Emotional Attachment to Oblivion.

[Jolly Madness]

The only thing I actually felt some emotional involvement in Oblivion, was Sheogorath... "And now he's dead" devastated me, probably the funniest character in Oblivion/SI was gone, he would no longer threaten me with strangling me with my intestines, or pluck out my eyeballs... Murder is a natural part of Oblivion after you complete the Thieves' Guild storyline, since you got a separate bounty with the mask on, and the mask off. And the looks on the NPCs weren't fantastic either, but I did love the Khajiit, no idea why, but the tails facinated me.
And damn all "pet" NPCs, murdered a member of the Mage's guild by accident (it's not my fault that I use Goldbrand for fighting guards) and had to pay a bloody annoying fee to get in again...

 

[Singing Gremlin]

Oblivion was an FPS.

An FPS where all the characters looked ugly.

- J

Someone hit him over the head with this bat!

http://www.kingpepper.com/gifs/bat.gif

RPG NOT FPS!!!

Do you hear that? That my friend, is the sound of you sailing past the point. RPG=character. Something Oblivion did lack, though I did quite like several characters, mainly the blades, and did several sections of the story again so I could keep them alive.

 

[Sib]

morrowind got me somewhat attatched, to the extent i didnt have a slash at a guard because i was so woefully weak that within a minute i would be bent over a castle parapet with my kegs down and him grinning behind me.
Then in oblivion i spent half my time slashing my way through the country side, an unstoppable force of doom and destruction, where my entire aim in the game was to empty the world of all guards then use the resurrection staff to make them my puppets (i loved that staff until a glitch deleted it and EVERYTHING i had stored in my house, and i do mean everything, i never played the game again). All of that out of sheer boredom...
But i think somewhere in that rant my point was that i found no connection to my guy in oblivion

 

[Gollon]

In the short time I played Oblivion I felt a thrill every time I sneaked into a house and stole everything I could carry to pawn it off because I wondered if I could do it without getting caught.

 

[Hal900x]

All of the Elder Scrolls series, since Arena, have had the same general feel for me: large, yet empty. I bought Oblivion having forgotten the huge and meaningless dungeon crawls of "Daggerfall". There's a tremendous amount of freedom in these games, but it's the freedom to run around looking at randomly generated scenery and listen to endlessly repeating NPC interactions.

I'll tell you what elicits an emotional response: The gleeful announcement from Bethesda that my all-time favorite series will be "like post-apocalyptic Oblivion with guns." One guess which emotion I'm referring to (hint: it's not joy.)

 

[propertyofcobra]

...Oblivion is quite possibly the least emotionally attachable game in the history of emotionally unattachable games.
I felt more for Duke Nukem than my automatically 50+ year old (try making someone look younger than that. I dare you) reptile.

The crime/pay ratio was laughable. I'm a super-psychotic mass-murderer, my modus operandi for stealing a candlestick is to kill everyone in the house, and their dog, and then wipe the place clean.
This means I have more than enough money to pay off anything and everything. There's never a feeling of risk. You can never injure or annoy any plot-relevant characters. You can bash their skull in with your super-powerful magical sword for a WEEK, and they'll get up, shrug it off and ask you once more if they can pretty please have a look at that ring.
This, sadly, means that you don't CARE for anyone plot-relevant, at all. At least, I never did. I stopped even trying to care when the Grey Fox (or whatever his name was), master thief, ran to try and find some guards when I...stole some stuff from his locker, yelling about me being a thief.

That caused me to giggle for an hour and a half, and then uninstall the game. Overall, there are much, MUCH better examples of western RPGs than Oblivion if you want character attachment. Anything by Black Isle is a good starting place.

 

[Natural Hazard]

i am using oblivion as an example, maybe explain character attachment in other western rpgs? Thanks for replies btw some are helpful, generally i am just comparing the differences between how a jrpg grabs you by the horns with emotions from the get go whilst emotions in western rpgs are generally more the player sharing emotion through a custom char. Btw before i get "They don't all fit into that sterotype" i have fully taken that into account. Thanks.

Rob

 

[Natural Hazard]

Okey people i need some opinions. I am currently doing a report for University about the emotional differences in JRPGS and your typical western open-ending RPG.

Um, I must be getting behind the times because this sounds like the wrong topic for a university paper. Maybe attack it from simply Japanese games vs. Western? ...and you might find a lot more content to draw conclusions from. But what do I know? I never went to video game university. ;-)

we need to concentrate on specfic genres of games, i am discussing Emotions, design and business in video games, and analyse how they have been used over history to make a good game.

