Oblivion:Gripes/Game Content

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This article provides Game Content gripes, as part of the Game Content section of the Gripes article.

I believe the biggest realism killer of the game is that you (as the player) are the center of the world. The events do not progress without you in the picture. Because of this, Oblivion does not feel "alive". Here is a list of recommendations for the game to feel alive (if Bethesda people are reading), in no particular order (also feel free to comment/expand the list):

The biggest killer in terms of immersive role-playing compared to Morrowind is that you are unimportant. If you weren't in that cell, the emperor would've given the amulet to someone else, like a guard who's actually qualified to handle the main quest rather than a random criminal. For all he knew, you were in jail for mass murder. Then maybe after the amulet was delivered, the rest of the main quest would've been resolved by a group of skilled warriors. I'm sure the citizens of Cyrodil were uneasy to say the least when they found out that their fate was in your hands. All in all, you being there didn't matter. Yes, there's the vague vision the emperor saw in his dreams that the game developers put in there to make you fell better, when really it just added to the fact that they railroaded you, giving you just enough to make you do the main quest without the feeling of identity you got when you were the Nerevarine.

• Random quests: Constructed from quest pieces (or templates if you will); NPCs, places, rewards are selected randomly. This also includes non-quest findings (i.e. powerful magical items/artifacts/notes found on dead adventurers)
• Random adventurers: Quests can be solved by other people, or other people raiding dungeons/caves would add an extra level of dynamics.
• Events actually happening: If a quest needs some precondition (i.e. somebody kidnapped), it can actually happen in the game (i.e. two ogres knocking out someone and dragging them to a cave), yielding slightly different results each time (based on positions of other NPCs, weather conditions, items/traps placed etc.. And it would be possible that if you are lucky, you can intervene and prevent the quest altogether, or solve it from the start (i.e. You rescued X, here is your reward/You saved X from being kidnapped, here is your reward).
• Limited knowledge: If it's not possible to know something, then I should not know it (i.e. see many master training quests, where you need to find a NPC in wilderness)

This is a trade off, between a quest marker pointing to the person, or traversing the entire map in order to find them. Since oblivion has no 'this general area' type quest markers, it's a choice of one or the other.

In oblivion, it's not implemented quite right, but there is actually something happening when you enter an area (Map markers for example). Find "this person towards this direction near some landmark" is the only information quest needs to give, and when you enter and exit the general area, you can get messages.

• If the game has something, it has to be possible to create that in the game (i.e. armor with more than one enchantment), with one possible exception: daedric/aedric/holy artifacts
• Quests/Events should be just happening, they should not be triggered (i.e "We need to wait until s/he enter this particular ayleid ruin before we open that big oblivion gate, it does not matter how long it takes... No we cannot take over the world before he is all the way ready to stop us")

That would mean that there could be a; "Game over. You have failed to do the quests in the correct order and the world has been destroyed by the daedra". That would appear whether or not you had even found Jauffre, if you chose not to do the very first part of the main quest after leaving the sewers.

You do get a game over message, at least once. Spoiler: In the last Main Quest quest, if Martin dies before you reach the Temple of the One, you get a message saying, "Martin has died. All is lost." And you're prompted to load a saved game.

Not necessarily. Someone else can complete the main quest if you choose not to (drop the amulet, give it to someone, etc.). Too much freedom does not make sense in case of the world being at the brink of utmost destruction. Elderscrolls series try to be realistic, that should include the quest order and timing as well.

Yes but that would be way too complicated and require a LOT of programing and the game might never be released. Anyway, seeing as all other NPC's are a) pansies (like almost everyone), b) idiots (guards especially), or c) soulless and/or evil (such as the Gray Fox or Umbra), who else would do it.

The Gray Fox wasn't really pure evil, a bit like Robin Hood, really. Anyway even evil characters might think "hm... maybe I should stop Mehrunes Dagon from conquering Tamriel so as to prevent myself from getting killed/enslaved." But having someone else save the world instead of you would suck so much. I'd probably kill him for it.

