Something Redeeming from Oblivion

[adddeed]

Oblivion can be a fun game, despite flaws. Just don't get into it expecting a deep or complex RPG, but as a game overall its no where near as bad as most people here say it is, and lots of people really enjoy it.

 

[MilesBeyond]

As far as I'm concerned, Oblivion is the absolute pinnacle of "so bad it's good." Seriously, I've derived more hours of enjoyment from watching all the crazy and stupid ways that Oblivion screwed up than I have from some genuinely good games. I mean the NPC dialogue alone was amazing.

"Hi!"
"I saw a mudcrab the other day. Annoying creatures."
"I'm through talking to you."


I guess it wasn't supposed to be funny. But that just makes it even funnier.

 

[Karwelas]

Have redhead GF... So, I guess I do. :D

Good to know I'm not alone. I mean... in GF thing... not preety redhead fetish... totally...

Spoiler

PW me good readhead porn,

 

[Commissar Draco]

Remanada, Chapter 1: Sancre Tor and the Birth of Reman
And in those days the empire of the Cyrodiils was dead, save in memory only, for through war and slug famine and iniquitous rulers, the west split from the east and Colovia's estrangment lasted some four hundreds of years. And the earth was sick with this sundering. Once-worthy western kings, of Anvil and Sarchal, of Falkreath and Delodiil, became through pride and habit as like thief-barons and forgot covenant. In the heartland things were no better, as arcanists and false moth-princes lay in drugged stupor or the studies of vileness and no one sat on the Throne in dusted generations. Snakes and the warnings of snakes went unheeded and the land bled with ghosts and deepset holes unto cold harbors. It is said that even the Chim-el Adabal, the amulet of the kings of glory, had been lost and its people saw no reason to find it.

And it was in this darkness that King Hrol set out from the lands beyond lost Twil with a sortie of questing knights numbered eighteen less one, all of them western sons and daughters. For Hrol had seen in his visions the snakes to come and sought to heal all the borders of his forebears. And to this host appeared at last a spirit who resembled none other than El-Estia, queen of ancienttimes, who bore in her left hand the dragonfire of the aka-tosh and in her right hand the jewels of the covenant and on her breast a wound that spilt void onto her mangled feet. And seeing El-Estia and Chim-el Adabal, Hrol and his knights wailed and set to their knees and prayed for all things to become as right. Unto them the spirit said, I am the healer of all men and the mother of dragons, but as you have run so many times from me so shall I run until you learn my pain, which renders you and all this land dead.

And the spirit fled from them, and they split among hills and forests to find her, all grieving that they had become a villainous people. Hrol and his shieldthane were the only ones to find her, and the king spoke to her, saying, I love you sweet Aless, sweet wife of Shor and of Auri-el and the Sacred Bull, and would render this land alive again, not through pain but through a return to the dragon-fires of covenant, to join east and west and throw off all ruin. And the shieldthane bore witness to the spirit opening naked to his king, carving on a nearby rock the words AND HROL DID LOVE UNTO A HILLOCK before dying in the sight of their union.

When the fifteen other knights found King Hrol, they saw him dead after his labors against a mound of mud. And they parted each in their way, and some went mad, and the two that returned to their homeland beyond Twil would say nothing of Hrol, and acted ashamed for him.

But after nine months that mound of mud became as a small mountain, and there were whispers among the shepherds and bulls. A small community of believers gathered around that growing hill during the days of its first churning, and they were the first to name it the Golden Hill, Sancre Tor. And it was the shepherdess Sed-Yenna who dared climb the hill when she heard his first cry, and at its peak she saw what it had yielded, an infant she named Reman, which is "Light of Man."

And in the child's forehead was the Chim-el Adabal, alive with the dragon-fires of yore and divine promise, and none dared obstruct Sed-Yenna when she climbed the steps of White-Gold Tower to place the babe Reman on his Throne, where he spoke as an adult, saying I AM CYRODIIL COME.

Remanada, Chapter 2: The Chevalier Renald, Blade of the Pig
And in the days of interregnum, the Chim-el Adabal was lost again amid the petty wars of gone-heathen kings. West and east knew no union then and all the lands outside of them saw Cyrodiil as a nest of snakemen and snakes. And for four more hundreds of years did the seat of Reman stay sundered, with only the machinations of a group of loyal knights keeping all its borders from throwing wide.

