Zero Punctuation: Oblivion

[TheMadDoctorsCat]

I actually agree with him on the whole "lack of immersion" the telling moment for me was when I actually got REALLY caught up in the game and came across a group of guards desperately fighting for their lives against a suddenly opened Oblivion Gate, there was only one survivor standing heroicly on the bodies of his fallen comrades, desperately trying to hold back the tide of demonic invasion. So I charge in, kill the demons, then go to talk to the guard and he promptly responds with...

"Good day citizen"

As if nothing had happened... that just broke the immersion factor right then and there.

Thank you! Exactly! 100% agree! etc, etc, etc...

And don't wolves usually hunt in packs?

And what's the point of a bow, or any long-range weapon come to that, if every single thing you meet, no matter whether it's a human bandit or an oversized rat, immediately dashes at you and lunges at your throat? Ever heard of tactics?

IS IT TOO MUCH TO ASK FOR GAMES TO INCLUDE THIS NEW TECHNOLOGY CALLED "ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE" THAT'S BEEN AROUND FOR THIRTY YEARS OR SO??!!!

(Actually Oblivion is easily my favourite of the five "new" games I've bought recently. And in many ways it's a great game, I just wish that someone somewhere would come up with a realistic way for characters to interact in a game that's, you know, about characters interacting with one another!)

 

[Dr Faust]

"Try "upgrading" Cyrodiil. Clone lots of silverware (easily gotten from guild halls) and swap it with cheap clay pots, etc, that you find lying about. [...] [Y]ou can brag about how your Waterfront is the best with all the good stuff in it."

What. The. Fuck.

I thought I had problems, but apparently, someone out there is ON A MISSION.

 

[ear8dmg]

Bang on. Exactly how I feel about the game - although I'm trying to like it more.

There's just so much that screams "You are playing a game!!!" over and over again. I found FFVII's bad translation more immersive than the pathetically small troupe of voice actors.

I am sort of enjoying the current crack at Oblivion more than the two previous tries (which I gave up on). I'm playing with the following rules though:
- Do not play the mini-games especially the "do you like me pie" one.
- Do not use your non-combat related main skills or you will get owned very quickly as everything levels.
- Focus on the quest you're currently doing - if the word's about to end why are you off picking flowers?.
- Don't bother going into any of the random caves and whatnot - it doesn't change anything.
- Do not talk to non-quest related characters if you can avoid it - otherwise you will get reminded that you can count the number of voice actors on your fingers.

 

[lindsay40k]

Listen, right.

The Kinks are fucking awesome.

After leading off with them, Yahtzee could have took a poo on on my treasured copies of Tetris DX, Advance Wars and Street Fighter 2 Turbo and I'd still be smiling.

 

[RonaldBakbacon]

I had a lot of fun with Oblivion but Yahtzee pretty much hit the nail on the head with its biggest flaw (the immersion thingy). I was so happy when news of Fallout 3 came out and they said that they were dwindling down the number of NPCs so they could have individual voices and characterization for every NPC you meet. I can only hope they will actually do that, but my cynical nature makes me think it's going to come down with Fable Syndrome: Promise Everything, Deliver Mediocrity.

 

[cctoide]

I'm apparently one of the few people who liked Oblivion, but that's probably because i played it on the 360.

You weren't. I don't know if anybody else remembers the time around when Oblivion came out, but everywhere you turned you would bump up against praise for Oblivion. Basically, a year or two of aging coupled with the need to agree with HM Yahtzee's review in this thread will assure several dozen posts of bile with only a few people left wondering where all the excitement went all of a sudden.

That said, I did start playing it a few weeks ago and I didn't get past the first bridge you cross. I'm not a big RPG fan so this is the first "proper" RPG I have played in ages, and I didn't find it very fun, and I'll take Yahtzee's word as to the uniform look of the game world.

 

[Blayze]

Such a pity he didn't mention the annoyingly shit level-up system. Any game that enforces micromanagement of skill gains through use in order to get maximum stat points isn't one I want to play. And let's not forget the way that everything levels up with you and upgrades their gear as they go, meaning that everything just gets that much harder to kill. It defeats the whole point of levelling up at all.

Basically, to make the game playable at all, you need to install Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (Fuck off with your full Daedric, mobs), the Unofficial Oblivion Patch, the Unofficial Shivering Isles Patch, the Unofficial Oblivion Mods Patch (See a pattern here?) and the AF Level Mod (It unfucks the level-up system and allows you to max out your stats, skills and levels *as you play*.

The only thing you'd need to change would be to use the x1 skill increase file rather than the 1/5 one.

And that's just to make the game playable.

 

[haxer]

I don't want to get picky... well yes I do, so here. The proper code for "if nothing else remember this" should be as follows:

if(nothing())
{
}
else
{
remember(this);
}

/**EDIT**
Well, someone already caught that. I missed it when I went through the comments the first time sorry.*/

 

[The Thief]

It's weird that he did this review today since I only recently started playing Oblivion again. This is my third attempt to start and it's going a lot better than the last two. I think it's due to the right combination of mods + a better PC + lack of other games. It's still a fantastic game, just sooo flawed.

