how did Oblivion get such a high rating?

[ArizonaSteve]

Having seen the positive reports on Fallout 3, I do have some hope that Bethesda will learn from their mistakes with Oblivion, and that Elder Scrolls V will be a great game.

But since there's no sign of Elder Scrolls V on the horizon, is there anything similar that's worth playing while I wait...?

 

[hans030390]

Based on how you're describing the problems of the game, I've come to the conclusion that you just don't know how to play it. I have never encountered such issues, to be honest.

That said, I thought Fallout 3 was even more bland and repetitive than Oblivion.

 

[Arglebargle]

Oblivion. Ugh. A household here of four PC gamers, all of whom had played Morrowind, some for years. Not a single one was playing Oblivion two months after getting it.

Oblivion ended my purchasing of Bethesda games at anything other than years-later-deep-discount. I wouldn't know aobut Fallout 3 except for someone buying it for me as a gift.

Personally, Morrowind was much more enjoyable, because it was foreign and exotic. For Oblivion they scraped all that off in their so-called 're-imagining'. Cyrodil ended up being a pretty bland place, pro forma fantasy fodder, not the Romanesque Empire at the center of previous legend. Repetitive, with a bland story (except for the Thieves/Assassain guild quests, which were interesting and had better design) and much overhyped over what it delivered. Bad voice acting, AI, and leveling concepts. 'Have you heard about the Mudcrabs??'X1000.

They built up a lot of press because of the graphics. Most reviewers had only a couple of hours in game, not nearly enough to work out what the problems were, before they wrote their glowing reviews.

While it might be transformed radically by modding, I just haven't had the interest to go back there. Fatally flawed in my estimation.

Oddly, I liked Fallout 3 way more than I thought I would. Better story bits, better voice work, if only it wasn't buggy as the day is long. And didn't use Windoze Live stupidity. I have only recently gotten to where it doesn't crash every hour or two. I will say, having played 'The Pitt' on a friends machine, and I was impressed with it. It gave you some diffcult choices. They were tough for me, not the usual easy or simple ones.

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: Jumpem
After Fallout 3 I will never buy another Bethesda product.

Yea I really disliked Fallout 3. It was very boring.

 

[frythecpuofbender]

I found FALLOUT3 totally inbalanced. Around level 17-18 you can be an invincible god with 10000 ammo for each gun and one-headshotting even the biggest mutants. The economy (collecting, buying, selling stuff etc) too is utterly broken in FALLOUT 3
Bethesda are good in designing open worlds, but lacking in gameplay polish.
And it doesn't help that DLC raised the level cap. With level 20+ the game is ridiculously easy aka no challenge whatsoever.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: frythecpuofbender
I found FALLOUT3 totally inbalanced. Around level 17-18 you can be an invincible god with 10000 ammo for each gun and one-headshotting even the biggest mutants. The economy (collecting, buying, selling stuff etc) too is utterly broken in FALLOUT 3
Bethesda are good in designing open worlds, but lacking in gameplay polish.

Get the alien gun with enough ammo you are GOD.

 

[Mem]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: brblx
you just can't bash oblivion and say fallout 3 is good. it defies logic.

Fallout 3 is much better, for this reason alone. All the NPC had their own voice, Oblivion had 3 people doing the voices for every NPC. And they didn't even make an attempt to sound different from character to character. It totally took away from the experience to me and that alone made the game unplayable. I would have rather had no speech and all text, because it's lame when you have a game that big, with that many NPC's and regardless where I was at, the dude I spoke to sounded the same as the last dude I spoke to way across the map. Because it was the same voice actor. Besides that there were plenty of other things wrong with it. Fallout 3 wasn't great, but it was about 57 times better than that POS Oblivion.

I was actually dissapointed with Fallout 3,I feel the gaming standard has dropped over the years its like "well we just do an average console version port for the PC ,that will keep them happy".They sure don't make games like they use to for the PC.

I prefer the exploring from the old days, I hate auto trackers I don't want carebear approach,if I'm an explorer let me explore and find the places on my own(one thing I liked about Morrowind), I dont want or need a tomtom guiding me.

 

[BenSkywalker]

I don't even know what you mean by PC native dev, and I'm a dev. I don't care where they developed it.

I meant that they are developers from the PC mindset, they built their company making PC only games and when that proved not to be working out as well as they would have liked, they started making console games.

What I meant was that developing for the console market meant a different audience than the old-school RPGs. I'm not anti-console, but consoles represent the mass market of gaming, and RPGs of the old-school variety never appealed to a mass market.

