Thanks to everyone who supported me the past 10 months. Read this comment before you respond: NIRNROOT: Yes I said it weird. You can apparently drop Nirnroot on at least the Steam version of Oblivion. It's weird because I've had conversations IRL about not being able to drop Nirnroot, and it's one of the chief complaints of the Nirnroot quest I've heard (being that you have to collect ~100 of them just to be able to finally stop carrying them around). Those memories came from the physical PC copy as well as the 360 copy, in case anyone wants to look into it. HACKDIRT: Yes, I'm aware that Hackdirt is a Lovecraft reference. I figured a fake out referencing an obscure film from the 60s was an obvious enough joke. Do you actually think I knew what "Shadow over Elveron" was prior to writing this script? It was a made for TV film from the late 60s, it's so obscure the novel it was based on doesn't even have a wikipedia page. "Shadow over Innsmouth" is, however, not an obscure reference. The joke is predicated on you thinking I'm about to say "Shadow over Innsmouth" and then faking you out at the last second. Thanks for playing along, you can stop telling me now. MOUNT AND BLADE: I did not say that Mount and Blade came after Mordhau. That paragraph is just structured badly, also I was lazy and used the Bannerlord footage I already had rather than getting new Warband footage. I mention Morrowind first, then clarify that Mordhau has directional attacks, and then say that Mount and Blade also used directional attacks, which was supposed to be relative to the first subject, not the second. The idea was to progress the idea backwards, and then show that Elder Scrolls pre-dated it all.
@@captainufo4587 to be fair, most new players to Morrowind don't buy physical copies that have the manual. However, some reading can help have a basic, if somewhat uninformed understanding.
They had the perfect excuse to get rid of Levitation and Teleportation and they chose not to use it; just say that it was in some way tied to the Heart of Lorkhan. That the heart's destruction sent magical shockwaves through the world that altered the way that certain magic worked, making some spells no longer possible. You can even say the change was gradual so it makes sense you could still use them in the Morrowind post game. It might sound flimsy, but it is ten thousand times more believable than "everyone collectively pinky promised not to use two of the coolest and most useful magical powers that any being can possess."
@@doghat1619 They doubled the size of the company between oblivion and morrowind, and several key figures left after morrowind. But tell me more about how that constitutes "almost entirely the same."
This is great because by the time I finish watching it, I've forgotten what was said at the start and get to enjoy it all over again. This is the only content I need now. This shall sustain me.
@@BrickleYourFrickle Simple, there's too much info to digest all at once. You can probably come back and pick up on points you might've missed or forgotten by the end durations of 12hours. Especially if you have to pause, or god forbid watch it all in one sitting. Currently watched it like twice now, and am 6 hours into it. I sat through all 6 so far all at once.
Honestly I've gotten so worn out on lockpicking minigames in general that when I finally played the original Deus Ex I was almost excited that it was a real time wait with no minigame.
20 hours of TES critique and analysis released within 8 months of each other. Not only is your content longer, more girthy, and far meatier, but it's delivered quicker than any other video game critique UA-camr could possibly compete with
Teleportation and, to a lesser extent, levitation are two spells in my Big Book of OP No-No Spells for Settings. This is because, while any magic would change aspects of civilization in ways Elder Scrolls games refuse to contemplate, teleportation and levitation would change all of society. Unless Tamriel were filled with flying cities (in the games) and armies (other than daedric ones) portalling into castle keeps--or simply the projectiles hurled by those armies--I would not want to see the concepts of teleportation and levitation come within mile of the setting. I am not against them as mechanics. Task the player to set up or restart an archanatrans suppression system as part of military campaign against the daedra. Leaves some wildlands in the gaps and edges where all magics are permanently available. These could be hazardous areas where cackling mages and magical creatures could ambush from above, kill you, resurrect you, or transport you to unknown locations for macabre experimentation.
@@iivin4233 I'm with you on this. It has way too much impact on entire settings to just handwave. I think it's ok to have things like fixed teleporters with a macguffin to explain why they can't be everywhere, for the sake of having in-universe fast travel options. Things like levitation could be tied to object size and mass easily - individuals don't have enough magic to lift great objects and even then, it's difficult to control them. Grabbing a pencil or dagger can be learned, but moving a tabled would be quite difficult. Time travel and parallel universes are even worse in my mind. Unless it's handled "perfectly", it ruins the worldbuilding for me. I think what they did in Skyrim was good though, it was more a window into the past and not actually going back to change events. Even sending Alduin forward in time is ok in my eyes - I read it as he was put in a sort of stasis for a few thousand years, which is just as a good explanation.
I’m only just past the first hour, but I cannot say just how happy it made me for Young Scrolls’ Star to start playing when the Adoring Fan shows up! I bought both the normal and instrumental version of the song. Edit1: Okay, so I’m coming back to comment on your UI review. Thank you so much for praising the artist! I’ve always loved the pictographs as they made it so easy for me to understand the menus when I was a kid playing the game when it came out. I’ve also used them as examples of how to properly convey something simply both in my college classes and at my current job!
Minor lore nitpick - Orcs being occasionally referred to as beast people has been an intermittent thing since Daggerfall. Morrowind lists them as one of the three beast races, while simultaneously having books explaining their Mer heritage. It's an unreliable narrator thing, I'm sure. It didn't originate in ESO but like you said, that likes to recontextualize things.
While I will concede the point that ESO likes to recontextualize things, I still hold that it's otherwise pretty faithful with the lore. It's set far back enough on the timeline to where many discrepancies with earlier games can be easily explained away as the unreliable narrator. It gets the most problematic when it tries to do anything with the daedra, though it rarely fucks up the lore in that department (my favorite instance of this is how Barbas is a bro in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, but he's an absolute jackass in ESO) I do however have a big problem with the lack of a 9th divine in the Imperial pantheon. Sure Tiber septum hasn't been born yet so obviously he hasn't ascended to godhood as Talos, but even back in daggerfall before his retroactive Ascension there was a 9th divine the form of Reymon Ebonarm, Imperial god of war
@@KitKatHexe I think Bethesda's lore people decided to scrub that given that they apparently removed all references to him completely, even from in game books he was previously mentioned in. So that is probably not on the ESO people. It is very likely they are aware of him, but he is not officially canon anymore.
As a Brazilian citizen, I have to congratulate Bethesda on the city of Bravil and how accurate it represents my country: Shit places and even shittier layout, a diverse population but somehow the racial tension is none compared to what it could be.
I agree with everything but shit places? You must live somewhere in the middle of the Tietê River or inside a favela somewhere that no one knows about. Brazil is beautiful, it just lacks organization and a lot of corruption.
It is pretty curious how brazil had a fuckton more slaves, outlawed slavery way later compared to everyone else, and somehow the racial tension although present isnt as bad as in the US.
I remember playing Oblivion while ignoring leveling and eventually being overwhelmed by how strong the enemies became. When I learned how to efficiently level/min max it felt like such an accomplishment.
My first character was actually nearly perfect for a playthrough. I hadn't played an Elder Scrolls game before, so I picked a bunch of skills that sounded cool at the time. I ended up with a weird grab bag of stuff like Alchemy, Security, Conjuration, ect on a primarily melee character, along with Heavy Armor and Blunt. I levelled at a pretty decent rate, and completely sidestepped the levelling issues with the game by accident, and never realized the issues until my second character.
I almost fear the day you choose to cover Skyrim. I've watched your morrowind retrospective 3 times now almost. I have several thousand hours in skyrim. You're going to tear my heart to pieces with that review if it comes.
I like your points about the fast travel implementation while cutting features. A couple years ago, I was playing the Bruma mod expansion for Skyrim, and was excited to feel nostalgic with places I recognized. After wandering around the countryside a bit, I started thinking "Why doesn't a single landmark here look familiar?" and it's because I fast traveled everywhere and had no idea what the connective countryside in Cyrodil looked like.
After Morrowind I didn't rly mess with Oblivion..so it's exactly what happened to me with Skyrim, I couldn't help myself using it. Survival really makes you slow down and enjoy the ride, I know Falkreath better than ever now that I'm forced to stay in the warmer regions longer. Beforehand it was left in the dust the moment I left Helgen. Survival should be the way the game was intended to play.
@@humanitiestheproblem sure but not anniversary edition survival. Its ridiculously imbalanced. You gotta pack 19 salmon steaks to eat every 3 hours to not have a hunger penalty
@@bEtHeSdA_LAME_sTuDi0s you don't HAVE to, you just heard from some guide that it's "weight efficient" to carry salmon steaks..I carry 20apple cabbage stews, 10 potatoe soups and 3 hots at any given time. Takes 1 to 2 soups to fill me up for a few hrs..3 tops if I rly let it go. Soups ftw.
@@bEtHeSdA_LAME_sTuDi0s unless you play on PC, everyone has the same current patch: AE. I coukd very well be wrong but I think your impatience with having to eat more than you'd like is affecting your opinion on the game mode.
"We make stories for the players, not ourselves." That is such a loaded sentence. Honestly, it explains so much about how their storytelling has changed since Todd Howard rose to power.
Instead of playing to their strengths and using environmental storytelling, they increasingly cram garbage characters in to do the 'elder scrolls nativity play'. Jumping to spoken dialogue was clearly too much of an ask for Bethsoft
@@Matt_History you can't just say that about the one thing that is consistently interesting from entry to entry lmao like would we even like caius cossaides without the implication of him being a FIENDISH a crackhead? or what about the legendary skyrim house with a creepy old man, a child, and one bed? Shit, what about the ways that Solitude and Windhelm represent their respective factions in Skyrim? Windhelm, home of the stormcloaks, is constantly experiencing blizzards and is bitterly cold; representing the hardship that old nords weathered to craft out Skyrim despite it's harsh conditions. Meanwhile, Solitude is beautiful and lucious, representative of the Imperials' comfortable way of life, yet also this ease of living makes them somewhat less fit for living in Skyrim. See? it goes beyond individual props and rooms. They use environmental storytelling for character development, and reinforcing/representing themes, not just making you go "oh ho ho something bad happened in *here*"
I actually like the potato quests. The reason is partially what you say, but also for the realistic yet mundane beauty of it. Sometimes I want to be a hero, other times, I just want to be a wandering traveler passing through at the right time, and I might not solve some confound dilema, but just doing normal people things for normal people. Maybe if I stick around someone will have a bigger quest, or maybe I’ll move on to the next town and just be remembered as the girl who got the potato’s back, and I genuinely like that
Agreed. I love the idea of being just a small time hero in certain towns. To some, i am a destined hero, some powerful warrior capable of almost rewriting the laws of the universe. To others, i am simply a helpful hand.
Check out kingdom come deliverance. It has a historical setting, and a lot of the quests are very low stakes. It was a real nice breath of fresh air for someone who has played tons of fantasy rpgs where you end up saving the world.
Listening to the Oblivion leveling system, even after knowing it myself for quite a while, makes me return to the question: Was this system created out of ignorance, an unfortunate blend of a myriad of design choices, or was it created because Todd Howard is secretly the devil incarnate? I guess we will never know.
What if the world scaled by a completely different metric than level? Breath of the Wild has a hidden exp system that does absolutely nothing for the player's stats, but quietly tracks the things the player has accomplished, such as killing the "leaders" of enemy camps, bosses, or completing quests, and gradually increases enemy and gear quality as that fills. For Oblivion, what if instead of scaling based on level, the world scaled based on your Fame? Retouch up what exactly gives fame to clear up loose edges, and this way, the world gets stronger not because you took a nap, but because you actually did things. Getting gear checked is unlikely to happen, since exploring the world and doing stuff means finding gear, and if you're feeling weak, then stopping to train on what you CAN handle actually makes you stronger without the world catching up.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Eh thing is in BOTW this kind of makes sense since you could argue Ganondorf senses that you're becoming stronger and that you're becoming a threat so he spawns stronger enemies. Fame wouldn't make that much sense. Why would people or monsters become stronger overall? You could however maybe make SOME enemies stronger or better equipped. Like if you had a high fame Bandit bosses have better gear cause they are scared of you and train more so they are stronger. The more i think about it this could actually work well with bandit camps. They are scared so they train harder, hire stronger people with better geat and maybe even capture creatures to protect themselves from you. Would definitely not work with elven ruins, animal caves, oblivion gates/daedra.
