Personally I thought the cities had plenty of character in Oblivion, it wasn't smack in the face "OMG, they live in mushrooms" character but they each had their own artechure and style and much more interesting was the subtile character which MW was missing, eg the Argonian vs Khajiit racism in Leyawiin.

Bah! I like Anvil ... because my Khajiit Kingdom is there. Someone mentioned that they hope that Bethesda goes to Valenwood next so they can shoot bosmers; but I know Pisces & I both hope that their next stop is to Sommerset Isle so we can make fun of all the hoithy Altmers.

I was so happy when the rumors were floating that the Isle was going to be the next game location - before Oblivion came out - but like most rumors .. it was just that.

The rumor about oblivion's content before oblivion was announced was pretty (completly) accurate, though that wasn't a rumor, it was an educated theory. I don't think the Summerset Isles rumor is an educated theory, more like wild speculation. I do want to go to Summerset Isles

Speaking of Khajiit kingdoms, have you been to Borderwatch (I think thats the name), that is my favourite town, full of Khajiit. I went there quite a few times and its always a pleasure, I use the sheep there as training whenever I go.

Well, I will watch for BorderWatch on my map .... but you really lost me about the sheep.

**Ibis shudders to think what Pisces is doing with the sheep**

Under a starry sky over a vast grass plain baa's of sheep can be heard.
Farmer Brown looks out his window to see what all the racket is all about.

Farmer Brown: O'h Bloody Oblivion! It's That fish with the gaint axe again. Martha!!! Get me my bow! Its time we settel this.


In any case back to the subject, Oblivion is a game, like any other game out there or any thing in egsistance (Sry for spelling) for that matter it is not perfect.

Personally I think Oblivion is a bench mark in what games these days can achieve.
No other game out there has such a vast 3D world to explore with such a freedom of choice.
Sure there's a lot left to be desired, but witch game doesn't have its flawes bugs and bad developing choices'es.
No game can say it has done what Oblivion has done.
Morrowind was and still is a great game, but it's engin was totally crap.
MW has longer out door loading times and in places more lag than Oblivion on my pc.

I hope that two things will hapen in the future.

1: Other developing companys see's the potential of Oblivions engin and uses it for they're games. (Can you just imagine the possiblety's)

2: Bethesda stops trying to make money out of their mini mods and puts all they're energy into a full blown expansion that has more dungen and story line content variaty.

Considering what Bethesda has accomplished I say hats off.
Even thou they seemed to try and apeal to the masses rather than stay true to their roots in some places.


Ar least it isn't a bug fest like BF2
(no dictionary's where harmed during this horred spelling sestion)

Hahaha .. LordDoomsDay, I love your imaginative little scenarios. And fried fish would look lipsmackin' good at the end of a skewer arrow! Don't forget to tell farmer Brown'w wife to save me the scales. LOL

And I suppose you are right about Obliv for the people with the proper enough hardware to run it okay. MW did have terrible lags as it went from square to square of real estate. And I don't hear too many people complain about the game just dropping out like MW did for so many people.

With the release of the first patch containing the new "very low" graphics setting, I've been able to coax my computer to play Oblivion with a reasonable framerate. It looks really bad (compared to what it would look like on a much better machine), but still looks better than many other games I've played. I haven't really spent that much time with it yet, so I'll have to reserve final judgement. But here's what I can say so far:

1. I really like Oblivion's magic system. I decided long ago that my first character would be a mage, and I've really liked the ability to switch between staves and spells fluidly during combat. I'm sure it would be even better for battlemages; a battlemage in morrowind usually got killed while trying to get his spell hands out. Forgive me if this is evil, but I really like the fact that spells don't fail anymore. It always drove me nuts when I had just enough time to cast a single protective spell before the enemy closed to melee range, only to have it fail and get cut down mercilessly in my unprotected state.

2. I like the fast travel. I know, that may be somewhat heretical, but my recent playing of morrowind involved a lot of use of the coc command because I got bored always traveling places. I still did it sometimes, but there are times you just want to get there and get to the action. Having said that, I've also enjoyed exploring the forests in Oblivion. They definitely look much better than Morrowind; I just wish I had a computer that could do them justice.

