the bad first. to extreme fans they are disappointed with oblivion because of the console-dalized system, and simplified story to something very much like LOTR (actaully almost 100% same). which i am quite disapointed too.
i love the visual presentation and jeremy soule's composition. but in term of style, morrowind art was much more original and alien. the buildings structures for oblivion is pretty much taken from roman architecture, some building copied 100% from real life like the pantheon-temple of the one, the athens-like building in anvil, and the cathedrals. which are cool too but lost its sparkles quick. i mostly enjoy the nature more than the cities. yes the presentation is stunning and i've put in 70hours total i am continued to be marveled by it.
this game have some big step over morrowind that i like. the major improvement battle style, a hit is a hit, which very much closen the gap of rpg and fps. so i can actaully use my manuver skill in this game, that is when the frame rates isnt so horrible. morrowind battle is just bad, you can manuver, but whether you hit or not is still based on dice role, making it very awkward. for oblivion the developer simply take out the dice roll, since most people like me doesnt fully understand it either......since i'm not nerdy enough.
and a lot of bugs and things are smooth out as well. i really enjoy the radiant AI actaully. a lot of people are disapointed because they expected too much, but comparing to other games released right now i think its brilliant. for those who havent play, the npcharacters in the game go about their days, perfom task, and solve problems, pratice skills, read, eat. instead of walking in circles like morrowind. although i am disapointed by the fact that the characters are indifference, mostly attributed to the fact that the dialog is voice over now, so there have to be significantly less dialog, and all of them say the exact samething. so even if the npc are smart, they arent so unique like ones in morrowind. they're mostly all boring.
the real reason why i am drawn toward TES games is because of the literature. the game series features more writings than any other game, and the complex pantheology is very interesting and sometimes correlated to beliefs in real life, although the manner in which its being present in the game is what make it interesting. my disapointment in oblivion is there are very few new literatures, its okay to recycle ones from morrowind, but maybe i'm just not looking hard enough, there are really few new books and they're not so interesting neither. they present the aylied race so vaguely and stereotypical that i couldn't careless about them.
in term of challenge, the scale leveling is good imo, the higher level you are, the game spawn stronger monsters to fight. although one flaw is that you can beat the game at a very low level because of that and for some people the game becomes gradually harder as they level up. i didnt have too much problems. but i beleive its made a bit hard for stealthbased characters especially when there are like 5-8 enemies to fight at once and i encounter a lot of that during the main quest, which also make stealth obsolete, i had to turn down the difficulty a little in a few occassion to make it balanced. the leveling system for the main character itself doesnt change as all. and you can still gain all the skills and become very powerful, although it is increase at a slower rate.
this game is really a perfomance killer. safe to say i spent $1400 on a new computer to run it. my video card is a gf7900gt oc'ed to 525/770, 2x1gb ram 5-2-3-2, opteron 144 oc'ed to 2.8ghz. and with near max graphic, i get 27-32fps in the wilderness, but when you turns and perform actions its felt slow. now if i turn off the grasses it jumped to 60fps. so the grasses is a frame rate killer. if i turn off hdr and turn on bloom i get anothrr performance boost. although i cant make myself turn down the graphic since the game is so beautiful.
there are visual and gameplay improvement for oblivion, but overall i still love morrowind more for its style and depth. i'm also bummed by the fact that oblivion world is so small, comparing to morrowind and in relation to the actual scale size of tamriel, but i can understand why they limit it otherwize the game would be very big.
i am looking forward to the next game, even though it'll be a few years down. its rumour that the nerevar traveled to akavir, and if the next game is set there it could be very interesting. although i doubt it, it probably is setted in summerset ilse. i am not really a fan high elves. the lower provinces and its races fascinate me though, valenwood, elsweyer, and blackmarsh. tough chance it'll ever be set there, and probably take a lot of work to make them original visually. the blackmarsh is a very mysterious place i'd like to see.
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