These loyal knights did go by no name then, but were known by their eastern swords and painted eyes, and it was whispered that they were descended from the bodyguard of old Reman. One of their number, called the Chevalier Renald, discovered the prowess of Cuhlecain and then supported him towards the throne. Only later would it be revealed that Renald did this thing to come closer to Talos, anon Stormcrown, the glorious yet-emperor Tiber Septim; only later still, that he was under instruction by a pig.

Long glory was wife to the all the knights of the dragon-banner, who knew no other and were brothers before beyond many seas and now were brothers under the law named the blade-surrender of Pale Pass. And having vampire blood these brother-knights lived for ages through and past Reman and then kept guard over his ward, the coiled king, Versidue-Shaie. The snake-captain Vershu became Renald became the protector of the northern west when the black dart was hooked into Savirien-Chorak.



Then again Cyrodil turned to be Renaissance fair grade in Oblivion, Sancre Tor is yet another boring Dungeon and the Glorious bro-hood of Blades ends up as Crazy Bosmer Womyn and Max von Sydow in Skyrym.

 

[Cthulhu_is_love]

Have redhead GF... So, I guess I do. :D

So are the rumours about redheads true? Did Faye, Marie and Dani tell me tha truth??

Back to topic:

I think we have to agree either we play it vanilla (1st case) or mod the shit out of it till we reach the rotten nipples of mother Retardonia (2nd case)

Cause lets be serious no one ever on this planet hat the guts to play thies game vanilla without:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2fxVeAVl2I8

Edit: Some comments are very scary...

 

[Chester Copperpot]

So, I see the balls already rolling and there's been a few passive mentions about some of the things Oblivion did sorta well, and the even some defense of it. Anyways, here's a few points I'll make to show how a lot of design choices were made that either changed the formula for the better in some ways or returned to the series roots in others.

First, let's look at combat. I find it funny how in this video, this guys elaborates on all these plethora of factors that come into Morrowind, then say: "by comparison, all a gamer has to deal with in Oblivion or Skyrim is the damage of the weapon, the armor of the opponent, and whether or not the weapon reaches the hit box of the opponent". Is this an accurate representation?

Well, look up the damage formula for Morrowind, which if you break down all the variables into their simplest components have various factors from your skills, condition, the state of your armor, and so on. All in all, the most variables we can get out of this equation is 20, so lets say that Morrowind has degree 20 complexity, and there are 3 attacks you can make (Chop, Slash, Thrust). By comparison, how does Oblivion fair?

Well, look at Oblivion's formula. Well, since there is no hit/miss calculation from variables like there are in Morrowind, what would the variables be if they simply subtracted all the hit/miss jazz? There would then be about 8. 12 of Morrowind's combat variables go into your chances of hitting or missing. But is there 8 variables in Oblivion's combat? No, there are in fact 15, the damage calculation is 7 variables more complex. As a design choice, it seems effort was made not to simply strip down the combat of Morrowind and here you go, but rather to make more complex by almost doubling the number of variables to take into account. Also, though the 3 varieties of attack are gone from the game, there are 2 varieties of attack with the normal and power attacks, so not that much decline there. Now, whether that was implemented in truly interesting ways or not, if they truly were trying to dumb it down to a casual game, they wouldn't have added so many variables, and that truly is a step in the right direction if we want a Elder Scroll game with interesting combat.

By comparison, Skyrim's damage forumla: (BaseDamage+SmithingIncrease)(1+skill/200)(1+PerkEffects)(1+ItemEffects), with 4 more variables all about perk bs if you're dual wielding. Now THAT's the formula of .

Furthermore, let's talk about the other things that are arguably improved in the combat of Oblivion. First of all, there's no missing rats 20 times when you're looking RIGHT AT THEM. I get it, this goes away after some time, but it just doesn't work for a first person action rpg. In first person turn based, it's fine, turn based in an abstract sort of combat system. In third person action rpg, it's not a huge deal. But in a game trying to make you feel like you're actually there, actually doing the fighting, it's just immersion breaking to miss something you aimed and timed your attack for perfectly. Also, let's not forget no autoblocking anymore, you have to actually block for yourself in Oblivion, again this is less immersion breaking and it puts more emphasis on skill, even if it could have been better implemented for actual challenge.

