Huh...
I wouldn't have exactly called the AI good in Oblivion.
After installing the XP mod (takes leveling to a more traditional mode), and I started getting into the game a bit... I made the mistake of hiring some dolt to follow me around because the next side-quest I had taken sounded like I might need some back-up...
By the end of it, I was glad I had also installed the "no-essentials" mod, which allowed me to murder this idiot.
I assume when people say they didn't like a game they base it off of other games that did aspects of designs, system, plot that were better. I couldn't pick a game that did lots of the stuff that Oblivion did that was better, I had a all around great gaming and playing experience with it, the only downside to Oblivion for me was the Shivering Ilse, I hated the Ruler dude he annoyed the piss out of me for some reason.
The world isn't just impressive in its looks, it's impressive in the way it is believable. all the cities have thier own arhcitecture, feel and cultures, as do all the races. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storilines are actually really good.
Guild Quests were all awesome, although it did annoy me that the Mages guild quests seemed as important as the main, Necromancers invading nation is more pressing to me than gradual advance of easily destroyed demons.
michiehoward said:
the only downside to Oblivion for me was the Shimmering Ilse, I hated the Ruler dude he annoyed the piss out of me for some reason.
you mean Shivering Isles, and he's the king of madness, he's suposed to be annoying.
Also the expansion added so many awesome new items, quests and areas (which looked even nicer than cyrodil) that I loved it, The city (which I forget the name of) was pretty awesome too, especially in mania, dementia's people just annoyed me half the time.
It was an okay read but as a review I'm afraid it was pretty poor. Were you deliberately trying to piss people off with this? It looks like it from here. Why are there no good points? I know this series is meant to highlight "bad" games but it seems that those games have run out and all that is left is to review games without mentioning positives, and there are man positives, most of which have already been pointed out to you.
sorry i call it the shimmering isles cause everything freaking glows, i understand he is supposed to be annoying, i just don't see that as a plus and yes i like the other shit that came with the expansion
I agree it was flawed. The combat and levelling are broken, but everyone knows that already.
You missed an important factor though: The immersion level of the game. The reason people love it is because the lore and history of the world are so deeply built and written.
There is in fact a lot of backstory in Oblivion, you just have to have to look around a little.
The world isn't just impressive in its looks, it's impressive in the way it is believable. all the cities have thier own arhcitecture, feel and cultures, as do all the races. The Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood storilines are actually really good.
Pretty much this. I've spent days lost in the UESP wiki ( http://www.uesp.net/ ), reading about Sloads or working out how to say stuff in Ayleid (yup, there are proper languages, with proper grammatical rules too).
I was always happy with wandering around, raiding, looting, exploring and questing. By the time I got bored I discovered that TES has pretty much the biggest modding community of any game, so I was set for life on Oblivion.
Anyway, Oblivion is an open game, you get to role play whatever character you like, unlike Final Fantasy, which, in that sense, is no more a roleplay game than Call Of Duty.
That's a terrible plan for a game like Oblivion, which is "gameplay open". Unless you're an archer. Because archers suck without a TON of min-maxing of stats. You have to be down right ANAL to make a kickass archer. If you need an example as to why Oblivion is "Gameplay ope"...look no further than the Dark Brotherhood. All of the people at the Sanctuary like stealth. Except for the Orc. And whenever you talk to him, you see that you can be a brute force assassin. And the game ENCOURAGES this by having a large number of Dark Brotherhood questline targets NOT HAVING A BOUNTY when killed without stealth, and being in separate cells from guards. You're only loss is usually the bonus. And even then, the bonuses you lose aren't meant for a non-stealth character like you. It encourages you to tackle quests "your way".
So if you can do the quests "Your Way" why can't you do the opening storyline, "Your Way"? "Gameplay open" does not mean you have to sacrifice the main storyline. I'd say we can look to games like San Andreas (as nonsensical as it got) and Grand Theft Auto 4 for lessons on how open-ended gameplay and narrative can coexist. Granted while I'm not the biggest Grand Theft Auto fan, or sand-box fan in general, it's definitely possible to do. I'm also not a huge fan of "You have to read non-dialogue text to get story" as if I wanted to do that, I'd read a book.
Indeed. The combat system just ruined this game. It was so flat and just didn't work. The game was beautiful, the world big, the possibilities endless, but the game's core, the combat, made the game frustrating and boring.
