Oblivion First Impressions

[Monte Carlo]

I wonder if it's just that 'they suck' at making interesting characters, or that with ES there are simply too many to give any real attention to.

 

Why cut them any slack? Gromnir is right about the NPCs.

 

FFS, there's a tiny little NPC in Icewind Dale 2 called Geoffrey who leads some mercenaries you can beat up in the prologue. See? I remember him and his name. They were nothing much, really, but they were more memorable than any one of the wiki-powered automata in Oblivion.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I've finished the game and can't recall a single remotely memorable character.

 

Except for Boromir, for the mere fact that he was Boromir. Anyone else would have been irrelevant.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Same here.

 

Well there was "Boner" and "Stiffler" I'll remember those for a while. Although they were my creations. Bethesda just provided the skeleton and zombie.

Edited April 8, 2006 by ShadowPaladin V1.0

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

I have already used a wolf as a de facto block trainer ... "

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

You know you can conjure your own trainers.

[ShadowPaladin V1.0]

Big question.

 

Are you more or less confident about Bethesda's ability to deliver FO3 having played Oblivion ?

 

While they delivered a large world. I think they failed to make that world interesting (beyond what you would find in an MMPORG) and popluated it with characters who wouldnt be out of place in a lumber mill.

[Monte Carlo]

I can't wait to see what Bethseda does with Fallout 3.

 

In a ghoulish, slowing-down-for-a-fatal-road-accident kind of way.

[Llyranor]

After Morrowind, I would have said they'd have no chance of making a remotely competent FO3.

 

After Oblivion, I'd say they at least have *some* potential to possible making an interesting game.

 

I don't buy that 'too many NPCs, can't infuse awesomeness into any of them'. For a professional product, it's a pathetic excuse. Bethie can hire Patrick Steward and Boromir, but they can't invest time into the main story to actually, like, make it compelling? There are two possibilities here.

 

1) They had some people working full-time on the main story, but they were mediocre writers/designers. This would not bode well.

 

2) They pulled a NWN1 and either did the main story at the last minute or never gave it much importance in the first place.

[karka]

Yes, i want to see some Fallout 3 screenshots and gameplay movies... Just to be able to bash Bethesda.

[Gromnir]

Eh, no vendetta here. I was just explaining myself, and while being a bit pished I was wondering why he types like a pirate talking in third person. I mean no offense.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

is a poof detection device. you cannot imagine just how many people before you has tried to do the mockery through mimicry thing. congrats.

 

so, why not share with us your list o' interesting characters from oblivion. is a huge game so there should no doubt have been a few opportunities for some characters worthy of noting... characters that gives you your apparent hope for da future.

 

as we said, we didn't finish, so perhaps we missed the good stuff that they no doubt saved for the last 2/3 of game.

 

we can points to characters from all kinds of crpgs that we has not played in many years as being examples of intriguing characters, but the game we only were playing last week we cannot recollect a single beastie or personage we would hold up as the kinda character we would like to see more of in a future game... which is very odd for a crpg, 'cause story being advanced through character development is kinda a traditional approach for such games.

 

heck, even crpgs we don't like almost always gets one or two characters right. llyranor mentions nwn as an example of a game where the story underwhelmed, but we can names bunches o' characters from that game that were good in spite terrible Revenge of the Evil Mutant Lizards thing they had going on in that game.

 

we won't ridicule your choices... honest. but if you thought patrick stewart or the grave robber or mythic dawn acolyte #305 were an interesting character then we can simply recognize and accept that your notions of "interesting" is a little different from Gromnir's. no harm done.

 

HA! Good Fun!

[Judge Hades]

I thought the Thoronir was a bit interesting. Owyn's comments isa bit off kilter but fun to listen to his tirade before an arena match. Jauffre and Baurus are bores though.

[metadigital]

The guy from the codex who killed the "only beautiful character" he could find in Oblivion, then took screenshots and posted them (and Llyranor reposted here) was the best character ...

[LoneWolf16]

I thought Lucien Lachance, Ocheeva, and Tainaava(sp?) were interesting. Not much in the way of interaction with the latter two, but I honestly regretted

having to kill

them in the DB quest line. And it sucked to find Lachance

strung up in applewatch by the Blackhand

at the end.

 

Also, Martin was interesting...and this is the first I've heard that it was Boromir's voice. I knew it sounded familiar.

Edited April 8, 2006 by LoneWolf16

[Llyranor]

The guy from the codex who killed the "only beautiful character" he could find in Oblivion, then took screenshots and posted them (and Llyranor reposted here) was the best character ...