Even the introduction of Level-Scaling, despite not being well implemented, I think wasn't a bad idea in and of itself. Daggerfall had this all throughout it's game, with certain enemies spawning depending on your level. The concept of allowing most the world being accessible by you regardless of level may be a slight bit immersion breaking if you think about it, but overall it just furthers your capacity for exploration, so the tradeoff makes it pretty not awful IMO. Anyway, like it, don't like it, but it's not a new concept that never was part of the Elder Scrolls before.

Perhaps the one example of where they really did dumb it down a bit was in the reduction of skills, with less skills meaning less choices with weight during your character creation. They did go from 27 (9*3) to 21 (7*3) skills, a bigger decline than from Oblivion to Skyrim where they went from 21 to 18 (7*3 to 6*3). Arguably streamlining from 27 to 21 isn't necessarily bad, but I'll just bite the bullet and say it's a bit of decline and move on.

Gameworld and NPCs absolutely were taken in the right direction with Oblivion I think. There's a few reasons for this, and again I'm focusing more on idea than execution. So, first of all there are 225 forts, caves, mines, and Ayleid Ruins in Oblivion, which is much more than the number of caves and tombs in Morrowind. Bigger game world is a big plus, and more in keeping with the previous Elder Scrolls games. For comparision, the increase from Morrowind to Oblivion is about 1.6, while from all measurement Skyrim seems to be about the same size as Oblivion or smaller, which is definitely a strike against it. The reason they could even do this, however, is because they returned to procedural generation. While, yaah Daggerfall/Arena did it isn't necessarily a defense of it, and it has the drawback of leading to blander areas, it does however make the increase in size possible, which for the Elder Scrolls games is great because it's all about getting lost in a world and so big game world is an important part of that. Therefore, I think the direction they went is a big step in the right direction, they just need to focus on making their procedural generation algorithms much better (look at how effective .kkrieger is with it's procedural generation for it's size). Or at least, you know, shit or get off the pot with procedural generation or hand-crafting, because every time they switch around there's a jump in how bigger or smaller the worlds are and they can't build up on their previous work for improvement because a game later it'll be obsolete. Anyways, yah that was the better way to go for size, the quality could be nearly as good if they worked more on their procedural generation algorithms, and it's more fitting with the series.

NPCs too, we should appreciate the improvements here. They're not wikipedia pages for one, they actually have their own dialogue. Grant it, it could use some polishing, but the way dialogue with NPCs was formatted in Morrowind, and the series of generic responses, honestly? Weird phrases every now and then, yes, not enough voice acting variety maybe, yes, but if you compared it to the amount of generic responses in Morrowind, it's clear that it wasn't the wrong direction to go presentation-wise. Furthermore, take a small moment to appreciate the attempt with Radiant AI. Seriously. Yes, it was a buggy mess, I'll give you that easily. However, so was Daggerfall, but that's a lovely buggy mess for some reason . Anyways I just mean to say that let's be honest, programming NPCs with their own schedules was pretty cool, even if it was a little buggy, but I don't know why some of the things those NPCs do is any less immersion breaking than a bear getting stuck in a wall, so to each there own.

And you have to admit, the faction quests were pretty cool overall , even if the main quests was eh. I mean the Dark Brotherhood storyline for Oblivion is one of the more fondly remembered ones by many people, even if it's not War and Peace or anything. Did Morrowind handle faction better? In most ways, probably yes. However, the faction storylines weren't a turn downward or anything.

So, overall? I think Oblivion was a step in the right direction from Morrowind, even if it was a boring, poorly executed step.

Bring on your rage Codex (and your informed debate ), I can take it

 

[SCO]

The best thing that ever happened to Bethesda was Kirkbride doing copious amounts of LSD while developing and integrating morrowind lore's, and since he only does peon tier occasional contractual writing work for them now and everyone else involved is busy demolishing, streamlining, deindividualizing or infantilizing the world and the quest design was never that good anyway nothing of value is lost by not playing their shitty jumping simulators with dragon respawn.

 

[NotAGolfer]

wall of text

Nicely done, newfag.
But imo you used the wrong game for your rhetoric exercise in playing devil's advocate.
I doubt Codex still has strong enough feelings about Oblivion to give a fuck about that turd. Skyrimjob was major and it's still kinda shit without mods.
Oblivious is beneath us.
Or we're over it if you wanna put it that way.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Play Nehrim (a fan mod to Oblivion). It's a lot of fun. Huge world splattered with hand-made dungeons, Gothic-like atmosphere (made in Germany) + an actual plot. Many problems remain but I had fun. Not as good as Gothic 2 or some such but definitely Risen+ quality as far as open-world RPGs go (though the gameworld is absolute massive - bigger than in any commercial single-player game for sure where stuff isn't RNG'd or copy pasted). To me this automatically redeems Oblivion for all the issues it had.

