It's not about the landscape, it's not about any lore that has been changed, it's not about broken promises, it's not even about how enjoyable the game is. You see to have the wrong idea of what people actually dislike.

It's about a plot and a world bland world that fall apart the moment you try to go beyond the obvious questions and the lore forum is exactly the place where you'll see those comments because the lore is about that background, plot and characters.

It's what makes a world actually come alive and can turn a brown wasteland into a alien desert or the English country side into the heart of an Empire. Yet you suggest that taking this depth out of the game for the new market, makes better for us all?

No, it lacks plot and lacks detail because it lacks detail and the plot svcks. That simple. I'm tempted to swear at you. Or at that sort of notion in general, if I misunderstand you. Our complaints aren't driven by a chronically anol obsession with continuity. Honest.

Well when I role play in the game, I feel immersed, and I experience the depth. I understand what you're saying, and am not arguing with you, merely stating, I, personally, enjoyed it.



As they say, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thats your opinion, and I've already stated mine. :tops:

Nailing yourself to the Cross of Opinion is acceptable and even inevitable, but you don't get to do after calling our own sacred opinions fanboyism.

That's all fine with me, but anwser me this, don't you think the world is rather shallow?

Immersion and roleplaying is an emotional response as well. I'm imaginative enough to make do, whether it's Oblivion's pine branches waving in the wind or that one non-linear level in Halo.

I can forgive the shallow world while I'm playing it (well, Fable still enrages me) but not now.

I merely retaliated, because I was called a fan boy, for my own opinions. Read the posts.



As opposed to what? In comparison to what? Morrowind?

Morrowind was a completely different landscape, a completely different world and culture. Great Houses, Ashlander Tribes, Imperial Cult and Legion, Temple Faithful and warriors. There was a lot of depth to the world, to Vvardenfell, and some of the factions, even intermingled with one another.

In Oblivion, you don't see that. The differences between Colovia and Nibeny were few and far between, and there seemed to be no great rift in their culture. The counts and countesses talked about one another, but never was there huge debates between the towns, vast differences in opinion.

The guilds, never intermingled with one another either.

If thats what you were trying to goad out of me, there, I'll say it, Oblivion, in comparison, is bland.

However, I don't compare the two. Cyrodiil was supposed to be different from Morrowind, and rivalries, as far as everyone told the character, was a thing of the past under the Septim dynasty. I didn't expect to see all out wars with towns, I didn't expect to see the colovians and nibenians feuding with each other, and I didn't expect to see the guilds squabbling with each other, in the heart of Tamriel's Empire.

Morrowind and Oblivion were standalone from one another, a fact Bethesda mentioned dozens of times. They weren't supposed to be the same.

Yes, It would have been nice if Oblivion did carry over some of those aspects that Morrowind established, but I don't think it ruined the game, as I'm able to immerse myself with my character, regardless.

So is Oblivion shallow? I'd have to say to a point, when compared to Morrowind. It lacks details that made Morrowind such a great game, and there were several times that those details could have, and probably should have been used in Oblivion. However, I don't think that ruined the game, and I don't find any reason to constantly berate it, when the company that created it, made it all too clear, that it was going to be drastically different from its predecessor.

That is of course, my opinion.

Excessive objectivity has a bias all its own.

Thats true, but I never once tried to discount anyone's opinion, and in fact, thus far agreed with everyone here, in that Oblivion lacks what made Morrowind an excellent game. Of course this is about Lore, and again, Oblivion changed Lore.

I stated why the games are so, and why I don't particularly hate Oblivion, like all of you seem to.

Rivalries are never a thing of the past, even the greatest Emperor can't root out corruption, especially in the heart of the Empire where the most power is to be had...

And its not even so much that the guilds didn't rival against each other, but that there were no guilds to rival against each other. We had a few guilds that had stand alone storylines and then the rest of the culture was untouched. Where was the Nine Divines/Imperial Cult, the Imperial Legion, the government agencies and the handful of other faction that should have been in Oblivion to flesh it out (joinably)...

I can understand that they are meant to be different from each other, but just because they said it was going to be different doesn't justify it being bad; it can be 'drastically different' and still have a feel and a depth to the world, even if it would have chose to do it in a different way than Morrowind I'd have been happy, but they didn't do it at all... We can all accept that they weren't supposed to be the same, that's not the issue, the issue is that even if you aren't comparing Oblivion to Morrowind, it still had no culture to pull you into the game...

(And I don't hate Oblivion, I enjoy it very well, but I still know its not what it could/should have been)

And that is the difference of opinion, in that it did pull me into the game, but didn't to so many others. And I agree, it could have been something better.

At least Shivering Isles shows the devs still know how to make a great setting and story. I haven't played it, and most likely never will, but what I've heard of it makes me believe that it's what Oblivion should have been like.

But like I said, at least we know they can still make a great setting and story.

Taking into account human nature and real world history, doesn't that strike you as overly simplistic view? When it comes to world building, don't you feel that a world without any real conflict or contrast is a cop out?



Owh that isn't the problem. Cyrodiil is indeed supposed to be a very different place from Morrowind, though the difference between Morrowind and Cyrodiil as we just established is that Cyrodiil is bland and lacks culture.

This however wasn't the difference that they were talking about. Morrowind was known to be the alien world, Cyrodiil was to be more recognizable. Though making a more recognizable world does not imply making a generic world - a generic world is generally thought of as a bad product.

