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[scriver]

Backlash from the hype. If it hadn't been praised as the second coming of games, people wouldn't hate it so much. Also a reaction to the fact that so many people like it. Higher amount of people liking something means the antifans have to hate it more (and consequently deny it's good sides). Goes the other way as well - the bigger quantity of people hating something, the more the fans feels the need to slavishly love it in spites of it's weaknesses. Generally speaking, with reservation for "extremists" going either way of course.

If you have trouble identifying with either group, count yourself lucky to be in the level headed middle.
edit: Of course, hardly anyone would wilfully count themselves as either kind nor admit that they only feel the way they do because they're continually being aggravated by the other side, so the situation continually escalates beyond their control.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

I'm not intentionally ignoring it - I've read it.

What I don't understand is why the dislike is so vehement, and I honestly can't be bothered to find out for myself.

Well if you acknowledge the problems and just don't care that's one thing, but it's pretty clear why people don't like it if you actually want to understand.

The Level scaling is broken.  The level up and skill system is dumbed down and broken.  There's no flight magic and no flying creatures because otherwise you could fly  over the walls of the cities which are all in their own separate cells because the X-Box couldn't handle it any other way which leads to the city designs being completely retarded.  There's a magic compass you can't disable that magically tells you where everything nearby is and also usually point out each individual step of a quest so that there's no chance of you ever actually engaging your brain.  If that wasn't enough there are constant pop ups explaining each step of each quest that can't be turned off either: 

"I have reached something something cave.  I should enter it."  "I have entered the cave, I should look for the altar."  "I sense that I am near the altar. I should approach it."  "I have approached the altar, I can now drop the staff of everscamp"  "I have dropped the staff of everscamp, I should return to so and so for my reward".

Anyone who actually needs that much instruction instead of just being too lazy to use their brain probably would have gotten stumped and given up long before they even got to this quest.

Retconning the setting from rainforest and marsh to generic D&D fantasy land.  Retconning the history of the world and basing the entire plot of the game on some prophecy that said history had already proven to be nothing more than a PR stunt by the Septim Dynasty in order to make the game about generic save the world from the demon invasion and tossing all the previous two games' customary pollitical intrigue out the window.

Craptastic consoley interface.

"Dialogue trees" that are actually dialogue twigs with next to no meaningful options.

The only solution to everything is violence.  There was even a quest where they had designed a non-violent solution but then removed it as an option, leaving the inaccessible journal entries in the game files for anyone to see. (nevermind that depending on the intentions of the writers of that quest they're either huge misogynists or huge idiots.)

Bad writing, bad acting, too few voice actors, and the characters don't even use the same voice consistently.

Idiotic minigames.

"Improved" (more actiony) combat system that was even more broken than the game it supposedly improved on.

Radiant AI was literally a hoax.

I could go on... and on... and on...

And no, despite what scriver might want you to think, having an educated opinion about something does not make one a fanatic.

[scriver]

The only solution to everything is violence.  There was even a quest where they had designed a non-violent solution but then removed it as an option, leaving the inaccessible journal entries in the game files for anyone to see. (nevermind that depending on the intentions of the writers of that quest they're either huge misogynists or huge idiots.)

What quest was this, if you don't mind me asking?

[Cheese]

I wonder if playing as an elf will make everyone hate you.

Why would that be the case? This isn't Dwarf Fortress.

Supposedly the Empire has fractured over the 200 years since Oblivion and the Elven Nations have declared independence (according to gameinformer magazine). Add to that Nord anti-elvish sentiment and the pointy ears don't have a lot of friends up north.

Elves hate humans. Humans hate elves. Elves enslaved and slaughtered humans when they first arrived on Tamriel. They then lived peacefully together for a while, but the nedic humans were a minority part of elven society and some humans were still used as slaves. The Nords came along, lived relatively peacefully until the elves became paranoid of their rapid expansion and decided to slaughter the Nords too. The one survivor, the king went back to Atmora(Island the Nords came from), raised a legendary army, came back and destroyed the elves, forging out a large area for Skyrim. The modern-day Imperials then rebelled, supported by the Nords and an almost invincible, army slaying, elf-hating human and eventually built the Empire and subjugated the Elves. Humans hate elves, now Elves hate Humans too.

It's also a religious thing; some high elves believe that they need to kill all humans in order to destroy the mortal plane and go back to being spiritual beings that they believe they once were.

