What's so great about Elder Scrolls?

[TheLoneBeet]

The freedom to do anything you want. You can completely ignore the main storyline and still get hundreds of hours of play out of these games. The re-playability would be my second greatest reason. You can make a warrior and play for hundreds of hours. Stop. Create a thief and play the same game for a hundred more hours, and it almost feels like an entirely different game. Stop again. Create a mage and play for hundreds MORE hours. Stop. Then create some freaky mess of the three using all your favorites. It's almost like a new game each time you play because there's always something you'll find that you've never done before and then it'll somehow inflate into hundreds of hours of play.

 

[BloatedGuppy]

All reviews are inherently subjective opinions. There's not an unbiased one that's ever been written; the job of a reviewer is to clearly convey his or her experience in a way that lets you know if you'd like it or not, highlighting positives and negatives a less discerning eye may not have noticed. A reviewer's job is NOT to be objective.

Yeah, that's fair, but some measure of objectivity is called for in that process. If a reviewer is naught but completely subjective, you don't know whether or not you would like or dislike a game, you only know whether they liked or disliked it due to their own personality and preferences. The review he linked, while not as bad as it seemed at first pass, sets out with the intention of slamming Oblivion for all the things its not. And since a lot of the critiques are on the nose, it can read like a damning indictment of the game. The reviewer does NOT give any time or attention to praising many of the things that Oblivion is, other than a few backhanded comments about it being a mediocre action game.

Ultimately people are free to write (and read) whatever kind of reviews they please, but I'm not sure I'd call such a one-sided review "honest", nor its author "a true RPG enthusiast". The author clearly likes a particular style of RPG, and is savaging Oblivion for not living up to his expectations. If I write a restaurant review column for my local paper, and I slam the new Mexican joint for not being Italian enough, I'm not doing my job.

 

[sievr]

Honestly, Oblivion was not that great, and Skyrim looks like almost exactly the same game. I think most of the excitement people have/had for Oblivion and Skyrim were due to how great Morrowind was.

Don't get me wrong. I played more than 140 hours of Oblivion. I was a badass black chick with a ponytail and a hammer as big as an angry cow; I bought five houses, got turned into a vampire, and generally became a God, and had a lot of fun doing it. But Oblivion and Skyrim (as far as I can tell) suffer from the problem that other people mentioned before. It's ugly as hell. There's no imagination in the art direction at all, the character voices are samey and uninspired, and you lack motivation to actually care about saving the world.

I really dont understand how someone could play 140 hours of a game they didnt like.

Again, I never said I didn't like it. I said I had a lot of fun playing it. My point was that I thought people might be excited for Skyrim based on their affection for Morrowind, which was in my opinion a better game than Oblivion.

 

[Leoofmoon]

HEARATIC!

 

[ultrachicken]

They're big and expansive, have cool backstory, and offer a lot of gameplay choices. If fantasy isn't your thing (which seems to be the case), then it's not your thing, but imagine such a game in a type of setting you enjoy and you'll see why the games are so popular.

Also, Oblivion is actually not really held in such high regard on this site. At least compared to Morrowind.

 

[ultrachicken]

Honestly, Oblivion was not that great, and Skyrim looks like almost exactly the same game. I think most of the excitement people have/had for Oblivion and Skyrim were due to how great Morrowind was.

Don't get me wrong. I played more than 140 hours of Oblivion. I was a badass black chick with a ponytail and a hammer as big as an angry cow; I bought five houses, got turned into a vampire, and generally became a God, and had a lot of fun doing it. But Oblivion and Skyrim (as far as I can tell) suffer from the problem that other people mentioned before. It's ugly as hell. There's no imagination in the art direction at all, the character voices are samey and uninspired, and you lack motivation to actually care about saving the world.

I'm confused as to how you managed to spend 140 hours on a game that "wasn't that great." I'm also confused as to how you consider Skyrim ugly. Its textures are fairly low-res, I agree, but the art direction is phenomenal. Did you honestly watch this trailer and not feel impressed?


I also find it strange that you claim there is no motivation to save the world when you haven't even played the game, though it wouldn't surprise me if this was the case, as Bethesda games aren't really devoted to good main stories.