takes place in Middle Earth For Wankers, and so the disappointments pile up until you don't want to play it anymore.

By the way, Knights of the Nine was the worst thing ever. I think the Horse Armour DLC is less of a ripoff than KotN. I'll play Shivering Isles to finish the playthrough I guess.

I would also praise the soundtrack personally.

 

[Wayward Son]

Occasionally looks nice at least.

I think my playthrough is nearing its natural conclusion. It's not been all bad, some of it's been fun, but the game is mostly just irritating in how it simultaneously boasts great ambitions and constantly settles for less. I'm glad I've finally managed to see it through to a near-100% completion playthrough though after many years of trying and giving up after a couple of hours.

To say some nice things about it:

rare oblivion praise

The game had a pleasing sense of character progression (despite the level scaling doing everything it could to undermine that), and I enjoyed exploring some parts of the world. I think the game does a handful of things better than both Morrowind and Skyrim. Despite the infamous AI, Oblivion NPCs actually have far more reactivity than Morrowind's pathetic unmoving dummies or Skyrim's dimwits. Yes, it goes wrong basically every time and people end up acting like schizo fuckheads, but it's still ambitious and impressive. Stalking people to learn their routines was a lot of fun, and something you can't do in Morrowind (where stores are open 24/7 and nobody enters or exits cells, lmao) or Skyrim (where everyone follows the same dumb simple routine every day).

I think the combat, while shit, is less unacceptably dogshit than Morrowind's and more satisfyingly stats-based than Skyrim's, though it's still ultimately crap and the game makes you do it every five seconds.

Ideas for quests are almost universally better than MW or Skyrim too, even if they often ended up linear and disappointing. Some quests were actually good; the Mage's Guild recommendation questline was great, though sadly the actual guild quests after that point were bad. I didn't like the Dark Brotherhood questline as much as everyone else seems to but I did appreciate that the devs actually trusted the game's systems for once; putting the objective as "this NPC must die" and then letting you do it any way you desire was a refreshing change from the usual ultra-railroaded shit.

The game also deserves praise for starting the stealth archery playstyle - yes it's completely broken and is basically godmode but at least it's fun, which is more than you can say for every single other possible playstyle except magic. There's a reason you end up as a stealth archer in this and Skyrim every time you play it.

It also looks beautiful at times (with my very minimal modlist), despite the setting itself being very generic.

Overall though it's all undermined by recurring lazy design, unrealised potential, and the extremely dull intepretation of the TES setting. That last point is the real killer - if Cyrodiil had been portrayed as it had appeared in Pocket Guide to the Empire, I would have forgiven everything else. I would have probably loved the game and I bet a lot of other people here would too. I can forgive the fact that absolutely everything in Morrowind completely fucking sucks - godawful combat, nonexistent AI, no reactivity, virtually no C&C, terrible quest design, boring wiki dialogue, useless stealth, cramped and boring copy/pasted dungeons - because the setting is so much fun to explore. I would have easily been able to similarly overlook all Oblivion's annoyances and shortcomings (many of which are the same as MW's) if it had taken place in a detailed and unique world. But it doesn't, it takes place in Middle Earth For Wankers, and so the disappointments pile up until you don't want to play it anymore.

By the way, Knights of the Nine was the worst thing ever. I think the Horse Armour DLC is less of a ripoff than KotN. I'll play Shivering Isles to finish the playthrough I guess.

I would also praise the soundtrack personally.

Yep. This was my first western RPG back in 08 and the feeling of the open world music fresh out of the sewer is something I’ll probably remember even when I’m dementia ridden