 

[Kehan Wann]

i am very saddend to say that i have been playing this game for over 300 hours. im sure yahtzee would have a field day with me

 

[KaiRai]

i like to think my character was put in there for numerous murders
i mean
NUMEROUS murders
which carried on through the game
and clearly the planet's didn't align enough, i personally think oblivion is (insert rude word beginning with 'f' here) awesome!
but then, as reviews have shown, yahtzee is a pretty big FPS fan, and anyway
oblivion is MUCH better if played on the xbox, although admittedly it was lacking in online multiplayer, i think being able to do quests with friends would have been awesome

 

[Alphavillain]

Don't agree with him about Oblivion. I loved it. But hey, he loves The Kinks, so how can I hate him?

 

[Eternal Phear]

Good review, surprisingly he didn't mention the leveling interface which pretty much breaks the game for me. (Wish I had a PC so I could mod it.)

I agree, unless you play in the factions your missing out on ALOT.

 

[Satoz]

Good review, and I rather agree...mostly. Despite what you say if you really try you can feel immersed as long as you ignore as many npc's as possible, now while you may say that is just delaying the issue, I find that if i run through a town, and hear bits of information and conversation it feels more realistic. The combat and such is decent, and there are some terrain changes, though I agree they are rather lack luster, its like "lets throw some super high quality grass and water around here, put a few trees up, some monsters *based on level* and go on. You didnt comment on how enemys level with you, I was hoping to hear you either say "that is sucked that guards were always too strong" or that "it was good because it never became too easy" anyways a big part of oblivion is mods, which is what makes it a good game. Some mods even present immersive storylines with actual consequence etc, and some fix the fighting system, even allowing decapitations, and slitting throats. all in all though your review was spot on, especially to those not playing on a pc.

 

[antipaganda]

Yay! Another hate-filled review! Yahtzee should be banned from reviewing any games he likes.

 

[Sennz0r]

I'm apparently one of the few people who liked Oblivion, but that's probably because i played it on the 360.

You weren't. I don't know if anybody else remembers the time around when Oblivion came out, but everywhere you turned you would bump up against praise for Oblivion. Basically, a year or two of aging coupled with the need to agree with HM Yahtzee's review in this thread will assure several dozen posts of bile with only a few people left wondering where all the excitement went all of a sudden.

That said, I did start playing it a few weeks ago and I didn't get past the first bridge you cross. I'm not a big RPG fan so this is the first "proper" RPG I have played in ages, and I didn't find it very fun, and I'll take Yahtzee's word as to the uniform look of the game world.

Yeah I'm not going to be jumping on the Yahtzee bandwagon here. I liked Oblivion a lot a year back, played it to death. That is to say the side quests, I loved the Dark Brotherhood and everything but when the time came to get to the main storyline my enthusiasm was stunted. The only objective really was to go into oblivion gates, kill things, steal sigil stone and you're out. It's the same everywhere even in the final Great Gate you're supposed to shut. So I said 'fuck you' to this aspect of the game, started anew as a Nord swordfighter with heavy armor and turned him into a friggin level 38 tank that could run like a life-long trained Kenyan with resistances so high in every aspect I could just run my way through every oblivion gate (even through lava, yes no problem) and get to the sigil stone within 3 minutes just so I could finish the storyline. This was in no aspect fun whatsoever. So if you want to enjoy Oblivion, never start the main story, only do the sidequests and download all the good mods. Unfortunately I don't have that opportunity due to me owning the game for the 360 and having a slow pc so the Oblivion era is dead for me.
Oh, and the replay value also sucks balls since every character you create can join any faction you want, no requirements.

 

[cmdr_zoom]

Finally, Yahtzee reviews a game I've actually played! (The last one was Psychonauts, I think.)

And I enjoyed it... but he's right about a lot of things, including the NPC voices (so few! so disjointed! so wacky!) and the fact that it all looks rather mundane (four or five different flavors of it, mind you) compared to Morrowind, land of ash and mushrooms. And when you come down to it, Cyrodiil is more like a theme park version of a fantasy kingdom; the whole Imperial City, which is supposed to be this grand thing, would fit within a couple of blocks, and the province itself is smaller than the county I live in.

My biggest objection/immersion breaker was how the leveling system worked with regard to equipment. After you've done one or two quest-lines to the end, you're going to be in your 20s, the level-up screens tell you that you have nothing to look forward to but gradual decline, and every random bandit on the road is going to be wearing full (or half) suits of glass or daedric armor and weilding weapons of the same. Why don't they just sell that stuff and retire? I've actually set some of my characters' levels back down into the teens (I'm playing on a PC, so I can do stuff like that) just so that the things I was fighting would have steel or leather armor again - not for the sake of easy wins (I can always turn down the difficulty slider for that) but the sake of some sense of versimilitude.

 

[Relgaro]

Genius.

 

[VonBlade]

Two quick replies.

1) To the guy who thinks that the Oblivion hatefest is a new thing, try popping over to the Bethesda forums sometime. It was hated before it even appeared. (see also "Fallout3 - Pete Hines lies repeatedly about a steampunk FPS". Not sure if that's the real subtitle but it's close enough)

2) The necrophilia woman is in a shop in the town with the crazy paranoid guy behind the church (I haven't played it for months and months so can't remember the name). Anyway she's one of the lizard things and you need to talk to here as if you were a necrophiliac, then she'll tell you all. So strictly speaking you aren't jailed for that at the start, but the guy who said you were obviously thought he was

VB

 

[TheIr0nMike]

I am saddened that I am yet to finish this game...

I actually don't think you can.