Hi all,

I was interested to hear other's views on a lasting legacy or - dare I say, relvancy, Oblivion holds today, with the 10-year anniversiry having been and gone without a whisper's notice. Oblivon was very much my first and for many years exclusive experience of TES, and even to this day the gentrified rolling plains of Cyrodill remain my snap-reaction image of TES.

Since the release of Skyrim, and having observed pre and post-2011 commentary, I have always felt Oblivion has received a harsh roasting. In some respects I think its unfortunate it sits in the middle of a plot-tastic juggernaut and a animation-popping complex. To complicate that anology its a bit like being a one-hit-wonder B-listed between Mariah Carey (Morrowind, the gift that keeps on giving and everybody remembers ever time an anniversary comes around) and Beyonce (Skyrim. Are you going to ask for better graphics sir?)

The point being everyone has heard of (and played) Skyrim. It was 2011 but it's still very much a current, trend-setting dynamo going into 2017. Morrowind most people have heard of, and its essentially been immortalised for it's contribution in lore, plotlines and worldspace to the series - there's very much been a community-wide reverence towards the title. I still see the game being sold regularly, and something about it - perhaps its the cover art? - somehow, it still just feels "relevant" and well-aware of its selling power compared to Skyrim (never seen any statistics, mind you.) Oblivion you do not see - it like there were two big titles, one focused on plotline and the other animation, graphics etc. and both being considered "game leaders" in their respective fields. And you have to wonder, where does Oblivion fit into this? Going into 2017 does Oblivion really hold any lasting legacy or sway over the series future direction, innovation/ideas etc.? Personally my thoughts would be the Shivering Isle is one area Oblivion definitely DID have an influence, and continues to be seen as "relevant" in its portrayal of Daedric worlds and the personality of Sheogorath. Other than that? Sometimes it feels like they took a whole lot more from Morrowind than Oblivion when implementing ideas into Skyrim (Housebuilding, crossbows, Dragonborn DLC...Heavy representation of Dunmer culture compared to other non-natives e.g. grey quarter.)

Just going to leave it by saying Oblivion will always be the one for me. Cant beat that first TES memory!

I'd say Oblivion's biggest issues are that it didn't significantly alter gameplay like Skyrim or contribute much to the lore like Morrowind. It also didn't feel very innovative with all the other open world games available at the time. The combination made it something of a flash in the pan. Shivering Isles remains a big deal for lore buffs, though.

I think my opinion is somewhat similar to C4B4L's. Oblivion is the least inspired, least imaginative game in the Elder Scrolls series. It is not a bad game, per se, but it suffers by comparison to better games in the series and to similar games made by other developers.

This is your problem. Men like boobs and asses, there's nothing interesting between those too.

Jokes aside, I'd agree with C4B4L, it didn't improve anything anything huge since Morrowind, aside from combat and graphics (which is a given when you go up a generation), and a few minor altered features, and then Skyrim changed a whole lot, for better or worse depending on who you ask. It just wasn't different enough, and there weren't any really really quality aspects of the game, imo at least.

Wow, after being called one of the top ten game changing immersive games by PC Gamer, August 2016, for making melee combat more realistic, its use of Havoc physics lending greater tactility to both archery and magic, delivering some of the best quests in the entire series and for fully embracing the open world 'go anywhere, do anything' concept; Oblivion is still being slammed as mediocre. Skyrim didn't make the list by the way. Skyrim really is not much more than a evolutionary step advancement, building on the foundation of Oblivion. Sadly Skyrim lost a couple of bricks.

To me it's saving grace and the reason I am currently playing it is, the Shivering Isles. The lands of Mania are breathtaking. Plus the game adds a lot of lore about Sheogorath and a never heard of before Daedric Prince. Don't get me wrong Cyrodiil is also beautiful, and the guilds are well done, as well as the sidequests. But in the end I am a lore buff, and Oblivion did not flesh out Imperial lore. It just made them generic and boring. Unlike the Dunmer in Morriwind and the Nords in Skyrim.

Words cannot convey how much I *do not care* what PC Gamer thinks. About anything. Literally about anything.

Oblivion was a massive disappointment to me, in almost too many ways to list in one single post. Let's just say I agree with Shelly and C4B4L and leave it at that.

While I love Oblivion and if forced to play Vanilla Oblivion is the only game that I can easily tolerate I do agree it was in it's awkward teenage phase. It will soon grow up to be a very shallow but pretty advlt who only talks about not being the best Blacksmith in Whiterun.

