Like the title says. It's always confused me when people say Oblivion is "generic", especially its landscapes. When people say this, they apparently mean the game's outdoor settings aren't that good. :confused:

I would agree that certain subterrnean areas have some generic features, especially caves. All caves have that little ledge that sits in a corner, for instance. This ledge always sits a little higher than the rest of the room, and there's a 75% chance (it seems) that the ledge will have a chest on it. I get this. What I don't get is when people say the towns and IC and landscapes are generic, as if I'm supposed to dislike the game's outdoors as much as they do. :shrug:

Lots of people complain about this in the Skyrim forum. I'm seeing this over and over. "Bethesda better not make Skyrim as generic as Oblivion" yada yada yada. They usually note the reason Cyrodiil is generic is because it's "too much like Earth's medieval era". Why is this a bad thing?

First of all, lots of dwellings (to me) don't seem like anything on Earth. Take the Imperial City, and Ayleid ruins in general. The IC seems unique in the game (other than the fact that it's the same color as the ruins). and each ruin has its own sort of look to it.

Forts, and certain houses definitely look as if they could be from Earth's middle ages/Renaissance periods, but I don't see this as a bad thing. :rolleyes: On the contrary, I actually don't have a prob with this at all. To this day, if I notice features on a house or in a town which look medieval or Earth-like, it doesn't break immersion for me at all; yet I notice it seems to for lots of folks.

And when we look at the towns themselves, they all have their own unique architecture, certainly not "generic" when compared one against the other. Bravil's dark wooden houses have an American frontier/west look to them, which is not shared with Chorrol's Tudor-style houses (I think they're Tudor....) Leyawin's yellows and oranges is not repeated in Bruma's whites and dark browns.

When I think of "generic", I think of seeing the exact same features over and over again. Some features do repeat for sure, but (for instance) when I look at You Tube vids of Daggerfall's houses & towns, to me these seem far more generic, because a lot of them literally look the same when the camera goes from town to town.

Not to start a flame war here, but to me Morrowind's landscape features (which always look bleak and bland) look far more "generic" to me. I don't own Morrowind becaues I don't have a PC or an Xbox, and I'm not saying it looks like a bad game (quite the opposite, matter of fact) but every time I watch a You Tube vid of Morrowind's towns or landscapes, I don't really see what people are talking about. I don't really see what's so much "better" about Morrowind's design.

Like I said, I'm sure I'd love Morrowind. One day when I can justify the cost of buying an Xbox just for this game (becuase...it will be just for that game!) I'm sure I'll dig it. I just don't get how Morrowind = good, and Oblivion = bad, when it comes to design of both games.

Thank you. *steps off stage for tea & cookies* Have some tea and cookies, folks, while you discuss.

Generic... this word keeps popping up in these forums but I′m also uncertain what they mean. Maybe that everything is not about magic in Cyrodiil, as in chests not suddenly "awaken" and bite you in the nose or book shelves start talking. But that′s something I definately wouldn′t want in Oblivion.

Maybe they mean there are too many ′real′animals? Bears, wolves and dogs. But I′ve never seen billies or will-o′s when I go to work. Nor have I seen ogres, goblins or cats in armor who tries to rob me so it can′t be it as there are plenty of made-up creatures too.

People often mention hand-placed loot but that′s something I don′t think twice about. I don′t care. If a dev or the game placed that gem in that chest is really not on my mind when I play. On the contrary, it′s what broke Morrowind for me cause everytime I opened a chest I thought about who could have placed it there just for me to find it? So for me that piece of ′un-generic′thing is something I can live without.

Thanks for the tea and cookies! :foodndrink:

I don't know if some of our members will be able to restrain themselves and turn this into a OB bashfest - so let's try not to do that.

I think what may be confusing to you is what the interpretation of "generic" might be. I suspect that a lot of people who were stronger fans of Morrowind felt that Oblivion's more traditional fantasy setting was generic - using an interpretation of generic as "not different enough for my tastes" As in "LotR" "medieval-y forested" settings, for one thing. The fact that that the countryside is trees, wooded hills, a higher percentage of non-fantasical beasts (wolves, bears, cougars, etc), snowy hills, barring unusual ruins and such, makes it less "different" than the more alien-looking landscapes of much of Morrowind, with it's parasol mushrooms, freaky odd critters (like a floating netch, for example), it's ash storms, weird stone monoliths and strange looking Dwemer ruins. Morrowind's setting was very different but Oblivion's story was a much more traditional fantasy story in it's way, so the more traditional/familiar type of fantasy setting worked, imo.

