Oblivion and the Bethesda traditions

Once again, Bethesda has managed to build a brilliant, breathtaking vision, which may be ultimately irrelevant because it’s too buggy to play.

This is easily the most strikingly beautiful realistic game I have every played. The direct manipulation of things in the environment to use either as traps or weapons is awesome. And for once, sharing the development between consoles and PCs has actually improved the gameplay: they have continued to refine the gameplay in ways that make it essentially completely intuitive, once you learn the keys.

On the down side, the game really is a pig. It’s playable on my current machine, but I’m glad I’m getting a faster one.

I also hate the character customization gui. It has about 50 sliders that all seem to be randomly connected together, which let you configure combinations of facial structures. This would be incredibly good, if I had any idea how to construct a human face, but I don’t. I frigged with it for about 2 hours trying to get a “pretty” woman to play, then gave up and took a male. Sheesh.

And finally, oh the crashes. Bethesda has had a grand tradition of building games that take multiple patches before they are playable, but I had hopes that, since the game was going to come out for a console at the same time, this one might avoid that. Apparently not. I’ve had at least five crashes in the four or so hours of play I’ve put in. Todd tells me that he has had three, one of which hit before he even made it into the game! I think I may wait and just install it on my new machine instead. Maybe by then the first patch will be out.

Note: There is apparently an NVIDIA graphics card patch coming out this week that is supposed to be specifically for this game. That may help. Unfortunately, I know that’s not the root of the problems, since Todd has an ATI. 🙁

Oh well.