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Oblivion Takes Top Honor At Spike VGAs

Posted by Zonk on from the all-about-the-horse-armor dept.

Last night was the taping for the 2006 Spike TV Videogame awards, and Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion took best game. Gamespot reports on the rest of the pack, which saw the Critic's Choice going to Twilight Princess, and Epic's Gears of War pulling down several top honors. For a blow-by-blow, Joystiq's event liveblogging post might interest you. It sounds ... pretty awful. From that article: "9:25: 50 Cent intros the 'Best Human Female in a Video Game' in a sort of slurred 'here's my drink' English. We'll have what he's having. It's unsure if he even knows what he's talking about."

39 of 52 comments (clear)

  1. hmmm by nomadic · · Score: 4, Funny

    The VGAs are definitely better than the CGAs, that awards show is only in 4 colors, all of them ugly.

  2. Now we wait... by vga_init · · Score: 1

    I'm waiting for posts about Twilight Princess to start. I can't wait to see what kind of flame wars could arise from such an occasion. :D

  3. who cares? by crossmr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Another "me too" awards show. Following the crowd. We all know oblivion was a shiny turd and if people are still patting it on the back it shows they've learned nothing.

    1. Re:who cares? by StillAnonymous · · Score: 1

      I really enjoy Oblivion (still playing through it). However, a friend of mine bought it before I did and told me about the goofy "levelling" system they have and it really turned me off of the game. When I heard there was a patch available (Oscuro's Oblivion Overhaul) I picked up the game and installed the patch before even playing. I'm glad I did. The game is a lot of fun.

      On the other hand, I didn't care too much for Morrowind. Wander, wander, wander, nothing happens.. yawn... Maybe I'll give it another shot again some time, but it seems like the world of Morrowind was just far too big for the amount of content in it.

    2. Re:who cares? by SScorpio · · Score: 1

      I have to agree with you on Morrowind. One thing I've noticed is that a lot of the people who praise Morrowind as the best game ever hate Oblivion. But the people who hated Morrowind love Oblivion. One of the best features of the past two games have been the ability to design plug ins to customize the way you play the game and fix issues with it.

      Morrowind in its original state was just a huge empty world though plug ins made it feel alive. Oblivion kept me caring about the main quest throughout the whole game which has been something the other games in the series have lacked.

      Now I just want them to release more Elder Scrolls: Adventures games as Redguard was a every fun game and I'd really like to see what they could pull off with current day hardware. I don't think the Legends series would do as well though. Battlespire was kind of a let down and I don't think a game of straight dungeon crawl would work, though keeping the multiplayer would make a small but vocal part of the fan base happy.

  4. Oblivion takes first place?! by ZDRuX · · Score: 1

    My god! With so many bugs, I`m impressed that they even had the game running long enough for the judges to see what they're judging.

    --
    The magical number is: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    1. Re:Oblivion takes first place?! by Aladrin · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I played it on the PC and XBox 360, all the way through both times. I even got the full 1000 points on the 360, and I completed 2 guilds and the main quest on the PC. I did not encounter a single bug. I don't find it hard to believe they played it 'long enough for the judges to see what they're judging'.

      It had bugs, there's no doubt. But they were most out of the way things and the majority of gamers did not experience them. Don't be fooled by the vocal minority.

      The game was enough fun that I spent over 100 hours on it without getting bored. Not many games can claim that for me. It's easily first place.

      --
      "If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you." - DM
  5. Why the Oblivion hate? by Sciros · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Oblivion might not be the best game to come out this year necessarily, but even saying that is still my own opinion. Twilight Princess, Gears, FF XII, and Oblivion have all set some sort of standard and that says something. Debating which is the best boils down to taste and privileging of some features over others (multiplayer, graphics, engaging puzzles, etc). From joystiq's report it appears the award show was overall quite terrible, and I wouldn't have been surprised if Best Game had gone to Madden NFL. At least we were spared that :-) Certainly there are other things to be upset about than Elder Scrolls IV getting *yet another award.* Such as maybe all the really tasteless humor.

