May as well (re)post my own here, on the TES forum it will probably be swept to page 10 before anyone can read it.
Package: The CE is nice, reminds me a lot of the LTR special edition DVD sets. I got it mostly for the guide to the empire, and that’s nicely done. The coin – the design and portrait keeps reminding me of Lenin (
http://members.surfeu.at/horvath/iwan2.jpg)
Installation: The installation went nice and fast. However it locked up on starting the DirectX installation. First time that ever happened to me. However the game started up without problems after a reboot. My 7900GT was not recognized by the system profiler, so I had to manually adjust to higher settings, which I did right away (and was positively impressed with the number of settings and sliders).
Creating my Breton character was quite a joy. Facegen isn’t all that easy to use, but some experimenting yielded a face I really liked. The prison escape series was nicely done, however the class suggestion (bard!) was pretty off. It’s something I thought would be a problem: of course people will want to try out all the gameplay options in the intro, so most folks will get a jack of all trades class suggestion.
The dungeons generally looks great of course, but during the intro came my first graphical disappointments. Faces look hideous with self-shadowing enabled, so I had to turn that off. Speaking of shadows, I hate to bring this tired topic up again, but I think the absence of shadows from architecture and larger statics keeps Oblivion from really looking that “next gen†– in dungeons and cities it looks a lot like MW, actually. This is obvious in contrast to the places with shadows (under trees), which really lifts the graphics above the ordinary, while chests and items often seem to float because they cast no shadows. I accept its impossible with current hardware, but it lessens the visual leap next-gen was supposedly to bring. Texture stretching occurs relatively frequently and looks worse because the mapping effect don’t take well to the stretching. I also get a weird checkerboard effect on some surfaces (e.g. cobblestone in Chorrol) that looks like a shader glitch to me – It makes textures look extremely low-res somehow. Another slight disappointment in the starting dungeon was the goblins just standing or wandering around. I had expected them to be more animated and, well, to be doing goblin stuff. Sound was great, especially the surface sensitive footstep sounds were done really well. Music is blending in well, creating the right mood but nothing more – well suited for a long game such as this, I think.
Finally out of the dungeon began a real rollercoaster ride of emotions. At first I was elated with the view and the night sky. Then I noticed that the textures on the hill opposite were really looking as badly low-res as some previews had hinted at (I don’tmind this effect at all on the really distant mountains, but it starts rather close by, and there are very visible seams between low and high res textures). In addition there is this very obvious tiling of high res landscape textures. The real shock came as I moved closer, and a whole hillside of blurry texture suddenly popped into high res. I was stunned and felt my stomach sinking – I still can’t quite grasp how Bethesda could be satisfied with this “solution†in a game that otherwise has so much beauty in it. To soothe my nerves I turned around and walked up the hill a bit and enjoyed a breathtaking sunrise over the lake and the distant mountains.
This kind of summarizes my feeling for Oblivions graphics, I have never felt such a disparity between breathtakingly beautiful and terribly jarring moments in a game before. I walk through the lush forest, the shadows of the leaves play on the ground and on my swords blade, a butterfly flutters by, I glimpse views of distant mountains in the blue haze far away, birds chirp – and I am truly transported to Tamriel like never before, what an incredible achievement! Then suddenly I walk uphill and a whole hillside changes its texture from blurry lush green to grey rock and yellowish dried grass texture. Should they not at least fade in, like the grass effect does? Or a whole ruin lazily pops into view, building by building, and rather close (again it doesn’t fade in, as I was convinced it would). As an effect I spent the rest of my first night with Oblivion tweaking the ini to increase texture draw distance and reduce pop-in as much as I could (with some success). To be fair, there are large portions of the game (within forests) where these problems never become apparent. You can walk all the way from the imperial city to Kvatch and almost never become aware of it. But walk up the mountains, and they get pretty bad. The disparity continued with faces. Some are totally convincing, convey character and the emotion system is wonderful – these guys are alive! Others just look off, with bad proportions, missing texturing on the “outer parts†of the face, and glaring texture seams at the neck. Same with water – at first it looks nice, but somehow it seems smoother and more unrealistic than MW’s, the rain ripples look less convincing, and my character makes no ripples at all – clearly a step backwards, is it not? In general, I wonder if Oblivion would not have been better off with a bit less ambitious but more cohesive graphical system – although I admit the forests and the view on the distant mountains would be hard to give up once you have seen them.
My first impressions of radiant AI are also a bit mixed. The “unscripted†conversations are sometimes great, sometimes silly. They are best if you only hear bits and pieces from a distance. They can get really annoying if you have several going on at once nearby (since they all stay really loud) as happened to me shortly after leaving the starting dungeon and entering the imperial market district. In general RAI somewhat fails to make the cities feel truly lively. When you meet people they are mostly standing or walking around. There is a lack of “working†animations to give them true life – blacksmiths hammering, bartenders cleaning glasses or preparing food, etc. There are highlights though – people sitting down on a bench, someone practicing marksman skill on a target, a woman walking her dogs, people reading, or sleeping. It just seems too far between especially in the city streets to make the impact it should have made. Still, it’s a huge step up from MW, just not as far as I believed. Greatest moment so far: After a fight a body was left in chorrols street and a guard comes up, kneels down (I thought he was going to pilfer) and says: “Body is still warm. Must be a killer about.â€. Cool.
Later, I waited in two pubs for the evening crowd to come in and to have a chat (now that I can sit down with my ale!) but nobody showed up. The rooms remained empty. OK, so I ate some garlic, but surely RAI does not have that keen a sense of smell? It was another sinking feeling moment.
