My thoughts on Oblivion.

[RedHeadAngel]

I decided to play the game following the remastered version's release, both that one and the original. After completing the game, I wanted to share my thoughts on Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion (the original, as I have not yet started the remastered version). Keep in mind that this is my opinion.

 

Pros.

 

The game isn't nearly as buggy and glitchy as Skyrim. At least, not that I noticed.

 

The factions are more enjoyable than Skyrim. Where the Companions questline was a convoluted snooze-fest, the Fighters Guild was fun and kept my interest.

 

The Arena was a lot of fun.

 

There seems to be more to explore than Skyrim.

 

Even though Oblivion is ~5 years older than Skyrim, the game's environment feels more scenic, which I'm a sucker for.

 

The game's mechanics were a pain to learn, but easy to understand once I got the hang of them.

 

The main story was great.

 

The game isn't filled to the brim with nonsense. As in, no civil war mixed with a dragon crisis and racial tensions between Nords and everything else and its mother as a High Elf extremist regime threatens everyone. I swear, I felt like Sheogorath was having a field day in my mind with that BS.

 

Sean Bean and Sir Patrick Stewart were in it! They voiced Martin and Uriel Septim, respectively.

 

Cons.

 

Lockpicking is a pain in the ass.

 

Speechcraft mechanics are fucking stupid. The whole persuasion minigame feels like it's pure luck.

 

If you become over-encumbered (which happens easily, as 1 sword could take up over 1/3 of your carry weight), you can't move at all.

 

Joining the Mages Guild was stupidly tedious.

 

The characters' faces are nightmare fuel.

 

Overall, I give the game an 8/10. It was a lot of fun, and I see myself playing it again. I will also say that I enjoyed it more than Skyrim. Yeah. I said it. Oblivion, I can enjoy without mods. Skyrim, on the other hand, I hate playing without mods. I need at least 100 bug patches just to make the thing playable.

Edited May 31, 2025 by RedHeadAngel

[HentaiGnome]

On 5/30/2025 at 10:57 PM, RedHeadAngel said:

 

Cons.

 

Lockpicking is a pain in the ass.

 

Speechcraft mechanics are fucking stupid. The whole persuasion minigame feels like it's pure luck.

 

If you become over-encumbered (which happens easily, as 1 sword could take up over 1/3 of your carry weight), you can't move at all.

 

Joining the Mages Guild was stupidly tedious.

 

The characters' faces are nightmare fuel.

 

Gave you a thumbs up because I pretty much agree with everything you said lol. But I will have to point out some stuff regarding your Cons list.

 

Lockpicking - It REALLY is a pain in the ass... until you find a way to brute force it. You may have seen a lot of guides tell you some bad info, but here's one that actually got me to finally mastering lockpick without even investing a skill in it or cheating my way with the Skeleton Key. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeXlTVR2mYc

 

Speechcraft - Same issue with lockpicking, it's annoying and even confusing at first until you realize there are only a few things to consider. Weave your way through the minigame and accept when there are the most bars with a happy face, OR the fewest bars for an angry face. (Argonians and Khajiits will be difficult to tell, but in the Remastered edition their facial expressions are easier to distinguish.) It won't always be perfect, and there's definitely RNG involved, but you just keep at it until the disposition number rises. (Max disposition can be as low as 75, it doesn't need to be 100.) Bribe a few times if you got the gold. Level up Personality and wear Speechcraft fortifying gear to help you out.

 

Over-encumbrance - Thankfully, with the Remastered edition you can still move albeit slowly. Also, in terms of carrying loot, my suggestion is to avoid picking up gear unless they're enchanted. Focus more on gold, gems, jewelry, other high-priced-low-weight items, and if you got the space, enchanted gear. That's because the most important thing to consider is the value/weight ratio especially if your focus is earning more money and leveling up. 

 

Mages guild - It's just the first half that's tedious imo. The second half does get interesting. Sadly, the final boss was a let down given his history/lore and overall plot premise.

 

Potato heads - Yeah... they're way better in the Remastered edition although some generic NPCs still look pretty funky. Best to install mods to glam them up lol.