I can appreciate the advantages of text-based dialog. In Pathologic 2, every character has little voice lines related to their character when you open dialog, but the actual conversations are text-based. Because there is A LOT to talk about. People lie to you, misdirect you, don't understand the situation, have their own goals, don't care, are too high, or traumatized to be coherent. And your own character has so many different options to choose from. Some are fake choices, with the same response which us unfortunate. This us due to their small team and covid affected deadline. Most of the dialog options, however, are different ways to respond to lies, supernatural events, mysticism, rumors, mob mentality, ignorance, and of course; breaking the fourth wall. It's really sobering to realize how much a small indie team can do with video game storytelling when they aren't limited by the price and file space of voice actors and their lines.
This is a great response to the 'voice > text' thing. Pathologic is dense af and trying to fit and deliver on the quality of the game is a monumental challenge with little comparative reward.
Fast Travel is mandatory in skyrim/fallout 4 because world is dead. I have not played other games but I assume same. Once you clear something there is no reason to return it.
@@zao9256 That's untrue on multiple levels. I also play Skryim without fast-traveling. If anything there's more density of activities in Skyrim than Oblivion. So you can hit a few locations up the first time you pass a certain way, then a few more the next time, and so on--because there are so many locations in the wilderness. And things re-spawn.
My favorite glitch in the game is Mannimarco. On the PS3 version, after his speech, he sometimes stays invulnerable, softlocking you into the final quest. The only way to kill him is to lure him into the water and trap him underneath a tunnel. As long as you have water breathing, he'll just sit there until he drowns. It just works.
This sounds like an INCREDIBLE quest: the quest line builds up this minor god who's almost literally a god of being immortal. Then you meet him and they actually _are_ immortal and you have to figure out a way to make them brain dead.
I Tried sooo many things i tried hitting him with my sword, magic nothing. I then tried drowning him it didnt work. So then i thought how about fall damage that must work right? Nope. I was out of ideas until i ended up seeing the oblivion gate icon on my compass. So i thought screw it time to take Mannimarco to Oblivion. I took him in and lured him towards the lava and he accidentally fell in. I heard him die and could only smile. :)
I once had Mannimarco permanently glitch where he just wouldn’t interact when you initially approach him. I even went back to my first save file and speed ran the mages guild as fast as I could and he was STILL bugged. Absolutely Gamebreaking. Even the weird claw things that come out of the ground or whatever they are as you approach him bugged halfway. He’d just stand there saying ‘well met’ and was essential. Couldn’t even be charmed into attacking.
I remember playing khajit, going to the arena, using eye of fear on a fighter, and getting the 'your act has been witnessed' when I killed him. I was like, duh.
8:21:40 - With high health and/or acrobatics, you can surivive the fall without the Boots of Springheel Jak, so you get to keep them forever. My brother discovered that by accident by forgetting to equip the boots and surviving with barely any health to spare, haha.
I love how you fight everything with your bare hands and a few spells, imagine how terrifying it would be to a random dremora just chilling in oblivion minding its own business to then witness a Breton with some beat up leathers and a pair of sandals walk up to a Scamp beat it into unconsciousness and then peel its skin off like a rabbit all in a span of like 5 Seconds.
@@myriad9597 no, it doesn't? I'm not sure if you know this, but Deadra are bound entirely to their concepts and cannot butt in whenever they want, it has to be related to their concepts(hence why Sheogorath can butt in if he chooses on other Deadra's rituals but they cannot do the same to his, his domain is that of chaos and maddness) Dagon is destruction, change, and revolution. He cannot ever become top dog in the cosmic order, because if he does so he has to seed his own downfall. The other Deadra know this(one can assume by the tale of Jygglag that the princes know of eachother's domains, so why intervene in a ploy that cannot succeed?) Kinda weird you're just going down the comment section goinging "nonononononono" to practicly anything other people say. Unless you have actual lore receipts(which based on the few comments ive seen... you dont. It seems more like you're on a "hate Bethesda" kick), just let people have their fun.
@@the_last_ballad Interesting read, have a good day. Out of curiosity, how many comments have I left here? Must have been rather irritable at the time.
i love how theres slowly more and more chaos sprinkled in as the video goes on, i’m nearly 9.5hrs in and i just heard the phrase elven femboys. a while ago he played the horsecock song. this is my new favorite youtube video
I didn't think of it like that but now that you mention it, if Pat does have highly structured scripts there is absolutely no way that's on accident. He's probably figuring, shit, their 10 hour into a video who cares what bullshit I insert in LMAO.
I just wanted to say, that I LOVE long-form on YT. It's so great to have someone tell you a story for hours and hours. I can listen to it each day after work, instantly getting back to that relaxed state from prior day. Or I can have it on a slow day in the background. I don't understand criticizing someone for creating FREE content. Huge cheers mate for all you do, and I'll gladly watch future ones, even if they take a week of non-stop listening.
Honestly, Mannimarco's fight could have been vastly improved by just letting him use his staff and having you fight a bunch of mobs first meaning the room is filled with corpses for him to reanimate.
Or, the oldest trick in the book. Mannimarco, and his two brothers, Mannimarco and Mannimarco, all attack the player together. Mannimarco and Mannimarco dissolve into dust or goo, while Mannimarco leaves a proper corpse with his goodies.
Rewatched in 2024, still a gold tier analysis of oblivion but this game inspires infinite discussion. It's uncanny and the jank inspires stories. I'm playing a Featherwitch Wood Elf right now. My first playthrough as a kid was an Argonian Mage Tank. This game is so versatile and it's awesome that it is somewhat accessible to everyone. I enjoy how the experience scales from total noob to pro
I think the aspect also shows just how much greater a daedric prince is than a hero. Even with full power,even with the greatest cheat known to man,you will NEVER be stronger than one of these guys.
Unpatched Oblivion gave you the ability to spam the use key on sigil stones at the end of an oblivion gate to get as many you could spam the use key to get before you black out.
This video is still so good 2 years later. I re-visited the Morrowind and Skyrim ones again this week, they're the perfect crossover between my obsession with TES and love of long form content. Thank you for your hard work.
Your breakdown of equipment durability and the insanity of people criticizing it while simultaneously embracing survival mechanics like hunger is magnificent.
I've been playing RDR2 the last couple days and that's yet another massively popular game with both hunger AND equipment durability in the modern industry.
@@durpasaur3052 This is like saying Reloading is a shitty mechanic in FPS games because it hinders your ability to defend yourself. Like it ain’t hard to do and calling it a shitty mechanic because you don’t want to adapt or learn from your mistake is just stupid.
Your improvement in sourcing from the Morrowind video to this is impressive. It really shows that you're dedicated to improving your content for the viewer's benefit and the sake of clarity. This was really well put together and all your hard work absolutely comes through. I will say I do wish some of the longer tangents had their own sections -- they fit well where they are, but it'd be handy to be able to go back and find them(like how Morrowind had its own travel chapter and music chapter). Please keep up the great work.
Bro... "Using scrolls as a way to test new spell ideas..." That is legit a genius idea. Scroll testing becomes the method through which you acquire spells and, eventually bind them into a spell tome for semi-permanent use. Not only does that justify spell-tomes' existence but also retroactively makes scrolls as cost effective consumable that doesn't supplant casting for real mages but makes the use of magic accessible to non-magic characters.
If you listen to this on 0.75, not only does it sound like you now have a drunk friend loredumping/criticizing Oblivion to you, but you also have more video!
“The Divines don’t have artifacts” Brush of True Paint Divine Crusader Armor Amulet of Kings Staff of Magnus Auriel’s Bow Auriel’s Shield Lord’s Mail Stendarr’s Hammer Chrysamere The multiple items you collect during the Imperial Cult in Morrowind
Well, Magnus isn't exactly an Aedra... But yeah. I guess it's easy to forget about the ones you listed, since you don't get to have a chat with the Divines before getting them lol (Unlike the Daedra I mean)
@Buster Ampleforth Some Daedra artifacts are not even daedra in orgin. Goldbrand, Spellbreaker, and Vala-Vala, Malacath's hammer are not daedric. How do those count as deadric?
The game oblivion is about 5 gbs and with dlcs. Not alot of hardrive to download and still works well on windows 10 no need to edit files. Unlike fallout 3 where you need to edit the files so it can run dualcore processors
Love falling asleep to the Morrowind video, this one somewhat, but the cutaway gags are very distracting. Horsecoq/Harry Potter meme bits. I had tried sleeping to further uploads like the Skyrim and Outer Worlds stuff but they have similar problems.
That Morrowind "take some time to train and come back later" is sooooo underrated... for people who value even the most light type of roleplaying, it's definitely something missed in Oblivion and Skyrim's main questlines... Specially in Oblivion where some items/rewards would be better in specific levels that you can lose by being busy with the main quest, and since it's so urgent it never lets you "take some time off" Even though my favorite game is still Skyrim, if we're talking about story immersion, Morrowind is greater than its successors. I felt alive in that game.
Sometimes it just feels right to have enemies who can mop the floor with you and have the choice to leave, train, update your gear and come back knowing they won't magically become stronger just because you also did.
Not even just elder scrolls - I find most open world games tend to be in conflict with their plots - "Hurry and save the world - here's 100 hours of BS to do". Permission from the game to take your time is something I didn't appreciate till replaying Morrowind recently. It's the lack of focus on cinematic narrative and heavier focus on exploring to be ready for the next challenge that make Morrowind, Breath of the Wild, and Elden Ring's open worlds work for me (mostly)
The quite-long video format is a thing that revived my interest for youtube, which lately has become mostly a platform for instant emotion based entertainment (which is fine, just not what I'm looking for) And seeing several channels releasing long and detailed works on topics that I enjoy is a blessing. Thank you, Patrician for these videos, for the hours you put in, for your passion, for all the times you've made the decision to come back to this.
Second time I've watched this through. Best way to replay an old favorite without having to play it. Well written and enjoyable retrospective. Not all in one sitting, but a full work shift and partial day. Helps to make it go smoothly.
Just came here to say that this video popped up in my recommended as I'm looking for a video essay to fall asleep to. This video would still be playing when I wake up
Your take on fast travel is interesting. I didn't know fast traveling was an option when I played the game for the first time and getting to Kvatch was a special experience. In a good and a bad way. I walked to it from the capitol and barely used the road to get there a bit quicker. That early in the game athleticism is really low and I couldn't afford a horse yet, so it took AGES! But it felt like a real adventure. I saw the world, went by old ruins and caverns, encountered monsters and bandits and when Kvatch appeared on the horizon it became almost cinematic. It was still during the day time and I could see this big city and it's castle on top of the mountain, but the way through the valley took a few hours, so it was night already when I arrived and in the dark the fleeing peasant ran towards me, warned me about the attack and a few minutes later the fires were visible in the night and the quest started. Playing the whole game like that would take weeks and it comes with the downside of an adventure. It gets tideous and discouraging, especially when you lost your way and realize that you walked in the wrong direction for hours, but honestly, until I discovered the fast travel option, this game felt way more like an epic fantasy adventure and that feeling never came back completely. "don't use it" doesn't work, because in the back of your head you know, that all your problems can be solved with two clicks and that ruins the tension. Edit: there's one thing I didn't realize until now. The main quest works really well without fast travel. Every new mission sends you to a place on the map you didn't go before and you can mostly follow the main roads, discovering Cyrodil in the process. After rescuing Martin you even get a horse for free, because from there on it's mostly fetch quests in every other corner of Cyrodil. It even makes sense now that the Daedric shrine the game suggests is Nocturna, because it's a) close to the temple and b) in the north east, where no other main quest leads. Even the help for bruma quest makes kind of sense that way, because you can travel it in a circle. If you only do the main quest "don't use it" is actually a pretty good suggestion.
yes!! I was floored when I found out I could fast travel right away. I dont think I realized it until my 2nd playthrough, lol. I just never attempted it and fought and died many times on my way to kvatch. I want to play it again now,
I didn't notice for a while either and the game benefits from it. He is correct though, to "ignore it" you need some viable in game travelling... Mark/recall, boat, etc. Wish Oblivion had this like Morrowind.