    --
    I like basketball!!1!
  6. Farce by Terminal+Saint · · Score: 1

    I love Oblivion as much as the next guy, but honestly, the Spike VGA's are a damn farce.

    --
    It's sad when choosing an installation directory on your own qualifies you as an "advanced user."
  7. thank you by Nasarius · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's disappointing how many people have given Oblivion absurdly overblown praise. What does it say about the current standards for greatness when such a flawed game averages 93% on GameRankings? The UI, the hand-holding quest system, the idiotic conversations and behavior caused by "Radiant AI", the lack of any kind of meaningful choices...and on and on, not even including the bugs. TES was so promising; I played Daggerfall for years. And this is the direction you decided to take the series? A mediocre game system with tons of *stuff* thrown in? Sigh. Maybe someone else will make the series that TES could have been.

    --
    LOAD "SIG",8,1
    1. Re:thank you by crossmr · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That is what gamers want now I guess, and reviewers. I recently read a review on gamespot on Vice City Stories. One of the reviewers complaints was the lack of hand holding the game did. He was concerned that it wasn't popping up arrows showing you where to turn and mapping out the best routes to take for missions, etc. I guess as a developer in that environment you give them exactly what they want.

    2. Re:thank you by Jace+of+Fuse! · · Score: 3, Interesting

      I guess as a developer in that environment you give them exactly what they want.

      Maybe if you're just in it for cash, sure.

      If you're making great games, and absolutely want to do things right, you include such a system, you disable it, then add a cheat code to turn it back on.

      Everyone wins.

      --

      "Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"

      Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
  8. Meaningless Awards by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Remember folks, this is the same advert--I mean awards show that gave awards to Resident Evil 4 (PS2) for game of the year without mentioning the superior Gamecube version and King Kong the video game before it was even out on store shelves. Oh and who can forget the award going to the 'Most Addictive Game Fueled by Mountain Dew' /rolleyes

  9. I wonder... by Vo0k · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Did somebody pay somebody else to have this terrible game given the award or are simply all the others even worse than Oblivion?

    Before you mark this as flamebait:
    If you compare Oblivion with its precedesor, Morrowind, which was good but not ultimately great, Oblivion has -everything- worse than Morrowind, with exception of graphics. Worse gameplay, more shallow plotline, smaller quest tree, lower quest variablity, fewer guilds, worse stability, fewer skills, spells, cities, NPCs, and above all no point in advancing the character, because the enemies are chosen depending on your level and growing harder faster than you gain advantages from high levels, meaning you are punished for progress, the longer you play the harder it gets.

    --
    Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    1. Re:I wonder... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Morrowind, which was good but not ultimately great

      On the contrary - vanilla Morrowind is good, but what the modding community has done to it is simply incredible, and I would argue does earn it the "great" moniker. The graphics have got constantly better with re-texturing and re-meshing efforts, the gameplay mechanics can now be as deep as you want (hardcore RPer? Make it so you have to eat and sleep, and try going out catching and cooking your own food), and so on.

      Recently some clever guy even modded Morrowind's graphics rendering so it displays land to the horizon instead of fading it out into impenetrable mist a few hundred yards away. The game gets instantly more immersive, and it doesn't even affect the performance. People are going away, playing Oblivion, then coming straight back to Morrowind. Even the flawed masterpiece that was Daggerfall never had this level of community love.

    2. Re:I wonder... by Vo0k · · Score: 1

      I thought the enemies that level up with you were a masterstroke. The execution left something to be desired, but they essentially eliminated my number-one RPG gripe: grinding.