Oh and there is the possibility of never beating the game or getting unique items because some guy got the goldbrand died in oblivion and the town you were in was leveled by a siege crawler

• NPCs should be same as the player, i.e. guards arresting NPCs that committed a crime, beyond quests.

Similarly to how civilians walk around cities on their daily schedules, there should be thieves doing the same, sometimes getting caught. Once they spend their time in prison/escape, they can go back to stealing again. The problem is, the guards never "arrest" NPCs and take them to jail unless it's a scripted quest event. They always jump straight to violently murdering people for minor theft.

This does happen. I have heard and witnessed at least one time where an NPC attacked or thieved from another and guards went after them. I am almost positive these were not quest-related, though they could be a glitch.

When I played "Nothing You Can Possess" on X-Box 360 as I exited Umbaccano's house after receiving the quest, the Imperial Watch chased and killed Claude Maric in Talos Plaza with a cry of "We don't want your sort around here", Maric made himself invisible but to no avail and the part of the quest where he tries to mug you of the treasure didn't happen at all.

You could just assume that the people of cyrodil don't give up without a fight. For some reason, after being arrested I was greeted by not only the bunch from the fighters guild but also the bleak mine guards outside the imperial prison. The fighters guild and city watch attacked them, and inevitably the guild accidentally hit some of the watch, resulting in every availible guard rushing the guildsmen and killing them. Seems a bit harsh but not totally unbelievable.

• A wider set of duties and enhanced AI that remembers and reacts: "Look a corpse in the main street, how interesting...", 5 seconds later: "It's not interesting any more, I'd better continue walking aimlessly...". Also: "The guards are attacking the player! I like the player, so the most logical course of action is...attacking the guards!"

This problem you mention is also a problem in almost every single stealth game ever released. People will be standing right next to you, and you nearly kill them, they freak out and run away, you turn invisible, and 20 seconds later they're complaining they must have had too much to drink. It's really universal.

NPCs will, on occasion, attack guards. This happened to me one time when I broke into Anvil castle and pick-pocketed the queen. Orrin, the Smithy, is a fellow member of the Thieves Guild, and so he attacked the guards when they were attacking me. I think it's usually a matter of the NPCs liking you a whole lot; this makes sense - how much do you have to like someone in order to outright battle local authorities?

Uh.. I think that's the posters point. If my best friend in the world was in a shoot out with the cops, I'm not going to go, "Hey, I'm gonna shoot them too." It really sucks when an innocent NPC is slain by the guards for liking you too much. The only way to save them is to leave the area, but that doesn't always work, either

• Player related quests: The thief happened to choose your house...

That would be terrible! What if you were trying to start a collection of unique items in the game?

He said player related quests, not random anonymous acts of theft. Even when you get arrested and the guards take all your stolen goods, you can always take them back out of the evidence locker if you put in the effort. Similarly, it should be easy enough to persuade/bribe a local hobo to tell you who he saw leaving your house in the middle of the night with a bag of goodies, and which way he went.

This would have to be fairly rare in order to not be annoying. Being robbed any more than 5 times in one game (character lifetime) would get repetitive, especially if you have to go to lengths to track the thief down. Then you have realism - If a house you rarely/never visit (assuming realism is kept to a point that you actually have to look inside the house to realize somethings gone) is robbed, it would be unrealistic to think the beggar still remembers where the thief went afterwards.

It would make for a very nice, one time only, quest. Someone asks you to hide their precious item in your house, then later ask for it back. You go to get it, and find it and many other junk/lightweight things missing, and your window with a "broken" texture. The hunt begins, with a hungover bum as the only witness...

collection/finding a specific item or person). This would also allow a pure speechcraft+mercantile based character to survive.