As far as I can tell, the biggest legacy of Oblivion was that it ripped away any semblance of identity from Cyrodiil and the Imperials. A great loss in the world of TES, really.

While i agree about Oblivion being a huge disappointment... I don't think it's fair to say that it didn't change much. Morrowind to Oblivion was, from a purely mechanical sense, a bigger shift than Oblivion to Skyrim. Oblivion was really the last time Bethesda significantly change the formula, i just don't think that change really showed off what the new formula could do.

One area that Oblivion still has relevance is modding. Skyrim has yet to offer anything that really compares to mods like Better Cities or Elsweyr Deserts of Anequina, and the work Maskar is doing with dynamically generated NPC and dynamically created dungeons is really cutting edge.

To me, it seems that many people saw Oblivion thinking it was going to be Morrowind 2. Instead, when they got a good game that was different, there was an immediate whiplash of hate and disappointment that, while it has died down some, still permeates many discussions. Even today, it's cool to hate on Oblivion as the "casualization" or "dumbing down" of TES (even though by all rights, Morrowind should hold that title), so the amount of negativity on display is amplified whenever its brought up.

I'm not saying Oblivion is perfect, nor am I saying there aren't valid reasons for some people to prefer Morrowind over Oblivion, but I do believe the amount of negativity surrounding it is born from it being so dissimilar to Morrowind, rather than from being a poor TES game in its own right, and then continued because of bandwagoning. If Morrowind wasn't a "TES" game, and that initial hate bubble wasn't there, I wager there'd be a lot less negativity for Oblivion today.

Personally, I see Oblivion as taking a step toward bringing things back some of what was lost after Daggerfall, with regards to atmosphere and gameplay. Not only did it start to bring them back, but it did so in a much more modern way that can serve as a basis for going into the future, rather than just tacking back on old things just because people wanted it.

AI, NPC interaction, schedules, physics... yeah, those are only minorly different from Morrowind. Or not.

Yes, that had a lot to do with my attitude for several years after Oblivion was released (until 2013 actually). But I've had over a decade now to reconcile myself to the game. I can't speak for anyone else, but after nearly eleven years I think I am able to appreciate the game for what it is, and not expect it to be something that it isn't. And I still think Oblivion is frustratingly riddled with poor game design choices, uninspired world building, and lackluster writing.

What I think Oblivion really has going for it, as Turija mentioned, is modding. Oblivion hits a sweet spot with modding. Morrowind can be an inflexible game to mod, but the vanilla game offers a lot of interesting gameplay. Skyrim is more flexible to mod but the vanilla game offers less interesting gameplay. Oblivion is in the middle: it offers some of Morrowind's interesting gameplay and some of Skyrim's flexible modding capabilities.

My perspective is sort of an "outsider" one, for lack of a better term. What I mean by that is that I came very late to the TES party. Skyrim was my first TES game, and even then I was late to it (2013). So my view may be somewhat influenced by this. Or maybe not. Anyways...

I absolutely agree that Oblivion gets more flack than it deserves. But I can totally understand some of the disappointments with the game, and I would agree in some cases. In Morrowind you got a very cohesive mishmash of culture, politics, and world-building that was extremely well-done, and Oblivion did not achieve that level. It dropped the ball on really fleshing out Imperial culture and could have done a better job of ingraining politics into the world. It was also very jarring for people who expected Cyrodiil to look far different. Cyrodiil was originally supposed to be a jungle. Except for the Shivering Isles, the world did not really feel alien like Morrowind did, and that was part of what made Morrowind so beloved (although alien does automatically equal good, contrary to what many seem to argue, but Morrowind did the weirdness incredibly well). Overall, it doesn't seem like Oblivion was quite the game-changer in the video game industry that Morrowind or Skyrim was either. Morrowind was what put TES on the map and saved Bethesda from bankruptcy, and Skyrim was what made TES enormously popular and made Bethesda a true juggernaut in the industry. Oblivion didn't seem to have quite the effect that either of those two games had. It brought in many more fans, sure, but not the way that Morrowind and Skyrim did.

But some of the hate is rather unjustified, IMO. I believe a lot of people (not all) don't give a fair shake to Oblivion because it was so different to what they expected, but they overlook some of the good things that it brought to the table. It gave us more of an understanding of what CHIM actually does and more information on the Towers. It was our first real look at the realms of Oblivion, with the Deadlands and the Shivering Isles. It gave us our first up-close look at what a Daedric Prince is like, or rather TWO although some people would argue it is really just one (Hircine was not prominently featured in the Bloodmoon expansion for Morrowind like Sheogorath was in the Shivering Isles, so that is why I am not considering that the first time). The combat and physics were definitely a step-up from Morrowind. I believe that Oblivion had the best overall miscellaneous quests (i.e. not main quest or faction quests) of the series. And it was arguably the culmination of the background arc of the series that has been going on since TES was first conceived with Arena--the fall of the Third Empire--that arguably continues in Skyrim. People focus too much on what Oblivion isn't, rather than what it is. In some cases that is totally fair, but in others it isn't.

