Oblivion
I tried to play this for a third time. I am sad to say that this may be my last. The character acting is so bad and some of the plots are so cartoonish.

Example:
So, I am in the Imperial City for the first time looking around the Market. I pick a mission that turns out to be about graverobbing, Unfriendly Competition.
After tailing 2 characters for at least 15 minutes, I over hear their conversation and follow them to find the home of the robber.

Positive:
On the one hand, being trapped in a 2 vs 1 fight in a tomb where there's a hole in the masonry just big enough for them to stuff my soon to be dead body in. Well, this was quite disturbing, it struck me as very offensive that, if I hadn't overcome them, my carcass was to be stuffed into a hole and covered up for no one to ever know.
Yet, this is not my problem with the game, this was a refreshing plus side. It was like I got immersed in the tailing part and then when it came to to battle for my life, I was invested in the plot.
I was impressed by the reaction it provoked.


My problem with the mission was the NPC just before I got to the tomb. The Wood Elf merchant, his reactions to my accusations about his associate. They were something like: "Oh my..Dear me... how awful, I am really so sorry."
I was pissed, this was so watered down and unbelievable. Like that merchant didn't know.... like he wasn't complicit with the robber, he knew the prices that he bought at were very low.
I even overheard the graverobber threaten to take his business elsewhere. It was such [censored] and broke the sense of believability, shattering immersion and investment.
It could have been a beautiful side mission, very different from anything I had experienced in Skyrim. (Though I could only ever play it once because of the length of time it took to tail. It would be too boring on a second run.) Like I said, I was drawn in by it.

Okay, so that mission was broke by the unbelievable 'innocence' of the merchant and his "Oh dear me, Oh my...Well, I never.." [censored] response to the situation.
A lot of the NPC's are afeminite and grotesque in their dialogue and physicality. It's such an immersion breaker. I can't stand their tone of voices or their dialogue.
I really wanted to get into this game, but my trust is broken too often. I feel like a bit of a loser playing it.
The corniness of the voice acting and the afeminite voices and dialogue. It makes me wonder what the Bethesda company leaders were like. Maybe huge fans of the Renaissance festivals and dungeons & dragons. (What I am referring is to the immaturity you often see, like the play acting of children. Fun for the children acting, not so fun for those witnessing them.)

It's not my intention to insult people who like these things, but it's so far from historicicity that you can see the limits of the imagination and knowledge of the game creators/writers.


My question is, does this continue throughout the game? Did I just happen to run into a really bad patch of interactions with NPC's?
As it has been, I can't see abiding the frequent immersion breaking of their inane comments and blurting, their corny dialogue and poor voice acting, and the unbelievable plot lines.

I can't believe that after over 3 versions of TES up through Skyrim, they haven't pulled back on the NPC blurting . It's like there's something in the water that causes mild cases of Asberger's Syndrome. To have them talk at you the same horrible lines over and over again, just because you are within proximity to them. I mean, okay maybe set up a counter per character and have them say it one out of 8 times you are near, put it to a dice roll.

It happens every time you are near, like that second dragon slaying at Kynesgrove. Delphine starts in with here inane comments right after you go through her tedious dialogue about the Thalmor Embassy. "What, what is it, what do you want?" (For you to Please continue, my good sir. NPC's.)


I've often felt like the game developers must be a bit self-destructive. That they reminded me of those game Griefers you see on youtube. The ones that go into multiplayer and do their best to piss off the team they are on.
That they set this system up just to bother their player base. Like: "Look what power we have!" Insert: Bart Simpson bully laugh "Ha HA."
"We can make our game stink it and stuff your face in it. You will come back for more too, because we know we have something good here."
It's a little piece of insanity, you'd think that with everyone involved, some of them would have stopped such a ridiculous game mechanic.

I don't know what to tell you. "Unfriendly Competition" is one of my favorite Oblivion quests. But then again I like effeminate men, so what do I know.

What a shocker that people who develop and publish medieval/fantasy role playing games might be huge fans of Renaissance festivals, and maybe even play (or played) Dungeons and Dragons. And these things still remain quite popular, so obviously more than "the children acting" are deriving some enjoyment from them.

And I actually found the merchant's reaction to "Unfriendly Competition" to be somewhat believable. I'm sure he knew that something shady was going on, but as long as the gold kept rolling in he was less than eager to dig too deeply for the details. And when finally confronted with evidence about what was going on, of course his first reaction was to deny having any knowledge about it. There are countless people just like that in the real world. Of course, in the real world, having his operation exposed like that would have ruined his business, and he would have closed his shop and moved away (unless the Imperial Guard jailed him, but the shop would still be closed), but it's a game, and that would have deprived players of a merchant.

Everyone here who enjoys Oblivion and other TES games will be the first to complain about some of the eye-rollingly bad NPC dialog and plot mechanics, but we can still enjoy the games enough to put hundreds or even thousands of hours into playing and replaying them. If you can't, then I don't really know what to say either, except to play something that you can enjoy.

My point about the voice acting and comparing it to play acting is that while it's fun to play act, it's only fun to watch professional actors. Let me go further by saying that what makes a popular actor or a famous one, is that they are capable of being believable to a wider audience.

This post may have spent too much time on criticism. (I definitely hesitated in using renaissance festivals as an example.)