See, I knew you could fast travel, but I thought you had to visit these places first before it would let you fast travel. My face when I found out I could immediately travel to Weynon Priory after leaving the sewers: : O
I like fast travel for convivence but honestly after modding the hell out of Skyrim to have a better map you can actually use like a map and motivation to NOT fast travel via need for sleep, food, etc, I actually really liked it more. The world of Skyrim is actually a very nice open world, there is just little motivation to get out there and explore. That first walk from Helgen to Riverwood was really exciting and interesting and immersive and I could never really figure out a way to recreate it. It's just a real shame because the worlds are so nice but fast travel just makes it so most audiences won't really explore it when exploring is part of the fun (along with really bland and boring dungeons that all basically look and act the same for you to discover tbh). Some people I have seen get annoyed at not having a close by fast travel location and instead have to find their way over there, because there is just no easy way to see which paths you have available and it's just a pain to even have fun looking around in when mountains stand in your way. The open world feels more like a hinderance when it's so disconnected to the quests and every other mechanic makes it out to be as painful as possible. Despite Oblivion having at least roads on the map exploration still felt kinda hollow and I just wanted to fast travel because I wasn't even aesthetically motivated to explore much and got annoyed when I got lost, even if there were some cool locations I found on the way. It really just sucks because I feel in some way that takes away a bit of player agency--it is harder to have your own fun and make your own way to places and feel like it was your choice, and instead just feels like the devs are punishing you for getting lost or taking the wrong way there. There are ways to motivate players to take specific paths but that requires writing and more attention to detail. Like how in New Vegas you /can/ technically try to sneak past the death claws and just make your way to the city immediately. It'll be a challenge, but it is possible, or if you don't want to you can take the long way around that has a trail of clues for you to follow that new players will be more enticed by, along with a lot of interesting locations, side quests, and stories. You almost always /want/ to go exploring, to find something new. It scratches that itch for curiosity. I couldn't tell you how I got to Kvatch in Oblivion, it was just a mess of fast traveling, getting lost, feeling frustrated, taking the wrong way up I think, and then boom portal. But I can tell you a lot about my first New Vegas playthrough, about how I got to Vegas, all the side quests I did or came back for, which companions I had, when I got nervous about raiders so I crouched along the road between Prim and Novac. While I use fast travel in NV it's def an option, and something they really just had to include. In Oblivion and Skyrim and other Todd era Bethesda games, it feels like a crutch. An excuse to not have more in depth travel systems, or more details, or better writing. Because you don't 'need' it if you're primarily just going to be teleporting around. So instead exploration feels like a punishment, not most of the fun.
I can't believe this short story of a comment you wrote was actually an enjoyably digestible read. You ever think of making a UA-cam series? If you write your scripts out the way you did here I would subscribe.
I personally hate fast travel, because it completely disencentives exploration. Which is why I love games that include it with a monkeys paw. For example, Death Stranding has a fast travel system via the charecter Fragile, who can teleport anywhere via the beach. However, due to the nature of the beach, you can't take any items with you. Only the clothes on your back and your bb. So if you need to transport yourself across the map to start a new quest, you're allowed to, but that means all your weapons, items, and cargo is put in storage until you return to that specific location. It's so dang brilliant.
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul makes the Mannimarco fight a significant challenge, one I was able to overcome with the "useless" turn undead spell to deal with the liches and ghostly warriors he'd constantly summon. It felt like a truly satisfying cap on the quest line and its disappointing that Bethesda is simply incapable of providing these kinds of experiences.
The turn undead spell is useless because in the base game, encounters are not designed for turn undead to function as anything but a means of acoiding combat entirely. That mod sounds cool, and if more encounters in the base game had that level of difficulty, spells like fear and turn undead would be much more useful.
Half of the spells in this game are useless and that is one of them. Burden simply doesn't work on anybody other then the player character themselves and not NPC's. Any scroll or staffs of burden are for selling and nothing else. That's just another example. I am certainly on the side of the fence that is tired of Bethesda simply avoiding problems by getting ride of the effects or magic's outright but some of these spells and effects are so useless it shouldn't have taken us past post-Oblivion to get rid of a lot these.
Not incapable. They can and they don't care, because gamers will always buy their games. In the long run people will make videos and write articles defending Fallout 76 and everyone will forget.
The section on leveling really hits home. For years I used a self made mod that set all your character stats and levels to max. This made the beginning of the game *damn hard* (because you would run into end game monsters when you had crap gear) but after the first couple of fights you would have enough gear to survive and could then play the game ignoring leveling without the problems of not leveling at all without a mod. (A better way to do this would be to math out a bunch of builds, and then make a mod or mods that allowed you to just jump to the end state of that build without all the headache of trying to manage your leveling, but the simple max everything solution let me do whatever) Later, I found a mod that assigned XP to a whole load of actions, and then gave you a menu to level up where you distributed your skills and attributes with amounts being close to what you would get from optimal leveling. This was better in that you had a smoothish power curve, but as you noted it removes that "do it to learn it" magic. In short, Oblivion leveling is fucked, and I never did find a perfect solution.
Realistic leveling? It works.. weird sometimes, but it's closest to the best you can get out of Oblivion, honestly. You still "do it to learn it", but your stats are increasing immediately by reaching the default threshold without the need to calculate all of your level ups that carefully. I.e. you leveled up Blades and Blunt by 1 point each? Get +1 to Strength right away. And leveling just unlocks better rewards and gear.
One thing I always liked about Morrowind is its clever justification for why you can take your time even though the world is at stake. One of the documents in Vivec's library outlines the protracted cosmic battle of attrition between the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur that Ur will inevitably win, though it may take decades, unless a new piece appears on the board (the Nerevarine) to tip the balance against him. That's why the player can blow off the main quest as long as they want, since the time scale on which gods fight dwarfs that of a mortal. Another such document even talks about how the Nerevarine is encouraged to win: by taking their time to familiarize themselves with Red Mountain, growing in power and probing the Sixth House's defenses, rather than charging straight towards the Heart. That's what I call gameplay and story integration.
It kinda amazes me how few people know the Ayleids were Melnibonean-tier degenerates. Real missed opportunity to delve into elves at their (almost) absolute worst.
Unless you dig deeper than the surface all you hear about the aeyleids is that they were mass murdering slaver people. Which kinda melds in since every race and country on tamriel has or is doing some mass murdering and enslaving. The aeylieds big stsndout feature if you just play through without reading a lot is they use a few more traps then the other wackos.
Thank you for this. I played Oblivion on an external hard drive in my college's computer lab while manually writing out a spreadsheet of how I wanted to level, so a lot of what you said about the leveling pain resonated with me. Also I'm voiced by Wes Johnson.
Also, there is something I want to point out about Clavicus Vile. Despite how similar the voice sounds, Clavicus wasn’t actually voiced by Todd, but rather Craig Sechler. The only NPC Todd voiced was Alban Corinis, a test NPC.
seeing the length i expected this to be super padded out, and almost just you 'explaining' the game, but fuck me was i wrong, this is dense as hell and really really well done, gonna go watch the morrowind one now. awesome job
3:54:48 Thank you for including the fact that apparently every time you go talk to the Archmage he's asleep, like girl what is it that's so common about Oblivion playthroughs that Hannibal Traven is always fucking sleeping when you go talk to him?
Absolutely fantastic, I just finished watching. I don't really know if I have anything in the way of criticism, or if I do it's hard to articulate given the scope of this; I think you are right to say this is a step-up from the Morrowind retrospective, which was itself already a fantastic video. I feel like it was well paced (as funny as that is to say for a 12 hour ordeal) and the chapters helped break the video up into manageable segments, both making it easier to find where I left off and even somewhat helping me remember where you made points that weren't strictly and specifically related to the chapter topic (like the discussion of the dialogue length and AI voices during the Dark Brotherhood section. I especially love the idea of having a choice between long form text-based dialogue and a more truncated alternative.) One thing that really sticks out about your style, and here especially, is your attitude that it isn't enough to just say a game design decision is inherently good or bad. As someone who wants to make games and is trying to understand more about intentional and effective game design decisions, it's refreshing and incredibly informative when you break down what the intended effect of a creative decision is, and whether you believe it meaningfully accomplishes that goal. The video's not only a thorough and lucid examination of Oblivion, but also a meditation on what unique experiences the game could deliver on if this quest or that mechanic were handled differently. Instead of walking away with just another opinion on whether the game was good or bad, I left this video feeling energized and excited just imagining the kind of role-play experience that could exist there. Anyway, a little meandering, but that's the bulk of the feedback I'd give on this. I'm considering contributing on Patreon, and I'm very excited to see if you start that Skyrim video.
Doing what hbomb did for Fallout 3. I still enjoy F3 and Bliv, but such highly detailed analysis/critique forces one to remove the rose-coloured glasses and really question _why_ you still enjoy it. I think there's a lot of value in that, if you have the maturity to admit that everything you love might not actually be perfect. :)
Wow. A 12 Hour breakdown on my #1 game of all time. Skyrim still doesn't come close to how engaging the original Oblivion was. I still remember the Blockbuster employee trying to get me to purchase (a used rented copy of) Oblivion after trying out the battle of Kvatch on the kiosk. I just finished Two Worlds at that time and had a bad taste from western RPGs but Oblivion literally blew my mind away at what was possible in a video game. Sadly I have not felt the same way about a new game since that day.
I was a kid and Wal-Mart had an Xbox 360 with a demo of Lord of the Rings: Battle For Middle Earth (Y’all remember when they had consoles set up at the game cases?) and couldn’t wait to be able to own the game.
When I was younger and I played Oblivion all the time, I gathered as many followers as possible at once for the final Oblivion Gate battle. Essentially doubled the human NPC's at the fight. It was the coolest fucking thing young me had ever played.
Yeah man, Oblivion was amazing in the day (still is today, you just need 50 or 60 mods to bring it up to date). I remember the first time I laid eyes on it in 2005 or whenever it came out - I was so impressed by the shadows coming from the torch in the prison cell. I had NEVER seen a game look that good.
I always felt Kvatch should have been sorta like a Riverwood/Whiterun situation where the player came up near it and got to know the game mechanics before deciding to go off to see Juaffre and then when you are delivering the amulet not only do you learn new info about someone who to you was the local priest in the starting town but also gives the emotional reaction when it gets wiped out at the same time
@@NigerianCrusader put Kvatch in eyesight or at least on the horizon from the imperial sewers, players who play for the sake of playing and not to finish the game would be like ooo cool new town and they wont worry about the amulet until after exploring. You could even say that the emperor just hands you the amulet and a sealed letter, that he doesnt have time to explain before the mythic dawn show up, so you fight them off with baurus and then travel to Kvatch where he opens the letter and gives you the quest, in which case skipping kvatch gets rid of the urgency problem too.
@@Haispawner yes and no- the placement of major cities actually was already determined by the original Elder Scrolls game, The Elder Scrolls Arena. Same for Skyrim's cities, they're in Arena
One thing I love about Oblivion is that with all of its flaws, it plays so smoothly, theres never a time where you feel like you're limited in movement or hindered by game physics or mechanics in basic play.
That's easily one of the best points of the game... Story and gameplay change issues aside- the gameplay never has any serious problems with approach, nothing ever gets in the way and prevents you from approaching things the way you want.
It sounds to me like Martin was a main character in a previous elder scrolls game. The way he talks about being tired of the mages guild and about chasing after daedric magic.
I'm so thankful for your explanation of why the leveling is so messed up. I've played this game multiple times but always in a casual sense - no guides, no min maxing etc - and every single time, I'd reach this *brick wall* where suddenly, the monsters were kicking my ass. I'd usually just crunch the main quest and book it to the battle in Kvatch because that was where it was particularly difficult at higher levels. Getting killed by Clannfears in one or two hits was not a pleasant experience lol. I always made it past that bump in the road in one form or another but yah, I always wondered what the hell I was doing wrong🙄 (Im still not 100% sure about everything but I do know that preferring light armor was clearly a mistake, as it's not tied to endurance) (If I ever play this again, I'm probably just gonna turn the difficulty down when that happens. Worrying about a bad system is way too much work for me personally lol)
Preferring light armor isn’t the issue, it’s merely not leveling it. Honestly you need like 3 spreadsheets to keep track of the entire leveling system, and if you want to level well without caring too much, just make sure you level a minor skill at least 10 times, and a major skill at least 10 times, every level
@@kakyointhemilfhunter4273 that sounds like a major overhaul of all skill and rng based systems that may change the experience entirely, and also there’s a million mods for that in Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim, and 9 times out of 10 they don’t work properly or at all ime
@@ponivi I’m more than willing to change the experience if it’s an objective upgrade which in this case? It absolutely is. Having to keep a spreadsheet and level certain skills at certain times so as to avoid fighting enemies that 1-2 shot you too early is just plain ridiculous
The whiplash of talking about a quest line, going on a tangent about something else in the middle of it, and then slamming back to the questline suddenly is great.
