oblivion

so a day or so ago? i started oblivion. and i've been loving it. so much so, that i'm finding myself download the extra stuff this very minute. so much so, that i've frequented the oblivion wiki more than twice. this all in two days.

the box from the store included the original and two of the downloadable "expansion" plug-ins. these amount to additional quests and storylines within which to engross yourself whilst playing through your character. lets just say that after you're approached suddently to exterminate vampires, whilst already completing various thief guild tasks, participating in arena battles as a gladiator, and udnertaking a growing skill in alchemy, all while exploring the countryside, battling various road bandits, the odd goblin, and more imps than you'd really ever have expected, somehow finding yourself a knight in the charge of a ruler of some faraway town, friends with an orc, and yes, a fully fledged feeding vampire, all whilst playing the class of your own custom design, making sure you experience the diverse aspects of the game as you level up your character, leads to a very rich experience indeed. infact the custom class was one i raced to put together upon noticing such a thing was possible. i managed to treat a decent line between bard, fighter, mage and a few other things... i know, it sounds like a do-it-all, but it's really more of a well rounded full experience, something i sorely lacked in games like diablo & diablo 2.

playing this, i had many thoughts of comparisons to other games, thinking to myself this is what the natural progression must've been from myst. also thinking to myself... looks like this is resident evil style graphics used in a rpg setting, the ultimate expression or perhaps usage of that art form. soon hopefully we'll see new trends in graphics, ones which then render obselete and old these that we've played with for so long. the new is what has kept my game interest alive for so long. and a game like oblivion while not altogether new in its relative seperate parts, packages them together in a way that really gamers have been begging for. in a way it feeds the beast but contributes little new to the industry. for instance, mmo-sized zones, with not to mention the absense of zones. while on the same time a limited map, limited by the bounds of the in this case province, but to me it always seems like a cop out when game designers & developers & coders decide to go the route of map barriers to focus the players on a developing land. if this was meant to be the do-it-all your own way style game, then let us play the way we want to, damn it. if we want to pick a direction & run, always, never turning around, then by god let us do it. the worlds either need randomized elements, or a whole globe sculpted for our gaming pleasure. and im talking something more like the scope of our own planet, not these miniature game worlds that just run out all too quickly. i feel like after merely two days i've already encountered the seams of this digital experience. and to me, that's the deal breaker. that's the killer of fun & fantasy. that's exactly what i hate to find, but so often do. a really quality game doesn't so dullingly reveal it's confines to the player so immediately such as oblivion does, but sorrily i've already hit that brick wall, and it's all down hill from here.

perhaps i'm asking too much, but i was raised on the dream-talk editorials of what-games-could-be back in the 90s. this is what got our hopes up, not simply fanciful thought, but believing the industry heads, and then what did we get, but a complete and utter disregard for "the vision". instead, we get this, time and time again, brick wall barrier after brick wall barrier, and it gets old, oh so old. im tired of hitting the cant-do-that barrier. let us fucking do what we want. if you create some mechanic, let it work that way, ALL the time. i'm also tired of the numbingly easy difficulty that seems to blanket every encounter. we're talking literally one after another that after a couple slashes, a heal or two, and a summoned skeleton, bam, they're dead. there's no strategy, no nothing. instead, it's a slap-dash job on the part of game creaters, and a rediculous addiction to anything pixelated on display by the gaming community at large. its for addictions sake and not for quality's that we play this game. it could be so much better, but instead proves itself not to be. another one of those coulda-woulda-shoulda-games that was good enough to review but not good enough to like.

im going to continue playing, admidst this poor-economy-striken game industry, perhaps in between EQ bouts, and a day or so on my WoW free trial, but mark my words, I will not enjoy this game as much as I could have had it been designed moreso to be enjoyable. this in the end is a game that i believe is poorly designed, and therefore limits the player to an only above average experience, keeping it from being what i would hope to see in a game; the very best. in a fantasy rpg genre that just seems to shuck bucks @ the same old game, this game coulda been the better newer one, but wasnt. we're looking at an industry of cowards folks. do the same thing a million times, make millions. its called jacking off. or otherwise known as rabid-consumerism fueled machines, soulless, and pointless, ritualized, and therefore rendered meaningless...