The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[Roto13]

So how is it? I'm refusing to trust game reviews on this one because it's one of those hype games. :P

I've heard some mixed things about it. People who love it love how immersive it is, but I also hear complaints that it's padded with a really slow pace. I don't like games that are too slow. :P I'm considering getting it (the PS3 version) because it's pretty cheap now, but I've never played an Elder Scrolls game and I'm not sure exactly how they play. Most of the information I find about it just goes on and on about how everyone has a mind of their own and it's really big and blah blah blah blah, but nobody seems to want to talk about things like the battle system and level system and dungeon design and stuff.

So yeah. Advise me, dear internet!

[Vyk]

You set the pace yourself. Its more realistic open world (albeit a fantasy world). Erm, I mean in comparison to games like GTA. You can enter any building. Talk to any person have some modicum of conversation. The sheer number of things to do can be overwhelming. But you don't -have- to do anything. So its just got a lot of options. And you can pretty much do anything at any time. If you're given a quest you're not required to do right then. Its a game you can take your time with. But it doesn't have to be slow. Just the way most people play is slow. My brother, for one, prefers it that way. Only real complaint I have is that its a very lonely game. You're a lone adventurer. And you don't make any real friends aside from having to do certain quests for (or in rare cases, -with-) people. You'll want to get the patch, though if you're playing it on a system that will probably initiate automatically. Its a large beautiful game. With hundreds of people. Maybe a thousand or so. I'm not sure. But its lonely :(

Edit: I suppose I should have gotten to the point of your post. You don't level up by experience points. You pick like 10 skills that you major in, and those level up faster than your other skills. Once you've acquired 5 accumulative levels amongst those major skills you get to level up. And each skill is set to one of your stats. If you get five levels in one skill you get to add five points to that stat. And you gain levels in skills simply by using them. Fighting is kinda wobbly. But you get used to it. If you can imagine any 3D shooter game using a sword instead. And if you go into third person view, if you imagine how stupid you look from first person view if you'd back the camera up. Yeah. It looks that stupid xD Its not horribly bad though. And its pretty easy to kill anything by darting in, attacking, and darting away real quick

The dungeons don't vary wildly. They don't usually get much bigger than 3 floors. And aren't usually very vast, per floor. And there's only a hand full of "types" of dungeons. But for some reason it takes a while for it to feel repetitive. Probably because you can do a dozen different types of quests rather than just going in dungeon after dungeon (though there are a quite a few dozen dungeons). Most quests have you solving problems in people's lives, which rarely requires you to go into a dungeon. Usually you have to hunt someone down and talk to them and/or kill them

[Markus. D]

There's also a GIANT ENEMY CRAB somewhere in there too =]

[Psychotic]

I've just bought it and have been playing this game obsessively for the past week or two. It's my first Elder Scrolls game too. It's great, it's sucked up countless hours of my time and will probably suck up yours too if you let it (I haven't even bothered with the main quest yet!) because there's just so much stuff to see and do. It's not as immersive as some would have you think. A lot of the NPCs look and dress the same, and I swear there are only two or three god damn voice actors for thousands of characters. You will come to know and hate each voice actor in turn.

Anyway, battle system? It's real time, and it's first person (I didn't know it was first person until I got it). Just hack away with your sword/axe/whatever or carefully aim your arrows - I am sure headshots do more damage but I could be wrong. You can also cast a bunch of magic crap real time too, with various buffs, heals, damaging attacks, summons and what have you. I've found it's pretty easy just to block an enemy's attack with my shield, then smack them twice with my sword afterwards.

I love the levelling up system in this game. You raise your skills by doing actions a lot. If you jump a lot, your acrobatics skill will go up. Hacking stuff with a sword a lot will make your blade skill up. Picking a bunch of locks will increase your security skill, etc. etc. Once you have raised a certain amount of core skills, you can go to bed, and when you wake up you will level up, and then you can choose some stats to raise (although they all have already raised based on the skills you levelled up during the day. If you talk to people a lot and make them like you, thus boosting your Speechcraft skill, your Personality stat will have gone up a lot in the night)

Dungeon design...meh. Lots of winding tunnels with the odd treasure chest or evil beast. Nothing to write home about there. Overall I'd say yeah, it's great, but sometimes it feels like something is missing.

[Roto13]

Well it sounds promising. I've been playing too many JRPGs lately and this sounds to be distinctly western.

