Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"All flash, no substance"

(I decided to rewrite my earlier review and raise the rating again, so the fans might actually READ something other than the number I gave it. If you plan to give me a thumbs down without reading what I have to say, then you are just admitting yourself to be an idiot, end of story.)

To those who can't believe how somebody could rate their favourite game so low, I know exactly how you feel, about the game and the rating. I couldn't possibly care any less though.

It's not an easy job to start reviewing something so big, but it will probably be most appropriate to the new generation to start with the graphics. It's all everybody seems to care about with this game and nearly all games nowadays. It lets the rich game developers get away with almost anything, because new generation gamers are so allergic to bad graphics that they won't make valid comparisons to earlier games, the 'less shiny' efforts. Core standards evaporate. Storylines can be recycled freely, gameplay aspects become dumbed down, and subsequently, so do the players. Anyway as I said, graphics are always the first thing people mention in reviews. In fact, and I'm not joking, average player reviews look like this far too often (and not only for Oblivion):

"this game has great and awesome graphics and yeah that's why I like it. They will just blow you away.. oh but some things are boring but overall it's a great game with an ok story and some cool characters but the graphics are great and you can make your character totally awesome and lots of mods and stuff. Soundtrack's nice too. In my opinion one of the greatest games of all time. Truly epic"

But they're partly right of course, because there usually isn't anything else to talk about. The problem is, they don't realize it. Also, nowadays the definition of epic is the equivalent to either 'cheesy cool' or anything with an big monsters and an orchestrated soundtrack.

Anyway, on to the game. I should say though, that I can wrap up this whole review by just saying that if Morrowind had Oblivion's graphics, then nobody would actually play Oblivion, but I feel it won't be enough. I still need to point out exactly how Oblivion failed, and point out how it compares to Morrowind, for all the people who have never actually played it (shame on you).

Starting with the oh-so-incredibly-important graphics then. I admit, the world is designed very beautifully. The plants and trees look beautiful, the ruins look good, although overly abundant. Rivers and lakes are devoid of plant life however, but that's really the most insignificant problem.
Towns are also well designed – not over the top or surrealist fantasy, but a realistic architecture. However they are all comically tiny, each roughly the size of a marketplace each (, I mean a REAL medieval marketplace, not the three-vendor weapons/armour/potions ones). Consider the fact that these are no mere villages, but actual castles with thick walls and powerful rulers, and about two surrounding huts with quaint back gardens feeding these vast metropoleis with a couple of watermelons that you will probably steal anyway.

Now to all those who say that "it's only a game" and "it's not supposed to be realistic", I say that a game that makes attempts to at least design a realistic looking world should at least follow the most basic rules of logic and proportion. While you're thinking to yourself "why is this idiot talking about watermelons?", ask yourself, how is one supposed to take a game seriously if the game doesn't take itself seriously at all? Yes, I understand that with constantly evolving graphics, games are given less space to look like games as they have to look more realistic, but that isn't an excuse to ignore the aspects which create an immersive world. I'm not saying you have to replace the castles with villages and build some farms, I'm saying that when trying to create a living, breathing world, then take into consideration the things that give our own world life. There are far easier and more pleasant solutions than Radiant AI.

The geographical absurdity of Oblivion still demands a few jabs. Tamriel is supposed to be a continent, yet the central Empire of Cyrodiil, which is where the game takes place, takes up a whopping 16 square kilometres (enough to put most towns to shame). Cyrodiil is about ¼th of Tamriel's size. Yep, 64 sqkm continent. The gameplay area of Vvardenfell in Morrowind was even bigger, although on the map it's about ¼th of Cyrodiil's size. Not great either, although far closer to acceptable. If you feel these things like the gaming world details are irrelevant to the hunt'n'loot gameplay don't matter in any way, then that's your business, but games that neglect the secondary aspects are only destroying themselves. It shouldn't be so infernally hard to include just some modest amount of realism, for those who indulge in some intelligence.

