Oblivion-The best game?

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I think that there is a lot more RPG in Oblivion and that it is the better game.. I especially like the sidequests..

JM

Ok, i'm curious about that statement as its something i used to come across in the tes forums, and it seems to split opinion. What is RPG for you? in the sense of what makes Oblivion a more compelling rpg compared to the earlier games?
I find this interesting because for me i feel the complete opposite, as a crpg(note that difference) Oblivion offered me the least ammount of rpg out of the series.

What i look for in a crpg is slightly different than a pen+paper rpg. In a pen+paper rpg its all about the players imaginations coupled to the particular game system your playing.

I liked the slightly more complicated pnp rpgs, RuneQuest,Traveller,Call of Cuthulu. DnD was fun for a while and what started my interest in the whole genre, but after a while it got a bit....well cliched i guess. I liked the more detailed character development of the other games i mentioned - it wasn't just 'vorpal sword+2' etc

Still in pnp rpg's much of the interest came from your own imaginations - like 'ok i'm looking around at the cliff and i'm thinking of trying to climb up it to escape the bandits'. That might not have been in the DM's scenario at all, he wanted you to find that hidden cave entrance, but i could make it up and roll my dice to follow that course of action.

Now the difference in crpg's is that you dont have the freedom of expression as the DM is pretty simple and cant think on its feet. So you get more structure and a more confined/defined gaming world.

One thing i'm thinking people might mean about Oblivion being more rpg for them, is that they literally do make stuff up as they play. It has nothing to do with the gameworld parameters at all, nor will you recieve any feedback from the game at all about it? That i can see you could do in Oblivion quite well.

Still thats not what makes a crpg for me. Mostly its about character developement and how that effects the choices you can actualy make in the game. Added to that it helps if you have a compelling gameworld setting for those choices to play out in.

Fallout,Baldurs Gate, all the previous TES games, KOTOR - they all had that depth to the player character and great gameworlds to develope them in.

In that light its why Oblivion failed to me. I have less stats than previous TES to develope my character, and even with the ones that i do have most of them seem to have very little relevance to what i can do in the game, or the choices i make.
Still i find it an interesting concept that people do find Oblivion more crpg friendly than the previous games, sadly i just couldn't find the crpg to enjoy. I'll add you to the 'better' camp

Originally posted by Kassiopeia
I loved Oblivion for the first two hours I played. After ten hours, I still enjoyed it. After a week, I stopped playing "to pick it up again later", and haven't gone back. The game just loses you as it drags on. The repetitiveness and lack of true depth are why.

I have not played other TES games so no opinion there.

And thats interesting from the point of view of you not having played the previous games in the series, but even those that have have made similar complaints about Oblivion. I dont think i can technicaly add you to the list due to you not having played the earlier games, but i would say dont judge TES on your experience of playing Oblivion. As crpgs with depth they are a great series that can keep you interested for a long,long time. Maybe i'll make a 'disapointed' catagory for folks like you.

Arena is still a free download on the elderscrolls site and worth having a look at to see where it all started from - you may find it interesting that even at this early stage the ambition of the series was much more evolved than what Oblivion ended up being. Its a pretty old game, bad graphics etc - but the char development and the story and the size of the game world do put Oblivion to shame, so its might be worth checking out.

If you do like crpgs then definately check out Morrowind - i recently got the GOTY edition(includes all expansions) for about $10 and have gone back to playing it while i contemplate selling Oblivion. I had played Morrowind to death on Xbox before, but on the PC with a selection of great mods its become almost a new game to me - its alot more detailed than Oblivion and you have to read alot.

Daggerfall is my favourite - the most detailed char development, the biggest game world, the most freedom; but its a pain to find and run well(you need old hardware really - if you want to avoid crashes and not having music or sound). You can get more info from the guys in the Past games section of the elderscrolls forums if you decide you need to know more.

Originally posted by Dis
I played Morrowind a lot more.

I can't explain why. Perhaps because Oblivion isn't "different" enough. But I know that's not it. I played KOTOR2 all the way through even though it was very similar to the first one.

I can see they were thinking of KOTOR when they did the dialogue system for Oblivion, i think the main problem with Oblivions system in comparison is that they made the NPC's 100% voice dialogued. This effectivly cut the amount of options they could have, and led to the annoying liniar only one possible choice thing. KOTOR handled it all much better with voice acting in most key momments plus complete text. When you didnt have voice acting you could still find out info about the world around you. KOTOR was probably the best crpg i've played on a console, and a pretty decent crpg generaly - especialy if your a star wars fan.