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Actually, this is true. I take back my previous comments on Oblivion having no cool characters.

[StillLife]

As others mentioned, the number of NPCs in the game is no excuse for next-to-none of them being interesting. Fallout 2 and BG 2 had a lot of NPCs, many of which were memorable. There were more interesting characters in little ol' Shenmue 2, and that game had a ton of voice-acted NPCs as well. Actually, I'm having trouble even thinking of a CRPG that didn't have at least a few distinctive characters like Oblivion does, aside from Morrowind that is.

 

The arena trainer was about as good as it gets as far as personality in Oblivion goes, and that's not saying much.

[Tigranes]

I wonder if it's just that 'they suck' at making interesting characters, or that with ES there are simply too many to give any real attention to.

 

What the crap? That makes no sense. BG2 had a crapload of NPCs, for example, and it had NPCs that were a lot more fleshed out, and which were generaly more liked. (Even if you didn't like their character, they had a lot more personality than TES ones.) Besides, if being as big as TES means everywhere the people are diluted to robots, they should rethink their design policy.

 

Thoronir was more interesting than most other TES characters. He sort of felt short when you discovered Agarmir's role in the plot though, his dialogue, his voice acting, and the fact that he just sat there and still sold stuff just didn't convince that he really cared (or noticed) where his goods came from. It just felt like getting a Kill X quest from him, the quest was nevertheless interesting but not the character.

[Dhruin]

Well, for one the dialogue system is not made for you to have any meaningful talks with NPCs. From what Ive seen(without looking at the actual code)

• There is no room for big, branching dialogue trees. You can have at most a "yes" or "no" choice.
   
  
• You cant tie dialogue options to anything but an NPCs disposition (you cant lie or come up with addditional dialogue choices based on your Int for example)
   
  
• You cant do a simple thing like insert a variable(the PCs name) into a dialogue.
  

And so on

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I don't like the dialogue system, which is outmoded and should be chucked out. However...

 

There isn't only "Yes" or "No" choices - there are (a few) dialogues with multiple responses, so it can be done. They just don't do it very often.

 

I don't know if you can tie a response to your Intelligence but some dialogue is driven by Personality (some NPCs will refuse to talk to you about quests until they like you, for example), so this doesn't sound right, either. Stat checks are a good thing in dialogue but I don't think they have much to do with making the NPCs memorable.

 

Ever play Ultima 7? Big world, lots of NPCs, not entirely dissimilar keyword dialogue system...plenty of memorable NPCs.

 

I agree a better dialogue system would help but it really comes down to the writing.

[Hassat Hunter]

Advetures in the city of the (Dead) lost Painter;

 

 

Painter saved... and killed again. His head dissapeared half through the wall, but that was because that wall wasn't solid. Anyways, even with him KIA many inhabitants of the city told me of his "sudden return" and wondering where he has been. I even got a newspaper stating he was back doing paintings again... yeah; RIGHT! Too bad too his corpse didn't have that one object

So I got a nights rest and got a visit. First surprise was when I opened the door (10 gold Inn) I found an Orc inside . Man, I NEVER get privacy. After an hour rest and "his" appearance the guy had some trouble leaving my room though (moonwalking door, non-physics door... the by-this-time-already-familiar-tale) and vanished when exiting the Inn (never popped up on the other side, has Detect Life to see through his invisibilty... so that couldn't be it)

Up for hefty combat I joined the Fighters Guild there. Headmaster Burz Gro-Khash feeded me a line when I asked about the fighters Guild. Subtitle: "If you'd like to join up, let me know"; speech: "If you'd like to join up, visit X in Y." Silly guildmaster...

Went on a bit of exploration. Looted Llevana Nedaren's House (Those silly Cyrodiilers should learn to lock up when they are gone). When exiting the house hit her talked a bit and got a quest. In this quest I had to ask someone for Ulrich Leland's Key. No wonder the guy needed SO much gold from the cities population, the guy had to made 100+ keys of his appartment! After looting his appartment I had to return the key... NOOOOOOOOOO. Good thing I could keep the 99 spare keys

Wanted to give Llevana the good news, but she called me a Trespasser. Same trick as with the painter (let her attack me, wield, then kill her when she re-attacks) and another dead citizen without any kind of penalty.

 

 

Playtime for all this stuff to happen: 1.5 hour

Bethesda ever heard of letting some "random guys with NDA's" just play it and report this stuff (ya know, for free, as they get to play it soon)?