 

[Miner Arobar]

Gameworld and NPCs absolutely were taken in the right direction with Oblivion I think. There's a few reasons for this, and again I'm focusing more on idea than execution. So, first of all there are 225 forts, caves, mines, and Ayleid Ruins in Oblivion, which is much more than the number of caves and tombs in Morrowind. Bigger game world is a big plus, and more in keeping with the previous Elder Scrolls games. For comparision, the increase from Morrowind to Oblivion is about 1.6, while from all measurement Skyrim seems to be about the same size as Oblivion or smaller, which is definitely a strike against it. The reason they could even do this, however, is because they returned to procedural generation. While, yaah Daggerfall/Arena did it isn't necessarily a defense of it, and it has the drawback of leading to blander areas, it does however make the increase in size possible, which for the Elder Scrolls games is great because it's all about getting lost in a world and so big game world is an important part of that. Therefore, I think the direction they went is a big step in the right direction, they just need to focus on making their procedural generation algorithms much better (look at how effective .kkrieger is with it's procedural generation for it's size). Or at least, you know, shit or get off the pot with procedural generation or hand-crafting, because every time they switch around there's a jump in how bigger or smaller the worlds are and they can't build up on their previous work for improvement because a game later it'll be obsolete. Anyways, yah that was the better way to go for size, the quality could be nearly as good if they worked more on their procedural generation algorithms, and it's more fitting with the series.

No, no, no, no. The gameworld is precisely the reason Oblivion hasn't been redeemed by mods, and probably cannot be. There's no hint of an economy in Cyrodiil. There's not a single working mine. All the mines are goblin or bandit lairs. There are a very few farms, not near enough to give the illusion of someone providing these eight cities or so with food. Basically you have eight cities in a neat circular pattern surrounded only by woodland, some big roads, but hardly any smaller roads or paths. The one village which actually looks like a nice village, Bleaker's Way, has no road or path leading to it and is basically put there for the population to be killed in a Daedric quest. That sort of exemplifies what's wrong with world design in Oblivion. And I haven't seen any mod trying to improve on this. There's a whole mod project focused on making the landscapes look nicer, which is really nice, but it's not what Oblivion needs most. Skyrim did much better in this regard - lots of farms, mills, hunting camps, some villages - even though the villages and cities tend to be a bit too small.

 

[bussinrounds]

Play Nehrim (a fan mod to Oblivion). It's a lot of fun. Huge world splattered with hand-made dungeons, Gothic-like atmosphere (made in Germany) + an actual plot. Many problems remain but I had fun. Not as good as Gothic 2 or some such but definitely Risen+ quality as far as open-world RPGs go (though the gameworld is absolute massive - bigger than in any commercial single-player game for sure where stuff isn't RNG'd or copy pasted). To me this automatically redeems Oblivion for all the issues it had.

ALL the issues ?

Does it magically make the combat any good ?

 

[Somberlain]

Furthermore, take a small moment to appreciate the attempt with Radiant AI. Seriously. Yes, it was a buggy mess, I'll give you that easily. However, so was Daggerfall, but that's a lovely buggy mess for some reason . Anyways I just mean to say that let's be honest, programming NPCs with their own schedules was pretty cool, even if it was a little buggy, but I don't know why some of the things those NPCs do is any less immersion breaking than a bear getting stuck in a wall, so to each there own.

No one is saying that Oblivion AI should have been perfect and the best AI in any game ever. The thing is, the monkeys at Bethesda should have realized what their AI is, and more importantly, isn't capable of, and design their game and quests around that. Not design a game where the AI's braindeadness is so painfully obvious it hurts. I don't know much about game design but I'd guess that the AI in Oblivion is technically more advanced than the AI in Gothic 2 for example, but the NPCs in G2 feel a lot more realistic, intelligent and immersive because the game is designed better, keeping the limitations in mind.