Some people hated Morrowinds 'alien' setting(weird bugs etc), and it took me a while to get into it - still it was the sheer level of detail in Morrowinds world, on all levels that made Oblivion such a disapointment for me. Its like TES is going backwards, but has skipped the first two games(also more detailed/complex) and started out in a completely different direction; mostly involving incredible graphics and voice acting - like trying to make an interactive movie?

I'll add you to the 'worse than' camp

Originally posted by AmericanCitizen
Yep, that's accurate. I don't know...It was the repetition that eventually killed me. I just kept doing the same things over and over and over, but the story or the atmosphere or whatever just wasn't enough to keep me going.
Morrowind didn't have voice acting, but when I talked with someone, I felt that they had a little more background (even if it was just random stuff that all the other bots had) than here in Oblivion. I can't "chit chat" with people in Oblivion, all I can do is ask them about rumours and quest-related things. I don't know what profession these people are, what political beliefs they have, etc...It really detracted from the game for me.......edit......

Yeah definately - its like your eyes are the main point of stimulation, when you first get out the first dungeon(and at odd points going through it), its does blow you over - big wow factor. But all that does wear off and you find yourself getting frustrated that when you scratch the surface there is a lot less going on than you found in Morrowind. And that repetition factor can sink in hard, in the combat, in the dungeons, in the voice acting, pretty much everywhere sadly.

Oblivion best TES so far?

Quillian = better
Ball Lightning = better
Jon Miller = better

El_Cid = worse
Sir Ralph = worse
AmericanCitizen = worse
Dis = worse

Not played other TES - but dissapointed

Kassiopeia

[Quillan]

All the complaints people list against Oblivion (at least the ones listed here, rather than the rabid pack at the official forums) are legitimate gripes. The all-voice dialogue system really adds immersion to things, but it makes it lose depth. They don't have options for things they didn't record. It's really easy to add in some more text dialogue. And yes, your options got more limited in Oblivion than they did in Morrowind or Daggerfall. However, I think it depends mostly on the individual playing and what is important to them.

The one thing I disliked most about Morrowind was the poorly implemented mix of first-person-shooter with RPG random number generator in combat. I'd draw back my sword, swing it, and WHIFF! It would go right through the body of my opponent. Or I would shoot 30+ arrows at an enemy and hit with 1, although every one of those arrows would pass through it. I still liked the game, but it made it almost impossible for me to play someone who was good with ranged attacks, since I could never hit, and because I never hit the skill would never go up. Melee eventually increased. Most of the quests weren't as well designed as the majority in Oblivion either.

In a game like KOTOR, all the combat is left up to the random number generator; all you do is make decisions on what actions to undertake. In Morrowind, they left the execution up to you, but put in random success/failure that I really didn't like. I'm not trying to convince you guys that Oblivion is superior to Morrowind, but for me it is. It's just a matter of what I can shrug off and what I can't. Obviously for you it's different. No biggie.

[Kinjiru]

Oblivion best TES so far?

Quillian = better
Ball Lightning = better
Jon Miller = better

El_Cid = worse
Sir Ralph = worse
AmericanCitizen = worse
Dis = worse
Kinjiru = worse.

Things that were bad about Oblivion:
a) For me, Oblivion lacked soul. First indicator - the musical score. It was very derivative and not nearly as sweeping as the main theme in Morrowind (which I admit, was my first TES game).

b) A sense of scale. You are supposed to be exploring a big territory, yet you can see the central spire from anywhere in the land? That might be okay if the dang spire was a big giant thing, but it's not. Look at the intro movie, the guard is nearly as tall as the outer walls of the capital city. All in all, the game world felt really really small.

c) Enemy-level scaling. This was a great idea, but a piss-poor implementation. After level 15 or so, the challenge was gone as you could get great equipment off common bandits just off the main roadways.

d) Graphics. The graphics are not really that good. So much bother was made about how realistic things looked with HDR. No, they didn't. Just because you can put "glowy" on everything, doesn't mean you should. You want to immerse your player, spend more time on NPC animations and facial mapping, spend more time on making a truly responsive enviroment, spend some time optimizing your code so that it runs well.

