Lytha on 21/6/2007 at 11:34

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Hm, I wouldn't sign the posting above...

It is a nice game, yes. But
- the dialogues are artificial (*married guy meets his wife in the living room* "I saw a mudcrab by the water recently." - "disgusting creatures. I stay clear of them" - "uh-huh" - "goodbye!"),
- the hyped choices are nonexistant ("yes, I will help you" vs "no, I won't help you" isn't really a deep philosophical question),
- the complexity of spellcasting and alchemy isn't that tough,
- the replayability lacks, and the dungeons of the same type are all basically the same. ("oh, it's the cave room with the gap in the center. Lets see, there must be a chest to the left hand right now. Bingo."),
- the monster leveling is annoying,
- the lockpicking is annoying,
- the speechcraft game is annoying,
- the mastery of some skills is extremely tedious (try to max out mercantile...).

After 30 hours and at your first character, the game is absolutely amazing. Yes.

But after a while, the lacking bits become more obvious. It gets worse if you want to replay it with another character after a while, as almost every dungeon consists of these prebuilt bits ("cave corner with stalagtites and stalagmites and a chest!", "oblivion world #1!", "ayleid ruin with velkynd stones on pedestals!").

I roamed around in a fort recently that I hadn't visited with my previous characters yet. It was so similar to other forts that the whole run was like a deja vu experience.

In Thief 1, on the other hand, you got at least different looking areas. Bafford's looks different to the Maw of Chaos, and you won't find rooms from Ramirez' manor in Assassins while roaming around in the Sword.

Keeper_Andrus on 23/6/2007 at 20:31

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Play with OOO. It's so much fun. I played through oblivion twice before, and now i'm on my third go with OOO, and while dungeons are still all very similar, they're much, much more interesting.

OOO wins.

Thirith on 25/6/2007 at 12:53

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Personally, I prefer the more approachable Francesco's Mod to OOO. However, that's a simple matter of preference. What is important is that practically all flaws that Oblivion clearly has have been addressed successfully by mods. The only big flaw that hasn't been addressed is that of the fairly boring main quest.

Obviously, even with user mods you won't have the same kind of RPG experience as you'd have with Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate 2 or Knights of the Old Republic. But if you enjoy exploring a big, open world that feels real, you can do a hell of a lot worse than Oblivion with rebalancing mods, the Unique Landscapes, UI mods, sneaking mods, texture packs etc. Of course people can and do make fun of this, saying, "Bethesda did a crap job, and modders have to pick up the pieces and try to put them together... lol!!!!" But quite frankly? Screw them. When I play and greatly enjoy Oblivion, I don't care whether I'm enjoying it because or in spite of Bethesda's work.

Opal-Eyed Fan on 5/7/2007 at 02:24

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Hi Oblivion and Thief fans
Has anyone made a "Baffordstyle mansion" mod for Oblivion yet? The game has been out for a long time now, and I figured you guys here at TTLG were the ones who would know for sure.