Oblivion review

I just finished the main quest,and the game goes on.

Since there is no end,i ended my quest.

I am going to break it down the review to several segments:

1:Gameplay:

In oblivion,the gameplay takes place in real time.

You are able to use the gameplay however you like.

Magic users:

You can specialize in several magical areas:
Alteration:Usage of defensive spells and the like
Conjuration:Summoning spells for the most part
Destruction:Fireballs and lightning bolts
Restoration:Healing magic
Illusion magic:Night vision,charms.Frenzy calm and alike.
The last one is called spiritual? Its the use of psychic ability to pick up things and the alike.

You are only allowed to have 7 major abilities,and you have to balance it out.
You would need:A weapon skill,an armor skill,a magic skill and possibly alchemy as a main skill.If you want to be a sneaky rogue,you will need sneak as a major ability.

I advise you to balance it out well,and really think it through.

The dungeons in oblivion are very repetitive,so chances are that you will be bored very quickly of seeing the same dungeon outline,with the exact same enemies.Thing about oblivion is:The enemies remain the same around the world.The only way to change them,is to level up.When you get to the very highest level,you will see enemies in daedra armor,and daedra weapons.You will also start encountering harder enemies,like the daedra themselves.This will become very boring very quick,since you will see lots of daedra anyways.

The gates are one of the worse parts as well.The gates of oblivion,all involve closing the gates by getting a sigil stone.This item,also gives a bonus to armors and weapons.As you level up,the sigil stones also become better,and give a greater bonus.
You will soon grow tired of doing these dungeons though,and chameleon makes all other ones pointless.

Quests:The quests are the most interesting part of oblivion,especially the knights of the nine,and the dark brotherhood and sheogorath main quest.
You will get very special rewards from these,like a spell that controls the weather,or an army of knights at your command.

The assasin’s guild does give you a free horse that is the fastest horse,along with being an immortal horse,but also its a lot of fun,just because you can be evil.Going around sneaking,and slitting people’s throats for extra reward,adds a little fun.You even get to a point where you are in your typical murder type thing quest,called:Whodunnit.This quest involves killing people in secret,and going into the next room.I ended up doing something really fun,by convincing the other person that the other is the murderer,and then i killed the last one.

The thieves guild is also a lot of fun,because it involves going in and sneaking and stealing people’s stuff.If you have chameleon,its even easier.

2:Graphical:The graphics look good for 2006,so i can’t complain.I especially don’t care much about graphics.

3:Music:Its alright.Some areas of the music have some decent sounding pieces,like some of the town pieces.I think that the cave musical piece also fits well.

4:Voice acting:This is where one of the problems starts.
Because of the room taken over by voice acting,supposedly they had to cut the story short.I don’t know if this is true or not,so i cannot confirm this.I can tell you that the voice acting always uses the same voice actors over and over,and i don’t find them to be all that great anyways.The main issue with the voice acting,is that they are repeated so many times,that it becomes tiresome.It is also repeated often in the same sort of tone of voice,as if not a care in the world.

5:The story:The story is paper thin,and almost non existant in fact.Some of it might have to do with the sandbox of a game it is,other might have to do with space from using so much voice acting,and some cutscenes.
There aren’t that many cutscenes though.

Overall:I’d give it a 7.5.While its got some fun moments,it has a few areas that need a revision.

I enjoyed the story, apart from that terrible section where you have to do about 10 Oblivion realms. That section is so awful that it kind of blanks out everything else, being the only bit that people remember – and the bit that many people quit the game over. Its a real shame, because other than that, I really liked the whole Cult of the Mythic Dawn idea. I was also particularly intrigued when you got to talk to a Dremora in Mankar Camoran’s paradise, and it turned out they were a proper race with intelligence, stories and culture etc, rather than just being some evil monsters. Shame that they didn’t explore this further.

My biggest beef with this game is that whilst you can supposedly do whatever you want, in practice it is quite restrictive. Why can’t you join the Mythic Dawn and help bring down the realm if that’s what you want? Why can’t you join the Blackwood Company in the Fighter’s Guild questline (especially if you are an Argonian or a Khajitt!), why can’t you turn on the Dark Brotherhood and wipe them out (I know this sort of happens anyway, but not because you are a traitor or anything).

I just got fed up with this game (and Fallout 3 and Skyrim) making judgements on which factions I could and couldn’t join. If I want to join the Thalamor or the Enclave or become a Daedra worshipping cultist, then the game should let me do it. Its no good people saying ‘oh those guys are totally evil, why would you side with them?’ – so are the Dark Brotherhood good guys then?! Its absurd, and it ruins the immersion. If these factions exist, then let me join me, like you are allowed to do in Fallout: New Vegas.

