Widescreen Gaming Forum

Love the game but it is a serious system hog.

Turning down grass view distance to 0 (off), updating to the latest nVidia beta drivers, and turning "max frames to render ahead" down to 0 from 3 (in driver settings with Coolbits2 hack) helped quite a bit (it also got rid of the mouselag I had before). I can now play the game at 1680*1050 at around 15-30 frames per second with my GeForce 6800GT. It's not smooth, but it's playable. I still slightly regret having bought the PC version though (I can't afford to upgrade my PC atm).

I have been playing Oblivion for 2 days straight now. My weekend falls in the middle of the normal week, so the release date of Oblivion was perfect.

I am already putting this one on my top 5 list. It is amazing! I am surprised that I was able to run the game and get good framerates at 1920x1200 with only 1 x1900xt. (I do have the x1900xt overclocked to above x1900xtx speeds though). At 1920x1200, I get 40-70fps in the indoor areas, and 30-50 outside. It can dip into the 20's in heavy grassy areas. Certainly playable, but being the framerate fanatic that I am, I settled for 1680x1050 to get better framerates. The game is smooth as silk 95% of the time. Load times are fantastic compared to Morrowind.

Graphics are simply the best in any game out right now. The day/night cycle and weather effects are astounding. I just stopped playing a few times to watch the sunrise and sunset. Oblivion has the most convincing sky effects I have ever seen. Most game's the sky is a low res texture map. Oblivion actually has depth. Layers of clouds and the HDR effects on the sun helps the immersion. I love how clouds and trees cast shadows on the ground.

The physics are amazing as well. The first time I was really wowed by it was when I killed a gargoyle type winged creature on a really steep hill, and his body flopped and rolled down the hill (about 150+ feet). It was hilarious.

Combat system is far nicer than the Morrowind system. While similar, Oblivion's just seems more "kinetic". All of your weapons feel like they have "weight" to them. The special moves you get when going up level in your weapons is also very cool. I have only gotten the disarm attack, but it has worked well for me in the arena. (I have reached Hero status in the arena so far). Nothing better than knocking your opponent's weapon to the ground and have them freak out and start trying to punch your shield.

I am so engrossed in this game, I am thinking of cancelling WoW as I don't need (or desire) to play it anymore.

[quote]I have never liked RPG apart from DeusEx ... and that to me wasn't really a RPG ... Oblivon is has me hooked ... I've been playing it nigh on non stop since it arrived this morning ... only breaking to answer emails and tease ... : :mrgreen:

My dear friend, you MUST try Knights of the Old Republic and its sequel. I hated RPGs before I played through those two games.

...and I don't call myself a Star Wars fan either.

Agreed, The Kotor series is great. Very story driven with multiple outcomes. Great stuff. In fact Kotor1 was the only game that I finished(a milestone achievement for me alone) and IMMEDIATELY started over (to play the dark side).

The moons in Oblivion look kinda bad though, Gabbo. :p That thick black outline around them should be transparent.

I played Oblivion some more. It's good, but all the hype aside, it's got flaws. I've encountered many quests which basically require you to follow NPCs around for several days and spy on them (sounds cool, but it's very boring, and in the end nothing happened, bah) or meet them at specific times. Doing that once or twice would be fine, but most of the quests I've encountered so far had me wishing for some fast-forward function. Yeah, I guess looking for an inn or some bed and then just sleeping works...

The dungeons I've seen so far are quite unimpressive. The first 3 random ones I entered all looked very similar (same textures, lots of repeated architecture and models). Compared to the instances in World of Warcraft, they were extremely uncreative and dull.

All the spells/skills and items don't impress me that much. They don't have as much flare as stuff in, say, Diablo II or World of Warcraft. I'm too tired to try to explain, maybe I'm just a Blizzard fanboy... :p

TES games are a far different beast than Blizzard rpgs. Blizzard is all about loot. Period. Hence the impressive naming conventions. (i.e. The Ungodly Short Staff of Irrepressible Discontent). Blizzard inundates its players with ridiculous magical items right off the bat, that you kind of lose track of what "normal" is. Give it some time, I imagine the weapons will get way more interesting as you get higher level. Please dont tell me you are still only level 6 with a steel sword and are complaining about loot.

As I have only played Oblivion for a few days, I cannot comment on how all dungeons look the same. The one's I have been through have been cool as hell to me. MMO's need to have even bigger worlds than a single player game because they need to keep people playing for years on end whereas a singleplayer game is 80-100 hours at most. (not including user-mods)

Graphically, WoW doesn't even come close to Oblivion.

TES games are more story driven. The missions that you found boring, others will totally get into.

I am not saying you're wrong or anything, it is just we probably approach the game differently...

or maybe I'm a Elder Scrolls fanboy. :wink:

I have only seen player screenshots of the games and it looks good from what I can tell. I have the collector's edition sitting on my desk right now but won't have a computer capable of playing it for a few months lol. I figured I'd get started with modding first so I can contribute to the community this go round in TES. The user made mods started surfacing the day after it was released.

