Oblivion: Was this a disappointment to anyone else?

[cora mcstrap]

I actually enjoyed oblivion side quests. i found the same quest a bit annoying and the ending awrful. I tired to play morrowwind but the game sent me to sleep. The game play was terrible. These being my only 2 experiences od elder scrolls my option of the serious in general is that it doesn't deserve the hype. (yes i know daggerfall is supposed to be epic but i've never played it and unless it comes out on steam never will)

 

[RaNDM G]

Second, the first stroll through Oblivion was a pain in the ass, even with an army of skeleton warriors. I can't remember how many times I died because a scamp scratched and then shouldered me. I finally had to turn on god mode, because the deaths were getting annoying.

Did you turn the difficulty all the way up? That will usually kill the experience for any first timer. I'd suggest staying on the default difficulty setting. This game can be either very easy or very brutal depending on your play style.

 

[Stephen Wo]

I think fallout 3 killed it for me

uncanny valley
imersion with more cracks than than my Ipod screen (thats alot of cracks)
dull story
No dialouge options

Definitely. Fallout was such a better game for me.

 

[Stephen Wo]

So you played newer games, and are comparing it to an older one? ...anyway

I found myself a little disappointed with the unfriendliness of the combat system. The block wouldn't come up fast enough, and swinging your sword felt clumsy.

That's due to low framerate. No lie. If you're not running at 60 FPS combat is phenomenally bad. It also improves with levels and skill. but even at 45 FPS, it's terrible..

Second, the first stroll through Oblivion was a pain in the ass, even with an army of skeleton warriors. I can't remember how many times I died because a scamp scratched and then shouldered me. I finally had to turn on god mode, because the deaths were getting annoying. Don't get me wrong, I've played New Vegas and ME2 on hardcore, and was pretty good at it, but this just felt unfair.

..You set up your character wrong. >> You either did something silly like set your major skills to acrobatics and athletics so you level up faster, you end up not having the combat ability or survivability to live through the levels you go through. I made the same mistake.

Then, what was up with the dialog? It felt hasty and stuck in, not like any real conversations like the ones projected in the previous games I'd played.

I.....actually have nothing to point out about that. It does suck.

Anyway, I wasn't disappointed in Oblivion, but I played it on release. So at the time it was amazing, I didn't like Morrowind much, and Oblivion covered all the things I thought were wrong with Morrowind. It was a very ambitious game, for the tech level, they obviously had to skimp on a few other things. Like voice acting.

I loved playing Oblivion. The only thing I hated was the copy/pasted nature of the game so every cave looked the same..all the ruins looked the same. I still play it though.

First of all, and you're making some valid points here, let me make that clear. First of all, my computer is a very nice Asus desktop running Windows Seven, and I had no problems with Just Cause 2 or Portal 2.

Second, I put most of my points into destruction, heavy armor, and blades, so I don't think that was it.

 

[Stephen Wo]

Its the same whenever you compare newer games to older games. The former is always going to be better than the latter... becuase you played the superior latter. I'm not sure if that made sense :0 Its just not a fair comparison that you're making.

I actually liked the original Deus Ex more than this, so...

 

[AlternatePFG]

Its the same whenever you compare newer games to older games. The former is always going to be better than the latter... becuase you played the superior latter. I'm not sure if that made sense :0 Its just not a fair comparison that you're making.

I actually liked the original Deus Ex more than this, so...

To be fair, when comparing most games to the original Deus Ex, the other game is always going to look worse. Deus Ex is just that good.

 

[Stephen Wo]

Well, it all boils down to this. Oblivion wasn't fun. Y'know, it wasn't necessarily bad, or terrible, or detestable. It wasn't like bringing home an un-hacked copy of Brink and playing that lag-fest. It wasn't like eating a crap sandwich, it just wasn't fun. And when the shit hits the fan, I'd much rather take a fun game like Heli Attack 3 off Miniclip.com for free instead of something like Oblivion.

Power character: Check!

Death-kill magick: Check!

Heavy Armor: Check!