Other than that though, I really enjoyed Oblivion. The setting and the Cult main story was infinitely more interesting to me than Skyrim’s nonsense about Dragons and viking nazis. I found the setting, quests and characters to be vastly superior in Oblivion (but yeah, the voice acting is atrocious!)

Because there’s only SO MUCH they can do.

Still, playing TES4 vanilla is a TERRIBLE idea.

Nonsense. New Vegas has just as much content as Oblivion, enough to keep you going for months. And they allow you to join up with all the factions of note (you can’t join the Fiends, but they’re so fried on chems that they can barely keep themselves from killing each other so…) Bethesda just don’t have any idea how to handle true freedom. Important NPCs are invulnerable in their games, and that’s just stupid. If you’re going to say that people can do what they want, they should be allowed to do so. Obsidian know this, Bethesda do not.

I’m not unreasonable. I know you can’t account for everything, but these are noteworthy factions that people would have an interest in joining. Its not rocket science to anticipate that elven characters might want to join up with the elven faction in Skyrim!

First of all, this is a review of Oblivion, not Skyrim or Fallout. Second of all, you’re looking at it from 2012. The game came out six years ago. Keep in mind the limitations of the day, and if you’re going to use examples, don’t use them from after Oblivion (e.g. Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim) because you can’t justify a comparison when it’s unfairly compared with something from after its time. You’re forgetting what an impact it had on the gaming world. Of course there are flaws, but we’re noticing them after the fact because we have a ton of new games since then. Of course, Nostalgia gamer just played it, but even he’s forgetting the historical perspective you have to consider.

First of all, this is a review of Oblivion, not Skyrim or Fallout. Second of all, you’re looking at it from 2012. The game came out six years ago. Keep in mind the limitations of the day, and if you’re going to use examples, don’t use them from after Oblivion (e.g. Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, and Skyrim) because you can’t justify a comparison when it’s unfairly compared with something from after its time.
AND THIS…so much this.
I think what folks fail to realize is that this was only the second or third game Besth made for a console and it was the FIRST they made for the current gen systems.

Also by ‘vanilla’ I was referring to playing the game without game play fixes and such.

I said the exact same things when I first played it. I just have a good comparison now to show how it could be done better. Back then, I was only able to say ‘I wish this had been done better’. I now know how it can and was done better. I stand by my points. It isn’t good how you can join some factions, but not others. How there is only one path that you must follow in a game that claims ultimate freedom.

You won’t find many people who still like Oblivion more than me. Saying I’m just needlessly harsh years after the fact on an old game are missing the point. This isn’t a case of ‘Oh, the new ones are so much better than this old rubbish’. Because I vastly prefer this to Skyrim. These are concerns I always had, which would have taken a game I already really loved (and still really love) even further.

My point was that there were mistakes Bethesda were making back then, which they still make now (IMO obviously, but this a forum, a place for the airing of opinions).

I said the exact same things when I first played it. I just have a good comparison now to show how it could be done better. Back then, I was only able to say ‘I wish this had been done better’. I now know how it can and was done better. I stand by my points. It isn’t good how you can join some factions, but not others. How there is only one path that you must follow in a game that claims ultimate freedom.

You won’t find many people who still like Oblivion more than me. Saying I’m just needlessly harsh years after the fact on an old game are missing the point. This isn’t a case of ‘Oh, the new ones are so much better than this old rubbish’. Because I vastly prefer this to Skyrim. These are concerns I always had, which would have taken a game I already really loved (and still really love) even further.

My point was that there were mistakes Bethesda were making back then, which they still make now (IMO obviously, but this a forum, a place for the airing of opinions).

Now that makes a lot more sense. Speaking for myself alone, Oblivion was really one of the first games I was sort of obsessive over. Never really considering myself a gamer before, (although sure, I had a lot of games, but I didn’t play them night and day), Oblivion stood out to me as a great landmark achievement. Looking back on it, the game didn’t really revolutionize anything, and in some ways, as you pointed out, imposed more restrictions than it should have. I definitely thought at the time that we should have been able to join factions that weren’t permitted, but I was abundantly satisfied with all the seemingly innumerable quests I was given. After all, if they made a ton more factions available, the game would have taken forever to be released (I admittedly don’t know the development history of the game). I was already struck by the combination of graphics, gameplay elements, immersive environment, and, yes, the freedom to do almost entirely what you want when you want. Almost entirely. There was so much that amazed me and grabbed hold of me that I didn’t care that I couldn’t be a Daedra worshipping cultist. We could always argue that we should been able to do this or that, but I thought – and still think – that the freedom that Bethesda granted was more than enough, for 2006 at least.

