Yet another long Oblivion "first impression" threa

[Diogo Ribeiro]

Given the situation, there's absolutely no way you could have realistically saved him, unless you knew beforehand exactly what was going to happen.

Realistically, no one would be frozen in their place against their will watching it all unfold.

 

[whitemithrandir]

The thing where you can't save the emperor isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Given the situation, there's absolutely no way you could have realistically saved him, unless you knew beforehand exactly what was going to happen. .

Realistically, the finest of the finest men in the Emperor's personal bodyguard service should not be dying in one hit to level 1 assasins.

 

[Solik]

It takes about half a second, tops. At most, you could have taken one step forward. The only way you could have prevented it would have been to position yourself at the exact perfect position, with your shield up to block the incoming blow.

EDIT: I didn't see them dying in one hit. In fact, they dispatch quite a few and take a good number of licks before going down.

 

[suibhne]

The thing where you can't save the emperor isn't nearly as bad as you make it out to be. Given the situation, there's absolutely no way you could have realistically saved him, unless you knew beforehand exactly what was going to happen. And the only way you could know that is from previous playing. That's "metagaming" and is in no way related to RP. It's also very, very quick; it's not like a JRPG cutscene or anything.

The plot isn't a literary masterpiece or anything. Its purpose is to be exciting and epic, and it's doing that just fine.

I have a hard time being too engaged by a narrative that defies common sense. I'm fine with it being unrealistic wrt to, say, elves and magic; I just expect it to follow its own rules. My plot gripes above weren't written in a vaccuum - I clearly explained how the plot violated its own narrative points. Reading comp ftw.

As for saving the Emperor...yes, it is as bad as I made it out to be. I had my bow out, aimed in the general direction of the ludicrously low-level assassin, but I couldn't do anything because the game literally froze my controls for 3-4 seconds while the assassin closed on the Emperor and killed him. (Fine, I'll admit I reloaded and tried it again, but that was to test the full extent of game design sins.) For chrissake, you're already under attack at that point, and it's pretty obvious that there might be a passageway where that assassin ends up emerging, so it's perfectly likely that the player will choose to cover the obvious angles. That's not metagaming from me, nor is it defensible game design from BethSoft.

Put it another way: why would BS freeze the player controls if there weren't a possibility that the player could otherwise kill the assassin and save the Emperor? And, if that's the case, isn't there a whole range of alternative designs which might have accomplished the Emperor's death much more effectively?

 

[Klinn]

Second of all, the Persuasion minigame forces you to use all the speech options. In other words, if you decide to use "diplomacy" at all, the game forces you to be a bully; there's literally no way you can't be a bully. Conversely, if you're playing a bully, the game forces you to also be a sycophantic flatterer even while you're threatening to bash an NPC's face in.

You nailed it. My favorite part is when you have to threaten NPCs - they spout some line indicating their fearfulness ("No, please, no more!") then break into a big smile since that action has somehow increased their disposition towards you.

Edit – a suggested quick fix for the Persuasion mini-game: As it stands, the type of NPC reaction indicates how they will react to the method of influence, e.g. they will smile if they will ‘enjoy’ being intimidated. An alternate approach would be to have a strong reaction indicate a promising approach to take, and no reaction indicating that you won’t be able to influence them in this manner. So if the cursor is over “Joke” and they give a big smile, that’s a good thing to hit when the wedge is full. But if the cursor is over “Coerce” and they make that sad/scared face, that also shows that they are strongly affected by that route, so hit that one when there’s a big wedge. If their face shows little emotion or reaction for a particular approach, then hit it when it’s a small wedge.

Doesn't fix everything, but at least it makes facial expressions correspond to the type of persuasion you are employing.

Second edit – to keep four levels of NPC reaction for each possible type of interaction, make them correspond to the positive or negative nature of the situation. For example, to demonstrate 1) large increase in disposition – 2) small increase – 3) small decrease – 4) large decrease:

Positive situation (Joke, Compliment): 1=big smile, 2=amused, 3=disinterested, 4=upset.
Negative situation (Coerce, Boast): 1=upset, 2=disinterested, 3=amused, 4=big smile.

In the case of Coerce, they break out into a big smile when your attempt is backfiring. (”You tryin’ to scare me, boy?”) They are upset when it’s working. The Boast category doesn’t quite fit unless you’re thinking of boasting as a means of asserting superiority over the NPC, so maybe a different label would be more effective.

