Oblivion Oblivion questions before buying:

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

EvilManagedCare

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Steam has been running the GOTY edition for $10, so I'm inclined to think that's a steal. But I have questions:

1. Does playing the Steam version allow the use of mods?

2. The level scaling has attracted some passionate criticism of the game with which I agree to a certain extent. Does the level scaling really detract from the overall game?

I haven't had that much experience with Elder Scrolls games. I played Daggerfall way back when it came out. It was a buggy mess and the dungeons were awful. I tried Morrowind and couldn't really get into it based in part to having a PC that couldn't run it well with the setting I want. But I also just didn't enjoy it for inexplicable reasons.

3. Is Oblivion an improvement on both Daggerfall & Morrowind? It got rave reviews, but I don't trust Gamespot or other gaming mags reviews.
 
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2. The level scaling is horrible.

3. It is much worse than both Daggerfall & Morrowind.
 
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Oblivion is nowhere near as bad as some people try to claim it is. That being said, it does suffer from a few very poor design decisions, with the most egregious being the already mentioned level-scaling (both enemies and loot). If you don't want to go crazy with a ton of mods, but still want to fix the biggest flaws of vanilla Oblivion, I would recommend Obscuro's Oblivion Overhaul (OOO). This mod scraps the level-scaling, adds more unique yet mostly lore/setting appropriate enemies, and hand-places most of the game's loot.
 
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Steam has been running the GOTY edition for $10, so I'm inclined to think that's a steal. But I have questions:

1. Does playing the Steam version allow the use of mods?

2. The level scaling has attracted some passionate criticism of the game with which I agree to a certain extent. Does the level scaling really detract from the overall game?

I haven't had that much experience with Elder Scrolls games. I played Daggerfall way back when it came out. It was a buggy mess and the dungeons were awful. I tried Morrowind and couldn't really get into it based in part to having a PC that couldn't run it well with the setting I want. But I also just didn't enjoy it for inexplicable reasons.

3. Is Oblivion an improvement on both Daggerfall & Morrowind? It got rave reviews, but I don't trust Gamespot or other gaming mags reviews.

1. yes, absolutely, I have 200+ mods running on my Steam install

2. not really a problem for me at all after installing FCOM and Duke Patricks

3. haven't played Daggerfall. I played Morrowind a bit, but not enough to really compare the two games in great detail. From the part that I played it seems that Morrowind has a deeper level of storytelling and more interesting flavor, but Oblivion benefits from a more user friendly interface as well as fully voiced dialog, better graphics and combat mechanics.

For $10 this is an amazing value. Oblivion has provided me personally with several hundred hours of enjoyable gaming entertainment. Some people have played the game for thousands of hours.

There are hundreds of locations, hundreds of side quests, and some of the quests are brilliantly written. Not to mention the tens of thousands of mods available, including many excellent quest mods, crafting mods, faction mods, even total conversion mods like Neherim and Andoran that provide 60+ hours of content, and all these mods are free.
 
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For me it was probably the best game in 2006 and as long as you don't mind bandits wearing full deadric armour in the later game you will enjoy it. It is a huge world with an amazing amount of content.
 
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but Oblivion benefits from a more user friendly interface as well as fully voiced dialog, better graphics and combat mechanics.
I would say that Oblivion suffers from being fully voiced. I'm not against voice acting in games, but the voice acting in Oblivion was bad. You had only a handful of voice actors, so you constantly heard the same voice, many generic dialogues could switch in tone (when talking to a beggar he could suddenly turn all noble in his way of speaking depending on what dialogue options you picked). It all served as a major immersion breaker for me.

Oblivion is not horrible, it just needs mods.
 
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