• Task offloading: Giving quests to other people (Mage scholars/apprentices/fighter guild members/other NPC adventurers). You can either give one of the quests you are supposed to complete, or create a new quest (hunting/ingredient collection/item

I think that would be more realistic, but the Random Adventure part would be a fun killer. You would get cheated out of some great dungeons and side quests. I wouldn't want to find out that by the time I got there, we had won the battle of Kvatch. Also, it's hard enough programming daily schedules for every NPC! How are you supposed to do what you're proposing?

Not only that, but if you were concentrating on thieving for the guild, or pursuing a career in assassination (Dark Brotherhood) you aren't really the 'right type' of person to be expected to save the world. However, with it being a game and not a VR simulation, you need to have the opportunity to do the main quest, whether you actually chose to or not.

For the most part, Oblivion already implements random adventure part to some extend, notice everybody has a daily schedule. I think random adventurers will only cause some problem if there are too many of them. Added dimension is always good.

it may be hard, but not impossible. Anyone who played as a member of house telvanni in Morrowind should remember having your mouth preform tasks for you. no its not quite the same since you don't have the option of doing it yourself, but it seams to me that after so many years they could manage the scripting.

Ayleid ruins are extremely depressing. I know that they are meant to be so etc., but this is really no fun at all.

I disagree - I find the Ayleid ruins with all the glowing Welkynd and Varla stones really beautiful and haunting. The endless quasi-similarity of the oblivion planes, however, bugs me to no end.

I love Ayleid ruins. The atmosphere is nice and I quite enjoy avoiding the traps, makes me feel like Indiana Jones or something. As awesome as Oblivion gates were I did get tired of them pretty quickly though.

Well they are supposed to be former cities, so I want them to be more city-like.

Related to the lack of freedom of some quests: I am extremely sad that you can't get on Mathieu Bellamont's side at the end of the Dark Brotherhood questline.

Well duh. He'd wanna kill you. You're already a speaker by then, do you really think he's gonna believe you want to betray the Dark Brotherhood? He's a complete nut job, besides. Have you read his journal? killhimkillhimkillhimkillhimkillhimkillhimkillhim is not a normal thing to be writing.

Whats normal for a member of the dark brotherhood?

Similarily, I'm trying to be a good man, but just happened to meet up with Lucien. I wish I could warn Rufio that there are people trying to kill him.

Actually rufio was evil a rapist if im not mistaken (ralk to him before you kill him, one of his responses proves it)

Many guilds don't have enough perks when you get to master of the guild. You should be able to promote/demote people at least and for the Fighter's Guild second-in-command I think you should be able to choose any Champion I may want Azzan for second-in-command. Also in the Mages Guild the idiot scholars shouldn't be able to blow you off like that. Thieves Guild just completely disapeers after you complete it most of the time once I'm done with it I never go back to the guild hall. DB you should be able to appoint the Black Hand again and let them choose their silencers and everything else. You should also be able to go into other sanctuaries of DB if their supposed to be spread all over Cyrodiil.

Although I am playing a female character, all the sounds associated with her are the same as the male character sounds. I mean every time she gets hit, lobs a weapon, etc., it is a "man-grunt." I think that when she dies is the only female sounding noise she makes, and the audio is overlayed on top of the male-dying sound. This is really harmful to the immersion factor, so I try to keep her in 3rd person while elsewhere in the world, but then she's silent anyway! I can't believe this was overlooked during development.

I had the same complaint, but then I thought it might be because I'm playing a female Dunmer, and the NPC female Dunmer voice, at least, is low and gravelly anyway. Is this a problem with all female races? It still is distracting to me too after 70 or so hours of gameplay.

I have a Female Breton who makes appropriate feminine grunts and yelps when striking and when struck. I haven't tried females in other races though.

Are you sure it's not a just very deep female voice? I've got a Bosmer with the same problem. Still, I think there should be an option to choose your own voice, or at least the pitch of it. A barely-out-of-his/her-teens character should not sound the same as some old fogey.

