Comments on: Living in Oblivion

By: pvg

pvg — Mon, 24 Apr 2006 06:12:20 +0000

This is certainly true, the NPC’s are not significantly more wooden than in many an RPG. The plot is no more hackneyed. The various glaring deficiencies are no greater or more pronounced than in RPGs I’ve put 8 hour late night sessions in. It’s hard to really put my finger on what made me actually care in, say, KOTOR or Fallout 2 or Planescape. But somehow those games added up to more than the sums of their flawed parts.
Oblivion adds up to less for me and it is not because I don’t like the combat or the fact the that emperor looks like a hobo really messes with my ability to suspend disbelief. I play it, enjoy it a fair bit but I find myself not really giving a pair of fetid dingo’s kidneys. At the end of the day, caring-on-rails might be more important than broad but bland freedom.

-pvg

By: Hirsch

Hirsch — Sun, 23 Apr 2006 20:27:04 +0000

…”No matter what you do, you are a relatively mediocre figure in a perfeclty weight-adjusted world. While this does enable a great deal of free exploration, it never lets you feel, even fleetingly, as a badass linchpin of a motherfucker”…

I’m old crpg player, also spent much time in Daggerfall long time ago, with big hopes started to explore this game, got 5 min eiphory, then all non-consistent things came out one after another, started read forums, complaints and as much i hate it i was forced to agree to most of them… this game have no fun, almost all aspects broken, i almost can’t name single thing what is good in game… until u name it! Thats SO GOOD not to play as “badass linchpin of a motherfucker” as in 100% all other crpg… after all this game have an edge! /sry my english, its my 5th language

By: psu

psu — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 20:21:01 +0000

In the game’s defense, the world and the NPCs are no less zombie-like than the world and NPCs in any other game that I’ve played. It’s true that they were hyped up a bit, but who really believes that stuff.

By: pvg

pvg — Sat, 22 Apr 2006 19:29:38 +0000

There is a great deal (or, arguably, more than in any other game to date) of incidental content in this game but this doesn’t make the world feel more alive to me, or perhaps it does but it is not the kind of aliveness that I find interesting enough in a game. The real world is quite alive and full of a myriad of little highly realistic chores for me to procrastinate on. Both Morrowind and Oblivion seem to model this with soulsucking fidelity. Just as I will not become a significant player in the real world by repeatedly doing my laundry and changing the cat litter, Oblivion gives me little reward for doing boring things.

The key points of whining -

1. Main quest is unengaging. Perhaps not so much on the elements of the story itself but the fact that the characters are bland and uninteresting. The fine voice acting helps little – that everyone’s face, as the Russian expression goes, is begging for a brick, helps even less.

2. The realtime combat is boring and clunky. In most action games (and that is what the combat is here, an action mini-game), the action has depth, putting in more time practising makes you better. You _can_ become a deadly with the railgun in Quake, you _can_ crush all your friends with Akira in Virtua Fighter. There seems to be no such payoff in Oblivion combat.

3. Combining 1&2 and a myriad of other details, like the leveling system, money, etc – it is inordinately difficult to achieve and feel exceptionality. No matter what you do, you are a relatively mediocre figure in a perfeclty weight-adjusted world. While this does enable a great deal of free exploration, it never lets you feel, even fleetingly, as a badass linchpin of a motherfucker. And this is not a fair tradeoff.

-pvg

By: peterb

peterb — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 01:01:45 +0000

> Pete should buy this game soon.

Hey, man. Convince people to click on enough google ads that we make a few hundred bucks in a short period of time, and I’ll buy a 360 before you know it.

But really, $465 is a lot to spend for one game.