Console RPGs are grind fests, PC RPGs tend to be far simpler in that regard(far more in depth in customization etc, but much simpler on the leveling on not spending hours every time you reach a new area grinding before you can start doing the quests). Your statement that the scaled leveling was an example of consolization makes no sense at all, to quote a random console site-

Another huge divergence in Oblivion is that the game doesn?t necessarily get harder the further you progress; it is actually based on your current level of ability. So if you spend the first 10 hours simply leveling up you will not become all powerful and simply blast through the first part of the game, in fact, it just makes it harder as the enemies gain levels alongside you.

That aspect of the game in no way whatsoever came from the consoles, other PC RPGs may have had some scaling going on, but it certainly didn't come from console RPGs which tend to be very grind heavy(to a fault most of the time). As far as the implication that that somehow would make it more mass market, the simplest and most mass market RPG of them all, Pokemon, is very grind heavy. Whatever they thought they were doing by having leveling scale with the player it wasn't in any way whatsoever an issue of making it more console like. Reducing your options for a new character, I could see that being more console like- cinematic style story presentation would also be more console like. Auto leveling? Not even close.

If I accidentally tripped over your console vs. PC war mentality... oh well.

I play games, and am not terribly fond of ignorance. I enjoy both PC and console games, I even buy some of them for both sides. We just seem to have a lot of ignorance around here about that devs are doing 'because of the consoles'. There are some valid points, taking grinding out of RPGs sure as hell isn't one of them.

 

[Edge1]

Oblivion had its good points. I spent a lot of time, probably close to 150 hrs, in the game. Eventually when the eye candy wears off, and you tire of the endless assortment of tasks which always await you, it becomes rather stale. There is definitely an empty shallowness about it after you peel away the veneer. Still it does many things in a cool way and does immerse you in its fictional world to a large degree. I never did finish the main questline. Too damn distracting doing other stuff. I found it more interesting to think about the writers and what little subplots they had developed outside the main quest. Still, it grew tiresome. Yet I don't regret playing it. My kids love it.

I am NOT an accomplished RPG type, so I can't say much there. I'm reasonably intelligent and educated and RPGs completely confuse the hell out of me .

 

[frythecpuofbender]

I liked Oblivion more than Fallout3 for a simple reason: You could mess with the NPCs in a lot more ways.
For Fallout3 they dumbed down the RadiantAI and they don't do shit anymore.

I loved stealing stuff in Oblivion, getting the guards to accuse and attack innocents or use the nude-spell on people. There was so much fun to be had stomping on a royal diner society's table and making an idiot out of yourself and everyone.
That really was the main appeal of the game for me: Trying to mess with the game's rules and logic. They should do a whole game around this and not pretend all the RPG stuff.
It's ridiculous anyway. You could kill someone's wife, strip her naked and dangle the body in front of the NPC and he would give zero reaction to it, nore acknowledge her demise in his dialogue...If you have such gameplay problems, don't try to pretend to be more serious than you are.

 

[AzN]

I loved fallout 3 but oblivion. Not really. Sure it had great graphics at the time but the story was absolute shit and dragged forever.

 

[jonks]

Logged well over 100+ hours, loved it.

 

[coloumb]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
This game is horrible. It's made by the same people who made Fallout 3, so I keep giving it the benefit of the doubt, but it keeps sucking ass. I've explored most of the map and I have yet to find any merchants that have money. My inventory is constantly full because I can't find a single person who can buy any of it. I'm looking for mods or patches to fix this bullshit, but so far I haven't found anything.

Seriously, can anyone tell me how this game deserves anything higher than a 4 or 5 out of 10?

Are you playing Oblivion or the GOTY edition? GOTY edition fixed a lot of issues...

Why'd it receive such high scores? Mainly because it has a good storyline and is a sandbox - you can pretty much do whatever you want.

The game [GOTY vanilla edition] was difficult to play in the beginning [the mobs seemed to level up faster than you] - However, once my caster reached a certain level [and obtained invisibility spell] - the game was very fun to play. Other than buying spells- there wasn't any reason to pick up items to sell to vendors.

 

[dj2004]

The only official quests I enjoyed in Oblivion were the Dark Brotherhood quests and the Knights of the Nine questline. I suppose the Thieves Guild quests were also good. Besides those, I spent hundreds of hours just roaming Cryodiil and completing quests from mods. To this day, I have yet to make it past the first ~1/6 of the MQ and I have over a thousand hours invested. If one plays Oblivion for its MQ then I can see how a dislike can be formed (and this seems to be the case from reading the posts within this thread), if one actually puts some real roleplaying and imagination into the game, along with plenty of mods, then it becomes the best PC RPG in a long time, IMO. I've had characters range from an almighty necromancer that terrorizes Cryodiil from his dark palace to a light-footed thief who robs castle vaults and stores with the use of Thieves Arsenal to a simple hunter that resides in a cabin in Blackwood that solely survives on animal meats and the selling of their pelts.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: dj2004
simple hunter that resides in a cabin in Blackwood that solely survives on animal meats and the selling of their pelts.

