Fourth Age screen shots

[Aezeal]

hehe sounds like daggerfall, it was the 2nd of the elder scrolls games (latest one is oblivion and you had a HUGE (like 1000x bigger than oblivion) world all filled with like.. trees and more of nothing. a zillion dots all over the map which where towns or dungeons, the dungeons where all randomly created when entered but then stayed like that as in your exmaple (except a few main quest dungeons.) the towns are random too, but most having a few shops and temples and guild. Depending on stats you could join guilds and then there always was a quest giver who had like 5 different types of quest which you randomly got (for mage guild ti was like: kill this monster in this dungeon since it plagues the neighbourhood (and then you'd search the whole dungeon for a weak imp while it was filled with load and load of way more powerfull creatures strangely enough) or wait till night and kill the assassins coming to this guild. etc etc.) you could fasttravel between dots on the map or walk between them (seeing effectively nothing except trees and some random bears once every hour) walking the whole map... well I've never tried it but probably would take a month RL or something.. I lost my copy of the game though (lend it I think) and after I finished oblivion I tried again.. but... didn't facinate me enough anymore to last more than a few dungeons.

Sombre: Fallout and Oblivion sure have great graphics but you can't really say their story or gameplay is nothing.. even this game fully focused on gameplay will have a very hard time beating them.. sure both aren't planescape torment or BG 1 or 2 storywise because they are meant to roam freely and open ended. And some like the setting of morrowind better than the less original setting (acutally same world of course but whatever) in oblivion.. personally I think the games are nearly exactly the same though except a bit better graphs on oblivion.. the quests and story certainly aren;t lesser in quantity or quality. (note I did read your lines that you didn't agree (= didn't disagree with me) so I'm not trying to convince you, more omni if that is really what he thinks)

[Sombre]

Originally Posted by Aezeal

Sombre: Fallout and Oblivion sure have great graphics but you can't really say their story or gameplay is nothing.. even this game fully focused on gameplay will have a very hard time beating them.. sure both aren't planescape torment or BG 1 or 2 storywise because they are meant to roam freely and open ended. And some like the setting of morrowind better than the less original setting (acutally same world of course but whatever) in oblivion.. personally I think the games are nearly exactly the same though except a bit better graphs on oblivion.. the quests and story certainly aren;t lesser in quantity or quality.

I wouldn't say it's nothing, I'd say it's bland, derivative and inferior to games that have come before. I think the setting, writing and overall feel of oblivion is incredibly bland and uninteresting. It's like an 80s american renaissance fair. Everyone you meet is an ugly two dimensional idiot too.

Fallout 3 has an excellent pedigree but it utterly squanders it. It's a very good game but it's not Fallout afaic, it's just using the brand to cash in. It's Oblivion with guns and a more cinematic feel. It lacks the character, writing, sense of consequence etc - basically all the strengths of the previous two games (ignoring the ****pile called Tactics).

Fallout 1 and 2, Exile 3, Arcanum and numerous other rpgs are arguably as open ended if not more so than Fallout 3 and manage to have proper writing, interesting characters and locations, a sense that what you're doing actually matters,.. you get the idea. Both Oblivion and Fallout 3 are 'streamlined' rpgs. By that I mean extremely dumbed down.