Bethesda's Gold: http://www.vagabondangel.com/Oblivion/Screenshots/va_obgold_before.jpg

Modder's Gold: http://www.vagabondangel.com/Oblivion/Screenshots/va_obgold_after.jpg

No contest! :) To those who are playing the game already, are you happy with the FOV in WS?

I'm running a single 7800GTX at 1920x1200 and the FPS are not too bad at all. It's the outdoor areas with heavy foliage that drag, most indoor areas are just fine. I have HDR enabled too.. just can't resist it.

1000

The moons in Oblivion look kinda bad though, Gabbo. :p That thick black outline around them should be transparent.

I played Oblivion some more. It's good, but all the hype aside, it's got flaws. I've encountered many quests which basically require you to follow NPCs around for several days and spy on them (sounds cool, but it's very boring, and in the end nothing happened, bah) or meet them at specific times. Doing that once or twice would be fine, but most of the quests I've encountered so far had me wishing for some fast-forward function. Yeah, I guess looking for an inn or some bed and then just sleeping works...

The dungeons I've seen so far are quite unimpressive. The first 3 random ones I entered all looked very similar (same textures, lots of repeated architecture and models). Compared to the instances in World of Warcraft, they were extremely uncreative and dull.

All the spells/skills and items don't impress me that much. They don't have as much flare as stuff in, say, Diablo II or World of Warcraft. I'm too tired to try to explain, maybe I'm just a Blizzard fanboy... :p

two things I'd like to mention.

1. There IS a wait function so you don't have to stand around or go to sleep.
2. WoW has what, 15 instances? Oblivion has 200 dungeons, how can you compare them? And yeah many are similar, but there are also tons of very unique ones too. Try going into Oblivion, that was as fun as any WoW instance I ever played.

And try some higher level spells to get more flare...the ones with large AOE or magnitude look awesome and can send things in houses flying all over the room.

Comparing this game to WoW is pretty dumb if you ask me, that's like comparing a final fantasy to gran turismo, they are so different it's just poinltess.

I have been playing Oblivion for 2 days straight now. My weekend falls in the middle of the normal week, so the release date of Oblivion was perfect.

I am already putting this one on my top 5 list. It is amazing! I am surprised that I was able to run the game and get good framerates at 1920x1200 with only 1 x1900xt. (I do have the x1900xt overclocked to above x1900xtx speeds though). At 1920x1200, I get 40-70fps in the indoor areas, and 30-50 outside. It can dip into the 20's in heavy grassy areas. Certainly playable, but being the framerate fanatic that I am, I settled for 1680x1050 to get better framerates. The game is smooth as silk 95% of the time. Load times are fantastic compared to Morrowind.

Graphics are simply the best in any game out right now. The day/night cycle and weather effects are astounding. I just stopped playing a few times to watch the sunrise and sunset. Oblivion has the most convincing sky effects I have ever seen. Most game's the sky is a low res texture map. Oblivion actually has depth. Layers of clouds and the HDR effects on the sun helps the immersion. I love how clouds and trees cast shadows on the ground.

The physics are amazing as well. The first time I was really wowed by it was when I killed a gargoyle type winged creature on a really steep hill, and his body flopped and rolled down the hill (about 150+ feet). It was hilarious.

Combat system is far nicer than the Morrowind system. While similar, Oblivion's just seems more "kinetic". All of your weapons feel like they have "weight" to them. The special moves you get when going up level in your weapons is also very cool. I have only gotten the disarm attack, but it has worked well for me in the arena. (I have reached Hero status in the arena so far). Nothing better than knocking your opponent's weapon to the ground and have them freak out and start trying to punch your shield.

I am so engrossed in this game, I am thinking of cancelling WoW as I don't need (or desire) to play it anymore.

I'm the arena Grand Champion! Muwahah!!!

I was really impressed with the performance of the game (autodetected Ultra Quality). It was running no less than 35 outside and uptp 60 indoors.

That was until i headed west into a large forest and the framerate took a huge dive, like unplayably slow!

I think my CPU is my bottleneck here... and my onboard sound isnt helping either (and my Audigy 2 doesent fit in the case...)

Paradigm Shifter... your pc is almost identical to mine apart from your faster CPU, hows it running for you?

(i have HDR on, i dont find the jaggies much of a problem in this game...)

Heh, well, unfortunately, I don't have my X1900 rig available at the minute - I'm away for a conference for the next four days... on my 2500+/6800GT rig (got a chance to test it last night) it does pretty well, although it's really obvious that it isn't at max - the ground in the distance looks pretty poor... I'll try turning off HDR and ramping the textures up a bit more.

I'll get back to you on how it runs on the X1900 on Wednesday, if someone reminds me... ;)

Well, i also bought it today and can say that it runs very well on a X1900XT.
I have everything maxed out except for AA (cannot go together with HDR :evil: ) and it runs awesome.

IIDX, I wasn't comparing WoW as a whole to Oblivion, just items and spells/skills, as well as dungeon design.

There are 2 things which make visuals impressive.

