It's been about three weeks now, and I thought I would update my impressions, from my
initial ones.
Frankly, I'm just feeling a little bummed out by it all, kind of like Stark. It is definitely a Good Game™, but falls short of what a TESIV should have been. In my opinion, it trades too much of
Morrowind's depth and content for glitz and flashy gimmicks. I managed to screw up my saves awhile ago due to a stupid error on my part, and where it Morrowind I would have felt two things: Extreme anguish at having lost dozens of hours of progress, and a perverse happiness at now needing to create a new character and get a fresh experience. I felt neither of these at losing my
Oblivion characters, and it was at that point I truly knew it failed to stand up to TESIII's legacy. There are
sizable portions of
Morrowind I still have not fully explored (granted, that is including the expansions), and literally every time I make a new character, I discover some new quest, adventure, or dungeon. And yet in
Oblivion, I already feel like I've tasted 95% of what it has to offer.
Some of these have been touched on in this thread, but I'll list and split my issues into two groups here: Game and Lore.
The Game: The mechanics, conventions, engine, and other elements related to the game independent of Cyrodiil, Tamriel, and Nirn.
- Content.
I feel like I've basically done everything. There is no point to playing as thoroughly as I did in TESIII. I have not even touched the Thieves' Guild yet, but it doesn't seem like it will offer anything very unique. I blew through the Arena to Champion in less than an hour with a fresh-out-of-prison character. The only reason I didn't go for Grand Champion is I wanted to do the Gray Prince quest, but didn't really feel like doing it at the time.
The dungeons feel virtually identical. Explore one of each type and you've explored them all: Ayleid Ruin, Cavern, Oblivion Tower, and Ruined Fort. And while the Oblivion areas are really well done in terms of mood and atmosphere, they are probably the worst offenders: All of them follow the same simplistic formula of "Hunt for Tower Entrance, Fight Through Tower, Take Sigil Stone." The rest of them are also good, but rarely great. It feels practically like hack'n'slash, just going through a dungeon, chopping everything up repetitively, and grabbing all the (ultimately meaningless, see below) loot. And while Morrowind's dungeons could also be said to follow fairly rigid "tilesets" as well, they all felt unique and had more atmosphere: Sixth House hideouts creeped me the fuck out, and Red Mountain and its blight storms made me grit my teeth in discomfort (in a good way, mind).
- Level Scaling.
It's been hounded and generally regarded as universally stupid, so I'll go sparingly here. Its offenses are twofold: The more commonly complained about scaling of enemies, so they always match you, and the issue of linear and scaled equipment/loot.
Enemies: As everyone knows, it's stupid. Thankfully mods are starting to appear to begin to rectify this heinous abomination of a design decision. Every single Daedra-damned moron in all of Cyrodiil has the equipment and experience to generally match you exactly in combat, necessitating either 1) epic battles of infinite destruction that quickly lose that 'epic' qualifier by virtue of happening every five feet of travel along a country road, or 2) turning down the difficulty, which yields what is essentially hack'n'slash. Bo-ring.
Then, of course, there is the issue that everything in Cyrodiil is accomplishable by you at virtually any time, and is never easy and never too hard. Nice occasionally, shitty most of the time.
And finally, because nothing is ever easy and everyone and everything matches you, there is no sense of accomplishment or having really ever done anything in the first place.
Equipment/Loot: Similar to the above, the equipment and loot found around is always matched to your level. Quest rewards are scaled, which again is nice sometimes, but ultimately pretty shitty. This whole system necessitates a linear progression of gear, and tied with the very limited selections available in Oblivion as compared to Morrowind, yields a very boring set of equipment. It's like playing a Diablo clone: First you use the iron, then you use the steel, then you use... and so on, ad nauseam until you max out your character. This was never an issue in Morrowind; higher-end stuff was not only not necessarily linearly better, it was also rare and a real treaure to find. High-end gear in Oblivion is junk because you can just get more off a bandit. Rant continues below in the Lore section.
- Plot.
Not so much the story itself, which is covered below, but just the general questline and pacing of the core game progression. Admittedly, this is somewhat controversial, as many were put off by Morrowind's slow, ambiguous main quest. I, however, quite enjoyed it. As is typical of The Elder Scrolls, you are working for the Emperor in some way or another, with the Blades. Generally spies in the previous games, but knights in TESIV (more on that later, though). This in itself reflects a core philosophy change; there is a greater focus on quick-paced direct action and straightforward quests, over Morrowind's indirect assignments, go at your own pace feel, and all-around depth. Caius kept you funded and on the right track. Martin just kind of goes "hay lol i need dis item now kkthx??" in my opinion.