I really admire Elder Scrolls lore. The mythology, stories, cultures and names are unique and well written, and the books in the games are a pleasure to read when I get tired of annihilating my braincells by jumping off high ramps to boost my acrobatics skill or just powergrinding on mudcrabs or dremorae. It's one of the few things that still make Oblivion pleasant, even though there are far less books than in Morrowind, and you don't have to read any of them to help you with your quest. You don't have to figure out details of lore, or the meaning of certain things, just follow the red pointy arrow and you'll be fine. Tragic how the Elder Scrolls Universe is being treated with such a silly brainless adventure game, and it alone is hogging undeserved attention among RPGs.

Another beef I have with is the face design. I understand the good intentions behind being able to customize your facial features, but did it work well? I swear, elves have never been so ugly. In fact making something beautiful out of any race is an ordeal. Khajiits and Argonians excluded, since they're consistently ugly. Anyway, as I said the intention is good, but what Morrowind did was better, where all the faces were already customised. They were unique and they didn't feel any more repetitive than they did in Oblivion when you look at NPCs. At least you could see beards, scars and tattoos in Morrowind. What kind of sick demented world denies men to actually have beards?!

Although generally badly designed as well, most of the equipment in Oblivion rather suffers from the retard syndrome. Roughly 2/3 of all of the things included in Morrowind were literally thrown into the garbage, including all the various different weapon and armour skills that accompanied these things. Armour sets are reduced from 10 (2 different shields) to 6 parts. Dozens and dozens of armour styles, variations, meanings (including different reactions from people) were reduced to 12 strictly standardised sets with no alterations or purpose of any kind other than just being armour and looking bad. They're either heavy or light, and you better believe it, wearing chain mail makes you stealthy(!). Also, play long enough and glass armour will be more common than leather or fur. All unique sets are completely and utterly useless, unless you intend to play the entire game with a low level. In fact only daedric armour has any purpose, since it doesn't break after getting hit twice by any endgame weapon. But don't worry, keep jumping around and hitting anything that moves and of course spam the shield spell and you'll be level 20 in no time, by which point all random low-life bandit scum will be equipped glass and ebony armour, which costs more than their all their souls put together. Oh and while the beauty of armour designs is subjective, the people who think that the three toed elven armour set isn't an utter abomination are either visually impaired or clinically insane. Glass, ebony and dwarven aren't particularly pretty either, but tolerable.

Moving on to weapons: I have no idea what possessed them to lob daggers in the same category with claymores, or turn axes into blunt weapons. Spears were completely removed, staff combat doesn't affect any skill any more, crossbows became obsolete, darts and shurikens were thrown away (omg a pun!!). However these were all compensated with the wooden club, which you will use approximately for 10 seconds, before finding an actual weapon. And as with armour, only the daedric sword and bow are worth using in the end. Weapons were also severely retardified, by the way. In Morrowind, all weapons did three different kinds of attacks, which produced different styles of attacks. For example, spears were only good for jabbing, hammers only for crushing, daggers for all attacks but low damage. And then there were strategic weapons, like dwarven axes and halberds that had different shapes and could be used for attacks that you couldn't for example dream of with the daedric counterparts for example. In Oblivion your weapon has one number for damage, no matter how you hit. And since your weapon skill raises weapon damage, then it won't be long till your dagger does roughtly the same damage as your two-handed sword.

But enough about equipment. No use in spoiling all of the exciting.. err.. somethings. Oh but some positive notes as well: chain mail looks ok and the steel set is swanky. But that's about it. Not even really a chance to mix different sets. They don't match with eachother, whereas they often did in Morrowind. Oh and although enchanted items don't have the plasma glow that Morrowind had, magic effects still produce a brief white or red radiant outline, which is probably the best looking magic effect, which isn't saying much, since the magic effects in general look dreadful. Sure, things like blurred vision look neat, but lightning looks like something you could have expected to see in 1995 games. Not to mention the oblivion gates themselves.. *shudder*


