As much as Gori loves Oblivion, he wonders why in the world did they remake it ?
If you were here during the original Oblivion days, you might remember the torrent of hate that it got. Of course at first it's a beautiful game, with a lively world and incredible mechanics and physics for the times, but behind this shiny facade you could easily see how casualised the game had been compared to Morrowind or Daggerfall, even Skyrim, the mass-appeal success offered a more unique and better roleplaying experience.
Bland stuff
The first torrent of hate was about how bland the game was, it was just a generic European medieval RPG world, except for the human cats and lizards. Compared to mushroom-land Vvardenfell (which was depressing but that's another story) or even to the Illiac Bay with its interesting North-South divide, jungles, deserts, mountains and temperate zones.
Some people say Oblivion has the same spirit as Daggerfall, because of the generated dungeons and cities, but they forget that Daggerfall had much more depth and was never holding your hand regarding where you need to go next. NPCs even gave you wrong directions, and some regions were populated by a**holes who refused to speak to you for who knows what reason (racists !). Oblivion was much nicer and politically correct, except for a few odd characters. Plus in the Elders Scrolls 2 you had so many different factions that you made enemies without knowing it, compare this to Oblivion where you only get 5-6 guilds, cannot kill essential characters (it gave the game a huge torrent of hate also at the time), and can be both a thief and a crusader (ok, after repenting by a pilgrimage let's be fair), the thing is that the 1996 RPG had much more complexity and possibilities than the 2005 one. Ok it didn't have voice acting and arrows flying realistically when you throw them, but you could sign up for a bank loan and get in trouble for not repaying your installments, if you ask me, when you grow up, the latter is much more in tune with real life problems.
Enhanced view of Morrowind, but still you get the spirit.
Another torrent of hate was about the level scaling, there was some in Daggerfall, but not as radical as in Oblivion. (Dagerfall was scaled but you could still die easily if you faced the wrong enemy), back in the days of 2005-2008 (the controversy lasted a long time), it was seen as a major departure from Morrowind where enemies don't really scale, and a major betrayal by Bethesda in trying to cater to the general public by making the game easier. The fact that the game's UI was tailored to consoles and the Xbox360 in particular, was another major source of torrents of hate.
But now all of this is over, everybody acclaims Oblivion for being the best Elder Scrolls ever (I suspect they are in fact bots paid by Bethesda to praise their own creations), and everybody is happy to play the remaster of a 2006 game, now weighing 120GBs (yes man you read me), and being unplayable on normal-tier hardware (at least this is true to Oblivion's spirit, it was always a very demanding game).
When you think about it, Skyrim had corrected many of Oblivion's shortcomings, even though it has been said that it's a casual game, having recently replayed it, I was amazed by the abundance of objects everywhere . Even if it doesn't have the complexity of Daggerfall, it still managed to be immersive and mysterious, in a way similar of Morrowind and its gloomy atmosphere.
Modded daggerfall, but that's what I'm saying
Anyway, now Gori goes back to Daggerfall...
