Oblivion: Was this a disappointment to anyone else?

[Goatmeat]

I played quite a bit of Oblivion but, honestly, I didn't think it was that great. It was fun for wasting time. At first I was really, really disappointed because I picked it up after people told me it was the best role playing game ever, and I started playing it and it was this odd sandboxy dungeon crawler with a gigantic world populated with idiots. So aside from the stats (which are ridiculously easy to manipulate), it just felt like it had nothing in common with RPGs I've played and enjoyed.

I installed it earlier this year, though, and now that I knew it was a combat-heavy loot-fest, I actually kinda enjoyed it. Sneaking about the countryside, hunting deer, and breaking into peoples houses and stealing their cheese was all good fun for a while. As an RPG it is absolutely terrible, but as a cheese thief simulator it's pretty fun.

I never completed it, though. I had so little interest in the storyline and hated every single NPC I met that I rarely did anything story-related. I eventually quit playing because... actually there's no reason I quit playing the game. I just got bored.

I'll probably pick up Skyrim second hand in January or something.

After that I didn't play Oblivion till 2009 on my PS3. Aside from the glitch that keeps you from curing your vampirism, I found that it is a really good game.

Oh Jesus Christ, I forgot about this. This is the most irritating and infuriating bug I've ever found in a game. I read up on it and apparently it was a bug that occurred on the PC and XBox versions, but got fixed before the PS3 version was even released.

And when this happened, everyone was bitching about how New Vegas was the buggiest game ever and shame on Obsidian for releasing it half finished and so on and so forth, and it just seemed kinda sad to me that such a massive bug had never been patched on the PS3 version of the game. I mean, there's a workaround, but you have to change the system language to German to convince the annoying witch to take your Bloodgrass. I had to look it up for my brother, and we literally couldn't stop laughing at how ridiculous the whole thing was.

 

[Nieroshai]

You may have your opinion. I loved it.

 

[PPB]

I wouldn't go as far as saying it was a big disappointment for me, but it sure did not live up to my expectations. Of course it could be my fault for setting my expectations too high, but between being a fan of Morrowind and the advertisement campaign they put up for Oblivion, it was hard not to be excited about it.

Overall, I just found Morrowind to be much more interesting to explore. At first I really liked the lush forests of Oblivion (something I always thought was lacking a bit on Vvardenfell), but there really wasn't enough variety in the game world. The combination of steampunk dwemers and the ashlander culture in Morrowind also made the setting much more interesting to lose yourself into in my opinion. I always thought that Oblivion felt like a generic high fantasy with even less depth than the Forgotten Realms. And I won't even bother talking about the main quest.

As for things like voice over for dialogues, my opinion is that if you choose to have voice over in your game, you may as well do it well. I'd rather have no VO like in Morrowind than bad VO like in Oblivion. Then again, having a poor dialogue system doesn't help.

In the end, I did like the game and played it quite a lot. But I did learn my lesson and I try not to read much about Skyrim to keep my expectations baseline.

 

[quantum mechanic]

I liked some of the quest lines, like the Dark Brotherhood and the Mages' Guild, and I admit a certain amount of glee when taking down bandits in forts with well-aimed sneak attacks, but...

...the level scaling is annoying, the people are ugly and deep in the uncanny valley (and couldn't they have at least tried to do different voices for different characters?), the world is huge, but it's copy-pasted and brown, the attack animations are pretty boring, and I never got very into the main quest (mostly because it started involving more and more closing of Oblivion gates, and that got pretty tedious after about two).

In short, I had some fun with Oblivion, but it was still disappointing, especially in comparison to more polished games like Mass Effect or Dragon Age.

 

[Brutal Peanut]

No, I wasn't. I thoroughly enjoyed Oblivion. Then again, I was never really a huge fan of Morrowind to begin with.
Skyrim looks to be promising, and I'll probably enjoy playing that too.

 

[Goatmeat]

I wouldn't go as far as saying it was a big disappointment for me, but it sure did not live up to my expectations. Of course it could be my fault for setting my expectations too high, but between being a fan of Morrowind and the advertisement campaign they put up for Oblivion, it was hard not to be excited about it.

...

As for things like voice over for dialogues, my opinion is that if you choose to have voice over in your game, you may as well do it well. I'd rather have no VO like in Morrowind than bad VO like in Oblivion. Then again, having a poor dialogue system doesn't help.

To be fair, it's easy to let your expectations get too high if you listen to just about anything that Todd Howard comes out with. I remember him claiming that you couldn't do everything in a single playthrough and you would have to choose what faction you wanted to join and so on and so forth. I'd go on about it some more but wouldn't want to get sued.

