As a person who is a known critic of some of Bethesdas decisions, I wanted to play the game a couple of days and give it a real chance before giving my impressions.
First, I would like to say that I was wrong about the compass. It didn't turn out near as obtrusive as I feared it would. So it's only right that I state that publically.
The Good: The Graphics are great. Good performance on a A64-3000 with 6800GT. The quests are a big improvement over the fed ex quests of morrowind. The music is fantastic
The Fair: The combat is not a real improvement, and is now dependent on framerates more than it used to be. Bows may be a tad overpowered now. The AI is okay, but a little weird. The first opponent I encountered after leaving the starter dungeon charged right past me, down the beach, and drowned herself in the lake for no apparent reason. I don't think but one or two of these "major cities" is as big as the TOWN of Balmora was. And they still seem empty. Horses seem kind of pointless, but that could just be me. Not to crazy about the dumbing down of Alchemy so that now you automatically succeed in making your potions.
The Bad: The removal of armor slots and weapon types has cut down on the ways you can customize your charactor in ways that matter. Buggy. I had to reinstall after the first install would only allow me to quicksave or autosave. Both the old install and the new one occasionally "black out", just leaving the GUI and the sound. Oh, and once again torches are pointless. These have to be the most well lit dungeons there are.
The Really, Really Ugly: That interface. It just screams "CONSOLE PORT". It is not resizeable, is unintuitive, and is a step backwards from the interface in Morrowind in every fashion. It stinks. Period.
And the persuasion game. Thats just painful. I don't want to twiddle with that kind of stupidity when I'm trying to persuade somebody. Beth should at least have done like the lockpicking and had an auto try button based on the percentage.
Summation: Oblivion IS good enough to be a fairly credible successor to Daggerfall and Morrowind, but it is a step backwards from them in most of the ways that matter.
I give it 7.8 out of 10
Yeah OMfGg Beth, and I wanna suck ya hard one!After reading a lot of negative reviews on here I was wondering if the game had been overhyped and in the real world it wouldnt live up to its reputation but fear not --- The Game is xxxxxxx Awesome.!!!!
Only just done the 1st dungeon intro quest but wow.....
Graphics amazing..and the sense of immersion is fantastic...
No problems so far on my PC setup and running with 1280x1024, HDR, Bloom, High Textures it runs fantastic om my Shuttle SN25P \ 6800GT.
No complaints,...the game is the best one ive seen too now...This will take some beating for years to come...
Well done Bethesda... If you ever have any IT jobs going look me up..
You are a passionate professional bunch of guys and you deserve all the success and rewards you get. !!
Ok now to be fair, I have only been playing Oblivion for three or four hours, but so far I can't say (beyond the mind blowing visuals) that I am all that enthralled. If Morrowind wasn't my favourite game of all time I cant help but wonder if id drop this or keep playing.
It started out fine and after the escape through the sewers under the prison it felt just like Morrowind with some amazing additions and I was excited as hell.
Now that I am loose on the countryside I just can't get too enthused about things.
The interface is terrible, I feel like the whole game was designed with the new XBOX in mind rather than the PC. Add to this the new conversation menus - I feel like im playing a Final Fantasy game rather than TES.
The really great thing about Morrowind was the freedom to do whatever the hell you wanted. Oblivion feels very pushy. Im constantly prodded in the direction of quests. At the moment I have that black guy.... name starting with B from the blades... tracking me down no matter where I am and trying to get me to continue a quest with him. When i played morrowind I didnt even go see the skooma addicted imperial guy caius whateverhisnamewas until I had been playing it for weeks. I feel like im being herded along in a tour group with Oblivion.
I don't get any sort of feeling of exploration in this game either. I try to avoid the awfully "over convenient" fast travel option, but it isn't just that that makes things confusing. Ten minutes in the imperial city and I find myself longing for Vivec or Balmora.
Finally, I find even moving my character around a bit cumbersome. It doesnt steer like it did on Morrowind - Don't even get me started on horse riding controls. Why not just have the horse work like Mounts on World of Warcraft rather than have them steer like bicycles with the goose-neck welded into a rigid position?
I'll persist with Oblivion, will probably even get a bit better video card for it, but I hope im not the only one hesitating before awarding it 95% or something along those lines.
I have seen two great thing in this game that tell me the people that are complaining have not played enough to see some of the wow moments the AI creates. Here are two cool examples.
I went into a tavern and there were about 4 people in there I started talking with a guy and I started messing with the speech craft mini game. I got his disposition down to 0 and he said alright I have had enough. So he pulls a dagger out and starts coming after me. There happened to be a guard in there and he yells out "stop no fighting!" and pulls his sword. At this point I was backpeddling because I didn't have my weapon drawn (the whole encounter took me by surprise) and this big fight breaks out. It was great because the guard starts pounding on the guy who was attacking me and fruit, plates, and other stuff was flying around the room from all the fighting. I went to help the guard and accidentally hit another patron who was just watching. So he starts attacking me, all of a sudden 3 new guards enter the tavern and proceed to beat the hell out of me, the original patron that wanted to fight me and the guy I accidentally hit. That was fun!
Another incident was I found another guy in the same dungeon as me trying to loot a chest and the bandit that was in there attacked and killed him. I don't know if that was scripted but it was cool watching that encounter in sneak mode.
Any other good stories? I'm loving this game.
some strange things with the AI i've seen in maybe 10-15 hours:
1. sleeping NPCs won't come after you if you sneak-shoot them with a bow. if you're well hidden, you can shoot them from sneak, they'll get hurt, get up, and then get back into bed. repeat until dead.
2. they don't help each other very much. i had a little fight with a pirate in the imperial city waterfront. i shot him with an arrow with 2 of his buddies standing not 10 feet away. he ran to me, about 15 yards away, and we duked it out and not once did he get any help. after i looted his sword, i walked up to one of the pirates nearby and talked to her. she didn't attack me.
what about dead bodies, hiding them and stuff? i had a bandit walk over to the body of another bandit i had just killed and i thought "oh no, he's going to see the body and start looking for me." but he didn't. he walked OVER the body and went somewhere else.
3. i never see NPCs eat. they sit at their tables and do nothing with food in front of them. not sure what the deal with that is.
4. i thought they were supposed to have jobs? most of the time, all i see them do is leave their beds in the morning and wander around from room to room or street to street. sometimes they'll visit a pub..
5. i got a bounty placed on my head for pre-emptively killing an aggressor in one of the early quests. i knew he would attack me because i played through it and then reloaded the game, but because i am a sneak character i decided to attack him first. i did so, got a quest message saying "you killed him in self defense" or something. i left the tomb where i was and a guard accosted me IMMEDIATELY and hauled me off to jail. i hadn't stolen anything unaccounted for or broken into any locked buildings or containers. wtf?
