[HEADING=2]It's About Time! reviews by a Stranger[/HEADING]
[HEADING=1]Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion[/HEADING]
Oblivion... it's a word that means one thing for gamers and another for everyone else, the internet tells me that oblivion means "the state of being disregarded or forgotten". But for me, and most likely many of you, Oblivion conjures up images of vast green plains and Giant Rats being set on fire. The reason for me writing this review is threefold: firstly it's a response to Saving Princess's article on it, secondly I have yet to explain my full standing on this game after my Dragon Age: Origins review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.185708-Its-About-Time-Dragon-Age-Origins] and lastly, I have nothing better to do and this is going to take a lot of time.
Now it's worth noting that I spent a lot of my time on this game, days in fact, I even know people who measure their time spent on Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in weeks. I bought the 430 page game-guide for it and even then I have never really gotten over my experience with the game. What Oblivion is, is an RPG where the player finds that they are a prisoner, one that is about to escape. Your cell is the entrance to a secret escape route out of the city, which is opened by the Emperor and his guards as they try to flee a group of assassins. You follow the Emporer into the ruins that make up the escape route and witness his assassination, before he dies he gives you the Amulet of Kings to take to a man named Jauffre. And just like that you are thrust in the wide open world.
First impressions, the game is gorgeous, not to mention massive. Even nowadays the graphics hold up very well, the water borders on photo-realism and each area is stuffed full of plants, rocks and hills. It is an environment that you could happily explore for hours, this is vital for a game such as this as that is exactly what you are meant to do. The main problem with the world of Oblivion is that it's rather too big, it means locations are spread out and there is some obvious copying and pasting of various sections. Notably the cave dungeons are almost indistinguishable from each other. There is an option to fast travel to places you have already visited and while this is useful it does serve to make Cyrodill feel a lot smaller than it actually is.
So off you go, diligently following your orders and when you finally meet Jauffre (it takes quite a while to get to him), he tells you that the land of Cyrodill, the country you're in, is under threat from a demonic force known as the Daedra and the only way to stop them is to find the Emperor's illegitimate son which leads onto another thing, and another, and another. Let's just say that the story of Oblivion isn't exactly its strongest point, but do you know what? I don't care.
Because you see, in my 80 hours plus I spent on this game I never finished the story mode for both the reason of the lack of motivation from the story and also the fact that I really didn't like going into the other dimension of Oblivion, it's boring and rather too red for my taste. Instead I completed the side-quests, of which there are many. Along with the rag-tag of one-off requests from villagers there are four main side quest arcs: the Fighters' Guild, Mages' Guild, Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood. As well as the Daedric quests, Arena battles and so on. Completing all of them can take weeks, even with a book that tells you exactly what to do. My favourite by far was the Dark Brotherhood quests which had you travelling around the land of Cyrodill, killing a variety of people, the quests were challenging, entertaining but still relatively short, for those that have played the game "Whodunnit?" will stir up some happy memories.
What further adds to your playtime is the exploring that can be done, at some point during their time with Oblivion most players will think "fuck it" and go off into the wilderness to see what they can find. You are rewarded for doing so, you'll find a whole (albeit similar) range of dungeons where you can level up by killing enemies or you can find powerful and rare weapons. It's a very fun thing to do but it does damage the story even further since if you're busy frollicing in the mountains and ignoring quests suddenly the incoming horde of demons doesn't feel too imminent, but that is a problem with all free-roaming games like this.
Now being that this is an RPG there are many, many different ways in which you can play it, this is made possible by the wide array of options that are available to you: there is a total of 10 races all with their specialities, 13 birth-signs (you pick one of them, they range from permanent attribute boosts to powerful spells), 8 attributes, 3 specializations and 21 skills. It means you can fine-tune your character to be whatever you want, the only problem is that certain specialisations/attributes/skills/races benefit each other meaning that there will always be a best way to do something. So if you're a Breton with magic specialisation, Apprentice birth sign (+100 Magicka) and you pick the 7 mage skills then you are basically unstoppable compared to say, a Wood Elf warrior. What makes it worse is that these benifits push you towards "pure" class builds to have the maximum skills, meaning to be the best you can be you have to be a pure Mage, Warrior or Rogue. Which isn't really the level of customisation that we were promised.
The way the skill system works is by levelling up skills as you use them, this is great since your favourite style of play but this also presents a problem. What if I, for some reason or another, want to use a bow with my hammer-wielding Orc? I can easily use it but it will be bloody useless. Again this pushes you toward one style of play, admittedly this is your favourite style but everyone gets the urge to try something new every once in a while. But since you can simply make a new character with a different style this can be worked around.
