TES IV: Oblivion: What is the opinion about it?

[Zen Bard]

Like all Elder Scrolls games, Oblivion has its Pros and Cons;

Pros
...The majority of the quest line arcs are interesting and well written. They weren't as drawn out and cumbersome as those in Morrowind, but not as simplistic as the "go here/get this/kill that" type in Skyrim. Some even had some very imaginative twists. You may also find yourself embarking on a quest when you least expect it...like after you've moved into your new house or rented a room at an inn.

...The combat was a vast improvement over Morrowind. You could manually block without having to depend on your stats in the skill to do it for you.

...The world of Cyrodill is just gorgeous and there's a ton to explore. After awhile, I started intentionally staying off the main roads just to see what I would find by cutting through the forest.

...Like every Elder Scrolls game, you can do what you want (with a few exceptions), go where you want and be who you want. I must have sunk about 200 hours in my first playthrough.

Cons
...Though it's fairly open for an RPG, it's more limited than Morrowind. There, you could literally do anything...kill a main character, break into any house, steal anything. Oblivion? Not so much.

...The character designs in Oblivion are just hideous. In Morrowind all Brighton woman looked like Kylie Minogue. In Oblivion they all look like the fish people from HP Lovecraft's Innsmouth.

...The limited voice cast gets a bit much. After awhile, it's not uncommon to hear a character having a conversation with someone voiced by the same actor.

...You can't switch weapons in combat. In Skyrim I can shoot someone with a bow & arrow from a distance and then rush in with sword and shield. In Oblivion, you're stuck with whichever weapons you drew first.

...The dreaded leveling problem. This is the sole reason I can never complete a second play through. No doubt you've read about the level scaling, where all the loot, characters and monsters scale with you. It was just ridiculous and totally immersion-breaking. After all, if you're the Chosen One and all the guards and bandits are as powerful as you...why don't they just get together and stop the Oblivion crisis?

 

[R Man]

I'm going to go with the majority opinion. Oblivion was not a bad game. It was well made. Sure it had a few teething problems with the voice acting and such, but overall the game was good. Personally I like how they organised the skills, spells and inventory. In some respects I actually think that Oblivion is better at this than Skyrim or Oblivion.

The problem was that the setting was not as well realised as it could have been. There were things ... missing that could have made the world richer, such as evidence that the Empire is actually an Empire. Why were their no Imperial Trade Companies? Why does Cyrodill contradict its historic potrayal. Hell, why don't the Imperial Legions actually look like Legionaries? There are also fewer meaningful factions. The world just feels less alive, because the details in a setting that make the world seem bigger than it really is are lacking.

 

[Zenja]

All you need to know is that you will never be more powerful than you are at level one. With level scaling in the game monsters level up with you to provide equal challenge that way the game is able to hold your hand no matter where you go and make sure you don't run into any threatening trouble. However, the leveling system is broken and if you don't earn the right experience points at the right time, you will essentially waste you levels and you could end up being weaker than you were at level 1 by leveling up wrong as a result.

Just like being unable to run into any real danger, loot is also auto scaled so you wont ever find anything really awesome. Everything will be level appropriate. What it offers is a nice forested temperate climate world to explore - however, it uses procedural generation and it shows through at parts. It has some fun quests in it but it also has a very contrived and cliche main quest that is very dry.

So when people describe it as mundane or "meh" this is why. While there are small parts to it that make it unique, it is very bland when compared to both Skyrim and Morrowind. (Especially Morrowind) I personally rank the games like this: Skyrim > Morrowind > Oblivion. Personally, I didn't like Oblivion and found myself constantly getting bored with it, or worse, irritated.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Vanilla Oblivion is something I cannot recommend under any circumistances. The interiors look fine, but the moment you look further away than 200 meters you start to see the cracks: texture quality on the level of pea soup, foliage that appears and disappears in a circle around you, buildings appearing out of nowhere and so on. Gameplay wise it has some of the most backwards ass design ever witnessed, the level scaling being the worst offender.

