Hey Dragon, You Can Have Her: The Elder Scrolls IV - Oblivion

[Njaard]

I've a solution to your problem with enchanted melee weapons, you get a soul gem that never runs out from a daedric god in the main quest, and it's up to you wether or not to keep it. There's also a strong sword called Umbra, which is aquired in one of the ruins, that gains charges when it kills, thus you've got unlimited power for your weapons.

 

[SavingPrincess]

I didn't find Oblivion's story to be as bad as all that. You mention that you like JRPGs. I can't honestly say I've played all that many unique and compelling JRPG storylines once I played my first JRPG, aside from the Shin Megami Tensei series I should say. Most of the Final Fantasy series, for instance, deals with some evil that is somehow trying to exploit the earth, and you are a character who often doesn't care about that, until about halfway through the game when you realize that, "Oh shit, I live in this world too. I better do something about this." Both JRPGs and WRPGs seem to have their own feeling and setting that is emblematic to their storylines.

I guess if I wanted to make up my own story, I'd write a book or go play outside or some silly nonsense like that. Oblivion's story wasn't "bad" it was just hard to find (which made experiencing it... well, bad). Trying to further the main quest at times was like trying to flip back to a television show you were watching that constantly changes to a random channel, while every channel you have to flip through to find it was a telethon asking for your charity. What really lost it for me was the lack of "characters." I get the whole "you're supposed to make it up" or whatever, but that just doesn't sit well with my brain thing.

I guess it's just my philosophy on games and entertainment that prevents me from wrapping my head around a game like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as the game itself is more of a toy by definition. It's a set of tools and parameters with which the player constructs their own experiences. The origin story for example: I like back story, I like good writing, don't make me make up my own good writing. I feel that hired writers are (or at least should be) more creative than me, or else I would be a writer myself (and thus get paid for doing so). It's really about proper advertising though... if you're going to make a "Hero Sim" then call it so on the box, don't lure me in with pretty pictures and talk of a grand sweeping epic story. When I find the story to be lacking, I focus on the gameplay, and well... yeah... we all know how that turned out.

 

[SavingPrincess]

You seriously need to proofread this sucker. I just find it ironic when someone with the title "symphonic wordsmith" writes stuff like this:

you're a (basically) nameless, (basically) faceless

subjective-ness

Starting off in a fairly typical way, you're a (basically) nameless, (basically) faceless hero with zero back story or motivation, who has been thrown in jail for some reason or another (which I'm assuming you're supposed to invent for yourself) and it just so happens that they put you in the jail cell with the super-secret door to the "escape this way if all goes to sh*t" room that on this one particular day during your duration-less sentence, just happens to be needed.

Notice anything strange up above? Yeah, that's all one sentence.

is while you're walking to said tree off in the distance to further the main story, you can stumble upon ancient tombs that hold treasures untold. The problem with that, is while you're walking to that tree off in the distance, you can stumble upon ancient tombs that hold treasures untold

relate-able goals

I'm sure I didn't come even close to finding them all, because after a while all the run-on sentences set my eyes to blurring. Most of your sentences really could be split into two at no cost to what you're trying to get across. I'm not even a very good writer, so I was kind of hoping somebody like Nuke would saunter in and mention all this stuff for me.

As for your opinion, it's fairly obvious with these reviews that you're big on getting attention. No point in addressing that until the mechanics of the review are solid. Yeah, maybe you were writing this way on purpose, but never forget that doing something wrong on purpose doesn't make it any less lame. I was trying to understand why I find it so hard to read your reviews, and it's really the run-on sentences more than anything else. Writing is not the same as talking, and conversational writing is what I think can be safely referred to as "poor writing." Unless it's for a movie. And your name is Quentin Tarantino.

On a final note, why censor yourself if you're going to type a swear word? As far as I know, you're not going to be moderated more or less based on whether you show a full swear or self-censor (it's context that's important). If you don't like to swear, then just don't swear! If you like to swear, then why wuss out? This is an adult website. Or at least, kind of an adult website.

LOL, seriously... just skip reading when my name comes up. Problem totally solved. Have fun on the internets!

 

[reg42]

Despite it's flaws, looking back I would still highly recommend Oblivion to people. There are just too many positives to the game for it not to be included in a must play list for this generation of consoles.

Ha ha ha, what? Why would you play a fundamentally broken game that the community has taken it upon themselves to fix and improve on the system that can't actually benefit from any of that effort? That's crazy talk!

Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 - sure, they were all released on consoles, but you're delusional if you think they really belong there. With some games mod support is a nice perk, with those, it's pretty much vital.

They're patched now so... What's the problem?

