EmP's The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion review

Reading this reminds me once again how disappointing Oblivion was in comparison to Morrowind. A much tighter game mechanically, certainly, but lacks the beauty of its predecessor.

Returning to Morrowind six years later feels clunky and outdated, but still magical. I think it's because its fabulous scope never really forces you to tackle any area of the game you aren't keen on. Even when playing the main quest, Morrowind never drags, and there's always an opportunity within fifteen minutes or so to put that on hold and do something you want to do. Oblivion seems more impressed with its own main game, and as such drags you along to places some won't want to go. Like the endless dungeons (Oblivion's opening is comparatively horrendous - thank god it opens up after an hour or so). Like the Oblivion Gates themselves, which feel like playing fucking Quake. It seems proud of the things it does reasonably badly, and then rams these things down your throat.

The result is that, while much of Oblivion is still fabulous, the overall impression I got was of merely an impressive and solid RPG rather than an infinitely memorable one. I'll take the flawed master over the bland perfectionist any day.

Oblivion is the worst game I ever dumped 150 hours into. It was atrocious, and I knew it was atrocious while I was playing it, but I really wanted to run around putting on clothes, collecting books, and launching fireballs.

Maybe if they had saved the money they used to hire Sean Bean and Patrick Stewart to get some decent writers and game designers -- !

150 hours suggests they did *something* right. Nonetheless, my PC is just going to laugh at me if I suggest running Oblivion, and although it can do Morrowind unlike my last one, I was never able to play it for more than an hour or so before I put it away again, having no clue what to do. For me there's apparently such a thing as being too open-ended, and Morrowind is it.

Haha I'm the opposite of most of you. I couldn't stand Morrowind but Oblivion was great. It is definitely a game that I would like to play again but that will probably never happen.

Morrowind is a fantastic game. I never had a problem figuring out where to go - your journal pretty much tells you. But, as was stated earlier, you have the freedom to do pretty much whatever you want in between.

I've not played Oblivion yet myself... but I really want to. I just haven't gotten around to it.

I can't imagine getting truly lost or stuck in either game. Morrowind is bigger, Oblivion is deeper but tigther, and both allow you to wander off everywhere - but neither ever made me get lost.

Morrowind's journal's horrific but if you pay the slightest bit of attention to what people are saying to you, you've always a sensible idea of where you need to go next to advance the main plot. Even if you don't, with 400+ sub-quests in the game, does it even matter if you can't find the next key bit?

It does if you're prone to choice paralysis :) When I was following the "main quests", if there is such a thing, I was doing okay, but the moment I wandered off to do whatever, as people kept telling me I should do, I missed my structured linear RPG experience.

Maybe it just takes more getting used to after having been spoonfed the path to take for so many years.