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Sep 18th, 2010 at 10:50:58 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC) |
I've been sitting on Oblivion for over a year doing a 'save the best for last' kind of thing. I'm dumbfounded though by how much un-fun I'm having playing it. I just played for a couple hours, first time in a week and have this feeling of disappointment, and I'm trying to figure out what all that consists of, so I jotted a number of things down.
1. It's just getting old fast. Same thing over and over. I think this is the biggest issue I'm having, the repetition and monotony, and blandness really. NPCs are simply not interesting. 95% of them are basically the exact same, say the exact same things as each other, and do those silly daily routines that (a) don't matter unless it's for a quest and you need to watch someone, and (b) just feel forced. I walked into a couple's house, and they had the same conversation you would hear on the street. "Hello!" "words words words." "Well, goodbye!" Who says goodbye to their spouse in their one-room house and then stands there facing the wall?
The towns are all also exactly the same. There's a castle, inns, a ton of houses with barrels full of the same junk, and a couple quests. The quests I do like in general, and perhaps if I stuck to doing quests and didn't dally with other things, I'd enjoy the game more. Something to consider. And insta-travel just means I don't have to see anything besides the towns. But what does running around do? Well, I see pretty scenery that's 99% nothing worth me looking at and 1% optional dungeons or some random monsters or something that doesn't really matter to anything in the story or the larger game world. There are the same old enemies everywhere. Either bandits or zombies or skeletons or wolves or some ghosts that I can't attack with my bow and arrow.
2. The last point brings me to #2. Using a bow and arrow sucks. Even though I'm using what I think is a pretty good bow and powerful arrows, enemies take a long time to die, so they close in on me well before I kill them. In fact, I just have to kite them around. A lot. And I'll use up 30 arrows on one enemy. When you only have like 100, that's pretty annoying. And you can usually retrieve about half back off the corpse. The other half mysteriously disappear forever. If you're shooting skeletons, all your arrows bounce off them and when they die, you have to try to pick them all up off the ground. And then the ghosts don't even take arrow damage, which is stupid. So I have to use my practically nonexistent fire spell casting ability to kill them, which takes like 5 minutes per ghost. If a player chooses to focus on bows and arrows, they're still going to be shooting a lot of fireballs. If I were to start over, I would create a character that was strong in both physical and magical damage. I do kind of want to start another character and try out all the magic. But if I'm just going to get bored again, then no.
3. I see this contrast between what the designers probably wanted to be populated and living cities versus the vast and untamed wilderness. Cool idea, and it kind of works. The wilderness is indeed vast, but I haven't felt like I'm exploring it for any reason. And it's certainly sparse compared to the cities. Every now and then I see an enemy or a statue or something. And the cities merely look populated. All the gripes I've listed before with the NPCs don't make cities feel populated. They are filled with vacuous and droning NPCs who are mostly awkward around each other and do silly things.
4. Sort of following from all the above, I feel I have no direction in the game. I know I have quests, and one main quest, but the world is just so big, I feel like I should go exploring. But exploring seems pointless, but I don't want to just shoot from quest to quest without looking at stuff. So I guess what I'm trying to say is because this massive world was put in front of me, I feel compelled to go see it, even though I don't really want to, like eating a food you don't want to be a good guest at dinner. Also, there is no urgency, none. The main quest? No urgency. I could do it like 10000 game days from now and no one would care. In fact, no one has reminded me of the main quest since the beginning of the game when I got it. Just a bunch of side quests. So, I feel like I've got no direction, and if I've got no direction, I'm just going to wind up sniping guards from the rooftops and picking all the locks I can find, which also gets kind of boring.
5. Finally, I don't feel like my character is advancing in any meaningful way. I get some skill points but it really doesn't seem to make too much difference. Just every now and then I pick enough locks to get a point in security or a heal myself enough times to get a point of restoration, but out of 100 points, 1 isn't a lot, and my healing still sucks, and my lockpicking is still exceptional. Leveling up just doesn't seem to be an important event and it feels very mundane, and makes me disinterested.
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Sep 11th, 2010 at 11:10:55 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC) |
Cool things:
1. Apparently if you kill someone, the Dark Brotherhood, which is like the shadowy murderer's guild, comes to you in your sleep, so I got a quest to join them. I'm already in the Thieves Guild, which has a strict no-kill policy. Wonder if I can join both?