And to be fair to them, I don't think that not including voice acting was an option for them. I don't think there's a AAA publisher that'll release a game where you have to read every line of dialogue these days. It's a double edged sword - it's good for people who just can't be bothered reading, can improve immersion (Bioshock and Red Dead Redemption were great for this), and makes emphasis and emotion easier to convey (if the actor is good), but ON THE OTHER HAND, it limits how much dialogue can be in a game (let's see them release something like Planescape: Torment now), if the voice acting is bad it can ruin decent writing, and if the writing itself is bad (like in Oblivion), having it read out to you just hammers home how awful it is. Not even Jean Luc Picard could make those awkward, obvious lines work for me.

 

[Jezzascmezza]

I loved Oblivion.
I still love it.
Then again, it was pretty much the first Western RPG I ever played, so I didn't have much to compare it to.

 

[cthulhumythos]

Oblivion was massively disappointing to me a well. Coming from Morrowind, it just feels like a massive step down in so many ways. There are some good changes it makes (melee and stealth, for instance), but I really don't see what other people see in it.

my feelings too. bluh- random loot. worst idea ever.

Morrowind felt handcrafted where oblivion feels simply boring. i hope they go back to putting specific items in certain things rather than making just about everything random and lifeness in skyrim.

huh. i didn't mean to rant but i guess this one of those 'opinion' thingys i keep hearing about.

 

[Azure-Supernova]

My first experience with Oblivion was on the PS3 and I loved the thing. I got the Game of the Year edition on the cheap and I must have poured several hundred hours into it. Sure the NPCs were ugly as fuck (I'm looking at you Bruma Guard) and the dialogue was less than spectacular, but I still enjoyed it and emersed myself into the world.

Now fast foward to 2010 when I saw the GOTY edition go on sale on Steam. I was sold. I'd heard about the mod community and since then I've poured several hundred more hours into Oblivion. Now I have so many mods I barely recognise the place.

People will complain about the level scaling, but the only way that it's going to sock you in the gut is if you try and be a jack of all trades. With absolutely no intent of 'levelling efficiently' I managed to play through the vanilla game on PS3 without touching the difficulty slider. It's not hard, you gain skills as you use them and they count towards your level up.

That whole '+5 level up bonus' is pretty much there for people who want to min/max their characters, which isn't necessary. So to sum up, no disappointment. I love it.

 

[Rusty pumpkin]

My main problem was that it had absolutely no incentive to me for exploration. I spent 40 hours in fallout Nv, and 110 hours in fallout 3 exploring everything and collecting stuff. Oblivion, T tried, and the lure of dungeon crawling was good at first. Then I realized that the enemies were bandits or skeletons, the combat was clunky, and the loot was usually gold coins and maybe a magical weapon with effects that did nothing.

 

[Ganji]

I had a lot of trouble getting into oblivion for some reason, but I remember that I eventually got into playing it for a little while. The problem is, I do not remember a single thing about the game. I'm pretty sure I beat the main storyline too. :l
It must not have been too great if it just vanished from my memory like that.

 

[alittlepepper]

Ask anyone that played Morrowind and they will tell you that Oblivion was a disappointment, at least from a gameplay perspective.

That being said, I love both of the games still for different reasons. The difficulty curve is awfully steep and kind of demands you actually know what you're doing...not very welcoming for first time players...but if you've stuck with the Elder Scrolls series as a whole, most of the stuff should make sense to you.

But yeah, any RPG where staying below level 15 (at most) is *much* preferable to grinding up levels like mad does kind of...fail.

 

[Atmos Duality]

"Disappointment" was an understatement.
"Water-boarding" was more like it.
Oblivion crashed constantly. Like, every 25-35 minutes.

Yes, I played the PC version because I really liked Morrowind and figured the mods would be really good.
(and if you're some smug dick-whistler who is thinking about quoting me just to say that I should have played the console version instead, then kindly fuck off)

Even so, I painfully slogged through the mains storyline and a couple guild quests and you know what? They sucked.
All of the NPCs I encountered were bland and generic (except for Patrick Stewart and the guy who did Martin); their stories were largely uninteresting. They got Patrick Stewart, but apparently couldn't afford more than a paragraph of his talents.

But at least the graphics and environment were great. As Oblivion went onto prove, you didn't need good characters, fun/interesting combat (which became this repetitive sequence of Block-Attack-Attack-Attack-Block that worked for EVERY bloody encounter I couldn't end with one Stealth Arrow to the head) or a good story to make an RPG immensely popular. You just needed a massive environment with shiny graphics.