< Minor rant on>
I have 'played' the game on three different machines. The highest spec machine (2.8 Ghz Dual Core, 2 256 meg cards in SLI, 2 gig ram) won't even run the game at playable framerates. My old machine, a laptop with 3.4 Ghz single core chip, 1 256 video card (no HDR support) and 1 gig ram runs the game pretty well. No freakin' excuse for this.


e) Character growth. A single char should not be able to do everything. Why on earth should a master mage be able to become a master warrior. This is just my personal preference of course, I know others like to be able to be god.


Things Oblivion did really well:
1) Lots of interesting little things to see in the countryside. The first time I rode to Kvatch along the road from the east during the evening, I noticed a shaft of light shinging upon something off to my left Investigation yielded an interesting tomb. That kinda thing was very cool. Sadly, there is little connection to the world at large for these things.

2) In the few instances of fully formed side quests, they were done very well with some interesting writing (some of the daedra quests, the female orc that wanted to be a knight). I just wish there was more content of this nature.

[Jon Miller]

I don't see why everyone complains of the enemy-level scaling...

You do know that in Morrowind, if you played the correct build that you could slaughter everything at like level 7, right?

Just as in Morrowind, in Oblivion you have to make your own challenge.

In Morrowind I had a lot of fun playing a character who thought magic was evil, and refused to use it (I did allow him to use magical artifacts (using evil to fight evil) and potions (he wasn't magical).

JM

[Skanky Burns]

In Morrowind, you could win the game with a level 1 character inside of half an hour without cheats.

Thats taking things to the extreme though.

[SirOsis]

For me Oblivion offers a more immersive enviornment. I tried to play Morrowind but the NPCs standing around distracted me. So far I've found Oblivion to play more to my tastes. I have started a new char with OOO 1.3 and a few mods and things are so much better than vanilla. The level progression is slow but I am enjoying taking my time. The mods I'm running are:

Unofficial Oblivion Patch
Living Economy
No psychic guards
No load
Visually Enchanted
Weather inside
Darker dungeons
Realistic Force
Cities alive at night
Harvest FLora
Natural Enviornment
PJ's Spell Compendium
Beautiful People
Natural Weather
Short Grass
OOO 1.3
Book Jackets
BT Mod
Unique Landscapes - all
Better Rings
Better Amulets
Weathered Direction signs
Illumination within revived optimized
Stereo sound overhaul
Low poly grass
LOD texture fix normal map
LOD replacement fix

That is most of em. Maybe forgetting a few. Runs great on my laptop too so for now put me in the 'better' category.

[Dis]

are you sure you don't need more mods?

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Quillan
edit......... The all-voice dialogue system really adds immersion to things, but it makes it lose depth. They don't have options for things they didn't record. It's really easy to add in some more text dialogue. And yes, your options got more limited in Oblivion than they did in Morrowind or Daggerfall......edit....

Yeah it could really limit the mod possibilities, the few that have added new quests(with new voice acting) don't really jell for me - it's incredibly hard(and time consuming) to get voice acting right, even for the origonal cast. Looking at the explosion of mods that Morrowind got it seems a step back in the direction they took TES with that game?

Originally posted by Quillan
The one thing I disliked most about Morrowind was the poorly implemented mix of first-person-shooter with RPG random number generator in combat. I'd draw back my sword, swing it, and WHIFF! It would go right through the body of my opponent. Or I would shoot 30+ arrows at an enemy and hit with 1, although every one of those arrows would pass through it. I still liked the game, but it made it almost impossible for me to play someone who was good with ranged attacks, since I could never hit, and because I never hit the skill would never go up. Melee eventually increased. Most of the quests weren't as well designed as the majority in Oblivion either.

The missing when you tried to hit thing became a useful part of the rpg for me. In Morrowind i actualy felt vunerable and low level when i arrived in Seyda Neen. Part of my gaming adventure was to try to get better in the skills i wanted to perfect. After 3-4months of solid gaming i was the tank i basicaly am when i first start out in Oblivion.

That aspect for me was my main disapointment in Oblivion - my stats didnt matter anymore, or at least not enough to make me care about them, so detracted from that aspect of character development, thus removing my interest in my character - in Oblivion they all feel the same to me, no matter what type i try to create.

Morrowind's combat was actualty a worse implemation of what they had acheived in Daggerfall. In Daggerfall you had much more control on your weapon strikes, like in Oblivion, but it was also stat dependant, in that to make a good strike you needed the skills(or weapon) to succeed. Overall Daggerfall has the best balance of weapon skill and hit chance out of the series imo.