My female redguard sounds like a female redguard. A pitch slider would be nice, but old fogeys don't sound old just because of the pitch of their voice. It's more of a roughness, and having mannerisms picked up thirty years before we young gamer types were born. I think part of the problem might be that when people talk, they sound (for social reasons) very much like their race, gender, and age. When people yell in the middle of a battle or grunt with effort, they don't bother with all that, and sound much more alike.

I see a lot of talk about breaking immersion, and yet nothing about the most glaring missing aspect of daily life. There are no toilets, chamberpots, wash basins, bathtubs, public baths, or even hair brushes. It would be great fun to assasinate someone who is 'indisposed'. I guess the lesson here is that everyone in Tamriel smells like a goat.

Do you really want to have to spend every day eating, drinking, sleeping, bathing and using the bathroom? Think of how many days go by in a usual session and how quickly tedious that would become.

I agree with you (then again, I hate realism mods in general anyway), but quite a few people don't. This is evidenced by the popularity of the Necessities of Morrowind, a mod that forces you to drink, cook, and get a solid night of sleep. Just judging by the number of other mods that included support for it, it must have been fairly popular. I think this gripe is basically asking for a Necessities of Oblivion. That aside, can we agree that a mod that just adds outhouses and places hairbrushes in some houses could be a good thing?

The question here is whether or not it's actually any more realistic to have bathrooms scattered around when you never have to use them yourself. So the logical alternative is to force you to use them, or not have them at all. One is The Sims. The other is an RPG. Guess which one Oblivion is trying to be...

I thought about this one after about 20 hours of gameplay and here's what I came up with. If they added a toilet/bathtub to one home, they'd have to add them to just about every other building in the entire game. It would be a waste of memory for something that would not affect gameplay whatsoever.

Does it seem odd to anyone that NO ONE in all of tamriel actually has a real BEARD. sure they have stubble but come on. and no shoulder length hair??? In "Medieval" times it was much more difficult and time consuming to shave or cut hait. I just dont see how others failed to see this sense so much was put into designing every aspect of your characters face.

I agree that the lack of a real beard (not just the 5 o'clock shadow) is painfully obvious when almost every other aspect of a character's face can be changed. I’d kill to have a Nord with a ZZ Top style beard. By the way, shoulder length hair is available; choose the appropriate hair style and simply increase it's length by moving the slider over. Some styles will be longer then others.

What I really hate is when you're fighting alongside allies, they always manage to get in the way of your sword or arrows. The worst part of it is that after you hit them a few times they turn and attack you, even if the enemy is still alive. It seems there should be some way to have it where they turn on you after the real fight is done. To prevent even that have them always go to an enemy you are not attacking; if it is the only one, have important characters hang back and others try to flank the enemy, attacking from the other side.

It’s called friendly fire and it does happen, you need to pay attention to your surroundings and where your allies are at, you can’t expect them to always be out of the way. Also they attack you because you hit them repeatedly (at least 3 times) and they perceive you as a greater threat. If they do attack you can always yield to your allies and they’ll stop attacking you and go back to fighting the enemy. You can’t expect your followers to break off combat every single time and attack some new threat that emerges, they might not even know there is a new threat being in mortal combat with an enemy, if they are attacked by a new comer they will break off and deal with the attacker.

I'll admit I found it somewhat annoying too, and it greatly limited my interaction in large battles, but I think ultimately this just adds to the realism. I would imagine real warriors probably faced this same problem at times, swinging their sword a little too widely. I would suggest casting a paralyze spell on the enemy. Lets your allies hack away with freedom and gives you time to make sure they are clear for you to deliver some clean strikes.