That sounds like loads of fun

 

[KeithP]

In regards to the available mods, does anyone know of a recent up-to-date mod guide. I was thinking about picking the game up but when I search for mods most of the pages I found seemed quite old (2006, 2007).

-KeithP

 

[dj2004]

Originally posted by: Dumac

Originally posted by: dj2004
simple hunter that resides in a cabin in Blackwood that solely survives on animal meats and the selling of their pelts.

That sounds like loads of fun

I was merely providing a few examples of what I have done with my characters to prove that this game is what the player makes of it in terms of RP. I did actually find it to be loads of fun and that is what matters to me.

KeithP: You probably already done so but the Top 100 in Tesnexus.com is the fastest and easiest way to find some of the best mods. Most of them get updated frequently. Something like the Unofficial Patch is finalized so even though it is from 2008 it does not mean it is outdated.

 

[Dumac]

Originally posted by: dj2004

Originally posted by: Dumac

Originally posted by: dj2004
simple hunter that resides in a cabin in Blackwood that solely survives on animal meats and the selling of their pelts.

That sounds like loads of fun

I was merely providing a few examples of what I have done with my characters to prove that this game is what the player makes of it in terms of RP. I did actually find it to be loads of fun and that is what matters to me.

I was only being semi sarcastic. That does sound kind of fun, albeit limiting.

 

[Markbnj]

Originally posted by: BenSkywalkerI meant that they are developers from the PC mindset, they built their company making PC only games and when that proved not to be working out as well as they would have liked, they started making console games.

Not really relevant. I don't know where the majority of the designers and programmers on the team came from and it isn't germane to my point.

Console RPGs are grind fests, PC RPGs tend to be far simpler in that regard(far more in depth in customization etc, but much simpler on the leveling on not spending hours every time you reach a new area grinding before you can start doing the quests).

The whole idea of a 'grind' came after the golden era of PC RPGs, so again not very relevant. My point was not about level progression. I don't remember even caring what my level was in Oblivion.

The middle quote you posted was not me, but maybe you intended that.

Whatever they thought they were doing by having leveling scale with the player it wasn't in any way whatsoever an issue of making it more console like.

That's your opinion, and you aren't responding to a quote from me here, but in any case the context is the same. I don't know what "console-like" is and I don't care. The last console I had was an NES. The kids have a WII but I don't use it. I theorized that the need to appeal to the console market (i.e. the mass market) was the reason for the dumbed-down monster/treasure levelling mechanism. That's all, and it remains my opinion. It might very well be wrong, or even as you suggest stupid, but I suspect that only someone from Bethesda could tell us for certain.

I play games, and am not terribly fond of ignorance. I enjoy both PC and console games, I even buy some of them for both sides. We just seem to have a lot of ignorance around here about that devs are doing 'because of the consoles'.

And I am not very fond of rude, arrogant people who mistake their opinions for facts, but then we all have to live with things we're not fond of.

 

[astrosfan315]

Originally posted by: vj8usa

Originally posted by: WhipperSnapper

How does Oblivion compare to Morrowind? Now that the dust has settled, is Morrowind regarded as superior?

I don't know about the general consensus, but I thought Morrowind was far superior to Oblivion. The world felt more mystical, or alive, or something. For all its fancy shaders and voice acting, Oblivion just seemed bland and uninteresting.

I felt it was superior as well. I had 100s of hours in Morrowind 3, and Oblivion I lost interest in about 15 hours.

 

[pwnagesarus]

Originally posted by: brblx
i played morrowind around the same time i played KOTOR and i simply hated it. the latter was ten times more engrossing, i did not want to read the former's boring text and dredge through what felt like a story-less wasteland. if there was a main quest, i never found it.

i played oblivion un-modded and loved it. the story was a bit bland but i enjoyed leveling my character and progressing through the game's dungeons. the thief and assassin missions were excellent.

fallout 3, meh. it was just oblivion with zombies and radiaton. i was bored by it.

I didn't mind reading the text, I actually prefer it sometimes.

People are gonna shoot me but I found KotOR to be boring. The story was interesting but the combat was just so bad. Mass Effect was awesome though.