Although the entire game has kinda become a meme in recent years, I love The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Its a really charming game, and although people like to rag on it for being “generic lotr fantasy” I dont think thats a bad thing. Sometimes you just wanna play a run of the mill fantasy game and explore some dungeons. Plus it still had enough weird and bizarre things to keep it interesting, like the Shivering Isle dlc. I have fond memories of playing the game all the time back in school. One time I beat the entire Knights of the Nine dlc in a single sitting. It can be really clunky, weird, and downright broken but I still love it.
Morrowind is still better tho
Nothing before or after Morrowind had this level of familiar-but-alien vibe. Telvanni towers of huge mushrooms, giant crab shell being a redoran town, dwarven ruin, where some npcs standing around in the dark are being held as cattle by vampires… wonderful.
I think its the fact that the game starts out weird, alien, and hostile to you (including the people of Morrowind) and the more you play the more you understand. By the time you finish the main quest, you completely understand this world and its secrets. You’ve mastered the setting.
I think oldschool games that were pre-minimap wonderful that way. The maps were often better designed to be distinct and navigable without a map, and by the end of the game you really learn the map in a way you don’t in a lot of modern RPG’s.
Gothic 2 and Risen are some I really remember fondly for this.
I’d go back to Oblivion if it weren’t for the scaling enemies. That really takes a lot of the fun away for me, ever since I realized the game does this.
Although the entire game has kinda become a meme in recent years, I love The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Its a really charming game, and although people like to rag on it for being “generic lotr fantasy” I dont think thats a bad thing. Sometimes you just wanna play a run of the mill fantasy game and explore some dungeons. Plus it still had enough weird and bizarre things to keep it interesting, like the Shivering Isle dlc. I have fond memories of playing the game all the time back in school. One time I beat the entire Knights of the Nine dlc in a single sitting. It can be really clunky, weird, and downright broken but I still love it. Morrowind is still better tho
Nothing before or after Morrowind had this level of familiar-but-alien vibe. Telvanni towers of huge mushrooms, giant crab shell being a redoran town, dwarven ruin, where some npcs standing around in the dark are being held as cattle by vampires… wonderful.
I think its the fact that the game starts out weird, alien, and hostile to you (including the people of Morrowind) and the more you play the more you understand. By the time you finish the main quest, you completely understand this world and its secrets. You’ve mastered the setting.
I think oldschool games that were pre-minimap wonderful that way. The maps were often better designed to be distinct and navigable without a map, and by the end of the game you really learn the map in a way you don’t in a lot of modern RPG’s.
Gothic 2 and Risen are some I really remember fondly for this.
Overall I also enjoyed Morrowind more, but the Dark Brotherhood questline in Oblivion was so good.l
I’d go back to Oblivion if it weren’t for the scaling enemies. That really takes a lot of the fun away for me, ever since I realized the game does this.
Maybe there’s a mod? I know we’re not alone in this opinion.