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It's funny that some people complain about games being dumbed down because of being simultaneously developed for consoles; I remember when Deus Ex: Invisible War came out and people complained that the reason it was guff was because of the X-Box, despite the fact that just a few weeks before Knights of the Old Republic has arrived on Pc to massive and deserved acclaim.
Of course, appreciating SW:KotOR whilst disliking Deus Ex 2 is a long way from hypocrisy, Thorn. You can't really escape the simple fact that many console ports do appear 'dumbed down' when compared with PC games, which as often leads to some PC owners blaming the console, as it leads to some console owners failing to understand why the PC owners aren't happy.
I personally loved Knights of the Old Republic because it was a well written, well presented, and highly polished little game. I personally disliked Deus Ex 2 because it was arse gravy of the very worst variety. The fact that the games happened to be console ports is largely irrelevant.
Most PC owners don't complain about the console per se; they complain because in most cases dual-format release games rarely, for a variety of reasons, take advantage of the PC's superior capabilities, so they tend to feel a little cheated.
On the subject at hand however, I started playing a while ago, and have now finished it once, then started a second time having heavily modded (well, as heavily as I can in these still early stages) the program to achieve my seemingly never-satisfied quest for game-realism.
Firstly, the bad. Sure, there is always going to be the aesthetic question, which is more personal opinion than actual problem, but like Deus Ex 2 and Thief 3 before it, I'm not a fan of clunky, oversized menus and user interfaces that make the game look like it was programmed by Fisher Price. Nor am I overly impressed with the dialogue (if I didn't know better, I'd suspect Bethesda wrote the game then hired a team of five year olds to write the dialogue).
On the mechanics side of things, most of the game is very well presented, but there are several niggling little areas. Fatigue seemed to be a particularly bad area, so much so that I'm pretty much convinced that it must have been a bug. The idea that fatigue always increases, and just slows its increase when running/swimming seems insane, and near-utterly removes the statistic from game relevance.
I note also that the game suffers from the problem of psychic NPCS. Shopkeepers miraculously know that you are carrying stolen goods, and so refuse to trade with you. I'd expect you to still be able to trade, but have a bounty increase if you attempt to sell goods back to the original owner, or, indeed, in that area of the city.
The other psychic problem are the guards. Not only do they instantaneously know when you've committed a crime, but, as the game shipped, would immediately teleport to your position in order to arrest you.
On the purely personal side of things, I note that Bethesda didn't include the requirement to eat, drink, or sleep, which I'm not so much a fan of.
There is also the fact that Oblivion is such a tiny game compared with Morrowind. I can finish the game in 9 hours, and walk - walk - clear across the world in less than 1; things that you could never do with Morrowind, and less so with a modded version. In short, and despite TES' reputation and all of Bethesda's hard work, I was simply not convinced I was playing in a world where I had total freedom. Compared with Morrowind, there was always a lingering knowledge that everything was a claustrophobic stage; that at any minute the backdrop would collapse across the orchestra pit, the cast would shout "April Fool", and I could then leave and start properly playing in the world of Tamriel.
Of course, there was so much that Bethesda got just right. I have to say that I was completely blown away by the quality of the game engine that they have built for this. The rag doll physics aside (themselves a seriously impressive addition), everything about the engine looked and felt as though it had been tested and retested to near-perfection. Through extensive tests, I can maintain a stable game in the most densely populated areas, surrounded by creatures, and never dip below 24FPS; something I cannot say for Morrowind when it shipped. I'm also not entirely sure whether I just have the most stable copy of Oblivion in existence, but after reading some of the horror stories from other PC owners, I cannot get the thing to crash. At all (except once, but then I was doing something I really shouldn't have been doing with the .ini files).
The other major plus point for me was, perhaps obviously, the converse of one of it's flaws. That very aspect that made it feel like a contrived little stage show meant that much more detail was packed into each area than had been in Morrowind. NPCs actually seemed to have lives of their own now, rather than standing around as window dressing, and I have to confess that I really, really like the new systems for attempting to persuade people into liking you and for lock picking.
In conclusion, I'm pretty much of the opinion that Oblivion is almost a great game, but that - in most cases - the factors that stop it being great are purely due to personal tastes and can be fixed with a few mods anyway. I was initially not so keen on the medieval feel at first (preferring Morrowind's varied and very alien look), but in retrospect it's sort of grown on me.
Oh, and full marks to Bethesda for finally including horses. |
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