Originally posted by Jon Miller
I don't see why everyone complains of the enemy-level scaling...

You do know that in Morrowind, if you played the correct build that you could slaughter everything at like level 7, right?

Just as in Morrowind, in Oblivion you have to make your own challenge.

In Morrowind I had a lot of fun playing a character who thought magic was evil, and refused to use it (I did allow him to use magical artifacts (using evil to fight evil) and potions (he wasn't magical).

It was very annoying that i had to cripple my gameplay in Morrowind to get the best out of it. After level 9 in my very first game i had already started to feel invincible - most of the tasks/quests i had access to or knew about were no real challange. Once i had found some decent weapons+armour and sussed out the magic system it became apparant i needed to make forced limits like you mentioned with that character that wouldn't use magic.

It was just not something i was used to having come from Daggerfall where you never knew if today would be the day you would die - because you never knew exactly what type of quest or enemy you might be facing(random quest generator). It was a strange transition to go from the one game where you spent your time mostly afraid or running away - to then become quite quickly a living uber god.

In Oblivion i felt potentialy pretty uber from the begining, ok stuff would kill me - but i could always hit and always use healing magic, so it seemed just a matter of time(not that long actualy) untill i got that decent weapon/armour combo and then it would be back to the anti-power play i developed in Morrowind, just with less choice over weapon/armour types to limit myself to.

As for the level scaling thing - they had already got a decent version of this in Daggerfall. Morrowind needed the levelling mods to make the game challanging, but in Oblvion the fact that everything scales with you is pretty poor/lazy - i suspect it was a thing they ran out of time to impliment properly, as it really obviously becomes a game breaker, mainly at the begining stages of higher levels,when every two-bit bandit has Daedric stuff. In over three years of playing Daggerfall i never have managed to get a complete set of Daedric armour(although Orcish is my favourite and even harder to find!).

Again Daggerfall is the only game in the TES series that seemed to get the balance right, some things levelled, some things like rats etc dont. The game remains a decent challange for the most part.

Originally posted by SirOsis
For me Oblivion offers a more immersive enviornment. I tried to play Morrowind but the NPCs standing around distracted me. So far I've found Oblivion to play more to my tastes....edit....

For me its almost completely down to the graphics+sound that make Oblivion immersive - everything else seems poor in comparison to the rest of the series? An interesting experiment would be to imagine playing Oblivion with Morrowinds graphics engine(no so bad at the time either) - which game would you rather play?

And your Mod list is impressive - when i stopped playing Oblivion i was running around the same amount, most of them trying to put back things that the previous games did better. This was my list more or less:

815-No persistant enchantment glow fix
980-Blue lagoon water
Callstead3.0a
DaggerfallBooks
Deadlier sneaking 1.1
FathisFix
FirstEditionGuidetotheEmpire
Francesco's Leveled creatures-items mod
Francesco's optional dungeon chest loot
Francesco's optional leveled Arena
GuildOwnership1.2
HTS
HTS.sfv
Level_Rates_Modified_x2
MagesGuildQuestFix
MD_Saddle_bagsv2
MM_NoMoreAnnoyingMesages-Lite
No psychic guards v1.2
OL_MyBrumaFireplacefix
persuasioncompatible1.8
ReducedbackwardsSpeed

HTS was probably my favourite one that added something new - i liked having to eat+drink+sleep, its also a version of the mod i use in Morrowind now.

In my current Morrowind game i run just over 100 mods!! Graphicaly its not as good as Oblivion, but the far better frame rates and the increased detail and colour the mods add make me actualy prefer it graphicaly to Oblivion. With those 100+ mods i just cant see a need to play Oblivion at all - i've got about another 200+ hours of adventure/quest content on top of the GOTY quests. I'll doubt i'll have finished it anytime soon.

And of course i have my on-going three year Daggerfall adventure - i havent even started the main quest and have only explored one province out of around 50. This comes back to the main reason i really feel let down with Oblivion.

ALL the previous games have more potential to provide really epic crpg gaming. Oblivion is a move to a much more stripped down and limited game model(heck you already have to pay for some little mods). In our current bland corporate gaming industry, its already a struggle to find games that offer more than just a few hours distraction then are over. For me that is the most dissapointing aspect, with Oblivion TES has moved into the mainstream and become just another game to play and forget about - its lost its class and uniqueness and become like everything else.

