Something Redeeming from Oblivion

[Dreaad]

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.

You say that, but I had great success with my Dragon Age 2 thread when I was a super new newfag. Reached 15 pages even.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/so-dragon-age-2.82586/
If there's one game that compete with the overall incompetence of Oblivion, it's DA2. To this day I'm impressed that Bioware outdid themselves and made something even worse with DA: I

 

[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.

You say that, but I had great success with my Dragon Age 2 thread when I was a super new newfag. Reached 15 pages even.
http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/so-dragon-age-2.82586/
If there's one game that compete with the overall incompetence of Oblivion, it's DA2. To this day I'm impressed that Bioware outdid themselves and made something even worse with DA: I

I think the difference is that your points about DA2 were somewhat valid, I don't see a trolling exercise there.
OP in this thread uses some sprinkles of lore in an overwhelmingly dull and forgettable game to gain a foothold and goes on to defend the shittiest aspects of the game (the procedurally generated dungeons, the broken char development which one has to abuse to not shoot himself in the foot, the ass-backwards level scaling) in a very weak manner. This is a pure troll thread, but it's already 4 pages long.
Codex, I'm disappoint!

 

[adddeed]

Oblivion is a much better game than Dragon Age 2 though.

 

[JarlFrank]

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.

Yes, Nehrim is really awesome and enjoyable. The dungeon design is impressive, especially visually.

I'm really looking forward to Enderal, their project on the Skyrim construction set.

 

[MilesBeyond]

Oblivion is a much better game than Dragon Age 2 though.

True. Well, kinda true. Oblivion is actually a much worse game than DA2, but that makes it better. Like I said in my last post, Oblivion is so bad it's good. It's the RPG version of The Room. DA2 is just bland. There's nothing all that bad about DA2 - there just isn't anything good. It's the type of game where, if I played it in a vacuum, if I didn't know anything about RPGs and DA2 was my introduction to the concept, I'd probably love it. However, because that's not the case, I'm left sitting there thinking "Why would I ever play this? Everything this game attempts has been done better by a different game."


See, that's the thing. Oblivion is the awesome sort of bad. DA2 is the worst sort of bad where it hasn't even got the good grace to be bad in an enjoyable way and instead just sits there taking up space.

 

[JarlFrank]

DA2 has the most awkward writing in the history of video games.

 

[Somberlain]

There's nothing all that bad about DA2

Yes there is. Shitty AWSHUM BUTTON combat, shitty character progression, really shitty writing and shitty and linear exploration, to name a few. DA2 isn't bad enough to be funny, you're right about that, but it's still really bad.

 

[MilesBeyond]

There's nothing all that bad about DA2

Yes there is. Shitty AWSHUM BUTTON combat, shitty character progression, really shitty writing and shitty and linear exploration, to name a few. DA2 isn't bad enough to be funny, you're right about that, but it's still really bad.

Yeah, true enough. I guess I was more thinking in the technical sense - it's not at Oblivion's level of pure, glitchy, "What the hell is going on"-ness

 

[Parsifarka]

DA2 is fun and the combat is more enjoyable than DA1's. It's like an extended action scene of Nicolas Winding Refn full of coolness.
Blood, boobs and gratuitously aggressive answers. There's no reason not to like it even if it's shit (and it certainly is).
DA2 is the most pleasant perversion of RPG I know, sweet decline.

 

[Somberlain]

DA2 is fun

No, it isn't.

Spoiler

 

[Chester Copperpot]

I think the difference is that your points about DA2 were somewhat valid, I don't see a trolling exercise there.
OP in this thread uses some sprinkles of lore in an overwhelmingly dull and forgettable game to gain a foothold and goes on to defend the shittiest aspects of the game (the procedurally generated dungeons, the broken char development which one has to abuse to not shoot himself in the foot, the ass-backwards level scaling) in a very weak manner. This is a pure troll thread, but it's already 4 pages long.
Codex, I'm disappoint!