The reason it is berated constantly is that you can not talk about Oblivion without forcefully applying the idea that people only have an incomplete picture. There is so little information that anything that seems to be wrong can only be thought of as a devs mistake and not an intentional mistake.

Mankar Camoran wearing the Amulet of Kings is a good example of this. Topals asynchronous sightings would be another. The game simply doesn't provide any information that suggest it's not a mistake.

So when using Lore from Oblivion, enforcing the incompleteness principle without any contradicting source has to be justified by Oblivions lack of quality.

---

If you want, compare Oblivion to Star Wars or Harry Potter.

Off topic, but I;m so happy someone sigged that.

It was very sig worthy, it pretty much sums up any insertidealhere VS insertideal2here argument, and perfectly sums up Morrowind vs Oblivion, except that there aren't nearly as many Oblivion supporters on these forums. We've got more food in our castle!

I chuckled as well, it was quite the overly dramatic and optimistic statement.

But not what I meant.
"I have a different opinion." Slam, discussion has a massive coronary. If everyone always got there so fast the forums would be deserted.

Compared to most Xbox RPG's, at least. Most fantasy settings that are as commercially-mainstream as Cyrodiil are far less, er.....not developed (whether that be books, tabletop games, or video games*)

What lore did Cyrodiil had that wasn't added in previous games? Well, we saw what Alyleid cities looked like......and.....some bits about Goblin organization......a couple of historic battlfields......the Dark Brotherhood was nice.

The landscape looked like Gondor, and the culture is that of modern New England with more than one god(and this doesn't even matter, since they're all worshiped in the same way in the same chapels anyway.) It's not bland in comparison to MW, it's just bland. Where is the conflict, the mystery, the detail, the realism?


Randomdiabloclone#343 doesn't count.

I don't hate Oblivion. I love Oblivion. I just hate the setting.

Aye. If you can, play "Shivering Isles." It's lore-tastic, and gives me new hope that TESV may have some decent world-building in it.

I challenge your argument with Halo. It takes place on a giant metal ring in space with pine forests on the inside, which turns out to be a superweapon inhabited by swarms of yellow things that look like giant retroviruses and can turn you into part of the zombie horde led by an immortal talking Venus fly-trap. That game sold the original Xbox while still maintaining having a non-bland setting.

Besides, when I am looking to buy a video game, I don't check the back of the box to see if it looks like medival Europe or not.

NOTE: I am not saying the Halo universe is better than the Elder Scrolls universe. But if you just looked at Oblivion, Halo's setting would seem far more interesting. There are actually some original ideas there.

I'm amazed how many people were too busy eating popcorn to actually LOOK AT THE SCREEN during the Return of the King.

We saw little of Gondor proper in the theatrical cut.

Though, nevertheless I'd put forward that large swathes of Cyrodiil do look like Ithilien.

Precious little indeed, which is why this is more [censored] than "optional fast travel." You can bet your ass everyone who says "Gondor" isn't drawing on Tolkien's descriptions of geography.

Comparisons to Ithilien are fair enough.

I fancied Cyrodiil to look more like Eriador. However, that's just all a bunch of LotR comparison wankery.

Middle Earth aside, there was a lot of similarities with sections of the US. Great Forest looking like the pacific northwest while the area surrounding Chorrol looked strikingly similar to Upstate NY (Finger Lakes region specifically... man, it's like I'm looking off my front porch in some areas of the game).

I can't honestly add too much to this thread in regards to the lack of visible culture in the game that hasn't already been said numerous times and much more eloquently than I could probably think of. However, one thing I think I'll add is something I've been thinking about recently. I remember from the (somewhat infamous) AFFA MU interview where (I believe) he mentioned one of Ken Rolston's decisions was no betrayals against the PC. I can't help but feel that given the atmosphere one would expect of Cyrodiil during the Oblivion Crisis; a well written and properly implemented betrayal would seemingly fit right in as well as providing chances for really grabbing the player emotionally at some point in the story. While I have an immense amount of respect for KR, I think that some "for the sake of the player" decisions like that add a few unnecessary constraints to the storytelling.

EDIT: tiny change so it doesn't look like one big run-on sentence at the beginning of the last paragraph

I was underwhelmed.


What would be bland in a sci-fi setting to you? Because the Dyson ring thing shows up occasionally in sci-fi, including Larry Niven's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ringworld or Ian M Banks' Culture novels in the form of Orbitals. I don't know about the former, but the latter is one of the more original sci-fi settings by virtue of the anarchist, technotopia he has going there. These sorts of vast extraterrestrial relics are so common to SF writing that they even have a rather unimpressive name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_dumb_object. As for the plot, to me, intergalactic war, but with zombies, doesn't strike me as terribly original.

(For the record, Half-life wasn't much better. That was alien invasion with government coverup, and a big mystery at the end. But that game's virtues weren't in its plot, but in its storytelling; a commitment to a first person narrative and brilliant level design that did the equivalent of the Blair Witch Project in placing you in the setting. Halo, like all the games that followed after Half-life, learned a lot from it.)

Now if you were talking Bungie's original http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marathon_Trilogy#Story, then I'd agree. That was cool, and a couple ideas (like Rampancy) did make it into Halo from Marathon.

I agree. And rather than re-type up WHY I agree, i'll just re-post what I said in a different thread:



Moderator: Closed due to thread necromancy.