Forgetting the past in games? (Or 5-year-old review)

It's funny how things work. I started hearing good things about Fallout: New Vegas, which reminded me of issues that I had with Fallout 3, and general dislike of the Gamebryo engine. This in turn reminded me about Oblivion, which was a game that I played only a bit before shelving. (A bit being probably 80 hours haha.) A number of the issues I had with Oblivion had to do more with the improvements that it had, like fast travel making the world feel disjoint and skills feeling confusing, and things like Alchemy and Soul Gem mechanics making no sense at all to me, at least until the point that I was way past the point that they could be useful without a ton of investment (well, in the case of alchemy anyways)

So I decided to pick up Morrowind. Yeah, go in looking at New Vegas, come out with Morrowind. I had tried Morrowind once before; I didn't get into it. I ran around the first town, Seyda Neen; I talked to everyone, but rushed through the conversations; I picked up every single item that wasn't tied down and sold it to the merchants. When I finished with that, I declined to take the silt strider like I was encouraged, instead I just wandered aimlessly to explore caves and anything else around. Then I died, a lot. The game didn't make much sense to me at that point, the world sucked, the graphics were ugly, and I was getting killed by super-bandits for no reason.

This time I wanted to give it a more fair chance. I decided that there was probably just too much to do in a single playthrough anyways, so I'd sort of Arr-Pee a bit. I picked a simple crappy concept for my character "This dude gets off the boat, he doesn't know who he is, he's in Imperial Custody but he doesn't know why. He feels frustrated that he hasn't been in control of his situation and he doesn't want that to happen again, so he is looking to become powerful however he can. He also wants to find out about what he was before, and why he has been released." So then I can streamline my quest seeking a bit, skipping things that don't seem likely to make me stronger (IE: I'm too busy to rescue a puppy or deliver a love letter for no reason, I'm also not likely going to help you assasinate a rival just so I can get a discount at your shop. Though, if you want me to collect daisies in return for a giant magical axe, I'm there).

So this time, I took the silt strider because I wanted to talk to Casius Cosades and find out about why I'm here. This brought me to Balmora where I found and joined the Fighters guild because I would have access to more powerful training, and started doing quests for them. Realizing that physical strength was only going to take me so far, I went to the Mage's guild and started running errands for them to get access to their powerful training. Doing the quests for the mages guild taught me about alchemy, and enchantments which were useful for me over spell-slinging since I had a lot of investment in hitting things. Training from the many trainer NPCs was very useful especially for those skills that I used infrequently.

I didn't finish the playthrough; I got to Vivec, and the city was so huge I again got lost in what I was doing or why. I'll pick it up again soon, but in the interim I decided to try Oblivion now after playing a bunch of Morrowind, and started to understand a lot of the decisions.

On fast travel: The Morrowind system of running from location to location was immersive, but at the cost of being tedious when you've had to make the trip 4 times. Silt striders help to an extent, but are limited in destinations (Silt striders are kind of like flightpaths in WoW, but instant. However they only travel between major cities). In Oblivion, fast travel is great once you've got your bearings, but can easily be overused to the point where you just hop between dungeon and dungeon or PoI in a city. Coming from Morrowind, I totally understand now the drive to create the fast travel system, and the tradeoffs (IE: You want to have cities on the fast-travel list or else your first trip to each city is super boring) but I think maybe a good solution would have been to have more quests be a bit further off beaten fast-travel path to let you see more of the world. Or structure the quests to not require that fast travel so much.

