Seriously, people need to leave Oblivion alone. Did they mess up with the whole "level up monsters with you" stuff, yeah, they did big time. But when it was released I and am sure some of you hitting it hard here, got up on a horse and just rode and rode and rode it, to see the landscape as it unraveled. Come on, some of you know that you did that like I did that too.

Which RPGs? Give me names of those games and tell me which quests are you talking about in particular, because there really, really isn't all that many. You are just taking this from such a wrong perspective - in TES games you say that you are centre of the universe, but in Fallout, you weren't? Nothing happened without your intervention, ever. Hell, NPCs didn't even go to sleep.

Oh I see, so you are voicing your opinion and I was trying to reinvent entire genre. This is very easy to turn around you know, especially after I have admitted that I was wrong.

And no, I'm most certainly not telling you that you're wrong to enjoy the game in the way you do enjoy it, I just believe you are criticising it for something that doesn't quite deserve criticism. Yes, TES games don't have fantastic stories, characters or plotlines, and when they do, it's more by luck than design - but there's a good reason for that.

Oblivion gates ruin Oblivion for me. They pop up everywhere and are all virtually identical. Does anyone really enjoy having to close all these things ?

The combat in both Oblivion and Morrowind is pretty tedious. I look forward to the thoughtful tactical battles in the Infinity Engine games whereas in TES games it is all about "action", i.e. thrashing away at my left mouse button, like the combat in something like Tekken, only inferior..

The levelling system has already been mentioned and it is not very good. The game is too difficult at the beginning but before long it becomes too easy. The game is unbalanced in this way.

Despite these objections I like both Oblivion and Morrowind but can only play either of them for a while before wearying of them.

I don't see why wanting others to accept your views on how games should be is wrong. What most people want games to be largely dictates which games will be made in the future so it's important to voice your opinion.

See? There's stuff that deserves criticism :-P I disagree about leveling system not being very good, there really isn't any other way to do leveling system that would work in a game like this (well, there is of course, Skyrim did it, but it's not that of a massive modification), but it's definitely not very well balanced.

This I agree with. The only thing I did not like was all the gates, and the plain of Oblivion itself. It was very boring and samey.

The rest I enjoyed quite a lot. Shivering Isles still stands for me as the best expansion (DLC :)) ever made.

Oh, and I found it very immersive also. I tend to play stealth-archer-thief in these type of games.

To be fair, the Elder Scrolls games are action RPGs unlike the Infinity Engine games. It'd be like comparing the combat in Doom to the combat in Jagged Alliance.

Some people aren't voicing their opinions, they are claiming that everyone else is wrong in their own. (big difference).

As for Oblivion gates... they get ridiculous in terms of mobs guarding them as well. The good news, once you know what you are doing... you can turn on the gates and also turn them off via the main quest line. So, you can avoid the main questline and never deal with them, or you can complete the main questline and they go away.

As for worthwhile... they have some unique plants that have some value on the Oblivion planes... so I do enjoy doing several before calling it a day. I also use a mod that gives the Daedra a random chance at dropping a piece of armor (just like Morrowind had) which makes it more worth my while to go there. I would have found this to be OP or "cheating" if I hadn't played Morrowind first ;)

On the contrary, I was introduced to TES via that game, on my 360 no less. Best decision I ever made, great launch game. And now I've played all of them (not all to completion, however) and I'm glad Oblivion was there to break the barrier for me.

Shivering Isles is great. On the whole I like Oblivion a lot despite my criticisms. The IE games are more my kind of thing but I'm glad that epic open world RPGs like TES games exist. Sometimes it's worth wandering around in these gameworlds just to enjoy the scenery and the music.

I might have to choose an archer type the next time I play Oblivion, though to be honest I was rubbish at hitting the target the last time I played, but that's probably because I chose a different class.

I accept that. They are two different kinds of experience. I just prefer tactical, turn-based combat (and preferably party-based : BIG parties, unlike the reduced-sized party in NWN for example), but I realise that some people hate it.

I have a bit of a love / hate relationship with TES games but my final verdict is that I like them. I think they're very original, very much their own thing. I suppose Baldur's Gate, for instance, could be criticised for being full of fantasy cliches, though I really don't mind that.

I remember a scathing review of Morrowind written by John Walker for PC Gamer UK magazine. He really laid into the game calling it boring and unfocused, though he still gave it a score of 82%. I agreed with him at the time and to an extent I still do, but over the years I've learnt to love it more. I played hundreds of hours of both Morrowind and Oblivion without following the main plot at all and got a bit lost to be honest, but the fact that I devoted so much time to them shows that they've got something about them which makes me keep coming back for more.

We both know that the only reason for this is money :P I suggested maybe they should reinvest some money to make a smaller world but written better. We don't have to agree, but you can't say it's impossible to be done. Because Obsidian managed to fill New Vegas with interesting characters and plotlines on the same engine.

The damn robot has more soul than pretty much every character in Oblivion.

Maybe Bethesda guys just dont' have good writers.

By the way, when does the Oblivion get too easy? I'm level 9 and I still need to shoot just as many arrows on certain enemies as on level 1...

Well, I wouldn't say the reason is money really, I'd say the reason is development time. And there's actually a huge difference in how big the worlds of Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim are, yet they retain the same 'qualities'.

As for New Vegas, again, you're right, characters are much more interesting and it's got great plotline - on the other hand, world is fairly boring to explore and as in all Fallout games, there's only ever one 'occupation' that you can actually be for the game to be any fun. See? You just can't do it all, you have to sacrifice one thing to get another. In a way, Oblivion have tried to sacrifice world 'size' - sheer size of that game is massive, but most of it is either randomly generated or slapped together from various building blocks. And indeed, questlines did improve quite significantly when compared to Morrowind. (Oh, and cities. Oblivion just has the most detailed cities I have ever seen in an RPG.) But it'll never be on the level of New Vegas, as something else would need to be sacrificed yet again.

Morrowind and Skyrim are completely hand-built, but you can see the quests suffering, especially the guild plotlines.
Level 15-ish, when your fighting abilities get above what the game expects them to be.

I totally agree that there is (apparently ?) no other way to make a levelling system which would work in an open world / sandbox RPG like TES games. I've have recently maxed out at level 50 in Fallout New Vegas (took me ages !) and I'm already missing the anticipation of levelling up. I also still have two of the DLCs to play and I've no idea how much of the main story is left to complete. But it's just such a good game that it's still worth playing on. If you play open world / sandbox games without making a beeline for the end you are bound to max out before the end, unless they took the XP / max level cap away. But would that work ? I don't know.

Plus, you need to consider that Bethesda had to make that monster of an engine for Oblivion. Other games that used it had most of their work finished for them.

This is a salient point.