Benj
07/Apr/06, 02:14 PM
Something I wrote earlier today, it's not the best and in some ways a bit of a rant so I figured I'd post it here instead of submit it:
First things first, the prompt for me writing this was hitting the 60 hour playtime mark in Oblivion and reading the article (http://www.360monster.com/newspost.php?id=0000000061) about graphics and gameplay that I wrote back in October. I took a step back and thought for a second, if you stripped away the graphics, is this game that much better than Morrowind, is it better than Morrowind at all?
Yes Oblivion has beautiful graphics, yes it has a huge open world that you’re free to explore as you wish, and yes Oblivion is a great game when compared with most other RPG’s. However compare it with Morrowind and you’re looking at a different picture. Oblivion has better graphics, a better combat/magic system, better face creation, horses, and a bigger world. All well and good but then you look at the RPG side of things and it’s all so very, very different.
Let’s start with the skill system. We’ve gone from having to choose five major and five minor skills to seven major and the rest minor. Thus making it significantly easier for people to make a jack-of-all-trades character, reducing any real amount of specialization and removing any real thought that had to go into your character. Then we actually look at the skills themselves and find out we’ve lost some, unbelievable! This is purely and simply dumbing the game down to try and appeal to a wider audience, they’ve taken skills such as long and short blade and combined them into an all-encompassing blade skill, you now have the thief who creeps about with a dagger being equally able to wield a 2-handed claymore because of it. Also where has the un-armoured skill gone? I can no longer run around in clothing and still have a chance of surviving in a fight. There’s also medium armour and axes that have been merged into other skills, whilst spears as a weapon class have vanished entirely.
That brings me on to armour, which has been well and truly butchered into what some would call a more streamlined system, but which I would call dumbed down. Instead of having left and right pauldrons and gauntlets we’re left with them always being in a pair, thus reducing the chances of customisation yet further. They’ve also removed the ability to wear clothing under your armour, why would they do this? I cannot see the benefit anywhere, all I see is fewer slots for enchantments and less realism and freedom in the game. (Ever tried wearing chain mail with nothing underneath?) Now this might have been made up somewhat had there been plenty of armour types to choose from however there are now less than Morrowind, why? It just doesn’t make sense. There are nowhere near as many unique items, there’s not a lot of point going dungeon crawling when there’s nothing good to find. It’s rather ironic that they’ve added significantly more dungeons but taken away most of the loot.
Dungeon crawling brings me on to the level scaling system. Interesting idea but very badly implemented, a level one character can complete the game and have a much easier time of it than a level thirty character. The real killer of the games immersion lies in here as well, when you get up to the higher levels and the various monsters level with you they also begin to get the better equipment. When you start seeing bandits kitted out in glass and daedric armour you really have to ask the question “Why not just sell it? It would remove the need to rely on robbing people for petty cash”.
So less skill options, less equipment options, less equipment in general, does this equal more freedom in other areas? We can but dream. Enchanting is only able to be done in the Mages Guild, what if you want to role-play a mage who wonders the wilderness baring a grudge against the guild who killed his father? Well sorry you can’t, that wouldn’t fit into the new “streamlined” world. How about transport? There were a great many ways to get around in Morrowind; portals, striders, ships, mark and recall etc. Now it’s just run, ride, or fast travel, yet again less options in Oblivion.
Last and perhaps most significantly are the quests. They take no thought whatsoever, zero, zilch, none. You get an arrow pointing you to wherever you have to go that can also track npc characters absolutely anywhere, no more exploring just follow the arrow! What about the part of the main quest that involves a riddle? This would be great if you didn’t have to get an npc to figure it out for you, it’s not like it’s a hard thing to figure out, I could do it myself yet I can’t actually progress until the npc solves it for me and moves the mystical marker to the new location. There is no thought process required to play this game, it’s not an RPG it’s a hack and slash action game.
If this sort of thing continues what is the next Elder Scrolls going to be like? Just push the control stick forward and watch as the character runs along a pre-defined path completing pre-defined quests in a pre-defined order? Of course it will be incredibly beautiful so the gameplay can take second place and nobody will care, right?
There are fewer choices, there is less freedom, and there is less scope in Oblivion.
The fact that the gaming media is falling over itself awarding Oblivion every award under the sun and 95% plus reviews scores is a pretty damning indictment on the way they work, reviewing purely on reputation rather than actually stopping to think about whether the game is truly revolutionary. Don’t get me wrong I think it’s a truly wonderful game, but in gameplay terms it’s a step back, not the giant leap forward everyone seems to be making it out to be.
