The Let's Rant and Rave About Oblivion Thread

Well I think there could be a lot of good discussion about the game and its mods. I'd certainly like to know about what the latest "fix" mod is. That's changed over the years. There was the multiplayer mod as well.

I think there's more than just cynicism that can be commented on it.

The one point about all the buzz on the net about it already is a good point. Certainly there isn't the interest in Gothic "out there" than there is here. It makes sense to have a forum. Does NWN2 need another forum then? Discussions of the game are certainly plentiful already on the Bioware forums.

But as I said, Its a bit of a moot point at now considering its release date. Mind you I made one comment yesterday and there were nine comments after so maybe Oblivion discussion is still relevant.

Oblivion subforum would make a lot of sense to me.
It's a CRPG. A very popular one too. And the GOTY edition
is just being released.

Or even better… a subforum dedicated to elder scrolls.
Now that would be even better. And make A LOT of sense.

All the past Elder Scrolls games… and the future ones.
Yeah!

I'd support an ES forum, but such decisions are made by the Admins. Generally, they consider the amount of traffic a game generates on the site before deciding on new forums. We had an ES forum back at the Dot, but I rarely visited it

With my new machine and a few weeks before class I was thinking of firing this up for real this time.

What mods should I get to play it with sanity. I recall there's a good comprehensive one that gets regular updates.

It's not a bad idea having ES forum but don't make it just for Oblivion *Shudder*. Make it for all of them.

Lucky Day, Gamespy's ten essential mods. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.co…rticles.Detail

If you are willing to download a 2 gig file then I highly recomend Qarl's texture mod III. http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.co…Detail&id=2363 It made a huge difference in the graphics. Although, the people in Oblivion still all have baby faces.

I think I found out about the ten essential mod list here at The Watch a long time ago. I used all of the ten essential mods except natural environments and it made the game a bit more playable, but in the end I still gave up. It was just too boring even with the mods.

What about the BTMod?

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.co…s.Detail&id=25

or how about the list of most downloaded?

http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.co…ir=DESC&w=&p=1

I gathered numbers of user made contents from BallOfFire's Oblivion modlist page:

1) Phinix immersive DarkUI 1.2 + OOO SI compatibility fix
2) Purse of wonder 0.5
3) Realistic physics and force 1.0
4) OOO Complete 1.33
5) Sudden Violence 2.0
6) Deadly Reflex 4.03
7) Oblivion script optimizer 1.0
8) Atmospheric Wheater system 2.1
9) OMOD 1.0168

Any comments & suggestions?

rant and rave huh?

Id love to join in, but im more in the mood for positive conversation today :þ

i will say this…. They didnt get it right, it pretty much sucked… Everyone who LIKES the game is not playing it the way the devs created it, they're playing Mod versions where non-game-dev users have made better additions than the actual company itself!!

Bethsoft? pffffffffft, they're absolutely crap. I fear for fallout 3

I liked it. I played it vanilla.

Yeah, I quite liked it too. I mean it could've been a lot better and it was far inferior to morrowind. But it was alright. And I won't touch mods. There are far worse RPG's out there nowadays.

One word:

LEVEL SCALING

I finished Morrowind and all expansions. I think Morrowind is one of the best RPGS around. My expectations were the same for Oblivion. I thought: "Ok. Here we'll have tha same good rpg system we liked in Morrowind, perhaps refined and implemented, and better sound and gfx….."
So I went to my local store and bought it.
Installed it.
Started it……
And I found a console game, with a lot of video effects, level scaling monsters and treasure (like a mix between a 3d shoot 'em up and flight simulator by foot…) and few, poor rpg elements.
I uninstalled it.

Originally Posted by Gragnak
One word:

LEVEL SCALING

That's two words

Eh eh eh….
Ok.
One word:
LEVELSCALING

Oblivion will always be regarded as one of the greatest games that could have been, IMO. Those kinds of games are always controversial, because there's plenty to like if you can get over the disappointment.

The single best thing that ever happened to those games are mods. So I will definitely mod Oblivion the next time I decide to give it another shot.

Originally Posted by Squeek
Oblivion will always be regarded as one of the greatest games that could have been, IMO.

Really? Mainstream media consider it one of the greatest ever, while for RPG fans it is one of the most divisive ever …

Originally Posted by txa1265
Really? Mainstream media consider it one of the greatest ever, while for RPG fans it is one of the most divisive ever …

I think most of us are already aware of those things, Mike, and they add up to be much of my point. I'm missing yours, honestly. Do you think it didn't have that potential or that it actually achieved it? Or do you mean something else entirely?

I see where Mike is coming from on that one, almost all of the reviews gave that game a very high score, while most hardcore CRPG players seen to either love it or hate it.

I'm still undecided myself, as I've never played far enough into Oblivion yet to determine whether or not I like it.

I thought Oblivion could be one of the greatest games I would have played. Because I liked Morrowind so much.
So imo it could have been one of the greatest, but the way they went opposite Morrowind in many aspects was a big dissappoinment, and though its not a bad game, its not one of the greatest nor is it better than Morrowind imo.

Originally Posted by Squeek
I think most of us are already aware of those things, Mike, and they add up to be much of my point. I'm missing yours, honestly. Do you think it didn't have that potential or that it actually achieved it? Or do you mean something else entirely?

I guess I violate both of my points - I gave the game 8/10 … and pretty much consider that 'as good as it gets' for the game. No matter what you patch, the Oblivion Gates are boring, the 'open world' is boring, the overwhelming majority of quests are one-dimensional, and there are pretty much zero actual choices.

What turned out to be bad about Oblivion is that Bethesda actually listened to Morrowind players. Ironic, I suppose, but there's a lesson there for game developers. Like the Chinese say "be careful what you wish for you just may get it."

Morrowind players wanted horses, and despite Bethesda developers saying they weren't worth the development time, they put them in Oblivion. Great. Happy? You've got your horse. You get on one for the first time, switch to 3rd person view and marvel at how cool your character looks riding through the countryside on horseback. But after a couple minutes of this you're like "uh… what now?" You can't fight on a horse; can't pick flowers; can't talk to anyone; can't enter indoor areas. It's just eye-candy and probably took hundreds of developer hours to put into the game.

Another big complaint about Morrowind was combat was too short: you could kill most enemies in 1 or 2 hits. So in Oblivion (thanks to level-scaling) every fight takes several hits. You swing and miss; dodge; block a hit with your shield; cast a fireball; whack with your sword; get hit with a blow… finally the enemy dies. Wow! That was fun and I really felt like I was in a fight for my life. You walk 30 feet and it's another fight. Then another… it just got so boring and tedious after awhile I just found myself racing through dungeons with half a dozen monsters chasing me because fighting was too boring to bother with.

One other thing that bugged me: Bethesda re-hired all the same voice-actors from Morrowind. So all the Redguards sounded the same; all the Nords sounded the same (hey! it's Wonder Woman again!). For anyone who logged hundreds of hours in Morrowind it really made Oblivion feel stale. Just to freshen things up couldn't they have hired new voice actors?