The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

Here's something I wroted up in my Chocojournal:

I originally intended to put this off for a while, but it occurred to me that some of you will probably end up buying the game if you haven't already. The following is a severe warning:

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, has been in development for quite a while now. It's one of the most highly anticipated RPGs of the year, and has a very large following. The Elder Scrolls itself is also a great property, in which the player is free to roam in one of the many provinces of Tamriel.

Oblivion, however, fails to live up to any of its hype, is in no way an RPG, and features extremely shoddy aspects of game design.

The first problem when playing the game: rats. Freaking rats. It's as if no Role Playing Game in the history of mankind can ever have a starting area that isn't packed to the gills with giant rats hungry for your man-flesh. So the game starts off with stale conventions. Ok. Not only that, but the beginning of the game is basically a tutorial that instructs you on how to play, and introduces you to the main quest. Not only is it annoying when you're forced to play through a tutorial, but the player is given no option of deciding his class, or the skills he'll focus on, until well into his playtime.

Once you get into the outside, you'll be overcome with a sense of freedom. That freedom is the best thing the game has going for it, so you'd better enjoy it. Like Morrowind, the greatest part of Oblivion's gameplay is the sense of adventure one experiences when exploring new areas. Coming across a mine in the middle of nowhere is exciting, and Daedric Shrines are an especially prime discovery, as performing the bidding of the Daedra can provide substantial rewards.

Of course, as I mentioned before, this is in no way a roleplaying game. Gameplay is entirely combat-oriented, meaning that if you don't select a couple of combat-related skills, you're shit out of luck. The end result, then, is that the player is type-cast into a murder machine, whether he be a powerful mage, hulking bruiser, or silent assassin. Diplomatic paths to victory are out of the question, considering that all of the dialogue in Oblivion is topical, and the few dialogue choices the player is allowed to make have no significant impact on a conversation whatsoever. The main quest is also focused on a single outcome, and the player is given no real option concerning his role as a positive or negative influence on Cyrodiil and Tamriel. Joining the evil cult offers no clear path for progression within the organization, meaning that the player could do something evil (joining involves a blood sacrifice) without having to face any repercussions. Sure, you could join the menacing Dark Brotherhood and go around killing people, but in the end that's all you do, kill people. None of your quests have any impact on Tamriel as a whole, and none of your actions affect the ending (from an intellectual perspective, Oblivion doesn't even have an ending, so much as a conclusion to a quest path more involved than others). Hell, this time around, none of your quests even impact your relationship with the Guilds. I completed all of the quests for the Brotherhood and Thieves Guild, and I could still join the Fighters and Mages guild, and follow their progression paths.

Not only is the player character typecast, but the skill set lacks any sense of balance. If you focus primarily on being combat-oriented, you'll have a difficult time going about things, whereas a character that combines a magic focus with a few select combat skills can walk around as a practical demigod. I should know, I'm roleplaying one right now. Not only that, but many magic schools are practically useless compared to the others. Regenerative magic is obviously a must-have, and Destruction is the only offensive-oriented magic system. Combine that with Alteration and Mysticism, and eventually you'll have a Battlemage that can kick ass, as well as alter her stats and abilities on a whim and enchant and restore items. It is THE most powerful way to play the game, and by comparison, playing as a strict fighter, mage, or stealth becomes a handicap. The magic system is also imbalanced due to the fact that your mana regenerates constantly, which makes sleep and the passage of time meaningless outside of the day/night cycles, and provides an unlimited number of ranged attacks for any one situation.

So, not only is Oblivion anything but a role-playing game, it also has no sense of balance, and a poorly designed skill set. That's three strikes. In baseball terms, this game would be out before you even leave the Imperial city.

