I played Oblivion on both the 360 (three years ago) and on the PS3 (just started a week ago).

While the PC players had the ability to overcome many issues in the game such as bugs or poor design, there wasn't much the console (yes, these are called consoles to the rest of the world) users could do about such things.

That said, I realize that this game was a port for those systems, and not built primarily for those systems. I also realize this was Bethesda's first crack at doing such a thing and that the "new generation" of consoles was just that, a new generation. With all that said, Oblivion actually did pretty well with meshing with those two systems.

But it certainly left a lot to be desired as well.

The ability to overcome the absolutely asinine leveling system could be overcome on the PC. The fact that NPCs would level differently from the player and from monsters meant that at a certain stage, any NPC leaving the town gates would surely wind up dead if the player got near the "cell" they were in. Bugs like quest items stuck in someone's inventory were easy to fix in the PC, but for the console players that wasn't possible.

PC players could easily create the characters they wanted to play in the game through the mod options, but the console players were pretty much stuck with a very rigid and unforgiving leveling system that they had to work through.

I actually created a "Perfect 40" wood elf for the Xbox 360 - it took me at least a week to do it and it was a complete nightmare. There's certainly no way I could have done it without duping items.

My hope is that the game creators take a few innovative steps to help make the game as enjoyable for 360 and PS3 users as it is for PC users this time around by including some of the following:

1) The ability for a PC user to create a PS3/360 character save file that can then be imported to the 360 or PC system so that we can make modifications to our characters and then import them to our consoles.
2) Cheat codes... It's a stand-alone RPG. A few simple cheat codes that allow us to revive important NPCs, change character traits, and modify/place items wouldn't be that hard to implement but would go a long way to allowing us the same abilities to overcome some of the game's limitations that the PC users have.

Again, I know that the last game was the first attempt to port to what at the time was a brand new set of consoles. Considering that, it was actually very well done - but the difference between working with a PC game and a console game is that the players themselves can make up for the game's short-comings by editing files, while console users cannot. This time around my hope is that Bethesda gives more attention to how constrained their game actually was for people on the 360 and PS3, and that they enable more tools for those folks to use so that they too can enjoy the potential the game has to offer, without feeling they got stuck with all of the bad aspects and no way to work around them so that they could get to the really good parts.


Also as an aside, I think it's funny how the two different types of systems have a different term for the same thing. "Console" being one of them. The other being "Modification Options."

On a PC it's a "mod option" while on a console it's a "cheat code."

I just thought that was interesting. Wow, I just derailed my own thread... I need coffee.

Dead NPCs is my biggest qualm. I abosolutely abhorred the fact that at level 43 getting thru the main quest is MORE DIFFICULT than doing so before you reach level ten. Terrible design choice. Ruins the satisfaction you find in even less developed games.

are you joking?


oblivion was made for the xbox 360, by sheer luck did it manage to get to the ps3 and pc

Really?

My mistake then. I had heard otherwise. If it was actually made for the 360... That's pretty spooky because it actually works better on my PS3, and the PS3 seems to encounter fewer crashes, bugs, glitches and slowdowns.

I honestly believed the sources I had heard that told me it was made for the PC. If it was genuinely made primarily for the 360... "Utter pfail" comes to mind.



Yeah, that was a disaster. So was not being able to complete certain quest lines because NPCs were dead. I remember constantly checking on certain NPCs before I saved because I knew that if anything happened to them, I'd be screwed. I'd fast travel to their town and go to their house to make sure they were alive before saving sometimes. It was a lot of extra work and stress, and it made the game very tedious. I've seen others that had save files of 100+ hours worth of their time get stuck on a quest that couldn't be completed because they had lost an NPC too.

That's got to be amazingly frustrating.

Hell, just a couple of days ago on the PS3 I did the Purification quest for the Dark Brotherhood, and I still had to go find the one chick that only comes in a couple of days a week. As soon as I killed Vicente though, I got the message that they were all dead. Somewhere along the line, she had gotten whacked by someone or something out there in the world. Thank God it wasn't essential that I kill her a particular way.

It was originally intended for PC and Xbox. The decision to port to PS was made relatively late in development cycle.

I'm not touching that with a six foot pole but cough pc

Your wrong. For the first 3 years of development the Xbox 360 didn't even exist. Beth is now (starting w/FO3) using the 360 as it main development platform now but it's not luck that it ports the to PC and PS3, it planning.

The early planning may have been for PC, but the UI and design scheme, as well as the graphics and memory limitations were obviously made for the Xbox. And they knew the new Xbox was coming, and had development kits for it long before the 360 was released. Oblivion was intended as a 360 launch title.

At any rate, transferring characters violates the consoles TOS, so Bethesda can't provide that.

A debug menu with some options like toggling collision should be possible, but (as with New Vegas) using it would disable any achievements until you quit and restart the game.

You dont seem to understand what mods are....

Mods dont edit save game files.....they edit game contents which save games can load up.....pretty much mods are user created DLCs.


Also, the PC version doesnt have cheat codes, it has a development console.....which although has functions in it that can be used for cheats....it meant as a tool to test and debug with. It also requires a keyboard to work....the only ones i can see that would work for consoles is a god mode cheat or no clip cheat to help get out of those buggy situations.

I believe you. I completely buy that the PS3 was the final port they decided to make - and it shows because it works far better than the 360 version. In my experience at least.

I don't see why they can't give console users access to the so called 'cheat' console. You can fix/do a lot of things using just that, and it really isn't hurting anyone. There are a few commands they'd have to disable on consoles, but the majority of them probably should be available to you. You just have to realize that using the console would turn off any kind of achievement earning. They like to keep people's achievements on an even playing field, and once you've used the console, you are no longer on an even playing field.