For instance, if the sewer exit from Imperial City dropped you off nearer the front gates instead of the back (so you had easier, more intuitive access into the city) and then Jauffre was at the inn, outside the Imperial City gates. Maybe instead of an assault on Kvatch immediately there was a daedric assault on the Wawnat Inn just outside the gates. You fend off the attack, and find out that the daedra are coming from an oblivion portal between Imperial City and Chorrol. You close the gate, and Jauffre flees on horseback to Weynon Priory with the Amulet, to keep it safe. He asks you to meet him there. You head up to the Priory and are attacked by Mythic Dawn dudes, get to the Priory and there is another gate opening to destroy Chorrol. You basically do what you originally did in Kvatch, except at Chorrol, and possibly save the city. The big difference here is just that instead of fast-traveling across the world to do it, you are encouraged to run the distance. Even if you had the option to fast-travel all along to Chorrol, you'd be doing the majority of it on foot because it's not an incredibly long hike between PoIs, and the intermediary points of interest are not fast-travel enabled right away. Same shit, just rearranged to make it not tedious, but still engaging enough to not require or demand fast travel.


Another thing that bugged me my first time through in Oblivion was Alchemy. It didn't make sense. I got a popup saying I could make potions with a mortar and pestle when I was going through the chargen area. I picked mushrooms and shit and they didn't do much at all. Making potions was a bit confusing because you needed 2 ingredients. And you sucked at it, everything you made sucked, and it just generally wasn't worth it. Now again looking at it from the perspective of Morrowind, Alchemy wasn't as bad in that game in my opinion. Your alchemy skill in Morrowind determined the potency and success rate of making potions, but also what effects you could identify on plants. However, recipes or experimentation could teach you how to make potions with any of the effects available. Alchemy training was reasonably available and a semi-working understanding of it was quite helpful.

In Oblivion, things were "simplified" a bit, you're given a mortar and pestle in character generation, and all the means to start making potions, even given a brief instruction on how to do so. But the problem is that there's no real guidance. The potions you can make in character generation are very limited. You get some Wisp Caps and Cairn Bolete Caps, but those can't be mixed into anything. You get some random food items that can be mixed into restore fatigue potions, but at that point fatigue is hardly an issue. It's kind of silly to say there was more "guidance" in morrowind, if anything there was a lot less. You didn't start with a mortar and pestle, you didn't even know alchemy existed. But when you got to the point where you find out about alchemy, you've got that opportunity. If your skill is low, you can train it up. You can go from not knowing or caring at all that alchemy exists to making it part of your character. Again, after playing Morrowind, I understand why they did this. Alchemy is a skill that has some potential, and is kind of interesting, but isn't really introduced well in Morrowind. But because of that you could take it or leave it until you needed it. Oblivion wants to give you the option to use it, so they throw it at you along with a ton of other options, and it gets lost. They try to make it simpler, by making potion creation based on skill level instead of having hidden effects. But in the end this leaves you with a lot of very confusing reagents, an inability to create useful potions for a very long time, and just general frustration until you are high level and know where to get materials.

I think a better solution to this problem is still a simplification of the alchemy system, but do it in a way that is not so frustrating. Have much more limited but functional 1st tier options from reagents: (Restore Health, Fatigue, Magicka. Damage Health, Fatigue, Magicka) Have slightly more potent or diverse 2nd tier options: (Restore Attribute, Cure Poison/Disease, Shield, Absorb Attribute, Silence, Elemental Damage) Have more utility-style 3rd tier options (Fortify Attributes, Feather, Chameleon, Paralyze) and 4th tier attributes would be reserved for more esoteric skills (Disintigrate Weapon, Armor, Drain Attributes, Resist Element/Condition) This way you still have a lot of the same gameplay for alchemy, but it's a lot easier. If as a novice alchemist I know I can create healing, fatigue and magicka regeneration potions, all of a sudden alchemy is a cool skill for me to use. Using it improves my alchemy skill score, and if it's a major skill advances my level, and makes me stronger. As it is, alchemy is kind of an iffy skill later, and a terrible one early. I'd also rework how potions stack in the inventory because it's a giant pain in the ass to deal with 5 different versions of the same potion. It's also pretty important to get rid of the "Poison of Drain Personality".