 

[PurePareidolia]

I enjoyed Oblivion, despite it's flaws (you were pretty much on the money with all of them). Though, if you only list flaws, any game can seem bad - there were a few really great moments in it, it's deep and fun enough to be at least moderately enjoyable on it's own and it's moddable beyond all reason, giving it practically limitless potential.

 

[Lullabye]

There was a main quest to oblivion?.......I guess I got side tracked somewhere. Now that I think about it, there was something about some amulet and samurai......but that was a loooong time ago. Now I'm the god of madness, felled Uriel the Unfeathered and Have spoken with the Night Mother herself!
Now I simply seek the company of other gods, which unfortunately can only be done through their statues. Plus there is the ever evasive mystery of the Ayleid ruins to solve. Assuming the traps don't kill me first.

 

[Meggiepants]

Despite it's flaws, looking back I would still highly recommend Oblivion to people. There are just too many positives to the game for it not to be included in a must play list for this generation of consoles.

Ha ha ha, what? Why would you play a fundamentally broken game that the community has taken it upon themselves to fix and improve on the system that can't actually benefit from any of that effort? That's crazy talk!

Morrowind, Oblivion, Fallout 3 - sure, they were all released on consoles, but you're delusional if you think they really belong there. With some games mod support is a nice perk, with those, it's pretty much vital.

Well, having never played any of those games on the PC, I can assure you, I did enjoy playing them as is. I understand people playing the games on PC had a much more malleable experience, but I really had no problem playing it on the console. In fact, I've played through both Fallout and Oblivion multiple times on the console and spent countless hours playing them. And I enjoyed it immensely.

Honestly, I don't really think you can compare the console experience to the PC experience. Even Super Mario could be modded to be more interesting on the PC. I don't really consider that a fair criticism. "Hey, if we take thousands of users with know how, and allow them to tweak the game in umpteen different ways, we have a much more interesting product!" Of course you do! And I am jealous that I don't have a PC that can handle these games. But to me, I see it as if we both have a piece of cake, yours just has extra icing.

Delusional? Perhaps. But if that is the case, apparently it's a delusion that has become so widespread as to be an epidemic.

I guess if I wanted to make up my own story, I'd write a book or go play outside or some silly nonsense like that. Oblivion's story wasn't "bad" it was just hard to find (which made experiencing it... well, bad). Trying to further the main quest at times was like trying to flip back to a television show you were watching that constantly changes to a random channel, while every channel you have to flip through to find it was a telethon asking for your charity. What really lost it for me was the lack of "characters." I get the whole "you're supposed to make it up" or whatever, but that just doesn't sit well with my brain thing.

I guess it's just my philosophy on games and entertainment that prevents me from wrapping my head around a game like The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion as the game itself is more of a toy by definition. It's a set of tools and parameters with which the player constructs their own experiences. The origin story for example: I like back story, I like good writing, don't make me make up my own good writing. I feel that hired writers are (or at least should be) more creative than me, or else I would be a writer myself (and thus get paid for doing so). It's really about proper advertising though... if you're going to make a "Hero Sim" then call it so on the box, don't lure me in with pretty pictures and talk of a grand sweeping epic story. When I find the story to be lacking, I focus on the gameplay, and well... yeah... we all know how that turned out.

I get what you are saying, and I will concede that WRPGs take the traditional pen and paper RGP playing and bring it into a game setting. It's expected that you make up a lot of the story as you go. If you didn't like this, I probably wouldn't recommend Fallout to you either, as it works very similarly.

Was it a perfect game? No. I haven't played a perfect game. But it was a great game in my opinion.

 

[SavingPrincess]

I get what you are saying, and I will concede that WRPGs take the traditional pen and paper RGP playing and bring it into a game setting. It's expected that you make up a lot of the story as you go. If you didn't like this, I probably wouldn't recommend Fallout to you either, as it works very similarly.

Was it a perfect game? No. I haven't played a perfect game. But it was a great game in my opinion.

Actually, I've played all the Fallout canon games (including Fallout 3) and enjoyed them. The narrative in Fallout 3 was absolutely prevalent and easily followed, as I believe it was a correction to Oblivion in that sense. I played Fallout 3 to completion and only did side-quests when they caught my eye, but never fell away from the overall narrative. So, yeah... I would even wager to say that my experience with Fallout 3 made me view Oblivion in a more negative light, which might be unfair, but since when do I care about such things?

Delusional? Perhaps. But if that is the case, apparently it's a delusion that has become so widespread as to be an epidemic.

There are so many games that fall under this category in today's world that it hurts my brain and my little gamer heart to start thinking of all of them.

 

[Pezzer]

Necromancers invading nation is more pressing to me than gradual advance of easily destroyed demons.