With 15 hours I have still barely scratched the surface of what the game has to offer by ways of quests. My first impressions are again divided. The quest writing in general seems clearly improved. I refused a certain quest in skingard (Pssst! Over here!) and was delighted to be presented with the consequences of my actions the next morning. Several quests seem to have you deal with opposing interests of NPC’s, and the pacing and exitement of the main quest has so far been great. All this is a huge step up from MW. However, the dialogue is still the stepchild. Too often you are given one-liners with no options. If there are options its mostly only for quest branching, you can’t express your character in dialogue at all. Again, I had thought we would see a little more of that kind of stuff. Also the character writing could certainly be better.
[minor spoiler ahead]
For example Martin, a priest all his life, seems a bit too easily convinced when you tell him who he is. I fully expected to have to use a bit of speechcraft here, instead I go IIRC “why would I lie†and he goes like â€yeah, you have helped the guards fight, so you must speak the truth! I’m coming with you!â€. Eh???
In general though it is at least better than MW, some characters do make an impact despite the railed conversation.
The magic compass is usually easily ignored, and the quest marker can be set manually. Overall it can be helpful, and is no more a spoiler than MW’s little map. Still it is sometimes used illogically. [Minor Spoiler ahead]
Inside the Oblivion gate in Kvatch, the compass leads you exactly to the prisoner, through the rather maze-like tower structure. Although you have no clear idea where he is. That’s not good.
Speaking of conversation. I love the full audio, but it seems it has taken a heavy toll on the available topics. Most citizens have little of interest to say now, and even less often can you react to what they said. Now only guards can tell me the directions to guilds and stores? Why? If someone tells me a rumor about someone, I can often not ask about that person. Also the “graying out†feature doesn’t fully work. Go to a new city and the topic “directions†is already grayed out, although the guard of course does have something new to say of this city. On the other hand I don’t know how often I heard the same rumour about the mages guild and necromancy and it is lighting up in gold every time I meet a new NPC willing to part with this invaluable piece of information. The “wiki-links†are gone, but there is too little “dialogue tree†to replace it. I can’t ask people about their background anymore, or about general topics (although as a nice touch they sometimes tell their story if you ask them about their hometown). Voiceacting was good in most cases, sometimes excellent (Sean Bean), imperials – sometimes a bit overacted “have you heard about Kvaa-aa-aatch†(with high-pitched fearful voice).
Unfortunately conversations do not seem to be recorded and linked to your journal entries as before (MW with expansions). And sometimes the journal entries are a bit incomplete, so such a feature would still be helpful. Journal entries still have a tendency to push you in one direction: “I now should go and talk to X†even when the dialogue itself seems to suggest more options are available.
The freeform adventuring is very reminiscent of morrowind, random dungeons are easy to find, and so far seem nicely designed, although not exactly huge. The traps are a great addition – however so far it’s the only thing where the physics tie into the gameplay, other than that it seems cosmetic. Eyelid dungeons really look gorgeous (if such can be said of monster filled dark pits).
The land is almost a bit too harmless right now, with a few wolves and skittish deer. I found myself using the fast travel already a few times, although I do enjoy strolling through the forests, too. It’s great meeting other travelers on the road now, and seeing the occasional RAI action with guards fighting robbers.
Combat is really improved, it feels great, and manual blocking adds much needed player involvement, IMHO. I also enjoy the quick magic casting a lot. With multiple foes things can get a bit frantic, but that’s maybe a given. Magic certainly has been given some great visual effects. I love the new “predator†invisibility effect on opponents, fire spells look great etc. If streamlining was so important that levitation and mark&recall had to bite the dust, I wonder though why there are still so many “drain skill†spells on sale – I never found those at all useful – same is true for 5% shield spells for 10 seconds…
Combat AI is somewhat, but not terribly improved. Weird things certainly happen. E.g. in a cave I sneaked up to two goblins standing side by side. One notices me and we start fighting, swords clash, the other guy still stands with his back to me, so after a while I take a stab at him: 4x damage for sneak attack! Is he deaf AND blind?
The interface – well I am not very picky with interfaces, it works OK for me. But a great improvement over MW it is not. I do seem to need more clicks to get what I want, and I despise not being able to hotkey each individual tab (I know I can get the inventory or the map with F1-F4, but there are 4 or more tabs in each category). I am also disappointed that they still kept the limit of 8 hotkeys – I have a whole keyboard available here! The font size should be scaled down so I can see more of my inventory at once. And why are there no tooltips for the icons?
So in summary, I had a bit of a rough start with Oblivion. I would say I had a harder time getting into it than with Morrowind, with graphical glitches, and design issues throwing me off course just because it generally looks so good. I am a bit disappointed with the dialogue options I have seen so far, but maybe there is more to come. Exploring the land and the dungeons is better than ever, but maybe it just doesn’t feel as fresh anymore after playing MW for so long (and maybe the lingering knowledge of loot being leveled curbs the motivation a bit, too). I am having fun now after getting used to some things and tweaking the graphics, and I am motivated for the main quest, but some of my expectations were a bit disappointed. Nobody makes huge free fantasy worlds like Bethesda does, and I still love them for it, but the game has kept throwing me off with a number of “little†things that made it hard for me to get into it, because they keep rubbing me the wrong way, and because of the improvements that I expected and that are NOT there. Well, let’s see what the next 50 hours bring. That's a good thing at least, with most other games I would be almost done now, with a TES game I merely started.
So in several things the critics here proved right. Still Oblivion brings some things to the table that I miss in any other game. Oh well.
Throughout the escape, there are multiple battles against ambushing assassins (most of which you can take part in). Guards will fall as you go, and the emperor says various things to you along the way. The actual assassination at the end is when the guards are fighting them outside of a room (that you think is safe) when a guy jumps out of a tunnel in a wall or something and axes him down. He doesn't tell you anything after that -- he's quite dead.