      Are you sure we're talking about the same vanilla unmodded Oblivion?
      Essentially they removed artificial block of grinding, but instead introduced a natural "grind or die" difficulty-based one. And what's worse, you can't go back and grind more, if you skip some grinding you're screwed.
      Scenario 1: Pick a custom class with major skills of Sneak, Security, Speechcraft, Alchemy, Conjuration, Alteration and Illusion. As soon as you exit the sewers you can start using your skills as much as you can, increasing your levels really fast. In matter of 4-5 hours you can be a level 40 character. But the moment you exit the city you'll be totally obliterated by the first enemy you find. So you choose...
      scenario 2: Custom class with skills of Armourer, Light Armour (you always wear heavy), Blunt, Hand to Hand, Conjuration, Alteration and Illusion (you never use them), then you avoid using your major skills as much as possible. After 5 days of gameplay you're level 4 and you kick major ass. If you want to advance to level 5, you spend a day grinding your minor skills, then 15 minutes training major skills to get highest possible attribute bonuses while not advancing the enemies too much. You must grind a lot and proceed very cautiously if you don't want to lose your advantage and make the enemies much harder while not growing much stronger yourself.

      Of course mods can fix it. Mods can fix everything. But don't count them here. Bethesda screwed up a big time and fans fixed it, so now Bethesda is getting awards? uh...

      --
      Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    3. Re:I wonder... by Mr_eX9 · · Score: 1

      Scenario 1: Pick a custom class with major skills of Sneak, Security, Speechcraft, Alchemy, Conjuration, Alteration and Illusion. As soon as you exit the sewers you can start using your skills as much as you can, increasing your levels really fast. In matter of 4-5 hours you can be a level 40 character. But the moment you exit the city you'll be totally obliterated by the first enemy you find.

      Doesn't it make sense that this sort of character would be very weak in direct combat, assuming it only developed its major skills, even at level 40+?

      I don't understand how that's a fault of the game. I love this aspect of the game because of the roleplaying opportunities such as those that the leveling system creates. Afterall, Oblivion is an RPG, not just some mediocre hack-and-slash. Most of the fun comes from immersing yourself in the experience by creating a character that can do what you want to do. Yes, not all of the skill lines are useful for combat, but combat is not the only component of the game.

      If your "Scenario 1" character wanted to not get obliterated in direct combat, just pick up an axe or sword and a few pieces of heavy armor and start swinging away, using Sneak attacks, Shield spells from Alteration, and Paralysis spells from Illusion to help you. You can also make some really useful poisons/potions with a decent Alchemy rank. The next time you level up you'll be able to get nice, juicy bonuses to your Strength and Endurance thanks to your sword/axe-swinging, armor use, and blocking.

      Perhaps you just don't like the direction Bethesda has taken the series and would prefer to be playing an FPS or JRPG?

    4. Re:I wonder... by Knightking · · Score: 1
      The character in Scenario 1 wouldn't be "weak" in combat. It'll be completly unable to survive an encounter with a random wolf that's supposed to be a trivial fight. At level 40, you probably wouldn't be able to survive one hit with the difficulty at the minimum (1/6 incoming damage). With the exact same character at level 1, the fight would be no problem. After playing Oblivion for a few hours, I realized that just never sleeping would make the game a completly joke, as you never level up if you don't sleep (although a few quests require sleeping, and the main quest requires that you level up a few times). After playing the game for a week or so with Obscuro's patch (where the character in Scenario 1 would still be awful at combat, but not get even worse ever time you leveled up), I realized that the game system was so trivial to break that the only way to make the game challenging was to go out of my way to avoid breaking it. Random examples I stumbled on without looking for broken things:
      1. Drain Life with high damage and low duration. Costs basically no mana, and the fact that it wears off after a few seconds doesn't matter if the target is already dead. If I hadn't been using OOO, I would have been able to 1-shot every creature in the game when I first got it.
      2. Once you're a member of a guild, you can take all of the guild's stuff. And then sell it back to them, completly removing any gold concerns for the rest of the game.
      3. Charm. Speechcraft is meaningless for a mage.
      4. 100% Chameleon. Stupidly easy to get, and the game might as well declare you the winner when you get it.
      I don't mind optional things you can do to make the game easier. I think fast travel was a great idea, as it's easy to simply not use if it offends you, as would the walkthrough arrow if you could turn it off without a mod. However, I shouldn't have to stop and think before doing something "Will this horribly break the game and completly remove all challenge?"
    5. Re:I wonder... by Mr_eX9 · · Score: 1

      Straw man logical fallacy.

