Annoucement walkthrough was magical. It looks way beyond anything at the time in RPG market and it actually looked better than final game for example objects had dynamic shadows indoors.
All in all I would say my lasting impression of Oblivion has had a fairly profound effect on how I view open world RPGs and my concept of a next generation experience itself.
I dont remember much.
but i do remember watching the 12 hour marathon with Greg Kasavin.
wish they had the whole thing.
I really hated this game. As a wandering-around-and-looking-at-crap game, yeah, it was cool. But I think everything it did was eclipsed by Morrowind. The new parts were just flat disappointing. The dungeons were awful. The scaling was awful. The OBLIVION GATES were so awful. The cities were big and empty and useless given the scaling.
I get why this game is so cool to so many people, but it was just a huge miss for me. My opinion is more a "you had to not be there [for Morrowind]" than the opposite.
But man Radiant AI was a letdown. I get that the NPCs still had schedules but that shit Todd talked about leading up to release was just flat out false.
I wasn't a fan. I was severely put off by the world's generic feel. I was just a kid when playing Morrowind but, I remember hearing that Cyrodill was like this weird Jungle like place with towns that combined Roman and China architecture, and the Imperial City being like the Aztec capital city in the lake. Instead we got a generic middle age european city, and a half assed roman city with none of the charm.
Don't even get me started on the shitty faces. I spent hours trying to make a cool looking character but, ultimately gave up as the game does not allow it.
Now that Skyrim is out, and is better in every possible way, there is no reason to go replay Oblivion. Even with mods, the game just doesn't grab me. Bethesda themselves would need to completely remake it from the ground up on a new engine for me to be interested again.
Every time an Oblivion thread pops up, I always feel like a weirdo.
I loved Oblivion. I bought a 360 for it, and when I finally replaced my aging desktop Oblivion was one of the first games I loaded on it. For me, it was a fantastic game. It was the first game I ever got a thousand gamerscore in on the 360 version, and then I kept on going.
The reason I say I feel like a weirdo though is because everything I said is reminiscent of someone who started the series with Oblivion, instead of the true king of TES, Morrowind. But the fact is, I played the hell out of Morrowind. Hell, my first TES game was Daggerfall. You know what? Yeah, Morrowind was more alien, more this, more that, and yeah Oblivion was more plain, more streamlined, more user friendly...but you know what?
I loved it for that.
I really enjoyed Oblivion much more than Morrowind, because it was much more playable than Morrowind ever was. Morrowind had atmosphere and random cool alien shit in it like silt striders and really unique cities and sandstorms and shit, but guess what? Oblivion had Ayleid ruins, which were fuckin' cool, and combat wasn't 100% shit. Morrowind had cool broken spell shit in it, but Oblivion I could actually play without consistent repeatable crashes to desktop that didn't go away for years. Oblivion may have had level locking and streamlined skills, but guess what? I could explore how I wanted (within reason) without thinking the next zone was ready to murder the shit out of me just because I wanted to see what was on the other side of that hill.
Oh, and there were no Cliff Racers.
I guess what I'm saying is, coming from an old school elder scrolls fan, I was able to appreciate and love Oblivion for what it was, rather than despise it for what it isn't.
Loved this game, just really wished the enemies didn't scale.
Despite its flaws, i always found Oblivion to be really fun game.
In many ways, i liked Oblivion far better than Skyrim. The skill/class system is more important (despite the leveling issue), spell system works far better (ignoring awkward spell switching) than what Skyrim has.
Also loved the environments, despite...nay, because they're cliche medieval Europe.
A knight in shining armor fighting against invading demons in idyllic countryside, whats not to love?
You're hitting on some key points as to why I loved Oblivion more. Even though much of it was just a forest. Something about it felt real. It didn't feel like a contrived sandbox.
The playable space in Morrowind is smaller than that of Oblivion.Greatest Bethesda game. Especially coming off Morrowind, which was way too big in scale for its own good, and boring.