Zero Punctuation: Oblivion
- Thread starter Yahtzee Croshaw
- Start date
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.
Except that I spent £900 on my brand new gaming computer with top of the range graphics card, quad core processor, 1TB hard drive and other nice little extras, and I'm damned if I'm going to risk f--king the whole thing up, forcing myself to reinstall the operating system and losing all my saved games (I back up things like music and video files to an external HD but I'm not THAT obsessive) for the sake of some mod bashed together by a guy on the Internet who for all I know could be a Siberian cyber-criminal. Sorry, but I am VERY careful what I install on that PC!Portoparty said:
Y'see, I disagree completely with the "mods" idea. If I have to install mods to make a game playable, then I consider that game unplayable. This isn't an operating system we're talking about, it's a FRIKKIN' GAME. There is no excuse for it needing to be "upgraded" with unofficial mods in order for it to work properly. None at all. I don't understand why people (rightly) give programs like MS Windows and Office a hard time, but let things like this go.
Let's get this straight: I hate Oblivion. Well, it's more of a "I don't like you, get away from me" thing, but I still don't like it. That being said, I don't actually agree with Yahtzee as to why he doesn't like the game. An entertaining review none-the-less though.
I like Morrowind more than Oblivion...WHEN I can get to play right! But after about a month or so, it starts crashing to desktop after 15 mins in game. I've reinstalled it 3 motherfucking times and it stills keeps doing it! I've downloaded unofficial patches and the official ones and it still does it. Oblivion wins by default in my case.
I'd just like to say that I LOVE both Morrowind and Oblivion though I agree with Yahtzee at the end. Morrowind IS better in gameplay if not graphically.
They took too many weapon types out of Oblivion for my tastes. I like using spear and fighting staves. No such thing in Oblivion. Still enjoyed it though.
Infact... I think I'll go play them both through all over again.
Also switching between the melee and magic casting systems was never a problem for me. I found it very easy.
Though Again I have to agree the countryside feel got very repetitive. >_> And boring.
I would still shag Oblivions pants off if it were a japanese girl cos-playing as my favourite anime char. Lina Inverse. ^_^
They took too many weapon types out of Oblivion for my tastes. I like using spear and fighting staves. No such thing in Oblivion. Still enjoyed it though.
Infact... I think I'll go play them both through all over again.
Also switching between the melee and magic casting systems was never a problem for me. I found it very easy.
Though Again I have to agree the countryside feel got very repetitive. >_> And boring.
I would still shag Oblivions pants off if it were a japanese girl cos-playing as my favourite anime char. Lina Inverse. ^_^
Crysis and Timeshift get 10 points for immersion, if only because when I went back to playing Battlefield I kept finding myself trying to slow time and cloak myself >_>
Also Bioshock gets 11/10 points for immersion because it was able to scare the hell out of me playing on minimum details.
Also Bioshock gets 11/10 points for immersion because it was able to scare the hell out of me playing on minimum details.