      Not all creatures you encounter are leveled. Wolves certainly are not. My level 47 Nord Spellsword can take out all manner of forest wildlife with a few swings (if not one swing) of his sword. A great deal of the enemies begin to appear when your character reaches a certain level (like Brown Bears) but do not get any stronger as the player continues to level. The enemies that I really need to watch out for are the ones that are actually leveled--clan/tribe leaders, Ogres, Minotaur Lords, et cetera.

      Were Oblivion an online game where I would have to interface with other human players who would do nothing but summon Dremora Lords, cast a 10-second Paralyze on Target spell followed by spamming Enemies Explode, I would probably be in the same boat as you. In fact, that's one of the reasons I've recently given up on all MMO playing.

      Oblivion gives me my own space to do what I want how and when I want to do it. It really is my world. On that note, I can safely say that if you don't love roleplaying, you don't love Oblivion.

    6. Re:I wonder... by Vo0k · · Score: 1

      Doesn't it make sense that this sort of character would be very weak in direct combat, assuming it only developed its major skills, even at level 40+?

      Yes, but a well-ballanced game would make it still possible, even easy (level 40!) for such a character to finish. An alteration 'shield' spell that wouldn't be useless. Sneak that actually works and is possible to pull off in most of quests. Speechcraft allowing you to bluff and befriend most of essential enemies.

      Actually, if you really wanted to finish the game with this character, you could - using alchemy (tons of poisons and restore magicka and health potions) plus illusion (short-duration invisibility spammed throughout most of the game) but the gameplay would be really crap, poison sword, hit, cast invis, repeat. Oh, and you'd be screwed against undead, immune to poison.

      The main gripe is that the result of the 'levelled everything' idea is that the game is a total bitch to any player that isn't a fighter, a mage or a combination thereof. Try to play a stealth-based character, and around level 12 you'll wind enemies own your ass as they like. Your sneak skill is nearly useless even at master level, your attack strength even with sneak bonus is pathetic, most of quests require you to kill all the enemies and make it impossible to sneak past them, social skills like speechcraft, mercantile etc are useless, bow weapons are pathetic more often than not, acrobatics which should easily get you out of reach of clumzier enemies is useless (and many good sniping spots are blocked off by invisible walls to prevent this!) and you keep gaining levels making you unable to slow down and catch up on skills against the enemies.

      Plus levelled merchants and levelled loot mean that you can patiently spend time doing well-paying jobs and save up lots of money then stick them up your ass because no merchant wants to sell you anything better than chainmail, and you can raid 200 ayleid ruins and you won't find a single piece of elven armour because your level is too low.

      --
      Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    7. Re:I wonder... by Mr_eX9 · · Score: 1

      "The main gripe is that the result of the 'levelled everything'..."

      I stopped reading there, because not everything is leveled.

    8. Re:I wonder... by Vo0k · · Score: 1

      Yep. The list of unlevelled items that are not a part of level-dependent quests is about 10 positions long. Including items like Fin Gleam (a helmet somewhere far off shore on the bottom of the ocean, no hints as to location or even existence of it) or a ring lying on top of a fort wall somewhere in the wilderness.

      --
      Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
    9. Re:I wonder... by popo · · Score: 1

      Agreed. 100%.

      Morrowind was creatively gorgeous. Oblivion was generic fantasy crap for first time RPG'ers.

      --
      ------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
    10. Re:I wonder... by jools33 · · Score: 1

      Personally I prefer games to get harder the longer I play them than for them to get easier - a boring game is an easy one - and for me Oblivion would have been a let down if the leveling system made things easier the more you advance your character - where's the challenge in that? Surely the more you play the game - the more you want it to challenge you. I just don't get why the Oblivion leveling system is so despised - and I hold with another comment here - its the vocal minority. Personally I found Morrowind less accessible - and I couldn't give a stuff about the graphics not being as good - but the agelong quests for the mages guild in Morrowind where for example you have to go find a bunch of mushrooms - is enough to put any gamer off.

