New Review Posted: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[Daniel Weissenberger]

Mike Bracken reviews Oblivion, and finds it somewhat praiseworthy:

"Writing this review proved to be a great deal harder than I'd imagined. I think there are two reasons why: First, Oblivion is a huge and multifaceted game. There's a lot of ground to cover and it's easy to concentrate on the few negatives while skipping over a lot of the positives. Second, it's really hard to talk about the game without referencing Morrowind regularly. The games are obviously from the same universe, but to call Oblivion something as trite as "the next installment in the Elder Scrolls series" doesn't even begin to do the game justice. So, with all that being said, settle in for a lengthy review. Let's get the few negatives out of the way first and then I'll regale you with just how great this game is despite a few flaws."

What makes it so good? Find out here.

[Hypatia93]

Well Mike, it's true. What you had to say, that is.

Off the top of my head, Bethesda, in its Elder Scroll series, is the only developer/producer (not sure which) that releases what I consider to be /true/ RPGs. (Well, as close as you can come in single-player video game format.) That right there says the world to me.

Now about this particular iteration. The horse gig is clunky, and I don't particularly care for it. I find it so awkward that I need to put my perspective in 3rd person. Besides that, your character can't do anything except carry a torch. Big woop. You can't fight or cast spells--not even innocuous ones. Hell, you can even cast Night Eye in water, but not on a horse? /That/ is my single largest bone of contention.

Also, if the developers decided to bring back horses, why not the cart? They were there in ESII. It made things /so/ much easier. /Looting/ out-of-the-way places was /so/ much easier. Travel time was slower, slower than simply walking, but you could carry that much more.

OMG! I just remembered, we actually sort of disagree on something. The VA is good, but the variety of actors is just not there. What do they have, like three people working for them? They need more. Of course Patrick Stewart is excellent, and some of the others are genuinely fine, but damn! it does grate on my nerves to hear the same voices over and over again, esp. if I hear the same two actors right in a row. Sorry.

I do agree with you that the developers need some mechanism to force players into the main storyline. Right now I'm L17 and have barely scratched the surface. (This time I will complete it, though, as it comes highly recommended. ) Normally, the openness of a game /kills/ it for me, e.g. the GTA series, Disgaea, or even ESIII. Somehow and for whatever reason, /this/ Elder Scrolls has captured my attention like no other non-linear game, like no other Elder Scrolls before it. I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's the scaling back of the world, the extreme customization, the intense graphics, the "right" time in my life, the interesting side-quests, the captivating main storyline? Who knows? I sure don't. All I know is I'm loving every moment of it and will be for some time. Period.

So considering everything, I'll give ESIV a 9.9.

[jwe8k]

I live in Northern Virginia, minutes away from Bethesda, MD. I really, REALLY want to work with them. I've sent resumes, but never hear back.

Any industry types know a good way to break into a programming job in the field? I have five years of professional experience (not with games, though) with C++ and four or five more before that, have a CS degree from a top-tier school and took a couple grad-level 3d graphics courses. Should I make a game to show them? Is it good to have a "portfolio" like that?

[Mike Doolittle]

The page isn't showing up from the hyperlink.

[Hypatia93]

Originally Posted by jwe8k

I live in Northern Virginia, minutes away from Bethesda, MD. I really, REALLY want to work with them. I've sent resumes, but never hear back.

Any industry types know a good way to break into a programming job in the field? I have five years of professional experience (not with games, though) with C++ and four or five more before that, have a CS degree from a top-tier school and took a couple grad-level 3d graphics courses. Should I make a game to show them? Is it good to have a "portfolio" like that?

I say go over there and walk into the place with your resume, portfolio, and LoRs. If possible, you may even want to try and walk past the front reception area and walk around the place first. Just act like you know where you're going. If not, tell the receptionist you have a meeting with (insert name of /really/ important person here) at whatever time.

Side question: How old are you? Are you really not sure how to just make things up on the fly?

If the call comes back you're not on his schedule, make something up, like.. we'd been trying to get together for weeks, but kept playing phone tag. Finally, last night he was able to get in touch with me, and so we set up the meeting for today. That's why I'm not on his schedule.

Hope that helps. But remember life is a risk.

EDIT: But remember, I'm no "industry-type." I'm just older than dirt.

[Chaos Wielder]

Wait, Hypatia93, are you telling me that Patrick Stewart does a voice in this game? I'm thinking of picking it up for the PC, no 360 is within a ten mile radius of here, and Stewart does seem to pander to his nerd base t every turn. It certainly is a selling point in my book anyways.

[Hypatia93]

Originally Posted by Chaos Wielder

Wait, Hypatia93, are you telling me that Patrick Stewart does a voice in this game? I'm thinking of picking it up for the PC, no 360 is within a ten mile radius of here, and Stewart does seem to pander to his nerd base t every turn. It certainly is a selling point in my book anyways.

Oh yeah. Patrick Stewart plays a vital role. Plus, he plays random characters throughout.

