Chris Kohler not impressed with Oblivion

Eh, the guy didn't really say anything: he just said it was like a typical American rpg (lol jrpgs are awesomu (awesomu is awesome in Japanese!) lol) and that it had some of the same technical problems that Morrowind had, ie bad draw distance, frequent loading and poor framerates. He didn't have anything to say about the gameplay beyond saying you could pick up and drop things. It didn't really have anything to say except that he didn't like it - but since the review had no substance and I have no idea who he is, it doesn't affect me at all if he didn't like it.

Also, that review is a good example of the fanboyism everywhere whenever some new console comes out - 1000's of gullible idiots who believe the hype that gets shoved down their throats and think that games on the 360 are going to somehow leapfrog forward 30 generations as far as graphics and tech goes. "But this ain't the next-gen experience I was promised" - well if you weren't so gullible maybe you would take "advertising" for what it is and you would have sat down and figured out on your own that there was no way that these new consoles could do what they "promised", just slightly improve on the previous generation.
 
Yar...

I'm a little upset over the fact that a seamless world was promised, though. I played Morrowind, and those pesky "loading area" messages got really annoying after about ten minutes. I wasn't expecting half the hype, but seamless sounded realistic. Hey, at least they got rid of those cliff racers. But I have a powerful enough PC to push this baby to its limits so maybe the modding community can make up for what it lacks.
 
i doubt any kind of mod can remove loading Pal Solo, as it is mostly due to design & limitations of the game engine.
 
From what I learn, game preview always results in 2 conclusion: good or bad.

HD era... yeah right. He is playing the X360 edition which mean:

1. No mod support.
2. Hardware limited.

I wish I could tell him go back to his "Final-fetish" game...
:roll:
 
Most of the time, reviews are nothing more than personal (educated or not) opinion about a said product.

The funny thing is - most people look for reviews that agrees with their own original opinion. If they don't like something, then they will look for negative reviews and say, SEE, I was right. And when they like something, yaddayadda, etc.

Since I can't see the review(most blogsites are blocked outright in China, go figure. :P) , I have no way to form an opinion on it.

But, personally, I don't think games like MW is meant to be played on a console. The mods gave MW the life that it needed in such a vast world. Real bodies mod comes to mind, since it replaces the horrid texture that is placed on characters bodies.

Console is limited despite the amount of hardware you dump on it. It lacks the flexibility that a PC has. But I like some of the console RPGs, since some of them are fun, quirky and fairly imaginative given the limitation placed on them. And it is similar to PC games in the sense that you have to wade through all the crap that you don't like to get to some rare gems.

I'll give oblivion as much attention as I gave MW - until I've played it, it's not worth my time.

Of course, I'd rather wait for Shin Megami Tensei's supposed NA release.

:D
 
SuAside said:
i doubt any kind of mod can remove loading Pal Solo, as it is mostly due to design & limitations of the game engine.
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It's a nice idea, but it's not what I said. I said I'm going to be downloading mods to make up for what it lacks, and in some areas, fix the lacks. But I also doubt a seamless world mod will come into existance.
 
Starseeker said:
Since I can't see the review(most blogsites are blocked outright in China, go figure. :P) , I have no way to form an opinion on it.
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Here you go:

So yesterday, I played Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, the highly anticipated Xbox 360 RPG set to hit shelves this spring. Note: this will not be a gushing preview. There will be complaints.

I'm actually late to the party on this -- most other people had their impressions up at midnight, which was when the press embargo was lifted. (Clever, actually, to embargo the only hands-on coverage of an incredibly anticipated game until Friday evening, meaning that all this weekend, the major feature on practically every games website will be on their game.)

Also note that I put exactly zero hours into the game's Xbox predecessor, Morrowind. So these are impressions from a total newbie.



Here's what I liked. If I felt like it, I could have spent another hour or so just screwing around with Oblivion's character-creation system. By this I don't mean "rolling D20s for stats," although I could have done that too. I mean the physical editing, which lets you adjust every little proportion, color, and size of facial features.

Sadly it's a first-person game. So you very rarely actually see yourself. Since this is a standard D&D-inspired American RPG, you do a lot of slashing rats for the first hour. Lots of rats. Then the occasional goblin. Combat feels solid. Ever wondered why you can't pick up weapons from the bodies of dead soldiers in other RPGs? You can here. In fact, all sorts of weapons, armor, and other items (bones, rotting food, sticks, cups) litter the opening dungeon, and you very soon realize that just like in real life, you are not supposed to just run around picking up everything that's not nailed down. Eventually you can't move anymore and have to start throwing things away. But when you do, the stuff you drop stays there. Forever.

Developer Bethesda says the world of Oblivion is about sixteen square miles large, and I have no reason to doubt that from what I played. Imagine walking sixteen miles in real life. That's how long it would take you to walk from place to place in Oblivion.

They're pushing the realism angle hard, which is going to turn off as many players as it attracts, I think. Towns are full of guilds that will let you start to branch off from the main storyline and start taking all manner of side quests and alternate paths, should you choose. Bethesda didn't say how many quests were in the game, but again I was in no position to argue. They could have handed me a press release that said there were sixteen bojillion possible stories and from what I saw I'd have printed that verbatim.

Here's what sucked. You don't see the problems for the first hour, because you're exploring a massive underground pathway that takes you through dank sewers and pitch-black caverns. You can't see more than a few feet in front of your face, sometimes, so everything looks decent -- not incredibly impressive, but fair enough.

