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Oblivion is dominating the RPG landscape at the moment and like many, I’ve been playing for several days now. It’s an ambitious project with a monstrous amount of content and it will take quite some time to really get a grip on an overall picture - but there are some design decisions that I find…curious…and I’d like to discuss them just a little. I should stress this is in no way a review – or even an impressions article – and these observations are based on a mere 12 hours or so play.
I’ll try and avoid spoilers (unless you consider discussion of a couple of the underlying game mechanics a spoiler).
In some ways, these observations are contradictory – they’re not necessarily wrong, although I think the game would be better if these elements were approached differently, and in some ways they relate directly to what Oblivion is…it’s quite possible that changing these items might lead to Oblivion being a different game that I might like better but not may not sell as well or appeal to as many other players. I’m not really a fan of the Elder Scrolls series, so feel free to berate me in the comments if you feel Oblivion does exactly what a fan wants.
What am I talking about? In essence, Oblivion tries to offer the freedom of several different play styles: want to focus on a linear, story-driven experience? Stick to the main storyline for 40 or so hours. Want to wander the countryside indefinitely raiding dungeons and abandoned keeps? Go for it. Travel from town to town, meeting different people but avoiding the central story? No problem. But balancing the gameworld is a problem.
The obvious (and often debated) comparison is with the Gothic series. The reality is they are quite different games, so I’ll get to the point: Gothic II doesn’t muck about trying to support different play goals – it makes no apologies for having deadly areas where a newbie will drown, or for requiring you to be strong enough to tackle the different enemies in latter chapters. You’re expected to explore a good part of the gameworld and undertake most of the quests available.
I’m not a big fan of Oblivion’s “use a skill to improve it” system of character development but it obviously has plenty of devotees. In Oblivion, using a skill for a period increases the skill score – and 10x skill improvement steps in any of the 7 major skills (chosen at character creation) results in a level advancement.
One problem is that this doesn’t necessarily equate to “power”. A character with non-combat major skills such as Speechcraft, Security and Athletics can run around, talking to NPCs and picking locks to produce a level advancement without improving their ability to cope with higher-level enemies in any meaningful way. Some players micromanage their gameplay to ensure appropriate skill advancement – better not pick any locks right now, because I don’t want that to advance yet! Other players even create characters with almost the opposite skills of the character they want to play to regulate the skill progression. Any system that encourages this behaviour has problems but another reason this is an issue is…
Oblivion uses levelled lists to balance the gameworld, adjusting the adversaries you meet to tailor the difficulty to your character (within certain parameters). To be honest, I prefer this to Morrowind’s completely broken balance but it introduces other problems. At a low level, you won’t barely scrape through a battle with the thinnest of margins, beaten and bloody to luckily uncover a coveted high-level magic item that made it all worthwhile, because the loot has been carefully levelled – you’ll get a bolt of worthless cloth and a few coins. Then again, the battle probably wasn’t that hard because the enemies were chosen to keep things nicely balanced…unless your character level doesn’t really match your actual battle capabilities, of course.
To be fair, an answer isn’t so obvious. With over 200 dungeons (according to the official blurb) you might enter any particular dungeon at level 1…or level 40. Unlike Gothic where the designers can simply say “tough – come back when you are stronger”, Oblivion doesn’t want to do that because they support these different play styles. Perhaps this is the only dungeon you’ll do as you pursue the main plot – or perhaps you’ve made a goal of finding every one and this is #173 on your journey to become a demi-god.
Similarly, stealing has been carefully balanced. With so many houses and so much loot, there’s a real danger a thief could make off with the whole shop. In response, Oblivion marks every single stolen item and no standard shopkeeper will touch hot goods. That’s right – steal a generic loaf of bread in Imperial City and you won’t be able to offload it to a shifty shopkeep in Anvil, because he magically knows it’s stolen property from halfway across the world.
In this case, at least part of an answer is pretty straightforward. If the door-locks and chests of the rich and famous were genuinely hard to open, requiring a rigorous skill-check, it wouldn’t be so much of a problem. The thing is, Bethesda didn’t want to exclude anyone so there’s a lock-picking mini-game that (with some practice and patience) can be beaten by anyone, even without thieving skills.
There are other areas where Bethesda has taken design shortcuts or heavy-handed systems to resolve balance issues but I’ve run out of space. Despite these comments, I should stress that I’m really enjoying Oblivion and for me, it’s significantly improved over Morrowind in a number of key areas.
It’s worth heading over to GamerDad and reading Dave Long’s article titled Saving the world... when I feel like it, which discusses the immersion problems related to the plot with accommodating opposing play styles.
What do you think? Are there better ways to balance an open game like Oblivion? Should they focus on a particular play scheme or does that destroy the appeal of this sort of game? Love the levelled lists or hate them? I’d love to hear your comments. |
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Side Quest: Questions to Oblivion's Design Answers
