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[BeesEight]

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.

This isn't really the hill I want to plant my musket but this is an incredibly bizarre complaint considering your premise. Is Oblivion ugly and full of potato people? Yes. But have you seen Morrowind? There's really no argument here. The shift to full 3D was not kind to the series and Morrowind was the first casualty to the cause.

I mean, come on:

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.

There's a third. There are those that played Daggerfall and don't think that Morrowind was the bees knees.

The thing with the Elder Scrolls games is that they've been cutting and streamlining the series since 1996. Every release has less than the one before. People love to complain about how Oblivion is missing all these amazing features without realizing that Morrowind had just as equal a gutting to mechanics as its predecessor. I was grossly disappointed in Morrowind with the decreased world size, removed skills (climbing in particular!), horrendous enemy/combat design (how quickly people forget cliff racers), non-random dungeons, static and choice-less ending etc...

After you've been through a few Elder Scrolls releases, you learn Bethesda's shtick. No sequel is going to be like the prior one with greater emphasis given to world creation, pretty graphics and streamlined gameplay. When you take that into consideration, Oblivion and Skyrim are hardly the harbingers of the apocalypse.

In terms of the OP's prior thread on companies ushering in a golden age of RPGs, I'd agree that Bethesda is not a spearheading force for that resurgence. They make a very different kind of game, which I enjoy, but that eschews so much of the role-playing genre that I'd hardly consider them stellar examples. I like them and enjoy them but they've always been leaning towards more action-adventure.

 

[TRI Mike]

You haven't played many games if you think Oblivion is one of the worst "sequels in history".

 

[hydruxo]

Oblivion was fine. I vastly prefer Skyrim in every aspect but Oblivion had alot to love.

 

[RichiRamjag]

I enjoyed oblivion, it was no morrowind, but it doesn't deserve all the hate. The dark brotherhood stuff alone provided one of the better stories. Also, it had that clue-like mission where you are locked in a house of people overnight and you have to pick them off one by one, you could also turn them alon each other. Damn, I loved that mission.

I think it's extremely silly to refer to it as one of the worst sequels those, but it's your opinion man.

 

[Arkeband]

Oblivion's scaled enemies and idiot-proof compass ruined the RPG experience for me. Suddenly my character was stripped of a reason to level up and also I had no reason to ever read dialogue given to me by NPC's, I just followed a big arrow telling me where to go.

Skyrim isn't quite as bad, but basically:

Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion

The combat system in Morrowind is hit or miss (pun intended), but to be fair the combat system in Skyrim and Oblivion is pretty god awful too. Click, pause whenever you take damage, drink a healing potion, unpause, click, repeat.

 

[Felspawn]

Master of Orion 3 is one of the worst sequels in gaming history


there Fixed that for you

 

[Sotha_Sil]

The hyperbole surrounding GAF about Bethesda Games Studio is getting ridiculous. I can count on one hand the number of games I consider to be peers with Morrowind and Fallout New Vegas.

Fallout 3 and Oblivion are not among them, does that mean they are complete garbage? No. They're still better than the vast majority of games released during the 360/PS3 gen, especially when you add the expansions like Shivering Isles, The Pitt, and Point Lookout.

 

[SmokedMeat]

Oblivion a 3/10? Yeah, ok.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Oblivion's scaled enemies and idiot-proof compass ruined the RPG experience for me. Suddenly my character was stripped of a reason to level up and also I had no reason to ever read dialogue given to me by NPC's, I just followed a big arrow telling me where to go.

Skyrim isn't quite as bad, but basically:

Morrowind > Skyrim > Oblivion

The combat system in Morrowind is hit or miss (pun intended), but to be fair the combat system in Skyrim and Oblivion is pretty god awful too. Click, pause whenever you take damage, drink a healing potion, unpause, click, repeat.

If that's how you're playing these games, no wonder you don't enjoy the combat. That sounds atrocious.

It's like the people who hate FF8 because they think you're supposed to just keep summoning over and over, and that's boring.

Yes, swinging a few times and pausing to drink a potion is terrible, so stop doing that and get better at the game, or play on a lower difficulty level. While ES games have never had amazing combat, Skyrim's was much-improved, especially with the addition of actual perks and finishers.

 

[_woLf]

Oblivion was more fun than Morrowind. There, I said it.