 

[Mr. Bubbles]

The only time I ever felt anything even mildly bad in Oblivion was when I killed my first innocent civilian. Didn't seem right, at the time. After all, what if he gave me a quest or something (which, I found out later, he did not)? Now I've literally slaughtered every killable nonhostile NPC in the game, just for the hell of it. That last part can serve as my answer for positive emotions related to Oblivion as well. I've never made up my own story as I went along, but it seems like an interesting idea that I might try just to give me a valid reason to play it again. And just so you know, I've not felt an emotional attachment to a JRPG since Legend of the Dragoon, though I enjoy them all the same. Oddly, I've had more emotional attachment in FPS games than I have in RPGs (such as in Half-Life or BioShock).

 

[propertyofcobra]

In a lot of cases, character customization lets you truly make your character your own. The KotOR games are a great example of how you can make your character uniquely yours story-wise.
The thing here is, while JRPGs have NO interactiveness whatsoever story-wise, short of extremely tiny and irrelevant things ("You look great" or "You look like a marshmallow swallowed a bear"), WRPGs generally are like extremely elaborate CYOA books.

Ergo, the brunt of the storytelling and thus character attachment falls, in WPRGs, on the programmers and NPCs. The programmers to give you an option that you feel your character would make, and the NPCs to react to it realistically.
In JRPGs, it's all up to the script writers. I like JRPGs, I find their story intriguing, but the characters were never anything remotely like "me".
Sure, Cloud, Tifa and Aerith/Aeris had a cute little love triangle and all. My interaction in it was limited to maybe deciding who Cloud goes on one silly little date that doesn't decide anything.

In KotOR2, I was personally responsible for if Atton would rise to a Jedi Knight, fall to the dark temptations of his past and become a Sith, or if he'd stay a humble scoundrel. Whichever decision was made, I personally made it. I pushed events, subtly altered conversations, and got a visible payout for it all that changed the entire course of the rest of the game.
Same goes for every Jedi Master I kill or get to help me, it all changes the story (if only a little bit).

Ergo, to me, emotional attachment in WRPGs is much closer and more personal, since it's YOUR attachment to them. However, it strangely tends to stick with you less, since next time you play through, Atton Rand might not become a Sith/Jedi again.
In JRPGs, come hell or high water, do what you want, all the events will play out as they are expected to.
In many ways, JRPGs are like reading a book, while WRPGs are like improv theater. WRPGs will be different every time, while JRPGs are identical time and time again. You form a very short, fast and deep attachment to WRPG characters, while JRPG characters usually last a lot longer, but (to me) the attachment is more shallow.

 

[StraightAces]

I began Oblivion with the intentions of every young man, to create a pale narcissistic prick who wears black, has black hair, probably black nail varnish and can hit an old lady in the head with a bow and arrow from across the width of the universe. So i went out an intentionally caught vampirism, which for some reason gave me a scarred face and ... rosy cheeks. I was not amused.
Mind you, there's nothing worse than sneaking around to find a fence to pay your bounty off to, with your weight in stolen goods galore. Then you run into Generic-Angry-Faced-Yet-Cheery-Voiced-Night-Watchman and he kindly removes you of your illegally purchased burden.
...Bastards.

 

[Gundark927]

I've really felt attached to not one specific character from one specific game, but the two "TEMPLATES" that I sort of use when playing any customizable RPG.

First is Ciliniel, who I am currently running in Neverwinter Nights and Mass Effect. She also existed in Oblivion and KOTOR and other RPGS. She's usually elvish, or at least delicate looking, blonde, and unflinchingly good in her alignment. That's the rough idea whenever I start a new RPG, and I really care about making her *good* aligned, and a nice character. She will be a magic user or whatever the sci-fi equivalent is in the game. She doesn't steal or cheat.

On the other hand, I also play my evil avatar, Gundark, in all the games mentioned above. I have twin save files for all those games-- good little Ci, and Evil Gunny. He's generally a big SOB, red hair if it's available, and he does whatever the heck he wants. He is a fighter through and through, and not interested in talking. He goes Sith in KOTOR, or just mugs beggars in Oblivion and what not.

Both Gundark and Ciliniel have their character origins on Everquest. When I quit playing that game, I took the characters offline to play other games. I like the idea of them being in "alternate universes," perhaps. BTW, when I played EQ, they weren't really good or evil, they were just me or my avatars for that world. That game had serious emotional attachment, but that was the social aspect of the MMPORPG at work there.

That said, I have a hard time playing evil in these offline games. I really can't just tell off a crew member in Mass Effect, without really feeling like a jackass afterward. So , yeah, I get emotionally attached to both my good and evil characters.

 

[Strafe Mcgee]

It depends. You could hack, slash, punch, electrocute, or fire arrows and missiles, etc, but you could use first-person or third.

You could also just run away, but I'm not sure anyone counts that as a type of game.

Assassin's Creed anyone? Most of my time in that game was spent running away, but maybe that's because I was a bit rubbish. Mirror's Edge looks like it's solely based on running away from people. Also see Haunting Ground for PS2 - rubbish survival horror game where you have no weapons and can only hide from the baddies.