Combat is a bit of a mixed bag in Oblivion, on one hand you have the terrible melee combat which feels clunky and crude, especially when compared to games such as Dark Messiah of Might and Magic which does first person melee combat incredibly well. But then you have the magic combat which I think is done fairly well, especially when you consider the almost infinite amount of spells that are available (you can make your own you see). The ability to enchant your weapons with various effects also adds another element to it and further lets you play the way you want to. I was quite fond of exploding arrows with my rogue and I have to tell you, the effects of it are hilarious.
Stealth is an area where Oblivion holds up very well, even when you max out the skill there is still a moderate challenge, it also allows people who may not want to kill everyone to simply slip through unseen. Furthermore, you can attack while hidden for an automatic critical hit. Outside of combat, stealth also allows you to creep through peoples' homes and stash their stuff which is yet another thing you can happily spend hours doing.
The one thing that I see so many people whine about is the way most of the enemies level up with you. This way you don't feel a sense of progression as you never have a chance to brush away enemies with one sweep that used to take you a long time to kill. But there is another side to it, the constantly levelled enemies means that there will always be some kind of challenge. The sense of progression comes with the new and exciting ways you get of killing enemies as you level.
There are however, many problems with Oblivion; the sheer amount of bugs serves to frustrate and annoy (though the ones in Fallout 3 are a lot worse) and the wide open world is let down by an insane amount of pop-in images and parts where the game freezes to allow the next area to load. Add this to the already impressively long loading times between dungeons and it's easy to get angry with this game. Also, there are only a small amount of voice actors and whenever you talk to someone and ask for rumours it's a lucky dip as to which voice will play, this breaking the immersion that this game relies on.
The thing is, I haven't even scratched the surface of this game, there is just so much to do and so much that I can talk about but in the end I don't think anyone wants to read through 10+ pages of my incessant whittering. Yes, it is true that this game does have its flaws... loads of them at that... quite big ones too, but overall it is most certainly still a good game. There are so many people that become so easily absorbed into the word of Cyrodill because in the end, it is a damn good game.
Any feedback, however irrelevant or mundaneexcites me sexually is always wanted, if I've missed something out be sure to say what. Thanks for reading
The BB code for the "other reviews box" has just gone over one page in Word, wow. I wonder how many people clicked on this review because it had "super-mecha-awesome in the title... most of them I'll bet. Anyway stop reading this and comment!
(Cue epic music)
Oblivion... it's a word that means one thing for gamers and another for everyone else, the internet tells me that oblivion means "the state of being disregarded or forgotten". But for me, and most likely many of you, Oblivion conjures up images of vast green plains and Giant Rats being set on fire. The reason for me writing this review is threefold: firstly it's a response to Saving Princess's article on it, secondly I have yet to explain my full standing on this game after my Dragon Age: Origins review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.185708-Its-About-Time-Dragon-Age-Origins] and lastly, I have nothing better to do and this is going to take a lot of time.
Now it's worth noting that I spent a lot of my time on this game, days in fact, I even know people who measure their time spent on Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion in weeks. I bought the 430 page game-guide for it and even then I have never really gotten over my experience with the game. What Oblivion is, is an RPG where the player finds that they are a prisoner, one that is about to escape. Your cell is the entrance to a secret escape route out of the city, which is opened by the Emperor and his guards as they try to flee a group of assassins. You follow the Emporer into the ruins that make up the escape route and witness his assassination, before he dies he gives you the Amulet of Kings to take to a man named Jauffre. And just like that you are thrust in the wide open world.
First impressions, the game is gorgeous, not to mention massive. Even nowadays the graphics hold up very well, the water borders on photo-realism and each area is stuffed full of plants, rocks and hills. It is an environment that you could happily explore for hours, this is vital for a game such as this as that is exactly what you are meant to do. The main problem with the world of Oblivion is that it's rather too big, it means locations are spread out and there is some obvious copying and pasting of various sections. Notably the cave dungeons are almost indistinguishable from each other. There is an option to fast travel to places you have already visited and while this is useful it does serve to make Cyrodill feel a lot smaller than it actually is.
So off you go, diligently following your orders and when you finally meet Jauffre (it takes quite a while to get to him), he tells you that the land of Cyrodill, the country you're in, is under threat from a demonic force known as the Daedra and the only way to stop them is to find the Emperor's illegitimate son which leads onto another thing, and another, and another. Let's just say that the story of Oblivion isn't exactly its strongest point, but do you know what? I don't care.
Wait a minute... shouldn't I be scared of you? You look terrified.
