Now we descend into Oblivion ... (pt 3)

[bonscott]

Yea I don't get the FPS thing either. Combat in OB isn't much different then MW, just a manual block. Heck, if you don't like to manually block then don't, just buy more heal potions. The "auto" block in MW rarely worked anyway so what's the diff?

The only thing "FPS" like that I see is that there is only one character vs. multiple like Dungeon Seige or Baulders Gate.

[El_Cid]

I think i need to clarify my 'FPS+OB' remarks

I spent a week and a half in OB happily exploring Cyrodill and not bothering with the main quest. It was ok, it looked great, and yes the quests were interesting.

But then i worked out that something was wrong. I was feeling prompted to rush around everywhere all the time, i didn't feel like i had the time to explore as i had in Daggerfall and to a lesser extent in MW. The world had become very small. The constant, repative voice acting was starting to get on my nerves(so i turned it down, but that just made it all feel weird).

I tried playing a selection of different character types - they all felt and played the same(or were so handicapped in melee as to offer no choice), so my role-play scope was limited compared to the previous games. I had to play a warrior with 100% success healing ability(as you can never fail). great role playing game.

After the 3rd char i started to see the limit(as in Morrowind) of the constant liniar guild quests that will always be the same. It doesn't actualy promote replay, especialy if there isn't much else to do because its difficult to role play a character and create something yourself.

Less skills, less stats, less choice = better rpg??

And after that week and a half of growing disapointment i decided maybe i should get on with the main-quest(something i never felt i 'needed' to do in Daggerfall, but became a choice in MW after a while).

Then after my visit into Oblivion via the gate at Kvatch i understood what was going on, and why i was feeling so disatisfied with this game, especialy compared to the previous games(Daggerfall in particular). And this is what i mean about FPS+OB. The Oblivion gate was pure FPS, i felt like i was playing an adrenaline action game, and not a deep rpg anymore.I could have been playing Heretic or Hexan. And this is what OB has been designed to be like.

The non-Oblivion gate parts of the game are ok(but because of the big cutbacks in the rpg stats/skills etc - kinda feel like an after thought of the main quest), but taken in context of the previous games and set alongside the Oblivion parts it became obvious that the whole target audience of the TES series has changed. They are appealing to console/FPS players first,and traditional rpgers last(or if at all in my case). OB has become all about the main quest(FPS wannabe) and less about the stuff you might like to do yourself - thats just how it feels.

So when i make the FPS+OB comparison that is what i mean, i could be more correct and say OB is moving in the direction of becoming a pure FPS game, and maybe TES V will be that monster; but i think it quickly describes the kind of game Oblivion is especialy compared to the older(and also FPS like, but with more rpg potential) games in the series

I'm glad if your enjoying Oblivion, i'm just sad to see another great game series go the way of mass-market and console(ie more shallow) driven design
I cant think of many good games series left to buy now.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The Oblivion gate was pure FPS, i felt like i was playing an adrenaline action game

Uh... just about every RPG has its combat heavy parts, where dialog is out the window and you just fight. The Oblivion areas aren't supposed to be a place you can do anything else... because, well, you aren't going to be talking to demons.

OB has become all about the main quest

You are nuts. There is so much to do in this game, the main quest hasn't even factored into my ideas, unless I'm in the general area as a main quest mission. Then I might take of it... or not.

I just don't see, at all, how Oblivion is more 'shallow' than Morrowind.

[yin26]

For me the prevailing feeling is one of "loneliness" when I play. You don't have a team with you, like back in the days of Ultima, Bard's Tale, etc. The team approach accomplishes at least a few things:

1] You can limit class skills (the way they should be, IMO) because now instead of having the ability to make an uber character, you have a team...and each member brings a vital skill set to the mix. Protecting your weak cleric takes on real strategic meaning because if he falls, there goes your healing, etc. Even games like Jagged Alliance took on the tradition, and I enjoyed it.

2] You simply feel part of something larger and more logical. Larger in the sense that, even if you are the leader of the team, you are relying on others to join and help. Logical in the sense that who would take on all these dire adventures by himself? Well, an uber character, I guess.

Of course, for the team approach to work, we're talking now about running combat by turns, which isn't at all what they were going for. On this point, I'm with El_Cid: I don't care for the FPS aspect of combat if the trade off is I have to go through the entire game as a single, uber character.