That type of world - sort of familiar, in it's way, with forests, animals, ruins of forts that wouldn't have looked out of place somewhere in Scotland, is simply more commonly used in fantasy games, movies, even books, though different developers interpret things in their own ways. Other than the cool Ayleid ruins and the jarring Oblivion gates popping up, I think a lot of people were hoping for more fantastical visuals and were thus very disappointed in the setting. Shivering Isles went back to the weirdness, in it's way.

I don't know really, but I think some people are referring to the standard European medieval fantasy setting.

Personally I like that. But I'm kinda traditional.

When I call Oblivion generic I mean it as the opposite of exotic. It's a fairly standard medieval fantasy world that doesn't really stand out very much from the thousands of other medieval fantasy worlds.

Although lately I have come to realize that Oblivion in itself isn't quite as generic as I used to think. It's just that after playing Morrowind pretty much anything will seem bland and generic in comparison.

The northeastern parts of Vvardenfell (the island in Morrowind) are rather wierd, populated by giant mushrooms and mushroom houses and so on. You start in the southwestern parts of Vvardenfell which looks fairly normal, and then the more you explore the island, the more wierd, alien and exotic it becomes (like the town Sadrith Mora).

That's sort of game progress is something few games have, including the other games in the TES series, and many people seemed to enjoy that so they were disappointed when Oblivion didn't have it (even though the previous two games didn't have it either and are less exotic than Oblivion).

Anyone who complains about that is probably less of an Elder Scrolls fan and more of a Morrowind fan. Morrowind was the only game NOT styled like the medieval era. Daggerfall was way more medieval/renaissance than Oblivion ever was, and of all the places I'd expect to be medieval-style, Cyrodiil is it.

I think a lot of people psyched themselves out of liking Oblivion. They liked Morrowind and so they expected Morrowind+, but instead they got a different game, so they played it once, decided it wasn't like Morrowind, decided it was shallow, and never bothered to look deeper and appreciate the game for what it is. They couldn't see the forest for the trees. Just my theory though.

I was pleasantly surprised by Oblivion, and I think it improved on A LOT of what Morrowind did. I constantly find myself defending Oblivion in the Skyrim forum, but for the record, I actually prefer vanilla-Morrowind over vanilla-Oblivion.

mirocu, hope you like the tea & cookies. I'm afraid the cookies are a little generic, as I'm not very good at baking IRL. I picked those up at Trader Joes.



Thank you. Yes, I'm not trying to attract this element, I'm just genuinely curious what people's opinions are..



...Very good, well said.

interesting. Yes, it's hard to see the forest for the trees, I get that reference.

Have some tea & cookies. There's even some sugar-free cookies now. And somebody just brought ice cream. :icecream:

Certainly. My favorite improvement is that they made sneaking fun, but there were plenty of other improvements too.

Not to say that all changes were improvements, but meh

Overall it′s hard to please everyone. Some like Morrowind′s alien landscape and some like Cyrodiil′s ′normal′ settings, like me. I don′t mind regular trees and animals, as long as there′s fantasy stuff too.
But that′s the thing for me, just either one is not enough. It′s the blend I like and maybe that′s the reason I didn′t fall in love with Shivering Isles. It had all the crazy stuff but almost nothing regular, which btw was the point so bazinga on me

Yes I brought the :icecream: Hope you′ll enjoy!

I think Renee Gade 2 in the OP and others, make a great point.

Oblivion is not "Generic" at least not for a video game. There are very few games even remotely like it. And it is very frustrating that this has been repeated so many times people start to believe it.

I think it comes from the comparison with Morrowind. TES III: Morrowind was a very strange and different world. It did not appear to really be middle-ages-like, but rather alien. So some people expected the same in Oblivion. What they got were earth-like forests, caves, animals. And my creatures were from our mythologies (Ogres, Troll, Will-O-The-Wisp, Minotaurs, Imps, etc). Also the planes of Oblivion are a somewhat standard view of Hell. So that's were generic came from, I think.

But since I started with Oblivion and then played Morrowind, I was not expecting something alien. And I was very happy with the beautiful, strange and diverse landscapes. And all the different creatures (enhanced with mods). It does seem like a very strange world to me. Sort of like Middle Ages but unique in many ways - like Aylieds and Goblin tribes.

