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[Imp the Dimp]

And a an incredibly poorly designed RPG.

I consider Morrowind one of the most impactful and memorable gaming experiences I've ever had and as soon as Bethesda started promoting Oblivion (which was in mid to late 2005 I think), the game blew my mind. I remember things like "Radiant AI" (which didn't make it into the game to the extend Bethesda showed us at all) and other fancy stuff.

Ultimately, I think vanilla Oblivion (I played the 360 version) is one of the worst sequels I have ever played and actually a fucking awful game. I'm talking a 3/10 turd that would have gained little attention had it not been the sequel to Morrowind. The mechanical issues are well known and I won't go into detail as to why the gameplay sucked but even in terms of graphics it wasn't as good as people expected it to be with textures in the distance being hilariously low res on PC and 360 alike. Characters looked awful, the art design was utterly generic and everything just fucking glowed because of an inflated use of HDR or bloom or whatever. It was just ugly as hell.

On top of that there were scaling enemies, scaling loot, scaling quest rewards, copy and paste dungeons, repetitive Oblivion dungeons and frankly, I can't think of a single thing this game did well. Maybe I'm overly bitter because I consider it my most anticipated game ever and was let down like never before or after (in terms of gaming) but I don't see how vanilla Oblivion could have possibly been developed by the same people that managed to create Morrowind (which I replayed multiple times after Oblivion and it is still outstanding).

It was so bad.

 

[The_Poet]

You are so Edgy.

It's a good game.

 

[SAiLO]

Never played Morrowind but enjoyed Oblivion on both PC and PS3.

 

[danthefan]

You are so Edgy.

It's a good game.

That'll do.

 

[PeakPointMatrix]

Early gen game aged poorly? What is this, bizarro world??

 

[Hellraider]

But is it one of the most generic settings in gaming history?

 

[Imp the Dimp]

Early gen game aged poorly? What is this, bizarro world??

What? I played that game in 2006 and never again. It was utter crap the day it was released.

 

[BocoDragon]

Horse armor.

I just wanted to be the first to say that.

 

[akira28]

I feel your pain man. I was excited as fuck and watch my friend play it and was disappointed as fuck. I just went back to PC. Wasted some time playing Two Worlds though.

 

[Soulflarz]

You see, finding the game significantly worse than ES3 is one thing. However, most people considered it a good game, so to call it one of the worst sequels ever means you haven't played enough games with sequels worse than the game they come from or you're heavily exaggerating for the sake of it.

 

[N.A]

I loved it at the time. *shrug*

 

[Alethebeer]

I partially agree. To me felt quite generic and i ended up dropping it. It was not THAT bad tho. Imho Morrowind and Skirim are way better.

 

[MattPeters]

I agree. I've tried several times to get into Oblivion since im a big fan of the series, and I just hate it. Even modding it to the high heavens cant save it. I want to like it, but I just cant.

And jesus christ, those face models are atrocious. I know it was the a first generation game on new hardware, but the proportions are so fuckin wonky.

 

[Blackage]

There was an Elder Scrolls before Skyrim?!

 

[kraspkibble]

I enjoyed it.

 

[eso76]

It's worse than Morrowind, yes.

"One of the worst sequels in gaming history" might just be a tiny bit hyperbolic

 

[Surface of Me]

You are so Edgy.

It's a good game.

"Haha someone else's opinion differs so far from mine they must be making it up! Haha but I saw through that! No one can have a different opinion than me!"

Grow up.

 

[Dictator93]

My oblivion experience when it came out:
I started playing the game, noticed how much worse it looked than the original preview, ran around stabbing stuff awkwardly whilst admiring the orange glow of HDR™ skin, woke up in an inn after sleeping, apparently someone visited me in the night? I then destroyed the Oblivion gate by awklwardly clubbing tiny goblin things. Aww yes! Great success!!! I was such a hero!

Then I walked about 20 meters into the woods near the fort and saw like 2 oblivion gates just unceremoniously sitting there.

I shut the game off and never played it again.

 

[UrbanRats]

To this day, my biggest disappointment in gaming.

 

[PuppetMaster]

There are 2 kinds of people. People who played MW when it came out first. And people who played Oblivion first.

People who played MW first like me were doomed to be disapointed by Oblivion. Others got to experience Oblivion in ignorant HD bliss.

 

[lord_lad]

And a an incredibly poorly designed RPG.

I consider Morrowind one of the most impactful and memorable gaming experiences I've ever had and as soon as Bethesda started promoting Oblivion (which was in mid to late 2005 I think), the game blew my mind. I remember things like "Radiant AI" (which didn't make it into the game to the extend Bethesda showed us at all) and other fancy stuff.

