By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Close
Mummelmann on 17 November 2011
Edit Thread
Alphachris said:

It is happening again... Everyone is praising skyrim as the game of the year. Somehow I am getting interested again.

But I already fell for the Goty Edition of Oblivion. RPGs have always been my favourite Genre, although only few of them were released in Europe. During the RPG drought in the early years of the PS3 I saw the reviews and the praise for Oblivion I decided to try it out. I bought it togehter with Dragon Age.... and I was soo disappointed with both of them. If you are used to JRPGS it is very, very hard to appreciate WRPGS.

After over 20 hours of gameplay i gave it up. The game got boring after 30 minutes and over 19 hours of boredom were too much to handle. I did not have the feeling that Oblivion would get any better.

I simply prefer enjoying a great story and interesting characters in a RPG. Oblivion has a silent character and I felt pretty lonely the whole time. The main story was very disappointing to me and I did not get the impression that there was a connection between the main story and the world.

The whole "explore a huge world" turned out to walk through randomly generated dungeons for random loot. The sidequests seemed to be unimportant... The guild quests also didn't feel very interesting. The leveling system was also bad in my opinion. All in all I did not like a single bit of Oblivion and it turned out to be the worst RPG for me.

I must admit that it was my very first WRPG and I had pretty high expectations due to the high reviews and the general praise... but in fact Oblivion was almost the complete opposite of what I like about RPGS.

Don't get me wrong. In its own Genre Oblivion certainly is a true masterpiece. But this genre just isn't suited for everybody. Maybe the Oblivion fans feel similar when they play Final Fantasy XIII.

Skyrim surely has its own merits... but I think that if I buy it I will be heavily disappointed again...

I can relate to what you're saying here.

WRPG's vs JRPG's is often non-linear vs linear progression, be it in the story, leveling up the character or exploration. The trouble can arise when non-linear games (Oblivion, Fallout 3) are an open expanse of sameness, a world filled with bland, repeated scenery and content as opposed to the more heavily scripted and directional linearity of many JRPG's. Then there are those who fall inbetween, these are the worst imo, Mass Effect series is a great example of this, it lends the illusion of great freedom while relying on fairly linear progression and in actuality limiting your freedom a great deal. It seems like a lot of folks have faulty logic when it comes to the term "freedom", many seem to see it as "great distance traveled" or even "two or three different choices". This is not freedom, not complete freedom.

Bethesda seems to have learned a great deal from Oblivion and Fallout 3 and have since become a lot more focused on creating a more varied environment and game world, Skyrim is a very good example of this, Fallout New Vegas a lesser one. However, the core mechanics of the game are still strikingly similar to that of Oblivion, combat is pretty much the same, quest structure is somewhat changed but still very familiar (keeping track of the them is a lot easier now, though) so you might be taken aback by all this. Furthermore, if you enjoy deep RPG elements, this might not be for you, they have taken a lot away from previous installments in the series, there are roughly half as many skills and no stats, regenerating health etc, the markings of a somewhat action oriented title. Then again, if you enjoy FFXIII, that kind of speaks against that point to begin with...

As far as story goes; this might not impress you at all. I find myself not getting immersed into the lore and world at large, I skip dialogue to get quests underway and generally care little for the populace, other than getting angry when the dragons kill the vendors I need to pawn my stuff on... The Elder Scrolls games never had very good stories, with the exception (imo) of Daggerfall and the focus lies rather heavily on exploratory gameplay.

If you want a tip from me, have you tried the Gothic series? It might be a good series to get you into free-roaming WRPG's. Gothic (with the exception of the action-fest that is Arcania) and Risen games are superior to The Elder Scrolls is nearly every way in my opinion, its just so rich and fresh and extremely varied, the locations in Gothic 3 were absolutely mindblowing when the game launched. It was riddled with bugs, however, but that is no longer an issue. Risen 2 is right around the corner, how about you have a gander at that?