The Oblivion Thread

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
I've heard people say they like the Morrowind interface, where when you pull up the menu (you also couldn't block yourself), you had 4 boxes (one in each corner) showing your stats, the map, inventory, and spells. It looked like a 5 year old came up with that setup. The inventory, in particular, was a huge annoyance, where you had to highlight things to find out what they were. And picking a certain item effect (in the spell box) could change what you were wearing if you weren't careful.

It was a horrid interface. This one has vastly. VASTLY improved that one.

After playing Fallout, BG, PST, etc I don't feel that manually blocking is really necessary for fun.

The Morrow interface was a bit intimidating at first, but showed everything that was desired. The tooltips came up immediately so there wasn't a problem in seeing what things are.

Oblivion does not even have tooltips.

It wasn't hard to tell what equips new items. The text was different colors.

Though it might be confusing at first, it was easy to learn.

[Apocalypse]

One great thing though.....more progress is being made in improving the interface.

Not only does the inventory show 12 items nicely, the spell list is also improved now.



Also wonderful....people are fixing the level lists. There are already quick mods that make vendor inventory/enemy levels location specific as opposed to everyone leveling with you everywhere. There will probably be a couple good stand out mods in this regard in the next few weeks. It is unfortunate that Bethesda couldn't have just done this in the first place. It was probably done to improve replayability with the xbox version. Vanilla Morrowind was quite easy at higher levels. On the PC, hundreds of thousands of people downloaded mods such as Giants to make the game much more difficult at later levels.

[Asher]

Originally posted by Apocalypse
If it was made for the PC first, the computer specs wouldn't be nearly an issue. The graphics really aren't that spectacular. It's like how the Final Fantasy ports ran retardedly slow.

If it was made for the PC first, the graphics would be worse.

For one thing, all of the trees in Oblivion are procedurally generated -- that is, they're randomly generated by an algorithm on the CPU before they're displayed. The Xbox 360's tri-core 3.2GHz processor can do this without breaking a sweat. In typical PC games the trees are all the same or with little variation and instanced. Boo!

Similarly, HDR incurs virtually no performance hit on the 360 due to the 256GB/s embedded RAM on the graphics chip, so it's used a lot. There's massive amounts of polygons/vertices because the Xbox basically has 48 vertex shaders when it needs them, versus 8 on the highest end graphics cards and 2-4 on the lower end but still playable graphics cards...

[Harovan]

Originally posted by Solver
The AI really livens up the world .

I'm walking on a road to a city, see a bandit slaughtering some deer, he attacks me, a guard rides up on a horse, gets down and helps me. Or, I go into the mages guild at night - empty, I go upstairs to the living quarters, see some mages sleeping in beds, another going into his room and shutting the door behind him. Nice.

That sounds pretty Ultima-VII-ish and was new when, 1992? I don't say it is bad, but it's hardly a feature worth to mention.

[Skanky Burns]

Almost every crpg have AI standing in the one spot or patrolling. They don't act naturally. This is certainly a step in the right direction.

[Asher]

Argh. First major annoyance: Vampirism...

Second major annoyance: The quest to cure Vampirism...

[Kinjiru]

Originally posted by Asher
Argh. First major annoyance: Vampirism...

Second major annoyance: The quest to cure Vampirism...

Now now, don't start complaining. Later on, you are going to WANT to play as a vampire, and you won't be able to catch vampirism no matter what you seem to do...

At least that is how things usually seem to work out for me!

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=Apocalypse]The graphics really aren't that spectacular.[/q]

Ok, now you are just talking nonsense... or don't have a top of the line computer.

The Morrow interface was a bit intimidating at first, but showed everything that was desired. The tooltips came up immediately so there wasn't a problem in seeing what things are.

Relying on 'tooltips', even after you've been playing it for months (what is the difference between two magical swords unless you wait for the tool tip to tell you) is a sign of an inefficient interface. You should be able to see it without relying on a tool tip... or at the very least, the tool tip should tell newbies what the graphical representations mean, but you don't need them as you put in more time.

Also wonderful....people are fixing the level lists. There are already quick mods that make vendor inventory/enemy levels location specific as opposed to everyone leveling with you everywhere. There will probably be a couple good stand out mods in this regard in the next few weeks. It is unfortunate that Bethesda couldn't have just done this in the first place. It was probably done to improve replayability with the xbox version. Vanilla Morrowind was quite easy at higher levels. On the PC, hundreds of thousands of people downloaded mods such as Giants to make the game much more difficult at later levels.

