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I dunno.

Morrowind was a hard act to follow.

Also, many people are very closely attached to D&D mechanics for whatever reason, so when skills get removed or folded into other skills, those people take it as objectively bad.

Admittedly, I like Morrowind more than Oblivion. That said, Oblivion was by no means a disappointment in my book, it was a rousing success and I love it very much.

Oblivion was amazing.....I finished it twice and I just started a new character.

the people that thought it was a disappointment are either crazy rpg fans that if a few things are removed it ruined in their eye...or to the call of duty adhd crowd that cant sit still for more than 3 minutes....those are the haters...

It was game of the year in 2006 bye the way

I tried very hard to get into Morrowind multiple times (on the original Xbox), but I couldn't. While some people love wandering, I couldn't take too much of it. By the time I figured out where I was going, I was getting frustrated with not having good spells and other things. Right now, I would love to buy the xbox Morrowind with the expansions included and try it again, but I enjoy Oblivion. It may not be the best, and it may not be the hardest, but it is fun and usually hits it's points well.

Also, I think a lot of people who say they don't like Oblivion would like Shivering Isles. I think that was one of the most well done add-ons I've seen in quite a while.

I played Morrowind for hundreds of hours, and loved it. I didn't get Oblivion until it had been out a couple of years, because I didn't like some of the changes Bethesda had made with it. You could say that I was disappointed with Oblivion before I ever played it.

I eventually bought it, and I got used to the changes. I was never impressed with the Oblivion Main Quest; it's trivial by comparison to Morrowind's MQ. Likewise, the OB faction quests are linear, simplified, and with no alternate ways of playing through them, mostly. I'm currently playing Morrowind again, after a long time away from it, and while the graphics and animation are a lot cruder than OB (even with MGE and lots of mods), the world and storylines are as rich as I had remembered.

Having said that, I think that Oblivion is the best free role playing environment ever created. What it lacks as a "game" it more than makes up for as an environment for acting out dreams. It's beautiful and open.

I've spent hundreds of hours playing Oblivion. Talk about disappointing! :wink_smile:

This is a beautiful description of what OB does best. My character loves her life in Cyordiil. She does some game quests, rejects a great many more and creates many of her own. But mostly, she just goes about the business of surviving in a harsh but beautiful land. She has played many games, but only the freedom of Oblivion's character design has allowed her to develop the way she was meant to be, then live her life to her own tune.

Sweet water and green paths to you, glargg!

Oblivion was a lot more shallow an experience than Morrowind. Morrowind had a deeper main storyline that managed to be epic while avoiding cliche. Oblivion failed on that front.

I was not particularly impressed by the world, either. Sure it's huge and open for exploration to your heart's content, but it lost a lot of charm compared to its predecessor. Now it's too clinical, to perfect a representation of the real world, and for me, it tends to fall into the Uncanny Valley in a few places. Remember, the more realistic you become, the more glaringly obvious it becomes to the human eye to notice where it doesn't match up. However, to the point, the game world lost a lot of the "Wow" factor that Morrowind had because of Bethesda going for a highly traditional fantasy setting. Bethesda went a bit too far down that road, and Cyrodiil was missing a lot of the wonder that Vvardenfell had; too much, actually. It just looked like a standard western European valley, and I don't play these games to see sights that already exist in the world I live in. What was needed was more landmarks like White Gold Tower, places that really stuck out as being unique, but at the same time not completely alien (like Morrowind). In a way, I actually think Oblivion would have been better off with LESS dungeons, because the less you see of those crumbling forts and overgrown elven cities, the more special they become. This is the approach that Bethesda is now taking with Skyrim, and I am glad for that.

Or perhaps the general "dumbing down" of the game, in this case, I will talk about the quest markers. The quest journal updates are a bit too concise now (although in Morrowind they tended to be too vague), and instead of improving on just having NPCs give you directions, Bethesda copped out and integrated a full Sat-Nav system into the game map, which would show you exactly where to go at any point in time in the quest you were doing. This conflicts with the idea of exploring this huge world that Bethesda always advertises their games with, because now you don't even need to do any exploration to find what you're looking for, you are told precisely where to look so all you need to do is follow that stupid arrow. That is not exploration, that is shepherding. What this game really needed was an option to turn that thing off, because it does have its uses, like reminding you where you left off in a quest you haven't give much attention to for a while, or if you get really lost and need a quick hint. But having it on all the time is condescending, especially when most of the quests give you a map marker for location reference anyways.

Those are my top three reasons why I consider Oblivion a disappointment.

I want to offer one point of clarification to Thomas' post: the Uncanny Valley is not a theory and has no scientific support. This is the focus of a presentation I am doing at an academic conference next month, by the way. It is also the statement by Cynthia Breazeal of MIT's Personal Robots Group, a woman who has devoted her life to creating social robots as human companions. However, what happened when Dr. Masahiro Mori proposed the concept of the Uncanny Valley back in the 1970s was that it was taken literally hook, line, and sinker by pretty much everyone, including both the general public and various researchers and inventors. It's a lack of critical thinking. In fact, Dr. Mori also stated that everything has a spirit and life energy (in keeping with Shinto and Buddhist philosophies) but people seemed to ignore that statement and associated concept(s). Dr. Mori has also stated that he never did any research to study the concept after proposing it. It was merely a hypothesis, nothing more. I can offer academic sources, but that would go way off topic. I only want to offer people the info. In relation to what Thomas posted, the problem is actually within any individual who views various elements and the expectations such an individual places on the elements, not any issue with the elements themselves.