@@baronvonbeandipif your brain is damaged goods, sure. he was writing a script, meaning he had plenty of time to internalize his thoughts, going from one tangent to another seamlessly. thats why this video is so great, subtle humor, great structure, and a whole heap of verifiable information to back all of his arguments
I'd imagine retrospectives like this help iron out things youre trying to correct in the remake mod, like level scaling. Hope it goes well, that'll prolly be what gets me into oblivion lol
Oblivion was my first Bethesda game and I managed to accidently become a vampire without realizing it and kept vaguely wondering why I kept getting hurt when I went outside and why all the NPCs were constantly telling me how awful I looked. And then I tried to pickpocket someone who was asleep and saw the "feed" button and was like "I can... feed them??" So I clicked it and my character started feeding ON them and that was when it all finally clicked. 10/10, excellent roleplaying experience.
@@boogit9979 if ya never realized vampires were a thing or they can turn ya into one by punching ya like how people use to think AIDs are spread it makes sense esp with it being their first ever bethsada game. no other vampirism is spread like that.
9:15:59 the player just standing there while matthieu bellamont's master plan of...... trying to stab a ghost(?) just happens in front of you always drove me insane
I still remember watching that E3 demo over and over again, just blew my mind. Remembered freaking out over the chains moving and the ribcage casting live shadows
The radiant AI blew my mind. I had one of those Xbox magazine discs with a trailer of Oblivion on it and I would watch it over and over. It was the first game I ever bought for 360. I remember reaching a mountain peak and being like, “Holy. Shit.” The beauty blew me away and honestly, oblivion’s stylized environment (not the faces obviously lmao) still holds up pretty well to me.
I recently realised how Jauffre getting the special dialouge of "yes Kvatch" makes him an irredeemable, irresponsible, incompetent idiot. With just one singular dialouge the super elite grandmaster of the blades reveals that he basically put the entirety of Tamriel at risk because he's a bum. He knew Uriel had an illegitimate heir as a backup plan, yet as he heard about the assassination of the Emperor's heirs and the big U himself he didn't IMMEDIATELY have Martin taken to Cloud Ruler Temple: strike 1. If the player visits Kvatch before delivering the amulet Jauffre implies that he knows of the attack but you never see a single blade agent sent to take Martin away nor are there any blades agent corpses to show he at least tried: strike 2. If the player B-lines it to the priory he gives a fucking inmate who might just have been a bloodthirsty murderer the task to retrieve the only hope of Tamriel: strike 3 he is out. And this is only the FIRST conversation you have with the guy. I will not even mention the clusterfuck of how the mythic dawn steals the amulet because that makes me want to open the console and just remove Jauffre from the game.
Yeah it’s just a running problem with TES wanting a foot in every door. The desire for a heroic, time-precious epic really clashes with the open world and ability to do what you want when you want it. The implementation of the player character is VERY lazy at times, like I have no professional writing experience and I still feel like I could write quests better than that. And Skyrim was the same way, since Alduin can never actually win and characters will put way too much trust in you
I mean, personally it always felt to me like the story of the game expects you to at least be waiting a day or 2 before going to kvatch. Its not possible for daedra to have "overran kvatch last night" as the npc says cause in order for the gate to open the emperor had to be dead. Personally I think it would take time for Jauffre to get down to Martin and him sending the player is his answer. The blades seem stretched thin compared to the mythic dawn. Idk its not actually a problem for me that stoey plays out how it does other than the quantum nature of kvatchs destruction
@@jaycrownshaw3902 I think the Mythic Dawn should have had more presence in the overworld along with the Oblivion Gates. It doesn't really make sense that the Daedra are everywhere but the Mythic Dawn are just resting on their laurels. Like you guys just assassinated the Emperor and stole the Amulet of Kings, this is the time to make your move. The Dawnstar Museum guy in Skyrim had more hustle than they did.
@@RancorousSeaI always wondered this too. I figured they would be the ones opening the oblivion gates on the Nirn side and that I'd find them near oblivion gates and communicating with daedra but there's nothing. There's barely any interaction with the Mythic Dawn or the Daedra and it's a lil sad.
No, dont expect logic! You have to come up with contrived and complicated theories like the Mehrunes Dagon theory to explain these inconsistencies For example, Uriel Septim could see into the future (The dragon blood… they see more than lesser men) Uriel probably left Jauffre specific instructions before he let his heirs and himself get assassinated. Applying Mehrunes Dagon theory, it all makes sense
![[UA] Eternal Fire проти NAVI | EPL Season 20 Malta](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/chvlsDygrZM/mqdefault.jpg)
Thanks to everyone who supported me the past 10 months. Read this comment before you respond:
NIRNROOT: Yes I said it weird. You can apparently drop Nirnroot on at least the Steam version of Oblivion. It's weird because I've had conversations IRL about not being able to drop Nirnroot, and it's one of the chief complaints of the Nirnroot quest I've heard (being that you have to collect ~100 of them just to be able to finally stop carrying them around). Those memories came from the physical PC copy as well as the 360 copy, in case anyone wants to look into it.
HACKDIRT: Yes, I'm aware that Hackdirt is a Lovecraft reference. I figured a fake out referencing an obscure film from the 60s was an obvious enough joke. Do you actually think I knew what "Shadow over Elveron" was prior to writing this script? It was a made for TV film from the late 60s, it's so obscure the novel it was based on doesn't even have a wikipedia page. "Shadow over Innsmouth" is, however, not an obscure reference. The joke is predicated on you thinking I'm about to say "Shadow over Innsmouth" and then faking you out at the last second. Thanks for playing along, you can stop telling me now.
MOUNT AND BLADE: I did not say that Mount and Blade came after Mordhau. That paragraph is just structured badly, also I was lazy and used the Bannerlord footage I already had rather than getting new Warband footage. I mention Morrowind first, then clarify that Mordhau has directional attacks, and then say that Mount and Blade also used directional attacks, which was supposed to be relative to the first subject, not the second. The idea was to progress the idea backwards, and then show that Elder Scrolls pre-dated it all.
Thank YOU
This is the only time I'll fell like staying up for 20 hours was justified
Thanks man!
12:00:00 my man
THANK YOU
Now that you've done a quick analysis. Do an in depth, time consuming one.
Yea boii
70 hours later
He would do a 15 second review of a gamr
I disagree. This was too long and I didn't like it, so I clicked off at 11:55:00. Boring!
Yea this is half a days work, I want a full one
"This game is shit, I can't hit anything!"
-Mannimarco, wielding a dagger he doesn't have the skills to use properly.
It's always that fucking -iron- silver dagger.
The legendary and infamous Necromancer runs out of magicka after 1 spell
i mean, how are you spose to know that if its your first time playing a es game?
@@zelexen By - Ghasp - READING the description of the skill or the game's manual?
@@captainufo4587 to be fair, most new players to Morrowind don't buy physical copies that have the manual. However, some reading can help have a basic, if somewhat uninformed understanding.
I've been enjoying falling asleep to random sections of this and waking up to a different video every night
thought i was the only guy who did that
Good I'm not alone
That’s exactly how I view these lol
These and Action Button’s videos are the best for that
I still feel like there’s always a new section to fall asleep too
They had the perfect excuse to get rid of Levitation and Teleportation and they chose not to use it; just say that it was in some way tied to the Heart of Lorkhan. That the heart's destruction sent magical shockwaves through the world that altered the way that certain magic worked, making some spells no longer possible. You can even say the change was gradual so it makes sense you could still use them in the Morrowind post game. It might sound flimsy, but it is ten thousand times more believable than "everyone collectively pinky promised not to use two of the coolest and most useful magical powers that any being can possess."
Very similar to how the Tribunal’s powers were waning
I would have never thought of that!
It makes me wonder if the devs that worked on oblivion had even played morrowind, let alone worked on it.
@@honeybadger6275yes, it's almost entirely the same dev team, just larger.
These changes were made deliberately to give the game wider appeal
@@doghat1619 They doubled the size of the company between oblivion and morrowind, and several key figures left after morrowind. But tell me more about how that constitutes "almost entirely the same."
@@honeybadger6275 which key figures left after morrowind?
This is great because by the time I finish watching it, I've forgotten what was said at the start and get to enjoy it all over again. This is the only content I need now. This shall sustain me.
Lol
Lmao
@@BrickleYourFrickle Simple, there's too much info to digest all at once. You can probably come back and pick up on points you might've missed or forgotten by the end durations of 12hours. Especially if you have to pause, or god forbid watch it all in one sitting. Currently watched it like twice now, and am 6 hours into it. I sat through all 6 so far all at once.
i will not eat, this video continues my life
The rewatch value is immense.
“A quick retrospective”
Is a half day long.
This is the syllabus for a semester of school for scribes in TES76 taking a history course.
It is a day long, as far as people stay awake that is.
TES 76? Oh god please no not another one! *FO76 flashbacks begin*
how do you even speak for that long
@@ttayWer you're genuinely stupid if you actually think this was all done in one sitting and not over weeks and months.
@@braydencharles6188 it was 80% a joke or he meant total, also dont like your own comment
The Perma-Virgin 10-minute review vs the Omega-Chad 12-hour quick retrospective
The only true full length review would be a novel
This might only be fore saving streams but doesn’t UA-cam have a 12 hour limit?
@@dannyb2344 there are videos on UA-cam that are way longer but they are also years old so they might have changed policies sense then
Long Man Good!
@@9manny99 well, by length, this technically is a novel in audiobook format lol
Honestly I've gotten so worn out on lockpicking minigames in general that when I finally played the original Deus Ex I was almost excited that it was a real time wait with no minigame.
I like them only if they're real time life in Thief. You have to move fast and messing up makes noise
20 hours of TES critique and analysis released within 8 months of each other. Not only is your content longer, more girthy, and far meatier, but it's delivered quicker than any other video game critique UA-camr could possibly compete with
One could say that with that girth, he thrusts his content into the limelight.
What a great way to tell him that his content is worth dick
Penis reference nice
Pause
Really gay way to describe it
"You up this weekend?"
"Nah man, I'm watching THE Oblivion retrospect"
"You up this weekend?"
"No"
"Why, are you watching THE Oblivion retrospect as well?"
"Nah, I'm just watching the quick analysis"
My friend literally called me yesterday and asked if I was free. He wasnt ready for my response of watching a 12 hour long video on Oblivion.
"Completely get it, enjoy"
this guy gets it
Teleportation is a perfectly valid school of magic, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!
*knock knock* its us the omnilresent imperial battlemages. We gotta memory hole mysticism before we're late for not helping during the great war.
Yep man and also trump make him president again man! Go vote matey! Go go go!
Teleportation and, to a lesser extent, levitation are two spells in my Big Book of OP No-No Spells for Settings. This is because, while any magic would change aspects of civilization in ways Elder Scrolls games refuse to contemplate, teleportation and levitation would change all of society.
Unless Tamriel were filled with flying cities (in the games) and armies (other than daedric ones) portalling into castle keeps--or simply the projectiles hurled by those armies--I would not want to see the concepts of teleportation and levitation come within mile of the setting.
I am not against them as mechanics. Task the player to set up or restart an archanatrans suppression system as part of military campaign against the daedra. Leaves some wildlands in the gaps and edges where all magics are permanently available. These could be hazardous areas where cackling mages and magical creatures could ambush from above, kill you, resurrect you, or transport you to unknown locations for macabre experimentation.
@@iivin4233 I'm with you on this. It has way too much impact on entire settings to just handwave.
I think it's ok to have things like fixed teleporters with a macguffin to explain why they can't be everywhere, for the sake of having in-universe fast travel options.
