At first I thought Oblivion might actually be great. Mechanically it didn’t seem much shallower than Morrowind at all, and now the world felt so much more alive! People moved around on a schedule, the grass and the sky threatened to poke out of the screen with their vibrant colors, and when I swang my gotdam sword I could tell if I got a hit or not finally. Vvardenfell was a land under blight, in the shadow of a volcano, and Cyrodiil is almost the opposite; despite literally being under attack by the forces of hell, it feels like all the crap has been cleaned off my windshield (funny, considering the bloom-filtery nature of Oblivion’s graphics). What a false omen.
Oblivion feels thin. Not particularly bad in any way, just thin. It’s a great large world full of dungeons and epic quests and ancient ruins and yet, once you start actually doing these things, journeying across mountains and into portals to hell, once you get used to the way things work, it all goes stale. Part of this is a lot of visually similar locations. All the portals to hell look and feel the same, even if they’re laid out a little differently. All the castles and cities (excepting the Imperial Capital, which is honestly visually striking in a way few things are, even if it’s just medieval skyscrapers). Of course cave dungeons and ruin dungeons are samey as well, but I’m not as pressed about that, and I’m not sure I’d even be able to explain this issue at all if I hadn’t just come from Morrowind.
Morrowind’s cities, or at least the group of cities in each part of the map, all had different feels to them. Houses were made out of different things, guards wore armor that looked different beyond a sigil and color on their chest, and the game went out of it’s way to highlight these differences in the main quest. There’s a similar beat in the main quest here as well, going around to each city doing something there, but this beat is much less involved. Morrowind made you figure out where each member of the city council was, how you could gain their trust (even if you really just needed to find the right one to start with), and what the ~drama~ in that city was. Oblivion has you go to the ruler of each city and ask for aid. They all say their forces are tied up with the nearby hell gate. You close the hell gate. They agree to send aid. It’s so rote, and with the new fast travel system it’s SO repetitive. Maybe I should’ve hung out in each city, done some sidequests or something to break up the main quest, but I never really had a reason to. The cities didn’t feel like they had unique histories outside of being ruled by a different person, and by rights they should’ve. Why do the city in the upper mountains and the city all the way to the south feel so similar, when they border different regions populated by different people.
I get that the larger size of the game probably took focus away from quest writing and location diversity, but man I don’t think it was worth it at all. Oblivion tightened up Morrowind’s loose parts, but accidentally cut the part I loved out and replaced it with empty spectacle, and I’m not convinced the rest of the game has the heft to make up for it. Why would I play this when I could play Morrowind, or Fallout New Vegas, or any of a million other RPGs that care enough about the worlds they’ve built to push you to explore their intricacies, rather than just assuming you will because it’s what players do.
Oblivion feels thin. Not particularly bad in any way, just thin. It’s a great large world full of dungeons and epic quests and ancient ruins and yet, once you start actually doing these things, journeying across mountains and into portals to hell, once you get used to the way things work, it all goes stale. Part of this is a lot of visually similar locations. All the portals to hell look and feel the same, even if they’re laid out a little differently. All the castles and cities (excepting the Imperial Capital, which is honestly visually striking in a way few things are, even if it’s just medieval skyscrapers). Of course cave dungeons and ruin dungeons are samey as well, but I’m not as pressed about that, and I’m not sure I’d even be able to explain this issue at all if I hadn’t just come from Morrowind.
Morrowind’s cities, or at least the group of cities in each part of the map, all had different feels to them. Houses were made out of different things, guards wore armor that looked different beyond a sigil and color on their chest, and the game went out of it’s way to highlight these differences in the main quest. There’s a similar beat in the main quest here as well, going around to each city doing something there, but this beat is much less involved. Morrowind made you figure out where each member of the city council was, how you could gain their trust (even if you really just needed to find the right one to start with), and what the ~drama~ in that city was. Oblivion has you go to the ruler of each city and ask for aid. They all say their forces are tied up with the nearby hell gate. You close the hell gate. They agree to send aid. It’s so rote, and with the new fast travel system it’s SO repetitive. Maybe I should’ve hung out in each city, done some sidequests or something to break up the main quest, but I never really had a reason to. The cities didn’t feel like they had unique histories outside of being ruled by a different person, and by rights they should’ve. Why do the city in the upper mountains and the city all the way to the south feel so similar, when they border different regions populated by different people.
I get that the larger size of the game probably took focus away from quest writing and location diversity, but man I don’t think it was worth it at all. Oblivion tightened up Morrowind’s loose parts, but accidentally cut the part I loved out and replaced it with empty spectacle, and I’m not convinced the rest of the game has the heft to make up for it. Why would I play this when I could play Morrowind, or Fallout New Vegas, or any of a million other RPGs that care enough about the worlds they’ve built to push you to explore their intricacies, rather than just assuming you will because it’s what players do.