Now we come to the interface. The overall design of Oblivion is noticeably dumbed-down due to its cross platform release. From an unintuitive no-drag interface, to item values that are on a scale so small, increasing your skills in their focus takes far too long to gain any increase in value, as well as the scale between lower and higher quality items. Your map, journal, inventory, and stats are all pulled up with one button. You can switch between them using F1-F4, but that obvious feature isn't documented in the manual. Once in the interface, you can use your mouse to click on things, but since there's no real inventory management that allows you to see more than 5 items, meaning a lot of scrolling, it would have been simpler to assign keyboard functions to the player interface. Not only that, but clicking on visited or documented locations on your map transports you automatically to them. This eliminates any need for exploration and travel, as there is no possibility of a random encounter mussing up your day. The player has to force himself to danger the roads, making their presence meaningless, and the fold-out map that comes with the game a useless novelty.

The graphics do not live up to next-gen standards. Vistas, foliage, and architecture are admittedly beautiful, and several spots are breath-taking (so long as you have the right hardware). Character renders, however, are ugly as Hell, the monster designs are unoriginal (as Roshambo of the NMA put it "they're more interested in rendering Minotaur testicles"), and the character animations are blocky and unnatural. When NPCs and monsters move, they appear to glide and float more than they do walk and jump. Looking at yourself in 3D is also pointless unless you strike a pose, because the player character's animations have no relation to the world, essentially creating a "skating" effect.

The Radiant A.I. has been revealed to be nothing more than pure, Grade A, American Raised bullcrap. Bethesda touted the Radiant A.I. as highly advanced, and something that would breathe life into the soulless world of its predecessors. Not only does it fail to accomplish these things, but bugs regarding NPC functions abound. Quirky NPC reactions range from inaction to assault, to assaulting the wrong character, to charging straight into traps. Not only that, but NPC routines usually involve going somewhere, having disjointed conversations with other NPCs, and staring at a wall for several in-game hours. My Making-Of DVD shows an early example of an NPC programmed with Radiant to set goals for herself, and react accordingly to circumstances. This means either two things: one, Bethesda is a bunch of lying bastards, or, the design team was too lazy to assign the NPCs any convincing behaviors or routines whatsoever. Monsters and enemies also don't engage you using any tactics whatsoever beyond cast-a-few-spells and swarm.

The combat itself has barely changed at all. It's still the same shoot-arrows/cast spells from a distance or wildly swing your weapon around until you kill something. *yawn* As a novel touch, though, your arrows tend to stick out where they strike, which makes a killing headshot that much more comical.

The game progression itself is retarded. The game is easy in the beginning. At no point from exiting the Prison, to level 9 did I feel in any way in danger fighting the spawned characters. Enemies in the game, you see, scale-up as you get better, as opposed to there being some strong enemies in certain locations or quests. Guards are always a constant, but enemies that spawn will become either progressively tougher monsters, or humanoid enemies will have increasingly better gear. The end result is that the player is punished for his progression, since these difficult-spawning enemies make a lot of quests highly difficult if not impossible, as where before they were well within the means of accomplishment.

NPC interaction is much less dreadful than Morrowind, however, and the dialogue is better written. Most of the personality injected into characters, however, comes from the game's competent voice acting as opposed to any real written or observable behaviors. There's also no real cultural difference between the towns or races that impact the gameplay. I suppose if I played as the beastmen races Khajiit or Argonian I'd run into some prejudice, but those races faced the same condition in the last game, and there's no NPC you can't butter up through the game's retarded persuasion mechanic.

Ultimately, the biggest change in Oblivion for the better compared to Morrowind is the quest design. A lot of quests are actually really fun. The Dark Brotherhood, for instance, features some great quests that make killing fun. My favorite was a whodunit, in which the Player Character had to socialize with, and murder every NPC in a locked mansion; under the condition that none of them figure out the Player Character is the killer. Simple retrieve-and-deliver quests are much fewer in number, and the player is given goals that more often than not have a good reason behind it. The Main Quest itself is a spectacle unlike any other, though the faction-related quests are very well designed.

I had a lot of fun with Oblivion, but that was mostly due to the sandbox gameplay, which is a mechanic where the player determines how varied his game experience is as opposed to the designers, and the good quests, which is the one aspect of game design that Bethesda actually got right. They appear to have learned from none of the mistakes of Morrowind.

