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PS3 Oblivion Approaching PC Quality Visuals
fistfullast33l writes "After taking a beating in Gamespot's side by side Comparison of Xbox 360 and PS3 graphics, Playstation 3 owners may finally have something to hold over the 360 fans. Both Gamespot and IGN have previews posted yesterday that talk up the graphics and performance improvements over the 360 version. Load times and texture quality and draw distance have been improved, as well as 'new shaders dedicated to rendering the foreground cleanly with sharper details, so rocky landscapes now have craggy appearances instead of smooth, non-distinct surfaces,' according to IGN. They end with the ultimate hype, 'screens from the PS3 version should approach those from high end PCs running Oblivion, which is an impressive feat.' How is this possible? Gamespot reports that 'Oblivion will make extensive use of the PS3's hard drive by caching multiple gigabytes of data, which seemed to help with load times from what we saw.' While there are no official reports of this making it into the new 360/PC expansion Shivering Isles, a rumor on the Gamespot preview says that 1up might have the scoop."
They've had over a year to tweak it for the PS3.
What did you expect?
These claims may be true, I care little enough to give them the benefit of the doubt.
But the real advantage of playing Oblivion on a PC is the plethora of modifications. The marginal difference of graphical performance between xbox360, PS3, and high-end PC Oblivion is not really that important.
So this article leaves me asking..."So what?"
And the PS3 isn't a terrible piece of equipment, it's just an expensive one. I wouldn't be suprised to see nice graphics on it, I would demand it.
I thought the PS3 was meant to be the dogs bollocks in terms of everything from graphics to love making?
ps, the Wii is so much more fun - its peppy!
liqbase
will be coming to the 360 version via a patch. Also, PS3 cannot there is a limit to how many different DLC packages that can be used at the same time. Give a little take a little. In the end it's really a push. Just release the damn add on!
"How is this possible? Gamespot reports that 'Oblivion will make extensive use of the PS3's hard drive by caching multiple gigabytes of data, which seemed to help with load times from what we saw.'"
This would be very possible on the 360 if they could assure the 360 actually had a hard drive. Unfortunately, this assumption cannot be made due to the hard driveless 360s floating around out there. Not including one of the best features of the XBox on the value edition 360s was a big mistake and it looks like Microsoft is already beginning to pay for it.
What about at the end of the PS3's estimated 7 year lifespan? How will it compare to the graphics of a high end PC then?
I swear, when I first saw the words "PS3 Oblivion" I thought it was going to refer to the PS3's sales record...
I'm confused. I thought that for the first year or so after launch, consoles generally out-performed $2000 gaming rigs, because of the simpler optimization environment of a non-moving target. After a year or so, it seems like Moore's Law kicks in and yesterday's console can't beat tomorrow's $2000 pc.
That PS3 isn't mopping the floor with PeeCee right now is suprising, especially given that its halfway between the cost of a normal console and a new gaming rig (logarithmically speaking). What's more suprising is that the article submitter doesn't agree with my assumption.
Get a move on it soldiers!
Get that "more development" damage control meme out there on the double!
Will the PS3 have a rich mod community that's constantly releasing fixes/updates/new content for Oblivion? Probably not. That alone makes me want to stick with the PC version...
Now they brag about "approaching" PC quality graphics. Nothing to brag about on a next-gen console.
You can increase the quality of graphics as much as you want, but the gameplay will never change. A dead rat will still look like a dead rat. On top of that, given what Bethesda did with Oblivion (charging for quest-by-quest content in an SP game), I wouldn't entirely count this as "good publicity." Sure the game is still there, it has prettier graphics, but the people behind the game are drowning it in bad business decisions.
Of course the PS3 game will look and run better if it has been in development for a year longer. dumb dumbs
Given the PS3's architecture, that's to be expected. It has a decent GPU on the back end, and all those underutilized Cell CPUs to do things like generate procedural textures. The obvious approach for textures on the PS3 should yield a look like Pixar's All Renderman All the Time, with every pixel generated by little shader programs written in San Raphael, instead of compositing in real-world images like everybody else.
The big advantage of procedural textures is that they survive zooming in. In the film world, this isn't as critical, because you know how close the camera will get to a background, and you only put in detail the camera can see. In games, the user can move around and get close to a textured surface, which usually looks terrible.