Which guild storyline was that?

EDIT: Wait, stupid question. It was the main storyline.

Mages Guild quest, they were all pretty fun and you get some of the few cool robes in the game, so yeah, go do those...

 

[DuplicateValue]

Oblivion is probably my favourite game of all time - I just loved every moment of it and was more than willing to see past it's shortcomings. Occasionally, I just spend hours wandering around the towns shopping and admiring the scenery - I adore the game's atmosphere that much.

However, I still thought this was a brilliant review/nitpicking session. It was funny and kept me entertained for a while.
It's not often I bother reading something so wall-of-textish, but I'm glad I did.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

LOL, seriously... just skip reading when my name comes up. Problem totally solved. Have fun on the internets!

Silly me, I thought when people posted stuff in the User Review section it meant they would like to receive criticism so they could fix anything that wasn't as good as it could have been on the first draft.

If I really despised you I obviously wouldn't have put any work into pointing out little ways your writing could have been improved. But now, as in the past, you've shown yourself to be pretty opposed to modifying your writing in any way (even when it's something as simple as eliminating run-on sentences.)

If you want to write whatever you want and never have anyone suggest it could be better than it is, you might try a little website called Gamefaqs.

 

[SavingPrincess]

Silly me, I thought when people posted stuff in the User Review section it meant they would like to receive criticism so they could fix anything that wasn't as good as it could have been on the first draft.

If I really despised you I obviously wouldn't have put any work into pointing out little ways your writing could have been improved. But now, as in the past, you've shown yourself to be pretty opposed to modifying your writing in any way (even when it's something as simple as eliminating run-on sentences.)

If you want to write whatever you want and never have anyone suggest it could be better than it is, you might try a little website called Gamefaqs.

That's all fair and good, but there's a way to constructively criticize without coming across in a mean or condescending way. I welcome constructive criticisms, but when people continually say "I don't enjoy this because it sucks" it makes me wonder why they even read what I write in the first place. People don't generally post to be criticized, they post because they want to be read. If the main purpose of a post is to have editorial critiques, they would post it on a site for English majors and editors. I realize I am a practitioner of pragmatics and linguistics as a whole, and that might putoff-ify some hardcore-ish grammatiarions, but heaven-forbidinate me to have a 'lil bit of fun-ness with the English language. I humbly apologificate myself unto you in hopes of forgivination.

 

[Samurai Goomba]

Silly me, I thought when people posted stuff in the User Review section it meant they would like to receive criticism so they could fix anything that wasn't as good as it could have been on the first draft.

If I really despised you I obviously wouldn't have put any work into pointing out little ways your writing could have been improved. But now, as in the past, you've shown yourself to be pretty opposed to modifying your writing in any way (even when it's something as simple as eliminating run-on sentences.)

If you want to write whatever you want and never have anyone suggest it could be better than it is, you might try a little website called Gamefaqs.

That's all fair and good, but there's a way to constructively criticize without coming across in a mean or condescending way. I welcome constructive criticisms, but when people continually say "I don't enjoy this because it sucks" it makes me wonder why they even read what I write in the first place. People don't generally post to be criticized, they post because they want to be read. If the main purpose of a post is to have editorial critiques, they would post it on a site for English majors and editors. I realize I am a practitioner of pragmatics and linguistics as a whole, and that might putoff-ify some hardcore-ish grammatiarions, but heaven-forbidinate me to have a 'lil bit of fun-ness with the English language. I humbly apologificate myself unto you in hopes of forgivination.

Actually, the purpose of the User Reviews section on The Escapist, and one of the things that separates it from other forums is that typically the writing, as well as the subject matter is criticized so as to improve the overall quality of the review. I guess that's something that's getting kicked these days.

If I come across as overly negative on your reviews, it's because I see the same kinds of mistakes being made, then rationalized. Like it's some freaking badge of honor to write poorly when just a couple changes would make your work so much easier to read.

I mean, The Escapist kind of is that website for english majors and editors. Or at least, it was. I have never said of your reviews that I dislike them simply because they suck-I have always provided reasons, explanations and ways you can improve. If you have felt offended at any point on a personal level by what I've said, rest assured it was not meant that way.

*eagerly awaits another sarcastic and flippant reply*

 

[clzark]

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.

I actually really liked making my own backstory for being in jail. my favorite was my dark elf archer. he was a guard, and on patrol with his unit. they were jumped by some beasties from an oblivion gate. my archer was the only survivor, and since he had kind of a "sneaky sneaky stabby stabby" background, they assumed the worst and threw him in jail.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Despite it's flaws, looking back I would still highly recommend Oblivion to people. There are just too many positives to the game for it not to be included in a must play list for this generation of consoles.