Admittedly, I also have a certain bias. I'm a huge Fallout fan, a franchise which Bethesda currently has the rights to make sequels for. After seeing the abundantly terrible game design presented in Oblivion, coupled with the fact that Oblivion's lead producer is also the head of the Fallout 3 project, it would seem that my prospects of seeing a decent sequel to my favorite roleplaying series will never come to pass. Not only did Bethesda already have no experience with the gameplay mechanic present in Fallout (turn-based tactical grid combat combined with branching dialogue trees for NPC interactions) but they've shown themselves to be incapable of creating a great game using their own original property.

I'd like to not regret my purchase. I did have fun, but ultimately I must be aware of the knowledge that by purchasing this game, I've also essentially supported shoddy game design, and put stock in the business practice of "Hype over Substance." Something likely to carry over into the making of a game that I desperately want to be good.

Games like this sell. They have mass appeal, and are released on multiple platforms. Their media blitz also practically guarantees that they're looked upon favorably by gaming media (though some big-name sites have picked apart a lot of the hype, while Gamespy continues to eagerly suck cock) due to their advertising. It's a game that will appeal to everybody, but it's the only mass-world sprawling sandbox of its kind, which doesn't mean that it's a good game, just the only one of its kind. If you absolutely must play it, then go ahead. You'll probably have some fun. People looking for much more bang for their buck should wait for Gothic 3, though.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well, then you get into the taste problem of whether or not it should be kosher to plug one's chocojournal on the forums. I think that linking to my chocojournal and getting views is gay, and that if text is topical, it should be quoted directly. I suppose I could, however, put it all in a spoil tag, but then that discourages people from reading it, and nothing in particular has been spoiled, other than perhaps the drive to purchase the game.

Also, no offense, but we have rules here against member-moderating.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

There is a definite mental connection between the strike on an opponent as you see it play out in the first-person. However, all you do is basically the same thing over and over and over. The only consideration you have to make is that swiping too fast will wipe out your fatigue.

Morrowind's combat did suck. It was essentially the same kind of system, and while Oblivion has improved somewhat in terms of visual and sound, the mechanic has remained unchanged. When compared to combination-oriented melee like that in Gothic, Oblivion's combat mechanic is pitiful. Oblivion is also unplayable in 3rd Person, because it's impossible to accurately determine where your blows will land. I'm not going to make a comparison to turn-based combat, because action-oriented games aren't about that, yet there's no denying that the combat in Oblivion could've been done in a much more engaging manner.

Yes, the game has flaws. Tons of flaws. Inexcusable flaws for a four year development time. With lazy programmers, ineffective QA, and Howler Monkeys for an art team, it's a wonder this game is any fun at all. I've seen somebody describe the game as "postcard pretty." It's very apt, seeing as how soil erosion and foliage appears to have been given a higher priority than character faces that don't look like they've been beaten with the ugly stick.

People become so enraptured with the open-endedness of the game that they overlook how much shit it's covered in.

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I think I already did, but thanks for giving me permission!

You're welcome.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Originally Posted by BZ

Brady the fact that you think the combat is basically doing the same thing over and over makes your whole post unecessary jargon.

I suggest reading the manual on combat or something.

Alright, I'm gonna suspend my disbelief here for a second and assume you're not an idiot. What does the manual say about melee combat?

Originally Posted by Verbatim

Melee Attacks
There are two types of attacks. Basic Attacks and Power Attacks. Basic Attacks are quick, but do less damage. Power attacks are slow, but do more damage. To make a Basic Attack, click and release the Left Mouse Button. To make a Power Attack, click and hold the Left Mouse Button. Use the W, A, S and D keys to perform different Power Attacks.

Wee. So basically, as I mentioned before, your only real concern involving combat is that swiping your weapon really fast wipes out your fatigue, because chances are that the amount of damage you inflict with a power attack will kill your opponent before one's fatigue gets too low in correlation to the amount of time between swings. The only reason you really ever use fast attacks is in order to train up your weapons skills, if in fact it does do that faster, and the weapon skills gain in amount of times you hit things instead of the amount of damage you've inflicted.