OBLIVION MAIN QUEST SPOILERS BELOW. SKIP THIS SECTION IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED!!
The Lore: Aspects pertaining to the story and universe of
The Elder Scrolls.
AGAIN: OBLIVION MAIN QUEST SPOILERS. SKIP THIS SECTION IF YOU HAVE NOT FINISHED!!
- Main Story.
Morrowind knocks the socks off of Oblivion. TESIII was a slow, epic build-up of power, resources, and fame across Vvardenfell, all culminating in a truly titanic battle (well, if you didn't twink your character before fighting Dagoth Ur, anyways). You are Saint Nerevar and everybody knows it... except you, perhaps, because it is left fairly ambiguous whether it's all an ancient prophecy fulfilled, a convenient set of coincidences, or a fiendishly clever Imperial intelligence op (Azura seems to think the first, but I doubt she really cares as long as the mess is cleaned up, nor is she necessarily omniscient anyways).
Compared with Oblivion: You're the champion... yay... have some shitty armor. Preceeded by a pretty simple, relatively short run around Cyrodiil killing things and grabbing spell components for ol' Martin. Some nice, reasonably unique quests in there... one undercover op that ends with pigeon-holed scripting, a few pitched battles that also end in pre-determined scripting (see where I'm going with this?), and so on. No advancement with the Blades, unlike Morrowind, and, ironically, no real emotional investment with the involved characters. One of Oblivion's stated goals was to breathe life into the NPCs, and yet when I learned Caius was being recalled on political orders I said, "Oh shit," but when I found Jauffre and Baurus's (scripted, insofar as I can tell) corpses outside the Bruma gates I just said, "Lame," not because Grandmaster Jauffre and Brother Baurus had been slain, but because the writers had offed them for no apparant reason. Even more insulting was the fact that the battlefield was otherwise devoid of my and the soldiers' handiwork, except for the equally-indignantly slain Captain Burd.
The final battle is understandably deus ex machina-ish, but that's forgivable, because hey, he's the Emperor, not you. End of the Third Age and all that jazz. But it wasn't very climactic, and there's no excuse for that. If anything I was frustrated by the "hey, let's send infinite hordes at the player to piss them off," mentality (compounded by the retarded AI diving in front of Daedra about to be smitten by my hand).
- The Elder Scrolls.
One of my favorite things about Morrowind was the undeniable sense that you were part of a larger world. The thing that always sent me reeling was that the events of TESIV were foreshadowed expertly. And in that respect, Oblivion really dropped the ball on some things. Caius talks of troubles in the Imperial City; the Emperor's poor health, dubious succession due to the events of Arena, and eventual recall for political reasons. They missed a no-brainer of a cameo there: One of TESIII's most memorable NPCs, a high-ranking member of the Blades, specifically recalled to the Imperial City due to the threat of the Emperor's impending death and ensuing problems, and... nothing. It was set up perfectly! Yeesh!
As Pablo touched on, the Nerevarine is trivialized. There's some talk of politics progressing in Morrowind: King Helseth's reforms, Redoran and Indoril faltering in the face of Hlaalu, and other such things, but little talk of the huge impact the Nerevarine otherwise had in pure canon (Almalexia, Dagoth Ur, and Sotha Sil dead, Vivec MIA; Heart of Llorkhan and Akhulikhan destroyed; Kangrenac's Tools unearthed, and so on).
And after all the buildup, the foreshadowing, the marketing and hype, and the game itself, it just feels like a very unsatisfactory end to a critical point in the Elder Scrolls series.
- Aesthetics.
Where'd Rome go? As I've posted several times before, why did Bethesda feel it necessary to directly rewrite the established Elder Scrolls style? This is Cyrodiil, right? Other than the cathedrals, most of the style seems to have disapppeared. Everything feels like "generic fantasy world," not Tamriel. Most of the equipment is boring or outright ugly.
What happened to male dark elf voices?
What happened to wood elf eyes?
What happened to real Daedric shrines (as opposed to these sissy stand-alone statues in the wilderness)? Where's Ashurnibiptashi?
And for their home province, I expected to see a lot more Cyrodiils living there.
I think I still have a few lingering issues, but that's all I can transcribe for now.