Ha ha ha, what? Why would you play a fundamentally broken game that the community has taken it upon themselves to fix and improve on the system that can't actually benefit from any of that effort? That's crazy talk!

They're patched now so... What's the problem?

Even assuming you are satisfied with the game as is (great textures next to horrible ones, auto-leveling enemies making leveling up like running in place, etc), the official patches still left a metric ton of bugs Bethsada didn't consider important enough to fix (time is after all money). The community patches that squash those are somewhat unavailable outside the PC arena.

Personally I'm not an especially big fan of mods, as I have this thing about my experience remaining 'canonical', so the systems that completely overhaul how core gameplay features work or throw in all sorts of extra content are not really all that big of a draw for me. But things like interface improvements (vital), graphic upgrades (oh hell yes), bug fixes et all - those are awesome, and in Oblivion's case the game as released was significantly less fun that it should have been thanks to a very ill-thought out system where common bandits start walking around in full daedric platemail.

So what's the problem you ask? The powers that be charge you a $10 premium for a copy of the game that's quite notably worse than the PC version (can easily become). This strikes me as a rather jackass move on their part.

Well, having never played any of those games on the PC, I can assure you, I did enjoy playing them as is. I understand people playing the games on PC had a much more malleable experience, but I really had no problem playing it on the console. In fact, I've played through both Fallout and Oblivion multiple times on the console and spent countless hours playing them. And I enjoyed it immensely.

Honestly, I don't really think you can compare the console experience to the PC experience. Even Super Mario could be modded to be more interesting on the PC. I don't really consider that a fair criticism. "Hey, if we take thousands of users with know how, and allow them to tweak the game in umpteen different ways, we have a much more interesting product!" Of course you do! And I am jealous that I don't have a PC that can handle these games. But to me, I see it as if we both have a piece of cake, yours just has extra icing.

Delusional? Perhaps. But if that is the case, apparently it's a delusion that has become so widespread as to be an epidemic.

I wasn't suggesting you had to be delusional to enjoy playing them on a console, just that you're kidding yourself if you think you haven't been playing the "not as good" version, and therefore discussing them as if they were console titles at heart (they aren't) is an odd thing to do. The industry's focus on the 'blockbuster' titles has certainly shifted in a distinctly console direction, and most multi-platform titles that hit the PC probably are just glorified ports, but Bethsada's sandbox RPGs are the exception to that trend, is what I'm saying.

 

[LeonLethality]

Actually, the purpose of the User Reviews section on The Escapist, and one of the things that separates it from other forums is that typically the writing, as well as the subject matter is criticized so as to improve the overall quality of the review. I guess that's something that's getting kicked these days.

If I come across as overly negative on your reviews, it's because I see the same kinds of mistakes being made, then rationalized. Like it's some freaking badge of honor to write poorly when just a couple changes would make your work so much easier to read.

I mean, The Escapist kind of is that website for english majors and editors. Or at least, it was. I have never said of your reviews that I dislike them simply because they suck-I have always provided reasons, explanations and ways you can improve. If you have felt offended at any point on a personal level by what I've said, rest assured it was not meant that way.

*eagerly awaits another sarcastic and flippant reply*

The user review section is not about perfect writing and getting criticized/looking to improve. It's about user reviews. You are not supposed to go to a user review to critique it you are supposed to go to it to be informed about what is being reviewed.

And if you think his reviews suck why do you keep reading them? Would you watch a TV show that you thought sucked just to keep saying "This sucks"?

 

[darth jacen]

Snipity

hi, leon.

I have to disagree slightly with you on your point that the this section isn't for critiquing. I personally relish in the ripping apart of my reviews so that I can fix them and improve. I mainly review old games for the purpose that no one will care and only read the review to critique it. Though if someone is like me and enjoys a good PS2 game or something of the such and read my review just to find out about a game that's great as well! But as a reviewer (used lightly for the moment) I think this site really is as Samurai said a step above the rest for the English side of things. I know many sites that host reviews that are no where near as good as here for critiques and tips. Just a few things for thought I suppose.

 

[slimeonline]

Oblivion was good but over time I fell some of it awesomeness has faded a bit, especially with fallout 3, and dragon age etc.

 

[Lord Krunk]

I don't consider this a really good review or recommendation per se, but you did touch on all the reasons I loved Morrowind better. To be honest the story's great, but like all Beth games the real meat is in the sidequests.

And, to appease the PC elitists reading this (who seem to be dwindling in number/ratio these days), the mods. Lovely, lovely mods. Vanilla's fine by me though; I myself prefer Bethesda games on my Xbox.