Fight me, OP.

 

[BigTnaples]

The combat system in Morrowind is hit or miss (pun intended), but to be fair the combat system in Skyrim and Oblivion is pretty god awful too. Click, pause whenever you take damage, drink a healing potion, unpause, click, repeat.

Wait. Is this actually a thing? Why in the hell would anyone play like that?

 

[Aaron D.]

Haven't played Ghoul Patrol I see.

 

[Pifje]

Can we start banning based purely on hyperbole clickbait threads such as this?

 

[BigTnaples]

Can we start banning based purely on hyperbole clickbait threads such as this?

If only.

 

[Amory]

the dark brotherhood quest in oblivion is still the coolest questline i think I've done in any game, followed pretty closely by the thieves guild.

the ones in skyrim were disappointing by comparison

god I love oblivion. I gotta go back and play it again sometime soon

 

[conman]

Oblivion was Bethesda's first deep dive into console-style game design. It succeeded in some areas (UI) and failed in others (enemy scaling). The shining piece of design for me in Oblivion, however, were the booby-trap dungeons. Fantastic and yet to be matched in any of the other ES games.

There's a third. There are those that played Daggerfall and don't think that Morrowind was the bees knees.

I've been playing the series since Arena, and I still think Morrowind is the bees knees. There's certainly something to be said for the series continuing to repeat itself and following a clear formula, but I don't think it's become "less" over the years, just tightened (for better and worse). Morrowind just happened to strike a perfect balance for its time between lore, world design, dungeon design, and mechanics.

Oblivion stands out for being both behind and ahead of its time, mostly because it was awkwardly straddling the console and PC space. Like other formerly PC-centric developers, Bethesda eventually figured it out.

 

[Hazaku]

You can't backflip in Morrowind though OP - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMoocaSuIvg

EDIT: This quote on the box always gets me (for how it's written).

 

[Arkeband]

If that's how you're playing these games, no wonder you don't enjoy the combat. That sounds atrocious.

It's like the people who hate FF8 because they think you're supposed to just keep summoning over and over, and that's boring.

Yes, swinging a few times and pausing to drink a potion is terrible, so stop doing that and get better at the game, or play on a lower difficulty level. While ES games have never had amazing combat, Skyrim's was much-improved, especially with the addition of actual perks and finishers.

So what, do you run into caves and do no-potion handicapped fights?

An arrow snipes you in the head from offscreen and now you have 1 hp, don't you dare pause and heal!

Lets pretend you've mapped all of your healing potion varieties to hotkeys - this now forces you to memorize which ones are heals over time and which ones are instant heals. Additionally, mid fight you might see an enemy using ice spells, well you didn't map an ice resist potion/food to hotkeys, guess what? You're now pausing and chugging potions and eating food.

You can pretend you've mapped out your whole keyboard to every item in your inventory but with alchemy producing tons of variations of potions you have a backpack full of choices that frequently need to be used mid-combat.

 

[UncleSporky]

The Characters were all unique, and ACTUALLY lived in the world.

No they didn't ACTUALLY. This was something Bethesda hyped up and nothing came of it.

They had schedules for places they would walk to. That was it. The AI that was supposed to be in place was almost completely scrapped and neutered because the NPCs kept killing each other and dying in stupid ways.

I don't even know if NPCs get hungry in the final game. They appear to eat food sometimes but it's either just an animation or food is being magically teleported to them at the right time. I don't think you can, for example, steal all food in someone's house and leave a poisoned apple as the only available food, and expect them to eat it. You have to reverse-pickpocket it onto them, and then I think they're scripted to eat it immediately.

They're not really living.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

So what, do you run into caves and do no-potion handicapped fights?

An arrow snipes you in the head from offscreen and now you have 1 hp, don't you dare pause and heal!

Lets pretend you've mapped all of your healing potion varieties to hotkeys - this now forces you to memorize which ones are heals over time and which ones are instant heals. Additionally, mid fight you might see an enemy using ice spells, well you didn't map an ice resist potion/food to hotkeys, guess what? You're now pausing and chugging potions and eating food.

You can pretend you've mapped out your whole keyboard to every item in your inventory but with alchemy producing tons of variations of potions you have a backpack full of choices that frequently need to be used mid-combat.

I basically never use items in combat. I never found it really necessary.