But OK, moving on to the things that are actually IMPORTANT. Anyway, gameplay. Whatever was badly done in Morrowind wasn't really improved, as you probably already concluded from the previous paragraphs. Guilds don't have any requirements any more. Stealth still isn't stealthy. Guards are always behind your back with invisibility capes, waiting for you to pick that one lock. There are no more probes for traps. Lockpicks and hammers don't vary in quality any more, and their durability is random. Lockpicking is turned into a minigame which makes all locks pickable regardless of your skill. Another minigame is the influence game, which is one of the most profoundly idiotic concepts I have ever witnessed. Where on earth does it make sense for people to make friends by choosing a sequence of taunting, humouring, threatening and showing admiration at once? And in a symbolic game of Simon Says no less. In Morrowind taunting, admiring and threatening actually had different, unique, helpful purposes. What kind of an idiot do you have to be to replace something simple, innovative, something that works, with a retarded waste of time method such as this for appealing to an NPC? Ah and also, there's no more flying. No more being able to explore every single area fully without cheats.

Combat, though dumbed down to an infantile level, was improved in two ways: convenient blocking and convenient archery. While in Morrowind, your weapon had a chance to miss, which is actually realistic, it didn't really affect melee as badly as archery. But that was more of a negative illusion. You saw the arrow hit the enemy, but you know it missed. But now that every single person who has never trained in archery is a sharpshooter, whose arrows do less damage for Satan knows what reason.. now the stupid exploit of backwards running, that makes most of your foes too easy to kill prematurely, is even stronger.

The economy basically just revolves around you being able to use an item. Gold and jewelry for example are worth barely more than a steel dagger for example. And then there are all the random items from the homes of people. It's a vast pity that all these 'useless' items can't be used for any crafting or such. I mean, you get a hammer, you get tongs, you get an anvil, smithing gloves as well I remember, how hard is it to make it possible to craft yourself a fine dagger or axe for example? Or perhaps use a skull and a glass orb for some mystic ritual? And the array of painting equipment to perhaps decorate your armour? Waste of potential, really. It shouldn't be hard to implement. It's a matter of adding some numbers and expanding the user interface. I mean, it's the same as alchemy, except different materials and perhaps some loss of time.

Speaking of socialising again, this game boasts of an incredible.. 6 voice actors at best, not counting Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart who were of course hired for their popularity among science fiction and fantasy fiction fans. The voice cast is just incredibly cheap. It's as if sound crew decided to do try a hand in voice acting themselves, instead of actually hiring even one person who could do more than one emotion while speaking. One person pretty much voices an entire gender for a meager average of two entire races. Morrowind had at least twice as many voice actors, but with about 100 times less voice to record. Yes, a full voice cast, where male orcs sound like Smokey the Bear, and female dark elves sound like Fran Drescher's lower register psychopathic twin sister. While many will think it's a good thing (haha), it isn't. Sound files take up alot of space, so forget about long speeches or any intelligent conversation. As I said earlier about there being far few books, it's dust compared to the amount of NPC chat that was axed.

A quick mention to some of the things that were better than the prequel though, that I didn't mention earlier:
-Beautiful graphics (which are limited to anything non-biped)
-More colours
-A richer soundtrack (while I personally felt Morrowind's soundtrack was doubtlessly more powerful, Oblivion has a more varied one, with more variations and themes and plenty of piano)
-You can see the amulet and rings that you wear
-The ability to buy homes, and furnishings (alone worth a point, and also why I raised the score to 2)
-No Cliff Runners (you have wolves now, but at least they don't fly or match your every speed)
-No intelligence, which is a great bonus if you want to play it drunk or in a normal state of brainlessness
-Nifty dungeon booby traps
-An easier to use map
-While most quests are still in the category of "kill the evil imperial scum, Naughtius Bastardus" and "go to the evil shrine of Hothglobloth and fetch me the skeleton skull of the undead bone skeleton Hothglobloth of Hothglobloth", the fun factor in alot of quests is surprisingly high. For example in one mission you have to disguise yourself as a noble and infiltrate your way into a party, and pretend to be someone else.. only to find out that it turns into another Hercule Poirot murder scene
-Existent AI

By existent AI I mean that yes, it exists. Although this so called Radiant AI isn't really as great as people claim. Sure, the brainless NPCs actually walk around and have their routines, but firstly, it isn't half as good as it could have been, and secondly, even it was dumbed down, because the idiot characters refuse to become smarter, and screwed things up. But the sight of a living environment is really an illusion, because well, the environment is a joke. The interactive world that Oblivion offers is the world of adult who only smile and talk about mudcrabs and increasing prevalence of daedra worship on the Summerset Isles. The people don't really do much. If so much time hadn't been wasted on graphics, then who knows what wonders could have been done with the AI. Perhaps even a plausible economy could have been born, or active bounty hunters.

