I’ve made it no secret to those around me that I never much cared for the changes that were incorporated in the newest of the Elder Scrolls series. While I have never said that TES: Oblivion is a bad game, I have stated on multiple occasions that I found it to be incredibly lacking compared to its predecessors. Yet for some unknown reason I felt compelled to go back and play the game again, especially since I haven’t experienced the expansion. What I found in my travels through Cyrodiil this time around changed my perspective on the game more than I thought it would.
What’s really interesting is that originally back when TES 3: Morrowind first came out I got it for the PC and I enjoyed it a lot, but even though I did enjoy it I couldn’t quite get in to it. I would play for a little bit then start over as a new character. It never drew me in. But when they released the game of the year edition for the console, which contained the expansions, I decided to get it and as a result I played it for weeks and weeks and spent hundreds of hours completing it. I’ve now had a similar experience with the Oblivion game of the year edition for Xbox 360.  Even though I have a computer that can run Oblivion on the max settings, for some reason I find that I get more enjoyment out of the game on a console.
Some of the main reasons why I was slightly disappointed with Oblivion during initial play-through was that it seemed to take out several features from the previous games to make it more streamlined and more for a casual – well, not really casual – but for a mainstream gamer. While they did offer some great improvements in visuals and other things they simplified some elements of gameplay and completely got rid of others. Another thing I didn’t really like was the fact that they have waypoints now which will tell you exactly where to go. One of the fun things in Morrowwind was them giving vague directions and the fun I would have trying to adventure out and find what they were talking about while doing a quest. In Oblivion you get a quest and for the most part they lead you exactly where you need to go. One more thing that I wasn’t exactly happy with was the ability to quick travel to any of the towns you wanted to in any location that you had already been to. This seemed to me probably one of the reasons why the game feels a lot smaller in size; you can zip to wherever you want. Quick travel also causes players to miss out on all the side dungeons and other neat things you encounter along the road or in the middle of the wilderness. I know they had fast travel in Morrowind such as teleporting to mage guilds and some places you could take boats or silt striders but you still had to find the right linkups to get there. Still, for the most part, you couldn’t really directly travel to where you wanted.
In my play-through this time I feel a bit different about some of my earlier feelings about the game. While I know they got rid of some gameplay elements I also begin to think that maybe they weren’t really as important as I thought. For example, while I really liked the whole levitiation spell system in Morrowind and being able to fly around, it really wouldn’t get much use in Oblivion. I’m still not too happy with the waypoint system but I have to admit that it can be quite helpful at times. When I first started this play-through I told myself I wasn’t going to use waypoint. Yet in some quests I just found myself completely without direction and having that little marker telling me where to go saved me a lot of aimless roaming. I also said that I would not use the quick travel system when I started this new file and that lasted for quite a while but when you get a point where quests tell you to talk to someone across the game world after you had just run across the game world suddenly the quick travel system does look so bad! While I still won’t use it to get to towns I haven’t been to or through pathways I haven’t traversed, I will use it on occasion to get to locations I really don’t want to run back through.
So far I’ve been playing the game for some time each day. I find myself still so far from really getting anything done. I’m not far in the main quest. I’m not too far in guild quests. I’ve been really busy with the side quests and I still find so many things to do. I’ve definitely found more this time than my original play-through. These past days spent with Oblivion have changed my opinion on the game from ‘a good game on its own’ to ‘a great Elder Scrolls game’. I plan to keep exploring and adventuring for long time and eagerly await the next installment in the series.
I also bought Oblivion when it first came out on PC, and didn’t really put that much more time on it. However, I kept hearing from friends that the console version was better, for often unexplainable reasons. I picked up 360 GOTY edition, and actually found myself enjoying it more. It’s worth noting that I resorted to downloading mods to “fix” PC Oblivion, where as on the 360 I just have to relax, accept the gameplay as it is (worry about exploring rather than gaining levels), and have fun.
Not sure if this is a good thing or bad. My experience with this game was that couldn’t focus on the main quest lines. There always seemed to be some side quests that would draw me off course until I had completely forgotten what I originally set out to do. I found myself hopelessly confused and overwhelmed with minor quest objectives, and it seemed that I was forced to go back and talk to EVERY NPC in the game over and over again.
I suppose it depends on how you look at it. It’s nice to have a lot of side quests, but it can be pretty confusing at times.
At least the journal in Oblivion is a lot better than Morrowind’s. If you need help remembering what to do then it’s great. You can easily go look at what quests you have and all the past entries to refresh your memory.