Zero Punctuation: Oblivion
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
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I think you skipped a lot of the game here, it allowed you to do pretty much whatever you wanted (I always found myself becoming a member of that underground murder society.. interesting). However I agree 100% with the whole huge map yet pointless map because of the teleportation thing and how everything looks exactly the same. Pretty funny in all and you nailed the bad points.
I tried playing Oblivion once because everyone kept telling me it was the next best thing after sliced bread, which I don't really see the point of in the first place...
I tried so hard to find reasons not to quit and uninstall the crap but in the end it failed. I wasn't too shocked though since Morrowwind had the same result for me. After those I've also tried out Two Worlds and come to the realization that western first person fantasy RPGs aren't really for me.
That said, I did enjoy Hellgate: London, much because of the Hilarious characters, like Lucious Aldin and Techsmith 314 =D Not that I played that in first person much...
I'm kinda afraid of what Bethesda might have done to Fallout 3...
I tried so hard to find reasons not to quit and uninstall the crap but in the end it failed. I wasn't too shocked though since Morrowwind had the same result for me. After those I've also tried out Two Worlds and come to the realization that western first person fantasy RPGs aren't really for me.
That said, I did enjoy Hellgate: London, much because of the Hilarious characters, like Lucious Aldin and Techsmith 314 =D Not that I played that in first person much...
I'm kinda afraid of what Bethesda might have done to Fallout 3...
Well I tend to disagree with a bit of what Yahtzee said, but then again I'm a huge RPG fan and really liked other games he's blasted like "The Witcher" (which doesn't prevent me from finding him funny).
I thought the immersion was pretty good. Sure there are plenty of backround NPCs, but then again they are just that: backround. A lot of the important ones were pretty well done, like the guys in the Arena, or (paticularly) the Dark Brotherhood quest lines. Not to mention some of the performances in "Shivering Isles" which were pretty amazing, especially our buddy the God Of Madness.
I think the problem with Yahtzee and RPGs is that he just doesn't have the patience for them. Plus writing a review column where he needs to check out a new game a week (at least) I'm guessing he doesn't have a lot of time to actually sit down and let things develop. But then again he more or less admits he has the attention span of an ADD afflicted gerbil gasping it's last after a cruel child overdoses it with speed and LSD just to see what will happen. Hence the comments at the beginning about shooters.
That said, as fans of Oblivion can tell you, it takes place in one province of the world so you have to expect it to look similar. It's not like it would make sense for like deserts and Tundras to be that close together. Plus while a lot of backround stuff is repetitive there are some neat backstories if you read the books, and some cool quests that involve investigating hauntings and such. I especially liked that bit with buying the haunted mansion in Anvil.
I thought the immersion was pretty good. Sure there are plenty of backround NPCs, but then again they are just that: backround. A lot of the important ones were pretty well done, like the guys in the Arena, or (paticularly) the Dark Brotherhood quest lines. Not to mention some of the performances in "Shivering Isles" which were pretty amazing, especially our buddy the God Of Madness.
I think the problem with Yahtzee and RPGs is that he just doesn't have the patience for them. Plus writing a review column where he needs to check out a new game a week (at least) I'm guessing he doesn't have a lot of time to actually sit down and let things develop. But then again he more or less admits he has the attention span of an ADD afflicted gerbil gasping it's last after a cruel child overdoses it with speed and LSD just to see what will happen. Hence the comments at the beginning about shooters.
That said, as fans of Oblivion can tell you, it takes place in one province of the world so you have to expect it to look similar. It's not like it would make sense for like deserts and Tundras to be that close together. Plus while a lot of backround stuff is repetitive there are some neat backstories if you read the books, and some cool quests that involve investigating hauntings and such. I especially liked that bit with buying the haunted mansion in Anvil.
my god, I nearly danced in glee. I got this game expecting it to be the best thing since sliced bread (I didn't get much into it during the demo I played on the PC) - SO I got it, I sat down and I really went whole hog into it.
If I see another FAKE zoom on the SAME face of the SAME NPC in the SAME situation say the SAME thing to me for the 5 BABILLIONTH TIME, my head will explode.