(Also, I honestly think it was a better decision to portray Cyrodiil, landscape-wise, the way it was done in Oblivion--although I think it could've done with a little bit of jungle around the Valenwood border. Perhaps I would not feel that way if I was coming from Morrowind though).

All in all, like the other Elder Scrolls games, there is a lot that Oblivion has going for it while in some areas it could've been better.

For me, it's mostly that I just don't enjoy the gameplay. Morrowind's almost complete lack of level scaling is an issue, but Oblivion was way too far in the other direction. I also just don't like massive dungeons, which Oblivion heavily relies on. Even in Zelda, I'll usually start to get bored with a dungeon some time before getting to the boss. I also felt that the new features were half-assed, with both the melee weapon skills having identical perks being a prime example, with the extremely limited set of voice actors being another.

Another big issue, though, is that I just don't like any of the characters. Modryn and Martin are okay, and that's pretty much it. Everyone else either had so little characterization that I couldn't care, or just grated on me, whether on purpose or due to poor writing. There's nobody I liked the way I liked Divayth Fyr, Gentleman Jim Stacey, or Percius Mercius. There's nobody I love to hate like Caesar in NV. There's nobody that I disagree with but can respect like House or Ulfric. Even the best of Oblivion's characters, to me, are just... there.

It's just not my kind of game, no matter how many times I try to give it another shot.

One last thing that kind of irks me about the fans is that so many of them keep raving about how great the environment is, even all these years later. Maybe the Great Forest is amazing if you're on the Eastern Seaboard or in Europe, but as an Oregonian, it looks sterile and sparse. There is a much more impressive forest than that five blocks from my house. Seriously, it's gorgeous out here.

I think the eastern Elsweyr border and western Black Marsh border work for the jungle-ish aspect. I do think the landscape itself could do with some sprucing up, but I've yet to see a TES game where that isn't true.

For me its about the colorful and lush environment. Morrowind was dominated by gray and monochrome environments, while Skyrim is in love with a desaturation filter along with many areas being under perma-snow. The grass and trees in Oblivion felt more "full", compared to Skyrim (where Morrowind was undeniably sparse). Interiors also had pretty good moody lighting in Oblivion, whereas Morrowind was more lacking (some places look good, I won't deny, but on the whole a lot of it felt more flat and bland). Skyrim's interiors, while better designed in some aspects, just don't hold the same level of creepiness that Oblivion (or even Daggerfall) does for me.

For sure, real-life can look a heck of a lot better. but when comparing the games and the hardware they had to run on, I do think Oblivion handled it the best out of the box.

Let's put it this way. The first time I played, I was off the road, meandering toward Chorrol and wondering when I would get to the forest. I checked the map and discovered I was already in the middle of the forest. I seriously thought it was the outskirts due to how thin it was.

The colors and draw distance were great, though.

Lol, compared to not being able to see 20 ft through the gray fog in Morrowind, it's outstanding!*


*Morrowind remains my favorite of the series (that I've played. Never played Arena or Daggerfall)

I definitely feel like Oblivion is the weakest of the entries I've played. A lot of forgettable quests, areas, and events beyond the main story beats and stuff that just didn't do enough to make itself stand out both as a game and a world. I'd even place the base game below Redguard in just being interesting and Daggerfall definitely did a more typical "Fantasy" setting way better. That DLC though? Shivering Isles was a huge step up and easily enhances the overall experience of a playthrough. Really gave the game a stronger sense of identity it was missing.

Oblivion introduced Radiant AI, which revolutionized Bethesda's quest and level designs.

Radiant AI created casual kinds of play that are scarce or unavailable in Bethesda's earlier games (find where an NPC is; discover where he lives and what he does, and look for ways to exploit what you learn).

Before Oblivion, you may only infrequently kill an enemy without relying on your character's skills or equipment. In Oblivion, you may push logs and boulders down on enemies, or lure them into traps. The various NPCs and creatures in Oblivion often react violently toward one another, and you may exploit their hostility to your advantage. I employ the environment as a weapon and as a distraction a lot, a whole lot, in a variety of ways.

