So, I recently finished Nehrim's main quest, along with about half of Nehrim's side quests, and I wanted to give my thoughts on Nehrim, especially on how it relates to Oblivion.

First, the good things about Nehrim. I personally thought that the true beauty in Nehrim was in the dungeons and in the detail. This was by far the amazing part of Nehrim. Everyone probably has their favorite dungeons, but I most fondly remember the dungeon that led into the dwarven city. The beginner dungeon, the magically-infected mine, and the dungeon that took you through the spider-worms digestive track. The detail in Nehrim was also amazing, and was something that was much improved over Oblivion. I still remember the time when I stumbled across a ruined gypsy wagon and the time I came across the currently unused jousting/racing arena. My thoughts? Wow...

The story was interesting and engaging (though not quite on par with winning as the dungeons/world detail), drawing you in to suspect everyone and really ponder the consequence of your actions. The ending of Nehrim seemed a little anti-climatic, though, and wasn't as satisfying as I had hoped. And I wasn't drawn into the whole destiny versus choice theme that ran throughout the plot. While some people still enjoy musing over the destiny/free will ideas, I had essentially a long time ago came to the realization that the ideas of destiny versus free will were completely meaningless, since the outcome in the end is the same. The only character I became attached to was Kim (and maybe the old Abbot from the monastery), possibly because I was suspicious of pretty much everyone else.

Okay, now for the bad. Nehrim, in my opinion, while exceeding in the above, fell behind vanilla Oblivion in creating an immersive and open world. While you could go a lot of places, Nehrim gave off the effect of "pathing" or "tunneling" the player through the landscape. You couldn't often venture far from the path, and hence large parts of the world were inaccessible. The fact that Southrealm was inaccessible from the beginning also bugged me. Truly open worlds don't do this sort thing. Two Worlds Two also adopted a system of new areas as you progressed through the main quest, though unfortunately to a much greater extent. As such, different parts of the world felt more like "levels" than part of a cohesive whole, and I had little desire to return to places that I had been following the Main Quest.

The other major stumbling block of Nehrim was instilling life into the world. Despite the incredible detail, cities, towns, and the countryside all felt lifeless. NPCs rarely had any sort of character or life to them, as they rarely had any sort of schedule or, even more infrequently, had any sort of dialogue option (disregarding quest characters of importance). Even then, quest characters only really had dialogue pertaining to the main quest, when I kind of wished that I could speak to them under less than formal circumstances. Oblivion's quest characters always had options where you could needle them with questions about the quest, and sometimes even discuss gossip. As a whole, Nehrim's world seemed an appendage of the main quest, and not a living, breathing world that stood on its own. Once I finished the main quest, I felt no desire to continue exploring.

All that being said, I give Nehrim an A+++ as an oblivion mod and a B as a game in general. As an open world rpg, which I don't really think that it fully is, I would give it a C-.

ALSO, I HAVE A QUESTION:

Nehrim is supposed to have an alternate ending, right? Upon finishing the game, I looked around for it because I wanted greater closure on the Main Quest, which felt rather unsatisfactory, but I can't evidence of it anywhere, other than the claims that Nehrim had one. I couldn't find any discussion of it whatsoever, or even a youtube video depicting it. Does it exist? What happens?



And now...back to Oblivion.

Have you played Gothic3 or any Gothic game?

Several of the things that you rate badly may, in fact, be features.

In the Gothic games - if an NPC has nothing to say about anything quest related - there is nothing to say. All but a very few creatures attack - so they are all actually encounters. In Gothic3 especially the world is fully accessible but the way points to the harder areas are 'guarded' by encounters that if you didn't have the stats there was no point in going there. Otherwise it was open with a lot of corralling.

The idea of Gods controlling specific land areas and folks choosing to support of condemn them and kick them out ... again a Gothic feature. The named opponents in dungeons is fairly stock boss fight strategy in most fantasy games.

The developers seem really really taken by Gothic and wanting Oblivion to be like Gothic.

Personally there were several native features to Nehrim I really like(d). The landmass for one. A real mountain on it. Sea ports, a (mostly open) major city, The areas lived in - looked lived in.

I think the bounty hunter missions are weak. I think they made the fold valley before they made the rest and then kept it more isolated.

No, I haven't played the Gothic games. I suppose I should at some point. No point in missing a chance to broaden my experience with rpgs! And I guess I could see my criticisms as features. Its probably just because Nehrim is an Oblivion mod that my criticisms have such prominence in this. If I was expecting something more along the lines of a linear rpg, I would have praised Nehrim for its openness...its something of a hybrid in this regard.

Seconded. This is one of my most fond memories ot playing any game ever. Whereas vanilla oblivion plays up locations in advance and then disappoints (for example, all the descriptions of malada as a remarkably horrible place when it's mostly just another interchangable stock dungeon), this is an amazing experience with almost no forewarning, creating a real sense of adventure.

I never played Gothic 3 so I can't comment on any similarities of the world, but I did like that despite the fact that most (friendly and unfriendly) NPCs are lifeless and uninteresting to interact with, I certainly found a couple of key characters to be both fascinating and memorable, something that again is entrely lacking in oblivion.

I disagree that the less open world is a negative, detractive aspect of the game. Great RPGs are able to show you new things as you progress through them. The great sense of exploration and wonder in Morrowind is often cited to argue for the superiority of completely open worlds but even Morrowind had ghostgate and the ghostfence, and the area inside it which you could access in a couple different ways but you had to do something to access it; it wasn't just wander anywhere you like. Also, because of the gameworld was not player-centric some regions were practicalyy off limits simply because they were too dangerous. What's more, I found a lot of room to explore and many interesting things to find in Nehrim even early on in the game. Still I don't think it's entirely incorrect to say that the world feels like an appendage to the quest. It's just more of a JRPG-style approach to plot and world development, which would be consistent with the anime hairstyles in the game I've seen some people complain about.

Keep in mind that Nehrim was never aimed to be a true open-world RPG, but rather a modernized cRPG. The semi-open world is simply there because Oblivion's engine does it so well. Roughly a third of the map is completely inaccessible at all times and yes, the game funnels you to specific areas in a linear fashion. On purpose. That's how the RPGs of old did things, encounter levels were static and the player shepherded to keep an ideal match, but you are never forced down that road. Nehrim does the same thing by telling you which zones are best suited to which levels. You can wander into higher level areas whenever you wish, but you will quickly be forced back due to your inability to handle the stronger encounters. This sort of soft linearity is fairly common in cRPGs.

However, I do agree with you that the world could have been developed a bit more in terms of stuff to do. Once you leave the Middlerealm, the quest givers virtually disappear and the dungeons become much fewer and farther between. No stops were pulled in the landscaping, but corners were indeed cut with populating.

Thanks for the replies. As I said before, I was kind of expecting an open world rpg in the flavor of Oblivion, so that determined how I judged the game. Also, I've heard that the same team plans to provide an expansion on the story for Skyrim. I guess we'll just have to wait and see... :hehe:

And I second my question: what is the alternative ending?