2. Getting better at picking locks and found out I can pick Very Hard locks! Unstoppable. Also, the guy who buys my stolen goods sells me lock picks. Manually picking locks is getting tedious, but luckily there is an 'auto lock pick' button that rolls your skill and the lock difficulty and seems to waste about as many lock picks as I do anyway.
3. I'm loving insta-travel. This makes it ridiculously easy to get places, even if it's terribly unrealistic and makes it so I don't explore the wilderness as much as I normally would. But actually I've been spending so much time, about all of it really, in cities, so the next time I play I'd like to get outdoors. I have a couple quests that require actual walking.
4. Loving the quest chains. Did one today where a widespread rumor about a woman who's husband landed himself in jail and hid their gold, and now she's poor and penniless. She tells me to go to him in prison and find out where the gold is so she can support herself. She said they were petty thieves and he insisted on a big job and killed someone, then was arrested while she was off gathering food. He wouldn't talk to me when I went to the prison to find him, so I had to get myself arrested so he'd trust me as a prisoner. I pick-pocketed a guard and landed in his cell, whereupon he told me SHE was the lying murderer and she'd screwed him. He wanted her dead and then he'd tell me where the gold is at. His story made way more sense, especially since she wanted half the gold and he just wanted her dead for getting him in jail. So I killed her (that's when the Dark Brotherhood found me next time I slept) and he told me where the gold is hidden. Haven't gone to get it yet, but I will.
Lame things:
1. Speechcraft mini-game getting tedious like lock-picking, but unfortunately there's no auto-speechraft button. I just kind of quit trying to influence people unless they seem important. Down side to that is my skill doesn't go up as much, which means I might not level as fast. But since everything in the game scales to your level, I guess that doesn't matter, now does it?
2. Houses all have the same stuff. People in Oblivion are very homogeneous. They all read the same 10 or 15 books, have the same magical green and never-browning lettuce in baskets, and the same junk in all their treasure chests. In one city, I stole a key off a guard to the Imperial Trading Company warehouses. All the boxes and things just had like Worn Slippers and a piece of Wheat and various other junk. Nothing good! Then three of the warehouses had this same table set-up with a table, 1 chair pulled out at an angle, a fruit basket tipped over on the table, and 3 apples spilled on the floor in the same spots! I think it's cool they try to populate the world with NPCs and countless objects, but it feels really monotonous overall. I should break in to less houses I guess.
Silly NPC things:
1. NPCs are still exhibiting mind-boggling and erratic behavior. I mean, sometimes when I'm inside their homes illegally, they run up to me and warn me they're going to kill the guards. Other NPCs just go about their business as if I'm not even there. The lady I mentioned yesterday who kept on eating, well, it turns out she was the lying thief I had to kill for the quest with the guy in the jail today. She kept on munching at her dinner table until I drew my bow and shot her! Then we fought down the stairs, somehow a guard appeared, inexplicably, so I had to kill him too. Which brings me to #2..
2. This guard was chasing me around the lady's bed with his sword trying to cut me, If I got him on the opposite side, he'd just run forward into the bed swinging at air while I shot him with arrows. Eventually he'd find his way around the bed, but I could just get him stuck again, swinging wildly at me and missing because the bed was between us, like he didn't even realize the bed was there.
3. The first time I went to see the prisoner, before I realized I had to be arrested, I asked a guard if I could talk to the inmate. He said okay, and then both of the guards followed me down there. Any time I walked up to a door, they'd yell at me, "Don't touch those locks!" just over and over and over, "Don't touch those locks!" "Don't get too close to the prisoners!" It was really annoying. The next time I went back, the guards didn't even notice me and I picked all the locks, except the one where my prisoner was because I thought he might go take his gold before I could get to it.
And finally, since I had to get myself arrested, I had to pay the bounty on my head. Now, I'd killed a city guard and that woman for the quest. My bounty? A little over 2000 gold. Is that all their lives were worth? I didn't feel bad killing them in the game at first. One I was avenging a wrong for another person and the guard was self-defense, but I did feel bad once I realized they only cost me about 1000 gold each. Life is cheap, huh? And to get the gold, I stole from people, including the woman I killed.
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Sep 10th, 2010 at 05:51:53 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC) |
Had a nice long session of Oblivion today and enjoyed it more than the other times I've played. I chalk this up to finally leaving the Imperial City, which is just so huge and full of shops and locked doors that I'm compelled to break into all the houses and just systematically steal things. It gets boring. I used the new teleportation travel in Oblivion. I think it's like cheating, but I can't say I don't like it. You can travel from city to city in the blink of a loading screen, and to other locations once you visit them first. Cities you don't even have to visit first! You can just teleport all around the world as you please.