So wait, first you say that Morrowind was too easy at the higher levels, then you applaud people messing around with the level lists?! WTF? The reason they are messing around with it is because they don't want enemies to scale with gaining levels, ie, they WANT it to be like Morrowind, because they think part of the fun is go from a nobody to an out an out God.

Don't you read the forum posts that lead to such mods, Apoc?

[Solver]

OK, I'll just have to write sort of a mini-review later .

Really, though, I'm vrey, very pleased so far, and I do now have enough hours in it. Morrowind is one of my favorite games ever, but Oblivion outdoes it in every aspect. I haven't seen most of the story so far, of course, but it's already obvious that many sidequests have a much deeper story to them than Morrowind, where sidequests often had no to little story.

[Solver]

The balance in Oblivion is so much better than in Morrowind! Of course, having a balanced game is a very tough thing to accomplish when you also have an open-ended game, and of course you can exploit Oblivion if you want to, but it doesn't have the almost inherent imbalance of Morrowind.

My character (a mage of course) is currently at level 4. Appropriately for level 4, I am quite weak. Practically helpless if I run out of mana. I need help from guards sometimes. I actually need to think about where I'm going, especially since I can't easily escape from anywhere.

Better yet, there are things I can't do. Such as open the toughest locks. In Morrowind, at level 4 I could open any lock in the game - locks were practically meangingless except the very beginning.

The economy is also much better balanced. Money here is harder to gain, although there are several ways to make a profit, but again, you have to actually do something for them (unless you exploit the game completely). Like, I go, explore a couple of caves, collect the weapons and other stuff from goblins, come to a city and sell the stuff. Looking around the stores and stuff, I see enough expensive stuff to buy. Like spells, I've seen spells for 3000-4000 gold. Excellent. So even when I can get thousands of gold, I'll have stuff to spend it on, without training. In Morrowind, IMO, stores were actually largely useless, especially for mages, as you could just find anything you need.

Very, very impressed .

[yin26]

Agreed. Money seems much tighter. I'm a level 4 Dark Elf with a flair for sneaking and marksmanship. The combat in general just has a wonderfully visceral feel. Probably because I enjoy the Sam Fisher character/gameplay so much (Splinter Cell), I wanted to try something similar with my Oblivion character...and it's pretty close! It actually takes some skill and patience to set up your 3x damage sneak arrow shot, switch to some flame spells to get a few more hits in before the enemy closes, then switch to shield and sword, using the timing of blocks, counter attacks, the occasional spell thrown it, to bring the guy down. Mainly zombies, which are pretty hard still for me, and skeletons -- who drop in a nice flurry with a single 3x arrow shot!

Sure, there is a lot of dungeon crawling, but after 3 dungeons so far, I can say that I've enjoyed each one as its own mini episode.

[Solver]

The following spoiler box is spoilers for the main quest, only read if you're past shutting down the first Oblivion gate.

Spoiler:

I was seriously impressed, actually, with my first trip to Oblivion. First I thought it looked kind of dull, seemed a mix of Doom3 hell (95%) and Half-Life Xen (5%). As I progressed, though, I quickly grew to like the style of Oblivion, there's some nice stuff. Loved those magicka/blood fountains. Having to kick the rears of all those Dremora is a bit hard, but fun.

And then the battle for Kvatch with the guards, just feels great. It's epic, cinematic, and yet another factor in the world feel alives thing. In Morrowind, the entire province is going to get doomed, I'm the only one doing something, all the guards/soldiers are stationed somewhere statically. Here, running through a ruined and burning city with several soldiers to kick some serious Daedra ass is a great experience. Can be downright hard for a mage though, I ran out of magicka potions and then it was nearly kaput.

[SirOsis]

I am enjoying the game quite a bit. I have not completed any quests other than the tutorial and exploring is quite fun.

I never could get into Morrowind but this game I have no problem. I really like the quick travel for those times when I really just want to go back to the city and not roam the countryside.

[Dis]

I'm getting this game monday. I want to get it today, but I won't have much time to play the next 2 days. . I don't know if I can wait 2 days.

[Felch]

First time I played Morrowind I hated it. I'd gotten it around the same time as NWN, and I knew which game I preferred.

I didn't get into it until I read a million people talk about it here, and a couple buddies told me to give it a second shot. I liked it, but I knew it had serious problems.

Those problems have definitely been solved here. I loved the first side quest I took, it was a huge leap above the old FedEx missions in Morrowind.

My favorite little bit so far is the rag doll physics. Watching a goblin corpse get crushed by a portcullis, then dragged up by it when it was raised, and dropped when it reached the top - it's just so much fun to desecrate the bodies of the selfish and wicked.