Sorry, off topic, but I just wanted to point that out

 

[ComradeJim270]

(Insert trademark ComradeJim270 rant about how Oblivion as an RPG is 'a blight upon the whole genre' here)

 

[Kogarian]

It depends. You could hack, slash, punch, electrocute, or fire arrows and missiles, etc, but you could use first-person or third.

You could also just run away, but I'm not sure anyone counts that as a type of game.

Assassin's Creed anyone? Most of my time in that game was spent running away, but maybe that's because I was a bit rubbish. Mirror's Edge looks like it's solely based on running away from people. Also see Haunting Ground for PS2 - rubbish survival horror game where you have no weapons and can only hide from the baddies.

Sorry, off topic, but I just wanted to point that out

Good point. I've should've said that any game where you ONLY run away and don't kill, explore, solve, and/or race shouldn't be counted as such.

 

[Echolocating]

Okey people i need some opinions. I am currently doing a report for University about the emotional differences in JRPGS and your typical western open-ending RPG.

Um, I must be getting behind the times because this sounds like the wrong topic for a university paper. Maybe attack it from simply Japanese games vs. Western? ...and you might find a lot more content to draw conclusions from. But what do I know? I never went to video game university. ;-)

we need to concentrate on specfic genres of games, i am discussing Emotions, design and business in video games, and analyse how they have been used over history to make a good game.

So... your paper is about players' emotions in specific RPGs, namely Oblivion as the case study of a Western RPG? Hmmm...

Well, from my experience on researching the subject, the key ingredient for evoking emotion from the player is empathy. If you can't connect with your character and/or the NPCs that populate the game world, you can't become emotionally attached. Your actions, essentially, become devoid of any moral obligations and only serve to achieve an arbitrary end-goal.

I tried to enjoy Oblivion, but after 20 or so hours, I quit playing. I was constantly distracted by the horrific character modeling that was oddly a step backwards from Morrowind in many cases; dare I say Arena as well? Also, the landscape and dungeons were too repetitive and the quest reward system punished you for completing tasks at early levels. Of course, I also had some high hopes for the Radiant AI which amounted to a big waste of development time as a simple script could have been made, with a fraction of the system resources being used, to the same result.

Basically, the only "constructive" thing I can say about Oblivion is that it presented too many obstacles to truly grab me and pull me into it's cliche medieval world. If I were to make an open ended RPG that focused on gripping the player emotionally, I would make a smaller world that's more meaningful and ensure the world changes and reacts to player input. Perhaps Fable 2 will be a good example of a better design? Hell, the first Fable trumps Oblivion, in my book.

Also, if western RPGs are what you're looking for, Bioware's offerings are a much better case study for emotional impact upon players. Even the earlier Baldur's Gate games destroy Oblivion when it comes to making the player care one way or another about NPCs.

I hate Oblivion and Bethesda needs to adopt a new mantra... let's try "quality over quantity." ;-)

 

[The Potato Lord]

Oblivion was fun but its problem was that it was too forgiving. psychopathic killer? 2000gold please. What? you say you hate me? well you'll have to play the wheel of whether i like you or not!Hey the emperor's son is being attacked! oh well He's essential so he can't die.

In Morrowind Every other NPC would slash your throat if you so much as looked at them (one literally did/tried to).

 

[ComradeJim270]

Oblivion was fun but its problem was that it was too forgiving. psychopathic killer? 2000gold please. What? you say you hate me? well you'll have to play the wheel of whether i like you or not!Hey the emperor's son is being attacked! oh well He's essential so he can't die.

In Morrowind Every other NPC would slash your throat if you so much as looked at them (one literally did/tried to).

It was just too damn shallow.

 

[Copter400]

Unlike practically everyone else on this board, I quite like Oblivion. It's all I've been playing for the past few weeks. People criticize it's difficulty, but forgive me for enjoying a game where I've got a good chance to beat a monster that attacks me.

Occasionally, I can feel quite attached to certain characters. Vilenus Donton, for example. He was a teenage Fighters Guild trainee who aspired to become a great warrior. Around the this time, by Guild standards, you are a great warrior, so who better to show him around a cave full of beasties? You and him go in, fight some ogres, good times.

Later, you get another mission. Apparently, he had gone with a patrol into a cave to attack some trolls, but hasn't been back since. When you eventually find his corpse, it's with his diary. It recounts that he had been quite happy to be relieved of the boredom of polishing boots day in, day out.

But in the cave, they were ambushed by Blackwood Company. Trolls had given them a hard time too. The only survivor, he had crawled into a secluded area of the cave awaiting aid.

You can understand what a pain it was for me, then, when I read the last two lines of his diary:

"I hear trolls. I'm sorry mother."

I was mortified. This kid had wanted to be a hero, and now he was troll food. It was this moment in the game that had really stuck out for me.

Yeah, I like Oblivion. I shan't be moved on the point.