Fair enough.

Elder Scrolls series is very complex, therefore there is plenty of room for improvement.

Yea, I noticed this too. I wonder how the level scaling made it out of beta testing. I think the professional reviewers have some sort of courtesy for the big producers like Bethesda and are inclined to point out the strengths of the big titles and to cover (by omission) the flaws. Anyways, I would never ever buy a game based on a press review. I read the reviews for the info, but when it comes to the writer's personal considerations, I often find that my taste is quite opposed to theirs. However, I understand that I'm not representative for the average consumer. For the average consumer those reviews and high scores actually matter, otherwise the big business wouldn't pump loads of money in marketing.

Oblivion had the good fortune of being released at the beginning of the X360's lifespan. It really was a great game compared to its competition at the time. Skyrim doesn't have that same benefit. Players are a lot more discriminating now than they were when a large number of new gamers were being introduced at the beginning of this generation. We live in a post-Mass Effect 2, post-Red Dead Redemption world and there's no going back.

That said, Oblivion was also very well marketed. Bethesda was very friendly with the gaming media in the lead up to release with their exclusives and such. And we all know the gaming media fawns over things like "Radient AI" and "Speed Tree". All in all the media was very friendly to Bethesda because of it, and Oblivion's flaws were wholesale ignored. It wasn't until Shivering Isles that I noticed Oblivion's flaws being examined...mostly level scaling and how boring Oblivion's gameworld was compared to SI and Morrowind.

:foodndrink:

Ug, Daggerfall -> aggressive Level Scaling same with Arena -> FAR WORSE THEN OBLIVIONS in both instances.

Quasi Duel Wielding you could equip 2 1 hand weapons but not use them at the same time -> very disappointing !!! and worthless overall.

Quest givers that knew less about the locations they were sending you do then some random barmaid !! boring and stupid no thanks not again, it seemed about 70-80% of all the quests were of this type, then there was the fact that to find most of the quest locations you had no choice but to use the fast travel find system as the quest giver nor any npc's would give you ANY information about where to start looking for said locations -> this systems was vastly worse then Morrowinds quests that sent you after the 5th rock on the 3rd path going north by north-west looking for the furry netch hover over a pond you needed to jump into to find that super secret cave only this one npc knows about and was to lazy to mark on your map even though he knows EXACTLY WHERE it is -> no thanks on both accounts.

Overly large world spaces with next to no reason to give a damn about them or ever explore them as there was next to nothing to find.

The ANNOYING I have Cerebral Palsy Combat.

The Unbelievably poor Magic Combat ! Seriously 3 buttons to chose and cast and 2 just to recast a spell who though that was a good idea ?!? it was tedious.

Not saying that DF was the worst game I ever played but its by far not the best TES game hell If I had to rate DF it would only be one step above Arena and Arena is only one step above ET for the Atari as the worst game ever created.

There are so many parts of those games I just found tedious or beyond annoying even for their times that was so unforgivable I refused to buy another TES game it was not until I got Morrowind for free with a video card I was buying that I gave the series another try and since bought Tribunal, Bloodmoon, Oblivion, SI and FO3 as day one games because of how good MW was vs the horrid games that were Arena and DF.



Including to places you have never been to and it was required to use as the game world was so so so large it would take a week (real time) to get to even one place without it, and also it was required to search for locations for quests as quite a few did not give any directions just a location and the only way to find it was with the Fast Travel Find System.



You can not except or even want the Dev's to look at mods and go this was popular we need this because in that case my http://www.tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=10819 mod would herald in the age of the Dragon Mount which would suit me just fine -> it would also suit me to have this feature just to piss off the annoying Loremongering, Cannon Spewing idiots around here.

As someone with Cerebral Palsy.... I completely agree with you I think Skyrim's combat should be tactical, but not sluggish. Something like a more refined Demon's Souls or Bushido Blade if ya'll have ever played those games? When Playing Oblivion, I felt like I was playing a first person diablo without all the cool loot

Very well said!

There was some big name (Edit: it was http://www.joystiq.com/2007/11/30/rumor-gamespots-editorial-director-fired-over-kane-and-lynch-rev/) site that had been paid a lot of money to advertise Kane and Lynch. A reviewer for the site, who was not impressed with the game, gave it something like a 7. He was fired.

You'll also note that most games get between an 8 and 9.9. They hand out 10's to stuff like Halo or Gears of War simply because they are big volume sellers. The give out 2's and 3's to stuff like "Big Rigs" or whatever game that was where you raced 18 Wheelers, could beat the game in 15 mins, and had no collision detection.

Edit: Kotaku just ran an article "Game of the Year Debate: Halo Reach or Black Ops" with the whole comment section blowing up, mentioning stuff like Mass Effect 2 and Red Dead Redemption, original games with incredibly credentials. Not episodic pieces of [censored]. It's like nominating the Simpson's over Citizen Kane.

Great post, great anolysis. Everyone read this. :celebration: It almost sounds like you have seen the insides of Todd's brain.

I also heavily agree with srk, I think we put too much emphasis on features. Every game is going to be different and they're going to try new things to see if they work - and those risks will influence future games.

Sometimes I think we're also afraid to let this game be different from it's predecessors. I mean, Morrowind was great, and Oblivion was great, but I never want the same game twice. If you get too hung up on the past you'll end up peddling backwards. Not to say you shouldn't learn from the past - but there is a delicate balance required for making a game that has both a new vision and is accessible to the series.

My list of things Oblivion did worse than Morrowind is about 10 times longer than that. The magic system for example is totally broken. There's practically no need for any school of magic besides destruction. Remember in Morrowind when you had to use any spell available to get the job done because each situation presented different problems? In Oblivion 95% of the time all you had to do was run backwards and shoot fireballs at mindless enemies.

