Oblivion

[Darth Jebus]

I'm just now getting around to playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion even though it's been out for a while. I'm playing as a high elf...nightblade, is it? Not familiar with all the classes. There's like a 100 of them or something.

 

But here's the thing. I played Morrowind a lot when that game was new. But I never finished it. I was wrapped up in all the sidequests and stuff and was able to achieve Master of the Fighter's Guild, and actually got pretty far into the main quest, but the game just kind of lagged out for me.

 

Morrowind had a lot that made it great, but also a lot that dragged it down in my opinion. So, though I liked it, I certainly didn't love it. So, far, Oblivion is visually stunning. And the combat and UI has been greatly improved over Morrowind. I mean, Patrick Stewart voiced Uriel Septim. How can that not be full of win???

 

However, I'm just curious. How would you rate Oblivion next to Morrowind?

[Deadly_Nightshade]

The two games are very different and hard to compare, although you will need modifications to make either of them very good.

Edited May 29, 2008 by Deadly_Nightshade

[Humodour]

Nah.

[Hurlshort]

If you liked Morrowind, you will probably like Oblivion. The only thing that Morrowind did better, in my eyes, is create a fairly unique setting. Oblivion is pretty standard fantasy fodder, but I do see it as having a more cohesive storyline. Also, the expansion for Oblivion is well worth it. Shivering Isles tells a pretty good story and it does a solid job of creating a couple memorable characters, which I will say was lacking in both Morrowind and Oblivion.

 

The gameplay is really pretty much the same in both. You might want a mod to change the crazy auto levelling enemies from Oblivion.

[Hell Kitty]

You don't need to "finish" a game like Oblivion, as there is a lot of content outside the main quest. Like Hurlshot I definitely recommend SI.

[RangerSG]

"Finishing" Elder Scrolls games is a mythical statement anyway, to be fair. The Main quest is such a small part of the overall story. And in Oblivion, the best content was in the Dark Brotherhood (Lucien Lachance subplot), which was quite good, IMHO.

 

To me, Oblivion is almost impossible to enjoy without using a host of mods to improve visuals and break the gameplay out of the "everyone levels exactly with you" nonsense. Nothing is more immersion breaking than the Daedra Armor wearing bandit accosting you for 100gp.

[Humodour]

To qualify my earlier post:

 

If you're anything like me, then Morrowind, despite its terrific early-game atmosphere, left you feeling hollow inside by the end of it (with finishing the game becoming rather like being forced to wash the dishes).

[Moatilliatta]

If you liked Morrowind, you will probably like Oblivion. The only thing that Morrowind did better, in my eyes, is create a fairly unique setting. Oblivion is pretty standard fantasy fodder, but I do see it as having a more cohesive storyline. Also, the expansion for Oblivion is well worth it.

There is one very specific thing that Morrowind did better, using the lore of the setting in making the world interesting in a fun manner. Oblivion uses stuff like the necromancers and Mannimarco in the mages-guild questline but it devolves quickly to carrot-on-a-stick and is quite boring. Morrowind did better with its dissapearance of the dwemer not-quite-storyline-but-still-somewhat-storyline. It was much better than any of the carrots in Oblivion and to a great deal what that world lacked.

Oblivion is still quite a lot of fun for people with their head screwed on right even if it quickly devolves into a dungeoncrawling diablo-ish thing.

 

Also, since I always do this when someone mentions Oblivion: Kaboom!

[Meshugger]

I play Oblivion now and then. Sadly, the vanilla game was pretty mediocre, make sure you have Shivering Isles installed and Knights of the Nine as well. After that i recommend the FCOM mod-package. It fixes the level scaling, adds animal A.I., lots of weapons and armour and so on. After that you should install

 

-Natural environments mod (butterflies, better weather and insects)

-Real Lava mod (Looks like real lava, yay!)

-Crowded roads mod (Lots of merchants and travellers on the roads)

-Beaming sunglare mod (Natural sunglare)

-Illumination within mod (Towns are lit up at night)

-Qarl's texture mod (most textures were 512x512, now they're 4096x4096)

-Real Night Sky mod (A high-resolution image of a real night sky)

 

These mods can be found at the tesnexus.com

[Slowtrain]

I'm just now getting around to playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion even though it's been out for a while. I'm playing as a high elf...nightblade, is it? Not familiar with all the classes. There's like a 100 of them or something.