I do. My Wii will sit alongside my ps3, once the Wii is available and the ps3 is more like $400. I'm skipping the MS thing.
who here hasn't played Oblivion already? Probably everyone but the most casual of gamers or those almost completely uninterested in a fantasy action adventure RPG or without a PC rig of any stature or xbox360. So it's still good news that the PS3 can crank out some gorgeous eye candy, although expected - definitely a breath of fresh air for anyone interested in the PS3 or Sony themselves. But there's still a lack of games now and on the horizon and a hefty price tag that needs alot more than a one year old game looking almost as good as a current entry level gaming rig will produce to sell me on this system. You know, I know I'll own a PS3 some day...probably around the middle of 2008. Oh yeah, already logged over 100 hours playing Oblivion on my PC, that's just about enough depending on the upcoming expansion's worth in added content...
Gaming for over 25 years
"I thought the PS3 was meant to be the dogs bollocks in terms of everything from graphics to love making?"
*note to self* Do not buy a used PS3 from Liquidcooled.
Thank you for your random Wii plug that really has nothing to do with the article at all (except maybe the subject).
Gears of War is the best looking game on any platform right now. So saying Oblivion looks better isn't saying much.
A sub $500 pc with a GTS 8800 and C2D will blow the PS3 out of the water.
I would hope, since the game is coming out a full year later, that some improvements would be made.
The real comparison would involve both development cost and quality of the game if they were developing for both platforms simultaneously.
They say the load times will be better than on the 360? That may just be speculation, given that Bethesda decided to put multiple copies of Oblivion on the Blu-ray discs because of the generally horrific Blu-ray loading times.
Yeah, way to not read the article.
Your link (1/17):
The PS3 Oblivion team compensated for the slower drive by duplicating data across the Blu-ray disc, making it faster to find and load
Today's link (2/6):
Bethesda's Pete Hines also commented that recent reports of data duplication on the PS3 Oblivion disc have been exaggerated, and this technique isn't different from the similar strategy that was employed in the creation of the Xbox 360 game last year.
Where is it that a *complete* system featuring a GTS 8800 (currently cheapest on newegg is $390) and a C2D (cheapest on newegg $176 for an Allendale) can be had for under 500 bucks? I know newegg isn't absolutely the cheapest, but between those two components, a motheboard, memory, case, power supply, optical drive, hard drive, you *cannot* get under $500 with the particular items you call out.
Besides, as far as the purpose intended, the Cell processor and memory architecture of a PS3 is more sophisticated (speed-wise) than any core 2 duo system. The GPU lags behind the top end PC parts and the memory amount is low relative to what is realistic with PCs, but it isn't so easy to dismiss what the PS3 *does* bring to the market.
That said I have nearly zero interest in the PS3, no interesting games to me yet, and a fair number of series going to PS3 to me jumped the shark. Increasing the graphical complexity is nice, but not fundamentally more entertaining than PS2 games.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Your $600 video card does just as well, if not just a little better than, a $600 console. How much was your processor, memory, hard drive, dvd drive, motherboard, network card, and case? And before we forget, how much did your copy of Windows cost you?
From the IGN comparison:
The PS3 didn't beat the 360 in this first comparison, but the games do look fine for first-generation titles. The real graphics battle will likely come next year.
Now that the Oblivion developers have had a while to work with the PS3, I would say it would be likley to look better than the 360 version which was an early title for that console. In both tests it's a matter of timing as to what looks better where.
Really both are about equal in terms of graphics ability, which we all knew already anyway.
What would be kind of cool is if some developers (like the Oblivion developer) would make available engine patches online to increase the quality of the game later on. I don't know if console games have done that before (beyond patching up things like framerate issues I think).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If the 360 has a Harddrive, then Oblivion will transparently cache data on it.
It's required on the PS3 to make up for the lacklustre performance of the 2x BluRay Drive on the PS3 (compared to the 12x speed DVD drive on the 360).
This has never, ever been true at anytime. It likely never will. Sony will have shills say such things and other marketoids have said things like that for various other dead systems in the past twenty years. The truth is that when games are compared head to head, consoles just don't match. It is about hardware price, there are no magical cheap chips. You get what you pay for even if you are Microsoft or Sony. If you want to beat a $2000 computer, you need to be selling a $2000 computer. Also even if your chip does cooler things than a chip already out on the market, if it changes the architecture ie. Cell versus x86 or PowerPC it will take years to get important software such as compilers optimized for it as well as a chip already on the market and gone through those growing pains.