I joined the Thieves Guild, which is always fun. Gotten better at sneaking around and stealing things, timing it when no one is looking. Unfortunately my thief character has super low strength, so super low bag space, so I really can't carry much at all. The perk of the Thieves Guild is that you gain access to a merchant who will buy stolen goods (no other merchant thus far will, making stealing pointless!), and you actually advance in the Thieves Guild by selling stolen items! How cool is that? So the biggest break-ins and robberies you can manage, the better for your reputation.
I traveled from the Imperial City to a Norse-type village where my stolen goods buyer lives, and cleaned out most of the houses of good stuff. I also completed a pretty cool quest chain, which is another reason I enjoyed today more. I got more of a variety of quests. There was a murder in the Norse village. Apparently a vampire was living among the people, and a mysterious man came to town claiming to be a vampire hunter, identified the vampire and killed him. Well, the victim's wife swears he wasn't a vampire and just knows something is up. So I go talk to the inn-keeper, who I influence to give me a key to the vampire hunter's room, where I discover a stolen journal of a third party -- a third party who was also supposedly a vampire and who the hunter killed before arriving at the Norse village. The journal was very revealing and described a treasure the three men found, and they each got a key so no one could open it alone. There's the motive. The one guy got greedy, justified killing the other two. He escapes to a cave hideout where the treasure is hidden and the city watch implores me to follow him and take him out. I did, and it was awesome. I recovered the treasure, which was a plain amulet, but when I took it back to the victim's wife, she revealed that it had a masking spell on it so no one could see its magic. I didn't look at what it does, but it's magical somehow, so it's better than nothing!
Also, here is the daily list of silly things I caught the AI doing:
1. 2 NPCs having a secret meeting I was supposed to eavesdrop on stood facing one another in the rain for about 2 game hours without saying anything. I was hidden behind some trees. I finally decided it was broken and walked up to them, triggering the cut scene, with me in plain view. Totally unrealistic and spoiled the stealth mood I had going on.
2. Lots of NPCs in this game go to the taverns and inns and drink alone. It's kind of sad.
3. NPC 1: Ah! Have you heard anything about the other proving lies?
NPC 2: Yes!
NPC 1: Ah! Have you heard anything about the other proving lies?
NPC 2: Good day!
NPC 1: Good bye!
4. Some NPCs just do not care that I'm in their house prowling. One woman was eating breakfast when I picked her lock. She looked straight at me and kept eating. Other NPCs did this too, where they just kind of faced the other way and turned every now and then, so I could just go through their stuff behind their backs when they definitely know I'm there. And then to add insult to injury, I'd pickpocket them before leaving their house.
5. Guards arrest me for stealing *sometimes* Usually if I reload it, they forget all about my crime. I'm still unsure as to how exactly they figure out that I've been stealing things.
So yea, entertaining. Shops are still not worth stealing from because those the guards tend to come and the shop-keep follows me around, but homes are a cinch.
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Sep 4th, 2010 at 21:01:23 - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (PC) |
Finally started playing Oblivion this week. Only had the game sitting in my case for over a year. I notice several things I'll talk about: (1)expectations; (2)autonomous tensions; (3)speechcraft
(1)I played Morrowind back in the day. I don't know if I ever beat it, but I know I played with at least two different characters and distinctly remember picking a lot of locks, stealing a lot of items, and levitating and raining fireballs on city guards. Those are all things I enjoy doing in games, especially stealing things. I enjoy seeing what I can get away with. In Oblivion, I initially tried to steer toward a kind of caster/melee/thief hybrid, but due to trying to be efficient with race/class/skill combinations, I wound up with a straight thief (sneak, security, marksman, acrobatics, speechcraft, mercantile). I am good at stealing, sneaking around, talking and haggling, and shooting things with a bow. I didn't want to just be the same thief I tend to like to play, so this was achieved by focusing on ranged attacks rather than melee attacks, which I'm thoroughly enjoying.
So, what I expected from this game was to be able to go anywhere and do anything. I expected to be able to sneak around stupid NPCs, pick their locks and their pockets, sell my stolen goods, be rich, assassinate people, explore the world, be a hero and a villain, and eventually decide to complete story missions. This is what I've realized. Oblivion touts intelligent and realistic NPC AI. My enjoyment of Morrowind was largely based on the fact that NPCs were idiots and I could get away with whatever I wanted, breaking all the rules with minor penalties for being caught. This is how most open-ended free-roam games are, in my experience. In Oblivion, the NPCs certainly are...mmm, I hesitate to say 'smarter,' but, maybe they are more observant, more cautious, and more suspicious. Being smarter or more holistically realistic would entail a whole range of behaviors, some of which I see in the game failing, others of which I see in the game working, and others of which I see not at all.
