Sometimes the quest's journal includes more personal notes, describing how a character feels or what s/he thinks about the subject.

Like this one, which I found really amusing by the way.

"Farwil thanked me in his odd way, and told me to go speak to his father, the Count of Cheydinhal. I should do so. Also, he's bestowed upon me the "honor" of being a Knight of the Thorn. To humor him, I courteously accepted."

Roleplayers often don't like anything that they didn't come up with themselves, so I wondered.

Don′t get updates since I don′t do quests anymore but I never disliked them. In fact, I liked them alot when I was new to Oblivion

Yeah, I've gotta agree with Mirocu, although I could see how it'd get annoying if you were trying to roleplay a certain personality.

I can't honestly say it does, just because I don't check the journal much.

It bothered me for the first time yesterday after doing the quest that's started just outside of Kvatch, I've actually never done that quest before. Here's what it said in the journal:

"I've come across a discarded page from a journal of a Slythe Seringi in an abandoned farmhouse near the ruins of Kvatch. It mentions some sort of pilgrimage to bring an offering of great value to something called "The Sunken One". All signs point to Sandstone Cavern nearby. I should proceed there, as I fear for Slythe's safety."

Says who?

Yes, this bothers me. I tend to play characters with detailed, individualized, eccentric personalities. And many Journal entries do not fit my characters at all.

This goes double for dialogue. Most of the dialogue given to my character in this game is not dialogue my character would ever in a million years even think of saying.

In order to enjoy the game without getting too aggravated I have had to learn to overlook these things.

I can't fully express within the confines of this forum the seething depth of my loathing for that Oblivion "journal."

First and most obviously, it's an affront to roleplayers. It should be a given that a roleplaying game won't include things that are directly contrary to roleplaying, but that merely illustrates the ever more tenuous and laughable nature of this series' claim to any interest in or concern for roleplaying or roleplayers. The journal obviously exists, to some considerable degree, to take people who don't, won't or can't roleplay by the hand and tell them what their role is, and thus walk them through the game.

Beyond that though, and actually the part that annoys me more, is that it's lazy. It could just function as an in-game walkthrough to tell shallow gamers what they're doing now and what they need to do next, so they could just push through and "beat the game," and it could do that while leaving an actual game outside of it for the benefit of the people who want to actually play a roleplaying game instead of simply checking off stages in a linear action/adventure, but it doesn't just do that. Beth treated it as a handy shortcut, so that there are many points in the game at which the player doesn't get a journal update in addition to in-game information, but INSTEAD OF in-game information. They didn't bother to include any in-game information on which the player can base decisions, but ONLY included a journal entry to tell the player what s/he purportedly decided to do next. That makes that loathsome and detestable piece of trash, at least in one's first time or two through the game, pretty much unavoidable.

That last is exactly the reason that I walked away from this game in disgust the first time. It was when my first character was doing Unfriendly Competition and couldn't get any information out of Thoronir. At that point, I hadn't bothered to look at the "journal" because I assumed it was an actual journal - a record of useful information to which my character might want or need to later refer, and all the available information was still fresh in my mind. I spend a couple of in-game days talking to pretty much everyone in the IC, then breaking into Thoronir's shop and poking around to see what I could find, and there was NOTHING. Not only nothing incriminating in the shop (which would've been okay), but no useful information to be had anywhere, at all. Sitting, idly wondering what to do next, I clicked on the "journal" and only discovered then that BETH had decided what my character was supposed to do next, and had seen fit NOT to actually put anything in the game that might provide a clue to that, but had just invested a couple of minutes into writing a journal entry that existed solely to tell me that that was what I had supposedly decided to do next.

And that was that. I shut the game off at that instant, and it was a year or so before I even bothered with it again.

And that wasn't the last time.

Now the journal isn't an issue, since I know the game well enough that I can provide make believe dialogue and such for my characters to learn things without having to look to see what Beth decreed that they decided to do next. But I still think it's a vile and loathsome piece of repellant garbage, and whoever was responsible for it has no business developing RPGs.

Heh, you should see the journal entries for some mods. Dear god, how pretentious some of them can be in regards to your character. Tell me Viccente, why is it bad that the vampire also fed on women, too? Is it somehow worse than feeding on men? Are women somehow more defenseless?

Anyways, it only bothers me a little, but then I only see the journal entries as more of a gameplay thing.

All of my characters make their own journals independent of the game.

Although I do agree a little with what gpstr said about the game not letting us make our own decisions.

Absolutely agree with so many of the points here. Great example, this one:

I had exactly the same problem with that damn quest. The biggest issue, I think though, is inconsistency. Sometimes the journal can be ignored except for reference (if you've got a list of ingredients to collect, say), which is the way I, and I'm guessing most people here, would prefer it. Other times, like the above, it worms its way into the actual quest structure. If the latter were consistently true, I wouldn't like it, but at least you'd know what to expect.

Better thinking about quest design can eliminate even the reference use, in fact. Many of the best mod designers, like David Brasher, simply issue the PC with a note or scroll they can consult and discard whenever they choose. Coupled with a disciplined use of pop-up boxes (though I'm guessing that these are widely hated too) you might not need the journal at all - well maybe just to remind you of outstanding quests. One thing mod authors are guilty of here, though, is not labelling these well. I find too many 'faded'/'scribbled'/'short' etc etc notes in my inventory, not to speak of just 'Note'. The vanilla game actually does a much better job of this.

As for the journal (or pop-ups) telling you your feelings and motives, that's truly awful and could actually be modded out. It's surprising no-one's done so. (Though I can think of one case where it can be justified, and that's alternative start mods. Used properly, of course.)

Nah, I think it's actual purpose really is just a reminder in case you temporarily abandon a quest.

I'm at the point in my RPing career that I don't really read the journal, but yeah, if I did sit there and read every word, it would definitely bother me. It's written for (no offense) casual players who need as much hand-holding as they can get, before they move on to other games like Dance Revolution and Lollipop Chainsaw.

I'm agreeing with gpster, basically. The solution would be to give us the ability to write our OWN journal. Since we can't do this in-game, what I started doing awhile back was writing notes with actual pen 'n' paper. I made a thread about it awhile back, actually.

I agree with gpster, too. It is an affront to roleplayers.

I dislike the fact that I have to intentionally ignore any out-of-character "decision" that the game has forced on me, whether in dialog or in scripted events, and I double-dislike the fact that the game makes those "decisions" a permanent part of a journal that I might need to consult at some point.

It's a badly done "reminder" system.

People are indeed entitled to play as they see fit, but that doesn't mean that roleplaying games should be constructed to "steer" players in a certain direction, or to make their decisions for them. The Oblivion "Journal" is a badly-written piece of trash, and there are no two ways about it. I can't imagine what the developers were thinking, especially since they had the excellent (post-Tribunal) Morrowind Journal as an example of how to do it right.