Then the gameplay balancing wonkiness hit me when I beat the game at level 5...(I admit, the ending was kind of cool. I do love...oh, wait, that's a spoiler

Spoiler: Major End Game Spoiler For Oblivion

I do love DRAGONS. It's ironic that I'm not all the interested in Skyrim, no?

.

The one truly great part of Oblivion was the expansion for it: Shivering Isles.
All of the character and personality the NPCs were missing apparently got sucked into the Mad Prince's domain. It was certainly more interesting than anything in the normal game; pity the game crashing bugs/glitches hampered every step of the way for me.

 

[MassiveGeek]

THANK FUCK someone who thinks like me.

I personally adore Fallout 3, I have all the expansions and I've played the shit out of it. When I tried Oblivion I was just immediatly turned off, I didn't lose myself in the game even once, the quests were sketchy the dialogue unclear and rushed and I wanted to stab every single character in there with a fork. While I am all for open world and explorer games, Oblivion does look exactly the same for the most part, making it really hard to navigate as a newcomer, a copy pasta mess that just left me longing for Fallout 3 again, because frankly, I'd take the vast, dead wasteland in there rather than the boring ass forest of Oblivion.

/rant

I probably didn't give it enough of a chance though, but I just don't feel like trying again, it doesn't feel worth it when I might as well replay one of my fav RPGs of all time again.

 

[Craorach]

I played and loved Daggerfall back in the day.

Every Elder Scrolls game has been a disappointment to me since.

But honestly, I just don't have the time or motivation to play that kind of game anymore, open world "chose your own path" games annoy me more than entertain me these days. I don't like stumbling around trying to decide what to do next.

 

[Gimelbub]

Not at all. For every problem someone has with the game, there's a mod that fixes it.

The fact that I had no expectation going in helped too.

 

[DR3AMCATCH3R94]

I loved everything in oblivion from the epic landscape to the (in my opinion) great story and tbh somewhat satisfying combat, while i didnt enjoy the leveling system that much i appreciated the attempt of a realistic leveling system by having to work on your abilities rather then just killing and exploring

 

[00slash00]

Now, to maybe clear some of the flak I'm inevitably going to get, I want to offer this disclaimer. This was my opinion, not one that I'm trying to push on anyone.

Oblivion... After playing and beating Bethesda's Fallout masterpieces and trumping both Mass Effects (not to mention a fun playthrough of Deus Ex), I found myself setting my sights on one of the most fabled Western RPGs of all time: Oblivion. In starting, 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. 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.
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.
Now, to be fair, I've never been a fan of most fantasy settings. They all take place in the same pocket dimension of alternate medieval-England. From the beginning, I was lost with "Bretons", and "Mehrunes Dagon", and "Mysterius Xyrxim" or whatever.
I'll give it this, it looked very good. I really enjoyed the visuals. Also, the theme music from the main menu was nice.
Other than that, I just felt disappointed and upset I'd wasted fifteen bucks. (Though it wasn't the worst cash I'd ever spent, Brink takes that.)
Anyways, thoughts?

it confuses me that you found the game so hard, considering you played other games on hard mode. i thought it was pretty easy. maybe you screwed up when making your class or something. my only issue was that the main quest was boring

 

[Belaam]

I liked the game. Played it pretty much the instant it came out on the PC, so thought the graphics were the most amazing thing I'd ever seen.

The gates/caves got a little repetitive, but certainly no more so than running the exact same WoW dungeon for the 30th time.

Never had that much of a problem with the combat system.

The leveling was absurd. Always had to make sure most of my primary skills were the ones I used least often. One of my first characters was a rogue with sneak as a primary. In no time at all, I had maxxed out sneak, gone up 10 levels and didn't have the combat skills to deal with all the stuff that was spawning now.

That said, loved the game. Played it all the way through several times, and its one of about 8 games currently installed on my computer.

 

[Mr.White]

I started playing it expecting a world as big as Morrowind, being required to level up before I could even think of accessing some areas of the map.

I explored most of the map before I even bothered with the story and finding good weapons and equipment, then played the story with great equipment and many homes and castles and hideouts thanks to the DLC.

Unfortunately, my game had glitched so when I went to the afterlife or whatever it was, to the room where I was supposedly meant to talk to the main baddie (his kids were stood by the throne)....he never showed up, I saved in the room which I couldn't leave until I spoke to him, the same room he wasn't going to show up in.

So everything that I had gotten and worked for in the game, was rendered useless, unless I wanted to repeatedly kill his kids forever.

I suppose you could say that I was disappointed.