Hell, the game is like 300 hours for all the quests as it is!

@Tanis: I completely agree. That’s one of the reasons I stopped playing. For all I adore about Oblivion, playing it vanilla can be a downright horrible experience. Skyrim was worse, though.

But just saying ‘It can’t be done’ when it obviously can be done (because New Vegas did it), isn’t acceptable to me. Especially when they make such a big deal out of the freedom to play howver you want. All I’m saying is that if you are going to sell the game on that premise, then that’s what you should do in game. So for them to still make the same design choices with invulnerable NPCs and rigiid quest paths, and disallowed factions in Skyrim etc, just shows they are not moving the genre forwards, they’re just copying a template over and over and over again.

None of which can take away what Oblivion does right. Like I say, these were things that I was keen to see addressed in later games, because they were pretty much the sole problems of any severity that I had. And because there was no reason why it was like that, it made no sense to me for the game to do this. In a game based around freedom of action and decision, it felt 100 times more bizarre and constraining to be forced down certain narrative paths.

I didn’t say it can’t be done, I said that it would have taken them a lot more time. Again, F:NV came out 4 years later, when Obsidian didn’t have as much to develop graphically. Bethesda was working on Oblivion for around four years and it already pushed things to the limit. I can sympathize with your claiming that it felt constraining and forced down narrative paths, and their claim that you could do anything was obviously a marketing thing. Maybe they could have added a lot more if they had put in the time – as I wasn’t in the development team, I don’t know how close to the deadline they were working. Overall, though, I think you’re in the minority for that complaint if we were talking in 2006 (as the game won numerous awards, honors, and nominations). Talking now, you’re right, it pales in comparison to other games. But then again, there are lots of games that we feel could be improved that we still love. I’ll bet you anything that if I go back and play Oblivion, I will feel exactly the same way as you. But when I was playing in 2006, I was like a kid in a candy store.

With Skyrim, though, I agree that it’s pretty unforgivable, because the development was far less than Oblivion. I’ve already expressed my complaints in my quasi-review in the ESV:Skyrim thread.

Fair enough, but I can only reiterate that whilst I was ‘a kid in a candy store’ for *most* of Oblivion, the thing with the factions is intimately tied to the roleplaying aspect, and that is always *the* most important thing for me in an RPG. So it was always a crucial issue for me, and explains why I consider New Vegas to be the best, because it addressed all those concerns in the best way possible, and why I don’t like Skyrim, because it reversed all of Obsidian’s big decisions on how to evolve the genre and reverted back to type.

It also says a lot about how much I liked the game. Because otherwise I wouldn’t even care whether you could be this faction or that faction, whether you could do this but not that etc etc. That I wanted to know more about the Dremora race etc – its because I was so invested and interested, that I was so disconsolate when content that I felt *should* be there, wasn’t.

And hey, let’s be fair about this. If we’re going to talk development time, then couldn’t the time they spent making you going into all those identikit Daedra realms, those soul destroyingly dull sections that *everyone* hates, have been better spent?! That was just pure filler to pad out the main questline, and I’d happily trade all those sections for some more freedom with regard to factions!

I heard that skyrim has 150 dungeons,but they are all hand crafted,so that might be an improvement over oblivion.Even if it is only a limited amount of dungeons,at least they will be different.

The point of this review,is to point out what i thought of the game.I also have no bias towards any previous elder scrolls,because i never played any.To me,i entered this game blind,so for me it is a new experience.
Olde,the story was pretty weak during most of the game though.The story is mostly about stopping the daedra,but part of the lack of story comes from being a blank character who you must create his background.The problem is:There are not enough choices to turn your character into the ultimate evil,or even having any grey zones,but that is hard as hell to do.One problem with these kind of games,is that there is a limited amount of space.For every action,there is an infinite amount of possibilities to branch past that action,and then you have more posibilities branching past that.With all these amount of possibilities,there is only so much room for these kind of things,and a lot of things would be so asimilar,that they would repeat themselves.

In this perspective,it is actually good to have a limited amount of possibilities,but good ones that truly affect the game.
Would it be nice if i could join the mythic dawn and conquer the world? sure.
Would i want to be a fellow necromancer in the guild? absolutely
Would i want to be a werewolf as well? That would be nice

The problem also lies with them being well done too.I would rather they not be included if they are to be watered down and even done in a boring fashion.I’m not exactly sure what would happen if you could join the worm lord’s necromancer guild for an example,and the actual rewards for joining and getting to a high rank would have to be well worth it,or it will be a boring quest.Necromancers borrow from mages anyways,so you would have to be a strong conjurer to summon daedra,and lich and alike.