There is no discernable difference between the Blade and Blunt skills. There is, but it adds to that whole "imbalance" issue. (forgive the unnecessary jargon) The power attacks using blunt weapons and blade weapons are exactly the same. Being master in blade, or master in blunt, still has the same effect for a forward power attack. The difference, then, is that blade weapons, which have a much wider range of weapons from light blades to claymores, have a selection between reach and light weight, while Blunt weapons have no honest to God discernable difference between Hammers and Axes, besides the fact that it's more easy to pretend you're Conan with an axe. If there is a difference, like say if atronauchs were weak against blunt, it sure as Hell isn't documented in the manual. There's no real reason to select the Blunt skill, other than the fact that you simply want to have an axe or mace "just because."

The Power Attacks system is also broken. I have to sidestep to do a disarming attack? lolok I'll just sidestep like some kinda retard every time I attack. Then there's backwards power attacks, which more often than not causes me to swing too shallow in relation to my opponent, and the forward dash attacks, which more often than not cause one to either overshoot the opponent due to the game's limited hit range, or too easily close a humongous distance.

Imbalanced, pointless, unnecessary jargon.

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I didn't mean any offense, really.

None taken.

How ya doing, buddy?

I haven't been able to get into the whole soul gems aspect, but if Morrowind is any indicator, you'll have to use the Soul Trap spell to charge any of your soul gems. I don't know whether it charges the appropriately sized gem first in relation to the soul quality or what, but you might want to invest some points into Mysticism.

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Actually Badylama, there is a large difference; namely, the absence of any die casting in determining whether your attack would even [i]hit[/hit] the target.

Right, so it's even more simplistic and less abstracted. It probably works in the game's favor to actually have a skill-based combat system as opposed to attempting a twitch-based orientation with an abstracted combat system. That is a strike against Oblivion, however, in its billing itself as an RPG.

I also have to admit that I'm playing the PC version, and am missing out on the Rumble experience in favor of a more accurate control scheme. However, simply having the controller rumble with every weapon strike is no excuse for simplistic combat.

I was speaking idiomatically.

It works the way it always has. WASD for movement, and the left-mouse button for attacks. The way God intended it to be. Spells and items can be bound to keys 1-9, so I suppose that's something the PC version has on the 360.

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Well, whoever said combat should be abstract?

Role Playing Games. That your attacks are based on a die roll is a part of a roleplaying experience. As your character's stats and abilities increase over time, so does the chances of gaining a succesful attack roll. What use is there, then, in a system where increasing your weapon skill only raises its attack damage by an increadibly low scale?

I already said that having the weapon automatically connect is a good thing considering Oblivion's game mechanic. I'm just saying that it lends the game more towards an Action-Adventure than an honest-to-God RPG.

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Most of the issues I had with the game have been fixed with mods anyway so I've lost the desire to complain.

"It's fine if the developers are lazy, we'll just let the modders pick up the slack for their bullshit and everything is honky dory."

This is the same thing that happened with Neverwinter Nights, and the end result is that what you payed for sucked.

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Relying on user input to make one's product an enjoyable experience for one's customers is a step back. Half-Life was already a great game that was made greater by a modding community. The developer made the effort to create an enjoyable experience for the user before they thought of making a customizeable one.

In this case, we have the opposite occurring. Had Bethesda's team honestly wanted to make a great experience for their customers, they wouldn't have implemented such shoddy design that had to be corrected (within a fucking month) by users with enough time and deidication to pick up their slack. This is never a step forward, it's providing an inferior product in the idea that your users will make it enjoyable. That's highly irresponsible, and shady.

Game developers don't exist to make game engines, they exist to make games. I payed for a game with a developer's kit bundled with it, not the other way around.

Oblivion has content, yes, but none of that content is followed up upon in any meaningful way, because the overall design of the game means that the player only receives a payoff in the form of virtual baubles, and what his imagination can dream up. There is no personal investment in a game like this, because there is no discernable effect on the gameworld outside of dead NPCs, and access to more baubles, and the player has no emotional ties to any of the NPCs because the nature of the dialogue mechanic means that he is incapable of developing a relationship with them.