 

But here's the thing. I played Morrowind a lot when that game was new. But I never finished it. I was wrapped up in all the sidequests and stuff and was able to achieve Master of the Fighter's Guild, and actually got pretty far into the main quest, but the game just kind of lagged out for me.

 

Morrowind had a lot that made it great, but also a lot that dragged it down in my opinion. So, though I liked it, I certainly didn't love it. So, far, Oblivion is visually stunning. And the combat and UI has been greatly improved over Morrowind. I mean, Patrick Stewart voiced Uriel Septim. How can that not be full of win???

 

However, I'm just curious. How would you rate Oblivion next to Morrowind?

 

 

If you like playing poorly designed and broken games, you'll probably enjoy it quite a bit.

 

You can't really compare it to Morrowind, Oblivion is far more broken than MW ever was.

 

It's pretty though.

[Guard Dog]

I really enjoyed Oblivion. But to parrot everyone else here, don't bother playing the game Vanilla (unmodified). Meshugger reccomended FCOM and it is great but I reccomend Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul. There is another one called MMM (Martigens Monster Mod) I would definitely reccomend one of these three overhauls. Sadly they are not compatible with each other.

[Moatilliatta]

I really enjoyed Oblivion. But to parrot everyone else here, don't bother playing the game Vanilla (unmodified). Meshugger reccomended FCOM and it is great but I reccomend Oscuros Oblivion Overhaul. There is another one called MMM (Martigens Monster Mod) I would definitely reccomend one of these three overhauls. Sadly they are not compatible with each other.

They are actually. FCOM is MMM + OOO and a few others. Since it is modular you can play just MMM+OOO or any other variation of the supported mods that you might want.

[Jorian Drake]

If you liked Morrowind, you will probably like Oblivion.

i don't agree with this,

i liked Morrovind quite much, but hated Oblivion a lot myself

[Hurlshort]

I've decided to re-install Oblivion, but these mods are a mess. Isn't there an easy one or two to get? I don't want to spend a day trying to sort this out.

[Slowtrain]

I've decided to re-install Oblivion, but these mods are a mess. Isn't there an easy one or two to get? I don't want to spend a day trying to sort this out.

 

 

Just install OOO (which is bundled with a bunch of mods) and the unoffical Oblvion patch. Together those two do help the game somewhat.

[Rosbjerg]

I enjoyed Oblivion quite a bit. It feels somewhat forced at times and the levelling is a bit of a turnoff.

 

But it's atmospheric and I really enjoyed the fact that you can travel between the towns on foot/horse and explore the country - it's easy enough to play no matter what "class" you chooce (which is important for me at least).

 

All in all it's an ok game and worth the money you would pay for it today. I never finished it, but have had over a 100 hours of fun gameplay time. That's a pretty good $/fun ratio.

[Slowtrain]

it's easy enough to play no matter what "class" you chooce (which is important for me at least).

 

The reason for that of course is that all "classes" and any player character that you custom design are functionally identical and they become more so the longer you play. During development, we were told that this problem, which also plauged Morrowind, would be fixed so that different characters would actually be different. This of course didn't happen and the problem was actually made worse.

 

 

In Oblivion's design there is really no need for skills. It would have been more efficient for Todd Howard to eliminate the major/minor seperation of skills since the difference is cosmetic only and has zero effect on gameplay. Rather simply start all skills at the same level and let them all develop at the same pace. Or, even better and more in line with Oblivion's design, woudl have been to eliminate skills all together and simply approach it as an FPS: players can do whatever they want and skill numbers are not neccessary.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

it's easy enough to play no matter what "class" you chooce (which is important for me at least).

 

The reason for that of course is that all "classes" and any player character that you custom design are functionally identical and they become more so the longer you play. During development, we were told that this problem, which also plauged Morrowind, would be fixed so that different characters would actually be different. This of course didn't happen and the problem was actually made worse.

 

 

In Oblivion's design there is really no need for skills. It would have been more efficient for Todd Howard to eliminate the major/minor seperation of skills since the difference is cosmetic only and has zero effect on gameplay. Rather simply start all skills at the same level and let them all develop at the same pace. Or, even better and more in line with Oblivion's design, woudl have been to eliminate skills all together and simply approach it as an FPS: players can do whatever they want and skill numbers are not neccessary.