And if you are *really* into secrecy just use relatives of the staff... easy to find and kill if anything goes wrong

Edited April 8, 2006 by Hassat Hunter

[Tigranes]

How did you regret the Purification? Everyone there was so disgustingly nice, Lucien Lachance was good (albeit with VO sometimes being a letdown, but thats excusable), then I go to the place and bam, it felt like I was in a fluffy pillows shop with all the love, really killed the atmosphere.

 

Ocheeva had no personality and neither did Te-something. Actually, if they weren't quest-givers I could never tell them apart.

[LoneWolf16]

It's an opinion. Live with it.

[Tigranes]

But it hurts so much!

[LoneWolf16]

They usually do.

 

That, and I usually don't slaughter people who've been nice to me. "

Edited April 9, 2006 by LoneWolf16

[Cantousent]

I play the good guy in these games. I have no problems bringing the smack down on the baddies.

[Briosafreak]

Oblivion feels more and more like "Shenmue3", uninteresting characters running around in a world filled with boring arcade minigames. Geez, i really hope it gets better, in the next levels, but since everything levels up with me i just can't get the point of leveling up in this game, so i don't know what to do...

Edited April 9, 2006 by Briosafreak

[metadigital]

Levelling up makes your PC stronger, and the environment harder. It also gives the PC better magic items, as they are on the more difficult monsters.

 

In order to keep the game balanced, the game must get more difficult as the PC gets more powerful.

[Briosafreak]

Levelling up makes your PC stronger, and the environment harder. It also gives the PC better magic items, as they are on the more difficult monsters.

 

In order to keep the game balanced, the game must get more difficult as the PC gets more powerful.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

Leveling is in order when you want to go to places where the difficulty levels rises, and to finish things in places where you went underpowered. This comes from the vertically placed dungeons from the RPG pre-history, and it's one thing that always worked, beeing the game a slasher , a CRPG, JRPG, whatver.

 

If i have to fight hordes of monsters, tune up speech skills or develop your thief character to a more advanced stage to get loot1 or loot 2 and then if you do level up EVERYONE also has loot1 or loot 2 and you find out it was easier to finish quest a or quest b if you didn't leveled up (a few are cruising through the game without sleeping because of that) than what is your motivation to level up? You can get an item y from a dificult monster at level 2, if you get to the location without leveling up, but if you go there at level 18 things will be harder, and in the next level you'll find items y in bandits or on a small dungeon, making you wonder "why did i had all that trouble"?

 

This is not balance, this is creating a pointless game mechanic.

 

Sawyer i'm sorry for saying IWD2 didn't had good design, it has ten times more depth and role-playing than this arcade mutant Oblivion is. I'm really sorry.

[metadigital]

Leveling is in order when you want to go to places where the difficulty levels rises, and to finish things in places where you went underpowered. This comes from the vertically placed dungeons from the RPG pre-history, and it's one thing that always worked, beeing the game a slasher , a CRPG, JRPG, whatver.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

So you are complaining because you can't use your time-honoured metagaming knowledge of "the more PC kills, the more XP, the more XP, the higher the level, the higher the level, the more uber spells and feats for PC"?

If I have to fight hordes of monsters, tune up speech skills or develop your thief character to a more advanced stage to get loot1 or loot 2 and then if you do level up EVERYONE also has loot1 or loot 2 and you find out it was easier to finish quest a or quest b if you didn't leveled up (a few are cruising through the game without sleeping because of that) than what is your motivation to level up?

...

This is not balance, this is creating a pointless game mechanic.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

How about competing against yourself?

 

Sure you can beat the game with the rusty dagger you get in the tutorial, without levelling up. If that pops your corn, go for it! I think that makes Oblivion a unique game. You find it annoying. Oh, well, don't play it.

 

You don't have to level up. Then again, if you do, the game adjusts and makes sure that your PC will not overpower the game, and re-balance.

You can get an item y from a dificult monster at level 2, if you get to the location without leveling up, but if you go there at level 18 things will be harder, and in the next level you'll find items y in bandits or on a small dungeon, making you wonder "why did I had all that trouble"?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The point you are missing is that Oblivion isn't focused on the traditional RPG mechanic; the devs have gone out of their way to make a "sandbox": an RPG environment that the PC can interact with through the main story arc and beyond.

This is not balance, this is creating a pointless game mechanic.

 

Sawyer I'm sorry for saying IWD2 didn't had good design, it has ten times more depth and role-playing than this arcade mutant Oblivion is. I'm really sorry.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Sure it's not perfect. Then again, I can't see your game idea, just constant whinging because you can't munchkin your PC ...