Things like levitation could be tied to object size and mass easily - individuals don't have enough magic to lift great objects and even then, it's difficult to control them. Grabbing a pencil or dagger can be learned, but moving a tabled would be quite difficult.
Time travel and parallel universes are even worse in my mind. Unless it's handled "perfectly", it ruins the worldbuilding for me.
I think what they did in Skyrim was good though, it was more a window into the past and not actually going back to change events.
Even sending Alduin forward in time is ok in my eyes - I read it as he was put in a sort of stasis for a few thousand years, which is just as a good explanation.
I’m only just past the first hour, but I cannot say just how happy it made me for Young Scrolls’ Star to start playing when the Adoring Fan shows up! I bought both the normal and instrumental version of the song.
Edit1: Okay, so I’m coming back to comment on your UI review. Thank you so much for praising the artist! I’ve always loved the pictographs as they made it so easy for me to understand the menus when I was a kid playing the game when it came out. I’ve also used them as examples of how to properly convey something simply both in my college classes and at my current job!
Minor lore nitpick - Orcs being occasionally referred to as beast people has been an intermittent thing since Daggerfall. Morrowind lists them as one of the three beast races, while simultaneously having books explaining their Mer heritage. It's an unreliable narrator thing, I'm sure. It didn't originate in ESO but like you said, that likes to recontextualize things.
Also racism.
While I will concede the point that ESO likes to recontextualize things, I still hold that it's otherwise pretty faithful with the lore.
It's set far back enough on the timeline to where many discrepancies with earlier games can be easily explained away as the unreliable narrator. It gets the most problematic when it tries to do anything with the daedra, though it rarely fucks up the lore in that department (my favorite instance of this is how Barbas is a bro in Morrowind, Oblivion, and Skyrim, but he's an absolute jackass in ESO)
I do however have a big problem with the lack of a 9th divine in the Imperial pantheon. Sure Tiber septum hasn't been born yet so obviously he hasn't ascended to godhood as Talos, but even back in daggerfall before his retroactive Ascension there was a 9th divine the form of Reymon Ebonarm, Imperial god of war
@@KitKatHexe I think Bethesda's lore people decided to scrub that given that they apparently removed all references to him completely, even from in game books he was previously mentioned in.
So that is probably not on the ESO people. It is very likely they are aware of him, but he is not officially canon anymore.
I'm gonna need a 12 hour explanation on this.
Orcs were created when some mer were eaten and shat out by malacath/molag bal.
They descended from mer but arent better than goblins or rieklings
As a Brazilian citizen, I have to congratulate Bethesda on the city of Bravil and how accurate it represents my country: Shit places and even shittier layout, a diverse population but somehow the racial tension is none compared to what it could be.
They even sound similar phonetically!
i found brazil quite accommodating,though..
Brasil é um tolete mesmo
I agree with everything but shit places? You must live somewhere in the middle of the Tietê River or inside a favela somewhere that no one knows about. Brazil is beautiful, it just lacks organization and a lot of corruption.
It is pretty curious how brazil had a fuckton more slaves, outlawed slavery way later compared to everyone else, and somehow the racial tension although present isnt as bad as in the US.
I remember playing Oblivion while ignoring leveling and eventually being overwhelmed by how strong the enemies became. When I learned how to efficiently level/min max it felt like such an accomplishment.
My first character was actually nearly perfect for a playthrough. I hadn't played an Elder Scrolls game before, so I picked a bunch of skills that sounded cool at the time. I ended up with a weird grab bag of stuff like Alchemy, Security, Conjuration, ect on a primarily melee character, along with Heavy Armor and Blunt. I levelled at a pretty decent rate, and completely sidestepped the levelling issues with the game by accident, and never realized the issues until my second character.
I almost fear the day you choose to cover Skyrim. I've watched your morrowind retrospective 3 times now almost. I have several thousand hours in skyrim. You're going to tear my heart to pieces with that review if it comes.
inb4 its closer to 20hrs than 12, carry on guardsman
Inb4 it’s just a 30 seconds video of him saying “Skyrim is actually my favourite Elder Scrolls game, I adore it and love it UwU”
@@Wizzo_Prez_Armco I'd rather be denied the right to sacrifice my life for the emperor than hear pat say he hates the game :(
I mean, I like Skyrim. But I'm sure we all have a laundry list of grievances that might seem a tad disproportionate to the praise we give it.
I feel like he already covered it mostly
It’s mostly summed up as “and that mechanic was cut”
I like your points about the fast travel implementation while cutting features. A couple years ago, I was playing the Bruma mod expansion for Skyrim, and was excited to feel nostalgic with places I recognized. After wandering around the countryside a bit, I started thinking "Why doesn't a single landmark here look familiar?" and it's because I fast traveled everywhere and had no idea what the connective countryside in Cyrodil looked like.
After Morrowind I didn't rly mess with Oblivion..so it's exactly what happened to me with Skyrim, I couldn't help myself using it. Survival really makes you slow down and enjoy the ride, I know Falkreath better than ever now that I'm forced to stay in the warmer regions longer. Beforehand it was left in the dust the moment I left Helgen.
Survival should be the way the game was intended to play.
@@humanitiestheproblem sure but not anniversary edition survival. Its ridiculously imbalanced. You gotta pack 19 salmon steaks to eat every 3 hours to not have a hunger penalty
@@bEtHeSdA_LAME_sTuDi0s you don't HAVE to, you just heard from some guide that it's "weight efficient" to carry salmon steaks..I carry 20apple cabbage stews, 10 potatoe soups and 3 hots at any given time.
Takes 1 to 2 soups to fill me up for a few hrs..3 tops if I rly let it go.
Soups ftw.
@@humanitiestheproblem idk what patch you have but despite having endless food my character is always under hunger penalty every 3 hours
@@bEtHeSdA_LAME_sTuDi0s unless you play on PC, everyone has the same current patch: AE. I coukd very well be wrong but I think your impatience with having to eat more than you'd like is affecting your opinion on the game mode.
"We make stories for the players, not ourselves." That is such a loaded sentence. Honestly, it explains so much about how their storytelling has changed since Todd Howard rose to power.
Instead of playing to their strengths and using environmental storytelling, they increasingly cram garbage characters in to do the 'elder scrolls nativity play'.
Jumping to spoken dialogue was clearly too much of an ask for Bethsoft
@@baronvonbeandiptheir environmental story telling us just throwing a skeleton on the ground. It's not that deep
@@Matt_History you can't just say that about the one thing that is consistently interesting from entry to entry lmao like would we even like caius cossaides without the implication of him being a FIENDISH a crackhead? or what about the legendary skyrim house with a creepy old man, a child, and one bed? Shit, what about the ways that Solitude and Windhelm represent their respective factions in Skyrim? Windhelm, home of the stormcloaks, is constantly experiencing blizzards and is bitterly cold; representing the hardship that old nords weathered to craft out Skyrim despite it's harsh conditions. Meanwhile, Solitude is beautiful and lucious, representative of the Imperials' comfortable way of life, yet also this ease of living makes them somewhat less fit for living in Skyrim.
See? it goes beyond individual props and rooms. They use environmental storytelling for character development, and reinforcing/representing themes, not just making you go "oh ho ho something bad happened in *here*"
@@salmon_winePretty sure you put more thought into this than Bethesda did.
@@Matt_HistoryIt isn't. That's the point. It's still leagues better than anything the writing room pops out.
I actually like the potato quests. The reason is partially what you say, but also for the realistic yet mundane beauty of it. Sometimes I want to be a hero, other times, I just want to be a wandering traveler passing through at the right time, and I might not solve some confound dilema, but just doing normal people things for normal people. Maybe if I stick around someone will have a bigger quest, or maybe I’ll move on to the next town and just be remembered as the girl who got the potato’s back, and I genuinely like that
Agreed. I love the idea of being just a small time hero in certain towns. To some, i am a destined hero, some powerful warrior capable of almost rewriting the laws of the universe.
To others, i am simply a helpful hand.
Check out kingdom come deliverance. It has a historical setting, and a lot of the quests are very low stakes. It was a real nice breath of fresh air for someone who has played tons of fantasy rpgs where you end up saving the world.
@@Steve_Everyman I’ve started a few runs. Really fun game! I love the combat in it
Can't spend every day whaling on Satan. Gotta slow down, smell the roses, and deliver a package for some guy sometimes.
Listening to the Oblivion leveling system, even after knowing it myself for quite a while, makes me return to the question: Was this system created out of ignorance, an unfortunate blend of a myriad of design choices, or was it created because Todd Howard is secretly the devil incarnate? I guess we will never know.
It works for the first couple hours so I imagine that was the extent of long test playthroughs.
Yep. It just works.
7:34:20 bro that legit bummed me out. Todd as a man can just completely shatter a writers creative process. What a bum.
What if the world scaled by a completely different metric than level?
Breath of the Wild has a hidden exp system that does absolutely nothing for the player's stats, but quietly tracks the things the player has accomplished, such as killing the "leaders" of enemy camps, bosses, or completing quests, and gradually increases enemy and gear quality as that fills.
For Oblivion, what if instead of scaling based on level, the world scaled based on your Fame? Retouch up what exactly gives fame to clear up loose edges, and this way, the world gets stronger not because you took a nap, but because you actually did things.
Getting gear checked is unlikely to happen, since exploring the world and doing stuff means finding gear, and if you're feeling weak, then stopping to train on what you CAN handle actually makes you stronger without the world catching up.
@@aprinnyonbreak1290 Eh thing is in BOTW this kind of makes sense since you could argue Ganondorf senses that you're becoming stronger and that you're becoming a threat so he spawns stronger enemies.
Fame wouldn't make that much sense. Why would people or monsters become stronger overall? You could however maybe make SOME enemies stronger or better equipped. Like if you had a high fame Bandit bosses have better gear cause they are scared of you and train more so they are stronger. The more i think about it this could actually work well with bandit camps. They are scared so they train harder, hire stronger people with better geat and maybe even capture creatures to protect themselves from you. Would definitely not work with elven ruins, animal caves, oblivion gates/daedra.
I can appreciate the advantages of text-based dialog. In Pathologic 2, every character has little voice lines related to their character when you open dialog, but the actual conversations are text-based. Because there is A LOT to talk about. People lie to you, misdirect you, don't understand the situation, have their own goals, don't care, are too high, or traumatized to be coherent. And your own character has so many different options to choose from. Some are fake choices, with the same response which us unfortunate. This us due to their small team and covid affected deadline. Most of the dialog options, however, are different ways to respond to lies, supernatural events, mysticism, rumors, mob mentality, ignorance, and of course; breaking the fourth wall. It's really sobering to realize how much a small indie team can do with video game storytelling when they aren't limited by the price and file space of voice actors and their lines.
This is a great response to the 'voice > text' thing.
Pathologic is dense af and trying to fit and deliver on the quality of the game is a monumental challenge with little comparative reward.
As a player who chooses not to use fast travel, the Fighter's Guild questline is quite a challenge to my patience.
I have an obsession with leveling up my Athletics so I don't really mind
@@HaispawnerOh yeah? How much you bench? lol
@@baronvonbeandip*jumps over a mountain with half a ton in his backpack*
Fast Travel is mandatory in skyrim/fallout 4 because world is dead. I have not played other games but I assume same. Once you clear something there is no reason to return it.
@@zao9256 That's untrue on multiple levels. I also play Skryim without fast-traveling. If anything there's more density of activities in Skyrim than Oblivion. So you can hit a few locations up the first time you pass a certain way, then a few more the next time, and so on--because there are so many locations in the wilderness. And things re-spawn.
My favorite glitch in the game is Mannimarco. On the PS3 version, after his speech, he sometimes stays invulnerable, softlocking you into the final quest. The only way to kill him is to lure him into the water and trap him underneath a tunnel. As long as you have water breathing, he'll just sit there until he drowns.
It just works.
This sounds like an INCREDIBLE quest: the quest line builds up this minor god who's almost literally a god of being immortal. Then you meet him and they actually _are_ immortal and you have to figure out a way to make them brain dead.