The original Xbox was nothing but a cheap PC that was OK performance wise for a $500 PC when it was designed. However, the PC equivalent in hardware actually was cheaper than the Xbox just a few months after the Xbox was released. Now that old Xboxes are dirt cheap, the equivalent PC is more expensive (prices for a computer can't go below about $200 no matter what is in them due to component count and size). Integration/elimination of excess components saves maybe $100 in real manufacturing costs. It was dumb to buy an Xbox and put all that effort into putting Linux on it back then, now it actually makes sense.
If you want to make a console where the price point is below the integration sweet point of $200 based on common components that sells over a million somehow, then you can probably just beat the price/performance ratio of PCs. The Wii is actually pretty close to this where Nintendo is making money and giving people a somewhat reasonable box for the price. The only reason to buy a console is for their exclusive games and the console's simplicity/integration. Kind of like why Apple thinks it can sell Macs for a premium over PCs with the same hardware.
Heh. Still doesn't hold a candle to Qarl's, LOD replacements, beauty mods, the foliage replacer, etc, etc, etc. Mods rule, baby.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Now for my response to the parent (Xugumad):
Compare the XBOX360 launch titles to the current XBOX360 games (i.e. GRAW vs. GRAW2). It's night and day. What if the PS3 came out with GRAW as a launch title. It would blow the old 360 version out of the water.
The real question is, if they are about equal now and the graphics on both systems mature at the same rate, which system is going to max out first? I say it's going to be the XBOX360. Check back with the PS3 a year after the XBOX games can't be optimized any further.
I own both the 360 and the PS3. Right now I play the 360 more. I would be surprised if I can say the same thing in a year.
...and some of it has not, so mod however you see fit.
I'm glad that they are making it look better. Too many games are on both the 360 and the PS3 in which the PS3 version pales in comparison...Fight Night Round 3 is the perfect example of this.
In the case of Oblivion, they have taken a game that was fantastic when it was first released (and still is now) and vowed to make it better. While this seems obvious to many people, they still took the time and the effort to do it.
Now.
My question to you PC Gamers that played Oblivion and delved into the (awesome) world of Oblivion mods...look at what they are citing as the differences for the PS3 version...aside from the extra caching and such, do you see what I see?
That's right folks. Like WoW, many of the changes are very similar to things that people in the mod community released for the PC. So, what is my real question then?
Had the original lacked the ability to be so easily modded, and had the mods that WERE released never created...would these same changes have been made for the PS3 version? Anyone can tell you that the difference between the PC and the 360 version of Oblivion on a hi-def screen is not very big...the difference between the 360 version on a hi-def screen and the PC version with many graphical mods applied to it, however, is massive.
So again: how much of the PC Oblivion modding community do you think played a role in the decision to rewrite, rerender, and redraw many portions of the game that modders themselves changed?
Living With a Nerd
This is not true ...
... do you think a Pentium 4 in the 1GHz range with a Geforce 3 graphics card would be able to run Windows and a game like this?
Consoles outperform a similar aged PCs because the game can be tuned to the exact hardware (it is impossible to optimize a game for a Geforce 6, Geforce 7, Geforce 8, Radeon X800, Radeon X1800 and also cover Pentium 4, Pentum Core Duo, AMD X2, and PowerPC. On top of that console's have historically had a massive advantage in that they have 'no' OS to run and have a much lower resolution.
Just look at the Gamecube's best looking games Star Wars: Rogue Squadren 2 and the Resident evil games
Wow, this is incredible! For the price of a high-end gaming PC I can get a machine capable of high-end gaming PC visuals!
"After taking a beating..."
I don't think the results of that comparison are so clear. Where the 360 does better, it is significantly so but not really a deal breaker. Where the PS3 does better is much more in-your-face stuff that makes the 360 look childish. Examples:
* The rear view mirror and the street light in the last Need for Speed picture. Where are you looking? I hope you are looking at the rear view mirror or traffic signals while diving instead of the buildings. So... bad drivers should buy the 360 and good drivers should buy the PS3? *grin*
* The last two Madden pictures. The visor is disgusting in the 360 shots. The scoreboard looks considerably better in the PS3 shots. Who cares if his jersey is clearer on the edge of the frame on the 360? The jersey numbers look clearer in the PS3 shots when it matters; during and just before the play.
* In NBA 2K7 the PS3 looks too blurred but the 360 has too many jagged edges. Both ugly but I think the blurring in the PS3 adds a nice touch to the moving players.