Scamp elbow: Death.

 

[scorptatious]

I personally thought Oblivion was a great game. Sure it started out kind of hard, but I strayed off the path of the main quest and did the many many many sidequests to make myself stronger. After that the main quest itself was a breeze.

And I don't know why people hate the level scaling so much. Sure, some enemies level up alongside you, but other enemies don't. And even then, I never had too much of a problem with fighting them. Except maybe the higher tier goblins. Those guys were tough.

The only problem I really have with the game is that you can join pretty much all the guilds in the game with one character. Which doesn't really make much sense to me considering that they are all so different fundamentally. I guess that's one reason why I thought Fallout New Vegas was good, your actions will benefit one faction while at the same time hurts another.

 

[Fishdog52]

Scaling made everything bland, while the oblivion gates were mindlessly repetitive. I had much more fun with the side quests than the main quest, just because they felt like they had more effort in creating them. The Thieves' Guild in particular was awesome, but it really made the main quest look like poo in comparison. I also felt like running in circles with high bow skill was God mode, as enemies could neither close the distance nor accurately track my position with their own ranged attacks.

Overall, it felt like the polish was applied to the side stuff instead of the core gameplay experience.

 

[The Mighty Pepper]

In my own honest opinion, Oblivion is the best game ever made in the history of the world. Ever. In my life. EVER! Just my opinion though.

 

[oplinger]

First of all, and you're making some valid points here, let me make that clear. First of all, my computer is a very nice Asus desktop running Windows Seven, and I had no problems with Just Cause 2 or Portal 2.

Second, I put most of my points into destruction, heavy armor, and blades, so I don't think that was it.

Oblivion is very poorly optimized, I have no problem with either of those games either (I run them at about 150-200 FPS) ...I run oblivion...around 70. With my mods it dips between 20-40 outside. It's mostly the grass. Oddly it's stopped running so shitty for some reason lately, I can get around 60 FPS. I just thought it was worth mentioning.

Saying you can run other games really has no bearing on how well other games will run. I was throwing out ideas to help your experience XD but if those aren't it...I dunno then.

 

[ResonanceSD]

Oblivion was a piece of shit, you would be correct. There were plenty of people who found th game disappointing. Bethesda as a whole is one of the single most overrated, incompetent game developers in the history of the medium. I can't think of a single dev team who consistently releases so buggy, poorly designed, and poorly written products into the market, yet still somehow manages to somehow avoid massive berating from the journalists as well as the gaming community as a whole. I am sure that is partly thankful to its overly-devoted, almost fanatical fanbase that hates anyone who dares speak against Bethesda's work.

Wow what's with all the bethesda hate in your posts.

OT: the OP will be pleased to note that Skyrim addresses all of your complaints.

 

[Eric Staples]

Allow me to explain why Oblivion is better than Morrowind.

Morrowind was bland. They gave you all these character customization options and they were all pointless, because everyone made the exact same character who was master of melee, magic, bow and stealth. Much of the magic was pointless too. Ice did the same thing as lightning and there was no reason to have one over the other. There was maybe one enemy weak to lightning and one to ice, and you rarely ran into one of them. Starting out in the game combat was terrible. You couldn't hit anything until you swung at them 20 times and you constantly got your butt handed to you by crabs and rats. The environment was ugly, there was mud and ash everywhere. You could level up very quickly in Morrowind by running, jumping, and bartering, and once you got to level 20, the game suddenly became a stroll in the park. There is such a big world to explore in Morrowind and after you explored just a tiny part of it and leveled up a little, the rest of the world suddenly wasn't a challenge. There also was certainly no more plot in Morrowind than there was in Oblivion. If anything, there was less.

