Oblivion

[Shryke]

And Lucian Lachance is easily the best voiced NPC in the game.

 

that's really not hard though

 

i got really sick of hearing the same voice for every argonian male/female etc etc

[SteveThaiBinh]

Hearing some young townswoman produce the same voice as the old beggar crone in the next town was always entertaining, though.

 

The speech minigame was a classic, wasn't it?

[Shryke]

it was quite terrible to talk to the old beggar women

 

they'd start off speaking in some croaky sounding voice, but as soon as you asked them about "latest rumours" or something, all of a sudden they'd start to speak normally

 

and the stupid speechcraft minigame was an utter joke. i just used charm spells before speaking to someone so i wouldn't ever have to bother with using that stupid thing to increase their disposition

[Darque]

Oblivion is awesome for two reasons.

 

1) The physics... use lightning.. spells, weapons... you'll see what I mean real fast (make sure they're area affect)

 

2) It's a primer for Fallout 3

 

 

.....just kidding on that last part.

[RangerSG]

The physics engine and lighting were very impressive. No two ways about it. The game 'looks' amazing...other than NPCs, who uniformly are hideous.

[Xard]

Since when BLOOM BLOOM BLOOM BLOOM has been good for game's looks?

 

It was ridiculous, Oblivion looked like Disneyland or something

[Pidesco]

While Oblivion had great graphics, it had pretty awful art direction which made the game a bit ugly to me.

 

Also, like Morrowind, it had big performance issues, even taking into account all the graphical bling.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

Bloom & HDR are 2 different effects, bloom looks pretty bad at the side of HDR and oblivion looks pretty good when using HDR. Ahem.

 

The performance was also very good especially compared to the likes of NWN2's perf.

[Pidesco]

I thought HDR wasn't very well used in Oblivion. Some scenes looked much better than without it, but others just made my eyes bleed. One of my characters was fairly light skinned and with HDR on, under the right lighting conditions her hand practically made my eyeballs explode.

[@\NightandtheShape/@]

I thought HDR wasn't very well used in Oblivion. Some scenes looked much better than without it, but others just made my eyes bleed. One of my characters was fairly light skinned and with HDR on, under the right lighting conditions her hand practically made my eyeballs explode.

 

Oblivion was one of the first games I am aware of to implement the technique, it wasn't used as well as it has been since but the HDR implementation is better than the bloom implementation.

 

From my experience with Bloom and HDR, both through writing and implementing the techniques, setting it up is like you indicate something which can go wrong, artists and designers have to be careful as it's very easy to overdo it.

 

Bloom works by taking values over and under a particular threshold and modifying their saturation and intensity... You can do other stuff too, but that's the basics of how bloom calculates the final result where something like HDR works directly with light exposure, hence the exposure should change based on the current environment, Oblivion doesn't appear to do this very well it, if at all... Tone mapping generally helps with better HDR calculations, but if you make someone so painfully white in the first place HDR will take it a step further as the lighter a colour is the more it is effected.

 

So that's why you experienced what you experienced, HDR can be done well, and Oblivion certainly gives it a fair shot. At the end of the day though it's a matter of personal like and dislike... You would probably prefer a scene with high AA and no bloom or HDR, so just don't activate it.

[RangerSG]

Bloom & HDR are 2 different effects, bloom looks pretty bad at the side of HDR and oblivion looks pretty good when using HDR. Ahem.

 

The performance was also very good especially compared to the likes of NWN2's perf.

 

I have to agree on this one. Oblivion's performance was better on my PC than NWN2's, despite Oblivion being far more intensive.

[Tale]

Next to Morrowind, I pretty much hate Oblivion. I can't put my finger on any singular thing to blame for why I hate Oblivion. Not a fan of blame altogether. But I'll say there's an interaction between a melee-stealth character, scaling, and Clanfears that made it a very unpleasant experience. Clanfears being the biggest offender in the creature category, but most of them share it to some degree.

 

The result of the interaction of factors is that a melee stealth character spends a good portion of the game getting absolutely tossed. As any stealth specializing character will experience, your stealth will be probably the thing that goes up the most at the begining of the game. Which, after a few levels, leaves you absolutely boned for the combat that results after your first strike. Even if they're major skills, your endurance and ability with your weapon have not gone up to the same relative degree that your enemies endurance and strength has. So, your tactics have to drastically change for what were previously mundane tasks. It's a difficulty increase for no sensible reason. At this point you adapt by either switching to the bow (which you may be able to use to either kite, get multiple sneak attacks) or using massive amounts of poison. If you encounter a Clanfear, the necessity of using a bow is critical. But also an exercise in futility because there will be a relatively distinct window of your gameplay experience where even causing a Clanfear to look at your fragile body will cause you to automatically die. When you enter this window, you need to change things.

 

I fully accept my own fault in things developing to that point every time I play. It's a choice of playstyle on my part that led me to such a situation. I never was overly interested in any particular endurance skill. But, I also recognize Bethesda's fault for implementing a design where early decisions can result in later events going so terribly pear shaped without warning and without giving reasonable methods for rectifying the situation.

 

But what's even weirder is how inconsistent this difficulty is. Early on things are well balanced. You can sometimes sneak up to someone, sometimes get the cheap shot in, then wittle them down normally. Then it transitions to a period where you can sometimes sneak up on someone, sometimes get the cheap shot in, but regardless of if you did those two previous things or not, it's time to start kiting while emptying your bag of every potion you could possibly managed to stock up in a "and the kitchen sink" manuever. As your sneak skill increases, you transition to yet another period for the rest of the game where nobody ever notices you. Not even while you're stabbing them repeatedly in the back. It all forms a retarded bell curve difficulty. It should be noted that in this later period where you stab someone repeatedly in the back that, if they did notice you stabbing them 10 times for the highest sneak attack multiplier, you would be truly and utterly boned.