Although the side quests are variable, the main quest simply isn't interesting and hard as u would expect from a great game like this. You being the chosen one, Hero of the Kvatch, Great Savior of the Land can bother intelligent gamers. The Emperor saw 'something in your eyes'. It really isn't a promising start. But if we even skip this intro, because the game designers didn't have enough patience and imagination to do something better, it really struck me how easily I followed and finished the main quest. It was cheap-easy. Battle between Lord Daegon and the Emperor, similar to Voltron, was so predictable, and the worst part is when the Emperor says that he don't see how could he stop Lord Daegon, and the Great Hero of the Kvatch reminds the wise Martin about one 'little' thing - Amulet of Kings. Martin than says something like 'Oh, yeas, the Amulet'. So, we fought and fought for Amulet, did beautiful mission in Paradise, very interesting mission in Bruma, with closing the big gate and the lack of time, and Martin just slipped his mind about it. That can annoy even a not-so-intelligent gamer, and I was furious in some way, buy the stupidity of this dialog. On the other side, it was so easy... I would expect hard mission, with some big level demanded for it, with the time slipping, like in closing the big gate mission, or something else, imaginary, interesting, different. But no, you can do it whenever you want, if you are level 2 or 33. In Fallout 2 you couldn't just attack Enclave, oh no, you had to be very very very prepared for it, while that part is missing in Oblivion. After I finished the game so easiy, I was angry at the game designers and thought that it would be better to give me, or to some other creative person instead, the money to think about something better, which will hold the concetration of the gamer, and make him wonder how would he finish the main quest, with what strategy etc. They could come up with a lot of different things which could enrich the game. And when I finished the main quest, I was left pointless in same way, although there were a lot of side quests, vast unresearched territories and level-ups to finish.

The whole point of an Elder Scrolls game is to allow you to do what you want, WHEN you want, if you want to complete the main quest straight away, so be it. As for the dialogue, it does need some better written pieces but these people are game designers, not playrights.

Now there's something that needs to be corrected in the game industry as a whole - the fact that so few studios see qualified staff writers as a necessary expenditure. It's such an obvious thing that it's incredible how long it's taken to begin to catch on. Of course you need specialized programmers, scripters, artists, modellers, and a dozen other things, but somehow writing a good story (and moreover, putting flesh on the bones of the aforementioned) is a task that's often given to people who, through no fault of their own, simply aren't always up to the challenge. You'll generally see that in the credits of a game with a truly great story, the name of the lead writer appears alone and nowhere else but under that title. It's their job, their only job, and no one else's. It's a specialist skill, and it's a hole that needs to be filled by specialists.

The Defense of Bruma was nowhere near as epic as I thought it would be. I imagined a huge, all-out battle, with a small regiment from each town, including the Imperial City, plus some Blades, Knights of the Thorn, Knights of the Nine, and Knights of the White Stallion, each with some warriors, some archers, and some spellcasters. Instead, we get: you, Martin, Jauferre, Baurus (possibly), Burd, and one (two if you're lucky) soldiers from each town except the Imperial City. I realize that anything bigger would be pushing the engine's limits, but the quest as a whole is quite mediocre compared to what one would expect.

You can get Mazoga to follow you as well as a Knight of the Nine, Dark brotherhood murder, Mage apprentice, Adoring Fan, ShadowMere, The Jemane Brothers, Maglir, eight guards from the other cities, your atronach familiar, you can also use command humanoid spells to add more people to your side. You can summon a Daedra or Undead, you can use the staff of worms to bring dead enemies such as Umbra into the battle, and in reality how big this battle is up to the player. Granted you can’t bring a whole brigade of allies to fight off a division of Daedra but you can build up a descent size platoon for this fight.

I find it very odd that of all the races with 'hair', the Khajiit is the only one that can not change said hair's color. At all. I enjoy playing a White Khajiit, but when I'm required to use generically blonde-brown hair, it kind of ruins the look of it.

The raining in Kvatch never ends. You may stand in front of the city gates in lovely sunshine and blue sky, and once you enter, it's all dark and rainy and miserable. Also, you'd think that the fires in the city would have died out after 1.5 years.