 

[PooBone]

I found Oblivion infinitely more playable than Morrowind.

 

[Cleve]

I remember most of the discussions amongst my friends were about how disappointing Oblivion was in comparison to Morrowind and even daggerfall in some ways. It felt like it took several steps backwards. At the time it was a pretty common assessment, at least among the PC crowd.

 

[Brandon F]

Most disappointed by the "checklist" approach to quest design that stifled the choice and consequence-driven ideology of morrowind. Previously choosing to side with factions made a great impact on how opposing houses confront and view your character in the world. Starting with oblivion, all of that transformed into a mere achievement hunt in Bethesda RPGs, with zero ramifications or consideration on how your actual character fit into the game world. Just do it all, nothing really matters!

Can't side with the OP on many of his other arguments though. Visuals, combat, world and area design were far improved. Not without its own problems but a step up. Morrowind was slightly more diverse, but that's about it.

 

[Arkeband]

I basically never use items in combat. I never found it really necessary.

Did you come from playing Morrowind?

In Morrowind this was even more heavily encouraged because you'd have items with on-use, so you'd have to swap in and out rings to get beneficial effects. I had like three shields going when going toe to toe with Dagoth Ur.

So maybe I played like this because of Morrowind...?

Either way cranking up the difficulty doesn't increase enemy AI or anything it just increases how much damage you take and how much they receive, so you basically just increase the odds of being killed in cheap ways.

 

[MrRudiMentary]

Lot of Oblivion hate recently. Despite being hilariously flawed, it's still one of my favourite games. I did actually play Morrowind first but I found it very hard to get into with the RNG-combat.

 

[Felspawn]

The hyperbole surrounding GAF about Bethesda Games Studio is getting ridiculous. I can count on one hand the number of games I consider to be peers with Morrowind and Fallout New Vegas.

Fallout 3 and Oblivion are not among them, does that mean they are complete garbage? No. They're still better than the vast majority of games released during the 360/PS3 gen, especially when you add the expansions like Shivering Isles, The Pitt, and Point Lookout.

yeah hyperbole and GAF in general is getting pretty stupid, everything is either Irredeemable garbage or Orgasmic gaming Nirvana with nothing in between.

 

[Harmen]

No they didn't ACTUALLY. This was something Bethesda hyped up and nothing came of it.

They had schedules for places they would walk to. That was it. The AI that was supposed to be in place was almost completely scrapped and neutered because the NPCs kept killing each other and dying in stupid ways.

I don't even know if NPCs get hungry in the final game. They appear to eat food sometimes but it's either just an animation or food is being magically teleported to them at the right time. I don't think you can, for example, steal all food in someone's house and leave a poisoned apple as the only available food, and expect them to eat it. You have to reverse-pickpocket it onto them, and then I think they're scripted to eat it immediately.

They're not really living.

Are you sarcastic? Because the situation you describe can be done in that manner exacty.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivionoisoned_Apple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek6HP4ypZlk

Break into a target's house while they are sleeping. Then proceed to place the apple in their inventory while using the pickpocket options. Next, rid the room, or house, of any remaining food.

Now, finally, you may wait. Depending on the target, it may take as long as one day. If you search the now dead target's body, you will find the apple is gone due to the simple fact that they ate it.

In fact, I think most NPC's do really eat regulary.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Did you come from playing Morrowind?

In Morrowind this was even more heavily encouraged because you'd have items with on-use, so you'd have to swap in and out rings to get beneficial effects. I had like three shields going when going toe to toe with Dagoth Ur.

So maybe I played like this because of Morrowind...?

Either way cranking up the difficulty doesn't increase enemy AI or anything it just increases how much damage you take and how much they receive, so you basically just increase the odds of being killed in cheap ways.

I played Morrowind, but Skyrim is a very different beast, and I just never found potions and effects to be terribly interesting. Hell, I barely messed with the make your own magic stuff in Morrowind too. I tend to always end up going either straight melee, or sneaky with a bow, so magic and special effects have never been a huge part of my playtime with these games.

 

[kswiston]

Most disappointed by the "checklist" approach to quest design that stifled the choice and consequence-driven ideology of morrowind. Previously choosing to side with factions made a great impact on how opposing houses confront and view your character in the world. Starting with oblivion, all of that transformed into a mere achievement hunt in Bethesda RPGs, with zero ramifications or consideration on how your actual character fit into the game world. Just do it all, nothing really matters!