Some people might argue with you that the game's core isn't the combat, but the exploration. However, it's impossible to play the game or do anything without fighting, and every story quest in the game was 'fast travel here, fight, fast travel there, fight...'.
Spells were fail, the combat was fail, the characters were fail, and story was fail...
Anyone who's played Might and Magic Dark Messiah would know that a first person Medieval RPG can be alot of fun if the battle system is spontaneous, original and dynamic. Dark Messiah (love it or hate it) had a bloody awesome battle system and having played that before oblivion revealed to me just how much of a flaming, repetitive, broken piece of shit Oblivion really was.
Far from me to come between an an immovable object such as yourself and an irresistable force such as the one that Onyx is writing, but there's a couple of things...
You *can* go on your merry way and let the empire sort itself out. Hell, I played through on two characters before I even thought about doing the main quest. I usually go straight into town to sell the stuff I've got from the intro section, see a sword or something that's worth a few coins and *woops* suddenly there's a very pissed off shop owner and two guards chasing me.
Your thief character is then on the path of a brilliant story, ranging from being nothing more than a pick-pocket in an alleyway to pulling off one of the biggest heists possible-
stealing an Elder Scroll itself
. It's frowned upon to run and gun through the missions, gaining attention from the guards and costing you reward money for cocking up. Not to mention, the end-game of the Thieves Guild storyline is brilliant.
Assassins have much the same to look forward to, with arguably one of the best quests in the game, "Whodunit". You get sent to a house with 5 people that have been marked for death, acting as just another guest in a treasurehunt.
Knights Of The Nine is laden with brilliant humour and writing, starring the insanity of the Daedric Prince of Madness, Sheogorath.
The Mages, Warriors and blends hardly run out of alternative questlines either, with a Fighters Guild, Mages Guild, Colosseum-style Arena fights, and then there's the side quests.
Yeah, I'll admit, Oblivion's main quest WAS deficient to Morrowind's, but to say that having a mediocre main quest means a mediocre game doesn't really take into account just how much there is to do BESIDES the main quest.
To your point about never being told about why you're in jail... Yeah, you are supposed to do that part for yourself. It's an RPG, if you're intending to roleplay the game as though you were a mercenary who got jailed for a bar brawl, but are usually on the right side of the law, your story is going to be a league away from if you're a mage who got thrown in jail because you blew someone up accidentally whilst trying a new spell out. If you remember Morrowind (which I'm guessing you also hated?), you started off as a prisoner on a ship, got chucked out into a crappy back-water town, and then decided to make a go of something. I had a playthrough where I played as a guard who had been kicked off the force and deported, so as soon as I got the coin to travel to the Imperial Guard recruitment city, I went.
As for not being a master of your trade from the start... you *can* cast fireballs right at the start of the game. And stab stuff, and shoot stuff. No, you can't cast uber spells, but if you really want a reason for it? Put it down to you being in a cell for however long. If you'd been locked up without a sword or anything to practice on, chances are you'd get rusty too.
Oh, and I know I'm gonna get shouted down for this....
"non-Asian guard posse with their decidedly Asian katanas"
The katanas are Akviri, from the in-game Akavir region. There is no "Asia", and so no "Asian katanas" in Tamriel (the game world). Yeah, you can draw parallels between certain aspects of racial appearence or culture, but that's all they are. Parallels that you've drawn.
Now, I'm not going to defend the voice acting (the infamous beggars...) or the leveling, both of those were crap. But you know what? The modding community have more than sorted the problems, and have improved and added to the game since it was released.
So if you can do the quests "Your Way" why can't you do the opening storyline, "Your Way"? "Gameplay open" does not mean you have to sacrifice the main storyline. I'd say we can look to games like San Andreas (as nonsensical as it got) and Grand Theft Auto 4 for lessons on how open-ended gameplay and narrative can coexist. Granted while I'm not the biggest Grand Theft Auto fan, or sand-box fan in general, it's definitely possible to do. I'm also not a huge fan of "You have to read non-dialogue text to get story" as if I wanted to do that, I'd read a book.
You can do the opening your way. The room after the first two rats has a bow, you start with flare, and melee weapons are everywhere. The opening is a "try before your buy" thing, too. You get to see all the basic facets of combat, and then choose your class later, to prevent you having to try do the Dragon Age thing of trying doing multiple openings to try all the different playstyles. And don't say "Switch to an AI to try a playstyle" for dragon. Because you don't even get to have a mage in your party until about 4-5 hours in, when you head to the tower and get that expendable mage guy, or Morrigan after the tower. I must have restarted Dragon Age quite a few times before I felt "right" with my choice of class.