 

 

Edited June 4, 2025 by HentaiGnome

[KentuckyExpat]

It's been a few years since I played Oblivion so my remembrance of lockpicking may be off a bit but here goes. Move your pick to the first pin that needs to be lifted. With a low level lock, there will typically be only one or two pins that need to be lifted and locked in place. "Bounce" the pin a few times, noting how long it takes the pin to fall. You should fairly quickly see that there is a pattern. First time you bounce a pin it will either drop quickly or slowly. Keep bouncing the pin until you see what the pattern is; shouldn't take more than half a dozen bounces with a low level lock. Then, when the pattern resets, bounce the pin until you get to where there will be a slow drop and click to lock the pin at the top of the lock. You will need to repeat this process for each pin, the pattern typically resets after each successful pin setting. Most important, take your time. If you rush it, you will almost certainly get frustrated when you miss placing a pin and have to start over. This can be a real PITA when it's the fifth of five pins on a hard lock, since there the number of bounces needed to see the pattern can be 15-20 per pin.

 

As far as over-encumbrance goes, if you're playing vanilla it's a PITA; so do yourself a favor and find a mod like "Bag of Holding" https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/4065. You now have the ability to pick up and store virtually anything sine the BoH negates the weight of anything in the bag. Otherwise, follow HentaiGnome's advice and be super selective in what you pick up.

Edited June 4, 2025 by KentuckyExpat
added info

[Count Chocula]

Like many, I never bother with the lockpicking mini-game, I just buy a lot of lot picks and have the game auto-try.

 

One thing that is irritating is the difficulty slider. Having both sliders set to "Adept" (the default in Remastered), I saved, then killed a wolf with 4 iron arrows shot from a steel bow. Then I set the sliders to Journeyman, reloaded and it took 10 arrows to kill the wolf. I forget to try on Expert to see what difference that made. The Journeyman setting was supposed to be a "bridge" between Adept and Expert, but to go from 4 arrows to 10 arrows to kill the same creature seems like a huge step up in difficulty to me.

Edited July 26, 2025 by Count Chocula

[KentuckyExpat]

1 hour ago, Count Chocula said:

Like many, I never bother with the lockpicking mini-game, I just buy a lot of lot picks and have the game auto-try.

 

One thing that is irritating is the difficulty slider. Having both sliders set to "Adept" (the default in Remastered), I saved, then killed a wolf with 4 iron arrows shot from a steel bow. Then I set the sliders to Journeyman, reloaded and it took 10 arrows to kill the wolf. I forget to try on Expert to see what difference that made. The Journeyman setting was supposed to be a "bridge" between Adept and Expert, but to go from 4 arrows to 10 arrows to kill the same creature seems like a huge step up in difficulty to me.

I'm not sure how Remastered works but my remembrance is that even without changing the difficulty level, when you try to kill two wolves, one after the other, you might need to shoot more or fewer arrows to kill the second wolf as you needed to kill the first one. The damage value for, say, an iron arrow is 8, but that is the absolute highest value for an iron arrow. Not every arrow you shoot will have that value, some will be less damaging. 

[Count Chocula]

2 hours ago, KentuckyExpat said:

I'm not sure how Remastered works but my remembrance is that even without changing the difficulty level, when you try to kill two wolves, one after the other, you might need to shoot more or fewer arrows to kill the second wolf as you needed to kill the first one. The damage value for, say, an iron arrow is 8, but that is the absolute highest value for an iron arrow. Not every arrow you shoot will have that value, some will be less damaging. 

This was the same wolf, on a reload. I tried the same thing with an Imp later, same type of results.

[Count Chocula]

Oblivion is no Skyrim, that's for sure. Zero interest in continuing after finishing the main quest. As opposed to Skyrim. "Good enough to play once" is my capsule review.

Edited August 3, 2025 by Count Chocula

[Miauzi]

On 8/3/2025 at 4:57 AM, Count Chocula said:

Oblivion ist definitiv kein Skyrim. Nach Abschluss der Hauptquest besteht kein Interesse mehr, weiterzumachen. Im Gegensatz zu Skyrim. „Gut genug, um es einmal zu spielen“, lautet meine Kurzbewertung.

 

That's why the "Hero of Kvatch" officially went to the "Shivering Isles" and never returned.

 

Unofficially — that is, with the help of mods — the Chancellor of the Empire re-established the Order of the Dragon Knights after the end of the Oblivion Crisis — and made the "Hero of Kvatch" its leader... thus, a sequel to the main story.

Here's the link to the newly released mod.

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/46786?tab=description

 

I personally only played through the vanilla main story once and then took care of the "romance with Saphira."

