TES Classics » Discussions


Oblivion Revisited!

  • April 12, 2019
    I’m also a little more upset than I remember being that something isn’t done about Alesia Caro. The woman likes torturing argonians, for gods’ sakes. Can  I kill her? Like, is she someone who can die or just go unconscious for a bit. Cos, not going to lie, she’s a great freelance target for the Dark Brotherhood. 
    Urgh, yeah she was just...such a disturbing character (I'm at least 90% sure that the entire quest is based off something else, right on the tip of my tongue as well) and quest. But yeah definitely worth killing her if it's possible.

    And aaaah! Now that I’ve started listening to the voices, it’s so weird! Skyrim spoiled us all, is right. The beggars are so annoying. They have one tone to explain to us that they need to save up for shoes or medicine, and then they switch to this aristocratic highbrow tone to tell me anything I need to know, and then change again to say “thank ye kind lady.” I like to think that they’re using the tone to trick people into giving them money and once they realize I’m Thieves Guild they use their normal voice, but the difference is so monumental. I’m definitely much more quest oriented in Oblivion than I am in Skyrim, that’s for sure. 
    Oh my god the beggers were always hilarious. It's hilarious for them to randomly go from one voice actor to another in the middle of a conversation. It's even better with the older ones who shift the most dramatically. But yeah the voices are sorta hilarious in Oblivion, in a way it makes me miss Morrowind where most of the game isn't voice acted, some of it is but not all of it which meant they spent a lot more time on writing the dialogue...Well, that's what I assume, Morrowind's a weird little game with a lot of the same dialogue issues as Oblivion (the way that 99% of characters have the same responses to questions). 

     forgot about some of the amazing Oblivion characters. 1. The guy in Cheydinhal who lost his house and goes around singing about the cliff racers flyyyin so hiiigh in the skyyyyy. 2. The snob outside one of the cities who is sure I’m stalking him because I want an invitation to one of his “super” parties. 3. Sah-weeeeet roooooollll. 4. The smith in Bliss who’s concerned about his attractiveness. 5. OMG the orc noble. All his words. I feel like writers of Oblivion had more fun than in Skyrim.
    I think it's more that they tried too hard to be serious with Skyrim, like there are a few quests where they had fun but it mostly feels a lot more 'realistic' in Skyrim. It's not bad, but it does make it feel like they had less fun with the writing and quests.
  • Member
    April 13, 2019

    Dragonborn2021 said:

    ...But yeah the voices are sorta hilarious in Oblivion, in a way it makes me miss Morrowind where most of the game isn't voice acted, some of it is but not all of it which meant they spent a lot more time on writing the dialogue...Well, that's what I assume, Morrowind's a weird little game with a lot of the same dialogue issues as Oblivion (the way that 99% of characters have the same responses to questions)...

    Morrowind also had more dialogue in general because it didn't have quest markers so npcs had to be able to give you detailed directions on how to find places.

     

  • April 13, 2019

    So, last night before I started playing, something my daughter was doing distracted me and I let the starting music play until the trailer started. I haven’t seen that in years, and let me tell you, it affected me a lot more than just playing the game. When I played Oblivion last, I wasn’t a mother, for starters. I wasn’t over 40 years old, for another. Which for some of you might seem like no big deal, but to many of you I might seem as old as Uriel Septim himself, and there was a bit more perspective there. I mean, his kids have all been killed; he’s had to live through that, through something that’s every parent’s nightmare. And then he knows he has one more son to throw into the hell that’s opening up in his world - to save the rest of it. I mean, the weight on his shoulders (which is, really, putting such a heavy weight on the shoulders of a child he never even knew, who he SHOULD have gotten to know, and there’s guilt there, of course) is so clear in the trailer’s dialogue: “these are the closing days of the 3rd era, and the final hours of my life.”  

     

    And that sort of, did it, you know? After that, I felt more involved in the quests, more involved in the history. And this needs to be said as well - when I played Oblivion, I wasn’t involved in the story, and although I’m not into the intricacies of lore even now, I knew NOTHING back then. But now, the weight of being the first person in centuries to venture through Pale Pass really got to me. I completed the quest for the Countess of Bruma last night, the one where she sends you to Pale Pass after the Draconian Madstone, and loved every second of it. The sense of exploration, the sense of history, the weight of it all. And I’m not going to lie, I teared up giving Commander Mishaxhi the orders he’d been waiting on for so, so long.