You offset the price of chips with the price of games and sell your console at under their cost of manufacture. So there are magical cheap chips.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
But won't you need to buy four video cards at $250 each for a four-player game? Virtually no major commercial PC titles from the last decade support a split-screen or shared-view (e.g. Bomberman) mode for use with SDTVs or HDTVs.
The problem is that almost all major commercial titles that support single-screen multiplayer are console exclusives (e.g. Smash Bros.) or multi-console exclusives (e.g. Bomberman). Too bad for owners of set-top PCs.
If PCs can push 2560x1600 pixels, then why aren't there more PC titles that give a 1280x800 pixel window to each of four players holding a USB gamepad? Why do virtually all multiplayer PC games require the head of the household to buy multiple PCs?
Who else out there paitently waded through all the game sections in the Gamespot article, waiting for some actual PS3/360 Oblivion comparison shots?
/. post title, and all?
Y'know... based on the
VOTE!
A rose by any other name is still a rose.
Klingon Software is not released, it escapes, inflicting terrible damage onto the enemy as it does
But sales don't necessarily mean the console is better, which I'm sure is what you used to parrot five years ago when you were a Gamecube fanboy.
Um, because nobody cares? because playing on a split screen sucks beyond belief? I have never enjoyed any game that required a split screen. In any PvP game it spoils any attempts at stealth or suprise. You know what weapon your enemy has, where they are, and what they're planning to do to you. You can see the traps they plant, you know how much health they have, who else they're fighting, and can pick the perfect time to jump in and kill both of them. And to top it all off, you're trying to play on a tiny little screen.
Also, a majority of households have 17" or 19" monitors, and they can't hit those resolutions anyway. thus we're talking about a very small market for the quad-screen-1280x1024 gamers.
I think PC game makers figure that they can leave that small portion of the market who is willing to play a suspenseless game on a 8"x6" window to the consoles.
Mark of the Coder fades from you. You perform Opening on World of Warcraft. Warcraft crits GPA for 4. GPA dies.
Patched for framerate issues and so on is not the same as patching for overall visual quality, which I would say includes new textures and so on (unless the graphics are all procedural). That's more along the lines of what I was talking about, it would be nice if 360 owners could possibly get a free patch that would increase the visuals to the level of the PS3 version?
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Unless he was a PS2 fan. Then his position hasn't changed
My Transformation Website
Kindle Books http://www.catprog.org/rev
Interactive CYOA http://www.catprog.org/st
Why should I play Oblivion on a console which "approaches" PC quality, when have the real thing? I'm feeling a tad underwhelmed, here.
And should I even care about it, as a result? From what I've heard, the difference between modern digital TVs (480p) and 1080i or 1080p HDTV sets is pretty minimal unless you're either sitting closer than 4 feet or are sitting 6-8 feet away with more than 40 inch 1080p HDTV.
And isn't one of those games, Call of Duty 3, available on the 360, PS3, and the Wii - so why no Wii comparison?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
You may be right. But then what about Tetris? What benefit is there of putting each tetrion on a separate screen vs. putting them side-by-side as seen in The New Tetris for Nintendo 64? And what about WWE, Bomberman, and Smash Bros., which support four players on one non-split screen that shows all of the arena? Why hasn't Bomberman for PC been updated in a decade?
The optimization argument is true but applies mostly to late-era games. It takes time to learn all the tricks that allow you to get significant boosts from specific consoles, especially when you're "tuning" to get around limitations like limited main memory. Rogue Squadron 2: Rogue Leader was a good showcase of next-gen visuals early in the GC's life, but compared to games released later on the GC (like RE4) it doesn't look so hot anymore. However by the time the ability to tune for the specific hardware is providing dividends for console developers, baseline PC hardware has already advanced by a generation and is twice as powerful running the same un-optimized code as before. In other words, optimization for a specific platform helps consoles keep up and have longer life spans, but it does not put them in front of PC hardware.
I'm not going to call OS overhead a massive advantage. If you reboot your machine and refrain from running any services it shouldn't make that big a difference; it's not as though the console has no OS. This is an advantage, to be sure, but not one that is going to make up for the gap between PC and console hardware.
Resolution is a red herring here. It's why consoles have been able to get away with having weaker hardware, not an example of why they are better. Consoles are just now starting to support resolutions that were standard in PC games five years ago. This is not evidence that they are equally powerful. It means they were doing less to begin with.