 

Oh please, that's a piss poor analysis of the games design.

[Checkpoint]

it's easy enough to play no matter what "class" you chooce (which is important for me at least).

 

The reason for that of course is that all "classes" and any player character that you custom design are functionally identical and they become more so the longer you play. During development, we were told that this problem, which also plauged Morrowind, would be fixed so that different characters would actually be different. This of course didn't happen and the problem was actually made worse.

 

 

In Oblivion's design there is really no need for skills. It would have been more efficient for Todd Howard to eliminate the major/minor seperation of skills since the difference is cosmetic only and has zero effect on gameplay. Rather simply start all skills at the same level and let them all develop at the same pace. Or, even better and more in line with Oblivion's design, woudl have been to eliminate skills all together and simply approach it as an FPS: players can do whatever they want and skill numbers are not neccessary.

 

Oh please, that's a piss poor analysis of the games design.

 

Could you elaborate a bit there? I'm genuinely curious because I'm thinking of firing this game up myself and don't really know whose opinion to trust.

[Nick_i_am]

On Oblivion? The only opinion you can really trust is your own because the game divides people so dramatically.

[CoM_Solaufein]

Oblivion is a good game, I highly recommend it. It reminds me of Baldur's Gate in the way of its many quests you can do and the vast areas to explore. Make sure you get these mods Atmospheric Weather System and Natural Environments which will greatly enhance the look of the game.

[Enoch]

Could you elaborate a bit there? I'm genuinely curious because I'm thinking of firing this game up myself and don't really know whose opinion to trust.

I think what CG is getting at is that picking a class doesn't lock you out of any particular skills or abilities. It just gives certain skills a boost at character creation, makes is a little easier to raise them in the future, and indexes your overall character level to your proficiency in those skills (10 increases in your class skills = new level). Thus, there's nothing stopping a Barbarian character from becoming an expert at Conjuration magic if he learns a basic "summon skeleton" spell and casts it 800 times.

 

Now, when combined with the scaling scheme of the vanilla game (which idiotically makes the entire world roughly equivalent to you in level at all times), this led to shrewd meta-gamers deliberately picking class skills that they would never use, so that they could raise their favorite skills to 100 while the rest of the world is leveled to be a good challenge for a 3rd level noob. Mods like OOO destroy the vanilla game's level scaling model, so this is less applicable to how any sane person plays the game now. Plus, these mods make the game quite difficult-- if you mess around with not tagging the skills you're going to use most, you'll get stomped pretty hard in a lot of places.

Edited May 30, 2008 by Enoch

[Jorian Drake]

Oblivion is a good game, I highly recommend it. It reminds me of Baldur's Gate ...

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

...now i am shocked...

[Slowtrain]

it's easy enough to play no matter what "class" you chooce (which is important for me at least).

 

The reason for that of course is that all "classes" and any player character that you custom design are functionally identical and they become more so the longer you play. During development, we were told that this problem, which also plauged Morrowind, would be fixed so that different characters would actually be different. This of course didn't happen and the problem was actually made worse.

 

 

In Oblivion's design there is really no need for skills. It would have been more efficient for Todd Howard to eliminate the major/minor seperation of skills since the difference is cosmetic only and has zero effect on gameplay. Rather simply start all skills at the same level and let them all develop at the same pace. Or, even better and more in line with Oblivion's design, woudl have been to eliminate skills all together and simply approach it as an FPS: players can do whatever they want and skill numbers are not neccessary.

 

Oh please, that's a piss poor analysis of the games design.

 

 

You've convinced me!

[Slowtrain]

Oblivion is a good game, I highly recommend it. It reminds me of Baldur's Gate in the way of its many quests you can do and the vast areas to explore. Make sure you get these mods Atmospheric Weather System and Natural Environments which will greatly enhance the look of the game.

 

I should just point out that I am referring to the unmodded game as shipped by the designers. The fan community for both MW and Oblivion did amazing things to both games. I should also point that, for both games, the unofficial fan patches fix thousands of problems that Bethesda never even bothered to correct in their own "patching" process.

 

Once you start talking about a modded version of Oblivion I have no real opinion on the game since every gamers personal selection of mods creates a different experience.