In all fairness, while I was at least semi playing a devils advocate in the beginning, I'm being honest in saying that I actually think the main points I'm making are sound, and if I'm understanding troll correctly (someone who's just doin' it for the lulz more or less) I feel like that's not an accurate description as I am genuinely trying to argue for my position. I did change the topic from lore to that argument, but mainly because people seemed little interested in the lore component, and I got other sites where I can post my Mythic Dawn Commentary commentaryies already. Anyways, I'd be interested for you to point out what's weak about the argument that these features were a step in the right direction but poorly implemented, because perhaps some of my points in particular or my reasoning is in some way flawed, or maybe you could shed some new light on things that could develop the argument a bit.

Again, my only argument is that if Bethesda only did what any other game franchise generally does and stick with a basic design for more than one game but improve it's flaws and do more with it in the next, they could have made a much better game than Skyrim. Instead of taking out all the complex variables that can be taken into account for combat in Oblivion, tweak the combat so those variables become something that actually makes combat a little more complex and interesting. Instead of abandoning procedural generation which produced bland things last time and making your game work not grow or even by some measurements shrink, work on improving those programs so you can procedurally generate not bland stuff (again, not too hard). I think similar arguments could be made about the AI because again it seems like they simplified the NPC behavior in order to fix it rather than trying to maybe tweak the programming to have interesting NPC behavior with as many situations where they act like they have no idea what they're doing. The only thing Skyrim really did this with was in fixing the character progression issues caused by the level scaling it seems like. Other than that, they ignored Oblivion and added dragons. It didn't make an awful game (to mindless kill some hours with and soak in the world a bit), I enjoy some of the things that resulted from going the other way with it, but again, if the above points were expanded upon and improved, and not dropped like a hot potato, we'd have a game that was quite a bit cooler imo.

 

[Siveon]

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.

I love Nehrim. The only caveat to Nehrim is that everyone forgets to mention it's prequel for Morrowind - Arktwend. I never played it myself (plan to try it out after I beat Morrowind), but it looks like a proper to beginning to what might be an awesome trilogy of total conversion mods.

 

[JarlFrank]

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.

I love Nehrim. The only caveat to Nehrim is that everyone forgets to mention it's prequel for Morrowind - Arktwend. I never played it myself (plan to try it out after I beat Morrowind), but it looks like a proper to beginning to what might be an awesome trilogy of total conversion mods.

If these guys were to design the Elder Scrolls games, rather than Bethesda, I'd actually pay for them again rather than pirating. Those guys have some real design talent.

I mean, look at these exploration trailers:




Some of the scenes shown come close to Morrowind in the atmosphere they manage to convey. I especially like that undercity.

 

[M0RBUS]

incorporating procedurally generated content -

I can tell you for a fact that Oblivion has zero procedurally generated content. Absolutely NONE.

It was yet another lie of the PR. Everything is hand place. It might very well have been machine placed, if you know what I mean, judging by the sheer blandness of the wilderness. Comparing the ladnscaping mods for Oblivion and Skyrim against the original games just goes to show how immensely untalented and/or uninterested the level designers are at Bethesda. Fallout 3 is no exception either. Half the time you're better off using the TCL command to fly through walls, and what's worse is you have more fun that way.

But then again, every single Bethesda game is more fun to play with god mode enabled, so what do I know.

 

[No Great Name]

I can tell you for a fact that Oblivion has zero procedurally generated content. Absolutely NONE.

It was yet another lie of the PR. Everything is hand place. It might very well have been machine placed, if you know what I mean, judging by the sheer blandness of the wilderness.

That's incorrect. Much of the outside wilderness in Oblivion was procedurally generated. Even Oblivion's construction set allows users to procedurally generate exterior cells.

 

[Siveon]

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.

I love Nehrim. The only caveat to Nehrim is that everyone forgets to mention it's prequel for Morrowind - Arktwend. I never played it myself (plan to try it out after I beat Morrowind), but it looks like a proper to beginning to what might be an awesome trilogy of total conversion mods.