By the way, I don't know about a Pentium 4, but the Athlon XP 1.66GHz and GeForce Ti 350 I bought in 2001 at the same time I bought my GC, was later able to run UT2K4 and Doom 3, both at resolutions and with effects that look better than what the GC could do. Could it have handled Rogue Leader? Yes. Absolutely it could have, and at a higher resolution too. Could the GC handle Doome 3? Eh... considering that the biggest problem I had with my hardware was the limited video ram, I'm going to say the GC would have choked and died.
Of course the GC was cheaper, easier to set up, and doesn't crash (not that my Linux box crashes ever since NVidia and X.org got their act together so crashing game != crashing box, but crashing game isn't something you expect either on a console). Consoles have advantages. Performance has never been one of them.
The enemies of Democracy are
Personally I wasn't a PS2 fan, I was a GC fan, but I really couldn't use sales to back up that argument, just personal preference. Anyway, I definitely would say that according to general public opinion that the PS2 was the best system of last generation, based purely on numbers. I happened to be one of the people who didn't like the system that others thought was the best, but as a whole, the world thought the PS2 was the best. This time around we'll see what the world thinks is the best system. It will probably be the Wii.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
Wii Madden is vastly better then either of them due simply to the superior control scheme.
If you watch last week's The 1up Show, there a feature on Oblivion for the PS3 if I recall correctly. They talked in there that the PS3 version's rendering engine was completely rewritten (engine+shaders) for the PS3 and while doing that they figured out to fix the shaders for the montains in the distance. So they fixed it for the PS3 version. Since it's only a shader, it is apparently going to ship with the 360 version too.
Now, given that the 360 version shipped at the same time as the PC version, it's reasonable to assume that the 360 version didn't have it's own version of the rendering engine which took advantage of the 360's hardware. In this case, I'm not surprised that the PS3 version looks better, since they had maybe a year to tweak the rendering.
In essence, this means nothing of the 360's or PS3's horsepower, only that when optimized for, the PS3 can generate better visuals than the 360. Shock! Gasp!
Seriously, I think people are missing a major point that seeing a console optimized game that is ported from other systems. This is actually a promising look for the PS3's future. While I own a 360, and want a Wii, I do hope the PS3 lives because I still hope for a new version of FF7.
From the screenshots it looks like Ps3 version includes LOD/distant land mod (original oblivion lods/text are just awful and could be improved without much of performance impact) .And they call it approaching PC? -With user made texture mods (Qarl for start) and in 8MsAA and 16xAF Oblivion on PC looks a lot better than on their screenshots.
,which is impossible for Xbox360/PS3.
I also should note that better texture mods need about 512 Mb of vid memory
The *IDEA* of the post was to say that a ps3 is nowhere near as powerful as a PC with a modern graphics card in it. PS3 can only push 1080p and it's not clear if it's even doing that in Oblivion.
Also, my computer can do a LOT more than a PS3. I can play games, serve web pages, and RUN ANY PROGRAM THAT I WANT ON IT.
I can even WRITE programs for it. For free. Without being sanctioned by Sony.
Yes, it's more expensive, but the point was that the PS3 graphics aren't comparing to PC graphics because the PS3 displays to a TV, not a high-resolution monitor.
And my PS3 can do all that also. It's called Linux for PS3.
I can write my own programs for it, for free using Kdevelop and GCC, I can serve web pages using apache, I can download stuff from Bittorrent, I can play Xvids in mplayer.
The bottom line is: Reports of the PS3 being hard to develop for are untrue (this proves it) Reports of the Blu-Ray being slower than the 360's DVD drive are also untrue (this also proves it). There are plenty of rabid xbox fanboys here trying to find fault with this news, and all they can come up with, it's been in development for an extra year, so will be better, or the Xbox360 will get these enhancements in the update soon (unfounded rumour).
It's a bit early to call the race won or done. From all reports the PS3 sold more then the 360 at the same point in it's life span. The Wii is kicking ass and taking names but it remains to be seen how long this will last. It's an amazing party machien and for non gamer it's the best thing since sliced bread. But the trade off is the games are mostly shallow (zelda exempted) and they need to broaden their genre choices. Success breeds success. So if the Wii can steal a few major serieis (MGS/FF/GTA/DQ/etc...) then they might "win" this round. If Sony loses those then they are truly dead. Sony must prevent this at almost any cost. The 360 is interesting but appealed to exactly the same group the xbox did. Halo 3 will help. Aside from that they have very little exclusive series that pull peopel in. They may be 2nd again or 3rd depending on how much sony screws up but it seems unlikely they will stay #1 for long.
"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy."
I can even WRITE programs for it. For free. Without being sanctioned by Sony.