Can't side with the OP on many of his other arguments though. Visuals, combat, world and area design were far improved. Not without its own problems but a step up. Morrowind was slightly more diverse, but that's about it.

Hey, my character being the master of the fighters guild, the arch mage, Grey Fox of the thieves guild, grand champion of the arena, and the whisperer for the Dark Brotherhood all at the same time was super realistic!

 

[kwisc]

Oblivion has many flaws, but it is still a decent game. I played it just after release for 60h and had a lot of fun. Stopped because when i started main storyline after 60h it was impossible to finish first quest (awesome lvl scaling )
3 years ago I started it one more time (this time focused only on main quests) and again had a lot of fun Characters faces are terrible but the rest looks rly nice even now. Generic world not always means bad. Story isn't gr8 but lets agree that TESO games were never about a story
For me Oblivion is good 8 maybe even 8,5. Many flaws but also many virtues.

 

[UncleSporky]

There's a third. There are those that played Daggerfall and don't think that Morrowind was the bees knees.

The thing with the Elder Scrolls games is that they've been cutting and streamlining the series since 1996. Every release has less than the one before. People love to complain about how Oblivion is missing all these amazing features without realizing that Morrowind had just as equal a gutting to mechanics as its predecessor. I was grossly disappointed in Morrowind with the decreased world size, removed skills (climbing in particular!), horrendous enemy/combat design (how quickly people forget cliff racers), non-random dungeons, static and choice-less ending etc...

Look, I just played Daggerfall and I'm currently playing Morrowind. No one in their right minds would ever complain because Morrowind has a smaller world. There is nothing valuable about the size of Daggerfall's world, it's terrible. You never even engage with it, because to walk anywhere is a fool's errand that takes forever for no good reason, since you can fast travel anywhere anyway. All dungeons, towns, and NPCs are completely interchangeable with each other except for main quest ones.

All the Daggerfall guild quests are randomly generated junk...I got to head of the mages guild by rejecting every quest they offered until they told me all I needed to do was defend the guild for 3 hours, hang out, kill a couple dudes. Same easy quest, over and over, to get to the head of the guild. Ridiculous.

I did this because most of the other quests involved going to the completely awful dungeons which are irredeemable in their mazelike design and size.

Nearly all the skills removed from Daggerfall were the fucking useless language skills that did practically nothing. They were supposed to let you talk to monsters to make them stand down and stop attacking, but why would you ever do that? Certainly not enough to justify, what, 9 skills?

Monsters and combat in Morrowind is vastly better than in Daggerfall too. There's just no comparison. I don't care if Cliff Racers are a little annoying, at least they aren't generic humanoids that shuffle up to you and bump into you over and over like everything from Daggerfall.

 

[truly101]

I hate Oblivion, Skyrim, Mass Effect series, Dragon Age Inquisition, Fallout 3 so much that that I bought them just to take them right back to the store. I buy used copies just to throw them away.

Such tripe, so beneath me. It can never measure to up some late 90s early 2000 PC sacred cow that the plebes are too stupid to enjoy.

Spoiler

to be fair, Oblivion's main quest is pretty bad, but I enjoyed the game anyway

 

[Munba]

Loved it and the music was awesome (Wings of Kinareth especially).

 

[Vincent Grayson]

Hey, my character being the master of the fighters guild, the arch mage, Grey Fox of the thieves guild, grand champion of the arena, and the whisperer for the Dark Brotherhood all at the same time was super realistic!

These games are, IMO, best played by actually making a *character*, and not just being achievement collectors. Yes, you *can* do all the factions in a single playthrough, and that's good from a gameplay perspective, IMO. But for roleplaying and IMO, replayability purposes, doing everything on one character removes a lot of the fun.

 

[BeesEight]

I've been playing the series since Arena, and I still think Morrowind is the bees knees. There's certainly something to be said for the series continuing to repeat itself and following a clear formula, but I don't think it's become "less" over the years, just tightened (for better and worse). Morrowind just happened to strike a perfect balance for its time between lore, world design, dungeon design, and mechanics.

Oblivion stands out for being both behind and ahead of its time, mostly because it was awkwardly straddling the console and PC space. Like other formerly PC-centric developers, Bethesda eventually figured it out.

