While being able to construct your own class is of course a hallmark of the series and one of it's best features, it kind of falls on it's face in Oblivion, because by the time you get out of the mandatory tutorial, you're pretty well committed to being a Spellsword anyway.
One of the things I'd like to see is some kind of skill synergy. So if I have say 55 in Heavy Armor, I can put Light Armor on and be at least marginally effective with it. Or I'm good with short blades, some of that translates into long blades. I for one appreciated Oblivion combining Axes and Maces into one skill.
The thing that has bothered me since daggerfall moved to morrowind is:
They reduce complexity to increase graphics.
They reduced the number of skills. Oblivion saw an ever greater decrease.
They reduced freedom.
Care to explain some of that vitriol? I'm going to commit a cardinal sin and criticize Daggerfall now.
There was no freedom in Daggerfall. There, I said it. Oh sure, you could follow the main questline, but that's any RPG. Other than that, you could do the same four quests for any given guild over and over, to after months of game time, have access to a couple more shops.
Gameplay consisted of madly throwing the mouse back and forth, hoping you were actually standing at a range your hitboxes would connect. Or throwing area effect spells around, because plain projectiles couldn't detect crap. All this in dungeons that looked like a pile of mating squid, full of angry zombies that got stuck in level architecture, differentiated only by texturing and which five random structure templates the map used. Though the main quest dungeons did have some cool set-pieces.
And of course, the engine itself was a klunky, ass-ugly, bug riven mess even for it's day. Graphics glitches, save corruption, broken floors, you name it. One reason why most of the skills were cut out for Morrowind was that they didn't do anything in the first place. And armor skills didn't exist yet, so there was no reason not to wear the best platemail you could find, because all equipment was just a straight progression.
Now don't get me wrong, I got Daggerfall when I was 10 and I played the crap out of it for years. I only stopped because I couldn't get it to work in XP. Heartbreaking. But by any objective measure, it was a crap game that Morrowind, even in context, vastly improved upon. A giant skill list or an abundance of details does not "complexity" make, nor does complexity necessarily translate into entertaining gameplay. I think the core of Oblivion was on the right track, but they real lazy about world building and quality control. The same model, but with loads more content, balancing, and attention to refinement would have made it a great game. That's what I'm hoping for.
Author
Topic: TES V: What should it not do? (Read 8816 times)