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Why is Oblivion your favorite RPG?


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I probably shouldn't answer your question because vanilla Oblivion isn't my favorite Elder Scrolls game.  However, a few gameplay-changing mods such as Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul, Running Revised, Realistic Leveling, Less Annoying Magic Experience (or Av Latta Magicka), Enhanced Economy and Birthsigns Expanded - to name just a few - turn Oblivion into one of my favorite games by any developer. 

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Oblivions mainquest was fun to play - I found it more thrilling than Skyrim's. But besides that, I love the landscape and the towns. I had everything from Vivid Landscapes installed and some other visual stuff and I enjoyed exploring the country. I'm now with Skyrim, but I have Beyond Skyrim Bruma and Rigmor of Cyrodiil installed, because I have now the option to go back to Cyrodiil. Sadly it's not the same like playing Oblivion. I hope someday I can experience the land from Skyrim the same it was in Oblivion. I really loved that.

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19 minutes ago, Tasheni said:

 I love the landscape 

Yes, it's the landscape that always pulls me back into the game.  I love the rolling wooded hills of the Great Forest area.  In more recent years I've begun to appreciate the Gold Coast as well.  

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8 hours ago, Tasheni said:

Oblivions main quest was fun to play - I found it more thrilling than Skyrim's. But besides that, I love the landscape and the towns. I had everything from Vivid Landscapes installed and some other visual stuff and I enjoyed exploring the country. I'm now with Skyrim, but I have Beyond Skyrim Bruma and Rigmor of Cyrodiil installed, because I have now the option to go back to Cyrodiil. Sadly it's not the same like playing Oblivion. I hope someday I can experience the land from Skyrim the same it was in Oblivion. I really loved that.

 

8 hours ago, Pseron Wyrd said:

Yes, it's the landscape that always pulls me back into the game.  I love the rolling wooded hills of the Great Forest area.  In more recent years I've begun to appreciate the Gold Coast as well.  

When I first played Oblivion, pre-ordered collectors edition, I was blown away by the graphics and artwork. I had just bought a new computer with not one but two graphic cards it was beautiful, however as far as the landscape goes I find it more pastural and tamed. Where as Morrowind and Skyrim are wilder and more majestic which appeals more to my tastes. The game its self was very enjoyable though.

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While not my favorite rpg I agree the landscape is beautiful, and each town has it's own unique architecture and feeling.  Though I enjoy Skyrim more, aside from Solitude and Windhelm the cities feel small and confined.  Even Morrowind had bigger sprawling cities like Balmora, Vivec City, and Sadrith Mora to name a few.

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My two favorite things about Oblivion were wandering the beautiful landscape. Also  the side quests. I think Oblivion had better 'hand made' quests than Skyrim. (As apposed to 'radiant' quests.)

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Another thing I liked about Oblivion was the Shivering Isles expansion.  In my opinion  it's the best expansion they ever made.

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I like how the main character is no one special. (i.e. they don't have special powers, nor are they the subject of a prophecy. They're just an ordinary person who happened to be in the right place at the right time.)

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4 hours ago, SkyLover said:

nor are they the subject of a prophecy. 

It has been argued by a few folks over the years that Uriel Septim's dream and his speculation that the gods have placed us in the cell can be seen as a form of prophesy,  a kind of quasi-chosen one trope in disguise.  I have always believed the developers intended this to be deliberately ambiguous.  We can choose to regard it as merely a dream, or as something more significant.  It is one of the few instances of good writing to be found in the main quest, in my opinion.

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"Each event is preceded by Prophecy. But without the hero, there is no Event."

 

 

'Heroes are closely related to the prophecies revealed in the Elder Scrolls, but are not bound by them"

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 4/25/2022 at 11:41 PM, Pseron Wyrd said:

I probably shouldn't answer your question because vanilla Oblivion isn't my favorite Elder Scrolls game.  However, a few gameplay-changing mods such as Maskar's Oblivion Overhaul, Running Revised, Realistic Leveling, Less Annoying Magic Experience (or Av Latta Magicka), Enhanced Economy and Birthsigns Expanded - to name just a few - turn Oblivion into one of my favorite games by any developer. 

I've laboured the point about FCOM for many years now.  I'm not even sure if it's still the current way to do things but for me it fixed everything that was "wrong" with the game: scare quotes because I actually loved Oblivion as it was for a good long while, having spent the nearly 30 years prior to that playing games that somehow missed the point for me (I was a real latecomer to RPGs for reasons that still elude me).

Eventually its endless PC-based levelling of everything got to be too much for me which is where FCOM came into its own.  The level variance wasn't as savage as Morrowind (which I played afterwards, and sulked for months after my first difficult encounter) but added a lot more interest, anything from actually benign spriggans who just chuckled quietly to themselves up to this mad witch at Lipsand Tarn or somewhere like that who chased me halfway across Cyrodiil before I finally shook her off (literally: I was somewhere south of the Imperial City before I finally managed to lose her).  Loot became much more interesting, the economy actually mattered and it showed just what the game was capable of.  In my case I went for the "kitchen sink" version which included everything I could find.  The installation was hideously complicated and I documented it on a homebrew Wiki-based thing which went on for very many pages.  Even if I could still find it I'm not sure I'd manage to do it again so I now carefully preserve the game as I had it about 12-13 years ago and move it from one system to another as I upgrade.