I could go on, but all the vital flaws have been pointed out multiple times in this thread. The consensus on Oblivion seems to be that it's aged very poorly, and these days needs heavy modding to become actually good. Not that there's no enjoyment at all to be found in it: the weather cycle I remember was particularly beautiful, and can create some fantastically atmospheric and beautiful moments.

 

[MHR]

It's a very good game that many people don't have the patience for.

Skyrim overshadows it significantly though in most respects. It does what Oblivion did, but better. If you've already played out Skyrim, but want a downgraded expansion to play, Oblivion is your game.

Some of the systems are fucked though. Like people have said above, the leveling system is garbage that makes you worse off as you level. Early quests you're meant to do at a low level, if put off, can spawn massive overpowered enemies in places that simple scamps should have been placed. And then there's all the bugs.

Overall it's a very good game that I thoroughly enjoy. Since I like to do all the side content before "finishing" a game, I've never actually finished it.

 

[FirstNameLastName]

I'd say Oblivion has better game mechanics than Skyrim, and worse than Morrowind in some ways while being significantly better in other ways (I don't care how many excuses or references to tabletop gaming people make, Morrowind's dice based combat is pure garbage and is now in the bin where it belongs). However, the setting is so painfully boring that I actually find Skyrim better overall. Not that pseudo-norse is all that groundbreaking, but with Oblivion they followed up one of the most unique fantasy settings (Morrowind) with the most standard of standard fantasy settings. The environment is absolutely beautiful, but the civilization lacks any real personality. Imagine a medieval European civilization; congratulations, You've just taken a trip to Cyrodiil.

I think I've ranted about this in the past, but one of the things I find interesting about Morrowind (and Skyrim to a slightly lesser extent) is the complicated relationship between different factions, cultures, religions, and races, but Oblivion lacks that. With a few exceptions, Cyrodiil just feels way too peaceful and stable, with all the various races getting along pretty well. Aside from that, I find the NPCs rather creepy in Oblivion, and not just because of the notorious faces. They all seem way too friendly and way too pleased to see you, even if you're a stranger who's arrived in town to cut everyone's throat. They remind me of some kind of cult.
I understand the peace and prosperity has a lot to do with it taking place in the heart of the empire, and probably to provide a juxtaposition for the generic demon daedra invasion, but it just seems to lack any real personality other than "happy".

 

[IceForce]

Pretty horrid, aye.

The leveling system is flawed. It means that you always need to level the precise right skills to get those juicy juicy "+5" attribute level ups. If you don't, you start to run into the law-of-diminishing-returns problem, where the auto-scaled enemies will start to become too tough for you to fight.
And there's no rescuing an Oblivion player character from that hell; you might as well start over.

People have gotten around it by deliberately picking skills that you won't use as your "major skills", thereby keeping you -- and by extension, the enemies -- as low level as possible. Another option is to just never sleep, (since you only level up when you sleep), but this isn't the best solution as a couple of quests actually require you to sleep in a bed to continue with the quest.

Anyway, all of the above is detailed here: http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Leveling#The_Leveling_Problem

As for the game world, it's pretty boring and unremarkable. The entire map was created using an auto terrain generator, and then the various towns and hamlets were then plonked down in their respective locations. So everywhere in between there's just nothing to see and nothing interesting to do.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Oblivion was my first taste of a truly open world game, way back in the day, and the only way to describe it was: amazing! It blew my mind to be able to pick up pretty much every single object in the world, and the freedom to explore anywhere in the world was incredible. Hours spent sitting playing Oblivion until 3:00 am when the reruns of M*A*S*H came on are some of the best memories I have from being a teenager.

People like to dump on Oblivion in particular for some reason, but The Elder Scrolls is really just extremely flawed as a series. Take Morrowind, people like to talk about it's story and how great the quests are, but what they neglect to mention is the fact that dialogue with NPCs consists of navigating a veritable encyclopedia where each character will have dozens and dozens of conversation options most of which yield almost identical responses to everyone else. It makes the game a nightmare if you are the kind of person who wants to talk to everybody in town! Skyrim was fun for one playthrough, but upon revisiting I find it incredibly dull. The questlines are short and uninteresting and there isn't a whole lot going on in the world.