Also, defending 2006 AI, which was really hyped by Bethesda, by saying that 1996 AI was just as bad is just sad.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

No one is saying that Oblivion AI should have been perfect and the best AI in any game ever. The thing is, the monkeys at Bethesda should have realized what their AI is, and more importantly, isn't capable of, and design their game and quests around that. Not design a game where the AI's braindeadness is so painfully obvious it hurts. I don't know much about game design but I'd guess that the AI in Oblivion is technically more advanced than the AI in Gothic 2 for example, but the NPCs in G2 feel a lot more realistic, intelligent and immersive because the game is designed better, keeping the limitations in mind.

Also, defending 2006 AI, which was really hyped by Bethesda, by saying that 1996 AI was just as bad is just sad.

What's sad is to excuse buggy gameplay on being released in '96. You can design a non-buggy game any year, my point wasn't that Daggerfall's bugginess excuses Oblivion's, they stand or fall on their own merits. However, Bethesda always reaches beyond there grasp, that is the Elder Scrolls in a nutshell pretty much: a game series trying to do more than it can. Like it or lump it, it's a double standard though to praise Daggerfall for trying to do more than it could while shitting on Oblivion for it. Skyrim of course is the exception, because Skyrim decided not to try to hard, and honestly that's why I can respect Oblivion more than Skyrim, even if Skyrim is more mindless fun.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

Miner Arobar , at what cost in size though did it take Skyrim to fix this? Better town design and better procedural generation algorithms could've solved this and at least 1.5x the area if not 3x probably.

 

[Machocruz]

So, first of all there are 225 forts, caves, mines, and Ayleid Ruins in Oblivion, which is much more than the number of caves and tombs in Morrowind. Bigger game world is a big plus, and more in keeping with the previous Elder Scrolls games. For comparision, the increase from Morrowind to Oblivion is about 1.6, while from all measurement Skyrim seems to be about the same size as Oblivion or smaller, which is definitely a strike against it. The reason they could even do this, however, is because they returned to procedural generation. While, yaah Daggerfall/Arena did it isn't necessarily a defense of it, and it has the drawback of leading to blander areas, it does however make the increase in size possible, which for the Elder Scrolls games is great because it's all about getting lost in a world and so big game world is an important part of that.

Assortment is more interesting than quantity. I'll see your Oblivion forts, caves, mines and Ayleid ruins and raise you Morrowind's forts, caves, mines, Dwemer ruins, ancestral tombs, Dumner strongholds, and underwater grottos. Throw in Oblivion gates and I'll throw in the Deadric shrines and their greater variation. Plus a TEMPLE IN THE FUCKING SKY! Plus towns that are distinct from one another. Content is king. Land radius isn't content, it's the container. If nothing else, Skyrim represent a correction to Oblivion's weak structural variety.

When people speak of "immersion" or "getting lost" in a game, I doubt they even understand what they are saying, and thus they draw up groundless relationships between those and things like size and "realism." These are uncritical memes at this point, and people who base their arguments on them are the kind that excuse the fussy movement in The Witcher 3 because "it's more realistic like this" -never mind that an actual human in actual reality has finer motor control than Geralt in the game, who is a slave to a wide turn radius and can't even climb low rock formations, can't decide whether to pick up a wedge of cheese or light a candle, etc. No, sorry, I'll take responsive and agile movement over (false) simulation in a GAME.

Although I do find it funny to speak of getting lost in Oblivion when it's the exact moment when Bethesda decided the player should never not know where they are or where there objective is, that their should be an indicator showing that there is a cave nearby even if the player character can't see it, and that there should be no content they can't miss out no matter if it makes sense or not.

 

[Rpgsaurus Rex]

Play Nehrim (a fan mod to Oblivion). It's a lot of fun. Huge world splattered with hand-made dungeons, Gothic-like atmosphere (made in Germany) + an actual plot. Many problems remain but I had fun. Not as good as Gothic 2 or some such but definitely Risen+ quality as far as open-world RPGs go (though the gameworld is absolute massive - bigger than in any commercial single-player game for sure where stuff isn't RNG'd or copy pasted). To me this automatically redeems Oblivion for all the issues it had.

ALL the issues ?

Does it magically make the combat any good ?

