Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Likes And Dislikes

[Spitfire]

I've had this game for awhile now, and long enough to have some likes and dislikes that I can strongly stand by. Some of these are infleunced by looking at the past games and how they were compared to this.

At first I loved everything. It was all so awesome. The combat, the world, the people. After awhile though...

Yes caves and mines are nice but that is ALL there is. You can explore caves, mines*Which both look the same*, old forts, and then towns. All the caves look the same too. And I watched my friend play #3 for about 10 minutes and I saw alot of cool different looking places.

The glass stuff sucks but they make it out to be the best. So if you play long enough eventually everyone has lame ass glass armor.

The enemies leveling with you thing can be very annoying. So no matter what level you are if a monster can own you it can own you.

The quests suck. There are two quests. Go get something for someone or kill someone. There ya have it.

The speech thing to get people to like you is alright but nothing all that great.

Okay so for some good? I enjoy the combat and the graphics are great. The enemies look cool and are fun to fight. Lots of fun spells! Being a vampire was fun while I had it, but quickly got annoying. I can kill people...if I want!

Not much huh? I may have a longer list of complaints but I still like the game. After playing Fable for a few minutes yesterday I'm glad I have a game like this. It's bigger and such. I would go back to #3 and play it but the combat is so awful I can't stand it. And I don't like text talking games anymore.

So how about you, have you played? Likes and dislikes?

[Peanut]

As a huge TES fan, I have to say this is the best in so many ways, but actually the worst in a couple. I've voiced my opinions quite clearly in my review in the "Rate The Game" thread, but I'll address your feelings here.

Locations can't all be insanely different. The technology just isn't there. I find it hard to complain at over 100 different locations to explore anyways. Most caves and mines are the same because that's really all that can be done, and really all you're complaining about is the look of the locations, they layouts are all different. A cave is a cave, they look the same in real life too. Besides caves, mines and forts, you also left out Aylied Ruins.

Morrowind was the same in this regard, except instead of Aylied ruins they had Dwemer ruins, and they also had tombs, which were just caves with some coffins and ghosts in them.
The thing with Morrowind and Oblivion are the provinces are different. If you had played the previous games, or if you were a long time fan of the series you would know different and realize that some of these things are the way they are for a reason.

Cyrodill is the Imperial province, so the stone work in many buildings in towns and cities is going to be alike, as it was built by the same people. The province doesn't feature deserts or swamps, it's basically a country side. Morrowind had these things because of the kind of landscape the Dunmer inhabited. It's that way for a reason. Morrowind and Cyrodill are two completely different provinces, and as such, feel completely different from each other.

Glass weapons and armor have been big in TES games for a long time. There's no reason to change it, and no, it doesn't suck. The attributes are higher than all but Daedric in armor, and Ebony and Daedric in weapons.

Leveling enemies is something I see as a problem as well. If you had played Morrowind for over 500 hours as I did, though, you'd see where it also helps. At about level 30 in Morrowind you basically had the ability to smoke everyone and their mother with a simple jab or two. In short, the fact that characters had to cap out at certain levels, so that people who didn't play the game until level 90 couldn't beat it, made it extremely easy.

That's not to say I like the leveling as it is. It does get rather lame to see some silly looking highway bandit decked out in a full suit of Daedric armor at high levels. It's a flawed system. They put caps on things like rats and wolves, so they would get to a certain level then stop leveling, but on stuff like bandits they didn't, which seems foolish. Once you're the Champion of Cyrodill and head of all the major guilds, I would think a couple lousy bandits should be a cake walk. There are talks of Bethesda trying to fix this though.

The quests...well they don't suck. I don't know what else you'd want from it. It's like this in every single open ended game ever made. There isn't an infinite amount of quests that can be created, but it's not like they didn't try in Oblivion. You must have missed quite a few of the more interesting quests. Like solving the murder in one of the castles, finding the missing painter, scaring the living sh*t out of Border Watch for a Daedric prince, saving a mage from his dreams, or finding out what happened to the Forlorn Watchman. There are dozens more, but I don't feel like listing them out. The entire Main Quest itself has some that go far beyond murdering and fetch quests. You must not have dug very far into very many guilds or town happenings to say that the quests "suck".

Not that this game is perfect. It is one of the best RPG's ever created, and probably one of, if not the finest open-ended RPG's ever, but it's far from perfect.

[Spitfire]

I can understand that but what I was trying to say is compared to what I have seen from Morrowind it seems rather bland. The glass armor looked alot cooler in MW and the locations seemed cooler as well. Maybe that's because I havn't been exploring them for 90 hours. But still.

[Peanut]

You must understand that the small amount of places you've seen in Morrowind do not take up the majority, or even a quarter of the land. This is what the majority of Morrowind looks like, with some subtle colour changes. Also take note that I'm being generous here, as 80% of the landscape has about 3/4th less trees.



So take that, and minus all but 1 or 2 trees. That's what Morrowind looks like. The largest section, the ashlands, is nothing but black ground.

[Spitfire]

Ah well like I said I havnt had that time with it that I had with Oblivion. I heard Daggerfall was really huge. I wonder if they will ever make an RPG that big again.