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/20762

 

The vanilla game always had a problem for me: the longer I played, the more unstable it became. At one point, I'd get a CtD within a few seconds of loading the save game.

With my modding skills at the time, I couldn't solve it—so I'm waiting for the release of "Skyblivion."

 

Um ... so lockpicking ... I always used the spells ... yes, exactly the spells that are missing in Skyrim

Edited August 8, 2025 by Miauzi

[Count Chocula]

10 hours ago, Miauzi said:

Here's the link to the newly released mod.

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/46786?tab=description

 

I personally only played through the vanilla main story once and then took care of the "romance with Saphira."

https://www.nexusmods.com/oblivion/mods/20762

 

The vanilla game always had a problem for me: the longer I played, the more unstable it became. At one point, I'd get a CtD within a few seconds of loading the save game.

With my modding skills at the time, I couldn't solve it—so I'm waiting for the release of "Skyblivion."

 

Um ... so lockpicking ... I always used the spells ... yes, exactly the spells that are missing in Skyrim

I'm not going to mod Remastered until it's been out for a couple of years, so that Bethesda will (I hope) be done with updating it and mod authors will have had a stable target to shoot at. But I appreciate the mod links and I take them as suggestions.

 

It seems to me as well that the longer I played Remastered the more unstable it became. So I periodically restarted my computer while playing it.

 

Regarding lockpicking, it's so easy in Skyrim (as well as Fallout) that I don't think a spell is needed. Having a whole bunch of lockpicks and letting the game auto-try until it succeeds works well enough for me, so I don't bother with the lock-opening spells in Oblivion, either.

 

I think Skyblivion will never be finished. I thought that about Remastered, too, but the difference is Bethesda is a huge money-making endeavor and they made Remastered pretty much knowing for certain they would make money. The people working on Skyblivion are doing it for at best the promise of a few bucks from Patreon (or whatever). I could be wrong, but it seems like way too big a project to do for free.

 

It's August so time is rapidly running out on their 2025 release date (as you no doubt know, they are in their "final stretch towards release"). They're not obligated to release it in 2025 (or ever), but the more the date slips, the more likely it will never happen. It's not easy for a for-profit game company to just walk away from a project (although I'm sure it's happened many times) but it's super easy for a bunch of people doing it for free.

 

 

[Miauzi]

Vor 1 Stunde sagte Graf Chocula:

Ich werde Remastered erst modifizieren, wenn es ein paar Jahre auf dem Markt ist, damit Bethesda (hoffentlich) mit der Aktualisierung fertig ist und die Mod-Autoren ein stabiles Ziel haben. Ich freue mich aber über die Mod-Links und sehe sie als Anregungen.

 

Mir scheint auch, dass Remastered umso instabiler wurde, je länger ich es spielte. Deshalb habe ich meinen Computer während des Spielens regelmäßig neu gestartet.

 

Was das Schlösserknacken betrifft, ist es in Skyrim (und auch in Fallout) so einfach, dass ich keinen Zauberspruch brauche. Ich habe einen ganzen Haufen Dietriche und lasse das Spiel automatisch versuchen, bis es klappt. Daher mache ich mir auch in Oblivion keine Gedanken über die Schlossöffnungszauber.

 

Ich glaube, Skyblivion wird nie fertig. Das dachte ich auch über Remastered, aber der Unterschied ist, dass Bethesda ein riesiges Geldmacherei-Unternehmen ist und sie Remastered ziemlich sicher gemacht haben, dass sie damit Geld verdienen würden. Die Leute, die an Skyblivion arbeiten, tun es bestenfalls für die Aussicht auf ein paar Dollar von Patreon (oder so). Ich könnte mich irren, aber es scheint ein viel zu großes Projekt zu sein, um es kostenlos zu machen.

 

Es ist August, und der Veröffentlichungstermin 2025 läuft schnell ab (wie Sie sicher wissen, befinden sie sich auf der Zielgeraden zur Veröffentlichung). Sie sind nicht verpflichtet, das Spiel 2025 (oder überhaupt) zu veröffentlichen, aber je weiter sich der Termin verschiebt, desto wahrscheinlicher wird es nie passieren. Für ein gewinnorientiertes Spieleunternehmen ist es nicht einfach, ein Projekt einfach aufzugeben (obwohl ich sicher bin, dass es schon oft passiert ist), aber für ein paar Leute, die es kostenlos machen, ist es super einfach.

 

 

 

Rarely have I read such nonsense!

