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Oblivion Polymorph Mod
Via Kotaku, a post on the Oblivion forums on a polymorph mod for Oblivion. The Kotaku story has a video attached, showing the shapechanging in action with a rocking musical background. The mod seems awesome, but I'm not sure I agree with poster Eckhardt's commentary: "This could be just the thing for me to forget how unbearably stagnant and boring I ultimately find Oblivion to be: the ability to transmogrify into huge ogres, gigantic walking sticks and carnivorous cephalopods."
The lack of abilities and spells such as this is what made combat in Oblivion so boring to me. Whereas other RPGS (the BG series will always be my goto example for well done CRPGs) have a variety of attacks and defenses, Oblivions arsenal was decidedly repetitive (the spell library consisted primarily of DD's and DOT's, with a few stun/paralyze type things thrown in, but only a limited variety of those). BG had all sorts of great defensive spells (stoneskin and all the various shields) to go along with a variety of unique transformation spells (polymorph self, polymorph other) and some great AE spells (admittely, you can add AE to Obvlivion spells, but they're still just damage spells, nothing interesting like a mass sleep or web).
Part of the problem is that there's no group to play with in Oblivion, no classes with complementary skills etc. But still, your character can become such a powerful jack-of-all-trades I think it's hard to justify the mundane nature of his/her abilities.
Cool stuff like this just adds a ton of gameplay possibilities, and the designer of the mod knows it. Changing into the rat form, for instance, isn't just some gimmick. You can then sneak into/outof places you normally wouldn't fit. Stuck in jail? Sneak through the bars. Chased by the guard? Sneak through a crack in the wall.
It's surprisngly well done, too. There obviously aren't animations between forms, but the transformation (accompanied by a puff of smoke type effect) isn't too jarring, and the animations once you've changed are all in place. Great to see mods for this game that don't ruin the immersion. I haven't gotten to play with it yet, but hopefully the spells have appropriate costs/requirements associated with them.
At any rate, this is really just a concealed rant against Oblivion's focus on graphics rather than what should have been a really awesome combat system. That and a little thank you to the modders for noting the potential here, and fixing what Bethseda forgot about.
Compared even to Morrowind, the game just felt incredibly flat, bland, and repetitive. The first thing that springs to mind when I try to assign blame is the terrible voice acting--I could go after the reduction in skills, or the blandness of the entirely similar body structures, or the totally generic feel of many of the locations, or the inane interface choices, or the (carried over from MW) completely similar nature of all the spell (effects), but I'll save those for other posts.
If you've played the game, do you remember walking into Edgar's Discount Spells? Talking with that guy was a slap in the face; maybe I just liked the nasal, annoying voice of the Bretons from MW or something. Then I go across the street and talk to--well, to any orc or nord, khajit or argonian. Though I think--not sure--that the VAs for some of those races had been the same in MW, in Oblivion it didn't even seem that they tried to differentiate the races vocally. The actor for the female redguard came off as not even trying, like she recorded her lines at 3AM the day before going gold. I really can't say for sure, of course. One of the things that kept me playing MW was the atmosphere: you were rarely jarred out of the notion that your character was walking around in some completely alien world. Oblivion's extensive VA just lends itself to the kind of stupidity you experience when, for instance, a beggar talks to you in a meek voice, and then suddenly jumps into the same voice that every other Imperial uses.
I'd argue that it has neither. The dialogue is 99% click through (although it is pretty well written and well voiced). Speechcrafting, although interesting, is hardly of primary importance, and can easily be ignored by the player. The trading system has been toned down significantly since TES and now amounts to simply finding an npc with good standing and selling as much as you can to it.
I'd argue that the only gameplay mechanism of any import is the combat system (speech, travel, and trading are all just ways to facilitate combat) and this is where Oblivion falls short. As I mentioned in my original post up the page, the spells are of a disapointingly repetative nature, all that's been implemented is a simple resistence system and a few damage types to get around it. This stuff is simpler than Diablo 2 for god's sake, and most harp on Diablo for its decidedly simple combat mechanics.
Archery, although satisfying to use, offers a similar lack of innovation. You click, you hold, you shoot, the enemy takes damage... and little else happens. The magic arrows and the effects they offer are startingly mundane given the quantity available. Some paralyze arrows, and then a bunch of damage adding arrows, the variety of which is disapointingly similar to the spell casting system. The fun, more creative effects found in deeper CRPGS are not to be found. No multi shot type things, you can't pin your opponent to a wall, spell effects limited to stun or damage, little to no alteration effects, and those that do exist are simply meant to allow you to do more damage.
The melee combat system isn't *bad* but as I went through the game I found that the special attacks were hardly any more effective than the standard attacks. That's fine in a game like Baldur's Gate, when you're also managing spell casters etc. in combat, but if you're melee only it gets rather tiresome not being able to do anything but deal damage (and *occasionaly*, *rarely* stun or disarm).
The sneak system was, IMHO, too powerful, which lead to it being no challenge to use. At high levels you could zoom around the room while crouched, only occasionally being threatened by an enemy..
At any rate, the sum of all this is that combat requires too little thought. Maybe the enemies were too weak, or maybe the fact that you rarely took on more than 2 at a time lead to gameplay limitations. Whatever the case, combat ultimately resulted on clicking on the enemy, dealing damage, and then either fighting or running. You could sneak up if that was your though, or just engage from afar. Better CRPGs allow for more creative solutions to fights, and given the excellent physics system present in Oblvion I was disapointed in the repetative nature of the combat. Every fight in a given dungeon was almost identical, the only difference would be whether you had to chase the enemy (if they were a caster) or they chased you (if they were a melee'r).
The amount of content was impressive, and the amount of repetition in monsters and dungeon types wasn't too distracting (although the auto leveling of the world was rather disconcerting). A lot of the quests were enjoyable, but a lot of them were mundane. Ultimately it comes down to the sub par combat system, that's its flaw.
My feeling is that part of the problem lies with the fact that almost from the beginning you have access to the whole map. There is no "new area" to uncover (after the gates are open).
Also, the authomatic leveling of the monsters with the leveling of the player means there are no zones packed with monsters "beyond your level" and you cannot set yourself as an objective being high level enough to get in there.
Also there is not enough variety in weapons and armor - there comes a point when your rewards for defeating a bucketload of monsters is weapons and pieces of armor of the same types you've been getting for the last two weeks (real time).
I other words the quality of the rewards (be it new areas to explore, new weapons or new armor) for achieving something, stops increasing too early in the game.
Which leaves the missions (and especially the main ones) as the only way to actually feel challenged and achieve something. This pretty much removes the fun of going out and exploring outside the missions.