Written by Benj Clist
First things first, the prompt for me writing this was hitting the 60 hour playtime mark in Oblivion and reading the article (http://www.360monster.com/newspost.php?id=0000000061) about graphics and gameplay that I wrote back in October. I took a step back and thought for a second, if you stripped away the graphics, is this game that much better than Morrowind, is it better than Morrowind at all?
Yes Oblivion has beautiful graphics, yes it has a huge open world that you’re free to explore as you wish, and yes Oblivion is a great game when compared with most other RPG’s. However compare it with Morrowind and you’re looking at a different picture. Oblivion has better graphics, a better combat/magic system, better face creation, horses, and a bigger world. All well and good but then you look at the RPG side of things and it’s all so very, very different.
Let’s start with the skill system. We’ve gone from having to choose five major and five minor skills to seven major and the rest minor. Thus making it significantly easier for people to make a jack-of-all-trades character, reducing any real amount of specialization and removing any real thought that had to go into your character. Then we actually look at the skills themselves and find out we’ve lost some, unbelievable! This is purely and simply dumbing the game down to try and appeal to a wider audience, they’ve taken skills such as long and short blade and combined them into an all-encompassing blade skill, you now have the thief who creeps about with a dagger being equally able to wield a 2-handed claymore because of it. Also where has the un-armoured skill gone? I can no longer run around in clothing and still have a chance of surviving in a fight. There’s also medium armour and axes that have been merged into other skills, whilst spears as a weapon class have vanished entirely.
That brings me on to armour, which has been well and truly butchered into what some would call a more streamlined system, but which I would call dumbed down. Instead of having left and right pauldrons and gauntlets we’re left with them always being in a pair, thus reducing the chances of customisation yet further. They’ve also removed the ability to wear clothing under your armour, why would they do this? I cannot see the benefit anywhere, all I see is fewer slots for enchantments and less realism and freedom in the game. (Ever tried wearing chain mail with nothing underneath?) Now this might have been made up somewhat had there been plenty of armour types to choose from however there are now less than Morrowind, why? It just doesn’t make sense. There are nowhere near as many unique items, there’s not a lot of point going dungeon crawling when there’s nothing good to find. It’s rather ironic that they’ve added significantly more dungeons but taken away most of the loot.
Dungeon crawling brings me on to the level scaling system. Interesting idea but very badly implemented, a level one character can complete the game and have a much easier time of it than a level thirty character. The real killer of the games immersion lies in here as well, when you get up to the higher levels and the various monsters level with you they also begin to get the better equipment. When you start seeing bandits kitted out in glass and daedric armour you really have to ask the question “Why not just sell it? It would remove the need to rely on robbing people for petty cash”.
So less skill options, less equipment options, less equipment in general, does this equal more freedom in other areas? We can but dream. Enchanting is only able to be done in the Mages Guild, what if you want to role-play a mage who wonders the wilderness baring a grudge against the guild who killed his father? Well sorry you can’t, that wouldn’t fit into the new “streamlined” world. How about transport? There were a great many ways to get around in Morrowind; portals, striders, ships, mark and recall etc. Now it’s just run, ride, or fast travel, yet again less options in Oblivion.
Last and perhaps most significantly are the quests. They take no thought whatsoever, zero, zilch, none. You get an arrow pointing you to wherever you have to go that can also track npc characters absolutely anywhere, no more exploring just follow the arrow! What about the part of the main quest that involves a riddle? This would be great if you didn’t have to get an npc to figure it out for you, it’s not like it’s a hard thing to figure out, I could do it myself yet I can’t actually progress until the npc solves it for me and moves the mystical marker to the new location. There is no thought process required to play this game, it’s not an RPG it’s a hack and slash action game.
If this sort of thing continues what is the next Elder Scrolls going to be like? Just push the control stick forward and watch as the character runs along a pre-defined path completing pre-defined quests in a pre-defined order? Of course it will be incredibly beautiful so the gameplay can take second place and nobody will care, right?
There are fewer choices, there is less freedom, and there is less scope in Oblivion.
The fact that the gaming media is falling over itself awarding Oblivion every award under the sun and 95% plus reviews scores is a pretty damning indictment on the way they work, reviewing purely on reputation rather than actually stopping to think about whether the game is truly revolutionary. Don’t get me wrong I think it’s a truly wonderful game, but in gameplay terms it’s a step back, not the giant leap forward everyone seems to be making it out to be.
Written by Benj Clist