Good for about 20 hours, main campaign, factions, side quests etc, but not a second more. The knowledge that I won't be able to play Skyrim for at least 2 years due to dated computer is tempered by the fact that mods are no doubt going to be necessary to get your money's worth anyways.

 

You're a bad person. A very bad person. I was trying to ignore the fact this would most likely to be true, and you had to throw a spot light on it. Damn you sir.

 

Bitch please.

How many other games let you rack up hundreds of hours of gameplay each playthrough.

Bethesda offer a hell of a lot more content for the same price as every other game.

 

What I was talking about, actually, was the crazy amount of bugs. Unofficial Oblivion patch had to fix all of those problems that were leftover after the official patches.

I feel this will be the case with Skyrim, too. I'm not too concerned about it being a horrible console port, actually, as I am sure mods will be able to fix it all.

 

Meh, subjective things are subjective. People look for different things in games, for me Oblivion was a clear letdown coming from Morrowind in about every way except combat and graphics. Even then, after experiencing the glory that is mods, it is disappointing to see what could have been. Bethesda seems to be a firm believer in the 6 steps forward, 8 steps back and 2 steps to the right philosophy of game making. Example, vastly improved combat but retarded voice overs and dialogue. Beggars are my favorite:Wtf?

Besides, those hundreds of hours are beyond repetitive. There's maybe 20+ hours of unique game play before it becomes a grind. Maybe you're into that but my problem with Oblivion is the grinding isn't even that fun. The combat is vastly improved but the variety of enemies isn't. There are almost no special dungeons and no bosses aside from boss level generic enemies, like Bandit Bosses or Marauder Bosses. Aside from quest driven dungeon crawling there's nothing to separate one dungeon from another.

The surface world isn't much better. The world is pretty bland and while it looks pretty good, it feels like you're adventuring through the same copy and pasted environment over and over. Probably my favorite non-gameplay related mod is Unique Environments. You'd be surprised how much it adds to the world and the joy of walking around exploring and suddenly stumble upon something new and interesting. Like in the Hircine Daedric quests where you are tasked to hunt down a Unicorn located in a glade protected by guardians. Vanilla Landscape VS

To each their own I guess.

 

Don't get me wrong I know Bethesda is hardly perfect and that mods improve practically every aspect dramatically.
I just get a bit annoyed that people cry for mods and seem to forget that Bethesda provide all the building blocks to these mods. I rarely see Bethesda getting praised anymore as people seem far too eager to attack them for things they haven't, for whatever reason, included.

 

Yah, Bethesda probably deserves more credit, but I do get the feeling that they sometimes take the modding community for granted.

 

...I really don't see how.

 

For one, they have a tendency to leave massive bugs in the game in optional quests, just leaving it to the modders to fix. In vanilla oblivion, fully patched, their are at least three massive bugs they never bothered fixing. One causes save corruption or the inability to save or something like that, and another permanently takes away one of your ring(?) slots unless you use the evidence chest exploit to lose the item.

I have one of the earlier PC versions. Fully patched, most significant bugs have been fixed, though their are several that completely fuck with anyone that wants to beat all the quests. It's only ever happened to me that I know of, but it's happened on every install I've done: The last area in the sewers in the theives guild quest has half of the area fucked up somehow. If it weren't for the console, I never would have finished that quest. The cave just kinda drops off into black space, like the dungeon was never finished. But like I said, I've never heard of that happening to anyone else.

 

I never had any severe problems when I had to play it unpatched for a while. Apparently I'm one of the few though, since I keep hearing about cases like yours.

You really should play it fully up-to-date. It's very good. And there are a lot of great mods for it.

 

I love the part where he starts babbling about them being big apple fans... considering I don't think any of the Elder Scrolls games have ever come out for the Mac. Neither Oblivion nor morrowind did, and Skyrrim doesn't seem to be either.

Also, why did PC RPG makers start sucking console cock?

 

Console gamers are easier to please and easier to sell horse armor to.

 

Well, there's your problem right there. :awesome

As someone who couldn't get past the first half hour of Oblivion and hasn't played an Elder Scrolls game before, I'm actually looking forward to Skyrim. Having customers talk my ear off about it every time we get a preorder probably helps though.

 

While 'convoluted' may be a bit of hyperbole, I definitely agree that "complex", in-depth menus are something that I appreciate in games. Well, I suppose in a general sense, that would be 'appreciated', hmmm? As is implied, they are unfortunately rare, and being replaced by increasingly simplified game functionality(across the board really, not just menus, but that's an old argument).

 

Not at all.

When I saw the new, "improved" menu, I was disgusted.
Don't forget, they need to dumb it down for the "console kiddies".

If you want a good example of a game that could've been awesome, but was destroyed because the devs thought making it a "Third person shooter" was a right idea, just look at Harry Potter DH 1 & 2.

 

To be fair, it was nearly guaranteed to suck when EA got a hold of it. Everything else was just desecrating the corpse.