In gameplay terms, this means you would have to notice not only when the NPC is smiling/upset, but how it relates to the type of persuasion. A slightly more involved logic puzzle.

 

[Licaon_Kter]

not sure in which one of the *many* Oblivion related threads, so i'll just do it here:

Todd Howard in "Making of"

Oblivion is a sword-and-sorcery-epic-role-playing-game, you know, the thing you see in Lord of the Rings or stuff like that and at it's heart, you know it is... this run through dungeons and kill things game... and all these features and it's all kind of ... there're so many things you'll get attach to... but at it's heart it's run through dungeons and kill creatures and take good stuff and buy bigger weapons and kill bigger creatures, and thats kind of layered in on top of this, wow look at these flowers, can i pick that? you know, it's almost two things sitting on top of each other, here's that game and then here's the virtual world.

i think we all know... now.

PS: the "..." are just small pauses that Todd Howard does while speaking, also there are no words removed by me (in case that the though/word stream does not make sense), also i dont know what ThinkfilmInc. edited out.

 

[LlamaGod]

the thing you see in Lord of the Rings

Todd likey likey pretty graphics, hatey hatey reading werdz

 

[Twinfalls]

This thread is on the front page of the ESF. It's now the type of thing being seen regularly there.

Oblivion, quite frankly, is an extremely underwhelming game. Nothing about it speaks of creativity or care. Throughout the next few paragraphs, I'll outline the reasons why Oblivion is a sub-par game.

To begin with, you're cast off in what is supposed to be an open-ended world, but in all actuality, it is as closed and narrow as can be. Your input in the game is minimal at best. You see, your character isn't going to be what you want him to be, but is actually an extension of the environment. Every action you do will be as a result of the environment calling for it. For instance, there's a quest in the game where you have to determine the identity of an Orkish knight, but the game forces you along an extremely narrow path that condemns your character to being the way it wants you to be. And this can be expanded to basically every other quest in the game. So in essence, your character can be all that you want it to be until the game wants you to do be something else. This is further aggregated by the fact that there's basically no real dialogue in the game. Your character is unable to express himself past using certain keywords, like 'rumours' or 'gray fox' to garner information and "hopefully," more keywords to use on other NPCs. As for the NPC dialogue, it is constantly recycled among all the other NPCs. Typically, NPCs will only say things that relate to a quest and rarely, if ever, will they say anything else. Which is another problem of the game since the NPCs do not really react to changes in the world. This is especially noticeable once you rise up to extreme prominence in a guild, like the Mages' Guild. You see, I became the Arch-Mage and practically no one acknowledged it save for fodder NPCs in the Arcane University. For all that the country of Cyrodil could care, I could be a beggar!

The RAI system fares no better than the rest of the game. As you all know, the RAI is supposed to bring life to the characters of the game, but it doesn't do that at all. In fact, it simply makes them commit some of the most unrealistic actions I've ever seen in a game before. For instance, I came upon a Breton greeting an Orc, whom promptly said, "Leave me alone, Breton scum!" Even so, the Breton asked, "What's news in the rest of Tamriel," to which the Orc replied cheerily. This is an all too often occurence in the game. And the foolishness of the RAI isn't limited simply to dialogue, but to combat, where mages will charge right up to you and begin attacking you with a dagger, despite having ample magicka to fight you with. This is all compounded by the fact that the NPCs adhere to such stringent protocols in their life that they will basically never do anything other then go to a tavern, talk to an NPC, or sleep in the same place as always. Suffice to say, the NPCs are as lifeless and dull as ever.

Oblivion isn't an RPG, it is an action-adventure and a poor one at that. Its sole focus is providing a ton of content that has no substance to it, much like an MMO, so if you like that sort of thing, then you'll love Oblivion. If not, RUN LIKE HELL! Oblivion receives a 2 out of 5 from me.

ps; Oblivion's implementation of combat is average at best. If you've ever played a game before, you've most likely played one with a better combat system.

http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/inde ... pic=291449

I liked this response:

I have to admit the sheer ecxitment i felt when i first played Morrowind didn't touch me with Oblivion. Maybe it's my [censored] [censored] graghics card. lol

 

[Vault Dweller]

Looks like the thread is gone.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

- stealth system is excellent

Whot about 360 npc vison, that sound like stealth system killer to me.

If they've already seen you, then they've got godlike knowledge of you from there on out. At least, that's how it appears to work from the videos.