[Peanut]

Daggerfall was huge in the sense that it covered the entire world, but that entire "world" of Tamriel was smaller than the province of Morrowind, game wise. Plus, the environments were even more bland. Lots of blurry wall textures and "fog" effects. Fun game, though.

[Spitfire]

So a new mod came out for Oblivion letting people like me with crappy Graphics cards play. This one allowed for better graphics. And I must say, with just this little taste which I'm sure is only half the real potential of the game I like it better.

I can see such a huge difference, I go places I've been and it all looks totally different. Amazing really, I wonder what it looks like at it's best.

Oh and I beat the game. The ending kinda sucks...but it was fun none the less.

[Peanut]

You should have just waited and got the 360 version. There's just no reason to be playing the game if you don't have a super high-end PC. None at all.

[ThirdMarioBro]

True 'dat. My PC is sh*tty and I never upgrade the video card because I do a lot of video capture. That's why I went for the 360 version. The fact that I absoultely hate playing games with a keyboard and mouse may have had something to do with it as well. Viva la 360 pad.

Anyway, I can't find anything to complain about yet, but I haven't been playing it very long compared to everyone else. The random bandits annoy me, but that adds to the fun of not knowing when somethings going to jump out and kill you. I'm sure I'll get pissed at them soon enough.

[Peanut]

Getting hijacked on the road comes with the territory. They're never that bad, though. Just in the beginning because they're the same level as you. Once you start getting into levels 5 and above they always stay 2 to 3 and sometimes 5 levels below yours.

[Spitfire]

So I've been playing this game on my new PC, I already beat it on my old PC. And it's like a totally new game. You were right...enviorments are so awesome.

[Peanut]

I told you, buddy. Welcome to the real province of Cyrodill.

[Brian]

I've been playing Oblivion for a while now here's my take...

Likes: You can do ANYTHING. The whole "enemy leveling up with you" thing is actually a good thing. It can get boring if you're killing everything in one or two hits. Its probably the most beautiful-looking game out there. The realm of Oblivion is simply freaky. I mean, it looks like Mordor on steroids. Basically, there's just so much you can do.

Dislikes: You lose sleep over it. It will consume you, making you play late into the night. That's not good, especially if you're in College like I am.

On a side note: Is anyone's copy of Oblivion rated T as opposed to M? I got mine for my birthday, not long after it came out and it was rated T. Now I'm seeing copies at Best Buy with M ratings.

[Peanut]

Mine is rated T as well. All of the first batch were rated T, which I have no idea how it got away with. Halo got an M for multi-coloured blood, but Oblivion gets a T for everything ranging from dismembered people, to tortured bodies, satanic sacrifices and corpses all over the place.

It's funny that the reason the game was given an M rating about a month after being released was that the PC mod community had made a nude patch for it. Forgot psycho's with their mom's head on a platter, or necromancers cutting people up in a church, WHAT ABOUT THE BOOBS!?!!

[Brian]

I forgot to mention one other dislike:

The loading times!!

[Peanut]

Your hard drive is probably fragmented. Hold down the A button while the game is loading up until the Bethesda logo comes up to clear it. That'll fix it.

UNLESS you're playing on the PC. If so you shouldn't have any problems, and if you do your computer probably isn't up to the task.

[Spitfire]

The awesome factor of my new PC just wore off on me.

I now dislike the quests. They are all very similar. It's either go to a cave and kill someone or go fetch set item. I've done all the guild quests and their all like that. There's a few that aren't and those are the ones I like. Like in the Fighter's Guild when you go to the Black Forest building and become a memeber. That was fun.

Just seems like they dump you in an area with lots of creatures and you fight them to get to an objective. And it's always a cave or old fort. Plus they add stuff that makes no difference. Like in one quest people asked me where I wanted to position them due to their skills. No matter where I put them I totoally raped anything that came out of the building.

I also was upset at how insanely lame the *Hidden* characters were. Like "The King Of Worms", "Grey Fox","The Night Mother", and that one guy you fight in Paradise. Their either just normal looking people in different clothes, or normal people with an effect on them...

Still a great game just something that bugs me. I'm sure some more Mods will come out to make it more fun. So far the only one I don't got is the horse armor one.

[Peanut]

You already made that arguement before. In FPS games all you do is hold down the shoot button and go through rooms...in Platformers all you do is jump on platforms...in RPG's all you do is select attacks and use one button.

Like..what are you expecting? An infinite amount of different quests? I can think of so many right off the top of my head that don't involve any of that stuff, OR if they do there are different things required of you. Didn't you play any of the Dark Brotherhood stuff? All the different things you have to do to go about commiting your assasinations is awesome, but you probably just ended up running in and stabbing someone.

In short, you expect too much, because you didn't know what you were getting into. It's probably your own fault that you're disappointed.

[jasonorme666]

Main Story Quests, Bad..

Side Quests and Guild Quests, Good.

Thank god for the refuse story mod.

I find being inside the oblivion gates very very boring and repeatative.

[Peanut]

Yeah, Oblivion gates are pretty crappy.