Chaos, do you have an HDTV? If so, then I /definitely/ recommend you go outside your 10-mile radius to snag a 360. If not, it's probably not so big a deal. It's my understanding that the difference b/t the two are minimal, assuming the 360 version is played on an HDTV and the PC version is played on a high-end comp. Essentially, the big difference boils down to mods (right now). Personally, I don't see why that sort of thing isn't available to 360 owners, considering all of the other downloadable content out there, and especially with the advent of the $100 program soon to be made available to "budding" gaming programmers. Perhaps at first it could be company expansions or kits, ala Bloodmoon, and then later user created content. Maybe someone can enlighten me on this?

[Chaos Wielder]

No HD and if I get the game I guess it will have to be for the 360, no way do I have the cash to get a gig of ram.

Sure looks good, and I'm not just talking about graphics.

[Adelleda]

What like £40 for a gig plug and play ram chip?

Ram isn't super expencive these days if you know where to look.

[Qikdraw]

Character models are well-drawn and animate with a surprising amount of grace and fluidity. Lips move in synch with speech. Eyes blink, facial expressions change, clothes move—all in all, the characters look strikingly real (save for the fact that most of them look like they have no teeth when they talk…a minor quibble).

Actually this is a sore point with me. Sure the characters look good, if you're looking through beer glasses.

I fiddled around with my chars face for awhile and tried to get the least bad looking one. It wasn't easy. Sure there are a multitude of options, but the end result is they mostly look bad.

With the power of the graphics they used, they should have spent more time on their faces.

Qikdraw

[tron7]

Ok, I'll give it a 9.4. I'd go higher but there are just too many bugs, too many things they could've made better.

The main issue I have with the game is that the horse is soooo worthless. Look at a game like Gun and you can see what the horseriding should have been like. Imagine casting fireballs from the saddle or slashing an enemy as you ride by.

The AI is brilliant yet quirky. Characters make amazingly life-like decisions followed up by unexplainable ones.

The majority of the game is quite amazing. Combat( melee, magic, projectile) all much more fun. I love how open the game is and even a scaled back map seems impossibly big, in a good way. Graphics are amazing. There's a million things to like with a couple minor problems and unrealized potential.

[Havblue]

I really like this game and it generally has justified my 360 purchase since it sucks up an incredible amount of time and beats Morrowind in almost every way with combat, variety of missions etc.

But as a next generation title? Okay, the flowers are swaying. And the frame rate drops when they do.

It's a more complex and beautiful game. That's great. But far more things go wrong with it, even in comparisson to Morrowind which had it's own share of issues. We aren't exactly raising the bar at the moment.

[Mike Doolittle]

Just read Daniel's second opinion.

I agree, contrary to what Mike said, that there's no reason to force players to play the main storyline when the other quests are done so well. I made it to the end of the Thieves' Guild, and I can tell you that it feels every bit as epic as the main quest. I've yet to encounter any so-called "generic fetch quest." Such a thing does not exist in this game.

The only thing I have to wonder about is the issue of bugs. Daniel said he played the PC version, and that it crashed too much. I would be inclined to point the finger at his system, because Oblivion has been rock-solid for me. I never had any crashes until I started running the game through DXTweaker, and that was quickly pinpointed as a problem between DXTweaker and the auto-save system; I simply had to disable auto-saves.

The only other crashes I've had came after I installed a bunch of mods and tweaked the game's configuration files, and I knew getting into it that it would increase the probability of crashes based on the RAM tweaks I did. Still, crashes have been exceedingly rare considering the weeks I've put into the game.

[EnduroGamer]

Ditto Mike. Oblivion ran rock-solid on my system and never hiccupped a single time in about 10 or so hours of play.

[Adelleda]

The AI is brilliant yet quirky. Characters make amazingly life-like decisions followed up by unexplainable ones.

That may be due to the nature of the AI.

According to developers there was alot of unexpected examples of how good the AI works during testing, such as:

One character was given a rake and the goal "rake leaves"; another was given a broom and the goal "sweep paths," and this worked smoothly. Then they swapped the items, so that the raker was given a broom and the sweeper was given the rake. In the end, one of them killed the other so he could get the proper item.

In another test, a minotaur was given a task of protecting a unicorn. However, the Minotaur repeatedly tried to kill the unicorn because he was set to be an aggressive creature.

In one Dark Brotherhood quest, the player can meet up with a shady merchant who sells skooma, an in-game drug. During testing, the NPC would be dead when the player got to him. The reason was that NPCs from the local skooma den were trying to get their fix, did not have any money, and so were killing the merchant to get it.

While testing to confirm that the physics models for a magical item known as the "Skull of Corruption," which creates an evil copy of the character/monster it is used on, were working properly, a tester dropped the item on the ground. An NPC immediately picked it up and used it on the player character, creating a copy of him that proceeded to kill every NPC in sight.

In one test, after a guard became hungry and left his post in search of food, the other guards followed to arrest him. The town people looted the town shops, due to lack of guards.

Bethesda worked to fix these issues, balancing an NPC's needs against his penchant for destruction so that the game world still functions in a usable fashion. In-game there are over 1,000 different NPCs, not including randomly spawned monsters and bandits. The result is that the AI in the release version is much reduced although still impressive

I find it funny.