You could do that in morrowind too.
Everyone has all these lists and bs against oblivion and I bet none of them have "Unique Setting" or "Diverse Culture". When I played morrowind I was AMAZED by the Uniqueness of the place. Mysterious Dwemer Ruins, Giant Mushroom trees, Those crazy telvanni town, houses made in the shells of Humongous crabs. There was also the diversity of the people, Imperials, Tribal Dunmer, Tribunal Dunmer, Wealthy Dunmer, Khajiit and Argonian slaves.
Oblivion had NONE of this. The towns looked a little different, but the people all behaved the same.
The cities were also very similar to stuff seen in movies. Anvil kind of felt like Pirates of the Caribbean and the imperial city had Lord of the rings written all over it.

I would disagree 100% lol. It was well received, but it has a LOT of room for improvement. If Oblivion didn't have much room for improvement I would imagine the plethora of mods soley focused on fixing or improving core aspects of the game (from mechanics and the very local it transpires in to the people and objects that reside within it) probably wouldn't exist in the quantity or maintain the popularity that they, in fact, do.


haha well put. I agree and have seen countless FPS games with deep pockets get consistant scores reguardless of content or effort. Hell most of them don't even change anything from one game to the next, broken or otherwise, and yet deep and fresh games rarely end up in the 9/10 rating how odd... Wait it's not odd at all.

I'm sure they'll have some ideas on what to change - these forums haven't exactly been shy about critiquing Oblivion :wink_smile:

There is always room to improve anything. With that said Morrowind/Oblivion are my two favorite games of all time and I know Skyrim will follow suit, but I mean things should be switched up changed around and rebuilt, things streamlined other thing more diverse, I have a lot of confidence that Bethesda will listen to fan feedback and change what needs to be changed and perfect what needs to be perfected to give us fans and new comers alike the mosr dynamic Elder Scrolls title ever: I mean just the things I've heard from the company and on the Gameinformer Hub Skyrim sounds very promising indeed. :thumbsup:

That issue was explained(and really was a non issue) if there were a number of occerances like that one, then the GP explanation might not seem credible as it is though, I see no evidence that gamespot does anything you say based on Sales, the games you mentioned were very popular for a reason, they are great games(I guess, I don't play those kinds of games myself). But this is not about gamespot, its about this forum overestimating itself and forgetting how small we are in comparison to the amount of people that buy Beths game and will buy Skyrim.

Oh really because i thought a lot of people who played morrowind and went on to oblivion were slightly disappointed.

just add crossbows and spears

Most reviewers are populists, and not a cult based audience like most of the people on this forum. Morrowind and Daggerfall where cult favorite because they stuck with their fanbase and provided complex and time consuming gameplay(for the most part, lots of people got ticked that climbing wasn't a skill anymore) but Oblivion was aimed more at the casual gamer, and not the cult fanbase. Oblivion was fast paced, lingerie, had phenomenal graphics, and dumbed down much of the game to make it more accessible (aka, getting more people to buy it). These traits are the hallmark of a mainstream game, not targeted at the fanbase, yet alone the more cult-like group of fans.

Bethedia is a company, and a lot of people tend to forget that. Companies are formed with the goal of making money. Money allows games to be made in the first place, and allows them to be constantly improved upon. Bethedia is going more and more mainstream with every release, which means more copies will be sold, meaning more money- but Bethedia is abandoning it's fanbase in the process in hopes of picking up a new even larger one. Many companies stick with the fanbase which makes people devoted fans who generally buy things based on the name alone, under the assumption that it will be like the previous game(s) in the series. This is also a business tactic, while you don't make as much money, you guarantee a "guaranteed" income from fans who really like you're work. Mainstream games are more of a gamble that is prone to drastic fluctuations that have a higher chance to go bust, while cult games make less money, it pretty much always makes a prophet.

At least thats how i see it..

This prophet that you speak of seems like a great herald of money.

I agree too, very much. I am happy that they are trying to innovate and continue to make the games more interesting, and adding new features into the game. Otherwise, if they kept only using the same features, it would be like you were playing an add-on, not a new game. And I want a new game, not just a glorified DLC.

I think the devs know exactly what's up, just from reading the interviews and the features they've added so far. They obviously pay attention to the modding community, which is the most important to pay attention to IMO. They stated that they got inspiration for unnerfing the bows from a mod, and I'm pretty sure shield bashing was no coincidence either. What I hope is that they paid a lot of attention to OOO, because in my eyes it's the best mod.

I have not played halo reach of black ops so I can't comment on them, but maybe they are great games just not in the genre you prefer. Though overall I agree with your point, heck ME 2 got better scores than it deserved IMO. Think back to your first play through of ME2 and how much time is blown on gathering resources, and how painfully boring that is. Can you really give a game a perfect score when 1/4 of the game is more painful to play than getting a nail driven through your hands. The morality system and how it effects persuasion svcks for an RPG, you basically have to metagame and stick with one alignment or lose party members. And really why should me being an ass in one scene now mean I have super intimidate powers. Do you really want a game with these flaws to get a perfect score? Heck I might give it game of the year, with a save editor I can skip mineral farming and get my morality to a decent starting point so I can avoid catfights that get teammates killed. And now I've put in near 300 hours into the game, but if it was perfect I wouldn't need a save game editor to make it replayable.

Even outside the bribe argument, reviewers are not chosen for their fantastic abilities to judge content. They are chosen for being interesting reads.

Indeed, while some may prefer what Beth did with Fallout New Vegas, letting Obsidian basically make a stand alone expansion(not saying the game is bad, just very similar to FO3). I like the reinventing the wheel approach that Beth uses for TES. I don't want to see MW 2, or OB 2, I want innovation.

and yet they figure out how to blow us away each and every time