It's TES. Did Daggerfall have good combat, or Morrowind? Combat wasn't my issue with Oblivion in the first place, not by any margin. The fatal flaw of Oblivion as successor to Morrowind (to me) was the copypaste world, which Nehrim made up for in spades. Morrowind still has a superior look and feel + is probably a better game overall (all despite absolute trash tier combat), but I had my 50+ hours worth of fun with Nehrim (and I'd probably need 50 more hours to beat it, RL intervened) compared to 5~ or so hours it took me to get bored with vanilla Oblivion.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

I don't disagree Machocruz , however with procedural generation you don't have to worry about hand designing every square foot, an algorithm can, just improve your algorithm and you can scale quantity to any size. Oblivion didn't have great quality a lot of the time, but if you want size AND quality procedural will eventually do both, hand crafted won't. Therefore procedural is the right way to go for an open world exploration-centric action rpg like Elder Scrolls. Whether it was implemented well in Oblivion is another story. Step in the right direction doesn't equal great, or even good, but if they had a similar design philosophy to Oblivion when designing Skyrim it could've been as good of a world with better combat and not watered down like it was.

 

[Infinitron]

OP reminds me of Kenneth from the Ultima Codex who likes Ultima IX "because it represents a return to the spirit of Ultima IV". As if that return to some idealized early installment primitiveness was anything but a cop out.

 

[Chester Copperpot]

OP reminds me of Kenneth from the Ultima Codex who likes Ultima IX "because it represents a return to the spirit of Ultima IV". As if that return to some idealized early installment primitiveness was anything but a cop out.

Cop out of what? Elaborate?

Again didn't say Oblivion is good, but if Skyrim was designed more like Oblivion but bigger and coded better instead of simplified evryone would've been playing a much better game.

 

[Lios]

still can't understand when the word "immersive" became the equivalent of Bethesda games or sandbox mediocrities in general.
Granted I may be far off here cause english is not my native blabla, but I remember Grim Fandango, Warhammer chaos gate, heck even that Street Jam basketball game for SNES were immersive as fuck, dare I say more immersive than Oblivion by far, the difference is that Salvador Limones didn't have a night-day schedule, nor could you summon zombies and start a riot in Street Jam, and Chaos Gate didn't expect you to cross a whole continent of GREEN on foot.

 

[pippin]

OP reminds me of Kenneth from the Ultima Codex who likes Ultima IX "because it represents a return to the spirit of Ultima IV". As if that return to some idealized early installment primitiveness was anything but a cop out.

Most of the hype about U9 was, precisely, how it was going to be a "classic" Ultima; however, the people behind it quoted Mario 64 and Zelda: OOT as inspirations, and the rest is history. Ultima 8 is, ironically, closer to U4 than 9 could ever be, mostly because it's about mysticism and its effect in society.

There is nothing really noteworthy about Oblivion. Even for 2006, it's kinda sad for what was supposed to be a AAA game. Open world games and RPGs were nothing new and yet it feels more like a boring tech demo for something else. I mean, they managed to fuck up audio files in one single conversation, how did that happened.

Immersion means larping, and people think it's what Bethesda does because they never really forced a certain type of character on you.

 

[Somberlain]

still can't understand when the word "immersive" became the equivalent of Bethesda games or sandbox mediocrities in general.
Granted I may be far off here cause english is not my native blabla, but I remember Grim Fandango, Warhammer chaos gate, heck even that Street Jam basketball game for SNES were immersive as fuck, dare I say more immersive than Oblivion by far, the difference is that Salvador Limones didn't have a night-day schedule, nor could you summon zombies and start a riot in Street Jam, and Chaos Gate didn't expect you to cross a whole continent of GREEN on foot.

Seems like immersion has become a meaningless buzzword when it comes to gaming. A lot of gamers don't even have a slightest clue of what it means. Just go to Skyrim Nexus, type "immersive" in the search box and you'll find dozens of "immersive x" named mods that have absolutely nothing to do with immersion. A lot of people seems to think that it's a synonym for lore-friendly.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

 

[AW8]

Seems like immersion has become a meaningless buzzword when it comes to gaming. A lot of gamers don't even have a slightest clue of what it means. Just go to Skyrim Nexus, type "immersive" in the search box and you'll find dozens of "immersive x" named mods that have absolutely nothing to do with immersion. A lot of people seems to think that it's a synonym for lore-friendly.

Guide to descriptive words on Skyrim Nexus:

Immersive - Means whatever the fuck the author wants it to mean

Lore-friendly - The mod doesn't add lightsabers

 

[Eyestabber]

The Shivering Isles is the best thing to mention when one tries to make a case for Oblivion, IMO. They were pretty and had fun quests full of nonsense. Sheogorath was also somewhat memorable, but as far as a "mad god" goes, Cleve is WAY better.