Oblivion is great. Right from the start you are fighting off Goblins and any rats you come across die in one hit. You don't have to worry about missing swing after swing like you did in Morrowind. Every swing hit its target unless they had their shield up blocking. The whole leveling system was better too. Enemies leveling up with you created a difficulty scale that Morrowind never had. If you got your butt handed to you by a scamp or some other beginner monster, it was because you tried to exploit the leveling system like you could in Morrowind, by developing non-combat skills. This makes sense, if you don't train your combat skills, your enemies will surpass you. And character customization finally mattered in an Elder Scrolls game. If you wanted to make a character who fought mainly with melee, you could master all the melee skills and max your level out at 30. Same with magic. Or you could master both, but that would require a lot of planning and you would have to max your level out around 50. The problem with this is the enemies would become stronger if you maxed your level out later rather than sooner. This meant if you wanted to make a barbarian who only used melee and maxed his level at 30, you would be more effective at melee than a character who used both melee and magic and maxed their level at 50. This makes sense, because why would a person who uses magic and melee be just as effective at melee as someone who only focuses on melee? They wouldn't, but in Morrowind they were and in Oblivion they aren't.

And it sounds like some people only prefer Morrowind, because of nostalgia. It was probably their first open world game. Yeah, Oblivion had a limited selection of voice actors, which was new in a world with this kind of scales, but that is so obviously not what they focused on. There is an entire world to explore and immerse in. Voice acting should only be an after thought.

 

[Davih]

I couldn't get into Oblivion personally. I must've picked an awful combination of skills because after a certain point I just couldn't kill anything. It's very unforgiving if you so pick an awful combination of classes.
I just gave up on the game, although I do plan on getting Skyrim.

 

[MajWound]

I don't have very high standards for video games. If I have fun, I keep playing. If I'm not, I stop. I try not to look too deeply into the "why" and "how". I had a ton of fun with Oblivion and recently maxed out a character in anticipation for Skyrim. Maybe I'm abnormal, but games are simply my primary form of entertainment, not the fulcrum upon which swings the fate of my very soul.

 

[Nudu]

Seeing as how Oblivion is possibly my favorite game of all time all I can say is we probably won't be friends. Haven't heard anyone complain about Oblivion's difficulty before. I thought it was a little on the easy side, but you can change the difficulty in the options menu. The only real complain I have about it is the level-scaling, which I didn't think was a gamebreaker, just an annoyance.

Also, not liking fantasy might be a clue that the game isn't your thing.

 

[Mewick_Alex]

Second, the first stroll through Oblivion was a pain in the ass, even with an army of skeleton warriors. I can't remember how many times I died because a scamp scratched and then shouldered me. I finally had to turn on god mode, because the deaths were getting annoying.

Did you turn the difficulty all the way up? That will usually kill the experience for any first timer. I'd suggest staying on the default difficulty setting. This game can be either very easy or very brutal depending on your play style.

Yea I found that finding a play style that suits you had a major impact on difficulty. Plus all of the pre-made classes you can choose at the beginning suck. My first time playing I tried the class that Baurus suggests for you (which I think was 'Bard'), a mistake needless to say, then I picked one of the other random ones which sucked just as bad. Only then did I even realse that you could create your own class, and suddenly the entire game opened up to me. Just got to experiment to find whats best for you.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Allow me to explain why Oblivion is better than Morrowind.

Spoiler

Morrowind was bland. They gave you all these character customization options and they were all pointless, because everyone made the exact same character who was master of melee, magic, bow and stealth. Much of the magic was pointless too. Ice did the same thing as lightning and there was no reason to have one over the other. There was maybe one enemy weak to lightning and one to ice, and you rarely ran into one of them. Starting out in the game combat was terrible. You couldn't hit anything until you swung at them 20 times and you constantly got your butt handed to you by crabs and rats. The environment was ugly, there was mud and ash everywhere. You could level up very quickly in Morrowind by running, jumping, and bartering, and once you got to level 20, the game suddenly became a stroll in the park. There is such a big world to explore in Morrowind and after you explored just a tiny part of it and leveled up a little, the rest of the world suddenly wasn't a challenge. There also was certainly no more plot in Morrowind than there was in Oblivion. If anything, there was less.