The dungeons are also described as "generic". That really gets me. The dungeons seem very unique to me. Yes caves have similar rock structures, just like they do here on earth. Aylied ruins have an architectural style, just like Ancient Egyptian or South Asia or Ancient Chinese or Mayans do here. So that's realistic. But the layout is different and many interesting things to find. So I don't find the dungeons at all generic. Even when compared with other Bethesda games like Fallout 3 or Morrowind.

"Tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, and people will eventually come to believe it"

Wow, yea, you hit the nail on the head. A buncha times.. That nail is now flush with the coffin it's been driven into, let's hope.

Let me ask you guys this. Since Morrowind is supposed to be barren because of a volcano (sorry if I"m wrong about that) which devastated its landscape, wouldn't it make sense that Morrowind could therefore be just as lush and green as Oblivion's Cyrodiil, other than a few weird-looking plants and mushrooms?

I dont know why either :shrug:

Personally I think that Oblivion itself is not generic, however there are elements within that could be considered "generic." Like some people say, there's not a whole lot of exotic feel to the game (one of the reasons I love visiting the Shivering Isles). It's true that Arena and Daggerfall had very little in terms of exotic elements to them. Which leads me to believe that the complainers started playing Elder Scrolls with Morrowind. People who played that game first were thrown into an almost alien world (which should be the feel of Vvardenfell). So when the sequel comes, it's not how they envisioned it because it's not a copied world or similar from the games predecessor.

I do agree that most of the animals and monsters in Oblivion are somewhat generic (e.g. Goblins, Ogres, Minotaurs, Wolves, Imps, Deer), although having MMM largely takes care of that issue. I would love to have the next Elder Scrolls have more original animals and monsters besides the daedra.

If there is anything that Skyrim should be, It should be just that, Skyrim. How Bethesda wants to portray the province is up to them. I just hope they are not being told how to portray it by people who say they know marketing best.

I'll preface by saying Oblivion was a very good game.

Here's what generic means to me:

- Dungeons are far too familiar in time
- Chests are leveled to you, very few treasures that are hidden (Fin Gleam being one of the exceptions)
- As others have said, medieval feel. It's not that medieval is bad, it's just there wasn't enough time to make it distinctive
- NPC foes like bandits and marauders. No distinction

I think the word generic doesn't fit too well in my description. Over time, the game feels repetitive, bland, and tedious. Of course, this happens with all games, but Oblivion quickens the pace.

I think this is due to issues of time. I do not blame BGS at all for it. The game is still an achievement

It has been my experience that human beings tend to repeat things they've heard other human being say. To be blunt, most human beings are not terribly original thinkers. Most people depend on other people for their opinions. And if you challenege the opinion of one of these people he's likely to become hostile. The reason he becomes hostile is because he can't defend his opinion and the reason he can't defend his opinion because it wasn't his in the first place.

In the case of this word "generic" we have a lot of people repeating a word they've heard other people use and, as near as I can tell, most of them don't know what they're talking about.

While I adore many areas of Vvardenfell I thought Vvardenfell too often resembled a theme park. The transitions between regions, such as the transition from grassland to volanic rock near the Fields of Kummu, was jarringly abrupt at times and too often reminded me of color-coded, World of Warcraft-style "zones."

It's my opinion that Bethesda blended the regions of Cyrodiil together with much more taste and sophistication. Transitions from southern marshes to the deciduous forest surrounding Lake Rumare up to the snowy mountains near Bruma and out to the rolling grasslands of the Gold Coast were subtle and artistically mature.

I have found that subtlety in art very often goes right over some folk's heads (one only needs to read IMDB or Amazon to see that). I believe there were some players who were simply unable to appreciate the more "advlt" approach Bethesda took when they created Cyrodiil.

Disclaimer: despite what I may say, I still love this game and to this day still enjoy playing it immensely. I do not hate it at all, it just disappointed me.

There is a fine line between Traditional and Generic. The Lord of the Rings was traditional, but it also had a lot of characteristics that defined it and made it unique. Middle Earth was actually a very exotic place, and was only helped by the release of the movies.

Oblivion, unfortunately, has none of that exotic feel. Everything feels plain, as if you've seen it before. And you have, Oblivion's world is very realistic, but therein lies the problem; it is TOO realistic. I don't want to explore landscapes that I could easily get just by going outside and taking a look around. I want to explore landscapes that make me enjoy the scenery simply for being unique to this world and no other. there is nothing wrong with making something look a bit unnatural or fantasized or dreamscapey.