After the opening, everything is free to you. Hell, you can lockpick "Very Hard" locks right from the start, with a little patience and skill.
You're complaining that on your way to do a quest or go somewhere you find other caves, mines, castles etc. And they make you forget what you were doing?? I see your first problem you are waaaayyyy to easily distracted.
Apparently you want a tank or a car as well since horses that move as fast as horses just aren't on.
Also you give out that you felt your character was stuck in molasses and not as proficient as he should have been. Did you try leveling up? Because i generally find that it helps your proficiency in oblivion a hell of a lot.
Finally your last problem, that of the story. I like it but yeah most people don't and i can see where they are coming from however no-one i know has said ignore all the stories, just the main one. The guild quests are fantastic, do more than one of them and they are equal in length to some full games like mirrors edge or modern warfare 2 and there are at least 4 of them. SO "ignore the main story" isn't as much of a drawback when there are so many other rich storylines for you to follow.
If you are playing an rpg i'd expect you to have a sense of adventure, to want to know whats over the other side of the giant hill or whats in the forest at the end of the valley but if you don't i really do not see why you bought oblivion since its not exactly a secret.
Yeah, Oblivion happened in an interesting world, with an interesting back story. I spent many hours wandering around checking out the scenery and reading books.
Of course, I did that partly because it was good, but mostly because the actual game was so inexcusably awful that wandering around not playing it was the only way I could have any fun.
The only thing more boring than the main quest was the side quests (Guild quests excluded. Those were actually a bit of fun.) and the combat and leveling systems were broken beyond all belief.
I wanted to like the game. I put huge amounts of my time into figuring out how best to play it, and later how to play it while minimizing the annoyances, but it was simply never enjoyable.
OT, Oblivion was one of my favorite games of all time and while I can understand a lot of the points you mentioned in this review, none of them were as bad (to me) as you made them out to be.
Sure, the story is nowhere near as good as Morrowind or Fallout 3 for that matter, but I found that the many side quests made up for it. And yeah, the very small number of voice actors made the encounters with NPCs fairly laughable when it comes to delivering serious dialog when I just talked to them 3 seconds ago as an old beggar woman but once again, I was able to look past it.
Ah well, even though I don't really agree with you, it was still a well written review and I commend you for not going the route of being like Yahtzee and just copy pasting his review of it.
Though I have to say, Oblivion was sssssoooooooooooooo much fucking better than Fallout 3.
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Anyone who's played Might and Magic Dark Messiah would know that a first person Medieval RPG can be alot of fun if the battle system is spontaneous, original and dynamic. Dark Messiah (love it or hate it) had a bloody awesome battle system and having played that before oblivion revealed to me just how much of a flaming, repetitive, broken piece of shit Oblivion really was.
Damn right about Messiah being better with combat. That's right. ME. Agreeing with how freaking awesome Dark Messiah is. Only problem I had with it was that it wasn't too open ended. I bought it yesterday, as a matter of fact. Previously, I'd only play the dumbed-down 360 version.
I was going to say the same thing; Melee and archery on their own are patheticaly weak. They need "magic" to be a little better.. for a limited time. Even there, they dont scale well at later levels.
Even if your magic sword is "nice", you are awesome only for a limited time. YOu will run out of charges often... and you will have to hunt for soul gems (and fill them up).
Same with archery, without poison and enchants its completely useless (the only "advantage" to archery is to do a sneak attack combined with poison and enchants.. an an opening move... good only for the FRIST shot in most battles). Enchanted bow have the same limitation as melee weapons, and enchanted arrows are rare and (AFAIK) impossible to craft ourselves.
Poisoning your arrows manually is a long, boring chore.
Mages get to be awesome as long as they want, their only ressource is technically unlimited, regenerating, and free. You only need to carry mana potions if you are in trouble,since magic does everything you might need at any time, and if your an atronach well.. you laugh in the face of ennemy mages while they recharge you, but you are a bit more dependant on mana potions.
Heck, just look at your options as a mage, you have 7 different schools of magic, hundreds of different spells to choose from, you can craft your own spells (for devastating effect, just make a good 1-spell-combo and you are set)
YOur options as anything else? Limited. The only thing mages cant do is the "armorer" skill effect to repair gear... oh wait, they CAN, just use the spell "fortify -skillname- 100 for 1 second".
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