My Thoughts On Oblivion

rip2roar

First off I want to start by saying that Oblivion is a very good game.It is one of the best on the 360 and even one of the PC's best games for a year or two.After playing it I find that it is a little bit of an anti-climax.This is not because of hype.It is because, in my honest opinion, Bethesda have gone mainstream.Alot of content that was brilliant in Morrowind is missing here.I have literaly played Morrowind every week since release.It is, in my opinion, the greatest game ever made.I expected Oblivion to be Morrowind on steroids.I wanted prettier graphics,a new populated land,possibly a new dialogue system and that the NPC's had lives.I can say that at least three of those were given in Oblivion.What I didn't want was for the developers to strip down the game just so that it may sell better among what is now known as "The Non-Gamers".

To list a couple of things I loved about Morrowind that have been changed for the worse

* The Journal and Map



I loved the old journal layout.I like the new feature of "Setting A Current Quest" but hate the fact that it sets a target to that area, so that it is easier to find.Morrowind was brilliant because it was vast,it was a world where you could get lost,forget your quest and lose hours through exploration.I absolutely hate the fast travel option with a vengeance.It rips the game of any reality and ruins the immersive experience.

* Population


Where is the population of animals that I saw so commonly in Morrowind.I loved to run into a mudcrab or kwarma fodder just to test my skills and level up.It seems I have to search for hours just to find animals and creatures.On the other hand, at least cliff racers are gone

* Combat


I loved Morrowind's combat.The fact that you had to be good at the particuliar skill in order to use it to effect was brilliant.I hate being able to kill certain people at level one with 35 as my blade level.It is unbalanced.You stripped the RPG elements down to the bones.You went mainstream.You are trying to make money not make the best game possible.

* Enclosed Areas


Why does it load when I enter towns and cities?Why a big fat in your face loading screen destroying the immersion.I want to be able to freely walk into a town like "In the old days" Caldera or Suran.No gates,no loading screens.Just a slight stutter of loading time.As I said, it destroys immersion.

* Bigger Than Morrowind?


Yes, this game's landscape is bigger than Morrowind's but how much of that is in use?I fail to see how the capital of Tamriel is so lowly populated by people and towns.

* Haggle System


I don't want to choose how hard I go on a shopkeeper in regards to haggling.I want to choose the amount that I haggle.I want to choose the exact figure.Give me that freedom like in Morrowind.

* Spells


I hate the way that most spells come off easily even if you are at a low level.The stats sometimes seem to make no difference in whether a spell works or not.In Morrowind it was much harder to cast, which was good.It took skill

* Inventory


I think I speak for everyone when I say that the older inventory was alot better.I could see all my items without the need to scroll down.I want instant access.

________________________________________________________________________________

All in all, the thing that makes Morrowind better than Oblivion is immersion and the attempt to let the series go mainstream.Oblivion in so many cases shoots itself in the foot.It grabs you and throws you into this world of magic,sorcery and lore only to throw you back out for five seconds as you look at a picture of a house with text underneath.Don't get me wrong! Oblivion is an amazing game.Alas though, Morrowind is better.I am sure there are many who agree

Kiith

ooh, like the triple post there

seems like you are still in love with morrowind (understandable), and expected oblivion to be the same game with better graphics (which wouldnt be so bad).

one point that i'd have to say your totally wrong about is the combat. its a far better system then morrowind, which actually requires a bit of skill. in morrowind, i just ran in and repeatedly tapped the mouse button, and i usully won. plus the magic and marksman skills are far far better this time around (imo).

other then that, the game is actually bigger then morrowind, but since most people use the quick travel so often, you wont see as much of it.

Ri_Nollaig

well population of both the cities and the world is down to one thing... proformance! most people (on PCs) had trouble running the game as it is. The inventory system is annoying but the UI was designed to suit the 360 more then PC. but both this and the quest arrow can b improved/removed with some of the (usermade i.e. FREE mods) as for fast traveal will no one is forcing you to use it. Combat is much better! arrows stick into guys and the cities have walls and use the gates as a way to load, i do not see the problem here?!?!

projectmayhem

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054912970
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054912968

how did you manage that?

rip2roar

projectmayhem wrote:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054912970
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2054912968

how did you manage that?

Irish Broadband:D

koneko

You can change a lot of the things you don't like with mods. You can turn off fast travel, you can turn off map markers, you can get the UI mod so your inventory shows more. This is why Bethesda make it so easy for people to make mods, so you can tune your experience if you have particular needs.

You can't get rid of the loading really, unless you make the graphics a lot poorer, especially with the size of the world. The load times aren't very long anyway, they don't bother me.

Ciaran500

If you don't like fast travel don't use it. If I just want to get a mission done I use the fast travel, whats the point spending 30min walking across the world if I don't want to get sidetracked. When I have hours to waste I travel to the missions and spend ages doing random side quests.

projectmayhem

rip2roar wrote:

Irish Broadband:D

ah. understood

Branoic

I respectfully disagree with nearly every one of your points. Unfortunately, I've only got time to write about the point I disagree with most.

rip2roar wrote:

* The Journal and Map
I like the new feature of "Setting A Current Quest" but hate the fact that it sets a target to that area, so that it is easier to find.Morrowind was brilliant because it was vast,it was a world where you could get lost,forget your quest and lose hours through exploration.I absolutely hate the fast travel option with a vengeance.It rips the game of any reality and ruins the immersive experience.