On the topic of the art direction for this game, that was not very good, either. The textures are washed out and bland, the normal-maps do almost nothing to enhance the textures, the architecture feels too familiar to our own world (this is Tamriel, not Earth), and there are so many ruined forts and elven towns that they lose their special feeling quite fast.

Speaking of models, the dungeon tilesets are the very epitome of generic. They are completely robotic, offering no flexibility in terms of angles, and they just feel really, really dull.

The Main Quest is just another cliched Demons From Hell story, so I don't think I need to say anything more.

In short, this game is generic because it has nothing to define itself by. Everything it does has been done before, and better. To be traditional requires at least some innovation on a non-technical level, and unfortunately, Bethesda exhausted all their innovation for this game on the technical stuff.

Actually I think oblivion and all the tes games for that matter deal with elven culture pretty originally.

I said nothing about the elven culture, I said that Oblivion had so many abandoned Ayleid settlements that the effect of seeing one was ruined after a fairly short time period.

I think the reason was explained pretty well already so I just want to say that personally I really like a world I can identify with. When I walk around Cyrodil as my character I can imagine exactly the way the forest would smell and the cool breeze in the morning would feel, because it is familiar. When I visit the Shivering Isles by contrast (and it is always a visit, it is hard to consider home), I have a hard time identifying with the landscape. Not that I don't love it, because I find the Shivering Isles to be very beautiful, but whenever I get back to Cyodil it always feels like I am home again and I really like that feeling.

I haven't played Morrowind much, but from what I have seen and heard of it, a lot of it seems desolate and depressing to me. And I don't mean that in a bad way. I think that can add just as much to roleplay as the familiar homey world can. I've always just felt sorry for the Dark Elves that it is their home when it is so bleak. Of course I haven't seen all of it so there may be some pretty areas that I have missed.

Right.

Um, I was actually responding to the general thread and not to you. I'm just say'n.

Smart phones are great but not good for typing long in depth posts.

Sorry, my mistake.

@Sidonzo: You don't need for the landscaping to be bland and empty to make it feel familiar, though. I like it when games step out of the ordinary with their environments, but I agree that to keep the feeling of Oblivion, you can't step out very far.

What you can do is take some of Earth's most beautiful natural landmarks, exaggerate them a bit to make them feel wonderous and exotic yet still familiar and something that would not be too out of place here on our own planet, and place them into the game. Oblivion was meant to have a familiar environment, but as I said you have to tread a fine line with this approach to ensure your familiarity does not become generic. Too much familiarity stagnates the experience.

However, that is actually only half the problem with Oblivion's landscaping. The other half comes from the feeling that there is nothing else there... nothing but you, a bunch of trees, rocks, and grass, and a couple dozen ruined forts that you've already seen two hundred gazillion times. It is simply drab, there is nothing really interesting or unique to be found in the wilderness. Morrowind alleviated this problem somewhat by having some variation between its environments that is easily noticeable, but in Oblivion, they all blend together.

To put it simply, Obivion's landscaping, though familiar, was extremely bland... kinda like eating mass-produced bread. Tastes good if you've never experienced anything else, but once you've tried the artisan loaves, you'll realize just how much you've been missing out on.

There are limits to what can be put into a game. It would seem that there are people who simply don't grasp this fact.

Personally I marvel at the scores of unique statues throughout Cyrodiil. Many of them don't contribute to a quest or story line, they are there to be discovered and wondered about. You are not taken by the hand and led to them by a quest. You must discover them on your own. So why are they there? Because someone cared enough to create them and put them there. Each one hand crafted not only to look recognizable but weathered and mossy and carved from different stone,

Each animal in the game moves according to it's own unique nature. This takes tremendous skill in animation. Get up close and personal with a mountain lion and you will find that from time to time they softly mew as they patrol their territory. Their faces alone, as rendered in the game are a study in art. Even the lowly rats are rendered in a manner that shows off the glistening tips of their fur. Any computer 3D artist will tell you that this is not an easy thing to do. It takes hard work and skilled artisans.

Headstones, boats, scores of different plants, furniture, dishes, tables, store counters, books, bookshelves, weapons, armor, clothes, lanterns, bridges, tents, bedrolls, animals, monsters, containers, caskets, lava, ruins, walls, fences, waterfalls, gold coins, bloody beating hearts filled with loot, fireballs, shock spells, flowery meadows, snowy mountain passes, sewers, castles, daedric towers, people; nuf said.

There are limits.

Generic? I don't think so. Rolling a pair of dice and looking up a combat chart for the outcome; that's generic.