Fallout 3 Why the Fallout 3 = Oblivion comparision is both unfair and blind

However, if you wish to prevent another Hitler, it's not enough to call Hitler evil. You must also learn how Hitler came to be. The abuse he received as a child. The society he grew up with. By his perspective, he was the good guy. I do not believe he ever thought "I am the evil guy".

Absolutely.

Gandhi passed through several stages. At first he tried to adapt 100% to the british culture. Then he rejected british culture 100%. Then he realized the evil of exclusivism and the good of inclusivism. But does that mean Gandhi at stage 2 was evil? Many also see Gandhi as the good guy but few understand the depth of his teachings.

Indeed.

I believe the perspectives good and bad is useful when teaching a child proper behavior in your own society, but I am tired of adults who claim that religion X and ideology Y is "evil", especially when they claim that their own narrow ideology they cling on to is supposed to be "good".

I agree 100%.
 
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I think you have to try more. NWN2 is widely held as inferior to it's predecessors, a disappointment. Drakensang is not even available.

I think NWN2 / MoTB are a useful pair of games for this discussion - same engine, utterly, utterly different experiences.

And in that light - sure, Fallout 3 looks a LOT like oblivion with guns. But MoTB looked a lot like NWN2 OC. Comparisons on looks and engine are unfair and irrelevant, they might make for smoother gameplay but they're irrelevant in the battle for a game to be worth playing for anything more than the enjoyment of clicking things.

On fallout 3 I've changed my mind a bit, almost all of the first reviews and PR by obsidian were of the "Guns! Nukes! Puppies! Bombs LOL" kind of level, but some of the later experiences from people who've played through a bit had a few moments that sounded like there might be some depth to it.
 
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Plus Oblivion wasn't really that far from being a good game. Take away the level scaling debacle, have more of the quest paths be as enjoyable as some of the dark brotherhood quests, shake up the demonic gate worlds to have each be a unique realm ruled over by a different demonic prince with strange background noises / trapped lost souls with backstories etc.

Frustrating really, it had 90% of the development time and budget that it would have taken to make a fantastic game with real immersion, but without that critical 10% it did feel really soulless. Fingers crossed they'll push that little bit further with Fallout 3 and hit the mark, some background bit of me says they wouldn't have gone through all the expense and controversy and grief involved in making it fallout rather than an original IP if there wasn't some genuine love somewhere in the team and it was that feeling of love and investment from the developers that was all that was missing from Oblivion.
 
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Plus Oblivion wasn't really that far from being a good game.

So you're saying that they should have used that 10% to fundamentally alter 90% of the game and change it back from a console action game with RPG-lite features to a RPG?
 
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So you're saying that they should have used that 10% to fundamentally alter 90% of the game and change it back from a console action game with RPG-lite features to a RPG?

In all seriousness though, I thought he made a great point. Oblivion was just a few bad design decisions away from being an incredible game.

It had great graphics, very good sound & music, a huge explorable world, fantastic architecture, a very deep collection of background lore to uncover, and it is very mod friendly.

All of that is handicapped however, mostly by 2 things: the aforementioned level scaling, and the radiant:)roll:) AI.
 
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So you're saying that they should have used that 10% to fundamentally alter 90% of the game and change it back from a console action game with RPG-lite features to a RPG?

I didn't read it that way.

I never finished Oblivion. Not because it was action-heavy, RPG-lite. But because the balancing was terrible (not to mention ham-handed), the quests were boring, and the locations repetitive -- especially the Oblivion realms. I don't know if 10% more work would've done it, but fixing these would have turned it into a good game, and they would not have fundamentally altered the gameplay or overall design.
 
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I needed a smiley in my post :D

I scored Oblivion as 4/5 stars and think it was a really good game, but I am not sure if it would have been a monir effort to turn it into a major 'choice & consequence' deep RPG.
 
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I don't think that's what Benedict was implying. And it would certainly have been more than a minor effort -- it's far easier to create "atomic" quest lines that have no effect on each other than complex branching storytelling. But it would have been perfectly possible to make the quests themselves less linear and more interesting, and to rebalance the game in such a way that it would have been physically impossible to become the master of all guilds. As well as to add some dialog that acknowledges your status. That sort of thing.