Now, that's a little unfair. If you install Linux on your PS3 you can write your own programs for it. There are a couple of restrictions, but they're pretty lenient:
- All graphical output is unaccelerated monochrome.
- All source code must include #rootkit.h
- All output is watermarked with a picture of Sony's MD fucking you in the ass.
I think we can all agree that Sony are really starting to get it.
For the price of a PS3 -- it had better *be* PC quality graphics.
Why does it only "approach" PC quality graphics.
There are tons of low end gaming PC's that you can hook up to your
TV with a USB wireless keyboard and mouse -- and play Oblivion
to your hearts content. (With the 100's of user mods available).
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
TOTAL $499
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$295 - Dell GeForce 8800 GTS 640 MB DDR3 PCI E
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TOTAL $499
you can even cheaper if you want to downgrade the memory.
A console which cannot do 3d in general purpose computing and costs as much as a PC, does the same graphics level as a similar priced PC! Yiehaa, what an achievement!
Wake me up when you get accelerated graphics in PS3 Linux all it does is to push you into a VM with the hardware entirely being isolated!
# - All graphical output is unaccelerated monochrome. No decent games programming unless you extend nethack, checked, sony did its work # - All source code must include #rootkit.h Excellent but I rather doubt it # - All output is watermarked with a picture of Sony's MD fucking you in the ass. I also doubt this. No seriously, the PS3 as general purpose computing device has severe limits, one being the ram, which is not too much Secondly, face it, the Cell is a lousy general purpose processor, it has in its core a standard powerpc core which is quite good, but stripped of all optimizations most general purpose cpus have. It has its merits however as pure number cruncher which makes the PS3 an interesting target for research facilities, as cheap number crunchers. For graphics, even graphical uis, which general purpose computers also requires, the exposed framebuffer device does not really cut it, this would be like running Linux on a Vesa graphics card on a Pentoum 200MHz this comes close to the specs the PS3 exposes to the average Linux install.
It takes some time for the developers to take advantage of the technology in any new console. More specifically, the Cell. This is new territory for gaming and time will tell if the additional DSP's make sense in gaming. I would love to see them make use of all that storage space on the BD but I'm skeptical about that as well. I still believe that 256MB of VRAM is plenty to make the visuals look good even at 1080.
Split screen gaming is not really wanted on a pc, people usually sit in front of a monitor with very high resolution. Multiplayer on a PC is pretty much network centric. Split screen high res gaming is a non issue on a PC due to the multicores and threading units, but it is not really wanted. I think from the architecture the Xbox probably is best suited for split screen gaming, several multi purpose cores can go a long way, while the playstation probably will have the biggest problem, the playstation 3 simply sucks in multithreading (but is an excellent number cruncher which will show in the areas of physics, texture processing and 2d imaging)
Two points to make here:
One - Nice work Ps3 owners, got an original game other than ridge racer yet?
Two - its still oblivion. That the ps3 one is almost as good as the PC version still makes it a bad game. While high moddability in a game is something to be applauded, it doesn't compensate for not making a game. You should not release a product and require fans of your last game to turn it into something remotely playable. All the text in its default interface was so huge, i expected half of it to read "See Spot Run", and the layout means that it took far too long to look anything up. When i'm fighting demons in their fortress, within a hell dimension, i shouldnt be required to stop for 10 seconds to change what spell i'm casting, or whether i have my shield out. Yes, i know there were quick keys. Eight of them, and no sets could be made without a mod.
I ordered it half a year in advance, being a massive Morrowind fan. I have to give it my most disappointing game award. For all its graphical requirements, it still looked like crap when shown next to hl2, and this is even on my new computer that i built a month ago. Gameplay is hilariously weak - spin the wheel diplomacy? what the hell. Suspension of disbelief was already right out the window, but right then, it jumped off the harbour bridge to a watery grave. Its lack of a dialog box hurt it massively - all the dialog is so slow, and the face animation + voice acting so terribly, that i couldn't engage in the plot in the slightest.
The
Emperor,
and
everyone
else
in
the
game
talked
like
this
no
matter
how
urgent
their
dialog
is.
How does your alleged edict explain Football Manager? See that big "Hard Drive Required" stamp on the cover?
But it's a silly argument even besides the imaginary edict: Oblivion on 360 does use the hard drive to cache. If you don't have a hard drive it doesn't. Very simple stuff, and Oblivion is hardly the only 360 game to do this.
There is no excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness in the proportion. -- Francis Bacon