3. I miss levitation. I've only played the game for two days, but I already miss it.

4. I don't miss the cliffracers. Flying enemies are evil.

5. Same problem as Morrowind: not enough restore magicka ingredients. I always use the atronach birthsign for my mages, but it is quite expensive to buy restore magicka potions from the vendors. I still haven't found a good natural source of (at least two) ingredients for these potions. But as I said, Morrowind had the same problem.

6. I haven't yet tried out melee or ranged combat, so I can't really comment on those yet.

Conclusion: I decided long ago that I would probably enjoy playing Oblivion. With a couple days experience, I think I'm definitely having fun. That's really the important part. I'm sure I'll continue to have fun playing for many hours to come. I just hope I can manage to get enough sleep.

The magic systems is AWESOME! Have you seen the soul trap casting effect? it looks sooo cool. Just wait until you can summon a daedroth, then you're unstopable! I'm switching between a ranger and a battlemage, my battlemage has lost abit of its battle to the awesome mage fun but it can still take a pounding, my ranger is weak as, I really need to get her endurance, light armour and blade up, its fun being a theif though, poisons rock.

Levitation I still miss but I have forgotten about it now, there is a mod which adds it I think but all the dungeons are designed not to be able to use levitate so it would mess up things. The designers seem to be trying to make up for the lack of teleporting inside with short cuts out in long dungeons.

5. What are you talking about, there is tons of restore magicka ingrediants, flax seeds and steel blue cap are the 2 I used at low level I think. You will DROWN in flax around skingrad and steel blue something cap is less dense but tends to be everywhere, I think Leyawin or Bravil has some in the town.

Hey cool. I haven't tried out the soultrap thing yet. Aye, spellcasting looks very neat in Oblivion.

RAI was most dissapointing!
Let me tell you a story:

I was in the dark brotherhood quest where I found Lucien Lachance.
He told me that there's a traitor, dark brotherhood hunts him...

And when he stop talking he starts to attack me!!! And then comes a woman
with Mythic dawn armor and defends me. After a few seconds Lucien Lachance has
escaped and I started to talk to that woman with mythic dawn armor. She tells
me:

"Thanks for closing that Oblivion gate outside the town!"...
The Mythic dawn agent thank me for closing oblivion gate?
That's stupid.

I have start laughing. Then I've really understand that OBLIVION IS DISAPOINTING. Especially Radiant AI!

Yeah, RAI was kinda dissapointing. I just read a post on these forums about RAI, it was made some time before the release of Oblivion, when the hype was still fresh in us. Here it is:



It's real if you don't believe me, just look at the first page of the mod idea thread "A Commoner's life" or something like that.

As far as the NPCs with a personality, I agree with that. NPCs with a very random personality, like the example with the Mythic Dawn woman. There are some NPCs that I like but the others are just cardboard. The only thing about them that's better than Morrowind is that they walk around town, talk with people and (sometimes) sit down. As far as eating, I've never seen an NPC eating and I've never seen an NPC practicing with a weapon as in the video Bethesda released a long time ago, the 20 min. video narated by Tod Howard.

Yeah, that was quite disappointing. These features were among the main ones that really made me looking forward to Oblivion. Their absence have made me switch 'currently playing' games much sooner than Morrowind (now playing the aging Rome:Total War, Barbarian Invasion expansion pack).

What? I've seen a lots of NPC's eating and practisting with weapons. And they read too, amongst other things.

Yeah, but it was probably pre-scripted when they did that. Let me know if you see an NPC doing anything of the above without interaction.

A lot of NPCs do that, and some refuse to take their heads out of the book to talk

Anyway, my main problem with Oblivion was, like a lot of people, the lack of depth. In Morrowind, one thing leads to another, and quests led off onto new ones for hours. Now, I can finish the Dark Brotherhood in about a day and not feel the urge to go off onto side quests and stuff. The quests are so shallow, as in they are short without much plot and intricusies.

I agree with Fethenwen, only a few NPCs don't eat, most of the ones who don't eat are the quest NPCs for some reason, they have strange timetables, like the dark brotherhood guy in Bravil who is set to stand at a statue from 5pm to 1am then return home to WANDER around his house untill he goes out to his statue again, never sleeps, never eats and he has 100% energy so when he is wandering for 16 hours he doesn't take a break.

