All I remember about Oblivion was walking up endless stairs and neverending fucking hills

Haha, and that hasn't improved. But that part of the game was a ridiculous amount of stairs and hills even for an Elder Scrolls game. It's like you go to this town in in the middle of nowhere to talk to these dragon guys and the quest notes make it seem like you just need to find like a house or something in the town. When you finally get there it's like "No, they're at the top of that huge fucking mountain over there, have fun walking up one set of stairs for ten minutes while really weak monsters attack."

that only took like 2 minutes to walk up and the only monsters were a few wolves and a really strong troll i had to run away from. there are people on the way up. it's not that bad, i was pretty happy to be walking up a huge mountain, and isn't what is wrong with this game. wandering around in skyrim is the best part of it. the world wasn't designed by algorithm this time but the writing still is.

are there still like a million drawers and boxes all filled with inkwell[x1] clay jug[x1] wheat[x3] dress shoes(+0)[x1] because in retrospect this still pretty much entirely sums up everything about the design decisions for Oblivion
 
blundering through endless houses filled with tumbling physics-based linens and clay pots while a shopkeeper watches you blankly and runs to summon Police Warriors whenever you accidentally take an onion[x1] is such a perfect representation of depressing vidcon consumer wasteland that all the heroic fantasy stuff couldn't help but feel superficial i think.
 
edit: actually revisionist post (barf) (BARF) but i think the closest thing to a distinguishing feature in that game was the way it took the rpg mix of Action Fantasy and Inventory Accumulation/Management Sim to such ludicrous extremes that nearly everything in the game degenerated into list-based item purgatory. like even in the hellgate demon dimension places you could click on mutilated corpses or fleshy pod things and get... the same faded scroll gui as ever telling you that This Container Holds: Bonemeal[x1] Sour Grass [x2] Human Flesh [x1]. constant stream of fresh corpses yielding Iron Boots [x1] Rusted Breastplate [x1] Scroll Of Longing [x1] Iron Battleaxe [x1]. thats p good i think. secret mturk aggregation simulator hidden inside generic fantasy framework.
 
edit2 i haven't been following skyrim and probably wont play it so this is a superfluous/decadent post sorry ;o(

that only took like 2 minutes to walk up and the only monsters were a few wolves and a really strong troll i had to run away from. there are people on the way up. it's not that bad, i was pretty happy to be walking up a huge mountain, and isn't what is wrong with this game. wandering around in skyrim is the best part of it. the world wasn't designed by algorithm this time but the writing still is.

Yeah I was exaggerating about this a bit, although I'm pretty sure it took me more than 2 minutes. And I know that that scene was not like the worst thing about this game, I just thought it was kind of dull.

I'm really not that big on how proud Bethesda is of there scenery and expect you to walk everywhere before you can fast travel. I think you should be able to fast travel to a place as soon as you know its location. I know they worked hard on it and some areas are really pretty, but I think of the 15 hours I've played about 5-10 were just me walking to locations.

only faerun-based fantasy games have enough lore for my tastes

on fallout3/nv and oblivion, I never fast travelled. The treking is part of the 'game experience'

only faerun-based fantasy games have enough lore for my tastes

a-MEN brotha! *ramci rises his arm to give a highfive with earl, EARLS HIGHFIVE ARCHS SMOOTHLY INTO RAMCI'S HAPPY FACE*


EDIT eye no that this is gonna ruin my joke but i think we all agree that nick drake is perfect background music while playing baldur's gate. man is/was there even a joke in that? i think i had that, a moments inspiration. when i go out to party i put my favourite baldur's gate (baldur's...drake) t-shirt under my popped collar pink-stripe button shirt, did that "repay" my joke... maybe i just try too hard, shits outta the roof...

are there still like a million drawers and boxes all filled with inkwell[x1] clay jug[x1] wheat[x3] dress shoes(+0)[x1] because in retrospect this still pretty much entirely sums up everything about the design decisions for Oblivion
 
blundering through endless houses filled with tumbling physics-based linens and clay pots while a shopkeeper watches you blankly and runs to summon Police Warriors whenever you accidentally take an onion[x1] is such a perfect representation of depressing vidcon consumer wasteland that all the heroic fantasy stuff couldn't help but feel superficial i think.
 