I had no ability to get "immersed" in the game, every time I went to have a conversation, it would lose me and I wanted to toss down my controller and jump off a cliff. The expressions, the everything irritated me to no end.
Sigh.
I still need to sell my copy
If I see another FAKE zoom on the SAME face of the SAME NPC in the SAME situation say the SAME thing to me for the 5 BABILLIONTH TIME, my head will explode.
I had no ability to get "immersed" in the game, every time I went to have a conversation, it would lose me and I wanted to toss down my controller and jump off a cliff. The expressions, the everything irritated me to no end.
Sigh.
I still need to sell my copy
Loved Morrowind, hated Oblivion. It's like they took everything that was great about the original and made it crap. And then they screwed up the interface by making it xbox-friendly and slapped the same shit on the windows version where they could have used the mouse and made it nice.
At least in Morrowind you actually feel like you're important... The whole time you play Oblivion it's like you're a generic twat wandering the countryside smiting wolves and deer... Only when you decide to enter a portal and really cheese off the demons does it get interesting... but at that point early on, the fighting dynamics are so damn hard... You're better off being a sorcerer and blast fireballs at everything on the screen than try and chase down imps that can run circles around your flailing limbs.
In Morrowind, there was a sense of adventure... there was surprise in dungeons, you never knew if there was some grand treasure waiting for you, or a bunch of golden harpies primed to rape the piss out of you.
Oblivion has a lot of ho-hum dungeons, mostly filled with goblins, skeletons and rats. Not to mention the skeletons are EXACTLY the same models... they have some signature defining feature to them that would have been at least SUBTLY INTERESTING to figure out... by the time you do however, you'll notice that every skeleton has the same thing, and it loses it's luster.
In Morrowind, there was a sense of adventure... there was surprise in dungeons, you never knew if there was some grand treasure waiting for you, or a bunch of golden harpies primed to rape the piss out of you.
Oblivion has a lot of ho-hum dungeons, mostly filled with goblins, skeletons and rats. Not to mention the skeletons are EXACTLY the same models... they have some signature defining feature to them that would have been at least SUBTLY INTERESTING to figure out... by the time you do however, you'll notice that every skeleton has the same thing, and it loses it's luster.
Oblivion has a number of issues you can nitpick about, but when it comes down to it this is the one thing that matters; Oblivion lacked the environment of Morrowind. Morrowind had that guy falling out of the sky, all those naked nords complaining about a witch, that sunken ship filled with pillows, a strip club, drug addicts, a skeleton of some guy who got crushed by a rock in a tomb and wrote a note about it, bandits smuggling slaves and goods around in caves, an underwater city, a mounted argonian head in a crate in a storage room of a bar, a wizard in castle with genetically engineered concubines and a mutant dungeon with a cyborg dwarf, around 6 different landscapes with a distinct geography and 6 different types of dungeons, also with unique permutations, all of which LOGICALLY FIT TOGETHER IN CONTEXT OF ONE ANOTHER. The tombs had zombies because the dunmer weren't big on having their ancestors disturbed. There were armed hostiles in dwemer ruins because the artifacts were valuable and illegal to export. in There were imperial strongholds near every major political group in order to keep control of the empire. There were shipwrecks on the coast because aspiring pillow merchants crashed there. There were the hlaau whose wealthy lived in rural estates with slaves farming stuff because that was how their culture worked, the telvanni whose leaders lived in giant mushroom towers surrounded by subordinates and a local economy, etc. It all fit together, and it was all interesting.
Oblivion, on the other hand, had around 3 dungeon types, one landscape type, and two cities (the one in the middle and all the rest of them, both of which were basically just walled enclosures with people wandering around and stuff to buy). Why these cities were walled and why people were living in them and not really anywhere else is sort of a mystery. As is the question of why there are zombies and bandits outfitted in 1337 equiptment running around the old forts and ruins. They didn't think it through; Oblivion has no cohesion.
tl;dr: Morrowind > Oblivion because it actually puts effort into world building.