Is it true that you can kill, like, anybody in the whole game? xP

[Psychotic]

No. Important quest characters are "knocked out".

[Roto13]

Aww. I wanted to, like, assassinate the royal family.

So I guess in your opinion it's worth the $30? :P If I pick it up (and you guys make me want to xP) it'll probably be after I finish Disgaea.

[Vyk]

Note you don't have to play it in first person. Though it is a bit more immersive that way. On 360 if you push in one of the joysticks it changes views. Probably the same with the PS3 (I think pushing it in is called L3 and R3?) Same way as getting in and out of sneak mode. Just can't remember which stick does which, since its usually my brother playing..

[Sir Lancealot]

No. Important quest characters are "knocked out".
As well as MOST people who are meant to die a scripted death.

[o_O]

No. Important quest characters are "knocked out".
As well as MOST people who are meant to die a scripted death.

You can use the console to enable important characters' deaths if you really want to kill them. Kinda ruins the game if you do though. :p

[Karellen]

I have not played Oblivion but I played Morrowind and it was terrible. I hear Oblivion is even worse, so I didn't bother. Then again these are the same people who recommended Morrowind, so maybe I'll give it a shot one day.

That doesn't really help you at all, of course.

[CimminyCricket]

Aww. I wanted to, like, assassinate the royal family.

So I guess in your opinion it's worth the $30? :P If I pick it up (and you guys make me want to xP) it'll probably be after I finish Disgaea.

Everyone here saw it, Frontsmack, you can't run from it this time. But, I swear, if you try, I'm going to kill you.

[Psychotic]

Note you don't have to play it in first person. Though it is a bit more immersive that way. On 360 if you push in one of the joysticks it changes views. Probably the same with the PS3 (I think pushing it in is called L3 and R3?) Same way as getting in and out of sneak mode. Just can't remember which stick does which, since its usually my brother playing..Huh, never knew that. It'd probably be the right stick as the left stick is sneak mode.

[Goldenboko]

Oblivion is a great game, I just couldn't get into it because Morrowind was so much better. >:/

[JKTrix]

Loved it, played it *obsessively* for a week (like over 40 hours, which is a lot for a working man), then forced myself to quit cold turkey to play Kingdom Hearts 2 which came out a week later. Haven't touched the game since, out of fear of addiction.

Recommended, especially 'cheap' *thumbsup*

[Aerith's Knight]

Played it 170 hours..

"Nuff said.

However the dungeons tend to be of the same general likeness..

[Quindiana Jones]

I've just bought it and have been playing this game obsessively for the past week or two. It's my first Elder Scrolls game too. It's great, it's sucked up countless hours of my time and will probably suck up yours too if you let it (I haven't even bothered with the main quest yet!) because there's just so much stuff to see and do. It's not as immersive as some would have you think. A lot of the NPCs look and dress the same, and I swear there are only two or three god damn voice actors for thousands of characters. You will come to know and hate each voice actor in turn.

Anyway, battle system? It's real time, and it's first person (I didn't know it was first person until I got it). Just hack away with your sword/axe/whatever or carefully aim your arrows - I am sure headshots do more damage but I could be wrong. You can also cast a bunch of magic crap real time too, with various buffs, heals, damaging attacks, summons and what have you. I've found it's pretty easy just to block an enemy's attack with my shield, then smack them twice with my sword afterwards.

I love the levelling up system in this game. You raise your skills by doing actions a lot. If you jump a lot, your acrobatics skill will go up. Hacking stuff with a sword a lot will make your blade skill up. Picking a bunch of locks will increase your security skill, etc. etc. Once you have raised a certain amount of core skills, you can go to bed, and when you wake up you will level up, and then you can choose some stats to raise (although they all have already raised based on the skills you levelled up during the day. If you talk to people a lot and make them like you, thus boosting your Speechcraft skill, your Personality stat will have gone up a lot in the night)

Dungeon design...meh. Lots of winding tunnels with the odd treasure chest or evil beast. Nothing to write home about there. Overall I'd say yeah, it's great, but sometimes it feels like something is missing.

Pretty much this. Also, you have full character design, which is neat.

I haven't even started the main quest yet, and I've been on it for ages. The Guild sub-quest stories are brilliant - I suggest leaving the Assassin's Guild till last. It's definitely worth buying, especially considering how cheap it is.