Oblivion is great. Right from the start you are fighting off Goblins and any rats you come across die in one hit. You don't have to worry about missing swing after swing like you did in Morrowind. Every swing hit its target unless they had their shield up blocking. The whole leveling system was better too. Enemies leveling up with you created a difficulty scale that Morrowind never had. If you got your butt handed to you by a scamp or some other beginner monster, it was because you tried to exploit the leveling system like you could in Morrowind, by developing non-combat skills. This makes sense, if you don't train your combat skills, your enemies will surpass you. And character customization finally mattered in an Elder Scrolls game. If you wanted to make a character who fought mainly with melee, you could master all the melee skills and max your level out at 30. Same with magic. Or you could master both, but that would require a lot of planning and you would have to max your level out around 50. The problem with this is the enemies would become stronger if you maxed your level out later rather than sooner. This meant if you wanted to make a barbarian who only used melee and maxed his level at 30, you would be more effective at melee than a character who used both melee and magic and maxed their level at 50. This makes sense, because why would a person who uses magic and melee be just as effective at melee as someone who only focuses on melee? They wouldn't, but in Morrowind they were and in Oblivion they aren't.

And it sounds like some people only prefer Morrowind, because of nostalgia. It was probably their first open world game. Yeah, Oblivion had a limited selection of voice actors, which was new in a world with this kind of scales, but that is so obviously not what they focused on. There is an entire world to explore and immerse in. Voice acting should only be an after thought.

There are 3 big reasons why Morrowind > Oblivion.

1. Atmosphere. Bizarre ugly volcanic island where people live in mushrooms and bug shells vs. Medieval Europe + clone brush.
2. Freedom. Ability to fly, leap across continents, and teleport vs. fast travel + horses.
3. Exploration. Unique dungeons with interesting layouts vs. the same three dungeons over and over.

The combat is equally terrible in both games, but the fact that a competent player could obliterate basically anything by around level 3-5 in either game excuses that in my mind.

 

[Babitz]

I don't know whether I should consider Oblivion a big disappointment because I haven't played any TES games before, but it was a boring game and I couldn't play it for more than 10 hours.

It's not a horrible game, but one of the worst RPGs I've played. Not to mention it was a buggy game that the community made playable and it was the game that introduced us to the cancer of video games - DLC.
I'm also not hyped by Skyrim one bit and I think it's gonna suck even more than Oblivion.

Fallout 3 also royally sucked. I dislike Bethesda a lot.

 

[Gustavo S. Buschle]

While Morrowind has its share of flaws, I still find it far more immersive than Oblivion.

Spoiler

I remember on my first play of Morrowind....

I immediately left Seyda Neen and traveled north in search of adventure, determined not to be fenced in by society and it's rules and laws! Suddenly a crazy wizard fell to his death from high above the sky without any warning. This intrigued me.

Being a impatient fool I nicked his stuff as his fancy robe and wizard hat suited me. I didn't bother to read his journal so I threw that aside and decided that magic was more of a hands on sort of thing. I was far too brave to bother with understanding the mechanics of what I would soon learn to respect and fear and look here I had been blessed with some nifty scrolls to try out my first incursion into the arcane arts.

So I took one and cast the spell balls to the wall without any idea of what it may or may not do. I'm a rebel gamer it's how I roll.

I stood there for a few moments wondering if it did anything. After some moments of looking around I figured it didn't do anything at all and nothing at all is certainly not important enough to warrant looking up the technical aspects of the arcane power I just impatiently released. The whole thing was too much hassle and started off back to town to sell the old mans stuff and buy a shiny new weapon, which might prove more amusing then scrolls that do nothing. I started on my journey to near certain riches with a hardy skip and a hop......

Suddenly I was flying though the air as my jump ability had increased a million fold! Bamboozled by my predicament I decided that I was an arcane superman able to leap mountains in a single bound. I was ever so quite pleased with myself my mind filled with delusions of grandeur until I came to my senses put together why the old mage inexplicably had fallen to his death in the middle of a remote back-water swamp shortly before I hit the ground dying instantaneously a few hundred miles away.

'Now that's immersion.'

Geez, you should be a novel writer. In case you already are, link me to one of your stories.