Komag on 22/3/2006 at 00:30

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I didn't realize there was an Oblivion forum, here's my little review and performance notes I wrote on GenGaming:

I've only been playing for about two hours, buy my system performance sounds better than Stitches (although it might be similar and I just don't mind as much). I tried setting everything to MAX (resolution was still on 1024x768 though) and framerate tanked to around 5-10fps (in a forest area with no AI around - would surely bottom out with any real activity). With settings above average I get a decent 15-30fps so far, higher in dungeon settings.

I haven't visited any city yet, I only played through the whole intro section and walked around the forest a bit (very nice trees/foliage/bushes/etc).

My short list:
Pros:
- Nice character selection, lots of features and subtle tweaks to facial structure, color, hairstyle/length, etc.
- Very good looking graphics everywhere. The dungeons and forests look superb to me, bravo! But for all that is good and holy, TURN OFF THE HDR AND BLOOM CRAP! (good thing you can)
- Brings back most of Morrowind elements like skills and traits, but sightly simplified (there is no spear or axe skill, for instance, but there is blade and blunt, and there's no medium armor skill, just light and heavy) which is fine with me
- All new stuff to mix for Alchemy!
- Nice sneaking system (not as good as Thief, but still cool, with satisfying reward for sneak attacks
- Very nice physics on objects, bodies, etc. Great to see that last arrow fling back their arm or whatever you hit.
- Cool "grabbing" feature - you can manipulate stuff, turn over dead bodies (which tumble/flop on the ground convincingly)
- Draw distance is nice and HUGE!!! I love it, even if it comes with some odd baggage, IT'S WORTH IT!
- Some interface elements are nice improvements - very easy to quickly set hot keys 1-8 for instance, just have your inventory or spell list open, hold the number and click the item, voila.
- Very similar feel and vibe to Morrowind, feels familiar and comfortable (this is a pro for me)

Cons:
- draw distance items ought to fade in, not pop in so suddenly (maybe they fade sometimes? I seem to have noticed it both ways, can't remember exactly now)
- Performance is only decent, not super optimised (but this is to be expected, and it's not an outright BAD performer like TDS)
- Interface menus are decent, but bulky and slow. I prefered the windowed layout of Morrowind much more, but I'm hoping the new tabbed interface will grow on me
- Interface/dialog text is FREAKIN' HUGE! I'll have to dive into the .ini files to see if I can't shrink that crap down a lot. Big consolitis symptom there.
- Focusing on things with the crosshairs is no longer precise and exact. Now if you are near it you can "frob" it. But this causes some minor trouble with layered/piled objects, or minor confusions elsewhere. Example - I picked a mushroom from a small bunch growing, and there was another couple bunches to the sides, but I wasn't sure if there were actually three bunches or just two, so I picked another one (the one to the right), and got something, so I said to myself "aha, there ARE three bunches, time to pick the one on the left now", but it turns out I HAD picked the one on the left at first, and there were only two bunches overall. Crap, that was a long stupid example, but hey
- what's with the big ZOOM ZOOM in on people's faces during some conversations? It's not like I suddenly ran up and got in their face. I don't have a zoom lense eye like Garrett. It detracts from the otherwise good first person immersion factor
- If you forget to turn off Bloom and HDR, you won't be able to see anything that is at all brightly lit, it will just be a blank white space on the screen (why do they do that junk???)
- Icons in the compass to hold your hand - what's with that? I would rather stumble upon and discover something, rather than have an icon for it pointing the way. This is definitely another element of "consolitis", dumbing down the game a bit
- The actual paper map (in the box, that you unfold) is decent but not as good as Morrowind's (but that would be hard to top). It's more like a basic styled map with few places listed instead of the super detailed Vvardenfall drawing. This actually might be a "pro" because the Morrowind map spoiled a lot of things
- Very very similar to Morrowind (if you really disliked Morrowind, it's unlikely Oblivion will change your mind - but then again I haven't played much yet so I could be wrong on this)


I think it's easier to nit-pick in detail than it is to be positive in detail (is that just human nature?), because even though my con list appears larger, I honestly have a very positive impression of the game and know I'm going to love it for the forseeable future :thumb:

It comes highly recommended from me, at least as this point



PLUS - I got the CE:
- The "Septim" coin is cool, if a little exaggerated in it's modeling (there's no way a coin like that could have been in actual circulation even now much less in any ancient culture. But I like it, nice touch
- The "Pocket Guide to the Empire" is a supposedly published by the Imperial Empire thing (as opposed to a 2006 strategy guide to the game) that tells about the various provinces and peoples and things of interest in Tamriel. I think it's cool, but again, if they had super high quality printing like that in a Romanesque era setting, then it could only have been done with pure magic
- I haven't popped in the bonus DVD, can't comment