Because you see, in my 80 hours plus I spent on this game I never finished the story mode for both the reason of the lack of motivation from the story and also the fact that I really didn't like going into the other dimension of Oblivion, it's boring and rather too red for my taste. Instead I completed the side-quests, of which there are many. Along with the rag-tag of one-off requests from villagers there are four main side quest arcs: the Fighters' Guild, Mages' Guild, Thieves' Guild and Dark Brotherhood. As well as the Daedric quests, Arena battles and so on. Completing all of them can take weeks, even with a book that tells you exactly what to do. My favourite by far was the Dark Brotherhood quests which had you travelling around the land of Cyrodill, killing a variety of people, the quests were challenging, entertaining but still relatively short, for those that have played the game "Whodunnit?" will stir up some happy memories.
What further adds to your playtime is the exploring that can be done, at some point during their time with Oblivion most players will think "fuck it" and go off into the wilderness to see what they can find. You are rewarded for doing so, you'll find a whole (albeit similar) range of dungeons where you can level up by killing enemies or you can find powerful and rare weapons. It's a very fun thing to do but it does damage the story even further since if you're busy frollicing in the mountains and ignoring quests suddenly the incoming horde of demons doesn't feel too imminent, but that is a problem with all free-roaming games like this.
Now being that this is an RPG there are many, many different ways in which you can play it, this is made possible by the wide array of options that are available to you: there is a total of 10 races all with their specialities, 13 birth-signs (you pick one of them, they range from permanent attribute boosts to powerful spells), 8 attributes, 3 specializations and 21 skills. It means you can fine-tune your character to be whatever you want, the only problem is that certain specialisations/attributes/skills/races benefit each other meaning that there will always be a best way to do something. So if you're a Breton with magic specialisation, Apprentice birth sign (+100 Magicka) and you pick the 7 mage skills then you are basically unstoppable compared to say, a Wood Elf warrior. What makes it worse is that these benifits push you towards "pure" class builds to have the maximum skills, meaning to be the best you can be you have to be a pure Mage, Warrior or Rogue. Which isn't really the level of customisation that we were promised.
Train hard, level up and you too could look like an oversized novelty garden gnome.
The way the skill system works is by levelling up skills as you use them, this is great since your favourite style of play but this also presents a problem. What if I, for some reason or another, want to use a bow with my hammer-wielding Orc? I can easily use it but it will be bloody useless. Again this pushes you toward one style of play, admittedly this is your favourite style but everyone gets the urge to try something new every once in a while. But since you can simply make a new character with a different style this can be worked around.
Combat is a bit of a mixed bag in Oblivion, on one hand you have the terrible melee combat which feels clunky and crude, especially when compared to games such as Dark Messiah of Might and Magic which does first person melee combat incredibly well. But then you have the magic combat which I think is done fairly well, especially when you consider the almost infinite amount of spells that are available (you can make your own you see). The ability to enchant your weapons with various effects also adds another element to it and further lets you play the way you want to. I was quite fond of exploding arrows with my rogue and I have to tell you, the effects of it are hilarious.
Stealth is an area where Oblivion holds up very well, even when you max out the skill there is still a moderate challenge, it also allows people who may not want to kill everyone to simply slip through unseen. Furthermore, you can attack while hidden for an automatic critical hit. Outside of combat, stealth also allows you to creep through peoples' homes and stash their stuff which is yet another thing you can happily spend hours doing.
[img height= 250]http://www.overclock.net/attachments/pc-games/43330d1173758986-oblivion-modding-faq-oblivion2.jpg[/img]
No matter what level you are, guards are always more powerful. So
why can't they save the world instead?
The one thing that I see so many people whine about is the way most of the enemies level up with you. This way you don't feel a sense of progression as you never have a chance to brush away enemies with one sweep that used to take you a long time to kill. But there is another side to it, the constantly levelled enemies means that there will always be some kind of challenge. The sense of progression comes with the new and exciting ways you get of killing enemies as you level.
There are however, many problems with Oblivion; the sheer amount of bugs serves to frustrate and annoy (though the ones in Fallout 3 are a lot worse) and the wide open world is let down by an insane amount of pop-in images and parts where the game freezes to allow the next area to load. Add this to the already impressively long loading times between dungeons and it's easy to get angry with this game. Also, there are only a small amount of voice actors and whenever you talk to someone and ask for rumours it's a lucky dip as to which voice will play, this breaking the immersion that this game relies on.
