CaptNKILL
05-21-08, 02:19 AM
I just need a place to dump my thoughts, so bear with me.
I don't know if anyone remembers all the texture work I did for Oblivion back in spring of '06, but I've just been thinking about how much time I've spent trying to fix this game as opposed to actually playing it. The texture work alone consumed about a month of my free time (usually 8 to 12 hours a day, every day) and since then I've put days and days into tweaking, downloading and installing mods. Funny thing is, I haven't actually progressed in the game's story in about a year and a half. I remember arguing about how the PC version would be better than the console versions because they would have mods, and I still think that's a great thing, because the 360 and PS3 versions have all the problems with no solutions at all... but it'd take more than a dedicated fan base to fix this game's problems for me.
Every time I pick the game up again I start it up and see all the horrible flaws that always irritate me and I end up spending a whole night scouring the web to see if anyone has fixed them yet. The most annoying part is that one of the most promising mods out there, Qarl's texture pack, went to extreme lengths to make the game look WORSE in a lot of areas (horrible tiling textures), so something as simple as downloading a texture replacer to make the game look better has turned into hours of hand deleting and replacing the textures that no one in their right mind would want to see in a game.
On top of all that, the game still runs horribly with no mods or tweaks. I can safely say that the Gamebryo engine is the worst game engine currently used in triple-A titles. There is no reason that Morrowind, a 6 year old game, should still have slow parts on a modern system and that Oblivion should have so much stuttering, freezing and generally crappy framerate.
And then there is the level scaling that punishes the player for playing the game.
It just drives me nuts that a game with so much atmosphere and so much to do has SO many glaring problems. If you completely ignore the visuals and turn the graphics settings way down so that it runs at a good framerate, you're still left with constant stutters from loading, jittery headache inducing mouse movement (they linked the first person camera view to the player model's movement for some reason), glitchy controls, and terrible level balancing.
I've tried for 2 years to enjoy this game, and every time I play it I get sucked into the amazing atmosphere but the engine blows so bad I can't play it for more than a few minutes without trying to fix something.
IMO, this game is going to go down as one of the most disappointing title's I've ever owned. Of the hundred or so hours I've put into it, half of those have been related to tweaking and trying to fix its flaws.
I know many (MANY) people love this game, but for everything it does correctly, the most noticeable things to me are the things it does horribly wrong. I just can't get over it.
Sadly, Fallout 3 uses the same engine, and for that reason, I am not going to buy the game unless the engine has undergone a MAJOR overhaul. I highly doubt this though, since Gamebryo has made Bethesda a ton of cash, despite how terrible it is.
/end rant
I don't know if anyone remembers all the texture work I did for Oblivion back in spring of '06, but I've just been thinking about how much time I've spent trying to fix this game as opposed to actually playing it. The texture work alone consumed about a month of my free time (usually 8 to 12 hours a day, every day) and since then I've put days and days into tweaking, downloading and installing mods. Funny thing is, I haven't actually progressed in the game's story in about a year and a half. I remember arguing about how the PC version would be better than the console versions because they would have mods, and I still think that's a great thing, because the 360 and PS3 versions have all the problems with no solutions at all... but it'd take more than a dedicated fan base to fix this game's problems for me.
Every time I pick the game up again I start it up and see all the horrible flaws that always irritate me and I end up spending a whole night scouring the web to see if anyone has fixed them yet. The most annoying part is that one of the most promising mods out there, Qarl's texture pack, went to extreme lengths to make the game look WORSE in a lot of areas (horrible tiling textures), so something as simple as downloading a texture replacer to make the game look better has turned into hours of hand deleting and replacing the textures that no one in their right mind would want to see in a game.
On top of all that, the game still runs horribly with no mods or tweaks. I can safely say that the Gamebryo engine is the worst game engine currently used in triple-A titles. There is no reason that Morrowind, a 6 year old game, should still have slow parts on a modern system and that Oblivion should have so much stuttering, freezing and generally crappy framerate.
And then there is the level scaling that punishes the player for playing the game.
It just drives me nuts that a game with so much atmosphere and so much to do has SO many glaring problems. If you completely ignore the visuals and turn the graphics settings way down so that it runs at a good framerate, you're still left with constant stutters from loading, jittery headache inducing mouse movement (they linked the first person camera view to the player model's movement for some reason), glitchy controls, and terrible level balancing.
I've tried for 2 years to enjoy this game, and every time I play it I get sucked into the amazing atmosphere but the engine blows so bad I can't play it for more than a few minutes without trying to fix something.
IMO, this game is going to go down as one of the most disappointing title's I've ever owned. Of the hundred or so hours I've put into it, half of those have been related to tweaking and trying to fix its flaws.
I know many (MANY) people love this game, but for everything it does correctly, the most noticeable things to me are the things it does horribly wrong. I just can't get over it.
Sadly, Fallout 3 uses the same engine, and for that reason, I am not going to buy the game unless the engine has undergone a MAJOR overhaul. I highly doubt this though, since Gamebryo has made Bethesda a ton of cash, despite how terrible it is.
/end rant