Stop with the platform bashing.

The game was created on the pc. There was never any doubts that it would be released on pc. And it seems that the 360 was so important that the game was pushed back to March 2006 instead of being a 360 launch title. The ps3 had issues that affected when the game was released for that platform; it took another year. Since the pc version was released at the same time as the 360 version, I don't see much "sheer luck" involved at all.

I understand what mods are. I also understand the difference between a semantic argument and the fundamental point someone is trying to make.

Since this is the real world and not a philosophy class, I tend to be concerned with the heart of an issue rather than the "verbatim, vernacular, lingo or esoteric vocabulary" someone makes their point with.

I'm here to discuss the disparity in game quality between the consoles and the PC, not to engage in a war of linguistic etymology.

not so much sheer luck, i meant that although the game was going to go on the pc, it was designed for the 360.

Yep.

That's fine. I'm not big on the achievements anyway.

Perhaps they can add an achievement for those that do access the console on the 360 or PS3 though. They could call it the, "Corrected the things we should have considered before we sold it" achievement.

Console currently gives some very fundamental access to the game's inner workings.

I don't know if MS forbids development consoles or whether Bethesda just doesn't see the point in giving a development console to the small group of people who have Xboxs with keyboards, considering they would likely have to severely limit the functions available.

Besides, Xbox and PS3 players never do development of mods, so the only purpose of accessing the console would be to use a few commands to "fix" things that Bethesda may not consider broken.

Although I still support the idea of a debug menu for when the game glitches badly.

Yeah on 360 it "stutters" alot.

BTW are you finnish?

I'd say that a quest line being impossible to complete because an NPC is dead is a pretty big glitch, regardless of the smoke and mirrors that "It's a feature!" might try to hide. Having stuff stuck in one's inventory is not a feature. Poorly - and I mean hideously - implemented leveling systems is not a feature - nor is it a bug. It's simply poor design.

This game... Is remarkable. It has all the potential in the world to be the greatest video game ever made. I consider video games to be an art form in the modern world. If da Vinci were alive today, he wouldn't use canvas. He'd use a computer. This game is that kind of art.

It has that kind of potential to me. I'll be seriously irritated if it winds up being "pretty much broken when all is said and done" for the PS3 and 360 users because the game is designed poorly in a few particular aspects - aspects that are easily overcome on a PC to fulfill the game's potential, but which PS3 and 360 users are stuck with.

Bugs are bugs and should be fixed when they are aware of them. NPCs dying is part of having a vibrant world. There shouldn't be very many quests that are unfinisable due to an NPC dying, if there is, it's a bug that should be fixed (unless keeping them alive was part of the quest).

I'm afraid, however, that playing the game the way the developers designed it is one of the aspects of playing on console. If you want to change the game to suit yourself, you buy the PC version.

The console versions will never have the adaptability of the PC version. It is not something that will change.

I think that's a matter of perspective that we differ on.

If the designers designed the game with the limitations of console players in mind, that would be one thing. They don't, however. They didn't last time at least. A flaw is still a flaw regardless of whether it can be fixed or not.

I equate that stance to someone buying a car that has a defect and the company saying, "But that's what we designed" rather than saying, "Yes, we should improve that."

It's harder to build things for a console because it's not as easy for the players to "fix."

That said, it shouldn't need fixing in the first place. This game required a lot of "fixing" last time - but that wasn't possible for the console players. My concern is that the game designers will fail to account for this again, and leave what could be a masterpiece of a game sitting in a position of "Neat idea, but incomplete and ultimately not a good product" as a result.

Eh? The leveling system in Oblivion may not have been well received, but they didn't think "never mind that it's bad, PC players can just mod it". The Oblivion leveling system was not due to the limitations of console players. It was a design choice. Using your anology, it's like buying a petrol car and then complaining that your fuel bill is more expensive than if you bought the diesel version. It's not the company's fault that you don't like paying extra for your fuel, just like it's not Bethesdas fault that you didn't like the leveling system they implemented. That is not a bug, it was intentional.

Things like floating rocks and getting stuck and needing to toggle collision is a bug, and should be addressed. But because you don't like a certain aspect of something, doesn't mean it's a flaw that has to be corrected.

Like Showler said, if you want the ability to completely change the way you play the game, then buy it for the PC. Having a console option for the game will not bring about the massive changes that some of the larger leveling overhaul mods for Oblivion have done.

Ps3 version runs better for me too. I put over 150 hours into the 360 version and around a 100 on the ps3 version. My 360 copy I got the day it came out but I got a ps3 last january and got oblivion goty and it runs noticeably better.

You seem very concerned about this. Why not just buy the PC version?

All games no matter the final target platform are developed on PC - you physically can't develop a game on Xbox Console is a final user implement that is used by developers only for testing and showing the games.
That is why you will never see any development tools on a console - they are not made for it and never will be, both due to design and the actual purpose of their existence - simplified user friendly system that is 100% controllable by parents, manufacturer and if needed government. They are not made to change programs, but only to run them.
The in game dev console is what it is - a development tool, it is left in PC version for the same reason we have Construction Set - for modders. It was not meant as a "cheat option" even thou people occasionally use it as one. And since it is a development tool and capable of changing content it will not be ported to consoles.
To summarize - the truth of the fact is that a TES game will never be an equal experience for PC and Consoles - it is possible to play it on consoles and even somewhat enjoyable, but the consoles are not able to support the creativity side of playing TES games. This is a price you pay for cheaper hardware and comfortable sofa