The Ravings of Demented Rabbits

Oblivion In Review

Wherein we, in that long tradition of game reviews, shall now turn our leporidic gaze upon that most anticipated of recent RPGs, Oblivion.

The short of it is that mostly it's like the coolest thing you've ever played, with a few things that work...not so well.

I feel the need here to note that Bethesda has inherited the mantle that Origin used to wear, and has done it quite well. Both companies went for large, freeform worlds, using engines that pushed the capabilities of computers of the day. This is, in fact, the second time I've upgraded my computer just to play a Bethesda game, the last time being when I got tired of 5 minute cell loads in Morrowind back in 2002.

That having been said, you'll immediately notice the graphics engine, which is great at worst, and ludicrously awesome with all the settings jacked up, like mine. It's a little hard to tell when you're cruising around in the dark (and I mean DARK) dungeons of the tutorial, but once you step outside and see daylight...wow. Vast forests, seas of grass, both of which do things like sway in the wind. We've had rain and snow for a while now, but they've never looked this good. Similarly, Morrowind's water looked pretty good, but now we've got ripples and sunsets reflecting off of it. You can, and I did, spend a fair deal of time just wandering around the world just gazing in awe at it.

Too, the graphics tie into character generation with a facegen utility with, oh, I dunno, 50 different options? More? You can do all sorts of things with faces, not to mention hair, eyes, whatever. I still can't quite get a Morrowind-style green Argonian, but oh well.

The whole Havok physics engine thing works out pretty good, too, especially in the environment. Trees sway in the wind, as do signs in big rainstorms and suchlike. You can pick up and move almost everything. Sit in chairs. Trip wires and get smashed by log traps. I can't really think of a game where I've been able to interact with the environment quite this much, ever.

The AI, too, is great. NPCs wander around, pick things up, have routines, and the like. They follow you through doors now. I've even had a case where I killed a guy, and an unarmed peasant came along, saw the murdered guy, picked up his weapon, and started beating on me with it while calling for the guards. Good times.

As to the actual gameplay, it's kind of more of the same, and kind of not. We're still doing the whole skill-based thing we all remember from Morrowind, except they dropped some skills, and changed things to have different mastery levels, with different moves with each level and each skill. This mostly works, though it's pretty hard for me to execute a good power attack, and the absence of old if perhaps underused weapons like spears and staves saddens me.

Quests are way, way better than any Elder Scrolls game ever, with even random side quests having a surprising amount of depth. The only drawback is that, while lengthy, it feels like there are less things to do in Oblivion's world, and the main game is far shorter. Ah well.

My dislikes are twofold, intertwined, and unfortunately fairly major. The first has to do with the melee combat system, which unless you play a lot of fighting games, is really hard to get used to. I still can't do the special moves well, whereas the enemies CAN, which means I spend a lot of time having axe-wielding dremora sending me flying over rock formations and balconies and suchlike, and not doing much of the same to them.

The second part has to do with the fact that the entire game is level scaled to roughly match you. Monsters, loot, stores, whatever. It makes the game harder than Morrowind was, to be sure, but it was done in a hackish enough way to feel VERY gamey, and still has serious balance issues, thusly:

For a time, until you can get your main combat skills to a sufficient level, say, the 60s, every single melee combat is a hardcore fight to the death. Mountain lions, dremora, whatever. You can't equip your way out of it, because equipment is level scaled, so you're stuck with fine iron longswords for a while, and leather armor versus the clannfear. Armor and weapon quality/damage scales with skill, which in no way improves this. So until you start hitting level 15 and glass/ebony, it's a hard, hard game for the melee character.

On the other hand, past level 20-25 or so, balance essentially breaks down as daedroths, dremoras, storm atronachs, and whatever become so much rabble to fall beneath your unstoppable skills. At the same time, there's a jump in loot quality from "reasonably sufficient" to "equipment not meant to be wielded by mortals." Case in point: My best ring went from +6/+6 in block/blades to +25 in blades and 33% reflect damage. Holy crap, guys.

This is, however, why there's a difficulty slider. Use it, and the issues more or less become ignorable, though the whole bandits cruising around in in enchanted glass cuirasses thing is a little...off. Once the mod community really gets it in gear, I expect my issues with that to go away.

Speaking of mods, one large black mark for me is the fact that Oblivion editing is actually a step back from what Morrowind had. On the one hand, the editor has more features. On the other hand, I had to find a third party tool to unpack the .bsa files so I could get to the .nif and .dds files to make custom objects. Too, the documentation for the editor is worthless, though the Wiki Beth started is a step in the right direction, but it relies on the fans to provide even such simple things as what the keys are, and how to make simple merchants and such. Very sad.

All in all, however, a worthy game. 8.5 of 10 aliens. We're not perfect yet, but we're rapidly approaching it.

Posted by Dwip at April 23, 2006 12:05 PM