Anyway, back to the main topic.


As an RPG, Oblivion is a disappointment, at least out of the box. Why? Because you cannot role play a character when activities you request the character to do depend on your skill rather than the character's skill. Even for actors in real life, role playing a character requires them to avoid their own personal skills and behave in a way appropriate for the character(s) they are playing.

Oblivion was a failure for character aesthetics, but that's normal for Western games due to the misguided idea that the Uncanny Valley exists and the constant focus on "realistic" rather than "appealing" visual looks and character behavior traits. Morrowind and most Western games suffer from this problem. This is a mistake for many reasons, not the least of which (as Thomas also pointed out) that "reality" is around us, but I'd also add that "reality" is purely subjective perception and varies with each individual. That is why diversity is a good thing, but Western game development does not embrace diversity. Instead, there is a constant attempt to focus on what the entire global game consumer market wants, and the idea is that people want "realistic" characters. No, many people do not want that, and that's why mods are essential and very popular. Heck, you don't even need to consider the entire character to see the problem. Just consider the hair and how Western game characters pretty much always use hair that is very unattractive at best, and often looks like a big blob of glop pasted onto someone's head. There's also the common lack of allowing custom colorization and lack of detail showing individual strands, etc... and of course, heaven forbid we actually allow hair to MOVE in the wind or with body movements! Meanwhile, characters in many East Asian games frequently have very detailed hair, and even short hair can be seen to move in the wind or with character movements in game. I find it interesting that Disney reported taking 2-3 years to do Rapunzel's hair, but Japanese artists seem to do such things in far less time as a simple matter of course for characters (just watch Hatsune Miku's live concerts for one example, or check out hair in Star Ocean: The Last Hope).

Oblivion was successful for environment, but Beth is a master of outdoor environments (not so much so for indoor, although they are usually pretty good, at least). Since this is their main area of excellence, this is expected. Thomas' comments are true, but I think that Beth did the environment in Cyrodiil as they did very deliberately for several reasons, including the parallels with Western history.

OB was great, but was nothing compared to Morrowind and certain aspects of Daggerfall.

I came here to read subjective reasoning, not fact-based drivel. :brokencomputer:

-jest-

Oblivion was a disappointment because Morrowind came before it. Morrowind was a disappointment to some because Daggerfall came before it.

If you attach yourself too much to a game that came before, you will most likely be disappointed with anything that even only lightly alters the formula and then complain about how it's not like the original, instead of enjoying the new game for what it is.

Differences in tastes or just attached to Morrowind too much, I suppose. For me pesonally, Oblivion is still my most favorite game this generation and I'm looking forward to what they offer in Skyrim.

oblivion was the first elder scrolls game that i played (360 version) it will always hold a special place for me. i can understand why some people might not like it as much as morrowind (have only recently got morrowind for my pc) i actually prefer oblivion though.as not being the greatest gamer i love the fact that i can just get absorbed into the world,without worrying that i am going to die at any moment (i think morrowind players will agree about the difficulty am not for one second knocking morrowind though.it is a (still) beautifully realized world,and a world that i want to explore as best i can.but oblivion will always be the elder scrolls game that got me into the series

Essentially you've said what I was trying to say in my Uncanny Valley reference. Oblivion was trying too hard to be too realistic, and ended up tripping over its own feet because of that. Most of the environment in this game was actually automatically generated by algorithms and macros supplied in the Construction Set to create as realistic a world as possible, and then simply tweaked for aesthetics. The result was very clinical, and lacking that human artistic touch. The Colovian Highlands contains scenery that I can get just by looking out my house window, for instance.

A good wRPG is capable of easily blending "realistic" and "appealing" together, that's the signature style of the genre. Oblivion, on the other hand, is a classic case of too much realism and not enough appeal, which is where references to the Uncanny Valley come in.

Another point I'd like to make: Bethesda left so much in this game up to macros that it's rather difficult for me to find a spot in the game where I can really relate. The landscaping was auto-gen, the face-mapping was auto-gen, the encounters were auto-gen, and the loot was auto-gen.

I think Bethesda might have deluded themselves into thinking with all that automation, the game would be able to more or less construct itself. Needless to say, it backfired big time, and come Fallout 3, Bethesda ended up tweaking things rather heavily to put that human touch back into the game that Oblivion was missing.

Oblivion was great; however, it lacks the fantasy element that you got with Morrowind. It kinda seems like every quest involves plunging into a dungeon that looks very similar to all the last ones. Also, every city looks like a basic, stereotypical medeival town...I miss going to Vivec or any of the Telvanni towns. Morrowind felt like I was actually in a different world; Oblivion makes me feel like I'm still on Earth, only I can use magic, lacking the sense of wonder I often got in MW.

That being said on Oblivion, there are certain elements that I love; after playing OB and going back to MW, I felt like my character was moving in slow motion; It was also very frustrating to use magicka when using a semi-powerful spell may dispatch two or three enemies, but then it's either make tons of potions, pull out your sword, or go to sleep.

I guess you could say I prefer the feel of being in Morrowind, but miss some simple character mechanics from OB. Are any of these things gamebreakers for me? Not even close. Both games are among my top favorite games of all time without a doubt.