[ZargonX]

I think the main problem I've had with the game after playing it for a good long while is that it gets, well, pretty boring. Most of the tasks are pretty repetetive, and even the main storyline moves along at a pretty plodding pace through the portion of the game I am in. Sure, there are lots of quests to find, but they've all just started to blur together. This game could've used a few more writers to try and spice things up, I think.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by yin26
For me the prevailing feeling is one of "loneliness" when I play. You don't have a team with you, like back in the days of Ultima, Bard's Tale, etc.

Bard's Tale was an FPS with "combat components". I remember some other games like that, too. You move through the world(/maze) in first person view, but combat takes place in an abstract fashion. None of it is shown, nor is it all realistic (who else remembers Bard's Tale 2 fights in a 10' cubicle where some monsters start 90' away from you? Raise your hand!), and it was all so ungodly repetitive one wonders how we didn't all lose our minds.

Seriously. Lonely? I really don't get that. We now have voice-acted AIs who have semi-coherent lives and respond somewhat to player's actions, with facial expressions that actually convey something, and quests with some creativity behind them, and you're lonely just because your "party" doesn't come with six names on the combat automatons?


I found Arena and Daggerfall to be the height of gaming loneliness because there was so little that was recognizably human within them. Bard's Tale has to be a close third, though. My god. I used to map out the levels on graph paper. The programming was so transparent, I could flow chart it for you just from playing. ... THIS game is quite something else. I think most of the folks who are complaining (with a couple of exceptions) are too young to remember how bad bad really was back then.

You can't go home again. Memories are colored by the emotions you felt at the time, but going back with what you know now would be a tragedy. You'd spoil all your great memories with observations about just how raw things really were back there.


Even the repetitive aspects of Oblivion are fun to me, at this point. That's because I have thought about the alternatives. I played and enjoyed a lot of Diablo 1, and that was just as repetitive as this. Lots of monsters, the same clicking and maneuvering and hauling junk back to town to sell off. At least here I can choose from a hundred dungeons or caves to try first, and a bit more than Warrior/Rogue/Mage for gameplay.

I'm getting ready to start a new char on higher difficulty and see how that goes. I really enjoyed my Assassin (my fifth char) until the natural convergence of items and spells pushed me over the 100% Chameleon threshold in practice (and, combined with Expert/Master Sneak, the game suddenly broke on me. The AI is a bit too feckless when you have effective combat invisibility!)


Somebody said they feel rushed. I'm just the opposite. I know there are almost no time triggers in the program independent of player action. Things only happen when the player sets them in motion by tripping a trigger or setting a flag. Not only can everything wait, but it WILL ALL WAIT on me, at my pleasure. One of the pitfalls of open-ended design.

Logically, the player can save the world by simply never going anywhere near Kvatch. The events that happen there and set other things in motion will never trigger if you never even go there.

Still, I know it's just a computer program in the end, a projection of human consciousness in the design and the writing and the art, but merely bits and bytes in terms of manifestation. I can't help but interact with it that way. I suppose that's a pitfall of understanding programming.

Even so, ALL games are like that to me, and at least here I find the basic actions to be fun: exploring around, seeing what is there, fighting, treasure hunting, questing, dorking around in town, leveling, and so forth.


- Sirian

[Sirian]

Oh One More Thing(TM)...

If you want a team feeling, you can get that for real in MP games: MMOs, Diablo2... Heck, even (dare I say it) Civ4. A real team, and a nonlonely experience, requires other live people, for me at least. Single player is lonely by definition. I really don't get how it could not be.

Maybe I just think too much.


- Sirian

[yin26]

The on-line angle is the obvious "cure" to my ills, but I can't stand idiots in groups. I'd rather be an idiot all alone, thank you. Even if you don't buy into having a team along with you in SP = not lonely, it's the uber character thing that kills me. It completely lacks strategy once you get all your core stats up and you figure out one of a dozen ways to kill something. That's what I miss about the team "dynamic" is having a skill set spread across a half dozen characters...and if one of them dies, you miss an important skill set.

I used to graph out dungeons, too, though I must be misremembering combat in Bard's Tale; but people know the kind of SP "team" format I'm talking about. Looking back, I think it was the stark contrast of characters in Ultima that made things so fun in a very simple way: You had the brawn, the magician, the healer, the archer ...

By way of contrast, I think a lot of games these days are operating on "let the player do/become anything he wants." This makes coffee and doughnut sense from a marketing stand point, but to the degree that you go too far in removing limits, there's also the threat of losing the strategy or thinking involved. To be honest, I do very little thinking when I play Oblivion. I'm so rich I could buy every house in every town. I'm so powerful in so many ways that I need nobody for anything.

