Honestly, you would have been perfectly justified in making an entire separate video for the faces alone. It is literally impossible to overstate the horror of Oblivion's character models. The developers unintentionally mastered jumpscares by forcing players into surprise close zooms with nightmare face NPCs who telepathically seek out sneaking characters.
"Mom I want Raycevick!" "Sweetie we have Raycevick at home." "But I don't want Raycevick at ho- Oh... No this is uh... This is pretty pleasant, actually. I'm fine with this. This is good."
I don't think it's fair to blame how far you can take facial sliders for how bad the NPC faces look. Yes you can make horrors with it. You can make horrors with Photoshop and any other competent tool. It's not the job of the tool to prevent you from making horrors, and it shouldn't be the job of the tool to decide what is and isn't desirable. That's the designers job. By contrast I found Skyrims face sliders too restrictive, and could never get the exact shape I wanted. You can't make horrors with it, but it came at the cost of full artistic expression. It's like when people made fun of task manager because you used to be able to use it to crash the system. Should it be task managers job to stop you? I'd say no. The tool did what you asked it to. Although clearly Microsoft disagree with both me and the creator of task manager on that one, because they changed it so you couldn't.
You know, the Elder Scrolls keep advertising themselves as "Fantasy Simulators instead of Role-Playing Games", but I kind of wonder if they would work if they were a level-less Zelda-esque game. Like, the character doesn't improve (or improves in a manner very differently from the infinite number growth we are used to seeing from these games), but the game world is super detailed. Spell creation is still totally a thing, though. I mean, what, are you crazy?
I love how you described the characters’ uncanny faces lol. I discovered Oblivion only years after developing my Skyrim addiction but I still feel so charmed by and fond of the characters’s cute doughy faces in all the contrastingly dark fantasy situations X) And yes I can distinctly remember being convinced to buy it off steam and give it a try by gameplay videos of countryside exploration that I checked out :D It’s truly the greatest strength of the game
Id avoid leveling up and limit my weapons to fine steel, maybe carry a silver short sword for ghost encounters. Id create a story for my character and operate within the limitations of that narrative. If i made a bandit then id act accordingly. Once i made a silver tongued play boy which fell into a vampire curse scenario. It was like a short novel come to life. I'd try to make a character then go through the motions of a logical progression then it may happen to change due to a quest or encounter. You have to play along with the game to help illusion.
Honestly, you would have been perfectly justified in making an entire separate video for the faces alone. It is literally impossible to overstate the horror of Oblivion's character models. The developers unintentionally mastered jumpscares by forcing players into surprise close zooms with nightmare face NPCs who telepathically seek out sneaking characters.
It's especially annoying when you consider it's not difficult to make decent faces for your own characters lol
Just like to make a correction, Orcs or Orsimer are Elves, not beastmen
Oblivion has always been my favorite ES game in the series, and has the best soundtrack in the series imo
Skingrad is the most confusing city
going through your oblivion vids one by one, it is obvious you put a lot of thought and effort into your videos.
"Mom I want Raycevick!"
"Sweetie we have Raycevick at home."
"But I don't want Raycevick at ho- Oh... No this is uh... This is pretty pleasant, actually. I'm fine with this. This is good."
39:36 "like spokes of a wheel"
of course you had to
The repetitive daytime bird chirps are BURNED into my brain such that I still find myself randomly whistling the tunes
I don't think it's fair to blame how far you can take facial sliders for how bad the NPC faces look. Yes you can make horrors with it. You can make horrors with Photoshop and any other competent tool. It's not the job of the tool to prevent you from making horrors, and it shouldn't be the job of the tool to decide what is and isn't desirable. That's the designers job.
By contrast I found Skyrims face sliders too restrictive, and could never get the exact shape I wanted. You can't make horrors with it, but it came at the cost of full artistic expression.
It's like when people made fun of task manager because you used to be able to use it to crash the system. Should it be task managers job to stop you? I'd say no. The tool did what you asked it to. Although clearly Microsoft disagree with both me and the creator of task manager on that one, because they changed it so you couldn't.
Oblivion is my favorite immersive sim
I believe you can strafe while jumping if you were already strafing before you jumped.
Love the 'Places of Cyrodill' section!
Cyrodil is not as snowy as skyrim
I may very well have but cannot remember ever noticing the "questionably familiar shape" of the Ayleid passage ways. But now that you mention it... 😂
You know, the Elder Scrolls keep advertising themselves as "Fantasy Simulators instead of Role-Playing Games", but I kind of wonder if they would work if they were a level-less Zelda-esque game. Like, the character doesn't improve (or improves in a manner very differently from the infinite number growth we are used to seeing from these games), but the game world is super detailed.
Spell creation is still totally a thing, though. I mean, what, are you crazy?
orcs are also a kind of elf.
I love how you described the characters’ uncanny faces lol. I discovered Oblivion only years after developing my Skyrim addiction but I still feel so charmed by and fond of the characters’s cute doughy faces in all the contrastingly dark fantasy situations X) And yes I can distinctly remember being convinced to buy it off steam and give it a try by gameplay videos of countryside exploration that I checked out :D It’s truly the greatest strength of the game
Id avoid leveling up and limit my weapons to fine steel, maybe carry a silver short sword for ghost encounters. Id create a story for my character and operate within the limitations of that narrative. If i made a bandit then id act accordingly. Once i made a silver tongued play boy which fell into a vampire curse scenario. It was like a short novel come to life. I'd try to make a character then go through the motions of a logical progression then it may happen to change due to a quest or encounter. You have to play along with the game to help illusion.
Yes Lockring my favourite aedra
Nice
I'm ngl, ive never had any issue with scrolling across the map
Amazing video series ! ❤️ Great work