While I was accomplishing my Dark Brotherhood quests, I began seeing the world as my player character would have seen it. I thought of how the player character would have written down journal entries to describe his situations. Then I thought, why do I have to imagine this? Why isn't this a part of the game? The way the player character interacts with the world around him, he could be as amoral as fucking possible, and there are no negative repurcussions outside of whether or not one chooses to pay a fine, one that tops off by the way at 1000 septims a murder.

That was my one big problem with Gothic 2. No matter how the player character interacts with the NPCs, the player character always says dialogue and performs actions that make him seem like an amoral jerk. It's a deceptive aspect of the game's storytelling, but one that can be ultimately forgiven because the game delivered on so many levels.

The same cannot be said for Oblivion. There is fault after fault after fault, and shooing them away by saying that "the modders can make it better" in no way counters my argument that the game sucks, and that Bethesda is delivering an inferior product by creating lazy design and making poor business practices. Doing so is a disservice to the developers that actually put effort into making their games fun to play, and creates a negative backlash in the industry, because supporting these measures is what hurts the nature of the market.

Also, as an aside, how exactly did Vampire suck? Obvious puns aside, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are, because at the present, not only does your statement lack any merit to the discussion at hand, but it is in no way an argument.

Edit: Heh, wow. Got very involved there. I'll have to get to your post later, NES, but suffice it to say that I think you're very very wrong.

FELIPE NO

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Whew, long post. Anyway, Masquerades was littered with game destroying bugs that the official patches never rectified. Without user fixes the game wouldn't have even really been playable start to finish. My point is, really, at least Oblivion isn't like that. I'll get to the rest later since I'm a little busy on the phone and just wanted to make sure you understood that point. I'll add more in a little while.

That doesn't mean that the actual game sucked, however. Troika was also incapable of properly supporting the game as well, because they sort of went belly-up after its failure. Bugs can be fixed, but shitty design is forever. The prospect of user-side mods making Oblivion "better" just means that you've made an awful game more tolerable. A banking system is cool and all, but it doesn't change the overall game mechanic.

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I think dice rolling is just an archaic tradition that's unnecessary in most recent games. It's a very poor way of simulating the chance of getting something right, which although might be useful in table top gaming, isn't needed in video games.

I highly beg to differ. Die rolls are the most accurate means of determining action success for an RPG, or is it that you don't understand the basic idea behind a role playing game?

Computers are capable of calculating the rolls for die sides in the hundreds of thousands. The mathematical quotient is close enough to be considered relistic, not to mention that the chance for success has to take multiple factors into account.

Let's say I'm trying to disarm a bomb. There's a red wire, a blue wire, and a green wire. Assuming the player character hasn't had any experience leading up to the bomb, he has a single dialogue choice [put your hand over your eyes and cut a wire]. There are three wires, so the basic chance to disarm the bomb is 33.3333%. If, however, the player has a high Traps skill, he can elect to make a die roll to determine his success in disarming the bomb. If the traps skill gives him a 45% chance of disarming the bomb, it's better than the former. The die roll is then made, and if the computer comes up with a factor higher than 65, then the player succesfully disarms the bomb. Mathematically speaking, the probability of the player character disarming the bomb is 1 in every 2.1 times.

This is as good as it gets for roleplaying. What happens when you roleplay, is that you play a game in which the player makes all of the decisions for the player character, but isn't actually playing the character. All aspects of the game are determined from the perspective of the player character, since if the player is allowed to make input into a dialogue tree from his own personal experience, then he is no longer roleplaying. A character with a low intelligence isn't going to be able to debate the finer aspects of existentialism with an urban elite, and win that NPC's respect and trust in the process, despite what the player is aware of.