If you go into the fighters guild then you can often see fighters training. Lets take Skasha at the Leyawiin fighter's guild, at midnight she sleeps for 6 hours, waking up at 6am, to train melee combat for 4 hours then she will wander around for 2 with aim, before having lunch at 12pm for 2, she will then proceed to the basement at 2pm for 4 hours before eating dinner at 6pm for 3 then wandering around aimlessly till she goes to sleep and starts the day over again.

Honditar, a trainer in chorrol who I steal my arrows off when he does his daily target practice, goes inside when raining instead of training archer meaning I can't steal his arrows. And if it is raining he will return home 2 hours earlier than he would stay inside longer than he usually would.

People at the mage's guild train their magic and do alchemy, infact I have gotten quite a fright when a fireball went shooting past me in the local mage's guild.

Have you never seen someone trying to steal their lunch? Or pickpocketing another NPC. I have had it happen a few times, of course they failed miserably.

They don't do as much as I would have made them done, but they hardly do nothing. If you have time in the editior the you can make NPC be fully lifelike, like someone will go out hunting for wolf pelts, sell them at local merchant, once they recieve a certain amount of money then they will go out and buy clothing, however a rival from when he was growing up likes to show off his greater success so whenever he sees X-npc in new clothing he will go and buy better cloths.

EDIT: Don't forget imperial foresters who are on a constant quest for 999 venison and won't stop untill they find it (in which case they will wander randomly for the rest of their lives!)

I mean a usual NPC, not a member of the Fighters Guild. I see those guys practicing often. In the video, the bookstore owner was practicing with a bow and she actually drank a potion to increase her skills. They increased and she started shooting better. I haven't seen this happen at all. I've seen NPCs reading once or twice. Anyway, Radiant AI is generally viewed as a superficial thing which is sometimes random and most of the time stupid. It is generally regarded as a joke. I think the best computer magazine in my country, Level, gave Oblivion its deserving score, an 8.8 which is quite fitting.

Well, as so often happens with creative endeavors - I think that we can all rejoice that Bethesda Softworks made such an exceptional and endlessly entertaining game as Morrowind and also mourn that even they themselves will probably never be able to repeat their performance. Oblivion is in no way a sequel or followup game to Morrowind.

They've really tried with the radient AI and the beautiful graphics, but the depth was lacking .... the quests, the expansiveness of MW, the repetition of dungeons, the fact that the architecture is all prefab in Obliv TESCS, the lack of weirdness for the animals, plantlife, architecture, funiture, etc.

Oh well, I'm not even sure that it is the same company exactly who made Oblivion. If you'll notice, Bethesda Softworks is responsible for Morrowind, Tribunal and Bloodmoon (Arena, Daggerfall, DarkStar, etc.) - - but it is Bethesda Gaming Company that looms up loud and clear on your opening credits of Oblivion. So, I'm not sure if this is of any consequence or if this perhaps explains the greediness of this new idea of ?selling? mods to us.

Hey dudes, work on an expansion to give us the looming feel of Morrowind in Oblivion somehow ... or try, at least. Don't picky-une us to death with $3 mods.

I know the book store owner used a bow, but in the game why on earth would a bookstore owner have a bow? You are basically upset that every single person in Cyrodiil doesn't act like a warrior Who else would train apart from the fighter's guild? The fighter's guild contains all the adventurers appart from the mage's guild who also train. Then there is the legion which gets active training and lets face it, you join the fighter's guild if you want to become an adventurer, the legion isn't full of people aspiring to become heros, they just want to hold a job so their hardly going to spend their spare time working, I mean they just spent the entire day fighting bandits or standing on patrol for that spare time. Then there is the gladiators, who want to become famous fighters by training constantly and testing their skills in a life or death duel, and so they all training constantly. Then there is hunters who train actively but a few also train in their spare time.