-

Skyblivion employs approximately 1,500 people... the Fallout London team has more than 100 voice actors (significantly more than the vanilla Fallout... and "Enderal" proves that such complex projects can be successfully implemented even with a small team.

-

But such teams don't deliver junk - unlike a "highly profitable" multi-million dollar company... that also finds a lot of complete idiots as buyers for the crap it delivers.

*sarcasm off*

[Count Chocula]

On 8/8/2025 at 1:02 PM, Miauzi said:

 

Rarely have I read such nonsense!

-

Skyblivion employs approximately 1,500 people... the Fallout London team has more than 100 voice actors (significantly more than the vanilla Fallout... and "Enderal" proves that such complex projects can be successfully implemented even with a small team.

-

But such teams don't deliver junk - unlike a "highly profitable" multi-million dollar company... that also finds a lot of complete idiots as buyers for the crap it delivers.

*sarcasm off*

Spoken like a true fanboi. Hard to argue with an assertion that says "This is nonsense!" and nothing more.

 

How many VAs FOLON used has nothing to do with Skyblivion being released, even if it's the same team. It's no doubt pretty easy to line up a bunch of amateur VAs drooling at the opportunity to do something for their resumes. And Enderal's successful release has nothing to do with Skyblivion, either. By that reasoning, we can say that TES VI and FO 5 will definitely be released at some point because TES V and FO 4 were released in the past. I imagine both are probable, but I'm certainly not going to say they definitely will be released some day.

 

When it comes to gigantic mods like Skyblivion, they are firmly in the category "I'll believe it when I see it." But so are many commercial products from game companies, e.g., Bloodines 2. I don't expect to ever see Bloodlines 2. Enderal and FOLON were "I'll believe it when I see it," as well. But they came out. And when they did, then I believed (as an aside, I can't fuckin' stand Enderal). I have nothing to gain or lose either way. If Skyblivion comes out, I'll DL it and play it. If it never comes out, I won't give a monkey's, as Brits like to say.

 

If you flag your sarcasm, that makes it no longer sarcastic. The essence of sarcasm is in its double meaning. If you say "This is sarcasm," you are removing the double meaning. Unless you're using double secret reverse sarcasm.

 

I'm not sure why people who have no vested interest in a particular thing, be it a board game, a computer game, a sports team, a movie or a celebrity, get so defensive when that thing is questioned or criticized. We have definitely reached the point of "agree to disagree" at this stage.

Edited August 11, 2025 by Count Chocula

[RedHeadAngel]

1 hour ago, Count Chocula said:

Spoken like a true fanboi. Hard to argue with an assertion that says "This is nonsense!" and nothing more.

 

How many VAs FOLON used has nothing to do with Skyblivion being released, even if it's the same team. It's no doubt pretty easy to line up a bunch of amateur VAs drooling at the opportunity to do something for their resumes. And Enderal's successful release has nothing to do with Skyblivion, either. By that reasoning, we can say that TES VI and FO 5 will definitely be released at some point because TES V and FO 4 were released in the past. I imagine both are probable, but I'm certainly not going to say they definitely will be released some day.

 

When it comes to gigantic mods like Skyblivion, they are firmly in the category "I'll believe it when I see it." But so are many commercial products from game companies, e.g., Bloodines 2. I don't expect to ever see Bloodlines 2. Enderal and FOLON were "I'll believe it when I see it," as well. But they came out. And when they did, then I believed (as an aside, I can't fuckin' stand Enderal). I have nothing to gain or lose either way. If Skyblivion comes out, I'll DL it and play it. If it never comes out, I won't give a monkey's, as Brits like to say.

 

If you flag your sarcasm, that makes it no longer sarcastic. The essence of sarcasm is in its double meaning. If you say "This is sarcasm," you are removing the double meaning. Unless you using double secret reverse sarcasm.

 

I'm not sure why people who have no vested interest in a particular thing, be it a board game, a computer game, a sports team, a movie or a celebrity, get so defensive when that thing is questioned or criticized. We have definitely reached the point of "agree to disagree" at this stage.

I don't mean to interrupt, but what does any of this have to do with this thread? If you and @Miauzi want to argue over this bullshit, then go somewhere else and do it.

[Count Chocula]

To the surprise of exactly no one, Skyblivion's release date is no longer 2025. I suspect in Dec. 2026, the release date will be "2027." Working for free on a huge project like this, gotta be easy to find reasons to not work on it.