But yes, Oblivion is a very flawed game. The voices are all the same, the conversation wheel is a little dull, and the game is filled with bugs (make lots of separate saves!)The level scaling didn't bother me, despite what people claim it is possible to advance past the opposition and all the bandits wearing daedric armor means you can drag it back to the store and make a mint as an exotic armors merchant! Also, I love how deformed you can make your PC. How many games let you play as a blue fish faced man, with fluorescent magenta hair?

Despite that it's still a very fun game. The quests and questlines are definitely a highlight. Especially the Dark Brotherhood questline, which is amazing. It's kind of funny, but I think that group of deranged murderers are the most endearing characters in the game. If you are only going to do one thing in the game, play through the Dark Brotherhood!

-----------------------------------------------

Has anybody played Nehrim: At Fate's Edge, the total conversion mod for Oblivion?
Someone on the forum was raving about how good it was a couple years ago (I think it was SmashLovesTitanQuest, anybody remember him?) I haven't ever actually gotten around to playing it, though.

 

[Guitarmasterx7]

I loved Oblivion. It was literally the only game I owned on the 360 for like 2 years and kept me occupied in my broke teenage years. So I've got about 700 hours on it. The writing varies but it has a lot of really memorable moments especially on the guild questlines and Shivering Isles is probably the best single player DLC ever made in my opinion. That said it hasn't aged very well so whether you can get into it or not depends on your tolerance for how dated it feels.

I've heard that content wise Morrowind has a lot of stuff people liked which wasn't in oblivion, so your "I liked it before it was cool" nerds will shit on Oblivion, but Morrowind is pretty much unplayable even when you compare it to Oblivion let alone by today's standards.

And the dialog wheel is almost like a "lockpicking" mechanic for getting people to like you. You learn how to do it and then it's really easy. Kind of pointless but I thought it was relatively innocuous. Do people make a huge deal out of it?

 

[FirstNameLastName]

...

As for the game world, it's pretty boring and unremarkable. The entire map was created using an auto terrain generator, and then the various towns and hamlets were then plonked down in their respective locations. So everywhere in between there's just nothing to see and nothing interesting to do.

Is there any source for this, because that sounds illogical. I don't doubt the base map was created with a generator, as many large open world maps are, but I'm pretty sure they would have gone over the map and manually tweaked the terrain, altered elements, added and removed others, etc.

 

[Trunkage]

After reading everyones comments the only things I can add are just like Oblivion is a "downgrade" RPG wise from Morrowind, Morrowind is a downgrade from Daggerfall. Now as people have losing the staff skill doesn't make sense unless you think that its necessary to maintain the symmetry in the skill system they have been refining over the years. But combining ones like athletics and acrobatics, mercantilism and speechcraft are fine. Like all Bethseda games, there a large move away from spreadsheets and the attribute system like SPECIAL and the one in the Elder Scrolls which I think makes it different from most RPGs (I could do with more talking, but they add more quests so that's a give and take too). It offends some of the so-called purist (like RPG have to be some one), I like that it is trying to be different.

I do have to add the combat misses in Morrowind were the worst, except for possibly cliff racers. They can both jump in a lake.

Get Shivering Isle, that was fun and is the best expansion for Elder Scrolls

 

[Politrukk]

Oblivion is inferior to Morrowind and Skyrim, but it's still a good game. That said, it's been difficult to return to since Skyrim came out. It's kind of a middle child of sorts in that regard.

Inferior to Skyrim?

At least gameplay wise it has been a sliding scale ever since Morrowind.

OT:

If you got The Shivering Isles with it and can see beyond the way it looks today you will have a blast.

Oblivion at the time for a lot of people was one of the games that really marked the "next generation" at the time it just looked beautiful and played smoothly it still had some of the depth of Morrowin (which got cut even deeper with Skyrim) but it also offered a richer more colourful playstyle and adventure.

Morrowind to my memory is quite grey, Skyrim is a huddled puddle of grey and brown, Oblivion is like a rainbow in comparison.

edit:

I actually found the dialogue wheel to be surprisingly fun.

