While I'm sure there's a thread on this forum already dedicated to Oblivion that I could reanimate the skeletal remains of for this purpose, it's too far burried in the list to be worth tracking down. So I'm starting a new one specifically for keeping the discussion I was about to have about Oblivion out of the Skyrim thread.
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.
You're totally missing the point. The game doesn't just get harder later on, it gets fucked up later on. It doesn't break immersion by making you better at bartering after killing monsters for two hours yes. That is the one good point, but you're completely ignoring the part that makes it totally broken. Specifically, If you make a character with major skills in anything but combat then using those skills will make the game unplayably difficult because all the enemies will magically level up in combat skill due to your leveling up in bartering skill. And tell me how it's "immersive" that all the bandits in the world always get stronger and better equipment as you level up? Tell me what's immersive about having to setting a mage character to have no magic skills as primary in order to level your magic skills up enough before you level up to get a decent stat bonus that will allow you to compete with the level scaling? What's immersive about bandits suddenly spawning in full daedric armor because you leveled up?
As for flight magic. You're right. There are very few games that have it. In fact the only series I can think of was The Elder Scrolls series... until Oblivion.
Obviously I wouldn't want to wander around completely lost. I'd like to find things the same way you would in reality... and Morrowind. By following directions. The compass is permanently plastered to the bottom of your screen so good luck not seeing it. The popups are even worse. My problem is not that the quest log tell you what to do. That would be stupid. My problem is that the game has these pop up messages constantly popping up and forcing you to click OK every time you get a journal and that they include step by step instructions for things that are completely self-explanatory long after the tutorial has supposedly ended. (A long mandatory Tutorial that you have to play through every single time is another flaw in the game.) They treat you like some sort of idiot child even though it's a T rated game.
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.
I'm beginning to think you're being willfully ignorant. First off I didn't say the entire of Cyrodiil was a rainforest. I said that Cyrodiil was supposed to be Rainforest and marshes. Secondly. Your assertion that rainforests look the same where ever you go, while most likely completely false, I don't really even understand how it would be relevant if it were true. Oblivion looks pretty much the same everywhere you went. Certainly no less generic that it would have looked had they stuck to the original lore. There's no reason for them to make everything look exactly the same except for laziness.
As I've already said, the history of the world had already proven it to be a PR stunt. There were several instances over the course of the setting's history where a Septim didn't wear the amulet of kings with no Daeric invasion. The whole plot that it was actually true was simply a ret con of all that history.
The interface is obviously made for consoles, if you're not on a console then change it!
People have tried. I've seen UI improvements that made the game significantly more playable but it's still a console interface that's been improved upon in what few ways it could be my third party modders. And since when does being able to fix a problem mean it never existed?
Wait a minute, someone actually followed the dialogue of the game?
Was that supposed to be an argument?
Why don't you use this complaint about violence for every other game? Have you ever played a CoD game, or even Dwarf Fortress?
Because it doesn't apply to every game. CoD is a First Person Shooter where the player
has no dialogue. It's all just run and gun and maybe a bit of sneak and kill. Dwarf Fortress is a strategy game/roguelike that's in the
pre-alpha stage of development. Oblivion on the other hand is a full on retail released AAA RPG, or so it claimed. They even hyped the dialogue as one of the improvements over Morrowind.
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.
Well I can't comment on your opinion of the quality of the writing compared to other games you've played except to assume you've mostly played games with terrible writing. Tons of games have voice acting. Voice acting is nothing special. Hell using full voice acting in a game is often a bad thing since it means much less dialogue due to the expense of paying all those voice actors for their hours of work. Games like Fallout and Baldur's Gate struck a happy medium. Bethesda's notable obsession with full voice acting is just another bit of pandering to the idiot masses who can't be assed to read.
I, personally, liked the little minigames, they were amusing.
Doesn't make it any less idiotic that you improve someone's disposition with you by clicking a spinning wheel to Joke, Boast, Compliment, and Coerce them all at once in the right order while somehow being able to tell what their reaction to each option will be before hand.
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!.
You can do the same thing in Oblivion. It's called missing. The only difference is that in Oblivion it doesn't take your character's skill into account so hitting and missing is only dependent on the hit box.
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.
Except that... they didn't do anything like this in game.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbx6-KQoRgThis is not radiant AI. This is scripted. Whether or not you care, it's still technically 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.
Being able to fix a problem does not mean it wasn't a problem. You don't buy a car only to find out it's broken and just say "Oh well, I can fix it so there's nothing wrong with it." Well.... I'd assume you wouldn't.
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Topic: Arguing about Oblivion again (Read 4357 times)