[escobert]

I couldn't stop playing until I turned into a vampire and getting un vampireish is a bnitch

[Roto13]

Aww. I wanted to, like, assassinate the royal family.

So I guess in your opinion it's worth the $30? :P If I pick it up (and you guys make me want to xP) it'll probably be after I finish Disgaea.

Everyone here saw it, Frontsmack, you can't run from it this time. But, I swear, if you try, I'm going to kill you.

I'm gonna do it! Also, why are these quote tags lowercase? Did you do them yourself? Why?


Loved it, played it *obsessively* for a week (like over 40 hours, which is a lot for a working man), then forced myself to quit cold turkey to play Kingdom Hearts 2 which came out a week later. Haven't touched the game since, out of fear of addiction.

Recommended, especially 'cheap' *thumbsup*

Alright, if you, who are notorious for playing games and loving them for about an hour before moving on to something else, say that you won't play it any more because it's just so addicting, that must really mean something. xD


I couldn't stop playing until I turned into a vampire and getting un vampireish is a bnitch

Why the hell would you want to? Vampires are awesomsauce.

[Quindiana Jones]

You get hurt by the Sun if you're a vampire. It's pretty neat. You burn, smoke and start sizzling. You can drink the important, non-killing NPCs blood too, which makes for some easy blood. And you have an infinite use power that let's you see in the dark and sense life. But that powers pretty weak. Mr necklace or ring or something has a better life detection, and NightEye is rarely useful.

[escobert]

Yeah it's fun sucking blood but loosing health in the day (no fast travel when you are taking dmg) and that fact noone wants to talk to you can make it annoying.

[Aerith's Knight]

I hated being a vampire. That quest sucked bigtime.

But I had fun with the glitch in the wizard home. xD

Getting all the sigil stones was fun. :p

And the copy thing was cool too. That little lake in Anvil is filled to the brim with Varla stones. xD

I put them in there so they don't mess up the processing power. xD

[Slothy]

It's certainly addicting but some of the things people love about it I eventually got sick of and stopped playing it because of.

I actually don't like the levelling system, mainly because it isn't explained that well in the game or manual, and some skills are just rediculously difficult/tedious to level up, especially if you didn't specialize in them at the start. I also got really tired of almost every dungeon looking exactly the same, and being sent on random fetch quests by people for most of the game. Sure it's rewarding to do, but it does wear thin eventually. I might not mind the quests as much if there was a cool story I could go back to and play for a while instead, but the story quests are largely more of the same and the story itself fell pretty flat with me.

I suppose I shouldn't be too hard on it; exploring was fun for quite a while, and I did do my fair share of quests racking up 30-40 hours in the game. Like I said it was addicting, I just got bored by that point and will probably never care enough to finish it.

[Pete for President]

I hated being a vampire. That quest sucked bigtime.



Definately, it took forever to complete.

I wish I had made a more interesting character at the beginning though. Things got really repetitive playing as a crusader, hacking and slashing always worked best which made combat lose it's fun.

[Laddy]

Get Morrowind. So much better.

Oblivion's good, though. If flawed.

[Psychotic]

I haven't even started the main quest yet, and I've been on it for ages. The Guild sub-quest stories are brilliant - I suggest leaving the Assassin's Guild till last. It's definitely worth buying, especially considering how cheap it is.I started with the Dark Brotherhood. Go figure!

[Quindiana Jones]

Yeah, so did I. Dark Brotherhood, Fighter's, doing Mage's now, then going onto Thieves. Then I'll do the main quest.

[Psychotic]

I did Dark Brotherhood before doing the Arena, just finished the Thieves and have now moved onto Fighter's. Not really interested in Mage's Guild. My destruction skill is 6. :D I might do it if I can be bothered to get unsuspended.

[CimminyCricket]

I'm going to buy this game again. And then I'll never leave my house again. I didn't want to have to start over, but now I really don't care. Reading all these stories about stuff I liked to do makes me want to start playing now. Right now. As in, I'm going to go buy it when I get payed. Hell, I might even say screw it, and use my credit card.

I don't know why they're lower case, Frontsmack, that's just how they quoted.

[Quindiana Jones]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the Arena. That one is brilliant. Just beating things till they die. No thought process involved. Perfect.

[Roto13]

So I picked it up today. :P Not going to play it yet, but it's in my stack of games right after Disgaea.