This brings up another point: In Oblivion, if you want to train up alchemy, or whatever skill, you can't really do so. You get 5 training sessions per level, so if you're behind in a skill, you don't want to really waste your training on those skills. So in my case, when I wanted to start getting into Alchemy on my Oblivion character, I ended up doing tons of eating raw reagents just for the microscopic skill gains. In Morrowind, the only thing that limited your training potential was the skill of the trainer and the amount of money you had. Again, I understand the intention behind this. Because of the strictly money-based system, you could become a master swordsman without ever swinging a blade, and that seemed kind of unfortunate as the game would be more interesting. It has an impact in Oblivion though because of the level-up system. Mainly, you don't want to really level up unless you've skilled up a bunch in the stats that you want to raise, which means working a lot on minor skills before leveling, which is slow. You generally want to use your training to move these slow minor skills up if you're min-maxing, which means you're spending your limited training sessions on skills you don't care about anyways, because the ones you're using will raise, and often times, too quickly, through normal use. So training in that case is completely backwards. This is really just a product of a bad leveling system though. I think the 5 training sessions per level limit is a fine idea if stat gains weren't tied to skill-ups. If, say, you only gained points towards stats for Major skills that you leveled, (IE: you level up after getting 20 major skillups. If every skillup gave 0.25 bonus points to a stat (and this partial value is stored, though not necessarily shown) then it doesn't matter if you practice blunt for 4 hours before letting your blade go up, and your final stat distribution is relatively consistent with your skill choices at the beginning of the game.

Another thing to think about is the DLC. I got the GotY edition of Oblivion, which meant I got all the DLC at once, and thus when I got out of the sewers, I was bombarded by 20 notes yelling at me to go over yonder to do some quest or pick up some house, or clothe my non-existent horse. DLC is always a tricky thing to get right, and I've never seen an implementation that I've fully accepted. I think the Knights of the Nine DLC is a good integration, because it's just something you run into in the normal course of the game, whether existing or brand new. Of course the problem with DLC is the fact that most games have a beginning and an end, and you could be anywhere between those two points when you get the DLC, and it has to be relevant. A leveled game like Oblivion or Fallout makes this easier, but still runs into problems.

Another thing that I think about is the mini-games. Lockpicking and Speechcraft. Ho Lee Shit, they are so annoying. In Morrowind both of those were simply skill-based, you try to pick the lock or bribe/persuade your target and it either works or fails based on your character's skill. Both of the lockpicking and speechcraft take very little skill once you learn the "trick". Speechcraft is an unlosable game, but at least it's limited by your speechcraft skill. Lockpicking is just unlosable. You can get through any lock with a single lockpick as long as you are careful and willing to quicksave occasionally, regardless of your character's lockpick skill. I understand the desire to make some of these actions more enjoyable, but they have to make them more enjoyable not just something to do. I think the speechcraft game seems goofy too, "Why I... Oh That's Nic... Go On ... I've never been more insulted!" 30 times in a row. If speechcraft simply raised your disposition when you spoke to people and then gave you some additional dialogue options that would allow you to raise or lower your disposition to an extent limited by you speechcraft skill. Lockpicking removes the need for the skill altogether, and I think the whole game just needs to go, I think a simple skill-check is better.

That all said, I think I understand a lot more about Oblivion, and a lot of the things that turned me off the game the first time around were actually welcome additions, but only after I'd played a reasonable amount of Morrowind. As more time goes on in Oblivion, I'm starting to notice them wear thin, but still I appreciate them.




One more thing that is kind of interesting from a analysis standpoint is the difficulty slider. The difficulty slider in Oblivion simply modifies your damage and the damage enemies do to you. The scale is absolutely massive, at the minimum setting, you do 6 times as much damage, and are dealt 1/6th as much damage as normal. At the maximum setting you deal 1/6th as much damage, and are dealt 6 times as much damage. You're 36 times more powerful than normal on the easiest setting, and 1/36th as powerful on the hardest, that means you're 1296 times as powerful on the easiest setting as you are on the hardest.