This goes back to the bomb example. Let's say the player character has had an interaction beforehand with the guy who made the bomb. Through dialogue, the player character could have learned that the bomb designer had an aversion to the color blue. Using that information, the player character could infer that blue is the wrong wire, which increases the base chance of success to 50%. Even better yet, let's say the player character found a manual for constructing bombs in the NPC's abode. In that manual all of the examples use the red wire as the trigger wire. Since the NPC isn't too bright, and the bomb is designed exactly as it is in the manual, the player character may determine that he would use the red wire and follow the book to the letter. Going even deeper into these aspects, the ability of the player character to determine these facts can be based on a certain minimal intelligence quotient. A character whose intelligence is too low won't understand the manual, or a character with a high perception would notice that the manual has an overabundance of red wire usage.

What the player is aware of already is irrelevant. Just because the player is aware of the manual doesn't mean that the player character is. This is the cornerstone of RPG design, in that all aspects of the game are determined by the player character's design, and in the player's control over combat, his ability to tactically execute. Other factors, such as the aforementioned morality determinants can create a situation where the player can roleplay his player character's impact on the game world. A game like Oblivion, in which too many aspects of the player character's interaction is left up to the perceptions and skills of the player, as well as a lack of any meaningful NPC interaction and social impact, keeps the game from being an honest-to-God RPG.

I'll have to go into detail about this later, but a list of true RPGs that I've played is as follows: Ultima series, Fallout 1 & 2, Planescape: Torment, Baldurs Gate, KOTOR and KOTOR II, Arcanum: Of Steamwork and Magick Obscura (a phenomenal roleplaying game hampered by sub-par combat), The Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines.

It's not as if the proper definition of an RPG only applies to a limited amount of games, it's just that the implementation of its model doesn't apply to a vast amount of games that bill themselves as RPGs, despite having absolutely zero aspects of roleplaying.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

And how. When I upgraded my RAM, I turned Self-Shadows on and wondered why the whole thing looked like ass. Good job, Bethesda.

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Masquerades has some pretty annoying issues even with user-fixes BTW. The game has a frustrating memory leak, so if you don't have good ram (gig minimum, even with 1.5 if I play for more than 2 hours straight the game gets stuttery) I'd avoid the game until you get a decent upgrade. Arcanum is pretty good, though, and doesn't have too many issues. Combat is severely unbalanced, though. Harm mage can solo through everything without a sweat. There isn't much need for any other magic, or much incentive to play tech when you realize harm is all you need to own everything in the game.

Point granted on Masquerades. I never said it was perfect in terms of build, but the assessment that it sucked cut deep seeing as how much fun I had with it compared to any other "RPG" that has been released in the past 3 years.

I also covered your points about Arcanum in a review I made before the board crash. Combat was pretty weak to start off with, but the imbalance issues were just rediculous. In a system like Arcanum's, though, there are at least social and quest incentives in roleplaying a Tech-specialized character than in being some faggoty mage.

I also had a problem with the retarded level cap. I understand the need for it, since it keeps the player from becoming untouchable. My issue with it, however, is that it kept your NPCs from levelling up as well, which eliminated the incentive for completing quests outside of its effect on faction and community endings. (another problem with Oblivion's Skill-based system, in that the absence of any ending means that there is no incentive for quest completion outside of baubles and coins)

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This is my main issue with dice rolling. In my opinion, a pathetic old man with little combat experience should not be able to fight on the same ground as a trained fighter in any situation. Yeah, I know the fighter will obviously have more health, be able to swing harder, and on average will have more hits because of his attack bonus. The fact remains, though, that depending on how the dice roll, the old wizard could potentially beat him in a one on one sword fight.

No matter who you are, or how much experience you have, there's always an element of chance that's set by external factors. Your geriatric wizard will always have a chance of striking any object in the event that he's close enough to hit them. Particularly in the event that the goblin has a lowered guard seeing this frail little old man, which negatively impacts his AC and ability to dodge. Even with a 1/16th chance the wizard has in hitting the goblin, that chance still exists. Ruling it completely out simply because you don't think somebody is capable of hitting something even though they have the base functions with which to do so is pretty naive. The only circumstance that should create a 0% chance of strike is in the event that his arms have been paralyzed, or aren't there.