It's quickly become a sandbox RPG: the sky's the limit! (...until they let characters fly, that is...) I'm not saying the game isn't entertaining, mind you. It's pretty to look at, some of the quests are clever, and there's always that "hook" of wanting to save the world. And nothing says a game needs to be (or even should be) mentally taxing in order to be enjoyable, but I do just see the basic OB recipe as being:

Step 1: Spend a few days becoming an uber demi-God.
Step 2: Solve the quests...or don't. You're an uber demi-God now.

[snoopy369]

Then why don't you play one of the slower levelling mods?

[yin26]

Now, THIS was a team! I remember Iolo was the archer, right?



Dungeons never looked so good!

[yin26]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Then why don't you play one of the slower levelling mods?

This is a good point, Snoopy. Indeed, I am watching the mod scene. I already installed a number of them. After the next patch, I'll look closely at the levelling mods, too. I was thinking about finishing my current game, but I've barely touched the main quest, so I will give OB another shot in some months.

[yin26]

It's funny, though: I was just looking back at Ultima 9 and don't recall feeling "lonely" back then. Perhaps I just want more variety. U9 was really a precursor to OB in many ways, including the visual setup and single character approach:

[bonscott]

Originally posted by yin26
Now, THIS was a team! I remember Iolo was the archer, right?

Wow does that bring back memories. I got Ultima IV for Christmas for my C-64....maybe when I was 13 or so? Man I loved the cloth map that came with it and searching for Mandrake! I had a notebook dedicated to marking notes and mapping dungeons. Man that was fun....

Lots of memories of the Bard's Tale too.

Do any of you remember a game called Phantasie? I think it was from Microprose. Mid 80s or so. I remember battles had all your characters lined up at the bottom and then the enemies above and it was very much dice roll type combat. Loved every minute of it!

[Imran Siddiqui]

[q=yin26]It's quickly become a sandbox RPG[/q]

Well, that is basically the underlying point of Oblivion . And different RPGs have different view setups in group v. individual. TES games have decided they'll go with the individual setup, which natural has to lead to the uber-character in the end (I guess isn't one of the points that you want a peasant to become a God by the end? At least that's the impression I get in the official TES forums).

I guess they could have had a group, but I'd much rather perfer a Fallout type group rather than a BG type group (ie, you can give basic orders, but you can't control NPCs). That would keep the first person view that makes the game more immersive. Though, for their own design reasons, Bethesda decided one player character.

[Sirian]

Originally posted by yin26
Now, THIS was a team!

Was it really?

Took me 109,000 moves to finish the first time. 13,000 moves with spoiler info the second time. That was truly a great game, the first with interactive typing. However, you could shortcut a lot of the game by (intentionally, or accidentally) hitting on a keyword the gameplay hadn't really led you to, yet. They closed that loophole in U7, but at the cost of channeling you down a much more linear gameplay path.

And in the end, weren't the party members in U4 really just combat props? Almost like items or pieces of equipment that you add to your main char.

In the end, all the Ultima 4 chars were uberchars, too. IIRC, five could use Magic Wands, two could use the boomerang-style Magic Axes, and then there was poor Geoffrey, the Valor knight, stuck with a magic melee weapon. Just leave him in the back line and let him watch. ... Lots of gaming available before reaching this "mow em down" point, but it was there.

Oh, and Iolo was the bard, actually, but I'm sure you got to use him as an archer a good bit.

...the basic OB recipe as being:

Step 1: Spend a few days becoming an uber demi-God.

You mean like the Avatar? From the Ultima series?

(See what I mean about old memories? Heh.)

Even in Ultima IV, which was fairly decently balanced, you had to level up to pick up party members. Your Avatar (well, not YET the Avatar, but would be by the time you could get the whole party together) would be topped out at high level when you bring on that last party member.

Ultima VII still had a similar problem, as the Avatar was tougher, and directly under your control, so would level faster than the others, and only widen the gap between them.


Controlling a turn-based party always meant a LOT of micromanagement. Ever play some of the old SSI tactical combat games? Wizardry, for instance. There was nothing at all to that game except for endless (and ultimately meaningless) turn-based combat.

I'm guessing I played more U4 (and Wizardry, and other turn-based tactical combat games) than you did. Even so, didn't you come to hate the U4 combat music? Didn't you hear entirely too much of it? Didn't you spend too many hours of your life issuing move and attack orders for fights you were going to blow away, no contest? It was by far the best game going in its day, but I cringe just looking at that dungeon pic, and NOT because of the graphics!


- Sirian