In short, it would have been perfectly possible to turn Oblivion into a *good* fantasy hack-and-slash sandbox exploration/questing/character-building game, without any fundamental changes, and with comparatively little effort (compared to what already went into it).

Re Radiant AI: I don't think there was anything terribly wrong with it per se; it's no worse than in most other cRPG's, and better than in some. The problem was the way it was hyped.
 
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I don't think that Oblivion had already 90% of what could make a very good (or even good) CRPG. For me the list of wrong points is quite long and I doubt 10% more time would have achieve it:
  • Most quests have a nice story line but a non existent quest design. For most it's just "sorry guy we haven't time to design quests, no time to design hints and landscapes, no time to tune the quest progression and playability... so just follow the cursor". Only that would require a ton of time to fix it.
  • There's something very wrong with the graphics, they are "woo cute" but everything is "woo cute". Everything is looking nice, poor style to show a RPG world. Just play The Witcher and you know what I mean. I don't think this is a detail, this graphic style is a mood killer.
  • Another killer thing was how all demonic planes was looking so similar, graphic style too poor, it could match a theme but the result is awful, it involves a strong feeling of repetition, terribly boring. Fix that means a big amount of graphic and level design to drop and redo.
  • Fight system, well ok that could be linked to the poor difficulty. On this point I totally disagree with the crowd. No, have a difficulty scaled to the party level isn't a wrong choice. Just play BG2 series and you know it.
  • Global story realism, too often it's hard to believe, at the ends it looks like they give up to setup something credible.
  • Last points is that I agree that more little links between various area and quests would be more fun.
 
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NWN2 is widely held as inferior to it's predecessors, a disappointment.
...
The recent offerings by Obsidian and Bioware have been dumbed down. NWN2 wasnt, but NWN2 is also mentioned as inferior and MotB (despite how much I loved the game) got rather low score in reviews.
I don't know what are your sources, but when you start let people think for you it's when comes the non sense.

NW2 has an original design and was innovative on many points. It is probably more linear than most of the best CRPG but beside many originals points that add a lot to the gameplay, it offers anyway some choices plus has a density that no CRPG I remember ever reach. For me it was a great time. MotB was even better even if I understand that some people couldn't adapt to the the special system it includes.
 
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About the engine, I wonder what they cover. I remember (need to be check) that Gothic 1&2+NOTR was using an engine to manage characters, quests I don't know, but not the standard graphic engine.
 
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I don't think that Oblivion had already 90% of what could make a very good (or even good) CRPG. For me the list of wrong points is quite long and I doubt 10% more time would have achieve it:
  • Most quests have a nice story line but a non existent quest design. For most it's just "sorry guy we haven't time to design quests, no time to design hints and landscapes, no time to tune the quest progression and playability... so just follow the cursor". Only that would require a ton of time to fix it.
  • There's something very wrong with the graphics, they are "woo cute" but everything is "woo cute". Everything is looking nice, poor style to show a RPG world. Just play The Witcher and you know what I mean. I don't think this is a detail, this graphic style is a mood killer.
  • Another killer thing was how all demonic planes was looking so similar, graphic style too poor, it could match a theme but the result is awful, it involves a strong feeling of repetition, terribly boring. Fix that means a big amount of graphic and level design to drop and redo.
  • Fight system, well ok that could be linked to the poor difficulty. On this point I totally disagree with the crowd. No, have a difficulty scaled to the party level isn't a wrong choice. Just play BG2 series and you know it.
  • Global story realism, too often it's hard to believe, at the ends it looks like they give up to setup something credible.
  • Last points is that I agree that more little links between various area and quests would be more fun.

I agree. Changing all that would be more than 10%. In fact, it would be around 90%. Also, the result would be a completely different game.

The way I read your critique is "I don't like easy-ish sandbox-exploration action-RPG's with bright, shiny fantasy worlds full of knights in shining armor." That's totally OK, and in fact this isn't my favorite kind of game either. My point was that Oblivion was a *bad* easy-ish sandbox-exploration etc., whereas with a moderate amount of work, it could have been a good one. Whether you like that kind of game is a different matter.
 
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My point was that Oblivion was a *bad* easy-ish sandbox-exploration etc., whereas with a moderate amount of work, it could have been a good one.