Well put  . Big list of Oblivion hate here, that pretty much sums most of the crap up.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

The only solution to everything is violence.  There was even a quest where they had designed a non-violent solution but then removed it as an option, leaving the inaccessible journal entries in the game files for anyone to see. (nevermind that depending on the intentions of the writers of that quest they're either huge misogynists or huge idiots.)

What quest was this, if you don't mind me asking?

The Siren's Deception.  You get asked by a woman to help her get her husband's ring back from a gang of evil harlots who dared to take advantage of poor helpless married men's lack of faithfulness to their wives by seducing them, meeting them in secluded places, and then robbing them without doing them any physical harm.  You meet them and they for some reason attempt to seduce you despite the fact that your character has no reason to look like they are married, and is probably heavily armed by this point in the game.  You then meet them at their house and after a bit of talking you discover that the ring was a fake and that they were set up.  The three of them then attack you with daggers while wearing nothing but expensive dresses, and are promptly massacred.  Then the couple that hired you show up in guard uniforms and explain that they were guards assigned to pose as a married couple in order to stop the gang.  They thank you, hand you a reward, and tell you they'll clean up the mess, and that's pretty much it.

So basically, you get tricked by two undercover guards into doing their job for them, which involves having a gang that only targets married men and robs them non-violently target you, a random heavily armed lone wanderer, who they then attempt to murder.

[Omegastick]

I disagree with a lot of what you have said, Ioric. I'm not saying that vanilla Oblivion has no bad points, but you are entirely ignoring the amazing points of the game whilst over-exaggerating the disappointing parts.

The level scaling system isn't as bad as you make it out to be; "Oh no! The game gets harder later on! It's a terrible game!". Many people love the level up system as it forces you to plan out your character beforehand. The skill system is one of the best I've ever seen in a videogame and it never breaks immersion by saying, "Alright, you've just spent two hours fighting monsters in a cave with your sword, do you want to become better and bartering?". There's no flight magic, wait a minute, neither does almost every game! The compass is a nice idea, would you prefer wondering around in the wilderness, entirely lost? If you don't want to be told what to do on quests then simply don't read the quest log.

If the entire of Cyrodiil was a rainforest the game's setting would be incredibly boring, rainforests look the same pretty much wherever you go. They just made a decision to use a patchwork fantasy map that varies in the different places. The thing about the Amulet of Kings being a PR stunt is evidently not true, as upon taking it off the Daedric prince, Mehrunes Dagon, attacks Cyrodiil.

The interface is obviously made for consoles, if you're not on a console then change it!

Wait a minute, someone actually followed the dialogue of the game?

Why don't you use this complaint about violence for every other game? Have you ever played a CoD game, or even Dwarf Fortress?

The writing is decent and much better than many other games I've played and at least it has voice actors. There is one case where the the voice changes and that is with beggars, who you never even need to hear the changing voice unless you are doing the Thieves Guild quests.

I, personally, liked the little minigames, they were amusing.

The combat was a helluva lot better than Morrowind's, in which you could swing your weaopn at an enemy twenty times and do no damage whatsoever!.

From Wikipedia's treatment of Oblivion, a complete description of Bethesda's ground breaking new scripting system. Each NPC (non playing character) is giving a list of goals, how they achieve them is based on the character's individual statistics.

For example one NPC was given a rake and the goal "rake leaves"; another was given a broom and the goal "sweep paths," and this worked smoothly. Then they swapped the items, so that the raker was given a broom and the sweeper was given the rake. In the end, one of them killed the other so he could get the proper item.

That is far from a hoax.

Finally I would like to point out that any problems that you have with the game can easily be modded out on PC.

[scriver]

Seriously, don't.
Don't make this thread into an argument about Oblivion. It's not worth your time. Just agree to disagree and be done with it.

[Farseer]

You know what I'd like? Daggerfall 2. Everything of Daggerfall but updated to a modern engine. I don't care how spare 90% of the game world is as long as it is MASSIVE.

[Cheese]

Wow... that really makes me sad.  I loved the Morrowind Theme, but then the Oblivion theme was just the Morrowind theme minus soul. 

The Oblivion theme was not the Morrowind theme minus soul. It was something else. But it did lack the beauty and soul of Morrowind's theme.

Actually, it was a variation on the Morrowind theme, which is why it felt a bit like a soulless ripoff. Y'know, coz it was. And now with the Skyrim trailer I can hear it in there too. On the one hand I'm glad for that, because I really like the theme. On the other hand, it does a bit diminish the uniqueness of having played Morrowind, and of course taking it out of that game completely destroys its connection to the story.