I Tried sooo many things i tried hitting him with my sword, magic nothing. I then tried drowning him it didnt work. So then i thought how about fall damage that must work right? Nope. I was out of ideas until i ended up seeing the oblivion gate icon on my compass. So i thought screw it time to take Mannimarco to Oblivion. I took him in and lured him towards the lava and he accidentally fell in. I heard him die and could only smile. :)
I once had Mannimarco permanently glitch where he just wouldn’t interact when you initially approach him. I even went back to my first save file and speed ran the mages guild as fast as I could and he was STILL bugged. Absolutely Gamebreaking.
Even the weird claw things that come out of the ground or whatever they are as you approach him bugged halfway. He’d just stand there saying ‘well met’ and was essential. Couldn’t even be charmed into attacking.
I remember playing khajit, going to the arena, using eye of fear on a fighter, and getting the 'your act has been witnessed' when I killed him. I was like, duh.
"That's...why I'm here."
"Well i fucking hope so"
8:21:40 - With high health and/or acrobatics, you can surivive the fall without the Boots of Springheel Jak, so you get to keep them forever. My brother discovered that by accident by forgetting to equip the boots and surviving with barely any health to spare, haha.
Clever brother. ALSO vote trump ! ! !
I love how you fight everything with your bare hands and a few spells, imagine how terrifying it would be to a random dremora just chilling in oblivion minding its own business to then witness a Breton with some beat up leathers and a pair of sandals walk up to a Scamp beat it into unconsciousness and then peel its skin off like a rabbit all in a span of like 5 Seconds.
The idea that the end of the main quest is exactly what Dagon had planned just changed my entire outlook on Oblivion's main quest.
The fact that none of the rival princes lifted a finger to oppose his gains renders this theory null and void. A fun concept, but nothing more.
@@myriad9597 no, it doesn't?
I'm not sure if you know this, but Deadra are bound entirely to their concepts and cannot butt in whenever they want, it has to be related to their concepts(hence why Sheogorath can butt in if he chooses on other Deadra's rituals but they cannot do the same to his, his domain is that of chaos and maddness)
Dagon is destruction, change, and revolution. He cannot ever become top dog in the cosmic order, because if he does so he has to seed his own downfall. The other Deadra know this(one can assume by the tale of Jygglag that the princes know of eachother's domains, so why intervene in a ploy that cannot succeed?)
Kinda weird you're just going down the comment section goinging "nonononononono" to practicly anything other people say. Unless you have actual lore receipts(which based on the few comments ive seen... you dont. It seems more like you're on a "hate Bethesda" kick), just let people have their fun.
@@the_last_ballad Interesting read, have a good day. Out of curiosity, how many comments have I left here? Must have been rather irritable at the time.
I mean its just an idea. Its like ESO: not actually canon.
Honestly incredible, I listened to this over 2 days during midterm grind, and despite how much my grades may disagree, was 100% worth it
I’m on that finals grind with this same video, good luck!
About "Bosmer villain would be silly".
The strongest living being of Morrowind+add-ons is a Bosmer.
Fucking Gaenor, man
Ah yes, Fargoth
Just give him a million gold problem solved
I don't think an ICBM would kill that guy
@@kevlar3994 *Fargoth Ur*
i love how theres slowly more and more chaos sprinkled in as the video goes on, i’m nearly 9.5hrs in and i just heard the phrase elven femboys. a while ago he played the horsecock song. this is my new favorite youtube video
Pat's mind slowly unraveling as his sanity slips away as he approaches the Mad God makes too much sense
@@christophersmith8848cheese
I didn't think of it like that but now that you mention it, if Pat does have highly structured scripts there is absolutely no way that's on accident. He's probably figuring, shit, their 10 hour into a video who cares what bullshit I insert in LMAO.
Must have watched a dozen times. These essays are amazing to fall asleep to. Thankyou
I just wanted to say, that I LOVE long-form on YT. It's so great to have someone tell you a story for hours and hours. I can listen to it each day after work, instantly getting back to that relaxed state from prior day. Or I can have it on a slow day in the background. I don't understand criticizing someone for creating FREE content. Huge cheers mate for all you do, and I'll gladly watch future ones, even if they take a week of non-stop listening.
Honestly, Mannimarco's fight could have been vastly improved by just letting him use his staff and having you fight a bunch of mobs first meaning the room is filled with corpses for him to reanimate.
Or, the oldest trick in the book. Mannimarco, and his two brothers, Mannimarco and Mannimarco, all attack the player together. Mannimarco and Mannimarco dissolve into dust or goo, while Mannimarco leaves a proper corpse with his goodies.
Rewatched in 2024, still a gold tier analysis of oblivion but this game inspires infinite discussion. It's uncanny and the jank inspires stories. I'm playing a Featherwitch Wood Elf right now. My first playthrough as a kid was an Argonian Mage Tank. This game is so versatile and it's awesome that it is somewhat accessible to everyone. I enjoy how the experience scales from total noob to pro
My favorite part of TSI, was the discovery that Sheogorath can kill you even with God Mode on.
"Oh? You call that 'God Mode?' Ha! Hilarious! A man after my own heart, ha ha ha ha... let me show you what a real god is capable of."
I think the aspect also shows just how much greater a daedric prince is than a hero.
Even with full power,even with the greatest cheat known to man,you will NEVER be stronger than one of these guys.
Unpatched Oblivion gave you the ability to spam the use key on sigil stones at the end of an oblivion gate to get as many you could spam the use key to get before you black out.
This video is still so good 2 years later. I re-visited the Morrowind and Skyrim ones again this week, they're the perfect crossover between my obsession with TES and love of long form content. Thank you for your hard work.
Your breakdown of equipment durability and the insanity of people criticizing it while simultaneously embracing survival mechanics like hunger is magnificent.
I've been playing RDR2 the last couple days and that's yet another massively popular game with both hunger AND equipment durability in the modern industry.
@@Patrician I would be interested in your take on those games.
This actually was dumb to me, because I never hear anyone enjoy those shitty mechanics in survival games either
@@durpasaur3052 This is like saying Reloading is a shitty mechanic in FPS games because it hinders your ability to defend yourself. Like it ain’t hard to do and calling it a shitty mechanic because you don’t want to adapt or learn from your mistake is just stupid.
@@joshwist556 no you're just making a stupid point here, if I go to oblivion I shouldn't have to exit and come back later because I used my sword
Your improvement in sourcing from the Morrowind video to this is impressive. It really shows that you're dedicated to improving your content for the viewer's benefit and the sake of clarity. This was really well put together and all your hard work absolutely comes through.
I will say I do wish some of the longer tangents had their own sections -- they fit well where they are, but it'd be handy to be able to go back and find them(like how Morrowind had its own travel chapter and music chapter).
Please keep up the great work.
Bro... "Using scrolls as a way to test new spell ideas..."
That is legit a genius idea. Scroll testing becomes the method through which you acquire spells and, eventually bind them into a spell tome for semi-permanent use. Not only does that justify spell-tomes' existence but also retroactively makes scrolls as cost effective consumable that doesn't supplant casting for real mages but makes the use of magic accessible to non-magic characters.
I could swear there's a TRPG I've played that has this exact system, but I can't place it. Would be great to see in a CRPG though, I agree.
If you listen to this on 0.75, not only does it sound like you now have a drunk friend loredumping/criticizing Oblivion to you, but you also have more video!
“The Divines don’t have artifacts”
Brush of True Paint
Divine Crusader Armor
Amulet of Kings
Staff of Magnus
Auriel’s Bow
Auriel’s Shield
Lord’s Mail
Stendarr’s Hammer
Chrysamere
The multiple items you collect during the Imperial Cult in Morrowind
Well, Magnus isn't exactly an Aedra... But yeah. I guess it's easy to forget about the ones you listed, since you don't get to have a chat with the Divines before getting them lol (Unlike the Daedra I mean)
@@bib4eto656 don't you actually chat to avatars of the aedra in morrowind in the imp cult faction tho?
5:12:54 he brings it up
From my understanding these items are related to the aedra but are not an extension of their power/influence in the way a daedric artifact is
@Buster Ampleforth Some Daedra artifacts are not even daedra in orgin. Goldbrand, Spellbreaker, and Vala-Vala, Malacath's hammer are not daedric. How do those count as deadric?
Wait this isn’t even the entire Elder Scrolls, this is a single game?
God, how many gigabytes was this final export?
The game oblivion is about 5 gbs and with dlcs. Not alot of hardrive to download and still works well on windows 10 no need to edit files. Unlike fallout 3 where you need to edit the files so it can run dualcore processors
@@TheFreezer700 I mean what was the size of the final export _of this video_ (I.e. how large of a file is this video)
comment because im curious as well
@@Trashloot he kinda did.
Really makes you wonder
Love falling asleep to the Morrowind video, this one somewhat, but the cutaway gags are very distracting. Horsecoq/Harry Potter meme bits. I had tried sleeping to further uploads like the Skyrim and Outer Worlds stuff but they have similar problems.
"You're finally awake..."
@@baronvonbeandip "hey you, you were dreaming... wake up... whats your name?"
That Morrowind "take some time to train and come back later" is sooooo underrated... for people who value even the most light type of roleplaying, it's definitely something missed in Oblivion and Skyrim's main questlines... Specially in Oblivion where some items/rewards would be better in specific levels that you can lose by being busy with the main quest, and since it's so urgent it never lets you "take some time off"
Even though my favorite game is still Skyrim, if we're talking about story immersion, Morrowind is greater than its successors. I felt alive in that game.
Have you played Daggerfall? It´s the peak of ES for me.
@@thatrandomcrit5823 Game is a bit dated for most people I think
@@kakyointhemilfhunter4273 Yeah, but Daggerfall Unity can take care of that!
Sometimes it just feels right to have enemies who can mop the floor with you and have the choice to leave, train, update your gear and come back knowing they won't magically become stronger just because you also did.
Not even just elder scrolls - I find most open world games tend to be in conflict with their plots - "Hurry and save the world - here's 100 hours of BS to do". Permission from the game to take your time is something I didn't appreciate till replaying Morrowind recently. It's the lack of focus on cinematic narrative and heavier focus on exploring to be ready for the next challenge that make Morrowind, Breath of the Wild, and Elden Ring's open worlds work for me (mostly)
The quite-long video format is a thing that revived my interest for youtube, which lately has become mostly a platform for instant emotion based entertainment (which is fine, just not what I'm looking for) And seeing several channels releasing long and detailed works on topics that I enjoy is a blessing. Thank you, Patrician for these videos, for the hours you put in, for your passion, for all the times you've made the decision to come back to this.
yes this is a medium for gentlemans and scholars exclusively
Second time I've watched this through. Best way to replay an old favorite without having to play it. Well written and enjoyable retrospective. Not all in one sitting, but a full work shift and partial day. Helps to make it go smoothly.
Found your videos looking up long videos retrospective. And you have been perfect for my 9 hour work shifts at Lowes.
Just came here to say that this video popped up in my recommended as I'm looking for a video essay to fall asleep to.
This video would still be playing when I wake up
The AI oblivion character voices narrating things is fucking hilarious
Your take on fast travel is interesting. I didn't know fast traveling was an option when I played the game for the first time and getting to Kvatch was a special experience. In a good and a bad way. I walked to it from the capitol and barely used the road to get there a bit quicker. That early in the game athleticism is really low and I couldn't afford a horse yet, so it took AGES! But it felt like a real adventure. I saw the world, went by old ruins and caverns, encountered monsters and bandits and when Kvatch appeared on the horizon it became almost cinematic. It was still during the day time and I could see this big city and it's castle on top of the mountain, but the way through the valley took a few hours, so it was night already when I arrived and in the dark the fleeing peasant ran towards me, warned me about the attack and a few minutes later the fires were visible in the night and the quest started.
Playing the whole game like that would take weeks and it comes with the downside of an adventure. It gets tideous and discouraging, especially when you lost your way and realize that you walked in the wrong direction for hours, but honestly, until I discovered the fast travel option, this game felt way more like an epic fantasy adventure and that feeling never came back completely. "don't use it" doesn't work, because in the back of your head you know, that all your problems can be solved with two clicks and that ruins the tension.
Edit: there's one thing I didn't realize until now. The main quest works really well without fast travel. Every new mission sends you to a place on the map you didn't go before and you can mostly follow the main roads, discovering Cyrodil in the process. After rescuing Martin you even get a horse for free, because from there on it's mostly fetch quests in every other corner of Cyrodil. It even makes sense now that the Daedric shrine the game suggests is Nocturna, because it's a) close to the temple and b) in the north east, where no other main quest leads. Even the help for bruma quest makes kind of sense that way, because you can travel it in a circle. If you only do the main quest "don't use it" is actually a pretty good suggestion.
