Dynafire has 132 chronicles

1. What I hate about Oblivion
   

   Player Chronicle -- Posted on May 13 2009

   Instead of another Under the Radar this week, I thought I'd try something a bit different. Instead of alienating mainstream titles from my reviews, I'm going to start writing about well-known good games, and the things that I did not like about them. The first game I'm doing this with is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.
   
   First, the good things: It's an open world RPG, which I love to play, and the game was very entertaining and compelling. The first time. The story was good, and the game's visual effects were stellar. Subsequent attempts at playing through the game however, were met with varying degrees of progression before ultimately becoming bored to death of it. I will be comparing it a lot to its predecessor, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind a lot, since they are the closest thing to one another.
   
   Now for the things I hated about Oblivion:
   
   1. There is zero incentive to explore anywhere. The dungeons look so identical to each other, I have only gone back to the ones with the most containers in them on other playthroughs. Most of the outside world is a bore too, which I will elaborate on in another paragraph. Instead of having an elaborate fantasy world like it's little brother, Morrowind, it's looks like a run-of-the-mill medievil setting. Sure, it's got gorgeous graphics and all that, but playing the game didn't make me feel like I was in an epic fantasy world.
   
   The landscape is virtually identical across 80% of the landmass. Zero Punctuation said it best when he described it as " a meadow that is copy/pasted with a few wolves thrown in". What the hell happened? Morrowind was a smaller world than Oblivion (though still very large), and has quite a few distinct regions. From the south-western area's gigantic mushroom-trees and water-logged swamplands to the north's ashen wasteland dotted with ruins of a lost civilization, it feels like a fantasy world. That is the kind of world that makes you want to explore it. Dungeons are also much easier to stomach, since you never really know what will be inside. Sometimes normal caves turn into elaborate hidden ruins. The coolest thing I've seen in Morrowind was a normal ancestral tomb that led far, far, underground and ultimately lead me to a long-lost legendary viking's tomb. There are other tombs and caves that will also lead to something completely different than what you expected.
   
   2. This ties in a bit to point #1. There are hardly any unique weapons or equipment to find. When you compare Oblivion to its previous installment Morrowind, the equipment department is severely lacking. Most of Oblivion will be spent with you parading about with generic equipment, occassionally locating an random enchanted item of some sort. Where are the badass unique armor pieces like in Morrowind? I've filled crate after crate after crate with unique items in that game, while I think I encountered maybe a dozen in Oblivion, and you can trust me; I've explored nearly every location in Oblivion. Seriously. On my first character, I have just about every location in the world fully explored, and have almost nothing worthwhile to show for it. It's true that you can enchant your own weapons and armor, but nothing gives quite as much satisfaction as fighting through a three-level dungeon to find an incredible unique item at the end of it like in Morrowind.
   
   3. Leveled loot. This was quite possibly the thing I disliked the most about Oblivion. In Morrowind, it was possible to obtain very good equipment early on, since a lot of it was in set locations. I liked that. I liked being able to stumble upon some awesome armor or an extremely useful weapon early on, then noting where it was so I could easily find it again on subsequent playthroughs. Ocassionally, quests will get you unique items as a reward, but in the wild, they are an extreme rarity. Almost everything you obtain in Oblivion is random. The chests and containers contain loot that is scaled to suit your level. Therefore, you will find crappy equipment at low levels, and better equipment at higher levels.
   
   4. Tieing in to point #2 and #3, those armor and weapons would be useless anyway. Enemies leveling with you is yet another issue I have with Oblivion. When you get a new piece of armor that has a higher defense, you generally wear it. However, when you gain a few levels, you start encountering tougher enemies that cancel out any benefit your new armor would have given you. You are then forced to find even better armor, which is again canceled out by harder enemies. It's the same thing with weapons. As soon as you find a good sword, the enemies become tougher, and suddenly your sword isn't nearly as useful as it was two levels ago. You never feel like you're getting stronger. Any bonuses you get from leveling up are nullified by enemies that do greater damage and have better defense, so you never get the feeling like you're actually a level 40 warrior. In Morrowind, the enemy scaling in there, but they don't keep getting stronger as you do. The game spawns harder enemies, but their stats are set, so eventually you are able to take anything on with relatively few problems. I love being an unstoppable death force, and in Oblivion, that can never, ever happen. In fact, it is impossible (and I dare anyone to prove me wrong here) to beat the main quest at a high level (I was level 38 at this point), because the enemies at the end will kill the person you need to protect every single bleeping time. There is not a damn thing you can do about it, and if you want to actually finish the game, you have to turn the game down to very easy.
   
   5. Fighting in this game is something I'm a bit on the edge about. I don't exactly hate it, but I don't exactly like it either. 90% of battles I experienced went like this: block, counter, block, counter, block, counter, something dies, move on. Now, this is where the Oblivion vs. Morrowind fanboys tend to have their biggest battle. The combat. The Oblivion fanboys (I'm a huge Morrowind fanboy, in case you couldn't tell. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a fanboy.) say that Morrowind's combat sucks because it is possible to miss over and over again with any attack while your skill is low. Yes, it's true, and yes, it's annoying, but I prefer Morrowind's combat greatly because it flows. Oblivion's combat seems slow and clunky to me. Every time I get into a battle, I sigh because I know it's going to be another block, counter dance. Battles can drag on for minutes, which would be fine if there was some sort of epic quality to them, but there isn't. Morrowind's battles flow, like I said. When you start working up your skills, you rarely miss, and battles rarely drag on past 20 seconds. In fact, once you know what you're doing, 5 seconds is pretty much the norm for anything.
   
   I had a brief conversation with Mr. Ryan Eft last night about this, who says it's an awesome game. I won't flat out call him wrong and say Oblivion is a bad game. Everyone's entitled to their opinions, and while I don't necessarily agree with it, I have to respect it. Like I said at the beginning, Oblivion is a good game, and most of my hatred of the game is from not being able to get much replayability out of it. What I will do is issue a challenge. This challenge extends to everyone who has played and loved Oblivion but has never given Morrowind a shot. Play Morrowind for 20 hours and tell me you hate it. Try not to focus so much on the main quest, just go exploring. I guarantee you will find it much more rewarding and will shower me with praise and gold (or not) for being your guiding light, if you will.

   
   

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Dynafire has 2 comment s on this chronicle.

1. JackDaniels624
   Posted On May 13 2009

   You didn't include what my biggest disappointment! I used to be extremely charismatic in Morrowind so I could persuade guards into attacking me so I could legally kill them! Then in Oblivion all you could do is raise how much they like you...Still a great game IMO

2. BEN
   Posted On May 13 2009

   I enjoy this writing style of yours. You're not mean when you say you don't like something, but instead give reasoning behind your opinions. That is the hard part, but you've done it well with this Chronicle and seem to do it well pretty often.
   
   I think this may become a side quest for you. A series about what you hate, haha, would be perfect for Dynafire and be fun to read for the rest of us
   
   See on the GoGcast tonight, where we'll have to talk about this and maybe your inspiration for a new Chronicle series?!