     

    I wish they’d had the tech back then to give Oblivion the immersive qualities of Skyrim because dammit, it’s a beautiful, brilliant game that grows as we grow. We have more perspective than we had 14 years ago, or so, and we can get so much more out of it. The voices and graphics might seem silly and campy now, but the story is eternal.  

  • Member
    April 13, 2019

    ilanisilver said:

    So, last night before I started playing, something my daughter was doing distracted me and I let the starting music play until the trailer started. I haven’t seen that in years, and let me tell you, it affected me a lot more than just playing the game. When I played Oblivion last, I wasn’t a mother, for starters. I wasn’t over 40 years old, for another. Which for some of you might seem like no big deal, but to many of you I might seem as old as Uriel Septim himself, and there was a bit more perspective there. I mean, his kids have all been killed; he’s had to live through that, through something that’s every parent’s nightmare. And then he knows he has one more son to throw into the hell that’s opening up in his world - to save the rest of it. I mean, the weight on his shoulders (which is, really, putting such a heavy weight on the shoulders of a child he never even knew, who he SHOULD have gotten to know, and there’s guilt there, of course) is so clear in the trailer’s dialogue: “these are the closing days of the 3rd era, and the final hours of my life.”  

     

    And that sort of, did it, you know? After that, I felt more involved in the quests, more involved in the history. And this needs to be said as well - when I played Oblivion, I wasn’t involved in the story, and although I’m not into the intricacies of lore even now, I knew NOTHING back then. But now, the weight of being the first person in centuries to venture through Pale Pass really got to me. I completed the quest for the Countess of Bruma last night, the one where she sends you to Pale Pass after the Draconian Madstone, and loved every second of it. The sense of exploration, the sense of history, the weight of it all. And I’m not going to lie, I teared up giving Commander Mishaxhi the orders he’d been waiting on for so, so long.

     

    I wish they’d had the tech back then to give Oblivion the immersive qualities of Skyrim because dammit, it’s a beautiful, brilliant game that grows as we grow. We have more perspective than we had 14 years ago, or so, and we can get so much more out of it. The voices and graphics might seem silly and campy now, but the story is eternal.  

    That resonates, I can feel some of that. The game has so much soul and the story is compelling. If anything sort of conveys the spirit of the game or describes that certain something it has, it's your summary above. I've said before how it was KotN which really sucked me in, but a lot of that was a compulsion to feel and really get what the game/story was about: The who, what, why and when of the KotN tale and how it fit into the MQ subtext. It's hard to explain, but I remember the prophet banging on about Reman, a guy so important to the history of Cyrodiil and the story of Pelinal that the new game books with that dlc, The song of Pelinal, mention the guy's name yet he remained quite mysterious. I needed to know who Pelinal, Alessia, Morihaus and Reman were - not in a lore-heavy sense but just to read their story and see/experience how it was important. Like, what was so special about this Amulet of Kings that only Uriel and Martin could wear? What are the links in the chain which unite these characters?

    Slowly but surely the mythology started to take shape, starting with Alessia under the yoke of Ayleid authority and then progressing to Mor and Pelly, then Reman, then to Tiber Septim/Talos in a way that was like a path which led right to Uriel Septim in the final moments of his life as he gives you the Amulet and tells you to find his last son and heir... I remember just being enthralled with that idea, how he game doesn't go to great lengths or dump all this info upon you, but rather delivers it quietly and subtley in the background through the medium of story or fleeting NPCs like Mishaxhi, almost drawing you in by relying on your emotions as a player to be the impetus which makes you want to dig that bit deeper. Then before you know it you're hooked, joining dots and pausing before a statue in the Imperial City depicting a legendary hero, recognising the name, and realising you're inside an epic which is thousands of years old and perhaps now starting its final chapter.