I haven’t played fallout 3 las vegas,but ih eard really bad stuff about it.I heard that the world is terribly under populated by monsters,and you could run for hours without encountering a single thing.I also heard that the dialogue from npcs being really bad,and that instead,you get a bunch of boring gambling stuff.I personally hate gambling,so that works against me.The reason i hate gambling,is because the odds are fixed so you lose 99% of the time,so you always lose more money than you gain.Only way i see it possible to win anything in this sort of fashion,is if you reload every time you fail,and i hate doing that so much.Games that force me to reload 50 billion times,piss me off to no end.

Look, I’ll keep this to a single post, but your comments about Fallout…

You are as misinformed about Fallout 3 and New Vegas as it is possible to be. The world has plenty of enemies – you’ll never want for encounters (it is a lawless post apocalyptic wasteland after all!) And the dialogue, characters and quests in New Vegas particularly are the best out of any of these kind of games. The gambling is not necessary, but it would be a strange game set in any kind of Vegas that didn’t have it, no?

You should really try these games instead of just deciding in advance. All the things you mention are utterly untrue, and I can’t believe anyone who played either of them would ever say such a thing. Whoever told you that was either lying or they were wrong, simple as that. If you want a game where you can properly mould the kind of character you are, play New Vegas. Its by far the best just in terms of actual roleplaying.

The only problem is the technical glitches, but I won’t lie – they are severe.

As far as I know New Vegas has actually gotten a lot better, since release. They’ve released a multitude of patches that fix the majority and, as usual, there are several community created mods that also fix various things (PC version obviously). Same is true for Fallout 3. I would definitely recommend them to anyone, as I think they’re both great games – among the best of this generation.

Agreed – and yes, New Vegas runs a lot better these days, after I bought the DLC packs and downloaded all sorts of patches that came with them. New Vegas is my 2nd favourite game of this entire gen behind Bioshock. But I consider Oblivion to be at least top 20 as well.

My point was more that even after all the various fixes, New Vegas is still a much buggier game than many people are willing to tolerate these days. And that’s a real shame, because its a truly fantastic game.

My problem with most of the games mentioned in this thread is that I play them on CONSOLE.

It sucks, but I don’t have the money to get a new PC and my current one was ‘new’ when WinXP first came out.
So, yeah…

I haven’t played fallout 3 las vegas,but ih eard really bad stuff about it.I heard that the world is terribly under populated by monsters,and you could run for hours without encountering a single thing.I also heard that the dialogue from npcs being really bad,and that instead,you get a bunch of boring gambling stuff.I personally hate gambling,so that works against me.The reason i hate gambling,is because the odds are fixed so you lose 99% of the time,so you always lose more money than you gain.Only way i see it possible to win anything in this sort of fashion,is if you reload every time you fail,and i hate doing that so much.Games that force me to reload 50 billion times,piss me off to no end.

You should really play Fallout New Vegas, brother. It has the best writing of the bunch by a fair bit. Skyrim was frustrating for me to play because it felt like an adventure game rather than a roleplaying game after playing New Vegas.

Complaining about the gambling in New Vegas is like complaining about the snowboarding minigame in Final Fantasy 7. The gambling in New Vegas is all just minigames, man.

I’l probably try out the demo of fallout 3 las vegas,but either for pc or for xbox 360.

I also want to try out the demo of skyrim.

Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas are two different games. Both are worth playing, but I’d say New Vegas is better. Some people prefer the world of Fallout 3.

I haven’t played skyrim either.

The problem i have sometimes,is that the games themselves may or may not present a demo.

I’ve never found demos to be useful at all. Giving you 1 or 2 levels out of context, sometimes even changing bits of the plot or controls just to make it a closed experience with a beginning and end, they don’t help IMO. Plus, some games are slow burners (RPGs particularly) that you have to ease into, gradually osmosing lore and seeing little things here and there that you think are pretty cool, until you suddenly realise ‘Hey, I really like this game!’

A demo can’t give you that. They might be fine for action games, but games like Oblivion, Fallout etc require you to put a lot of work into your character, and work with the game to find the way that is unique to you, on how you are going to enjoy the game. The games are designed to be huge, and filled with possiblity, so it can go ‘Hmm, you don’t like this… well, how about that then… No? Well, what about this, then?’ There’s always something new to explore, something different going on, and getting out there and finding it is a big part of the fun. Again, a demo can’t give you that.