As has been mentioned already, if you don't like the fast travel option, don't use it. That's why its an *option*. I fail to see how you can hate it with a vengeance because it rips the game of any reality and runs the experience, when its entirely optional whether you choose to use it or not! Personally, for me this is the single greatest improvement in the game over Morrowind.

See, I have two things which severely limit my game playing time, and I'm certain I'm not the only one. First, I have a b*tch of a commute home from work in the evenings, meaning I have at max 2 hours of spare time. That's not necessarily 2 hours of game playing time, thats 2 hours of free time between the time i get home and the time I need to go to bed if I don't want to be zombie. Second, and most severely limiting of all I have a wife. This means that I can only actually get on my computer once or twice during the week without risk of divorce. Though judging how much I'm enjoying Oblivion, divorce is looking attractive

So the map pointers and the fast travel are brilliant. They mean that when I get to play for an hour and half during the week, I can actually get something done and feel like it was time well spent, I can complete a quest or two without wasting pointless time travelling between two points which I've already travelled manually before. At the weekends, when I have more time and I can play for 4 or 5 hours in a stretch, I don't use fast travel so much, and I do explore and get lost and appreciate the vastness and forget about my quests. But its good to have that option there.

Vegeta

I think the OP doesn't hate travelling fast he just hates the system they use. I would agree. It is a lot more realistic that you get a boat or a silt strider. This way you can only fast travel from city to city which would make travelling less labour intensive while keeping a bit or realism i.e. getting some transport to travel quickly (and I don't mean a horse either)

Bethesda missed the mark on quite a few things in Oblivion, we can blame performance all we want but at the end of the day I would definitely take a hit in the graphics before sacraficing gameplay and experience.

I love the missions but not much else, think morrowind is much better in a lot of departments.

I do think comabt is better in morrowind but the fact that a lot of enemies are scaled according to your characters level jus wrecks my head, not just their skill either, their equipment also

Sarky

Combat in Morrowind was a process of standing in one place and clicking until someone fell over. I like the fact that you have to move about and time your attacks and defenses now. It's far more immersive and makes a fight much more exciting.

Fast travel? Yeah, I don't like it much. A lot of people are going to keep using it and never uncover the bucketloads of interesting locations all over the map.

And I wasn't terribly impressed with the size of the Imperial City. Granted, the tower in the middle is damn cool, but it's less populated that most cities in Morrowind. Shame, that.

I'm not too fond of the level scaling myself. I agree with a lot of what Karl Hungus said the other day in his traditional Massive Elder Scrolls Post (tm). Still, it's not really getting in the way of me enjoying a damn fine game. It's really pretty, it's really immersive, and it's really, really big.

Also, Patrick Stewart.

rip2roar

Vegeta wrote:

I think the OP doesn't hate travelling fast he just hates the system they use. I would agree. It is a lot more realistic that you get a boat or a silt strider.

Exactly what I mean

Sarky wrote:

Combat in Morrowind was a process of standing in one place and clicking until someone fell over. I like the fact that you have to move about and time your attacks and defenses now. It's far more immersive and makes a fight much more exciting.

Not exactly what I'm saying.I just don't like the way that it isnt based heavily on stats anymore.

Sarky wrote:

Also, Patrick Stewart.

Agreed:)

_CreeD_

So you'd prefer a combat system based on experience/dice rolling rather than reflex? Thats what Morrowind's (Which I love so none of this is really a negative) was, as was pointed out for the most part you just clicked and as long as your stats/equipment where higher you won...woohoo....yawn....The only issue really is the enemy balancing vs. your level, this allows for winning fights you really think you shouldn't, and losing some you know you should win, but the actual combat is much more fun imho.
Just about everything you mentioned UI/Map/Questwise was optional, besides the mods you can simply ignore them. You can't expect everyone else to play the game the way you do so I find arguments about the quest markers and fast travel pointless. I use both, about once a day I'll run from city to city and explore every marker I find, but when I'm on a mission it's fast travel all the way. I don't need to see that hill or pond, kill that random wolf or troll etc. when my interest is a few miles away, its pointless (and this from someone who never used the auto-travel methods in Morrowind).
As for city populations and loading times remember this is a much more graphically intense games. The various types of maps they use to relieve some of the stress that would otherwise kill your frame rate if relying purely on shaders take up a lot of ram, a 2-3 second load time is forgivable in this respect imho. Going back to Morrowind and performance just look at the draw distance, originally it was way too short with the tweaker is better but still nothing compared to Oblivion's. Also Morrowind did not scale well with newer hardware, FFS it runs at about the same speed as Oblivion on my rig .
The games far from perfect and of course personal opinions are just that, personal, so this is just my $.02