    11. Re:I wonder... by Vo0k · · Score: 1

      The problem is that in a good challenging game you can scale the difficulty, take a hard challenge, fail, then step back to easier areas to beef up your character and try again. In Oblivion there's no scaling back. You can't pick an easier cave or less difficult quest to make your character stronger, and you won't face a surprise battle against overwhelming odds which would force you to retreat - at given time every enemy in every location all over Cyrodiil is about as difficult, sometimes too difficult, sometimes too easy. You just got your ass kicked by a faded wraith? You return to a cave where you kicked goblins' asses but now it's full of shamans, berserkers, and the goblins kick you the same as the wraith. You try bandits, and bandits kill you. You try to scale back and do some non-combat missions to raise your parameters, and as you level up, your combat parameters remain pathetic and the enemy gets even stronger. OTOH if you concentrate on battle-related parameters and you start a fighter/battlemage career from the very beginning, neglecting any thieving, social, assist magic or whatever that makes a true role-playing of a character other than "Conan the barbarian" or "almighty mage", you can easily reach unmatched power which removes any challenge from the game. The problem is that the 'level' parameter corresponds directly with enemy power but is hardly related to player's power - start a 'conjurer' class and play it like it was a barbarian without knowledge of magic, and before you reach level 3 you can swipe storm atronachs with bare hands. Start a 'thief' and play according to the lore and at level 20 you find closing an oblivion gate is simply impossible. The game punishes you for role-playing your chosen role, excluding the two mentioned stereotypes, and rewards for straying as far as possible from chosen proffession - your parameters rise while enemy power doesn't.

      --
      Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
  10. Oblivion isn't great at all. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    It really isn't. Just read the only honest review on the net: The Review.

    1. Re:Oblivion isn't great at all. by kionel · · Score: 1

      Yuh-huh. The reviewer's admission that he'd been a critic of Oblivion's design since before it was released said more about his attitude than that lengthy diatribe.

      Oblivion is a terrific game, IMO. Lots of people agree. Leave it to Slashdot to harbor the demographic that would whine about its quality.

      --
      "'My Country Right or Wrong'is like saying 'My mother, drunk or sober,'" -- Chesterton
  11. Re:I wonder...Bark worse than Byte. by a_ghostwheel · · Score: 1

    He is talking about Morrowind FPS Optimizer - I'm sure Google will point you in right direction. On the same note, I will agree with grandparent - modding scene for Morrowind was plain incredible - I enjoyed it much more than the game itself.

  12. Final Fantasy XII by balthan · · Score: 1

    I did not like Oblivion at all. I liked Morrowind and spent countless hours playing that, but gave up on Oblivion after just a few hours.

    I consider myself a PC gamer. I prefer games on the computer and have played very few console games since the NES. That said, Final Fantasy XII is the best RPG since Baldur's Gate II. I'm not even a Final Fantasy fanboy, having only played VII all the way through, and a little of VIII.

    1. Re:Final Fantasy XII by Oniko · · Score: 1

      I did the same thing at first... but then I found mods that made the menus much more computer-friendly and adjusted the difficulty slider (to make my poor little theify not go splat all. the. bloody. time). And then it became much, much better.

      There's a lot of things Morrowind did a lot better, hands down. But Oblivion has it's charms, once I got past that initial "it's pretty but doesn't feel like I expected" hump. I think the Dark Brotherhood questline is a really well done mindgame. Many of the other factions are pretty good, too.

      It's not Morrowind, and the hour count isn't even close (despite being rather high and hard on my grades), but there's no cliff racers, and the compass takes away all of the pain of 'directions' that say something like "find a pointy mountain next to a dead tree south of a talking guar". And it's pretty. And while Radiant AI's not perfect, the fact that NPCs actually care what time it is *does* do something for realism.

