Amazing Game even in 2024

[Thorba]

Started this a few days ago and cant stop playing (lvl16 atm), the atmosphere of this game is fantastic.
The opening intro with patrick stewarts voice and the tutorial dungeon is one of the best introductions i ever seen at a game (the soundtrack makes it even better).
After the medicore starfield i thought i would get bored with another bethesda game but so far i am impressed.
Now i only hope that it stays bugfree and that it dont become too easy (so far everything is really challenging and i enjoy every piece of new gear).

[Bonus!]

Glad you're having a grand ol time with it. Morrowind is my favourite TES game (even tho i have the most time in Skyrim cuz it's my first TES game), yeh Bethesda got famous for a reason but since Fallout 4 they have been pretty much a dying studio.

[AC Denton]

Originally posted by Bonus!:

since Fallout 4 they have been pretty much a dying studio.

I wouldn't say becoming the Zenimax flagship studio and expanding by two offices "dying". They are far from dying.

[Bonus!]

Originally posted by AC Denton:

Originally posted by Bonus!:

since Fallout 4 they have been pretty much a dying studio.

I wouldn't say becoming the Zenimax flagship studio and expanding by two offices "dying". They are far from dying.

If it wasn't for the funding of Microsoft (from them buying them out and being a multi billion dollar company) then they would be dying, and i don't just mean dying financially i also mean they have lost a lost of fans most of the ones that have any faith left are mainly fanboys.

[psychotron666]

Honestly imo the atmosphere was the weakest aspect of this game and the weakest of the 3 modern elder scrolls. When I first played it at release, i always said the atmosphere was non existent compared to morrowind. And Skyrim took a step back in the right direction in that regard

[WhateverWorks]

Oblivion will always be my favorite ES game, by a huge margin too. I regularly boot it up just to run around and do a bunch of nothing, for the atmosphere. Mods help graphically, finding additional music that fits the soundtrack also helps. I doubt they'll ever capture the magic again, as they're now a social engineering tool of Bill Gates.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3059604604

[Wai]

I guess atmosphere is very much a matter of opinion. I love this game and keep coming back to it. For some unfathomable reason, my last play through vanished completely after a Steam Update. (OK, the two things may not be related). So, I am back to the start and repeating everything once again.

No problem; the atmosphere makes it worthwhile. The beautiful relaxing scenery makes it worthwhile. The odd appearance of someplace I have, for some unknown reason missed in my previous games make it worthwhile. The Caves can be a bit misty, and heavy rain can be a problem, but, this is more likely my old eyes than the game. As for Morrowind, by comparison, yes, the scenery could also be beautiful and the atmosphere enchanting, but the wretched dust storms and one horrible, major city (The equivalent of The Imperial City) built like a dismal, grey, over engineered Battenberg Cake really put the damper on it for me personally. I played it through way back when it first came out on PC but have no desire to revisit it. I have tried other Bethseda games, but, non I ever completed or wanted to complete.

I am mean and highly critical when it comes to reviews - this game is a winner for me personally. I even love it's quirky but interesting and challenging levelling system. I have 5 games I keep coming back to, year after year, this is Number One.

PS. Sorry, I cannot say it is bug free, but so far about 1500 hours playing Vanilla since downloading on Steam about 18 months ago I have not encountered anything game breaking, (Had played, obviously, before I repurchased the current version from Steam). Save regularly, file corruption when changing cells can be a random problem.

[WhateverWorks]

I had a playthrough disappear after the most recent steam update as well, I was at the very last quest of the main quest too. I always have cloud saving off so idk wtf happened. Oblivion is also in my top 5 rotation that I'm always playing one of.

[Wai]

Originally posted by WhateverWorks:

I had a playthrough disappear after the most recent steam update as well, I was at the very last quest of the main quest too. I always have cloud saving off so idk wtf happened. Oblivion is also in my top 5 rotation that I'm always playing one of.