When I got outside, things got hairy. I could see across to the other side of a lake, but it was completely undetailed. Just big, formless blobs of blues and greens. I turned around and looked at my more immediate surroundings and realized that the draw distance was awful. As you walk around, the ground teems with individually rendered blades of grass, bushes, mushrooms, all sorts of stuff. But only a small radius around your character is fully realized -- the rest of it is drawn in, quite visibly, as you move around.

This is the HD Era? Watching bushes and trees pop up out of thin air as I walk around? At one point I was heading towards what I thought was an empty forest clearing, when big-ass chunks of building started magically appearing. Come on. (Or maybe I was doing so well in the game that its denizens had started building shrines to my glory.)

Things get even worse when I jump on a horse. Now, I'm actually trotting at a steady clip, and Oblivion starts not just to have draw-in issues but framerate problems as well. It's chugging. It can't keep up with my speed, and quite frankly the horse isn't even going that fast. At some points, I keep seeing the "Loading Area..." message pop up every couple of seconds, which brings with it another framerate stutter. It's herky-jerky-all-over-the-place as I climb up the hill to the gate of Oblivion. My reation to the graphics has, over this sequence, gone from "unimpressed" to "nonplussed" to "annoyed."

But this ain't the next-gen experience I was promised. Weren't these kind of massive game-worlds supposed to be running in high-def grandeur, with smooth framerates and seamless transitions, by now?
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Paladin Solo said:
I'm a little upset over the fact that a seamless world was promised, though. I played Morrowind, and those pesky "loading area" messages got really annoying after about ten minutes. I wasn't expecting half the hype, but seamless sounded realistic. Hey, at least they got rid of those cliff racers. But I have a powerful enough PC to push this baby to its limits so maybe the modding community can make up for what it lacks.
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He's playing an early build, not the final build. Chances are popping issues will not be in the final build. That is simple an optimization issue, so no biggie...
 
But this ain't the next-gen experience I was promised. Weren't these kind of massive game-worlds supposed to be running in high-def grandeur, with smooth framerates and seamless transitions, by now?
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HAH! Sucker.

Moronic console fans are about to wake up to the cold, harsh reality of the fact that XBox 360 sucks. Judging by the recent developments surrounding PS3, it will suck even more than XBox 360. The battle of the "next-gen" consoles should make for an exciting crap-athlon, the winner of which will be those people who were smart enough to invest into a state of the art PC system.
 
Looks like it has gone gold and will be avalible March 20th. Then comes the fallout...

http://pc.ign.com/articles/693/693107p1.html

March 2, 2006 - It's been a long wait, but after much drooling and speculation, Bethesda at last announced an official ship date for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: both the PC and Xbox 360 versions will arrive in stores March 20.

Happily, the game is now officially gold, meaning Bethesda has finished work on the epic RPG title. As ambitious as any Elder Scrolls game -- in fact, even more so -- Oblivion promises vast, non-linear gameplay, advanced "Radiant" A.I., countless side quests, action-heavy combat, and next-generation visuals.

"Our most ambitious project ever is finally done," said executive producer Todd Howard. "We're excited to get the game into everyone's hands and let them experience it for themselves. We hope they enjoy it. I think it's our best game yet."

"Oblivion will set the new standard for next generation gaming and change the way role-playing games are viewed forever," said Bethesda president Vlatko Andonov. "We set very high goals and ensure they are reached because that is what our fans deserve and have come to expect from Bethesda Softworks. We are very proud of our team's accomplishments with respect to Oblivion."

Along with the standard edition, Bethesda and publisher 2K Games will release The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion Collector's Edition, which features a media-packed bonus DVD, a replica Septims coin, and a 112-page "Pocket Guide to the Empire."

Oblivion is the latest primary chapter in Bethesda's long-running Elder Scrolls series, which began in 1994 with Arena, followed by Daggerfall in 1996 and Morrowind in 2002.
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Because it's the game that will change TEH WEI ROPLAYGN GAMES AR VIUED FOREVAR AND EVAR!!!11

Oh, my lack of god, will anybody please smack these people over their head and tell them what an RPG is?
 
choice and concequence

if you choose to go out to the middle of nowhere and jump around for an hour you get a godly acrobatic skill

great rpging ftw
 
Todd Howard said:
We hope they enjoy it. I think it's our best game yet.
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That would be a great surprise, seeing as you are their worst project leader yet.
 
DirtyDreamDesigner said:
Who the fuck is Chris Kohler and why the fuck should we care about his oppinion of a crappy game on a crappy console?
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He wrote some video game books. Never heard of him before either.

The only reason I posted this was because for once not everybody in the industry is going all fanboy over Oblivion. He says the game is basically "meh." Come on, you start the game killing rats. I know it's an "RPG", but come on, this is supposed to be the "HD Era" and "Next-Gen." Can't you think of something better than rats? Magic roaches, even?

And Oblivion will change the way people roleplay, by making everybody think they're roleplaying when they're really just playing a shitty action game with some stat numbers.
 
Suppose Fallout 3 shouldn't have deathclaws. They are SO the last generation. Signeon, your argument is higly flawed.
 
Forgotten said:
Suppose Fallout 3 shouldn't have deathclaws. They are SO the last generation. Signeon, your argument is higly flawed.
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So are you saying that you approve of killing rats, you fucking fascist?
 
Ratty said:
the winner of which will be those people who were smart enough to invest into a state of the art PC system.
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Yeah, I had a state-of-the-art PC about two months ago, then these fuckers decided to release a 512 mb graphics card, and I'm sure Microsoft will have plenty of "customers only" products for their new Vista... Fucking technology.
 
I really doubt that we'll be seeing any games that can actually make use of 512Mb of video memory at any point in the near future.
 
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