The only exception to the rule is the blades, who train when they are really just high ranking legion officers so shouldn't be training. But they are aspiring to become heros too and they became high ranking because they wasted their spare time training.

if you honestly ask me it wasn't realy disapointing, the graphics were great and stuff. But I just couldn't get into it. In fact I'm more disapointed in beth than their game. They bascly don't care about their fans anymore. I know they are busy 2 but they can't even come up with some updates. I mean they promised us so much but done so little.

The game wasn't realy disapointing I just can't get into it. Morrowind was 1000x better, just the oddness of the world and stuff. This is just a normal fantasy world. I'm actually playing Morrowind again...that says enough I guess.

Indeed Geo, I'm playing Morrowind too. You just have to load in some new mods and everything in Morrowind is different or at least exciting again.

what i did not like was that u could not play multi player
the game would of been alot better if u could play online

other than that it was pretty good

Online.... No. That would be wrong. There'd be Deadric armed warriors chopping down all the newbs as they came out of the caves...

I think Bethesda wanted a more action-oriented game this time, and I think they did well with that, the fighting engine is vasely improved compared to Morrowind's and I really like that the stealth element to the game has been improved. Even with a character that was specialized in sneaking, I could rarely pickpocket a character in Morrowind. That was changed in Oblivion. I also like how magic and weapons work in a more in union, you don't have to rummage between modes anymore.

On the other side, content-wise, Morrowind was amazing. The lower amount of fast travel makes the player find things and curiousity often gets them to go explore things while questing. I love Morrowind's distractions. Oblivion didn't really do that for me. It felt like I was being taken by the hand everywhere. Personally I would go back to the Mark/Recall format than fast travel markers to found locations.

It would be great if ES V was a combination of Morrowind and Oblivion.

Yes .... set in the Sommerset Isles with the Altmers. I mean, they are so conceited, they really need a game of their own.

The whole NPCs not doing anything you guys are talking about. Watch guards in the imperial city. Just go break into one of their towers. I was watching them one time and I think a few of the patrols would switch posts.

Wish they would actually make the guards people. Instead of just "Imperial guard"

Mod idea for some of you out there.

The Almer's must die... I even killed them all in Morrowind (even those ones hidden way out there in caves). Thier just so... arrogant.

Good job, Hunter.

Lets keep this on topic please.

Well, sure Iloved Oblivion, it was a great game...but I got dissapointed nonetheless, it just didnt give me that feeling that Morrowind gave me four years ago, and I had thought the game would deliever more...but still, its a 6 on the dice from me bethesda, (make sure you give us that lil'extra you gave us with Morrowind in your next TES game.....

I voted "No", hats off to Bethesda (even though I don't have a hat).

I think that since I had no preconceptions about Radiant AI or some of the things Todd and Pete were personally promising in pre-release info, I had no reason to be disappointed. Chances are that if I had an Xbox, and therefore had Morrowind, I would have been upset about a few things. But I'm an open-minded person > I'm usually able to see good things where others see negatives.

So assuming I would have had Morrowind first, I probably would have been upset about a few things, but also ecstatic about others (like the way combat is handled).

I really enjoyed Oblivion. It had a unique feel to it

I hadn't played Morrowind, I wasn't all over the forums speculating wildly about what the game will and will not do, so I didn't have any expectations build up to be shattered. So I loved it.

Now speaking to people that participated in the forums and was involved in that speculation... I can see why some people weren't impressed.

I voted the Are You Insane option, as Oblivion was the only game I played for 3 years straight. I am also one of those people who were not exposed to any pre-game hype, so I had no expectations to be crushed.

OTOH, I learned many, many years ago with Doom 2 to never believe hype or create expectations about a game before it is released. I never get psyched up about any game, and will never pre-order any game. I wait until they are actually released and people have played it before I start thinking about getting it. That is why I waited about 5 months before getting Skyrim, and completely ignored the Skyrim forum over at Bethesda before the game came out. What is the point of talking about a game that no one can play?

I never played Morrowind until after playing Oblivion first. It I had played Morrowind first, I probably would have never bought another ES game. The story was alright, but I found the gameplay (not the graphics) to be pretty meh over all.

I'll get excited and preorder, but I'll never go into the forums and speculate. That is just a recipe for disaster.