Omg same. The second time I picked it up, when I found out you could fast travel I felt soooo dumb
Lucky people
yes!! I was floored when I found out I could fast travel right away. I dont think I realized it until my 2nd playthrough, lol. I just never attempted it and fought and died many times on my way to kvatch. I want to play it again now,
I didn't notice for a while either and the game benefits from it. He is correct though, to "ignore it" you need some viable in game travelling... Mark/recall, boat, etc. Wish Oblivion had this like Morrowind.
See, I knew you could fast travel, but I thought you had to visit these places first before it would let you fast travel. My face when I found out I could immediately travel to Weynon Priory after leaving the sewers: : O
I like fast travel for convivence but honestly after modding the hell out of Skyrim to have a better map you can actually use like a map and motivation to NOT fast travel via need for sleep, food, etc, I actually really liked it more. The world of Skyrim is actually a very nice open world, there is just little motivation to get out there and explore. That first walk from Helgen to Riverwood was really exciting and interesting and immersive and I could never really figure out a way to recreate it. It's just a real shame because the worlds are so nice but fast travel just makes it so most audiences won't really explore it when exploring is part of the fun (along with really bland and boring dungeons that all basically look and act the same for you to discover tbh). Some people I have seen get annoyed at not having a close by fast travel location and instead have to find their way over there, because there is just no easy way to see which paths you have available and it's just a pain to even have fun looking around in when mountains stand in your way. The open world feels more like a hinderance when it's so disconnected to the quests and every other mechanic makes it out to be as painful as possible. Despite Oblivion having at least roads on the map exploration still felt kinda hollow and I just wanted to fast travel because I wasn't even aesthetically motivated to explore much and got annoyed when I got lost, even if there were some cool locations I found on the way. It really just sucks because I feel in some way that takes away a bit of player agency--it is harder to have your own fun and make your own way to places and feel like it was your choice, and instead just feels like the devs are punishing you for getting lost or taking the wrong way there.
There are ways to motivate players to take specific paths but that requires writing and more attention to detail. Like how in New Vegas you /can/ technically try to sneak past the death claws and just make your way to the city immediately. It'll be a challenge, but it is possible, or if you don't want to you can take the long way around that has a trail of clues for you to follow that new players will be more enticed by, along with a lot of interesting locations, side quests, and stories. You almost always /want/ to go exploring, to find something new. It scratches that itch for curiosity. I couldn't tell you how I got to Kvatch in Oblivion, it was just a mess of fast traveling, getting lost, feeling frustrated, taking the wrong way up I think, and then boom portal. But I can tell you a lot about my first New Vegas playthrough, about how I got to Vegas, all the side quests I did or came back for, which companions I had, when I got nervous about raiders so I crouched along the road between Prim and Novac. While I use fast travel in NV it's def an option, and something they really just had to include. In Oblivion and Skyrim and other Todd era Bethesda games, it feels like a crutch. An excuse to not have more in depth travel systems, or more details, or better writing. Because you don't 'need' it if you're primarily just going to be teleporting around. So instead exploration feels like a punishment, not most of the fun.
I can't believe this short story of a comment you wrote was actually an enjoyably digestible read.
You ever think of making a UA-cam series? If you write your scripts out the way you did here I would subscribe.
Actually I'm just going to subscribe anyway, just in case you decide to make a channel one day.
I personally hate fast travel, because it completely disencentives exploration. Which is why I love games that include it with a monkeys paw. For example, Death Stranding has a fast travel system via the charecter Fragile, who can teleport anywhere via the beach. However, due to the nature of the beach, you can't take any items with you. Only the clothes on your back and your bb. So if you need to transport yourself across the map to start a new quest, you're allowed to, but that means all your weapons, items, and cargo is put in storage until you return to that specific location. It's so dang brilliant.
@@xcaluhbration eh maybe, I don’t rly have a decent mic or know much about video editing, but boy do I love talking
I'm interested to know which mods you use to improve skyrim's map
Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul makes the Mannimarco fight a significant challenge, one I was able to overcome with the "useless" turn undead spell to deal with the liches and ghostly warriors he'd constantly summon. It felt like a truly satisfying cap on the quest line and its disappointing that Bethesda is simply incapable of providing these kinds of experiences.
The turn undead spell is useless because in the base game, encounters are not designed for turn undead to function as anything but a means of acoiding combat entirely. That mod sounds cool, and if more encounters in the base game had that level of difficulty, spells like fear and turn undead would be much more useful.
Half of the spells in this game are useless and that is one of them. Burden simply doesn't work on anybody other then the player character themselves and not NPC's. Any scroll or staffs of burden are for selling and nothing else. That's just another example. I am certainly on the side of the fence that is tired of Bethesda simply avoiding problems by getting ride of the effects or magic's outright but some of these spells and effects are so useless it shouldn't have taken us past post-Oblivion to get rid of a lot these.
Not incapable. They can and they don't care, because gamers will always buy their games. In the long run people will make videos and write articles defending Fallout 76 and everyone will forget.
Man I love Oblivion. But I agree with almost everything in this video.
Seems like these two things have no bearing on each other. Wish other people would recognize that.
The section on leveling really hits home.
For years I used a self made mod that set all your character stats and levels to max. This made the beginning of the game *damn hard* (because you would run into end game monsters when you had crap gear) but after the first couple of fights you would have enough gear to survive and could then play the game ignoring leveling without the problems of not leveling at all without a mod. (A better way to do this would be to math out a bunch of builds, and then make a mod or mods that allowed you to just jump to the end state of that build without all the headache of trying to manage your leveling, but the simple max everything solution let me do whatever)
Later, I found a mod that assigned XP to a whole load of actions, and then gave you a menu to level up where you distributed your skills and attributes with amounts being close to what you would get from optimal leveling. This was better in that you had a smoothish power curve, but as you noted it removes that "do it to learn it" magic.
In short, Oblivion leveling is fucked, and I never did find a perfect solution.
Realistic leveling?
It works.. weird sometimes, but it's closest to the best you can get out of Oblivion, honestly.
You still "do it to learn it", but your stats are increasing immediately by reaching the default threshold without the need to calculate all of your level ups that carefully. I.e. you leveled up Blades and Blunt by 1 point each? Get +1 to Strength right away.
And leveling just unlocks better rewards and gear.
I never used any mods (mainly because I suck at modding) but the good ol' "minor skills FTW" trick serves me well enough I guess
One thing I always liked about Morrowind is its clever justification for why you can take your time even though the world is at stake. One of the documents in Vivec's library outlines the protracted cosmic battle of attrition between the Tribunal and Dagoth Ur that Ur will inevitably win, though it may take decades, unless a new piece appears on the board (the Nerevarine) to tip the balance against him. That's why the player can blow off the main quest as long as they want, since the time scale on which gods fight dwarfs that of a mortal. Another such document even talks about how the Nerevarine is encouraged to win: by taking their time to familiarize themselves with Red Mountain, growing in power and probing the Sixth House's defenses, rather than charging straight towards the Heart. That's what I call gameplay and story integration.
Man, can’t wait for that glorious 48 hour Skyrim retrospective.
It'll probably be him saying "this is so shallow and dumb" over and over again.
It kinda amazes me how few people know the Ayleids were Melnibonean-tier degenerates. Real missed opportunity to delve into elves at their (almost) absolute worst.
Unless you dig deeper than the surface all you hear about the aeyleids is that they were mass murdering slaver people. Which kinda melds in since every race and country on tamriel has or is doing some mass murdering and enslaving. The aeylieds big stsndout feature if you just play through without reading a lot is they use a few more traps then the other wackos.
Thank you for this. I played Oblivion on an external hard drive in my college's computer lab while manually writing out a spreadsheet of how I wanted to level, so a lot of what you said about the leveling pain resonated with me.
Also I'm voiced by Wes Johnson.
I like how through out this whole video there is humor sprinkled everywhere in it. Makes it so enjoyable the entire time
Also, there is something I want to point out about Clavicus Vile. Despite how similar the voice sounds, Clavicus wasn’t actually voiced by Todd, but rather Craig Sechler. The only NPC Todd voiced was Alban Corinis, a test NPC.
after reading this i feel like my whole life was a lie
seeing the length i expected this to be super padded out, and almost just you 'explaining' the game, but fuck me was i wrong, this is dense as hell and really really well done, gonna go watch the morrowind one now. awesome job
3:54:48 Thank you for including the fact that apparently every time you go talk to the Archmage he's asleep, like girl what is it that's so common about Oblivion playthroughs that Hannibal Traven is always fucking sleeping when you go talk to him?
He has crippling Depressionen, don't judge him.
Hannibal is playing Daggerfall, can't be bothered.
He really grinding for the 10 minute mark
This was a juggernaut of a retrospective, and I enjoyed every moment of it.
I can’t believe he wants us to watch it in 1 sitting! What a crazy tuber
This is it. It's the longest non-nonsensical YT video I'll ever watch. Just legendary stuff.
Thanks, man. Cheers!
Honestly love the length of these videos. I just pop them on whenever I got a 5 hour Factorio binge to do.
Actually, maybe it was just my TV as a kid, but I definitely needed the light spell in Oblviion.
Absolutely fantastic, I just finished watching. I don't really know if I have anything in the way of criticism, or if I do it's hard to articulate given the scope of this; I think you are right to say this is a step-up from the Morrowind retrospective, which was itself already a fantastic video. I feel like it was well paced (as funny as that is to say for a 12 hour ordeal) and the chapters helped break the video up into manageable segments, both making it easier to find where I left off and even somewhat helping me remember where you made points that weren't strictly and specifically related to the chapter topic (like the discussion of the dialogue length and AI voices during the Dark Brotherhood section. I especially love the idea of having a choice between long form text-based dialogue and a more truncated alternative.)
One thing that really sticks out about your style, and here especially, is your attitude that it isn't enough to just say a game design decision is inherently good or bad. As someone who wants to make games and is trying to understand more about intentional and effective game design decisions, it's refreshing and incredibly informative when you break down what the intended effect of a creative decision is, and whether you believe it meaningfully accomplishes that goal. The video's not only a thorough and lucid examination of Oblivion, but also a meditation on what unique experiences the game could deliver on if this quest or that mechanic were handled differently. Instead of walking away with just another opinion on whether the game was good or bad, I left this video feeling energized and excited just imagining the kind of role-play experience that could exist there.
Anyway, a little meandering, but that's the bulk of the feedback I'd give on this. I'm considering contributing on Patreon, and I'm very excited to see if you start that Skyrim video.
A truly impressive and professional project. Thank you! :-) This makes me want to check out Oblivion now.
7:47:56 Great clip, well intregrated into the story and hillarious. Please more of these in the next installment.
Bruh, had to go find the song after I heard it
ua-cam.com/video/bdGKy3nLMeo/v-deo.html&ab_channel=MaxHimbigger
I love this :) shedding a new and realistic light on a game that sits in a rose-tinted, nostalgic corner of my memory
Doing what hbomb did for Fallout 3.
I still enjoy F3 and Bliv, but such highly detailed analysis/critique forces one to remove the rose-coloured glasses and really question _why_ you still enjoy it.
I think there's a lot of value in that, if you have the maturity to admit that everything you love might not actually be perfect. :)
Despite knowing all The Games flaws, it’s still my favorite game of all time. 2006 was a different time
Wow. A 12 Hour breakdown on my #1 game of all time. Skyrim still doesn't come close to how engaging the original Oblivion was. I still remember the Blockbuster employee trying to get me to purchase (a used rented copy of) Oblivion after trying out the battle of Kvatch on the kiosk. I just finished Two Worlds at that time and had a bad taste from western RPGs but Oblivion literally blew my mind away at what was possible in a video game. Sadly I have not felt the same way about a new game since that day.
Neither have I...😓
I was a kid and Wal-Mart had an Xbox 360 with a demo of Lord of the Rings: Battle For Middle Earth (Y’all remember when they had consoles set up at the game cases?) and couldn’t wait to be able to own the game.