Oh, I don't actually think there are three kinds of people. I was mostly being cheeky with the "There are two types of people: those that have played Morrowind and those that haven't."

If there is a general trend, it tends to be that people are generally blown away by the first Elder Scrolls game they play and then are disappointed with the sequel because they're typically very different.

 

[kswiston]

These games are, IMO, best played by actually making a *character*, and not just being achievement collectors. Yes, you *can* do all the factions in a single playthrough, and that's good from a gameplay perspective, IMO. But for roleplaying and IMO, replayability purposes, doing everything on one character removes a lot of the fun.

I was role-playing a Mary-Sue.


EDIT: I started playing Elder Scrolls games with Morrowind. I really liked both Oblivion and Skyrim when they were released. I also liked both Fallout 3 and New Vegas. You find different reasons for playing each, but they are all fun in my opinion. Perhaps I am easy to please.

 

[Torment]

OP when you compare Oblivion to Morrowind I will agree with you that they took a step backwards in a lot of aspects, but it is still a fantastic game. The guilds were done much much better, the pacing of story was much more reigned in. It had a sense of death around every corner and a well done perk system. I will say that I hated going into the portals though, just got way too tedious. Morrowind the story was way too disconnected, but the world felt so open and you could get so powerful that you felt like a God. So they both had strong points, but both are absolutely fantastic games.

 

[UncleSporky]

Are you sarcastic? Because the situation you describe can be done in that manner exacty.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivionoisoned_Apple
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ek6HP4ypZlk

In fact, I think most NPC's do really eat regulary.

I already said I might've been wrong about that. I searched the internet to be sure and all I could find were accounts of people who couldn't get NPCs to pick up the apples and had to reverse-pickpocket them.

Plus I think the apples themselves are specifically scripted to be picked up and eaten, and you can't do the same with other foods, i.e. steal all food from a house and leave bread lying somewhere, and expect them to eat that.

 

[kswiston]

But that was a sequel to Ultima VIII, which in terms of drops in quality from one game to the next might be the biggest gap in gaming history.

...nah, you're right. It's still Ultima IX. Awful game.

Might and Magic IX was worse.

Wizardry was the only classic CRPG that got a more or less proper send off.

 

[UncleSporky]

Might and Magic IX was worse.

Wizardry was the only classic CRPG that got a more or less proper send off.

Might and Magic X is awesome though. At this point I'd say the series got a proper send off.

 

[nortonff]

Worst thing about it is the title. Should be called The Elder Scrolls: Bloom.

 

[JimmyJones]

Oblivion was also my first Bethesda game. I got it on the 360 when it came out and I thought it was absolutely amazing. It's probably my most played game of all time. I played it recently on steam for the first time in years and it was very nostalgic. Skyrim isn't even in the same league as Oblivion IMO but I can't put my finger on why.

 

[Fuz]

Ultima IX.

Ultima IX wasn't that bad. You needed a vey powerful pc, though. It was deeply flawed but the world was great.
VIII was worse.

 

[Servbot24]

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

Well, it is true.

Both Oblivion and Skyrim are bad games that sold on concept.

 

[op_ivy]

Oblivion ruined the series for me. I hated it so much. It's only been with the awesomeness of witcher 3 that I've thought about what I may have missed with skyrim.

 

[Melon Husk]

Great quests though.

 

[pheron]

How can you like skyrim if you didn't like oblivion? Both have shitty brainless "left-click spammy" combat, the worst animations, very bad ai, bugs and a very generic story.

The only redeeming factors are the good worldbuilding and maybe some side quests.

I'm talking about the base game not mods

I really dont get the high ratings for either games at all.

 

[Gaz_RB]

Just like Morrowind, I loved it when it came out, but both did not age well. But no way is Oblivion a 3/10. It offered such a great amount of freedom that was so rare back then.

 

[kswiston]

Might and Magic X is awesome though. At this point I'd say the series got a proper send off.

Yeah, but that was 12 years after the fact, and M&M X is more of a retro throwback to M&M 3-5 (with the skill system of the late 90s games) than it was a continuation of the progression that Jon Van Caneghem had been making for 15 years.

I am glad that we got a modern take on Might and Magic for sure, but the classic series dying with IX was a real shame.

 

[SuperDowns]