The possibility for a critical also can't be entirely ruled out, because if the wizard has a chance for hitting something, he also has the chance to strike the brain, the heart, an artery, or any other vital part of the creature's anatomy. This has been abstracted in most games, but in games like Fallout and Silent Storm, where hitting certain body parts through called shots affects character status (stun, motionlessness, knockback, all that good stuff) the anatomy factor is a very important and immersive part of the combat. The Fallouts even had an Anatomy perk that gave the player character increased damage rolls, because of the player character's familiarity with anatomy.

Of course, in actual practice, mathematically speaking your mage will almost always die, and one would have to reload a savegame an average of 16 times to get that 1/16th hit, and then probably another 1/20 chance to get a critical. That means that you'd have to reload an average of 36 times just to get a hit that's worth a damn, and I think you can understand how one would have to be a complete idiot to play in such a fashion. So, practically, your complaint regarding the practicality of a die-based system is highly trivial.

As for your issues regarding aesthetics and immersion, that's up to the designers and the art team. I mean, Fallout had animations signifying evasion as well as hideously brutal death, and it was released back in 97. Ultimately, the aesthetic and immersion factor depend a large part on the capabilities of the engine. Silent Storm is full-3D, and renders character positions as they relate to time in the turn series, as well as implementing fully destructible buildings and physics (what the game lacks, though, is a good aesthetic representation of motionlessness or being knocked down, which Fallout has against it). These are mostly left up, again, to the design team. If you think that gliding enemies and swinging wildly at characters presented in the first person is more immersive, then hey, whatever, but how many times have you not stood still when fighting? Now, ultimately, your aesthetic complaint against die-based systems is trivial, as it depends mostly on the game's design.

I don't think talking about this type of stuff is off-topic, since I think the design methods of Bethesda as shown in Oblivion will impact their development of Fallout 3. (outlook not so good) If an RPG moderator disagrees, though, then I won't complain.

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I've played or at least a portion of the games in that list, but I'll definitely have to check out Vampire the Masquerade, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Arcanum. Thanks.

A word of warning about ToE. The story isn't that great. ToE is designed directly off of a classic D&D module, and doesn't have much value to a player that doesn't gain nostalgia from having played it in the 80's. Also, while the combat is absolutely increadible, the game itself is highly unstable. I couldn't even get it to play on this computer, so you can expect to jump through a lot of hoops just to get the game running, and that's before the CtDs. For its present 10 dollar price tag, though, the combat is more than worth the hassle.

Good luck finding a copy of Arcanum, though. You might have to acquire it through less than savory means. Arcanum, by the way, is a great example of the lost artform of manual creation. The Guide to the Empire in Oblivion's collector's edition would have been a standard subsection in the manuals of the days of yore.

Silent Storm, by the way, isn't an RPG, but a turn-based tactical combat game. It uses a die roll system, though, and its levelling combines a skill system that increases as the player characters use them, and an experience gain that affects the acquisition of character perks.

The game Hammer & Sickle, though, is basically Silent Storm billed as a tactical RPG. In practice, though, Nival's ambitions didn't live up to what they're capable of, which led to the roleplaying element of the game being absolutely awful. Combat's still awesome, though. I'll probably have a review for it in my chocojournal by the weekend.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

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You'd think after seeing how stable the source engine was in HL2 that you'd get the same relatively smooth experience from Masquerades but reality can be quite harsh. Outside of the terrible engine problems the game was definitely among the best I've played in a long time, though. I guess I should have been a little more specific during my initial post

Yeah. In Troika's defense, though, what they received was a mid-production build of the Source, before it had been fully tested and had all of the kinks worked out. Further testing of the engine may have violated their agreement with Valve, and they were relegated to QA'ing the immediate problems for the game.

The last half is conjecture on my part, but they still ended up getting the shaft.

I also would like to clarify and say that Die-based combat systems aren't necessarily the prerequisite for a roleplaying game, it's just that they fit the genre the most in terms of representing player character abilities and the chances of success.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

So what are the changes with the new patch?

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.