- Technology (pixel shaders, high definition rendering, high poly-count, etc).

- Art and design (models, textures, world/building/level design, animations).

Oblivion clearly wtfpwnz technology-wise (though, at the cost of framerates on non-state-of-the-art systems), and I can't say that it isn't great art-wise either. But I think World of Warcraft is slightly better in this 2nd category. Stormwind, Ironforge, Mauraudon, Onyxia, Shadowfang Keep, etc. etc. are artistically the best shit I've seen in any video/computer game, ever.

Have you played through World of Warcraft instances? (Ignore Molten Core - that's the only one which doesn't look amazing imho). Every single room has been hand-crafted. No copy-paste-rotate duliplication done with some high-level dungeon editor. In Oblivion, so far, it seems to me that there's lots of duplication, and the few dungeons I've seen so far don't come close to Blizzard's work. The Oblivion ones I've seen all had Doom-style, grid-like architectures which made them seem a bit unconvincing. They're not bad though, just not amazing, imho.

But yeah, Oblivion's got a totally different art style - it aims to be realistic. Some of the buildings I've seen in Oblivion do look amazing (like that cathedral in that little city with the paranoid Elf in the south - don't recall the name), and the building interiours are awesome too. I guess it's mainly just the few dungeons I've seen so far which didn't blow me away. But then again, I've not seen very much of the game yet, so I probably haven't seen the best stuff yet...

(I entered the first Oblivion gate yesterday btw. I'll go check out the tower inside it now I think. Maybe that'll change my opinion :p).

Yeah I actually have two 60s in WoW...the instances were cool in it, but I find the oblivion dungeons far more engrossing...actually I don't know, I like both a lot, so it's tough tos ay that.

But just FYI, Oblivion dungeons were also all hand designed and made. I admit there is a kind of series of dunegons, the cave looking one, the ayleid ruin, the old worn out castle etc. But still they all look so great to me I never noticed anything wrong :P

Oh well, to each their own, I respect your opinion I just don't understand it! :P (sorry I'm too obsessed with TES games)

Well, I've just experienced my first Oblivion crash to desktop... not entire unexpected given that the system is was running on isn't the most fantastic thing around any more... the Windows install itself is a little flaky sometimes, so I don't think I can blame it on the game.

I have one complaint - I broke into one shop as an experiment - no one saw me go in or out, or even be in the damned place - I got to a town a little way away, and suddenly two guards jump me! Huh? Are they clairvoyant or something? :lol:

Long post.

Well, I agree that Oblivion's dungeons have a similar "feel" among the individual types, but bear in mind the world Bethesda is trying to create. In Oblivion, all the ruined forts look similar (not the same, but similar style) because they were constructed by the same society at roughly the same period in Tamriel's history. Go tour some ancient Roman ruins in Italy, and I'm sure you'll get the same "feel" amongst all the buildings. I can't speak for WoW (never played), but Cyrodiil is one province probably on top of one type of bedrock, which would suggest lots of similar caves. To arbitrarily have different styles would feel out of place.


*SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER*

However, Bethesda does a good job differentiating in certain spots. Early on in the game you "crash" the Mythic Dawn's party, so to speak, in their cave, which is really stylistically done IMO. Also, there are side quests where you actually go into an impressionist painting and fight painted monsters. EXTREMELY artistically done, I think. Also, there is one instance in which you go into a mage's dream, which is also spectacularly done.

/ *SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER*





Plus, each city has it's own architectural style, drawing on influences from surround provinces. Different landscapes dot the different climate areas. The list goes on and on. Oh, and the water effects cannot be compared to any game out today. *Sigh* All right, I'll stop ranting. I'm just too in love with this game now and feel I have to defend it at every given moment.

I thought that the X1900 cards were able to run AA w/ HDR. Can anyone with a card in this series post their results? I'm thinking about upgrading (currently using 7800GTX 256mb) and was debating whether to get the 7900GTX or the X1900XTX.

From what I hear, the 7900GTX and the X1900XTX are about neck-and-neck, except the X1900XTX was supposed to run HDR & AA but the 7900GTX couldn't. The 7900GTX, however, is supposed to run quieter and cooler. But if the X1900 cards won't run Oblivion with both enabled, I'll probably lean toward the nVidia card.

And while I was on the fence about Morrowind, I can honestly say that Obivion is fun to play. Not perfect, mind you -- but fun. I chose a stealth profession, and the main quest so far seems to favor warrior classes over stealth. I think that the "role-playing" elements in Morrowind were better, even if the game itself was less accessible.

Hello ... welcome to the WSGF ... 8)

My 7900GTX's can do HDR and AA in some games ... just depends on the game :?

I thought that the X1900 cards were able to run AA w/ HDR. Can anyone with a card in this series post their results?

I just read this on IGN.com ... :cry:

Bethesda recently announced that the PC version of ES4 cannot have both HDR and AA, but it looked quite nice with just HDR. Load times are faster on the PC, but the visuals are about equal. The 360 version of Oblivion does both HDR and AA