Way back when this was in pre-production I had thought it was too soon for another Elder Scrolls centered on the Imperial District.
The animations, lighting, texturing were all far superior to Morrowind, the Radiant AI was a marginal improvement, but the storytelling, the voice-acting, the depth of character were comparatively poor. Not only does the over-hyped 'open-endedness' fail to measure up to the previous game, but it's pretty pointless considering almost every significant situation demanded only one solution, one approach, one perspective. The inconsistencies to previously established culture, characters, organizations were distracting and disappointing. Many successful and demanded features were left out of this game, and the Construction Set is no better the Morrowind version, which was so inflexible and anti-intuitive and inferior to open-source modding tools for other games that I was skeptical anyone would have used it to produce a commercial game.
All of these support my perception that Oblivion was released too soon. It had great visuals, and the final battle was a greater payoff than Morrowind's, but main storyline was pretty forgettable. Oblivion blew it's potential; it's clearly lacking in almost every aspect of gameplay and storytelling.
The animations, lighting, texturing were all far superior to Morrowind, the Radiant AI was a marginal improvement, but the storytelling, the voice-acting, the depth of character were comparatively poor. Not only does the over-hyped 'open-endedness' fail to measure up to the previous game, but it's pretty pointless considering almost every significant situation demanded only one solution, one approach, one perspective. The inconsistencies to previously established culture, characters, organizations were distracting and disappointing. Many successful and demanded features were left out of this game, and the Construction Set is no better the Morrowind version, which was so inflexible and anti-intuitive and inferior to open-source modding tools for other games that I was skeptical anyone would have used it to produce a commercial game.
All of these support my perception that Oblivion was released too soon. It had great visuals, and the final battle was a greater payoff than Morrowind's, but main storyline was pretty forgettable. Oblivion blew it's potential; it's clearly lacking in almost every aspect of gameplay and storytelling.