    That was massive. I was used to a very codex-led format like Star Wars and Mass Effect, so this idea that setting and background was presented in such a way that it was less about encyclopedic entries but more about emotional resonance and interpretation appealed to me something fierce. The most beautiful thing was that it was all there for a player to go in as deeply or as lightly as they chose to. It all worked really well on the surface level that you could lose yourself just being the character you rolled without ever needing to go deeper than you wanted. In retrospect, the incredible music helped a lot, too. I had a ritual for starting a new character: I had to transfer my saved games to a stick, wipe my console's memory, then watch the intro cutscene and listen so that when the camera at last panned past those giant guards so out of proportion to the city walls they were patrolling and into the cell I was occupying, my first save game on that character would alws be 1 - and I'd never delete or overwrite that first save for the entirety of that character's adventure. It may have been a bit of OCD xD

  • Member
    April 14, 2019

    ilanisilver said:

    I completed the quest for the Countess of Bruma last night, the one where she sends you to Pale Pass after the Draconian Madstone, and loved every second of it. The sense of exploration, the sense of history, the weight of it all. And I’m not going to lie, I teared up giving Commander Mishaxhi the orders he’d been waiting on for so, so long.

    That quest was always one of my favourites, to the point that when I first played Beyond Skyrim: Bruma I kept my eye out for each of the landmarks and found myself stopping to effectively greet the Sentinal; who true to his name was still keeping watch over the path. Every time I read one of you comments in this thread it makes me want to go back to this game, inspite of my recent failed attempt.

    Paws said:

    ...when the camera at last panned past those giant guards so out of proportion to the city walls they were patrolling and into the cell I was occupying...

    I really hope that they Skyblivion team keep those giant guards in when they remake the openning. It would have been hilarious if in the original game you could have found a giant set of armor in one of the barracks hinting at them being real.

     

     

  • April 14, 2019
    @Paws, yes, exactly. All the things you’re a part of, it’s just so weighty. And I don’t know if that’s OCD or just really regimented. I honestly have no idea how to do anything you just wrote about!! @Goldie, yeah. It’s tempting, I know. The games so cool, and if it hadn’t been years since I played, I’d be in the same boat. And it took me until level 12 or so to get really back into it. But to be fair, Skyrim is the only other game I play, so it’s not like I have other, newer, intriguing games waiting for me.
  • Member
    April 14, 2019

    @ilanisilver - I actually installed and played Oblivion again a few months ago. This might be a harsh word to use but in regards to major storylines/questlines Skyrim's writing for me at least is trash when it is compared to Oblivion's (I 'll never forget the disappointment I got from the College of Winterhold questline :P).

    In regards to the world and the fact that you didn't feel as immeresed in it as you feel in Skyrim I also got this feeling for quite some time and I believe it has to do with how much we 've played Skyrim before going back to Oblivion again and of course with the fact that the AI interactions of NPCs are cut like 99% from what it would originally be due to their NPC system going out of control there is info and video on that and it is hillarious. There is also the thing that they had a cast of like 12 voice actors and the game is full of robotic replies.

    But if you manage to mod the game correctly which could be a bit of a pain it can become pretty good with overhauls, graphics, gameplay, quest improvements etc. I updated the graphics as much as it was possible and made a pretty good mod load order with like 80+ mods to work (even I couldn't believe it ran smoothly for the most part :P) and it ended up a pretty good gaming experience. 

    Since you mentioned that you only play Oblivion and Skyrim I would also suggest to check out Kingdom Come: Deliverance. You can easily get immersed in this game, it really feels like you just blend in with the world and you are not some chosen one or anything for the most part, I highly recommend it.

    Other rpg games you could check out if you haven't already are Witcher series, Dragon Age Origins, Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War (2018).

    Oh and special mention is Enderal if you haven't played already it is a total conversion "mod" for Skyrim making it another game actually and it has amazing storytelling, they also released a DLC recently for it. 

  • Member
    April 14, 2019

    I managed to leave the sewers this time and my god the game is so colourful, I'd forgotten how truely nice it is to see that much colour in a game. Well that is until I got to Chorrol where it seemed like the brown of the houses was bleeding into the air around them xD

  • April 23, 2019

    Shivering Isles butterfly door!

     

     

  • April 23, 2019

    In case any of you forgot how freaking gorgeous this game is. I wish this could have been remastered, or whatever, too.