What makes Morrowind visually appealing is its unique setting, which at times is almost like an alien medieval world and I think that's pretty cool, compared to Oblivion's super generic lands of Cyrodiil.

Point taken hence why I recommend Shivering Isles.

However Oblivion to me is like Southern Ireland, some of those vistas even for the time were pretty "realistic".
It's not a crazed fantasy world but to me it was the first "generic" fantasy world done on that scale at the time, currently there are plenty of alternatives but still back then, just being able to hunt deer in a forest looking like that in Oblivion was a big thing to a lot of people myself included.

 

[Glongpre]

-The "YOU ARE THE CHOSEN ONE" theme for the player character, unlike the more ambiguous interpretations of earlier titles.

Are you though? You do most of the heavy lifting, but Martin is the one who defeats Dagon. So I wouldn't say your character is the chosen one.
Skyrim has the chosen one character.

OP:
I rather enjoy Oblivion, I actually just started a new game as a spellsword kinda guy. There is a lot wrong with it, but I find it fun. The magic system is really good, better than Skyrim by a lot, and maybe better than Morrowind (because you always hit).
I liked the daedra in this, it really added a nice twist to the generic forest landscape. I missed them in Skyrim honestly.

Also, that OST is beautiful.

 

[Bad Jim]

I was thinking about playing Oblivion (I bought it dirt cheap...

Why don't you just play it and decide for yourself? You've already spent your money, and the half hour you'll spend reading our opinions would be better spent playing it and forming your own.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

Oblivion might not have lived up to Morrowind's standard, but it was far, far from poorly received. It was a critical and commercial success, enjoy by millions and is an absolutely great game. All that means is that it's predecessor and successor were exceptional games.

Look, it's not all roses. The game had issues and judging it again by today's standards and against Skyrim, it's a little less favourable again, but it is really worth playing. There are some magnificent moments. Of note is the latter half, and in fact the finale of the Thieves Guild questline. Skyrim's Thieves Guild was awful by every measure, so bad I genuinely hope that whomever worked on it is not working on TESVI. Oblivion's Thieves guild however was fantastic. The last parts are brilliant fun, great adventure, utterly tense and very memorable.

Similarly, the Assassin's Guild, talking to the members is really frightening (listen to the Orc talking about a birthday party...it's chilling). They have lots of character. The missions are interesting and fun with cool challenges and one in particular, a "Whodunnit" murder mystery (with you as the murderer) is, and I say this in earnest, one of the best missions in gaming, full stop. It is sublime in its execution and so replayable because of the permutations available depending on the player's actions. It's up there with the Hotel mission from Hitman 1/3 as one of the best gaming experiences.

There are some issues. The gates an get utterly repetitive after a while, and since there's a limited number of Oblivion maps deja vu will set in quickly. Funnily my solution to the problem is itself another problem with the game, namely 100% chameleon. While it let me trivialise the "chore" of shutting gates later once the novelty had worn off, it's crazy OP. The limited number of voice actors was a little telling, and they nerfed merchants massively compared to Morrowind (granted in Morrowind it wasn't hard to become very rich very fast). It had crazy level scaling that affected absolutely everything...the lowliest bandits which you'd ignore or consider trivial in any other game will be Daedric level soon enough. In Morrowind, IIRC there were two sets of Daedric armour in the entire game, the pieces scattered across Vardenfell. Here you'll be leaving it on the ground because you're out of inventory space to pick any more up. It also means the player can complete the arena stuff absurdly early on because the challenge will always be the same (relative to the player).

It lacked much (if any) Dwemer stuff, which I think was/is one of the most interesting, fantastical and mysterious parts of Elder Scrolls' world. In spite of the Oblivion stuff and Daedra, Oblivion felt a little more "mundane". And lastly, the radiant AI, while a leap forward, exhibited some very odd behaviour at times. Watch this [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNvApkkpR3g] for my favourite ever example of AI gone rogue! The husband likes the player so attacks his own dogs. The wife likes the dogs so attacks her husband and when the husband tries to flee, a guard comes to "arrest" his assailant.