 

[DemonKing]

I played about 6 hours last night and I am definitely enjoying it more than Morrowind, where I had to force myself to finish the main quest.

The Good

Quests are a lot clearer this time around - probably the voiced dialog helps a lot here plus the quest marker on the map.
Some of the quests have different endings depending on your actions/level of success, which I like.
Combat is ok but gets a little repetitive once you're facing demon after demon who all utilise the same strategy.
Graphics are generally decent (up close).
Some of the voice acting is quite good.

The Bad

NPCs generally look retarded and have an annoying pixelated shadow on their faces for some reason.
Inst-travel doesn't always seem to work as it should - I got a quest for one city I haven't been to that I can travel to instantly but with exactly the same situation in another city I have to travel there manually.
The UI sucks - like others habe found it is not intuitive to use the f1-4 keys to access inventory and other options plus I'm constantly hitting the escape key which doesn't work (thanks XBOX!)
Long range textures look like multi-coloured crap. Also NPCs pop in out of thin air in the distance sometimes.
What is it with all the long books? Does anyone ever read this crap?


Well, I'll put in some more hours today and see how I feel about it then.

 

[Twinfalls]

<belongs in another thread>

 

[Sisay]

I guess this thread is as good as any for posting my first impressions. I'm about 10 hours into this 200 hour epic masterpiece, made a custom thief/assassin type of character. Long time lurker since the NWN review, this is my longest post here.

First of all, has anyone gotten far in the guilds? They seem just as bad as in Morrowind, completely linear quest lines, no one actually reacts and all that jazz for what I've seen. The quests are better than in Morrowind but they're still pretty bad, lots of thinly disguised fed-exing and generic kill quests. I actually got a flashback from Gothic 2's beginning from a "fetch me some potatoes" quest but at least it didn't turn out to be quite that bad. As for multiple solutions, they're about as deep and have as much consequences as in Sacred (every now and then you can decide who you wish to side with but it's just meaningless fluff of no real consequence). Or Deus Ex, remember how they scold you and refuse to give ammo if you kill lots of people in the first mission.

As for Radiant AI, even ADOM had the super kewl NPC picks up a weapon from a fallen comrade type of scenarios. It's just the really, really basic stuff you have in every cRPG and some NPC scheludes thrown in for bonus. The NPCs still seem to end up standing around for no reason most of the time. I guess it's supposed to be an AI revolution since all the monsters just waiting around for the player to come slay them now actually walk around a bit. Why they're inhabiting Cave #1309 or Ruin #427, nobody knows. I completely agree on the persuasion minigame, it's horrible, makes no damn sense what-so-ever and is far too easy. I knew picking speechcraft as a major skill probably wouldn't be wise but I didn't quite expect this. I hate the lockpicking mini game, too, but at least it makes some sense. And I can auto-resolve.

The combat is definitely improved yet still simplistic, but it's a lot more twitch-based now. Saint nailed it in another topic, why do they insist on using 1st person view for melee when 3rd person is much better suited for the task. Oblivion's combat just doesn't compare to Die by the Sword or Severance and I'd say even the Gothics had much better combat. Combat, unsurprisingly, is another area where the Radiat AI shines again, most of the time the enemies just run towards you in a straight line (and that's just when they don't get stuck) or stand in one place casting spells/shooting arrows. The NPCs' supernatural ability to pinpoint your exact location when they've noticed you once is pretty damn annoying for a stealth character, too.

I was plesently surprised with the loading times while in the wilderness, they probably wouldn't be noticeable at all if it wasn't for the LOADING text. Separate zones for cities and houses is something I really didn't expect from a "next-gen" game, and why there are several zones in the same fucking building is beyond me. I can't say much about the graphics since I'm running the game on a Radeon 9800 Pro but the faces are pretty bad and the animation is a bit lacking, otherwise they seem very nice. Pop-up of buildings, grass and NPCs gets a bit annoying but that's partly due to my PC. OTOH as said, Far Cry didn't have any of this two years ago. Same with Operation Flashpoint even earlier. I'm getting a lot of CTDs, might have something to do with me having an ATI card since most of the people not having any trouble seem to be boasting fairly new nVidia cards.

The exploration aspect seems pretty fun but the dungeons you bump into aren't really all that interesting. Sure they're bigger than in Morrowind but they're nowhere near as big as in Daggerfall, and I'm really missing the dungeon design climbing and levitation allowed. There doesn't seem to be much variety to the dungeons but that's not exactly new in the TES series. Can't say the revolutionary Havok(TM) traps impressed me either.

