so yesterday i was on oblivion, and i had run away from cheydinhall after killing phillida, and after losing the guards, i stopped at a camp by the large river.
it was a sunset, and there were mountains in the distance. i thought about going to sleep, and then continuing on my journey to imperial city, but instead
i decided to just watch the sunset and that was the greatest feeling i've ever had in any game. i slept after the night fell and then continued on the road on a beautiful sunny day to imperial city.
better than my first nuke in mw2.
better than any other rpg game.

i think that's something you can only find in TES games.

It's been said many times : there are games with graphics that are technically better than Oblivion's, but somehow it uses what it has really well.
Of course it is all a matter of opinion, just look at the Skyrim forum, full of how OB is apparently generic and bland compared to Morrowind, but, and this is my own personal opinion, Oblivion left me completely breathless when I first played it. The world seems so completely realised, with the ability to pick up any mundane object, the ( amazing for the time ) npc schedules and as you say, the sunsets.
The first time you leave the sewers and view Cyrodiil, the first time you see Chorrol from the Jeralls, the first time you enter an Ayleid ruin, no other game has come close to this. Sure it has flaws, nothing is perfect, but for me this is as good as a game gets.

I've played loads of other RPG's and have clocked so many hours playing games (Well over 1000 on WoW) but no other game I have played has ever managed to beat the atmosphere in Oblivion. I love sitting up in the mountains around Bruma looking over the Imperial City and watching the sunset. When Sabarel is at home in Anvil she likes to get up just before sunrise and take a nice stroll to the docks with her fishing rod and stoll, sit on the docks and fish as the sunrises over the waves lapping at the docks edge. If you can find me a game where the atmosphere is any where close to that I will stop playing Oblivion. Until then I'll play Oblivion to the day I die.

Agreed. Though it think Morrowind is a great game, I don't really even see the diversity that I see in Oblivion, particularly as far as landscapes go. Oblivion has so much diversity in landscapes it's amazing. Morrowind has a small number of fantasy landscapes, mostly rocks though. Oblivion is certainly more "normal" IF you don' t count Planes of Oblivion or Shivering Isles (though I don't understand why you wouldn't count them), but it has a lot more diversity in what it has.

I had a similar experience as the OP just last night. In the hills near Anvil watching the sunset near the coastal area and the coastline. With Anvil in the distance on one corner. Great job with the game.

Fallout 3 has technically better graphics (you can see this if you look closely at the rubble and particularly NPCs). But since it is intentionally drab and desolate, it doesn't have the same affect.

I agree the best game ever! Hands down.

What can I say that hasn′t been said by the others?

I came to Cyrodiil from the horrific environment on Mars, battling demons from hell. So as you can well understand for me Oblivion was bliss with its music, magic, lights and altogether wonderful experience. One can debate that Oblivon is dumbed down compared to other RPG:s, but to me it will always be that special game :tes:

For me, nothing has topped what Natural Selection was like in the first few months after the game was released. That game.... holy mother of god. It was like PLAYING Aliens.

For those who don't know (and I'd be surprised if many here did, it was a pretty "niche" game), http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/ was a multiplayer only mod for the original Half Life. The beauty of it was, when the game was first released, very few people knew a damn thing about it (I knew a tiny bit from browsing the website), so EVERYTHING was new and amazing, and since every single entity in the game had a live human behind it, everything was deadly, so ANYTHING unexpected could scare the [censored] out of you.

It's sort of a multiplayer survival/horror fps/RTS, aliens vs marines, pretty much all on spacecraft of various sorts... very atmospheric and farking freaky as [censored]. IDK, it's a bit hard to describe it. It's a team game, and as a marine, you REALLY want your teammates around, because aliens can move FAST, hit HARD, and freaking vanish in a blink... plus, they can be very quiet if "evolved" for it.

So you've got your small squad of marines moving through this creaking, damaged, infested hulk in the depths of space somewhere, and you're all trying very hard to be quiet and listen for any noises, like the click click of claws, and then a [censored] steam pipe releases pressure right next to you and you freak out thinking an alien is coming out of the damn wall and you let off a few rounds and then go ..... oh [censored], now they know we're here.

And then you start screaming.


It was most amazing in those first few months though, because, again, no one knew anything, no one knew the maps, no one knew the aliens, no one knew the abilities, it was all "what the hell IS THAT THING AAAAAH" and then you'd get your face ripped off because that thing had a real brain inside it.

Plus the skulk chuckle was just creepy.

Playing as aliens was pretty fun too, but jesus, playing as a marine.... terror and adrenaline nonstop.

^This. Weather: All Natural mod also provides some *very* red sunsets that are awesome, especially in the Lost Coast, the Great Forest and in Skingrad Outskirts' zones of the Unique Landscapes mod series.

Plus, I love cozyness, and http://img718.imageshack.us/img718/5627/screenshot1wl.jpg redefines that word. That's extremely cozy.

The first time Helena and I watched a sunset from the hills outside Anvil. Helena found her own little place in my heart that day, and she's been there ever since. Inspiring me to completely change my roleplaying and how I approached the game in general.

I cannot wait to get hold of a PC that can run Morrowind and Oblivion, to see her reaction to Vvardenfell and mods.

Same here, xbox only and an old mac for internet, but vanilla still gives me a feeling nothing else can match.

Me too me too! I've been playing RPGs and some "RPGs" since the 1980s. Ever since D&D (which I haven't touched since college) I've been looking for a game which captures what I used to see during some of my dice & paper role-playing days.

That's what I dig about OBlivion, Bethesda seemd to know there are thousands (millions) of us out there who simply want to find a game which portrays some of the games we all used to play way back when.