Ultimately, I think vanilla Oblivion (I played the 360 version) is one of the worst sequels I have ever played and actually a fucking awful game. I'm talking a 3/10 turd that would have gained little attention had it not been the sequel to Morrowind. The mechanical issues are well known and I won't go into detail as to why the gameplay sucked but even in terms of graphics it wasn't as good as people expected it to be with textures in the distance being hilariously low res on PC and 360 alike. Characters looked awful, the art design was utterly generic and everything just fucking glowed because of an inflated use of HDR or bloom or whatever. It was just ugly as hell.

On top of that there were scaling enemies, scaling loot, scaling quest rewards, copy and paste dungeons, repetitive Oblivion dungeons and frankly, I can't think of a single thing this game did well. Maybe I'm overly bitter because I consider it my most anticipated game ever and was let down like never before or after (in terms of gaming) but I don't see how vanilla Oblivion could have possibly been developed by the same people that managed to create Morrowind (which I replayed multiple times after Oblivion and it is still outstanding).

It was so bad.

What...you never played Devil May Cry 2 before?

 

[MilkyJoe]

I really enjoyed it, but got caught in a loop, John said go to the church, or whatever it was and find Tim and you get there and talk to Tim and he says go to the Farm and Find John. You go back and John says to go find Tim... Rinse repeat...

I came too far to ever bother playing it again.

 

[120v]

it's definitely aged the worst. i'd take vanilla morrowind over vanilla oblivion any day... and it is probably the worst modern elder scrolls

still a great game though

 

[The_Poet]

"Haha someone else's opinion differs so far from mine they must be making it up! Haha but I saw through that! No one can have a different opinion than me!"

Grow up.

You must be fun at parties.

 

[Lanrutcon]

There are 2 kinds of people. People who played MW when it came out first. And people who played Oblivion first.

People who played MW first like me were doomed to be disapointed by Oblivion. Others got to experience Oblivion in ignorant HD bliss.

This. Absolutely this.

 

[Surface of Me]

You must be fun at parties.

Trust me, I am.

 

[akachan ningen]

I loved Oblivion back when I played it. It was my first western open world RPG. That was probably a big reason why I liked it. It gave me a feeling of being part of that world. And since it was my first it was more special.

By the time Skyrim came out, I was really looking forward to it and I upgraded my PC for it. Even though it was technically better, the magic was gone. I only played a couple of days before getting bored with it. I was trying to recreate the experience from Oblivion but how could I with a game that's so much like it? The experience in the first place was something completely new.

So for me, Skyrim was the sequel to Oblivion and it sucked. But it didn't really, if I had played Skyrim first, I'm sure I would have loved it.

 

[Rapstah]

All I remember from when it was new is the funny jank and everyone having Jauffre's voice actor.

 

[lazygecko]

I was not particularly impressed with the graphics either at the time. Poor textures, very primitive distant land and facegen tech like you said, tactless use of bloom, and animation quality that wasn't keeping up with industry standards.

Oblivion is one of those games that most developers go through when they're coming off their runaway success, and end up talking too much about how their next game will be The Best Thing Ever, and they're going to have this and that feature, etc. Then you have to face reality and how a lot of those things will either not work in practice or you simply don't have time to finish it all. After that, Bethesda has always kept a very low profile with regards to previews and interviews for their upcoming games. I think they're a lot smarter about that than most devs after Oblivion ended up disappointing so many.

 

[Fbh]

Dissapointing? Mabye
But in a world were stuff like this exists:

It's not even close to being one o the worst sequels

 

[PnCIa]

I see where you coming from OP, even though its definitely *not* the worst sequel in history. Playing Morrowind was something else, but i had hundreds of hours of fun with Oblivion. Its a fantastic game. Only falls a bit short in comparison to its predecessor.

 

[KHlover]

In a world where we have stuff like FlatOut 2 -> FlatOut 3?
lol no

 

[grandwizard]

Oblivion was a gigantic disappointment, but it hit at the exact right time to be many console people's first big bethesda style RPG. Among that crowd it has the formative memories of being totally mindblowing, but just a weak sequel to others.

 

[EmSeta]

It was lacking in some regards compared to Morrowind, but come on, it was still an excellent game. Standard GAF hyperbole.

 

[blacklotus]

On top of that there were scaling enemies, scaling loot, scaling quest rewards, copy and paste dungeons, repetitive Oblivion dungeons

That's actually very true.

The game was really poor, mostly because of the "let's make it easy" aproach.
Such a shame.

Morrowind was simply superb.

 

[KORNdoggy]

And a an incredibly poorly designed RPG.

I consider Morrowind one of the most impactful and memorable gaming experiences I've ever had and as soon as Bethesda started promoting Oblivion (which was in mid to late 2005 I think), the game blew my mind. I remember things like "Radiant AI" (which didn't make it into the game to the extend Bethesda showed us at all) and other fancy stuff.