You can change the weather with the Console. The city isn't very pretty in the sunlight, though. All burnt and blackened.

Even if it wasn't all dark and miserable there wouldn't be any point to it. there are no good loot locations, no people, no services, and no horses, no houses, and no sleep locations, so it doesn't need to stop raining (and the fires dont have to stop burning:)) unless you have a hobby of waiting around until normality is restored.

Ok, i found the right place to say this. I think that Oblivion is a great game and all these other gripe people are just whiners who need everything their way. i am just a bit annoyed with the fact that the rain goes through any outdoor rooftops. i mean, that being said there is no reason why the beggers of cheydinhall should stand under riverview when it rains. PS: i found that the rooftop of the Benirus Manor balcony does deflect rain.:)

This is just due to the way the visuals for rain and snow were designed. As far as I know, your character is basically inside a tube of animated rain or snow, which is why it follows you when you walk. This is more noticeable with snow. So even though you are under shelter the rain effect must continue in the same way or it would seem as if it had stopped raining altogether. Make any sense? Correct me if I'm wrong. Although I need to check under the Berinus Manor balcony to see what's up with that.

With all the graphical R&D that went into this game, the developers somehow managed to overlook by far the most useful and powerful performance-tweaking technology developed to date: mesh LOD scaling. In Unreal Tournament 2004 (a game built for the GeForce FX series), I can play with the mesh LOD factor to my heart's content and get 30fps out of the game (at admittedly crappy visual quality) in a busy Onslaught level with 30 players on a measly GeForce 2. In Oblivion, I have to kill the view distance, having a pronounced gameplay effect, and STILL can't eke out more than 5fps in most areas on my GeForce 6200. I can't help but look at the several-million-triangle rocks in the outdoor areas and think about how much faster the game could run if only I could remove a million or so of those triangles. But no, Bethesda decided that everyone that plays the game must have all models rendered in their raw, abusive maximum polygons. There was a time when brand new games would run comfortably on budget chipsets upwards of three years old. I want to see those days come back. There's really no good reason that Oblivion couldn't have run, and well, on a GeForce 3, out of the box.

The GeForce 6200 is NOT a gaming card. It is an absolute entry level desktop card that was not meant for ANY kind of gaming other than MILD 2D stuff. I have a friend that runs half life two at ALL LOW at 640x480 and BARELY cranks out 6fps. If you want to play Oblivion, for god's sake, have a decent graphics card before complaining. There's a lot more going on than polygon counts.

There is not one working mirror in the entire game. I would have loved for my character to be able to look at himself in the mirror, just once.

The way females look so....gross. Don't get me wrong, I'm not asking for the game to become some Final-Fantasy setting, where all the women are gorgeous. I know that there are some people that should be ugly, as that's...what real life is like. However, even the npcs that were (presumably) intended to be attractive look bloated. I don't understand what it is, but I myself spent about 30 minutes with the face-editor at the beginning of the game, and could not produce a female that was attractive, at all. This may seem like a petty, shallow complaint, but really, several books/comments make mention of notably beautiful women, and such women simply don't exist in the game. I've seen many mods that have changed the structure of faces such that the women are much better looking (and honestly, more realistic - sure, these are more medieval times, but that doesn't mean every chick is a hag), so it's definitely not ~impossible~.

30 minutes? I'm not surprised you had no progress. Working with the face editor, unmodded on my 360, I can do it, but it takes around one and a half to three hours. You just have to take a lot of time to practice with the editor and you can create basically anything you want. so far my repertoire includes Jay Leno, Hitler, Paris Hilton, Harrison Ford, and yours truly. Its not hard, but its not easy either. Just spend some time with the editor and you'll figure it out. I think the biggest problem here is that even though you CAN replicate these faces, the entire rendering is a polygonal surface so it just doesnt look as realistic or high quality as cinematic CG much less RL does.

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