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I've typed too much already, but here's a little more:

My system for the above notes:
- AMD Athlon XP 2500+ (1.8ghz, rated at a 2.5ghz Intel equivalent)
- 1 gig RAM (average speed, can't remember)
- GeForce 6800 w/128meg
- XP Home w/SP2
Playing at 1024x768 with above average settings

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Okay, just for kicks I installed Oblivion onto my laptop, which is:
- Pentium M 1.4ghz
- 512 meg RAM
- GeForce FX-go 5650 w/128meg
- XP Pro w/SP2
Playing at 640x480 with rock bottom settings

I turned EVERYTHING down to the absolute lowest settings possible, and, while the game would technically "run", you couldn't really call it running. It took me forever to just pick the basic guy they give you because it wouldn't register my mouse clicks and the curser was moving at like 1 frame every 3 seconds so I kept overshooting the buttons.

Eventually I got it started and somehow managed to jerkily grab a skull of the ground and toss it over to the table, and it flew through the air in a slow slide show, eventually falling against the table and down to the ground, after about 20 seconds overall, when it should have taken about 2 seconds.

Then I forced the character to meander his choppy self up to the gate to hear the other prisoner rant at me - the game froze for about 15-20 seconds and I thought it was crashed, but then it started again and the guy's audio started, so it turns out it was just my computer pausing to load the audio clip.

That's when I turned it off and uninstalled it. :p That was just bad.

The lesson is that if you're hoping to get by on less than the minimum specs listed, don't even try, it's impossible. I'm betting that my bottleneck here is the processor, it just can't crunch the physics, the audio, etc. I'm sure the relatively low amount of RAM (and it's probably slow laptop RAM too) doesn't help either.

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Hope that helps get a feel for performance and other details :)

Komag on 22/3/2006 at 03:12

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I'm sure that's true, but there was super extra slowdown when I tossed the skull (physics) and when the AI was speaking (audio decompression), both CPU/RAM stuff. But I didn't really test it thoroughly, so it's just the impression I got, and maybe you're right

scumble on 22/3/2006 at 10:40

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Seems play.com is doing the same thing - allegedly my order is at the "Packing" stage, indicating they're about to send them out. They have also sold all of their CEs. Friday is possible, depends how the postal system is running.

Fingernail on 22/3/2006 at 16:57

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Oh shit I'm looking forward to this now, gunning for a Friday delivery. :D

Stitch on 22/3/2006 at 17:26

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I spent another couple hours playing it last night, and my opinion has grown slightly more favorable. I cleared out some minor dungeon (Fort Nickel, I think) and joined the Thieves Guild. I killed a bunch of sand crabs and got my ass handed to me by some nasty fish.

I still think the game utterly fails in the "living world" aspect, at least in the main city, anyway. Part of the problem is I was hoping for a vibrant, bustling urban center where my thief could settle in and make a killing, and instead we have six people walking around and talking about how the Fighter's Guild is hiring. I understand the Gothic games didn't use radiant AI, but I think they were far more effective at presenting a living, breathing city full of life. So while I'm starting to enjoy Oblivion for what it is, it doesn't come close to what I was hoping for (and expecting based on previews).

And I'm still stunned that some people with computers worse than mine are reporting acceptable performances, although that may be in the eye of the beholder, as I'd consider a framerate of 15-25 pretty poor. I find it weird that I can run every other system intensive FPS out there with everything maxed out and Oblivion performs terribly without really looking any better (once I scale back the details, which only helps so much with the frame rate). I understand Oblivion isn't really comparable to other shooters as there's a lot more going on under the hood, but this is still frustrating.

I've mentioned this before, but there's also one part of the game that slows the game to a crawl. For some reason, the waterfront maps are death to my PC. The game literally becomes unplayable, with me getting probably ten frames per minute. The only way I can make any progress is by looking at the ground and walking, which is frankly unacceptable. Believe me when I say this put a damper on the Thieves Guild introduction.

I realize part of this just might be my computer (P4 3.4 Ghz, 1.5 RAM, GF 6800) but like I said I've run other games smooth as butter and I even did a complete system reinstall last Friday to make my Oblivion experience as streamlined as possible. I'm not expecting to run the game seamlessly with all the bells and whistles, but I certainly would like it to be playable.

I look forward to the nvidia drivers that will be released today and I hope they'll turn me around completely on the performance issue. As is it seems like Bethesda has once again shipped a game with an elephant hiding in the code.

HAVING SAID ALL OF THE ABOVE
I still enjoyed my two hours with it last night.