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Oblivion: Preliminary Impressions |  |
Well, I got _The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion_ for PC, on release day, and I’ve been playing it pretty steadily since. I’ve logged more than a few hours, gotten my character up to 9th level, and completed a wide sampling of quests. I must say, this game is living up to my expectations in every way. There’s a real sense that this is a living world, and the quests, so far, have all been very well thought-out. Even my impulsive sessions with random dungeons have been pretty memorable. I won’t go through and give you a features list, or tell you what’s good about it and what isn’t; the gaming press has pretty much covered that by now. Instead, I’ll just tell you to buy this game. If you’ve got a powerful enough PC, get it for PC. If you’ve got an Xbox 360, get it for that system. If you’ve got neither, your cheapest option is probably to get the 360 version, along with the console, itself. At any rate, if you like computer role-playing games at all, or have liked _Elder Scrolls_ games in the past, you absolutely owe it to yourself to get this game and play the hell out of it. Seriously.
April 13th, 2006 at 4:39 am
Couldn’t agree more.
I have the 360 version, and it’s dominating my gaming time. It provides a steady stream of slack-jawed ‘Wow!’ moments throughout.
Since I blogged about it though, there are a few things I’ve found disappointing. On a superficial level, the game world ‘is’ a living breathing environment which offers unique experiences based upon the player’s imput. But the whole thing starts to unravel if you test the system at any length. Take the Radiant A.I. which everyone is crowing about for example. Follow an NPC for a while and their day consists almost entirely of wandering around staring at walls and having the same conversation about mud crabs. There also doesn’t appear to be any context to the conversations based on the participants.
More seriously though, if you bend the general rules to any degree whilst questing it is often capable of turning up some absurd results.
In short, it’s like a David Copperfield magic trick, you know he’s using smoke and mirrors but you put that to one side and try to enjoy the illusion.
April 13th, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Which is exactly the point, at least in my opinion. It’s not supposed to stand up to scrutiny that close. NPCs have full 24-hour schedules, but that doesn’t mean that those schedules are incredibly detailed or realistic; it’s a game, not real life. Yes, it’s smoke and mirrors, and yes, you have to suspend your disbelief a bit to see past that and enjoy the game without getting bogged down by the details of the NPCs’ daily lives or whatever. However, Oblivion pulls off the smoke and mirrors far better than any game I’ve ever played, and on an incredible scale.
Oh, and about dynamic conversations not being context-sensitive; I agree and I don’t. I once heard two mages talking in the Arcane University, one of whom was Raminus Polus, an incredibly powerful mage by all accounts. It was the mudcrab conversation, and needless to say, Raminus avoided those beasts at all costs. Because they’re scary, I guess. However, I’ve also heard a number of context-specific conversations. For instance, I can’t imagine NPCs outside the Dark Brotherhood discussing the mishaps that occured during a contract, and how the guy who messed up killed all of the witnesses. I’ve heard a number of conversations like this, that appear to be context-sensitive. However, there are a number of ’stock’ conversations, and they don’t appear to take the specific NPC into account. I think the same is true of rumors (which I believe are connected to the random conversations), as I’ve heard the head of the Bravil Mages’ Guild refer to herself in the third person during a rumor.
Anyway, this has been a long reply. I’ll shut up now.