Ah, good to know it was not just me. I too play with cloud save off so I lost everything. Unfortunately, I did a major clean up of my older saves just before Christmas so I had nothing to go back to. I would not have thought it possible for a Steam Update to erase the contents of a local disk drive. That is a big problem imo. Now, I am wondering what other games may have been purged.

[WhateverWorks]

Yeah I got lucky, it reverted me to a point where I had made 3 different starter saves. I play with a mod enforced level cap of 20, so can't actually have max stats and it's more beneficial to play within a class type since I also can't raise all of my skills to 100 (Oblivion XP allows you to cap both basically). I had made a starter lvl 20 warrior, mage, and stealth character with no quests completed. That's what I got reverted to, lost like a 17-18 hour main quest on the warrior is all.

As for other saves, I have no idea and hadn't thought about it. I have saves in like 70-80 games at least :/

Still was aggravating, I was going to finish the MQ and move on to SI that night.

[Wai]

I haven't dared to try any of my other Steam games.

[chakkman]

Originally posted by Bonus!:

Originally posted by AC Denton:

I wouldn't say becoming the Zenimax flagship studio and expanding by two offices "dying". They are far from dying.

If it wasn't for the funding of Microsoft (from them buying them out and being a multi billion dollar company) then they would be dying, and i don't just mean dying financially i also mean they have lost a lost of fans most of the ones that have any faith left are mainly fanboys.

Nonsense.

[JPTC]

Originally posted by Thorba:

Started this a few days ago and cant stop playing (lvl16 atm), the atmosphere of this game is fantastic.
The opening intro with patrick stewarts voice and the tutorial dungeon is one of the best introductions i ever seen at a game (the soundtrack makes it even better).
After the medicore starfield i thought i would get bored with another bethesda game but so far i am impressed.
Now i only hope that it stays bugfree and that it dont become too easy (so far everything is really challenging and i enjoy every piece of new gear).

It absolutely does have good atmosphere. It has that Elder Scrolls feel in spades and a lot of the architecture reminds me of Daggerfall but more modern. I find it to be pretty playable in the vanilla state right now, though you may run into a couple errors. The main one I ran into on a recent playthrough was a strange bug that thought enemies were always nearby no matter how far I ran from a certain area, but it was fixable by a console command (and maybe just by playing if I wanted to mess with the problem any longer). But otherwise I had a great experience, hope yours continues to go well.

While I'm still disappointed with some of the changes made after Morrowind, I still find a lot of joy in Oblivion. I played it just in the last two weeks again and had a blast. It's also the last Elder Scrolls game with the spellcrafter, athletics, and acrobatics which are core components of the Elder Scrolls series IMO..

I had a great time and made this little roleplaying video about it.

https://youtu.be/vwuXco53WsU

Elder Scrolls, to me, is very much a make your own fun sort of game and I can still have fun in these games easily.

[Bonus!]

Originally posted by chakkman:

Originally posted by Bonus!:

If it wasn't for the funding of Microsoft (from them buying them out and being a multi billion dollar company) then they would be dying, and i don't just mean dying financially i also mean they have lost a lost of fans most of the ones that have any faith left are mainly fanboys.

Nonsense.

im pretty sure Bethesda wasn't very successful between Fallout 76 and Starfield now were they?

[Thorba]

i am now level 21 and one thing i dislike a bit, i found a random enemy with full daedra armor, i dont know if it is the best armor in game but it was very easy to get this.
I dislike the look of this too and hope that there is still other gear at the same power level.
The game still runs without bigger problems, only 1 crash back to desktop so far.

[JPTC]

Originally posted by Thorba:

i am now level 21 and one thing i dislike a bit, i found a random enemy with full daedra armor, i dont know if it is the best armor in game but it was very easy to get this.
I dislike the look of this too and hope that there is still other gear at the same power level.
The game still runs without bigger problems, only 1 crash back to desktop so far.

Definitely one of the worst things about Oblivion. Basically as you level even basic enemies run around suddenly decked out in very strong gear, ie all glass, daedra, etc. It's crazy how it made it past testing/development, but there it is.