Ultimately, I think vanilla Oblivion (I played the 360 version) is one of the worst sequels I have ever played and actually a fucking awful game. I'm talking a 3/10 turd that would have gained little attention had it not been the sequel to Morrowind. The mechanical issues are well known and I won't go into detail as to why the gameplay sucked but even in terms of graphics it wasn't as good as people expected it to be with textures in the distance being hilariously low res on PC and 360 alike. Characters looked awful, the art design was utterly generic and everything just fucking glowed because of an inflated use of HDR or bloom or whatever. It was just ugly as hell.

On top of that there were scaling enemies, scaling loot, scaling quest rewards, copy and paste dungeons, repetitive Oblivion dungeons and frankly, I can't think of a single thing this game did well. Maybe I'm overly bitter because I consider it my most anticipated game ever and was let down like never before or after (in terms of gaming) but I don't see how vanilla Oblivion could have possibly been developed by the same people that managed to create Morrowind (which I replayed multiple times after Oblivion and it is still outstanding).

It was so bad.

while i did lose myself in that game a fair bit, i do kind of agree. it definitely got a pass in some areas due to its name. from combat to their 3 voice actor dialogue, endless fetch quests. poor main story. limited weapon and armour sets. but for me it was bad in hindsight yet addictive at the time... hell, i managed to enjoy two worlds 1 a whole lot more than it back then and feel it did a lot better then oblivion. but because it was some no-name WRPG the things it did just as bad as oblivion or in some cases better then oblivion. was now a bad thing instead of the amazing thing oblivion was praised for... but that's just the double standards of reviewers for you i guess.

it was definitely a HUGE down step from morrowind though. that really can't be argued.

 

[Lanrutcon]

It was lacking in some regards compared to Morrowind, but come on, it was still an excellent game. Standard GAF hyperbole.

It was an excellent game if you weren't used to Morrowind.

 

[SPCTRE]

There are 2 kinds of people. People who played MW when it came out first. And people who played Oblivion first.

People who played MW first like me were doomed to be disapointed by Oblivion. Others got to experience Oblivion in ignorant HD bliss.

No.

(I played Morrowind first, I still felt that Oblivion was pretty good.)

 

[Dictator93]

Even though I disliked Oblivion (and posted about it just above), Crysis 2 is still my most disappointing sequel. It would take quite the turd to change that.

 

[mocoworm]

And a an incredibly poorly designed RPG.

Are you serious? It was aces!

You have to play it in the context of the time it was released. My 1000gs on Oblivion is something I am proud of, along with my COD2 1000gs.

 

[Rad-]

I agree. One thing I really disliked was how they took the horror-lite element away that was in Morrowind. Exploring some of the dungeons felt scary in Morrowind. None of that was in Oblivion. And neither in Skyrim. I think the graphic style was a big part of making that mood because in Oblivion and to a lesser degree in Skyrim, most of the dungeons were too shiny and nice looking to be scary.

 

[toddhunter]

The worst part about Oblivion is it made people think Skyrim was a good game by comparison.

That said, you could still get enough enjoyment out of it. At least it seemed to have a bit more diversity outside of the awful main quest.

 

[Memorabilia]

"Haha someone else's opinion differs so far from mine they must be making it up! Haha but I saw through that! No one can have a different opinion than me!"

Grow up.

Seriously?

 

[Surface of Me]

It was lacking in some regards compared to Morrowind, but come on, it was still an excellent game. Standard GAF hyperbole.

The title says it is a horrible sequel, comparing it to Morrowind is the point of this thread.

Seriously?

When your argument against someone's opinion is "Oh you're just edgy" or "You're being a contrarian", that's exactly how you come across.

 

[daninthemix]

There are 2 kinds of people. People who played MW when it came out first. And people who played Oblivion first.

People who played MW first like me were doomed to be disapointed by Oblivion. Others got to experience Oblivion in ignorant HD bliss.

This is true. I never played MW so for me Oblivion was nothing short of revelatory. I have rarely been as astonished by a videogame.

 

[dark10x]

There are 2 kinds of people. People who played MW when it came out first. And people who played Oblivion first.

People who played MW first like me were doomed to be disapointed by Oblivion. Others got to experience Oblivion in ignorant HD bliss.

You forgot those who played Daggerfall first (or, hell, Arena - though I can't see someone arguing in favor of that one). A lot of Daggerfall fans were pretty disappointed in Morrowind just as it seems Morrowind fans were disappointed by Oblivion.

 

[danm999]

It wasn't as good as Morrowind, not by a long shot, but I really think it doesn't even belong in the top 20 worst sequels.

 

[Lanrutcon]

Oblivion will forever be the game with the insanely stupid scaling. That's the most memorable characteristic of Morrowind Lite: HD edition.

 

[Sheroking]

These types of threads are really starting to make me hate Morrowind.

 

[Gravy Boat]

What? I played that game in 2006 and never again. It was utter crap the day it was released.

So you waited almost 10 years to rant about it?