ES4: Oblivion - Retrospective Review

Deuce Traveler of the RPGCodex has written this funny review of Oblivion. The review was released on April 1st, nevertheless there's a lot of truths in it:

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You see, in Morrowind even fast leveling with minimal attribute gain was still a positive thing due to the maximum hit point and mana increases. However, once you introduce level scaling you now have an incentive not to level. Yes, Oblivion is a bizarro world RPG where you want to avoid leveling up. It may be the only RPG that has ever caused min-maxers to play with the intent of dragging out level ups. It works like this. You can choose seven skills as your major class skills. I typically lean upon Blade, Marksman, Security, Heavy Armor, and Stealth skills, with various magic skills for backup. I hardly ever use Mercantile, Hand-to-Hand, Armorer, Alchemy, Blunt, Destruction and Speechcraft. So of course I choose the latter as my major skills, and take the hit of poor starting scores for the skills I will actually depend upon in practice. Now I can almost completely control when I level up, and will likely be able to increase my desired attributes by five points each time I do. Enemies remain relatively weak while my character grows more powerful than the game anticipated. Thus a min-maxer can still game the system despite all the effort made by the developers to maintain difficulty throughout. Way to go!

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More information.

Without Oscuro's, Francesco's or (best) FCOM, Oblivion was unplayable in the long-term. But add one of the big overhauls and some minor tweaks and it became one of my favourite RPGs of all time.

I sank more time into Oblivion than Skyrim and even Morrowind (which was an almost religious experience for me back in the days when I first loaded it up without knowing anything about the game or ES in general).

Interesting and well written retrospective, I enjoyed reading it. Oblivion definitely had flaws, and the level scaling was horrific and the reason I'll probably never replay it. The generic dungeons were a bit dispiriting as well.... and shutting the Oblivion gates got old very quickly. But it also got a lot of things right - I thought the graphics were stunning at the time, and spent hours getting sucked in by the scenery and the cities. And the day/night and weather cycles blew me away, I'd not seen it done that well previously (maybe there are examples I don't know about). Some of the quests were also good - for example, vampirism was handled much better than Skyrim I thought, the benefits and drawbacks were well balanced and the quest to cure it took thought and time.

My friends and I were taken by Oblivion when it came out. We thought it was the pinnacle of what a game could be. I'm still in agreement that in 2006, it was. It holds as a fantastic game and mainly the draw distance, a visual complaint, is where I feel it's aged hardest.

I just reinstalled it.

I know a lot of people dislike Oblivion, and I don't know if it's just the attitude of this particular site (94/100 STEAM, 9.3/10 IGN for example) but I'm in defense of it. It was a magical few steps into the rise of open world games that continues to be the trend today.

My retort is thematic and comes in the form of a YouTube video by MrBTongue well worth watching:

https://youtu.be/4ZUynhkal1I

For me, the level scaling was a killer, and the Oblivion gates sections were boring, but it had a great deal of charm. I actually found the world much more enjoyable and atmospheric to explore than Skyrim, and much more playable than Morrrowind.

Embolus said:

I know a lot of people dislike Oblivion, and I don't know if it's just the attitude of this particular site (94/100 STEAM, 9.3/10 IGN for example) but I'm in defense of it. It was a magical few steps into the rise of open world games that continues to be the trend today.

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Most people here consider Morrowind to be superior in term of atmosphere and gameplay design. That's why there is a "dislike" for Oblivion.

I personally think Gothic 3 (also released in 2006) did some stuff better than Oblivion did too (and some stuff worst). I also had more fun in Two Worlds which released a year later.

By the way, I don't think there is more open world games released each year than there was pre-2006. They just get marketed a lot more because all the big franchises moved to the genre.

I actually stopped leveling up until after I had completed most quest lines. As the author joked, the game took away your incentive to do so. Why would I want to face a bandit in glass armor when I could ensure that he was only using leather armor? So my character completed everything, over the course of maybe 40ish (that's just a guess) days and nights while only sleeping 5 times.

Wow, reading this thread replies I realize now they are April Fools replies! You guys really had me going there for a minute. It was as if you had never heard of Gothic 2/Gothic 3 before… Haha, good one, you guys got me.

Morrowind & Skyrim are awesome games. Oblivion on the otherhand… The level scaling in that game really killed the fun for me. Obscuro's Oblivion overhaul tried fix that, but when the game is designed that way, even a mod like Obscuro can only do so much. Oblivion becomes enjoyable with OOO, but there are some annoynces. Main quest for instance remains quite repetative and dumb. Oblivion gates are opened everywhere, but npcs pretty much continue their existance like nothing has ever happened…

There is plenty of good in oblivion ofcourse. The gameword is beautifull like in all benthesa games. An other highlight were side quests. They were quite varied and as a whole nicely writen.

I could never get into Oblivion. Never even got as far as the level scaling. It was just boring to me, the story never really pulled me in.

azarhal said:

I personally think Gothic 3 (also released in 2006) did some stuff better than Oblivion did too (and some stuff worst).

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I know we're treading common ground in this thread but Gothic 3 is one of my favorites, too. Such an underrated gem, especially after the unofficial patches. Exploration in that game was just killer.

I genuinely love Oblivion. It's just a magical, charming world to explore. I recently played it for 300+ hours leisurely and had a blast, and barely scratched the surface of what the game has to offer.

Not my perfect game nor a perfect game at all, but what is? I still love it.

Took me a very long time to really enjoy OB. Coming from MW I immediately modded it to the eye balls with FCOM, lots of equipment mods etc etc. Turns out, for me, it made the game a real chore to play. I pushed through but ended up hating the overpowered enemies my setup threw at me so much I was killing them using the console - mainly to get through the gates. Years later on a whim I started another install with a couple of minimal overhaul type mods, focusing more on graphics, quests and only a few carefully selected equipment mods. This turned out to be the game I was looking for and I still enjoy playing it today. MW was for a very long time my TES game of choice but tbh I can't remember the last time I played it. Oblivion has been happily scratching that itch for me for the past 2 years or so…. Although this could be because when I have felt like visiting Vvardenfell I've done it in Oblivion via the Morroblivion mod.

I suppose its a bit of a pity for the wider audience it takes some polish via modding to get the game to that personal sweet spot. Luckily in my case I love tinkering with modding games so it worked out well. If you don't get into that then I can understand it might have been only an ok experience and not as snug a fit as something tweaked to your own tastes. That is however one of the best things about the past three TES games though, you can tweak them should you want to take the time and enjoy them all the more.

Closing the gates was still pretty tedious, I don't think there's much that could change that.

-KWM

I played Oblivion when it first came out and thought it was ok. I re-played it again last year (with a ton of mods) and loved it. It's still installed on my HD and I fire it up now and then.