The only thing that stops me playing is its infamously bad memory management where I'm lucky to get more than about 30 minutes before something crashes it, even though I've layered on a plethora of fixes and gone through the mods with a fine-tooth comb to remove as many known problems as I can find.  Oh, and the lack of facial hair: it's not just nords who need it, so do all the roaming guardsmen: middle-ages themed policemen just look wrong without moustaches!  I spent quite a while working on that one before eventually concluding it was an impossible problem to fix as conformulated helmets occupy the only slot that automatically colours hair.  But I digress.

I'm currently replaying Skyrim and in spite of heavily modding it (to the point it crashes at least as much as Oblivion and Bloodmoon) it just lacks that certain something-or-other.  Oblivion had a certain charm that Skyrim seemed to fundamentally lack, for all it had so much epiiiiic! about it, I suppose a bit like Peter Jackson's take on Lord of the Rings compared to the books (I mean Tom Bombadil doesn't appear in Skyrim either, but I could imagine him stomping around Cyrodiil somewhere).

I wish Oblivion was Bethesda's fave RPG tho'.  Skyrim has enjoyed 18 different releases to date and Oblivion gets no love.

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I am enjoying playing Oblivion right now, but it is by no way my favorite game.  Yes, the scenery is pretty.  Yes, the story line is fun.  Yes, it is a good game.  But alas, it is not my favorite game. 

To find my favorite game, you have to set the Wayback Machine to 1979.  There you will find a little gem called Colossal Cave Adventure, a game considered to by many to be the grandfather of all Adventure RPGs.  It was a line mode, command - response, typewriter console game.  No pretty graphics.  No open world.  By today's standards, it is a dinosaur.  But it was my first, and thus my greatest, love.

Truth be told.  The Elder Scrolls isn't even my favorite BSG franchise.  I prefer the Fallout Series.  Everyone talks about the feeling they had when they first exited the Shipping House in Morrowind or the sewer in Oblivion.  That was my feeling when I first exited a vault. 

So, different strokes for different folks, I guess. 

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I think which series you prefer probably depends on whether you're more interested in sci-fi or fantasy. Of course, in my case, I've never cared for the post-apocalyptic-wasteland genre. Too depressing for my taste.

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2 hours ago, Scythe Bearer said:

To find my favorite game, you have to set the Wayback Machine to 1979.  There you will find a little gem called Colossal Cave Adventure, a game considered to many to be grandfather of all Adventure RPGs.  It was a line mode, command - response, typewriter console game.  No pretty graphics.  No open world.  By today's standards, it is a dinosaur.  But it was my first, and thus my greatest, love.

One of the many great things brought to us by the PDP-10 mainframe!  Wish I'd got to know ours better when I was at college way back.

I loved text adventures in my teens.  They had some of the best graphics I've ever seen. :D  Seriously, the descriptions were evocative enough that I didn't need pictures to see what the environment was like, though I admit I do prefer the fancy graphics you get nowadays, as much fun as I had with the descendents of ADVENT and the various Roguealikes back in the day.

I don't really have a strong preference for TES vs. Fallout and I suppose I don't even think there should be a "versus" there so I dunno why I wrote it.  I admit I really didn't care for the '50s Americana retro-futurism when I first blundered into FO3 but it really grew on me.  That Bob Crosby song still drives me nuts, tho'.  "The dungeons are the lootiest, the raiders are the shootiest"... er, maybe I should leave that sort of thing to the rhyming gangstas.

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On 5/31/2022 at 5:07 PM, SkyLover said:

I think which series you prefer probably depends on whether you're more interested in sci-fi or fantasy. Of course, in my case, I've never cared for the post-apocalyptic-wasteland genre. Too depressing for my taste.

You may have something.  I am a big SciFi fan.  Started as a wee kid in the mid 1950s with those old radio shows.  As I aged, my dad didn't mind if I read those "trashy" scifi books with their scantily clad women and bug eyed monsters on the cover, just as long as I was reading something.  It wasn't until I convinced dad to read some of Asimov's work that he actually approved of my reading selections.  Now, having aged 70+ years, I still read SciFi.  It is my "habit of a lifetime".  

PS.  I do mean read.  I keep the printers and tree pulpers in business.  I love waiting for my favorite book store to open so I can pick up that new book I ordered.  I love the smell of a new book and that crisp crack when you first bend the spine.  I love the feeling of a book in my hands as I gently turn it's pages.  I love the ability to put a book on the shelf to be enjoyed again, and again; like a visit from an old friend.  You can keep your Kindle and your reading apps, give me a book and a comfortable chair, and I am a happy old man.  To me, that would be the perfect ending, passing away with an old friend in my lap.  Maybe Stranger in a Strange Land, or Lucifer's Hammer, or Rendezvous with Rama, or The Stainless Steel Rat, or The Hobbit, or The Caves of Steel or The Lord of Light, or The Green Brain, or ... so many old friends, so little time. 

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