Try enderal m8
Man I got back into western RPGs when I played FO3, and I got that moment back when I binged Stalker SoC over the course of 6 days/55 hours
When I was younger and I played Oblivion all the time, I gathered as many followers as possible at once for the final Oblivion Gate battle. Essentially doubled the human NPC's at the fight. It was the coolest fucking thing young me had ever played.
Yeah man, Oblivion was amazing in the day (still is today, you just need 50 or 60 mods to bring it up to date). I remember the first time I laid eyes on it in 2005 or whenever it came out - I was so impressed by the shadows coming from the torch in the prison cell. I had NEVER seen a game look that good.
i think it more has to do with YOUR age at the time, but i am not sure.
For those folks that may have first discovered Young Scrolls through these videos, what a wild ride that must’ve been lol
Imagine actually liking Vardenfall when it doesn't even have trees smh my head
shaking my head my head?
nice.
Lets be real Todd Howard may be the king of liars but only because Peter Molyneux has wisely decided to shut the hell up lol
Kingdoms rise and fall.
I always felt Kvatch should have been sorta like a Riverwood/Whiterun situation where the player came up near it and got to know the game mechanics before deciding to go off to see Juaffre and then when you are delivering the amulet not only do you learn new info about someone who to you was the local priest in the starting town but also gives the emotional reaction when it gets wiped out at the same time
HOW YOU NEED TO FAST TRAVEL TO WEYNON PRIOTRY
@@NigerianCrusader put Kvatch in eyesight or at least on the horizon from the imperial sewers, players who play for the sake of playing and not to finish the game would be like ooo cool new town and they wont worry about the amulet until after exploring.
You could even say that the emperor just hands you the amulet and a sealed letter, that he doesnt have time to explain before the mythic dawn show up, so you fight them off with baurus and then travel to Kvatch where he opens the letter and gives you the quest, in which case skipping kvatch gets rid of the urgency problem too.
@@NigerianCrusader They could have *moved the locations of the cities* on the map as _developers_
Just speculating you know.
@@Haispawner yes and no- the placement of major cities actually was already determined by the original Elder Scrolls game, The Elder Scrolls Arena. Same for Skyrim's cities, they're in Arena
@@salmon_wineThis would not be the first time Bethesda did a big Retcon. and if it benifits the game there is no good reason not to do it.
One thing I love about Oblivion is that with all of its flaws, it plays so smoothly, theres never a time where you feel like you're limited in movement or hindered by game physics or mechanics in basic play.
That's easily one of the best points of the game... Story and gameplay change issues aside- the gameplay never has any serious problems with approach, nothing ever gets in the way and prevents you from approaching things the way you want.
Level scaling would like to know your location
Level scaling is an easy fix with something like an all attributes to plus 5 mod
It sounds to me like Martin was a main character in a previous elder scrolls game. The way he talks about being tired of the mages guild and about chasing after daedric magic.
Nah. He was a elder Scrolls online player who decided to stop playing the game, and came back to see the new update.
Heheh
the thing about oblivion horses is that, when your athletics is high enough, you can outrun the fastest horses by a pretty significant degree
When your restoration is high enough, you can fortify your speed past 100 and leave horses in the dust.
Or better yet, fortify the horses speed. Then you will know true power.
I have a (bad) theory that the Adoring Fan is meant to be so annoying that the CoC kills him, thus starting the Dark Brotherhood questline.
I'm so thankful for your explanation of why the leveling is so messed up. I've played this game multiple times but always in a casual sense - no guides, no min maxing etc - and every single time, I'd reach this *brick wall* where suddenly, the monsters were kicking my ass. I'd usually just crunch the main quest and book it to the battle in Kvatch because that was where it was particularly difficult at higher levels. Getting killed by Clannfears in one or two hits was not a pleasant experience lol. I always made it past that bump in the road in one form or another but yah, I always wondered what the hell I was doing wrong🙄 (Im still not 100% sure about everything but I do know that preferring light armor was clearly a mistake, as it's not tied to endurance)
(If I ever play this again, I'm probably just gonna turn the difficulty down when that happens. Worrying about a bad system is way too much work for me personally lol)
Preferring light armor isn’t the issue, it’s merely not leveling it.
Honestly you need like 3 spreadsheets to keep track of the entire leveling system, and if you want to level well without caring too much, just make sure you level a minor skill at least 10 times, and a major skill at least 10 times, every level
What platform do you play on? There’s an easy to install mod that fixes the godawful leveling system in this game on pc
@@kakyointhemilfhunter4273 oh thanks for the tip but I only played it on Xbox 360. It's been a while lol
@@kakyointhemilfhunter4273 that sounds like a major overhaul of all skill and rng based systems that may change the experience entirely, and also there’s a million mods for that in Oblivion, Morrowind, and Skyrim, and 9 times out of 10 they don’t work properly or at all ime
@@ponivi I’m more than willing to change the experience if it’s an objective upgrade which in this case? It absolutely is. Having to keep a spreadsheet and level certain skills at certain times so as to avoid fighting enemies that 1-2 shot you too early is just plain ridiculous
The nods to Mans1ay3r and gamer poop takes me wayyy back
I just love how he titled this 12 hour video "A Quick Analysis" as if he's threatening us that he can easily make a longer version
Foreshadowing of skyrim analysis which would probably be 20 hours
Lmao!
Skyrim - A Brief Overview
Video length - 48 hours
@@Michael-bx8up Can UA-cam videos even be that long?
Threatening?
The whiplash of talking about a quest line, going on a tangent about something else in the middle of it, and then slamming back to the questline suddenly is great.
Holding multiple things in one's mind sure is hard.
@@baronvonbeandipif your brain is damaged goods, sure. he was writing a script, meaning he had plenty of time to internalize his thoughts, going from one tangent to another seamlessly. thats why this video is so great, subtle humor, great structure, and a whole heap of verifiable information to back all of his arguments
Kinda like getting sidetracked in Oblivion.
@@AChunkyDogthis video really makes you FEEL like youre playing oblivion
Worth the 12 hours I'd say
I am so happy that you’ve watched this! You guys are doing incredible work, thank you
Every single minute of it
certainly
I'd imagine retrospectives like this help iron out things youre trying to correct in the remake mod, like level scaling. Hope it goes well, that'll prolly be what gets me into oblivion lol
100%
Oblivion was my first Bethesda game and I managed to accidently become a vampire without realizing it and kept vaguely wondering why I kept getting hurt when I went outside and why all the NPCs were constantly telling me how awful I looked. And then I tried to pickpocket someone who was asleep and saw the "feed" button and was like "I can... feed them??" So I clicked it and my character started feeding ON them and that was when it all finally clicked.
10/10, excellent roleplaying experience.
If youre roleplaying as a rube unaware what vampires are in the setting then sure.
@@boogit9979 if ya never realized vampires were a thing or they can turn ya into one by punching ya like how people use to think AIDs are spread it makes sense esp with it being their first ever bethsada game. no other vampirism is spread like that.
Ye man and also trump is 10/10 too
That sounds like a very funny RPG experience XD
@@NigerianCrusaderDRUMPF
"whoever made this UI doesn't use magic"
Earlier "Todd is a barbarian main"
9:15:59 the player just standing there while matthieu bellamont's master plan of...... trying to stab a ghost(?) just happens in front of you always drove me insane
That explains how you got to the 9 hour mark of this youtube video
Sneaky Skooma Cat
Jump in the caac
Hows life been Sorenova? Do you often deal with the fame you garnered in the past or is it just stuff ya did?
No hate, loved yer content.
I still remember watching that E3 demo over and over again, just blew my mind. Remembered freaking out over the chains moving and the ribcage casting live shadows
Damn. Oblivion didn't feel like a game, it felt like some black magic from the year 5000, when we were watching this demo.
Jep. The moving chain was crazy back then
oh hey rycon. i was just watching your dust playthru.
The radiant AI blew my mind. I had one of those Xbox magazine discs with a trailer of Oblivion on it and I would watch it over and over. It was the first game I ever bought for 360. I remember reaching a mountain peak and being like, “Holy. Shit.” The beauty blew me away and honestly, oblivion’s stylized environment (not the faces obviously lmao) still holds up pretty well to me.
I can see it, other than NPCs, I think Oblivion's graphics hold up surprisingly well
People: Wanna go watch a movie
Me: Sorry I don't got time
Also Me: Watches 6 movies worth of oblivion analysis
Were you the one who made the same comment on the Morrowind video?
I loved it then and the callback now is even better!
Truth
Do what I do watch it during your insomnia nights or when your on a 12 hour shift
I recently realised how Jauffre getting the special dialouge of "yes Kvatch" makes him an irredeemable, irresponsible, incompetent idiot. With just one singular dialouge the super elite grandmaster of the blades reveals that he basically put the entirety of Tamriel at risk because he's a bum. He knew Uriel had an illegitimate heir as a backup plan, yet as he heard about the assassination of the Emperor's heirs and the big U himself he didn't IMMEDIATELY have Martin taken to Cloud Ruler Temple: strike 1. If the player visits Kvatch before delivering the amulet Jauffre implies that he knows of the attack but you never see a single blade agent sent to take Martin away nor are there any blades agent corpses to show he at least tried: strike 2. If the player B-lines it to the priory he gives a fucking inmate who might just have been a bloodthirsty murderer the task to retrieve the only hope of Tamriel: strike 3 he is out.
And this is only the FIRST conversation you have with the guy. I will not even mention the clusterfuck of how the mythic dawn steals the amulet because that makes me want to open the console and just remove Jauffre from the game.
Yeah it’s just a running problem with TES wanting a foot in every door. The desire for a heroic, time-precious epic really clashes with the open world and ability to do what you want when you want it. The implementation of the player character is VERY lazy at times, like I have no professional writing experience and I still feel like I could write quests better than that.
And Skyrim was the same way, since Alduin can never actually win and characters will put way too much trust in you
I mean, personally it always felt to me like the story of the game expects you to at least be waiting a day or 2 before going to kvatch. Its not possible for daedra to have "overran kvatch last night" as the npc says cause in order for the gate to open the emperor had to be dead. Personally I think it would take time for Jauffre to get down to Martin and him sending the player is his answer. The blades seem stretched thin compared to the mythic dawn. Idk its not actually a problem for me that stoey plays out how it does other than the quantum nature of kvatchs destruction
@@jaycrownshaw3902 I think the Mythic Dawn should have had more presence in the overworld along with the Oblivion Gates. It doesn't really make sense that the Daedra are everywhere but the Mythic Dawn are just resting on their laurels. Like you guys just assassinated the Emperor and stole the Amulet of Kings, this is the time to make your move. The Dawnstar Museum guy in Skyrim had more hustle than they did.
@@RancorousSeaI always wondered this too. I figured they would be the ones opening the oblivion gates on the Nirn side and that I'd find them near oblivion gates and communicating with daedra but there's nothing. There's barely any interaction with the Mythic Dawn or the Daedra and it's a lil sad.
No, dont expect logic! You have to come up with contrived and complicated theories like the Mehrunes Dagon theory to explain these inconsistencies
For example, Uriel Septim could see into the future (The dragon blood… they see more than lesser men)
Uriel probably left Jauffre specific instructions before he let his heirs and himself get assassinated. Applying Mehrunes Dagon theory, it all makes sense
6:36:52
"That UI is for another _day."_
24 hour Skyrim analysis video confirmed!
analysis video so long that you can’t even upload it to youtube
@@AsexTwin but if you stream the video it can be done
@@bogdanpostole7251 it would but you wouldn’t be able to rewatch it
No way I just scrolled down and saw this comment right as he said this
Actual week long video incoming
I dunno how many times I've watched this, but I have to wonder. How many people have been woken up by that last line. "You've massively overslept."
I woke up to a auto play hadvar going "hey you your finally awake huh"
i mean i listen to these to go to sleep… so many times…
I’ve really enjoyed working my way through this.
Just starting the journey now can't wait till I complete it
try tounge but hole
Thanks for mentioning this in Iron's stream. I enjoyed it quite a bit
"I wonder if I'm almost done with this 6 minute intro..."
*18 minutes in*
@@suddenshadow amazing chest ahead
"This video isnt meant to be watched in its entirety in one sitting"
Thats a challenge. Challenge accepted.
Ah, another watching the whole video in one sitting out of spite