Fun fact about PS3 Greatest Hits games: The Greatest Hits banner is on the outside of the plastic so when you take it off, you have the standard box. No more non-uniformity. :P This pleases me.

[CimminyCricket]

Oh? That's really cool! I like it, too!

[Mr. Chomps]

I absolutely LOVED this game! I say loved because my crappy PC is now five years old and won't run the damn thing properly. It was okay at first, but it won't work at all without being in a really poor graphic setting mode thingy.

I need to buy a new PC and re-install this game, pronto. :p

[darkchrono]

That's one reason why consoles are so much better for gaming than PC's. As long as it is made for the system you have you know the game will run.

I have found one gripe about Oblivian lately, lol. I traveled all the way to Anvil for my next assignment for the fighters guild. They had me do one little quest and then they said they don't have anything else for me and that I have to go all the way to Chyllendale (sp) for my next quest.

AHH, lol. I think they should have several things for you to do at a particular location. I know the locals will have quests for you to do as well but when you travel all the way there for your guild and all they have is one little assignment it is a mild irritation (the game is to good to get that irritated with).

[Quindiana Jones]

It's not exactly that big a problem, considering you can SUPERTRAVEL or whatever it's called. But yeah, that bugged me about the Fighters' Guild quests too.

I haven't played Oblivion for a while, due to other games (The Darkness, splat), but I really fancy going back to it now. :)

[Tabris]

This is one of my all-time favorite games. (Only FF-X ranks above it). I loved the vastness of it, the freedom to both explore, kill and do whatevery I wanted - but also the freedom of levelling and creating and customizing your character.

A tip when you start - be careful what class you choose, because those ten major skills that are linked to the class are the onces you need to level to gain a level, like someone mentioned earlier in the thread.

The only people I've heard complaining about it, really, is the huge Morrowind fans. They compare Oblivion to a model - beautiful to look at, but no brains. ;)

[Roto13]

I hate the battle system beyond compare. >_> Seriously. Everything else about the game is awesome, but the battle system makes me not want to play it. >_>

[Psychotic]

Yeah, battles grew really old, fast for me. I hated that enemies levelled up with me. Random bandits should not be able to keep pace with the Grand Champion of the Arena. So every time I levelled up I've racked the difficulty down a notch. It's stupid that I had to do that but it's made it more rewarding.

[Tabris]

Why do you not like the battle system, Roto13?

[Roto13]

It feels like an FPS, only awkward.

[Psychotic]

Holy mothersmurfing christ! I was just playing the game right now and the game glitched and kept giving me a bounty of 40 for no reason (I had a bounty of 2000 for no reason to begin with) even though I kept getting my Thieves Guild contacts to pay off the guards.

Best part was, the whole town of Bravil did not like this, and literally there was a war with the whole town vs guards. At least 6 of the townspeople are now dead. There may be more, and I think there are, but so far I have found 6 bodies. On the one hand, that is absolutely god damn awesome. On the other hand, now Bravil is going to be a ghost town.

Had to pay my fines properly (after dumping all my stolen goods in my house ;)) to get rid of that weird glitch.

[Tabris]

Roto13: It might take a while to get used to. :)

Psychotic: Lol, I've heard of similar things happening but have never experienced it myself.

[Aerith's Knight]

Same happened to me in Bruma. I spendt a lot of time there, trying to get on the walls and all(I did succeed xD) and a fight broke out between me and the citizens, but I had so much favour with the gaurds that they sided with me. xD

The entire south side of Bruma is now gone. :p

[Roto13]

I think I'm going to turn the difficulty down, and then some day I'm going to go on a big killing spree and slaughter everyone. XP

[Aerith's Knight]

I think I'm going to turn the difficulty down, and then some day I'm going to go on a big killing spree and slaughter everyone. XP

Trust me, it gets boring after a while.

Small cities can be done in an hour or so, but it takes forever to clear out the imperial city. :mad:

Plus, enough gaurds can really get annoying, even at level 85. :p

Expert armorer really helps though.

[Slothy]

Roto13: It might take a while to get used to. :)

There was no getting used to it for me. The crappy battle system was one of the reasons I got bored and stopped playing very often. No matter how powerful you are in the game it's always clumsy and tedious. Makes me a little wary of Fallout 3 just because I'm not sure Bethesda knows how to do a combat system that's actually fun all on it's own.