      Bottom line, it's not the game I would have made, but I still really do like it. Although I agree that awards and ratings can have a certain element of wankfestery to them.

  13. Pathetic by MWoody · · Score: 3, Interesting

    The first time I looked at this years' entrants, it took all of 5 seconds to dismiss this entire contest as irrelevant; namely, it just took a quick glance at the "best soundtrack" category. GTA? Scarface? Guitar Hero 2? MADDEN!? This, when this year celebrated one of the most outstanding soundtracks in a game that I've heard in years: Bully, from Rockstar Games. The music accompanying your schoolyard antics is outstanding, managing to be original, appropriate to what you're doing in-game at the time, and non-intrusive while still having enough of a melody to keep you humming it hours later. How do these other canned collections of whatever random crap was cheap to license even belong in the same category? Perhaps what I'm really lobbying for is a seperate "best original soundtrack" group, but frankly, I don't see why any of the four games actually up for this award deserve any sort of recognition at all. Honors like these should reward the best examples of creativity in an industry, not just pay lip service to who chose the best trash to recycle from other sources.

  14. Mod Parent Up.... by MWoody · · Score: 1

    ...and mod grandparent down. I am, you see, either retarded, blind, or both. In my defense, I was searching for "soundtrack" and didn't realize it was called "score" - a paltry excuse for not moving your eyes two inches down, I know, but there ya go. Still, I stand by my statement that these awards are stupid, based largely on Bully not winning for its score. I turned off the canned, annoying music in Oblivion very early on; it was boring and added little to the game.

  15. it wasn't even shiny by idlake · · Score: 1

    Not only was the gameplay worse than Morrowind, I thought the graphics also hadn't improved much, given how long the company had been working on it.

    1. Re:it wasn't even shiny by MrHanky · · Score: 1

      Perhaps you should try playing it with a more modern video card. The graphics are superb (well, for the scenery, that is -- the characters aren't that special up close).

      Personally, I like many things in Oblivion. The negatives that stand out are the voice acting (you'd expect better not only after GTA: SA, but also before), the dialogue, the "AI" and the bugs. It crashes far too often, and strange things happen in-game. The levelling system didn't bother me too much at first, since I'm not a regular RPG gamer, but now that I'm level ~30, things are getting far too easy.

  16. Re:I wonder...Bark worse than Byte. by Vo0k · · Score: 1

    Blah, FPS optimizer maybe doubles view distance but then square borders start showing up (are clearly visible when set to max), and that's not very immersive. I'd love if Morrowind could create something like LOD far landscape from Oblivion, where you could see both Vivec and Dagon Fel from top of Red Mountain after finishing the main quest.

    --
    Anagram("United States of America") == "Dine out, taste a Mac, fries"
  17. Re:I wonder...Bark worse than Byte. by Petrushka · · Score: 2, Informative

    The AC wasn't referring to FPS Optimizer, in fact, but to Timeslip's Morrowind Graphics Enhancer. As of version 3, MGE can indeed render landscape to the horizon in the same way that Oblivion does. Yes, you can see all of Vvardenfell from the top of Red Mountain. It's not by any means perfect -- it doesn't render objects and buildings nearly far enough away (they pop into existence about 30 metres away) -- but it's still a very impressive achievement, and regularly updated.

  18. Wish I installed... by SIInudeity · · Score: 1

    Gothic III, so that I could have added a meaningful comment here.

  19. or better yet by Travoltus · · Score: 1

    an option to include the hand holding, and a reward system that encourages avoiding that option.

    Perfect scalability.

    --
    --- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
  20. VGAs by PingSpike · · Score: 1

    The spike VGA were awful the first time I tried to watch them for 15 minutes. 70% commercials, 15% people that have nothing to do with video games making noise, 10% T&A and 5% showing a developer standing there while loud shit and flashing lights drown them out. It was such utter garbage I couldn't believe it was actually allowed on television. Its the television equivilent of a failed abortion.