The story thus far has been just as crappy as you'd expect, I really cringed at some of the things Patrick Stewart!!11 said at the beginning. Oh no the prince of generic evilness wants to conquer the land, here have a magic artifact. And they blamed Arcanum for an unoriginal beginning. Add that to a tutorial of FPS grade linearity and you get one underwhelming start of a game. The LOTR wannabe music didn't help one bit. The game gets better but I'm pretty sure I'll be bored out of my mind sooner or later like in Morrowind. Dialogue and writing as bas as ever and this time you've got that mini game making things worse. As mentioned the NPC responses conflict sometimes, the voices change in the middle of conversation and the WIKI system returns. There's just a lot less responses this time. The moron indicator for "I don't like you enough to tell you more" makes playing a talkative character even less compelling. It's not like you'll be solving quests by talking very often anyway, of course.

As has been known for a while, they dumbed down the skill list to 21. There doesn't seem to be any difference between what melee skill you choose and as mentioned, even the damn perks are the same. The perks themselves are just one big wasted opportunity and don't really add that much. When I first levelled up I thought damn did they include the point-buy system of Daggerfall but I was greatly mistaken, you choose to raise three stats and you get those really damn stupid stat multipliers based on the skills you've raised. The system just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me (exactly why does the order in which you gained the skills affect the stats?), and coupled with the auto-leveling monsters and raised difficulty (which in itself is a good thing) I can see some potential problems.

All in all I'd say it's an ok action/adventure game with exploration elements but the RPG just isn't there. I've definetly had some fun with the game, breaking into people's houses and exploring the wilderness etc but as an RPG Oblivion fails pretty damn bad. I don't feel like I wasted my £25 but this doesn't give much hope regarding Fallout 3 or the genre in general. CRPGs going the way of point&click adventures.

 

[franc kaos]

This is especially noticeable once you rise up to extreme prominence in a guild, like the Mages' Guild. You see, I became the Arch-Mage and practically no one acknowledged it save for fodder NPCs in the Arcane University. For all that the country of Cyrodil could care, I could be a beggar!

What the fuck, I thought MSFD on these very forums, said this had changed, and you could effect change in the game world once you'd reached these heights...

I was plesently surprised with the loading times while in the wilderness, they probably wouldn't be noticeable at all if it wasn't for the LOADING text...

There is an easy hack in the CS to stop that.

 

[Lowry]

The Stealth system combined with the Dark Brotherhood Quests is superb, a million times better than anything from Morrowind.

 

[Klinn]

If they've already seen you, then they've got godlike knowledge of you from there on out. At least, that's how it appears to work from the videos.

They certainly keep good tabs on you, but I have had them lose track of me while sneaking around. It's possible, just not very easy for my low-level character. My beef is the 'eye' indicator doesn't seem to have much variation, that is, it doesn't slowly fill up to indicate increasing awareness or risk a la FarCry. It's off (hidden) or on (discovered). Mind you, I have had NPCs give the typical responses like "Who's there?" to show that they are becoming aware but haven't discovered you yet. That's OK in dungeons but outside you're usually too far away to hear such things, even if they are spoken in those cases.

On a more general note, I gotta say that some of the dialogue touches are amusing. I joined the Fighters' Guild and got my first assignment, a rat problem of course. While exploring the rest of the Guild house I passed by the quest giver a couple of times. The first time he said (just in passing, no dialog window) "Haven't you got a rat problem to look after?" and the next time it was "Better get a move on, rat-boy". It was well voiced and really seemed to indicate a growing question in his mind as to whether this new recruit was really cut out for Guild work.

 

[Saint_Proverbius]

It takes about half a second, tops. At most, you could have taken one step forward. The only way you could have prevented it would have been to position yourself at the exact perfect position, with your shield up to block the incoming blow.

If it were too fast for you to stop it or twart it, then there would be no reason to freeze the player.

 

[obediah]

Here are my impressions 3 hours in:

System:

sexbox 360
37" 1080p lcd tv
roxoring (but 2 channel) sound by Rotel and PSB
comfy long couch by some company in North Carolina

Game:

Graphix - I really appreciate the irony of Beth sacrificing so much for uber graphics then having that goal crash back to reality. But, graphically, it's way above my bar, for the most part it looks great. Trapsing around outside is great scenery - I don't give a fuck yet about blurry distance textures our whatever, it looks good to me. Beating a crab to death with my fists and having one of them covered in blood afterwards was nice. Faces are still - off or wrong or something.