The new physics and AI elements for Oblivion contributed to a leap ahead in stealth play. New level designs incorporate lighting and the new physics and AI elements in ways that make avoiding fights a pleasure.

Those are the "ya son't say" improvements, it was on the start of a new gaming generation. Stuff like physics and better ai was expected, if NPCs were the same as in Morrowind, now that would be a surprise, and not a pleasant one. Compared to other games that were out at the time none of those things were unseen or done the best.

I agree with this - though, can you really say that it is weaker than Redguard???

The point being made by a number of posters is that most of Oblivion's improvements over Morrowind were the direct result of general improvements in technology, both in hardware and in software, during the several year gap between titles. The overall game concept and world that it portrayed was less detailed or consistent, and felt considerably less interesting to me. I expected those kinds of technical improvements, but never expected the decline in culture and lore, most of what was there being simply carried forward from the previous games.

The incorporation of physics, NPC schedules, and a more exciting combat system had numerous teething problems, but were significant additions to the series at least in principle. Then you accidentally bumped the edge of a table, and witnessed plates and silverware flying around the room in all directions, or saw goblin bodies sailing through the air and slamming against the wall, then neatly folding in half when they hit the floor, after being stabbed by an iron dagger. Good idea, poor implementation.

The combat system went from Morrowind's extreme "all or nothing" chance to hit based on character skills, to an "always hits" system, but for the same paltry amount of scaled-down damage base on character skill in Oblivion. The combat in Morrowind looked terrible, thanks to weapons passing harmlessly through an opponent and other bad animation issues, but represented the steadily improving skills of the character quite clearly, while Oblivion provided much nicer and smoother animations, but lost the concept of having a novice or non-combat character FIGHT like a novice.....every character responded exactly the same, except for the amount of damage inflicted. Calling one or the other "better" or "worse" is all a matter of perspective, with MW actually being better from an RP standpoint, while OB was preferable from an action viewpoint. The 3 different forms of attack and the ability to charge up attacks for variable amounts of time gave Morrowind a far more direct feel, and offered more control, while the hit/miss mechanism made the character's skills relevant. I really wish Bethesda could have found some way to incorporate some of those aspects into Oblivion's "press the button and wait for the animation to play" combat system.

The switch to voiced dialog was a mixed bag, providing more personality to the NPCs "in theory", but that was frequently squandered by bad dialog writing and the overuse of a very limited number of voice actors and the misuse of the wrong voices for the character on many occasions. A partially voiced system, with the major topics and quests being fully voiced, and a lot of the purely informational "filler" being text-based, might have worked better. The lack of vocal coaching (or the poor job done by whoever did that coaching) resulted in a lot of mispronunciations, wrong emphasis, wrong emotion for the situation, and other issues which should have been easily avoided. The voice-actors seem to have been given nothing to work with, because there's no consistency to any of it, except for a couple of characters who were clearly given some attention and a consistent personality (like Uriel Septim). The rest of the dialog was "mix and match".....but you could no longer do that with your armor in the game.

I do give credit to whoever came up with the Alchemy sorting screen, because that seemed to be about the only UI feature that improved from Morrowind, at least for PC users. The overly large fonts and limited number of lines of information allowed for minimal information on the screen at any given time, so you either had to scroll through long lists or page between menus for everything. Contrasting that with Morrowind's "nearly everything at a glance" menu screen was no contest, at least for me. As with too many other aspects of the game, OB appears to have worked too hard at "looking" good, at the expense of functionality.

Overall, I'd say that OB tried a number of new technology-related things, but implemented them poorly. Otherwise, it took away more than it added to the series. It looked really great when I first fired it up, and my expectations seemed to have been met, but the longer I played, the more the fundamental design problems and restrictions sapped my interest in it. The best features of the game were shown up front, but there was very little behind it. I didn't expect Morrowind 2, but expected another game with the same cultural depth and character importance (versus being reliant on player dexterity). Instead, I got a nice piece of icing with a completely flavorless lump of dry cake beneath it. Once I got past the icing, and started to get a taste of what was beneath, it was all downhill from there.

I deserves MOST of the abuse it takes, but some is clearly unjustified.

I liked Oblivion, and thanks to mods, I have the most hours logged in that game. The mods addressed most of the issues I had with the game.
I'd say the PC crowd hates it, and rightfully so, due to it heavily catering to the xbox360 so much so that the interface was cumbersome. however, playing it on xbox360 was a breeze and way easier than morrowind on xbox, which was pretty cumbersome in inventory mode.