Voted: "Are you insane? It has consumed my life!" I mean, I've had the game 7 years next month and I'm stil playing it, writing about it, hanging around on forums discussing it. Had to buy my own XBox 360 and game since my son wanted his back. Then I bought a PC and had it stoked up to play Oblivion's hungry graphics and bought the PC game. (Then bought a laptop so I could take it with me on trips).

I also went out and bought Morrowind & Skyrim for both the 360 and PC, plus all the DLC's - based on my love of Oblivion. (Then downloaded Arena and Daggerfall, but couldn't play them).

(Not to mention buying Fallout 3 and New Vegas just because Bethesda made or was connected with the making of them). So yeah, pretty much consumed my life. My husband sure complains it does, lol.

Another vote for "Are you insane"

Like others I had no expectations, did not hang around any kind of forum and did not read any magazine and therefore did not create or participated in any hype. Oblivion and its concept came as a total surprise to me and blew me away like Megaton when activating the switch. Oh, sorry. That´s another game

Have played it constantly since Feb 2007 even though game time per session was immensely longer in the beginning. So I´d say I´ve been pretty hooked

Edit: Only now did I realise that mALX is a lass!

Acadian thought I was an annoying hyper teen boy for a long time, ROFL !!! I think it is because my Foamy avatar is male, but no telling, lol.

Wait, you aren’t an annoying hyper teen boy??!!

I doffed my cap to Bethesda, even though I came into the series with Morrowind. I get the angst that some Daggerfall and Morrowind players have toward Oblivion. It is the same as the angst that some Oblivion players have toward Skyrim. I take each game as it comes. Even though I believe that there are some things that Morrowind just does better (and vice-versa), I am not so blinded by my own preconceptions that I can’t acknowledge Oblivion’s greatness too.

I voted "it was alright, but it didn't draw me in" because, well, it was alright, but it didn't really draw me in.

I'll go pack my bags and flee town before the lynch mob assembles.

Captain Logical to the rescue!

But no need to flee, we´re all friends up here in the tree

It wasn't really forum speculation that caused the damage, it was Todd pulling a Peter Molyneux that did it. We got spoon fed a lot of bs over a long period of time and lots of people were let down because of it.

Oblivion is STILL my least favorite ES game because it was by far the most generic of the three I've played.

Captain Obvious to the rescue with the shield of common sense!

I voted for consumed...

Not a great shocker that... ...

I absolutely adore that game...

If it wasn't for the two Assassin's Creed ones above it (which I adore a ridiculous amount) Oblivion would be, by a long-chalk, my all-time favourite game...

For me, it's almost perfect...

The only way it could have been perfect?...

No vampires... ...

I almost voted this way, too. Oblivion did consume my life for awhile, but nowadays I only play once or twice a week.



It's fun to get psyched up! I dunno....*shrugs* I liked getting excited about Skyrim before it came out, and had no probs pre-ordering it, and standing in line on 11/11/11 with other gamers. It felt a like a mini-adventure, all of us were standing in this cramped GameStop looking forward to the game, and I got to meet some new people. Granted, most of them were young enough to be my teen, perhaps, but that's another story.

On the other hand, visiting (dealing with) Beth's forums before the game came out was nerve-racking. I wanted to participate in discussion, but back in those days ANYTHING that anybody said on forums could be taken as flamebait, and I don't have a very good flame-retardant suit. But (again) I'd rather participate and discuss.

Agreed. They didn´t feel like they belonged in Oblivion´s setting, even though I can live with killing them


Same here. But I do play frequently and c´mon, it´s six years later and I still play and talk about it! I had to vote Insane

I would agree, friend.

This thread is both illuminating and depressing. Started reading it this morning and I can see where some people were coming from back in the day, but it also starts to bug me if I read too much criticism on one of my favorite games. It's like somebody is criticizing my child or something.

I voted It’s a Great Game. I got it years after it had been released, so I had no expectations. Now since I’ve played Morrowind a little I get what people were saying in those old posts. I’m still not disappointed, but it’s easy for me to understand why so many other people were.

Quoted for Truth.

I thank thee for spelling that out fully. Every time I read QFT I think "quit hamster cave talking!"