@Kinjru, i agree with all your points.

Oblivion best TES so far?

Quillian = better
Ball Lightning = better
Jon Miller = better
SirOsis = better

El_Cid = worse
Sir Ralph = worse
AmericanCitizen = worse
Dis = worse
Kinjiru = worse.

Not played other TES - but dissapointed

Kassiopeia

Not played other TES - but happy

[Kc7mxo]

I thoguht the autobalancing system was a good idea very badly implemented.

The lack of depth within the RPG aspect could have been ignored if it had a great deal of depth within the combat / magic system. But it lacks in depth there too.

My opinion was that it was a good game that needed another year in the oven with maybe another added designer who specialized in combat.

The game just got so terribly repetitive. Enter cave. Swing sword the same three ways for half an hour. Exit cave overburdened with expensive loot that a band of starving bandits probably shouldn't have had to begin with. Sell loot to the nearest merchant for an extreme loss on its actual value. Rinse repeat.

And I really disliked the gates. Although it doesn't take too long to get really good at them, and then its more of a race.

The combat in the game needed some more depth. More weapon types, more moves, less random swinging and charging. Some more combat stats, (more interesting endurance bar), MOUNTED COMBAT, enhanced archery and shield systems. . .

Or they should have really deepened the story.

[LDiCesare]

I haven't played Oblivion but enjoyed Morrowind to a point. So I talked to a guy who's a game designer and he told me how much he had been disappointed by Oblivion, so I think the trend I see here may be quite common. I was still thinking of buying it when I get a new PC, but I see here there's an all-voice dialogue system! Eeek. I'll never buy such a thing then. I want to read dialogues, not hear them.

[Dis]

That's a first. I don't mind hearing them, if they are worth hearing. KOTOR 1 and 2 did a good job with this.

The problem with Oblivion is they have probably 100 times more NPC's than KOTOR. So they have to reduce the number of things they can say. You don't have long drawn out conversations like you do in KOTOR 2. It's all pretty generic if you ask me.

[El_Cid]

Originally posted by Kc7mxo
I thoguht the autobalancing system was a good idea very badly implemented.

The lack of depth within the RPG aspect could have been ignored if it had a great deal of depth within the combat / magic system. But it lacks in depth there too.

My opinion was that it was a good game that needed another year in the oven with maybe another added designer who specialized in combat.

The game just got so terribly repetitive. Enter cave. Swing sword the same three ways for half an hour. Exit cave overburdened with expensive loot that a band of starving bandits probably shouldn't have had to begin with. Sell loot to the nearest merchant for an extreme loss on its actual value. Rinse repeat.

And I really disliked the gates. Although it doesn't take too long to get really good at them, and then its more of a race.

The combat in the game needed some more depth. More weapon types, more moves, less random swinging and charging. Some more combat stats, (more interesting endurance bar), MOUNTED COMBAT, enhanced archery and shield systems. . .

Or they should have really deepened the story.

Well i think Tod Howard is partly responsible for this confusion you can feel when you play Oblivion.

Is it an crpg? - in that case its got much less going on than all the previous TES games; stats,skills,weapons,guilds,quests,char development,lore, background detail,story even?

So it wasn't a good move in terms of the progression of the series as crpg's.

Is it an fps? - in that case ok its does have these typical rpg elements, stats etc; which is cool. And the combat does get frantic and looks cool with the physics engine as everything flies around all over the place. But as you say, even if you take is as an fps the balance of the combat system is pretty weak compared to most honest fps games.

So it wasn't a good move to make TES more fps like, atleast not in the way it turned out.

"imagine a game like Halo but set in the TES universe" - or something very close to that was a quote from Tod Howard in an interview i read from years back. They were discussing inspirational games and what Tod actualy liked to play. I'm not sure if Oblivion was being worked on at the time, but i can see the relevance of that interivew when i play Oblivion. And its one reason i really cant get into the game as a TES crpg. They should just have called it something else imho, not a TES.

And i completely agree about it needing more depth in the combat model and the story - still one of my gripes about 'next-gen' graphics is that it will take away from the rest of the game, i think Oblivion suffered from this.

I guess i can add you to the 'worse TES' camp Kc7mxo?

