ES4: Oblivion - Retrospective @ The Koalition

It's interesting how opinions differ on these games, I think it just boils down to individual preferences. I personally don't get how anyone could think the dungeons were so much better in Oblivion. Bigger yes, better no. Part of a good dungeon, imo, is the reward for exploring it, and that's where Oblivion failed miserably. Few of the dungeons in Oblivion contained anything worthwhile. As Relayer pointed out, there was really no point in exploring them.

Agreed that we all have different preferences, and there's something I've taken out of each TES game and enjoyed especially.

With Arena it was just the world setting/races etc.
With Daggerfall it was the world scale, coming across hamlets, the political intrigues, the house/ship ownership etc. Still my favourite of the series.
With Morrowind it was the historical lore, disappearance of the dwarves etc. and that bloody scary ghostgate.
With Oblivion it was the game play, the NPC schedules and quests, the graphics, the world feel and realisation.

Likewise there's been something about each of them that I disliked.

JDR13 said:

It's interesting how opinions differ on these games, I think it just boils down to individual preferences…..

Click to expand...

You are certainly right:

• Some people like search a little and sometimes a lot when doing a quest or a when searching something, when some other don't bother follow stupidly a cursor as soon as they have a fairly good story to read.
• Some players like have some challenges and surprises in fights when exploring a dungeon when some other are fully satisfied with pretty and bigger dungeons.
• Some players are bored with repetitive graphics and game mechanism from Hell areas when some other don't care of such details.
• Some players are sensitive of the realism degree of the main quest when some other don't care it doesn't work very well and that legions of Hell just wait the hero patiently.
• Some players enjoyed the opposite factions system forcing you choose a camp when some other don' care much of such design.
• Some players prefer pretty graphics with a nice level of detail when some other prefer less nice graphics and even some a little ugly but with a mood and with some originality.

That's just personal preferences.

EDIT: To make things clear, if Oblivion isn't in my top 100 CRPG (when I'll have play 100), Morrowind is probably not in my top 20.

Wow! Amazing that this game still generates so much discussion. I've played both OB and MW to completion (and I mean completion - all expansions, maps completely filled in, all quests). My favorite was MW - atmosphere, art design, music, story, characters, exploration, but mostly the lore.

I think they are both weak on the classic RPG features, though. A character design system that rewards you most if you leave out the skills you want to use the most? Totally Fucked Up.

No matter how much i tried i never liked the game. Shallow is the word that fits the game for me.
Totally the opposite for Morowind

There were several folks in here who mentioned the weak vanilla dungeons that weren't quest related. I just wanted to link to a huge mod that attempts to address this and it also tries to change the random dialogues. If you're wanting to attempt Oblivion again, this might be a good mod to spice up the dungeons:
http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1084614-relzkragenirs-death-quest-106-thread-6/

I should add that I have nothing to do with this mod. It's just one I plan on adding to my next playthrough of Oblivion. It sounds interesting and could address one of the issues of vanilla.