If these guys were to design the Elder Scrolls games, rather than Bethesda, I'd actually pay for them again rather than pirating. Those guys have some real design talent.

I mean, look at these exploration trailers:




Some of the scenes shown come close to Morrowind in the atmosphere they manage to convey. I especially like that undercity.

I know man, I've been oogling at the development for quite a while.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

I can tell you for a fact that Oblivion has zero procedurally generated content. Absolutely NONE.

It was yet another lie of the PR. Everything is hand place. It might very well have been machine placed, if you know what I mean, judging by the sheer blandness of the wilderness.

That's incorrect. Much of the outside wilderness in Oblivion was procedurally generated. Even Oblivion's construction set allows users to procedurally generate exterior cells.

It's what gave birth to the "OMG SOIL EROSION" meme, iirc. Turns out realistic looking green hills are fairly boring to look at.

The dungeons were hand-made, but since all dungeons in a same "theme" (ayleid temple, beast cave, necromancer hideout, etc) are pretty similar and over time you start to recognize premade "chunks" used to build less important areas (and in some cases you can see the seams), it can give the impression of random generation.

 

[pippin]

When people talked about soil erosion I imagined my character being trapped in a landslide or something like that. In the end it was just a fucking buzzword.

At least we got Gamer Poop out of Oblivion.

 

[MilesBeyond]

The dungeons were hand-made, but since all dungeons in a same "theme" (ayleid temple, beast cave, necromancer hideout, etc) are pretty similar and over time you start to recognize premade "chunks" used to build less important areas (and in some cases you can see the seams), it can give the impression of random generation.

Exactly. That's the thing. The dungeons in Oblivion don't really feel any different from Daggerfall's dungeons other than being much smaller and far less interesting. To me, if you're going to step away from procedural generation, you've got to make it worthwhile. If you end up with something that's not procedurally generated but feels like it is, then what the hell is the point? I mean, offhand I can't even distinguish the Oblivion dungeons. All the Ayleid ruins meld together, all the caves meld together. They all felt so same-y.


I mean Baldur's Gate had dungeons that were more interesting and memorable than Oblivion, and as far as I'm concerned the BG series is like the bottom of the barrel when it comes to dungeon-crawling (which pains me to say, as it's possibly my all-time favourite RPG, but seriously. If you're playing the BG series for the dungeons, don't. Well, that's not totally fair. Durlag's Tower was pretty interesting, and I know some people were big fans of Watcher's Keep. But yeah).

 

[Cthulhu_is_love]

WTF? Didn't expect that:

http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=129410391

Fuk your black ops, Fuk your halo games, Fuk your wow. Oblivion ruins all that shiit without even trying! I'm playing it for the 4th time now and still finding new shiit to do. I'm taking my factions quests to the limits and enjoying it all. Oblivion = best game ever. One factions entire quest chain = the same content as one game today. Tell me I'm wrong.

You're wrong, Morrowind was superior.

This.

these,
oblivion is like morrowinds retarded cousin, you play with him when morrowind isnt around but as soon as morrow shows up...... your hanging out with him



And:
lightweight99
Banned

 

[Eyestabber]

-Bodybuilder forum.

-Oblivion apologist got banned.

Some lines simply aren't meant to be crossed.

 

[zwanzig_zwoelf]

My IQ dropped to 135 after reading through this thread.

I'll just do what I have to and get back to my stuff.

Spoiler

 

[taxalot]

Oblivion is, at worse, a 4/10 game.

 

[AW8]

Spoiler

Those tits, looking back, is at worst an 8/10 pair.

 

[DraQ]

The single truly good, nay, awesome thing to ever come from Oblivion is this:
http://www.prequeladventure.com/

Though I guess SI sort of counts as decent too if you squint hard enough as it wasn't exactly unplayable and did seem like PS:T next to BG1 when compared with vanilla (anyone disagreeing may be misremembering at least one of them).