I think Elder Scrolls combat is good, you just have to go 3rd person when it happens.
The problem is the writing for the dialog and in game quests tends to be inferior to the lore. Also Oblivion's main quest really didn't take much advantage of the lore at all in comparison to say Morrowind's main quest or even the Shivering Isles. Knights of the Nine even seemed to re-write the lore. Compare the portrayal of the Imperial religion there to Daggerfall.
Most of the questing you will do will be for the guilds, and those chains are linear, or near linear. There are a few times where you are given the option of which guild you'll take quests from, but you still need to do all the quests, and for the most part, you need to do them in a rather strict order, unlike Morrowind where you had more choices in which order to tackle the guild quests.I have to admit I am quite surprised at how much I am enjoying this game. I think the game improved upon the free-roaming aspect of Morrowind by offering less "shackling" content. As far as I can remember quests were often chained in Morrowind and once you reached the end of a particular quest line you were directed to a new location with a new questline which could make the player's progress through the different cities and areas quite linear. Although, admittedly, it could be that I am misremembering or or that I played Morrowind more thoroughly than I am playing Oblivion now, but I do get the feeling that Oblivion tries to encourage the player to change locations more often, which is something I personally like.
I think Jeremy Soule is an overrated composer. While his songs are good, there is not a whole lot of variety in his work. Morrowind did not have a whole lot of internal variety either, and with the exception of the intro song, none really stands out.Also, while not really that important, I noticed that a lot of tunes and melodies seem to be only slightly varied from pieces used in Guild Wars, which I think is a pretty lazy move by the composer (of both games) Jeremy Soule.
Fnord said:Most of the questing you will do will be for the guilds, and those chains are linear, or near linear. There are a few times where you are given the option of which guild you'll take quests from, but you still need to do all the quests, and for the most part, you need to do them in a rather strict order, unlike Morrowind where you had more choices in which order to tackle the guild quests.
What I meant was that Morrowind encouraged me more to follow a particular quest line than Oblivion. Again, this could be faulty memory on my part, my particular playstyle for Morrowind or due to the balance changes by OOO, but when I finish a quest in Oblivion the feeling of "What do I do now?" and the choice between simply free-roaming and questing seems to be stronger and more important than it was in Morrowind.
I found the exact opposite to be true, in Oblivion you just get pointed towards the very next quest in line, in Morrowind it felt like the game expected me to not do everything in a particular line in one go (in part due to how level scaling was handled).What I meant was that Morrowind encouraged me more to follow a particular quest line than Oblivion.
Post back again in a week and let us know if you still feel the same way.
The vast majority of people I know enjoyed Oblivion for the first week or so… before the flaws became more apparent.
I am playing it for the first time now.
There are really 3 types of dungeons, the Alyieds ruins, forts and cave system.
I found the exact opposite to be true, in Oblivion you just get pointed towards the very next quest in line, in Morrowind it felt like the game expected me to not do everything in a particular line in one go (in part due to how level scaling was handled).
One thing that annoyed me the most was, how empty and lifeless the outdoor world was, hardly anything happens. Its big world but even then it just felt dead.
Just a hint: Make sure to kill an innocent person at some point - Later this triggers the best quest in the game, and it's a long quest.
If you don't like killing innocents, then simply try to become the champion of the arena in the imperial city. It requires you to do an "assisted suicide" at one point, thus triggering the quest I mentioned.
My personal favorite quest line was the one that was triggered by selling an Ayleid statue from the ruins. I think the quests that were triggered in non-standard ways were some of the better ones. Again, this is another area where I thought Oblivion had some good ideas and implementations but didn't go far enough with it and really needed more of that.
As far as I can remember quests were often chained in Morrowind and once you reached the end of a particular quest line you were directed to a new location with a new questline which could make the player's progress through the different cities and areas quite linear.