Bugs:

In the started dungeon the first time I went into the room with Picard the script system got hosed and nothing would happen. I spent 30 minutes looking for a trigger, and trying to get into the secret passage I could see on my map. Eventually, I went back to save and the guards did their thing the second time. Other than that I got stuck a few times, but wiggled free, and NPCs stuck at doors is goofy.

IMMERSHUN:

I think the started dungeon was larger than any dungeon I found in morrowind. I came out and went across some water and found a real live dungeon crawl and had quite a bit of fun in there. I was perplexed that a bandit didn't react to his buddy falling off a 3 story ledge to land at his feet with an arrow in his back, but what the hell? All in all, I loved my first real dungeon.

Then I decided to go to town and it all went to shit in a hurry. The radiant idle chit chat was stupid as fuck. It reminded me of South Park this week - <sing>I wanna make love to</sing> <worried and soft>the children</worried and soft>. The persuasion mini-game alone is enough to kill any hopes Oblivion had as an rpg. It hasn't really been challenging so far, but it pisses in immersions eyes, and when immersion opens her mouth to gasp, it shits down her throat. Others have done a better job explaining the details, so I'll leave it at that.

That's all I have so far, I'm only lvl 3, but I'm not power-gaming, so I'm sure my next update will have all sorts of bitching about the HASBRO NEVER-SURPRISED(TM) levelled encounter/loot system.

EDIT: Solik - the freeze the player for the assassination was a terrible fucking hack. It's bad in Doom III or jRPGS, but a game about freedom and such it's indefenseble (although you get a stale cookie for trying).

 

[Crazy_Vasey]

I'm playing it on a fairly mediocre PC by modern standards (AthlonXP 2800+, 512MB of RAM, Radeon 9800pro) and the lag is sapping my will to live. I've got the graphics options set so far down that the game look like Farcry's ugly stepsister (with serious popup issues) and it still lags like a bitch. I need to find a tweak to reduce the game's RAM usage I think, then it should be less irritating.

 

[Lumpy]

What is it with all the long books? Does anyone ever read this crap?

Redding is teh hard!111!!11!!1

 

[DemonKing]

What is it with all the long books? Does anyone ever read this crap?

Redding is teh hard!111!!11!!1

No - I enjoy a good read, but I don't play video games to read pages of meaningless filler text in a font that looks like it's straight out of the Commodore 64 era.

 

[kingcomrade]

I remember when I encountered books in Baldur's Gate (or maybe it was someone else's copy of NWN) that I read the first couple of sentences and went, "This is retarded, why would anyone want to read this shit."

 

[Shagnak]

I'm playing it on a fairly mediocre PC by modern standards (AthlonXP 2800+, 512MB of RAM, Radeon 9800pro) and the lag is sapping my will to live. I've got the graphics options set so far down that the game look like Farcry's ugly stepsister (with serious popup issues) and it still lags like a bitch. I need to find a tweak to reduce the game's RAM usage I think, then it should be less irritating.

I have a lesser cpu (A2600xp) but 1 GB of RAM and a "not-current-anymore but still quite good" video card in the form of a GF6800 (the boring valilla-flavoured version).

I even have HDR turned on and texture size set to "Large", but the distance stuff set to the defaults, other than character fade-out, which I've improved so I can get the drop on creatures with my mad bow skillz. Performance is good, but not perfect.

So, pointing out the obvious, you need more RAM and a card that has more current shader tech.

I am pleasantly surprise how well the bitch is running. Indoors look mighty fine, but admittedly outdoors doesn't look much better than MW for me (except close up stuff).
Oh, except for the sky, which looks motherfuckingly majestic.

 

[Shagnak]

All in all, I loved my first real dungeon.

Yeah, the dungeons seem pretty nice.
After my massive disappointment in the "big city" I wandered into a dungeon in the ruins of Fort Ash.

Not bad. It even had a friggin' lever puzzle in it.

I'm still only a few hours into the game, and I hope I notice more "old skool" dungeon bash aspects that have crept into the game.

Call me old-fashioned, but more of that sort of thing, even though it is a mouldy old cliche, and less of the execrable gimmicky mini-games like the Persuasion one (that is SHIT of the first order), and this game will get a higher score from me.

 

[Atrokkus]

And it is definitiely an RPG, meaningful dialogue choices or not.

No.