*sighs*

And finally, there's the most important part of the game. The soul, the deep core, the one thing you can't replace, and that's the story.. but then again, there really isn't one. Everyone who thinks that this game has a good storyline are either fooling themselves, in denial or have never played anything other than Nintendo children games, EA's weekly assembly line upchuck or other post-2004 randomness. A teenager could have thought up this story after playing Morrowind once and reading three books in it. No effort was put into it to make anything out of it. There's no depth or meaning. No originality. It basically mixed together the beginning of Morrowind's story with some Lord of the Rings. They could have at least given just one character personality, which is not much to ask, but the writers' heads would have exploded from the pressure of thinking it seems.

Anyway, about the story itself: Your character is a blank mercenary. A random prisoner (nobody knows why), who suddenly becomes the chosen one to carry out the quest of saving the accursed empire (that you probably grew to hate if you played Morrowind) because you're blocking the emperor's escape route. Incredible, isn't it? The emperor is attacked by assassins, and his vast elite guard of three plate mail clad agents try to "sneak" out of the "city", so you get to be freed from prison simply because they built a secret escape tunnel from the palace that goes through a prison cell, and they put you into that very cell instead of one of the unoccupied ones nearby. Later when the emperor gets killed by a level 3 unarmoured noob, his clanking african-american samurai spies trust you with safeguarding the most important artifact in the empire. Apparently they don't have the manpower to take it to the monastery approximately 300 metres from your location, so they'll make an unequipped former convict do it. Eventually, you, the mailman, will take it to the heir to the throne that you really don't want to help, because you can't really imagine someone so unbelievably boring named the unbelievably boring name of Martin sitting on the throne. The quest will take you to some random places, and then you get to play spy for a bit, and go back and forth to the realm of Oblivion about 50 times to do the exact same thing. Later you get to participate in an epic battle of unbelievable size. Namely you and 10-15 soldiers against a couple of bigger monsters and a walking battering ram. And of course the main villain is a giant version of Goro except with less personality. Even Diablo showed more depth.

It's also worth mentioning that while this game claims to be an RPG (which is insulting to all the real RPGs out there), you don't get to make any actual choices. Yes, of course you can decide what you want to do, but you can do everything anyway. Join all factions at once, meet all the worthless people, explore all the 300 empty dungeons for those ~10 special non-generated artifacts, which aren't special in any other way other than that they have a custom name and are underpowered by the time you find them. You can just do all the things in one big go. Nothing you do has any actual consequence. In fact, the game has no end. When you finish all your quests, that's it. You still exist. You'll just keep existing alone in a world where you are the only one with power or a free will, levelling what skills you can. If you consider it a climax to find all the best gear and be able to kill every single monster, and level to whatever your maximum will be, chances are you'll have that before the end of the main quest.

The only way to get immersed in the game and REALLY enjoy it is to just travel in the nature and do nothing. The plant life and the music are the only really wonderful things in this game, albeit mundane and unoriginal. Find a mod that removes natural hostility, so you can travel freely, because to be honest, you don't really need any other mods. They can't save this game. Nothing can save this game except a complete rehaul by people who have no connection to Bethesda. People keep saying that mods fix all the problems, but the truth is, they don't. They improve many things, but not nearly enough. How can a game that relies on so many mods be called good?! Morrowind was just as moddable, but the difference is here that Morrowind didn't need them. As I said before, it's the graphics that ruin all games. It's a distraction, after all, it takes away ALL imagination. This is simply among the most degenerate games of our time, and it's acting as a flagship, inspiring fresh recruits to a new low. It's a sloppy, lacklustre effort overall, a severely dumbed down sequel with not only a lack of new innovation, but a speficic removal of many previous innovations in games such as this. If it was just this, it'd be easy to forgive, but when you take into account the hype, the promises, the legacy and ambition..

..why, Bethesda, WHY?!