Edited June 3, 2008 by Tale

[Arkan]

Yes, Tale, the leveling system in Oblivion is horrible. When I played my half-orc tank hth brawler, I pretty much held my own against anything. Even sent a few of those croc things flying after I got good enough with my unarmed skill. The PROBLEM, then, was that after about halfway through, all the abilities I regularly used were maxed out, and I couldn't level anymore. So I never got a chance to encounter the most dreaded enemies in the game.

 

There are mods out there that easily fix both sides of that coin now, though.

 

What got me about Oblivion is that despite its great graphics. It was very drab. EVERY area looked like EVERY OTHER area. Morrowind shined here, with a great variety of areas to explore.

[Tale]

I could never enjoy those mods. I tried a couple and ended up finding nothing but poorly balanced encounters. And even they couldn't attempt to fix the lack of any reason to explore. I think it was about the point of trying those that I realized I didn't care about dungeons because the greatest treasure to find at the bottom would be yet another rusty warhammer.

Edited June 3, 2008 by Tale

[Pop]

In Oblivion (but much, much moreso in Morrowind, to a staggering degree) all you really need to go toe-to-toe with any powerful monster is an investment in alchemy. I'm not even sure how you're supposed to play Morrowind without alchemy.

[Tale]

I never needed Alchemy for Morrowind. I actually used it, but pretty much exclusively for water walking and water breathing. You explore a little, find a decent sword, and you can cut down anything. Oh, and the absolute brokeness that is Dark Brotherhood armor. 2nd strongest light armor, quite valuable, delivered right to you while you sleep.

Edited June 3, 2008 by Tale

[RangerSG]

Well that was broken by Tribunal, not vanilla Morrowind. And I think someone forgot to playtest what would happen if you used that armor before you were where they expected you to be. That plus the fact people called you the Nereverine in Mournhold even if you hadn't gotten that far in the real game. Must have been prophets everywhere in that city.

 

Best way to handle that was to disable the Tribunal dss until you'd reached the appropriate stage of the plot.

[Tale]

It's quite silly that Bethesda didn't test what the game would be like if people selected "New Game."

[Xard]

It's quite silly that Bethesda didn't test what the game would be like if people selected "New Game."

 

 

Now now Tale, you're assuming Beth has talent

[Jorian Drake]

hmm, xard i want to notify you that you exceeded the size of the allowed signature, about a year ago i had to cut down/change mine because of that aswell, i asume you will be addressed becoz of this by a mod soon, so just 'Preemptive edit' it

[Slowtrain]

Now now Tale, you're assuming Beth has talent

 

 

That, sir, is cold. lol.

[Tigranes]

I have to agree with Tale that Morrowind 'feels' like the better game in almost every aspect, except for the revamped stealth, which is probably the best CRPG stealth I've seen (of course I'm not counting Thief, my precious). Yeah, that doesn't say much about stealth in most CRPGs, but still.

 

Morrowind actually had atmosphere in almost its entire world, even the wind-swept, barren areas you had to trot through. Certainly the grass and trees and whatnot are a joy to see in the first few hours for Oblivion, but then you realise that (a) all the cities are the same, (b) everything looks like generic medieval fantasy, © it's hard to get a sense of verisimilitude when you notice how blatantly close different dungeons and encounters and events are spaced out - it's like you're not walking through a real world but constantly shifting through space-warp zones, like the world was actually twice as big but compressed 'for your playing pleasure'.

 

The first mods to fix level scaling were absolutely horrid for me, I recall early versions of OOO where you'd get mobbed by 7 or 8 bandits. Good in concept, but Oblivion can't handle combat with more than 3-4 enemies at any one point. Everyone collides with each other crappily, the AI can't handle the pathfinding and the combat mechanisms suck for group fights anyway. Never mind what happens if you stand on a hill, they all end up circling around Forrest Gump-like. The newest OOO, I tried a little bit, appears to have become more sensible.

[Slowtrain]

The only real problem I had with MW graphically was the awful bodies and faces. Especially the faces. Once I played with the better faces and better bodies mods, there was no going back. The enviormnmental graphics were all quite good; the ash storms were cool, the rain was cool, even the water looked pretty good. And it did have a lot of atmosphere. Oblivion is very pretty (although I do think the water looks better in MW) but it really lacks atmosphere. Maybe the setting was just too generic?

 

It will be interesting to see where they set the next ES game. I'm guessing either the swamps of Argonia or the Sumerset Isles.

 

I think Argonia would be pretty cool.

[Meshugger]

The only real problem I had with MW graphically was the awful bodies and faces. Especially the faces. Once I played with the better faces and better bodies mods, there was no going back. The enviormnmental graphics were all quite good; the ash storms were cool, the rain was cool, even the water looked pretty good. And it did have a lot of atmosphere. Oblivion is very pretty (although I do think the water looks better in MW) but it really lacks atmosphere. Maybe the setting was just too generic?

 

It will be interesting to see where they set the next ES game. I'm guessing either the swamps of Argonia or the Sumerset Isles.

 

I think Argonia would be pretty cool.

 

Considering that almost every second NPC in Oblivion was worried about the Daedra worship in Sumerset Isles, i instantly thought that the expansion would be set there. Well, that's my bet on ES V as well.

[Pidesco]

While the variety in Morrowind was certainly better than the blandness of Oblivion, in most other respects I feel Oblivion is a better game than Morrowind. It feels like the natural next step for the series after the changes that went into the series from Daggerfall, to Morrowind. Effectively they're not trying to make RPGs anymore, they're trying to make action adventure games. Oblivion is a better action adventure than Morrowind, even if it isn't much of an RPG.