You make some good points. My expression of disappointment on those aspects of the game may have been amplified because I liked so much of that mission and other parts of the gameplay. They were different from Skyrim, which is mostly fetching stuff. I actually contemplated with horror, the idea that I was to be stuffed into that hole and covered up, hidden and without justice.

I wish I could mute the voice acting and read text instead. Imagination is much better at generating the world, voice acting has to be top notch or it will break immersion.

As for the believability of the Wood Elf and tying it into the 'real world', I maintain that to me it lacked realism. I would rather have seen him lie, however badly, than to have the game make him out to be "not such a bad guy". It promotes naivety and doesn't have the bite or depth that it might have.

I'll have to see if this is a style that continues through the game. I posted to find out if I should bother, because if it's a continuous tone, I'm afraid that I won't be able to get into the role play.

You can mute the voices... simply turn down the voice volume in the audio menu.

or just play first person shooters .. (completely real)

This is exactly how I play. I have voices turned off and subtitles turned on. I read every line of dialogue. I'm comfortable doing this, coming from Morrowind and other RPGs like Baldur's Gate.

Another reason I do this is because I don't absorb information in spoken form (I had a terrible time in school). I absorb information best when I can read it. Voice acting is lost on me. I have to read what NPCs tell me or I don't retain it.

Sounds like it's not the game for you. Simple solution - don't play it.

I like Oblivion, but I have Asperger's, so maybe that's why And believe me, the repetitive dialogue in Oblivion and even more so in Skyrim is not how I usually speak. TBH I think repetitive dialogue is more common among real world people who don't have Asperger's and who can only talk about superficial things in their everyday lives because social conventions forbid them to discuss anything beyond that.

"I saw a mudcrab the other day..." or "I work for Belethor at the general goods store" x 30000 is not very different from how normal people normally talk.

...Except that if they had talked about mudcrabs, I would like socializing a little better.

It would certainly be more entertaining than the stuff I overhear in the mall.

To the OP, I would second (third? fourth?) the advice to turn the voices down and read the subtitles. Imagine the voices the way you want to hear them, just as we do when we're reading stories.

Oblivion is Bethesda's first fully voice-acted game. A lot of the prerecorded stuff comes across as odd or out-of-context, and much of the generic dialog is voiced to be spoken by any character, even when it will clash with other lines spoken by the same character. This is most noticeable when you talk to a beggar; their beggar lines come across as "lower-class" while their generic "rumor" lines may be in the same voice as the lines you just heard spoken by a "noble."

Best to just cut the game a little slack. Eventually the voices become part of the "charm" of the game.

Holy [censored] batman, the OP is right! I had no idea how bad this game is, I'm going to stop playing immediately!

Well...

Honestly, and sincerely with the best of intentions, the first piece of advice I'd give you is to try to learn to not subject yourself to senseless rage over things you can't change anyway. In reading that OP post, I really didn't see a "review" - I saw a tantrum. The real problem isn't that the game has flaws, but that those flaws trigger an unwarranted and ultimately pointless emotional response in you.

Seriously - and trust me, because I speak from experience rather than just as an observer - that kind of rage only harms you. The game obviously doesn't care, and really, Beth doesn't even care. You're just stressing yourself out for no useful purpose.

I hated Oblivion when it was released. Absolutely detested it. And I raged about it too, and it accomplished nothing (other than triggering some enormous flame wars). At this point, after about a year of not playing it at all, another couple of years of playing it only very occasionally, then another couple of years learning to mod and, most importantly, learning how to roleplay - how to tell my own story within the game rather than depending on the game to tell my story for me - it's easily not only my favorite TES game, but my favorite RPG and quite possibly my favorite game, period.

You'll have to sort out for yourself what to do with the game. If you don't enjoy it, don't play it. That's easy enough. Don't bother raging over it though - not only does that not do you any good, but nobody else cares, so it's just a waste of time and effort in all possible ways. Either play it or don't - it's your choice.

If it helps any, I'd say that Unfriendly Competition is one of the poorer executed quests in the game. There's very little useful dialogue and a notable amount of entirely senseless dialogue (my own favorite is at the end, when Thoronir breathlessly asks, "Did you manage to stop Agarmir?" and the player character responds, "Yes. Here is his shovel.") Most of the quests are better structured. Note though that there are some that are worse (if you have a low tolerance for senseless quests, as seems pretty obvious, you'd probably best avoid Canvasing the Castle). But again, at this point, I don't care about the dialogue - it's just a rough outline to the story I'm telling with my own character, and the beauty of this game, in my opinion, is that it provides so much opportunity for that storytelling.

So my long term advice, if you do want to play this game, is to learn how to see beyond the strict confines of the story Beth told and learn how to tell your own stories. My short term advice though is simply to learn not to waste your time and energy raging over things that you can't change anyway.

Dude you get the killer Elven mace in that little tomb (pretty early in the game).

Best thing about that quest...

Turns out the wood-elf guy IS a good guy after all, and he and Jensine become pals, and everything nice-nice.

It's a 'nice' quest.

The awesomeness of Oblivion is... Oblivion! Swarmed by Daedra, seeking Sigil Stone...

The game has its 'heavy' moments.

Market District is... soft.

Like I say, that quest is all about the Caliben's Grim Retort mace. Don't leave without it!