Oblivion's emergent AI, or whatever they called it, is interesting so far. I've come to the Imperial City where citizens roam around. Apparently, everyone has a schedule that they follow, and depending on various things, NPCs will perform a range of actions, such as eating, sleeping, walking, etc. at certain points of the day. I was reminded of this when I came to the city the first time. It was night, and I was exploring. I wasn't paying attention to the time of day, and came to a locked shop. Weird. Picked the lock, went upstairs to the bedroom, was busy stealing things, when I hear footsteps! The shop-owner apparently just came home from somewhere and was going to sleep! I hid behind the door and waited for him to get in bed. He never saw me. So he must go out at night and come home around a certain time for bed. Now what happened next is something that irritates me. I went to pick his pockets while he was sleeping. He caught me, yelled, "Guards!" and then stood there and proceeded to carry on his normal NPC conversation with me. He told me some rumors, gave me directions, and even gave me a quest! I would think he would run outside, refuse to talk to me, or attack me. But no, normal conversation follows. So, following the normal conversation, I go outside. I am immediately arrested for pickpocketing. What? How? The victim was upstairs in his private room. There's no way a guard heard him yell or could have known I stole from him. Another time, I picked a lock in a shop, went inside the room, to find a guard standing there, who promptly arrested me. Why would a guard be inside the private bedroom upstairs of a shop in the middle of the day behind a locked door alone?
(2) This leads to problems of being autonomous in the game. I cannot do what I want, when I want, where I want, because NPCs are, not only overly cautious (they follow you around in their shops -- how weird would that be in RL if the proprietor followed you around as you browsed in his shop?), but they do things that don't make sense. Of course, you have to play within the rules of the game, like the rules and norms of real life when you go out, but I expect these to make sense, and I expect to be able to manipulate these rules in certain ways. I know how to do things I'm not supposed to without being caught or getting in trouble. Maybe I haven't spent enough time in the game, but it's frustrating that I'm having trouble playing how I want to play. Then again, maybe I have to come to terms with the fact that that's how the world of Oblivion is and I can't blame it.
I do, however, feel free to explore outside the city. At the beginning of the game, you escape from prison, and upon exiting the sewer escape route, you see a vast expanse of land, a river and rolling hills. Your main quest leads you far away, and from that point, you are free to go where you want. I turned in the opposite direction of the quest and ran, soon discovering a little bandit camp and some kind of ruins. I explored them, found some treasures, killed some skeletons, and felt like I'd been somewhere no one else has ever seen. There must be tons of places like that in this huge land, and I find that really exciting, because I can play through again and probably have a similar, but different experience.
I'll also have a different experience if I play through again because of the level of possible character customization. You can mix and match any skills and attributes and races to play exactly how you want. The trouble for me is I want to be a kickass thief, marksman, mage, alchemist, and about 90% of the other skill/class combinations. Very difficult to do all that with one character.
(3)Finally, an improvement to the NPC AI I do see is their reactions to me. Depending on race, deeds, etc., NPCs will like you more or less, and you can influence this with a little speechcraft mini-game. You can do this with most any NPC, and how it works is you can either admire, joke, boast, or coerce them. You can only select each speech type once per round and you must select all four. Now, NPCs either hate, dislike, like, or love the four speech types, and you have to play the game to raise their opinion of you. You gauge their hate, dislike, etc. by facial expressions, which are really well-done. Mouse over 'joke' and they may slightly frown. Mouse over 'admire' and they may smile broadly. It's a fun game, very easy with practice and an increasing speechcraft skill, and affects the amount and type of information they give you, maybe giving or withholding quests, price of buying and selling goods, etc. I feel it adds some realism to the NPCs, them being able to make recognizable facial expressions and me being able to respond to them. In addition to this, NPCs also talk with one another on the street. It can be kind of awkward conversations ("Hello!" "Hi, how are you?" "Goodbye!") or actual interesting ones that may give hints or useful information. Apparently the NPCs will engage in a lot more random, pointless, dumb, etc. behavior that I haven't seen yet. So far, I'm fairly impressed with the NPCs' interactions with each other and my ability to influence them, even if in shops, they are ridiculously cautious and guards are prone to arrest me.
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