Oblivion, on the other hand, had around 3 dungeon types, one landscape type, and two cities (the one in the middle and all the rest of them, both of which were basically just walled enclosures with people wandering around and stuff to buy). Why these cities were walled and why people were living in them and not really anywhere else is sort of a mystery. As is the question of why there are zombies and bandits outfitted in 1337 equiptment running around the old forts and ruins. They didn't think it through; Oblivion has no cohesion.
tl;dr: Morrowind > Oblivion because it actually puts effort into world building.
Oblivion is a nice game, but it's not great, as Yahtzee mentions, it lacks Immersion, the feeling of getting lost in the game, in the world. It has some great points, and some abysmal ones. The voice acting is terrible, definitely, they got like 3, max 5 voice actors for ALL npcs in the game (main quests npcs excluded, at least partially). The npcs look fugly. The story is much less immersive, much less interesting than the one in Morrowind (tried playing Arena and Daggerfall but they're just way too old). Mainly it's because the story in Morrowind revolved around the main character, whereas in Oblivion he's only a handy man.
Another very dissappointing thing about the game - the open end. Great, you haven an open ended storyline, but what do you do once you finished the main storyline? The world is not interesting enough to continue playing for it's own sake. Same for the different guilds, once you're Master, High Lord, whatever, it's boring. At least in the arena you can do _something_, even if only a few fights, but at most other guilds you can't do (interesting( jack.
BUT - Oblivion had a few good points, with the Dark Brotherhood questline (and Thieves guild) it had some of the best and most interesting quests I encountered in a rpg so far. This alone gives me hope - that the folks at Bethesda CAN do it better, they just have to try harder... ^^ The stealth gameplay was great too, Oblivion was the first game where I loved to play a stealth-based character - for the side quests, couldn't do jack in the main story. Once you start encountering multiple daedras light armor+short sword etc. just don't cut it... Even if you manage to do a ranged x5 hit with bow and arrow from the shadows - one single shot and every daedra within half a mile know where you are - wtf. Same for magic imo.
That was also dissappointing, imo Oblivion plays best with a heavy meele character, other choices are nearly impossible without turning the difficulty setting down to half.
Another very dissappointing thing about the game - the open end. Great, you haven an open ended storyline, but what do you do once you finished the main storyline? The world is not interesting enough to continue playing for it's own sake. Same for the different guilds, once you're Master, High Lord, whatever, it's boring. At least in the arena you can do _something_, even if only a few fights, but at most other guilds you can't do (interesting( jack.
BUT - Oblivion had a few good points, with the Dark Brotherhood questline (and Thieves guild) it had some of the best and most interesting quests I encountered in a rpg so far. This alone gives me hope - that the folks at Bethesda CAN do it better, they just have to try harder... ^^ The stealth gameplay was great too, Oblivion was the first game where I loved to play a stealth-based character - for the side quests, couldn't do jack in the main story. Once you start encountering multiple daedras light armor+short sword etc. just don't cut it... Even if you manage to do a ranged x5 hit with bow and arrow from the shadows - one single shot and every daedra within half a mile know where you are - wtf. Same for magic imo.
That was also dissappointing, imo Oblivion plays best with a heavy meele character, other choices are nearly impossible without turning the difficulty setting down to half.
a good review, but i didnt find it as outrageously funny as your best work. it didnt feel like you covered as much ground in this review, as it seemed that you only had one or two real issues with the game. a good effort nonetheless.
can't wait for the next one.
can't wait for the next one.
I'm sure the game is good, but I can never get stuck into them, sometimes it even feels like work! But I will admit that there is alot of detail, just doesn't feel right anymore to play big games by myself.
Great review as always Yahtzee, I agree that WOW has amazing concept but I didn't like the game itself unfortunately.
Great review as always Yahtzee, I agree that WOW has amazing concept but I didn't like the game itself unfortunately.
The precise reason I stayed away from these games is exactly what yahtzee mentioned. Bland dull uncreative environments and characters. Thats why wow is so successful because everything, absolutely every freaking thing is cool and interesting and well designed, least from an artistic/immersive point of view, its how they get away with a 6+ year old engine in todays modern society of 'shinier is better'. Sadly even wow is somewhat limited, I look forward to the day some company makes a truly compelling, interesting and immersive world to play in. Fallout 3 will hopefully deliver that to some extent. Maybe these guys could take a lesson from rockstar, now theres a company that knows immersion.