Now the slider from a theoretical point of view is interesting, because people rarely want to turn it down. You turn down the difficulty and it's almost worse than cheating, it's more like giving up. It's conceding that you're actually not good enough to win on the normal level. On the other hand, turning the difficulty up is something that feels good. You are good at this shit, you can win at the hardest difficulty level! No problem!

But give a player a similar situation like this: You get to 2 chests. Inside each chests is a scroll that has a simple substitution cipher, the solution to the cypher is written on the wall that the chests are found in. If you translate the cypher, you learn that one scroll will weaken you, and the other scroll will strengthen you. You cast the spell attached to the strengthening scroll, and it makes your character more powerful. You are now 20% more powerful and take 20% less damage, and you feel good about it, because you figured out the puzzle, so you deserve to be stronger. Despite the fact that the puzzle was trivial, it's because you were a good player, smarter than those terrible game developers that put in such an easy puzzle. And you're way better than those losers who have to dial down the difficulty a notch.

Similarly, you put a player in the game, and you say: You will be more powerful if you set up your character to be weak at blunt weapons, but then use blunt weapons primarily so that when you level up, you can raise your strength score a full 5 points every level. Also you need to be similarly ignorant in Armoring so that you can practice repairing your armor constantly so that you can raise your endurance 5 points every level. Now, it's hard to not accidentally level up when you're doing things that let you get hit, so you can learn a spell that allows you to cause a target to reflect magic, learn another spell that allows you to damage a targets armor, learn a 3rd spell that lets you summon a minion, then summon a minion, make him reflect magic, cast a spell to damage his armor, have that reflect and hit you. Now you can repair your armor over and over again and get a bunch of bonus stat points!

That sort (though not that example in particular) of exploitative behavior is what starts to show up when people start to do these "hardest difficulty" challenges. You're not really making the game harder, simply making the game different. Instead of trying to beat the monster with your ability to play well (IE: make good decisions about when and how to sneak, or make good decisions on how to move or block in combat) you're trying to increase your advantages through spell stacking or whatever else, such that you're playing close to on the level of the normal difficulty.

However, similar difficulty in actual play could be obtained by restricting yourself from using anything but a rusty iron sword and only choosing luck, personality and speed as skill-ups every level. But the idea of restricting yourself for challenge instead of finding ways to abuse the system to reduce inherent challenge seems less rewarding.

I personally dialed the notch down a couple of ticks recently, not because I can't win otherwise, but because it's just more fun for me that way. If I am sneaking, I want to use a dagger. If I backstab someone, I want them to die or just about die. I don't want them to lose 1/8 of their health, and spend the rest of the fight dodging back and forth for 3 minutes trying to avoid every swing and survive. I can do it, yeah, but it's not so much fun. On the other hand, I don't want to kill everything in one swing, I want there to be some peril. Finally, I don't want to have to fuss with mucking with my stats to get a good mix of skills. I don't want to sit under a bridge and jump for 40 minutes to get a few points in acrobatics. So I have the opportunity to make the game just as tough as I like it, and the fact that there are basically 1300 grades of difficulty mean there's a lot of customization there (in reality, there's not, too low and you basically just annihilate everything, whether you're dealing triple damage or 6x damage doesn't much matter. Similarly when it's really high, either you don't get hit or you've abused spell stacking to the point where you're invincible, and the only difference maybe is the length of battles). A bit more info when setting the slider would be better, and maybe a slightly tighter range would be approprate (double damage/half damage instead of 6 by a sixth.)


The new Elder Scrolls game has been announced, and I'm actually kind of excited about it. Oblivion made me really dislike the elder scrolls games, but then Oblivion made me like them again, only after I played Morrowind.

I just hope that when they make the new game, they don't lose track of what made Oblivion good, and what made Morrowind good before it, and Daggerfall before that, in trying to improve them. I think it's especially easy to forget that probably many or most people will not have played the previous game to the level that they have, and while it's important to cater to your long-term players, it's most important not to turn off the new ones.