Inflammatory Remarks on Oblivion
I think I may be done with (The Elder Scrolls IV:) Oblivion again. The first time, I played through what is essentially the tutorial (feat. Patrick Stewart) and lost interest as soon as I emerged from the training-wheels dungeon into the world, which was filled (theoretically) with possibility, and (perceptibly) with trees. But everything I’d heard about Oblivion suggested it was a masterpiece, so with 5 or 6 of my friends playing (The Elder Scrolls V:) Skyrim (probably as much alignment as I ever see from my gamer friends) I thought it was time to give it another shot.
Guys. Did you actually play Oblivion? Because a lot of it is awful. There’s good stuff in there too, and some stuff (like the visuals) that I’m sure seemed pretty great when the game came out in 2006, but I would like someone to explain to me how the combat is acceptable. Rock Paper Scissors would be a more entertaining way of resolving disputes.
Look, button-mashing gets a bad name, but I’m not above it. I’ve mashed many a button and I’ll continue to until arthritis kicks in. But the thing is, when you mash buttons in Double Dragon, you get feedback. When your first connects with a dude, you hear a sound (“PSSHT”), the dude looks alarmed, you’ve got a fraction of a second to consider your options from there. You can continue mashing and probably take the low-level enemies down like that, but you can also practice more advanced dude-punching techniques that will help you beat the tougher guys.
Oblivion’s combat has none of this. It controls like a low-rent shooter. There’s no lock-on to make sure you’re facing generally in the direction of your enemy, the sound effects aren’t helpful, spells are difficult to aim, and after a bunch of fights I still have no idea if I’m better off doing a lot of regular attacks or fewer power attacks, how often I should be blocking (because I seem to take quite a bit of damage even when I do), and whoops I’m dead again. Even when I’m victorious, it doesn’t feel like I won a battle so much as a slap fight.
The “fight/magic/item/run” system that served us so adequately for years in Western and Japanese RPGs is mostly gone now, and that’s probably just as well. It wasn’t a great system, it was just a simplification of D&D that was easy to implement. But if you’re going to do something different, for God’s sake, get the basics right. Mass Effect and Deus Ex both did a great job of taking the essential beats of an RPG and using action game mechanics for the combat. Oblivion seems to focus more on creating a big, sprawling world (which Mass Effect and Deus Ex did not), but that comes at the expense of the nuts and bolts of the actual game. I’m focusing on the combat here, because it’s actively frustrating, but I could talk about things (like the writing, voice acting, generic fantasy setting, poorly-distinguished towns, etc.) that are merely lame. This guy has some other complaints, which aren’t as high on my list but are totally valid.
Maybe Skyrim is better. But I thought the same thing about Oblivion after I played Morrowind.