The thing is, I haven't even scratched the surface of this game, there is just so much to do and so much that I can talk about but in the end I don't think anyone wants to read through 10+ pages of my incessant whittering. Yes, it is true that this game does have its flaws... loads of them at that... quite big ones too, but overall it is most certainly still a good game. There are so many people that become so easily absorbed into the word of Cyrodill because in the end, it is a damn good game.
Any feedback, however irrelevant or mundane
It's About Time! Resistance 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.190001-Its-About-Time-Resistance-2] Resistance:Fall of Man [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.189272-Its-About-Time-Resistance-Fall-of-Man] Final Fantasy XII [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.188075-Poll-Its-About-Time-Final-Fantasy-XII] Fallout 3 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.186956-Its-About-Time-Fallout-3-version-1-2] Dragon Age: Origins [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.185708-Its-About-Time-Dragon-Age-Origins] Little Big Planet [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.184065-Its-About-Time-Little-Big-Planet]
Games Peekaboo [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.188855-A-Review-of-Sorts-Peekaboo-complete-re-write] Cel Damage Overdrive [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.187437-A-Stranger-reviews-Cel-Damage-Overdrive] The Fall(en) [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183414-A-Stranger-reviews-The-Fall-en-updated], Plants Vs Zombies [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183040-Plants-Vs-Zombies-In-a-Nutshell], Borderlands DLC: Secret Armoury [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.179437-A-Stranger-Reviews-Borderlands-Secret-Armoury-Get-you-one],Cod: Modern Warfare 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.181561-A-Stranger-reviews-CoD-Modern-Warfare-2-a-review-to-end-all-others-well-hopefully], B:BC2 demo [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.176510-Review-Battlefield-Bad-Company-2-multiplayer-demo]
Movies Hot Tub Time Machine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.192255-A-Review-of-Sorts-Hot-Tub-Time-Machine] The Butterfly Effect [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.191275-A-Review-of-Sorts-The-Butterfly-Effect] 2001: A Space Odyssey [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.179870-2001-A-Space-Odyssey-A-Strangers-verdict]
Music [url-http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183857-Music-for-Dummies-A-collection-of-music-reviews-7-Technicolour-Health-by-Harlem-Shakes]The Music Thread (20+ individual reviews/rants)[/url] My Dinosaur Life [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.182845-A-Stranger-reviews-music-My-Dinosaur-Life-by-MCS], Cajun Dance Party [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.181141-Cajun-Dance-Party-A-Strangers-Music-Review], Bloc Party [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.178462-A-Music-Review-Bloc-Party]
Random The Escapist forums [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.182355-A-Stranger-reviews-The-Escapist-Forums] Progress Wars [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.185328-Poll-A-Stranger-reviews-Progress-Wars]
Games Peekaboo [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.188855-A-Review-of-Sorts-Peekaboo-complete-re-write] Cel Damage Overdrive [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.187437-A-Stranger-reviews-Cel-Damage-Overdrive] The Fall(en) [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183414-A-Stranger-reviews-The-Fall-en-updated], Plants Vs Zombies [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183040-Plants-Vs-Zombies-In-a-Nutshell], Borderlands DLC: Secret Armoury [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.179437-A-Stranger-Reviews-Borderlands-Secret-Armoury-Get-you-one],Cod: Modern Warfare 2 [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.181561-A-Stranger-reviews-CoD-Modern-Warfare-2-a-review-to-end-all-others-well-hopefully], B:BC2 demo [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.176510-Review-Battlefield-Bad-Company-2-multiplayer-demo]
Movies Hot Tub Time Machine [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.192255-A-Review-of-Sorts-Hot-Tub-Time-Machine] The Butterfly Effect [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.191275-A-Review-of-Sorts-The-Butterfly-Effect] 2001: A Space Odyssey [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.179870-2001-A-Space-Odyssey-A-Strangers-verdict]
Music [url-http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.183857-Music-for-Dummies-A-collection-of-music-reviews-7-Technicolour-Health-by-Harlem-Shakes]The Music Thread (20+ individual reviews/rants)[/url] My Dinosaur Life [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.182845-A-Stranger-reviews-music-My-Dinosaur-Life-by-MCS], Cajun Dance Party [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.181141-Cajun-Dance-Party-A-Strangers-Music-Review], Bloc Party [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.178462-A-Music-Review-Bloc-Party]
Random The Escapist forums [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.182355-A-Stranger-reviews-The-Escapist-Forums] Progress Wars [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/326.185328-Poll-A-Stranger-reviews-Progress-Wars]
The BB code for the "other reviews box" has just gone over one page in Word, wow. I wonder how many people clicked on this review because it had "super-mecha-awesome in the title... most of them I'll bet. Anyway stop reading this and comment!