Honestly I thought Oblivion was fun (After I installed about a bajillion user made mods) yeah, yeah I'm a troll/loser/jerk/banned, whatever. I stand by my comment. Was it an RPG? HELL NO! But at least it was entertaining, and I'm a pretty big Tolkien fanboy, so it was pretty fun to just wander aimlessly through Tolkiens Disneyland. Also, I should mention that this is all IMO, but you guys are a pretty smart bunch (Unlike, sadly, most of the other forums I visit where I have to freaking put 'IMO' after every sentence or else some asshole gets all hot and bothered.)
Things I liked:
Wandering around like a drunk frat boy in a hall of mirrors.
The graphics after I installed Quarls texture pack 3, OOO, and a ground texture update that ups the... uh... ground texture to 4096x4029 (Or something, can't remember the exact numbers).
The Hackdirt questline. What can I say? I'm a sucker for H. P. Lovecraft innuendo.
And the combat. Yes, the combat. Compared to Morrowind, I liked it alot, honestly. Compared to Daggerfall and Arena it sucked ass.
Things I hated:
Leveling in general. Level by doing is worthless shit, IMO. Well, I shouldn't jump the gun, I suppose it's a good idea, but they really dropped the ball with this one.
Monsters that are scaled to your level. Yeah, because at level 19 all the bandits in the world suddenly get rich and start carrying glass armour. Phef.
(BTW, does anyone know of any mods that fix the scaled levels?)
The monsters in general sucked ass. The only ones I liked were the Deadra, and to be fair, I thought they were pretty freaking cool, tbh. But there was a SEVERE lack of monster variety in the game. Sure you could argue there wasn't, but don't deny it. I don't consider a Skeletal Archer to be different from a Skeletal knight (As in, I don't consider them to be two different types of beasts). All in all, I was pretty bummed at the complete lack of variety in the game. Whats more is the wildlife blew, too. I EXPECTED there to be Wolves, rats, deer, bears, puma, and boars... but that was it. How about Alligators in that giant lake? nope. How about 'different' creatures that showed up in Morrowind, like the Skaab (I think thats what they were called?)?
Lack of Werewolves bothered me. But I got a mod to fix that problem.
Things that downright pissed me off:
The complete ass raping they gave to Cyrondil. The fucking country was supposed to be a freaking JUNGLE, according to the older games. Oh yeah, "WHO GIVES A FUCK ABOUT THE OLDER GAMES?! LAWL! THOSE OLD GAMERS SUCK ANYWAY! AT LEAST WE GOT HORSE ARMOUR!" Yeah, FUCK YOU, too! You asshole sunsabitches are part of the reason this game sucks. Go pat yourself on the back, you tools, then shoot yourself. Jackasses.
Seriously, I reeeally wanted to see a massive jungle. It would of been so different than whats out there. Seriously, we've got a billion and a half games out there with tolkiens disneyland as a setting, how about sticking to canon and making something 'different'? Oh yeah, that's right, those pricks just like to play it safe.
Which brings me to me next point:
The game was far to 'safe'. They made it knowing full well the general public would eat this shit right out of the fucking toliet. All they needed was good graphics (Which were PISS POOR without all the mods I downloaded.), an open ended game world, and a fake feeling of freedom that only console players think is revolutionary. That's it. Nothing edgy. Nothing new. Nothing revolutionary. The whole game feels far to 'manufactured' (I suppose thats a good way of putting it). So they spit this piece of shit out, and of course they built the hype machine up (Todd Howard may be a piece of shit person, but I'll admit he's a pretty good PR guy with the press.), and act like it's Gods fucking gift to humanity. All the while most of us guys who were raised on REAL RPG's like Bard's Tale, Wasteland, Wizardy, and of course Fallout (Not to mention those of us who were introduced to RPGs by DnD... RIP Gary Gygex, I loved yah man.), see right through this bullshit... and what happens? We get labeled as the assholes! We get labeld asthe flamers! Well fuck them!
GAH!
Oh, I'm not done yet, this has been a long time coming, and this shit has just been sitting inside me, rotting, festering like a fucking vat of shit and toxic chemicals.
Things that bothered the holy shit outta me:
Oh wow, so they got fucking Patrick Stewert to play the emperor? Oh wooow. He has fucking four speeches (Oh, I'll get into the dialouge in a second) and then croaks. WELL WHOOPDY FUCKING DOO. I'm so glad they promoted the hell out of this aspect. Jesus, with all the PR they gave this bit, I'm surprised the fucker didn't follow you around the whole game offering to hand you your sword and shield when you needed it. But, no, the fucker bites the dust. Why even fucking bother?
I did like Sean Bean though, gotta admit. I didn't even know he was in it, and was happily surprised when I heard his voice.
Oook, now onto the dialouge. Well holy shit, how the fuck did they manage to make it worse than Morrowinds? Hell, the original fucking Metal Gear on NES had better speech then this shit. I swear to God, if I heard one more NPC complain about seeing a Muccrab I'm gonna beat the holy shit outta him just for breathing my air. Oh, but it somehow gets worse doesn't it?
because those assholes spent so much money on Professor X (Who, once again for those of you who skipped out on this wonderful little shit DIES IN THE FIRST 15 MINUTES.) they could only afford like, 5 other people to do all the fucking voices in the game... Sean Bean notwithstanding. I thought it was really fucking funny when a begger would hooble over to me and beg for a freaking gold piece (Hey just like in real life) and had that scratchy "I just drank a fifth of Jagermeister" voice, so I would give the asshole the gold just to get him the fuck away from me, and you know what that bastard did? HE FUCKING THANKED ME WITH FUCKING CAPTAIN AMERICA'S VOICE! It's bad enough they only used 5 or so voice actors for 500 different people, but you'd think they'd at least have the same people finish the goddamn lines. Seriously, why even bother?
Oh yeah, because it's suuuuuch a fucking revolution to have full voice overs. This is the current age of video gaming people! Who needs written text anymore? Seriously, I thought it couldn't get any worse with Morrwind, where every freaking citizen said (Wrote? texted? whatever.) the same crap, at least it was mostly well written and at times lengthy. Plus the conversation trees in Morrowind, while crap compared to other games, were head and shoulders above Oblivions.
But I'm not gonna touch that subject. Any monkey strung out on LSD could rant on about how the conversation trees blew ass. My opinion on that bit pretty much mirrors what rpgcodex wrote in their review. And besides, that bit has been beaten to death anyway.
And these dumb fucks are gonna make the next Fallout? One of the few games where I couldn't fucking wait to hear (read?) what was going to be said next! Oh joy, this shit is gonna be grand. I'll reserve total judgment until I get the game in my hands, but I think it goes without saying I got a BAD feeling about this.
Well that's it. I'm gonna go ahead an apologise for the rant I just gave, but like I said it's been festering inside me for a while and I just had to get it out. As I typed this I think I slowly realised I really don't like this game. Even though at the begining I said I did. I guess I had a change of heart once I decided to type out everything I didn't like about it.
Viva la Arena! Viva la Daggerfall! Hell, viva la Morrowind. But this game fucking sucks ass.
I need a fucking smoke.