Some role-playing games are criticised for being too linear, too focused on the main story. The best example I've ever seen is the final chapter of Hordes of the Underdark. Not only do you travel in a dead-straight line from your starting point to the goal, but you pass through a series of one-way gates so you cannot retrace your steps (or return to town for supplies) and there are arrows painted on the ground telling you which way to go.

Oblivion doesn't do things quite like that. There is a main quest: Go here, do this, go there, die. Well, the die part is optional, but it's not avoidable. If you follow the main quest without going and doing other things first - finding better equipment, new spells, and generally levelling up like mad - you will die.

On the other hand, if you wander around near where you start out, you will get bitten by a vampire, and contract vampiritis.

Assuming you don't want to have pale-skin and glowing red eyes and catch fire when exposed to sunlight, you'll need to find a cure. The local temple might be a good place to start - but the only thing they have to offer is to kill you on the spot. When you decline their kind offer, they suggest you try the Wizards Guild. The Wizards suggest you speak to someone at Unseen University. The bloke at Unseen University tells you that he has no idea how to cure vampirrhea, but tells you that the Duke of Dartmoor does. The Duke of Dartmoor (once you get in to see him) tells you to seek out Wendy the Wicked, Witch of the Western Wastes. Once you find her (getting killed only twice along the way) and break into her house, she tells you that she can tell you what the cure is, but first you have to bring her seven Greater Spotted Hufflepuffs. Since you've never seen one Greater Spotted Pufflehuff, much less seven of them, you decide to kill her instead. Or get killed by the monster she summons which attacks you from behind; either way works.

When you've only been playing the game for ten hours, being told you have to go on what sounds like a thirty-hour quest merely to rid yourself of a chance affliction is most unwelcome. Far easier to go back through your saved games to before your encounter with the bipedal mosquitos. But if you're just going to throw away half the time you've spent playing the game every time something like that happens, what's the point in playing it in the first place?

The thing is, it's not fun. There's no sense of accomplishment or adventure. The graphics are extremely detailed, but also thoroughly uninteresting. I think it was Might & Magic 7 that first presented us with a world that was - in the name of realism - the colour of mud from one end to the other. Oblivion is HD mud.

But it's a huge world! It's a huge, boring world.
But there's so many things to see! They all look the same. This town is built on a hill, and that town is... Okay, also built on a hill. Actually, all the towns I've visited so far are built on hills.
But there's so much to do! Perhaps. But do I want to do any of it?
But once you get past (some point involving two weeks of dedicated effort) it's much more fun! Don't. Care.

Score

Graphics: Mud
Sound: Mud
Gameplay: Mud
Overall: Pfft

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:09 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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