Exactly. Imagine how different the game would have been just with the exclusion of level scaling. That one simple change would have made a huge difference. There would actually be an incentive to battle enemies and level up, so you could feel some measure of accomplishment in conquering an area that was previously too difficult.
 
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What was missing (IMHO of fcourse) to make Oblivion a great TES game (and that is really all that would need to be):
- Less obtrusive level scaling (I don't say none, MW's was fine)
- More attention to lore: a more tropical imperial region, more new books, more development of imperial history and intrigue
- More clearly different regions
- At least slightly branching main quest offering one two or three alternative paths.
- Some decisions to be made as to which factions you choose (compare MW's Great Houses)
- More dungeon types, or more "special" dungeons.
- Much less Oblivion gates, but their realms much better designed, lore-drenched, challenging areas (think Battlespire).
- Less handholding (quest pop-ups specifically, compass optional)
- Making better use of the setting. The imperator is dead - where is the intrigue, the power-grabs, the scheming of the counts and countesses.
- Daggerfalls character generation.

But in a way I think it was also too early to tackle the imperial province in this game, technologically speaking. The heart of the empire came across as a poorly populated assembly of towns, with an army numbering a few hundred (resulting in an "epic" last stand battle with a dozen soldiers), and an imperial city that did not impress and did not breathe history. Maybe in 10 years they could have had a suitable numbers of NPC on screen to really get the idea of a bustling capital across, and shown the once-mighty army of the empire.
 
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Crap fights, no need use any brain, plastic world so poor mood, main story not well setup... You keep all and raise the difficulty level? So it's just, look the fancy graphics read passively the quests texts, follow stupidly the cursor and get tougher fights.

I wonder to what game you want bring Oblivion with 10% more work or even with only a higher difficulty level.

Do you mean Diablo or what? Diablo is the best bet I see except that action of Oblivion will never reach 10% of the action quality in Diablo, not with only 10% of work.
 
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Exactly. Imagine how different the game would have been just with the exclusion of level scaling. That one simple change would have made a huge difference. There would actually be an incentive to battle enemies and level up, so you could feel some measure of accomplishment in conquering an area that was previously too difficult.

Doesn't Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul fix this? I tried it and it was a lot more interesting, but by then I was so bored with the whole game that I couldn't get into it.
 
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Doesn't Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul fix this? I tried it and it was a lot more interesting, but by then I was so bored with the whole game that I couldn't get into it.

I took one look at the huge list of changes in OOO and immediately decided I would never use it. That mod doesn't just change the level scaling, but also modifies about 100 other things as well.
 
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There are mods that just target the level scaling. Don't remember the name, you could look or ask at the Oblivon mod forum.
 
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So you're saying that they should have used that 10% to fundamentally alter 90% of the game and change it back from a console action game with RPG-lite features to a RPG?

It wouldn't fundamentally alter the game for some play styles, those who enjoyed action RPG-lite could still have plugged away perfectly happily fighting the same scaled enemies again and again, people who just want a sandbox could have explored same as ever.

There'd just be a few more involving plot streams for those who want plots and the scope to switch off level scaling for the people who found it immersion destroying and irritating.
 
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Quite recently I´ve tried Oblivion with more than 100 mods installed and I was having a pretty good time.

Here are those with most of the impact:
Visual: DarkUI, Quarl´s Texture Pack Redimized, Bomret´s Shivering Isles Texture Pack, Natural Environments, Better Cities Full, Unique Landscapes Full, Alive Waters
Sound: Symphony of Violence, Atmospheric Oblivion, Audia Arcanum Sound Overhaul
Gameplay etc: Martigen's Monster Mod, Francesco's Leveled Creatures-Items, Tamriel Travellers, Enhanced Daedric Invasion, Midas Magic, KseAliLeveling
Quests: The Lost Spires, Malevolent, The Dungeons of Ivellon, Glenvar Castle, The Quest for the Elements
All can be found at either Planet Elder Scrolls or TesNexus.
Also, this http://devnull.devakm.googlepages.com/ is pretty good mod guide page.

With all these mods, the game was generally more engaging, natural, challenging and diverse, however it was still far from perfect and I can´t even imagine how boring the vanilla Oblivion must be.

As for Fallout 3, I don´t care much about it but if it´ll be moddable it may be a pretty good game after two years or so.
 
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