Saying all that, there's a lot of fun to be had. Unlike Skyrim, it still has stats and major/minor skills, so there remains the potential to *gasp* actually role-play a character! In an RPG no less! Just play the thing and enjoy it for what it is. An interesting story, a chapter in TES lore and an open world RPG with to enjoy.

 

[Mister K]

I was thinking about playing Oblivion (I bought it dirt cheap...

Why don't you just play it and decide for yourself? You've already spent your money, and the half hour you'll spend reading our opinions would be better spent playing it and forming your own.

In short, because I have a huge backlog and I was wondering whether I should put it in the top of the list, or somewhere lower. So far, the latter option seems to be the most likely one.

 

[aegix drakan_v1legacy]

Incidentally, I'm loving the shit out of Skyrim. Which I only recently got on Steam sale.

Just wait until you start digging into mods. There's a ton that improve the game in so many ways or add tons of new content.

On that note, for your first playthrough you REALLY should at least download "SkyUI" (makes the interface WAY more user-friendly for mouse and keyboard and it gives you hotkeys for equipment), and "A quality world map" (which shows you the actual ROADS on the map so you're not hoofing it through wild terrain all the time), and "Immersive Patrols" (Which has the civil war factions sending out regular patrols along the roads to fight each other, so it actually DOES feel like a civil war is going on).

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

I was thinking about playing Oblivion (I bought it dirt cheap...

Why don't you just play it and decide for yourself? You've already spent your money, and the half hour you'll spend reading our opinions would be better spent playing it and forming your own.

In short, because I have a huge backlog and I was wondering whether I should put it in the top of the list, or somewhere lower. So far, the latter option seems to be the most likely one.

alot of the flaws people have mentioned can be fixed/made enjoyable by mods, and due to oblivions age they have been ironed out pretty much as good as it'll get...yes yes, people like to tell you to enjoy stuff vanilla first, but many of us have backlogs the size of a forest so that's just not smart time micro-management, and elder scrolls are at their best when given 100 steroid shots of mods.

I personally enjoyed oblivion more than morrowind, but that could be due to playing oblivion first, but otherwise the factions had decent enough sidequests and the shivering isles was pretty damn great as well. It's definitely worth trying out if you like mods and you like a bit more open world type rpg's.

 

[Smygskytt]

"Get out of my house you blasted thief... Oh hello there."
Any gamer who doesn't remember this hasn't played Oblivion.

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

I may've written more about Oblivion and Morrowind than any other pair of games in my entire life... I spent years on a TES forum, and came to be known as one of the Morrowhiners, those critical of pretty much every single thing Oblivion did.

Now? I still broadly feel the same, but no matter how dumb, shallow, or uninspired Oblivion was after spending so long on Vvardenfell, on Solstheim and in Mournhold, it was 'fun', and it remains a good canvas for a quintessential Bethesda element - roleplay.

Bethesda simply aren't good core game designers. In fact in many ways they're glaringly incompetent, even now. But if a player can take what factions, lore, and plot threads that they give you and transform it via roleplay? Then their games can overcome almost any limitation, and allow the kinds of emergent stories to be told that no other game can quite match.

If Oblivion's conservative, chocolate-box world and rather childish, cartoony writing/characters doesn't bother you, then there's countless hours of fun to be had. A lot of people remember it fondly because it was either their first Western RPG, or it was their first TES, and that's sentiment which is impossible to really argue with or against.

Skyrim's Thieves Guild was awful by every measure, so bad I genuinely hope that whomever worked on it is not working on TESVI. Oblivion's Thieves guild however was fantastic. The last parts are brilliant fun, great adventure, utterly tense and very memorable.

What in particular didn't you like about Skyrim's TG? I actually really liked it.

Overall I'd say Oblivion's factions had the edge over Skyrim (and Morrowind had both beat), mostly because Skyrim's factions barely had any quests/missions, but I thought the TG was quite interesting, bordering on surprising.

In Morrowind, IIRC there were two sets of Daedric armour in the entire game, the pieces scattered across Vardenfell.

Yeah, I loved that. I dimly recall a glove was found shoved into some corner in one of the major Sixth House caverns, and it feeling like an absolutely standout find... 'cause it really was.