Spoiler: For those who don't get it (click to show/hide)

Listen to it. What's the first thing you hear? The drums, right? And don't they sound a bit like... a giant, slow-beating heart? As soon as you launch Morrowind, even before the main menu appears, the music is already foreshadowing its climax. And since it continues playing during regular gameplay, the rhythm resonates with and permeates the entire island of Vvardenfell. Subconsciously, you can feel the heart beating deep beneath the earth you walk on. It's quite likely the most brilliant thing I've ever seen in a video game.

The Skyrim theme tune has heavy drums and sort of wind and storm noises, which is kind of a reference to the greybeards who cause storms and earthquakes when they speak due to Thu'um/The Voice.

@Farseer; Daggerfall was kind of 'cookie cutter', wasn't it? I'd prefer 5 big cities with some big differences, a vast and relatively varying landscape and tens of villages/hamlets with their own unique stuff, rather than tens of thousands of towns and villages which are mostly based around 3 or 4 different themes but otherwise exactly the same.

[Ioric Kittencuddler]

Seriously, don't.
Don't make this thread into an argument about Oblivion. It's not worth your time. Just agree to disagree and be done with it.

This isn't a matter of agreeing to disagree.  But I suppose this isn't the place.

So go here instead. Arguing about Oblivion again

[Heron TSG]

Retconning the setting from rainforest and marsh to generic D&D fantasy land.

I'm not going to argue with you about whether or not Oblivion is a good game or not. Some think it is, some do not. However, I must say that this quote makes no sense. Dungeons and Dragons, by definition, is not a set world. There are some core settings, but Faerun, Eberron, and Greyhawk are all wildly different. Of these, only Greyhawk is somewhat close to Cyrodiil.

Anyway, how about that Skyrim? Has anybody heard rumors or somesuch about a storyline other than that there is one man who fights dragons?

[Javarock]

Retconning the setting from rainforest and marsh to generic D&D fantasy land.

I'm not going to argue with you about whether or not Oblivion is a good game or not. Some think it is, some do not. However, I must say that this quote makes no sense. Dungeons and Dragons, by definition, is not a set world. There are some core settings, but Faerun, Eberron, and Greyhawk are all wildly different. Of these, only Greyhawk is somewhat close to Cyrodiil.

Anyway, how about that Skyrim? Has anybody heard rumors or somesuch about a storyline other than that there is one man who fights dragons?

Civil war between two leaders?

No Idea how the duel wieldign would work so we could talk about how we think they will accomplish this feature.

[MasterFancyPants]

You know what I'd like? Daggerfall 2. Everything of Daggerfall but updated to a modern engine. I don't care how spare 90% of the game world is as long as it is MASSIVE.

If only Bethesda would release the code...     

[AntiAntiMatter]

You know what I'd like? Daggerfall 2. Everything of Daggerfall but updated to a modern engine. I don't care how spare 90% of the game world is as long as it is MASSIVE.

I believe that people are already working on that.

[Sordid]

I have to say I agree with everything Ioric said. I'm not going to argue about Oblivion, I've done enough of that in my time. But I will say it made me really rather worried about Skyrim. See, a lot of those problems stem from the fact that Oblivion is a dumbed down console game running on an outdated console. In this respect, Skyrim will be no different. It's still going to run on the same console, only now it's five more years out of date. And the hype is already ramping up.
What really gets me is how they always promise more of everything, as if that's necessarily an improvement. "More detailed textures"? Well hello, even Oblivion had textures that were way too detailed already. Like that stupid quiver you get with silver arrows. I can't find a screenshot and don't have O installed right now to take one, but it basically looks like it has a solid metal rim. Only it doesn't, it's actually extremely intricate silver filigree. But it's far too detailed to be visible, even if you have your monitor set to a very high resolution it just washes out and looks completely flat during normal gameplay. The only way to see it is to deliberately stand with your character's back to a wall to push the camera closer. I mean, what's the bloody point of that? I'm really worried that if they put more of everything in, the dumbbox isn't going to be able to handle it, so they're going to have to dumb down other aspects even more to compensate.
I cannot stress how much I hate, hate, hate, hate the hype. It ruins enjoyment of games. Every single game I've ever played that'd been hyped up turned out to be a disappointment. And you can't avoid it either, not without cutting yourself off from the internet completely. Hopefully it'll turn out better than Oblivion.
But it won't be better than Morrowind anyway.
</old fart rant>