Originally posted by LDiCesare
I haven't played Oblivion but enjoyed Morrowind to a point. So I talked to a guy who's a game designer and he told me how much he had been disappointed by Oblivion, so I think the trend I see here may be quite common. I was still thinking of buying it when I get a new PC, but I see here there's an all-voice dialogue system! Eeek. I'll never buy such a thing then. I want to read dialogues, not hear them.

Originally posted by Dis
That's a first. I don't mind hearing them, if they are worth hearing. KOTOR 1 and 2 did a good job with this.

The problem with Oblivion is they have probably 100 times more NPC's than KOTOR. So they have to reduce the number of things they can say. You don't have long drawn out conversations like you do in KOTOR 2. It's all pretty generic if you ask me.

After my No1 gripe about Oblivion feeling less TES and more fps-like for me, No2 is the full voice dialogue system. You cant have a deep complex crpg with such a thing, and it will hamper mods that want to add more content.

I agree with Dis that both KOTOR's handled it all much better, in those games it doesn't jar you constantly out of the game world. Oblivion would have been much more immersive(long-term) if it had opted to have both voice dialogue and kept the text based backbone. I think it was a huge mistake to go with the full-voice for a crpg game of TES's reputation. Still i hear it looked great at E3 and wowed everyone: "wow! that looks amazing and has all voice dialogue! Awesome!"

Still to prove i'm not just simply an Oblivion hater or even a disgruntled ex-employee etc i want to metion some things i really liked about Oblivion, some things i can see having a place in a first person single protagonist crpg game.

Traps:

They were a great addition and i enjoyed having the option of not just having to run upto the enemy and hit them to death. Options in crpg are a good thing. I think they can't be too hard to impliment in a vast TES world, Daggerfall had them of a sort(more like be careful what lever you pulled). So having fun trip wires and pressure plates is something that could be enhanced further.

How about the abilty to set your own traps, or even disarm them - that would bring back into play the skills of your character(something Oblivion really needs imho). I guess it would be tricky to implement, maybe you'd need defined rules as to where and when you could set them up; like if you were seen setting one it should be unlikely the enemy would walk into it, or trip wires in the open in daylight might not work etc.

So i loved the traps.

Super detailed character appearence generation:

Great in principle, and if you have the patience to spend 1-2 hours everytime you create a new char then you can end up with just what you want. Still maybe in this case it got a little overcomplicated and twitchy? Even with a bunch of head-pack mods for Morrowind you still wouldn't always get what you wanted. So i like detailed personaliation of the player char - just tweek the system so it isn't such hard work and it becomes a great feature, especialy for role play. Oh and you really can't have a 'medieval' crpg and not have hairy beards.

Hmmm thats all i can think of for now, i didn't mention graphics as i think its a given that pretty much everyone likes the graphics.

Oblivion best TES so far?

Quillian = better
Ball Lightning = better
Jon Miller = better
SirOsis = better

El_Cid = worse
Sir Ralph = worse
AmericanCitizen = worse
Dis = worse
Kinjiru = worse
Kc7mxo = worse?

Not played other TES - but dissapointed

Kassiopeia

Not played other TES - but happy

[Tocca42]

You can add me to the worse list.

The first couple of days with Oblivion i felt they had improved a lot of things. But after a while, when the "wow look at the nice graphics" feeling had worn off you started to see the shortcomings.

I miss the scary feeling you got when exploring in Morrowind (atleast in the beginning).
Or even more in the Gothic series games (if anyone played thoose?). I can still remember the first time i stumbled upon an orc in Gothic... I heard him roar, jumped in my seat and didn't even have time to get my sword ready before it was game over!

In Morrowind (and even more in Gothic) you really felt you got better and better during the game, sure you got a bit too good eventually (in Gothic too) but you needed to advance to be able to do certain quests or go to certain places.
In Oblivion it doesn't matter much if you're level 3 or 20, you still beat whatever is out there.

Gothic and Gothic2 (Gothic3 is soon to be released btw) has shortcomings compared to Morrowind. But they also have a lot of things that's better.

Oblivion to me feels more like Gothic than Morrowind, but without many of Gothic's good stuff.

[Skanky Burns]

You can add me to the worse list too.

[Dis]

I agree about the scary part. I am by no means a master power gamer. I couldn't beat the game at level 7 in Morrowind. No way.

In the beginning it was scary going into some areas. Sure you could reload, but long reload times made that unreasonable. I tried not to die. . You really had to watch what you were getting yourself into.