edit: actually revisionist post (barf) (BARF) but i think the closest thing to a distinguishing feature in that game was the way it took the rpg mix of Action Fantasy and Inventory Accumulation/Management Sim to such ludicrous extremes that nearly everything in the game degenerated into list-based item purgatory. like even in the hellgate demon dimension places you could click on mutilated corpses or fleshy pod things and get... the same faded scroll gui as ever telling you that This Container Holds: Bonemeal[x1] Sour Grass [x2] Human Flesh [x1]. constant stream of fresh corpses yielding Iron Boots [x1] Rusted Breastplate [x1] Scroll Of Longing [x1] Iron Battleaxe [x1]. thats p good i think. secret mturk aggregation simulator hidden inside generic fantasy framework.
 
edit2 i haven't been following skyrim and probably wont play it so this is a superfluous/decadent post sorry ;o(

Pretty much my thoughts/experience with oblivion though! heh, brothers... like lovers! *ramci pushes in the arm in a friendly manner, catamites sways and looks a mix of shame, confusion and worry, n-noo get me outta this spotlight as everybody's piercing eyes look at squirming catamites...*

on fallout3/nv and oblivion, I never fast travelled. The treking is part of the 'game experience'

Yoga is Not for Weak. ~~ klingon / yer full of shit...or shot? shat, is that even a word.... shet. you are full of shet. jesus shet. sorry, talk about empty posts... i'm not that sleep deprived (well, for some) even, i just wanted to get that kawory wordplay (or...W O R L D P L A Y asfgsadfsa) no matter what. i'm shit i'm weak... if i was a videogame chara i'd be Wimp Weakling... weak...pimp? wimp pimp... wimp PIMPLING... . . . just food for thought, everyone...
EDIT yeah this is definitely a sleep deprivation post. sorry....

a-MEN brotha! *ramci rises his arm to give a highfive with earl, EARLS HIGHFIVE ARCHS SMOOTHLY INTO RAMCI'S HAPPY FACE*

I'm serious. it's probably all stupid, but in other games I'm like ugh why do I care there's nothing unique about any of this/it's just a video game why care about any lore? eg dragon age is awful. and I can get into NV but even the majority fallout lore in NV is pretty dumb like heh, take THAT still relatively shallow interpretation of contemporary society...exploitative and imperialistic military powers and chemically unsafe artificial sarsaparilla, zing

the 2012 forgotten realms game doesn't sound that great though. for one it's an MMO. and the story sounds kind of dragon age/300esque and there are only 5 classes I think? what of spending hours poring through game manuals reading all the strengths and weaknesses of different races/classes/prestige classes and formulating different combinations?? plus doesn't D&D 4 make most of the Realms lore useless anyway. *ramci gleams welcomely to Drizzt Do'Urden, but his expression turns to one of astonishment as it is met with drizzt's smug grin...bruenor and wulfgar appear from behind, though we had thought them dead... sorry ramcy this is your thing and I'm stinking it up

are the skirrym character models any less sexist or is it still macho strong-looking men with huge muscles followed by spindly fragile-looking women with huge tits

that only took like 2 minutes to walk up and the only monsters were a few wolves and a really strong troll i had to run away from. there are people on the way up. it's not that bad, i was pretty happy to be walking up a huge mountain, and isn't what is wrong with this game. wandering around in skyrim is the best part of it. the world wasn't designed by algorithm this time but the writing still is.

I also encountered said troll, I just BBQ'd his ass with dual flames, and I used my companion as a distraction. and the walk up the mountain didn't bother me.

are the skirrym character models any less sexist or is it still macho strong-looking men with huge muscles followed by spindly fragile-looking women with huge tits

Well, the woman look a little masculine in the face but there is a mod that gives women muscles via normal maps i mean one of the devs did say "all the men are big burly and have beards, all the women are big burly and have beards"

Really? Because I've thought that some of the opponents were unfairly dificult in comparison to others. There were a couple parts where I was dying A LOT and then I'd do the next quest in the set and go unscratched. I don't know what quests you are doing or character build you're playing with or whatever, but I definitley wouldn't say it's hard to die unless you do something stupid.

So far I've only encounterd ONE enemy that was WAY too hard and that was a named enemy, I think it was one of those dragon priests, tried to fight him twice, gave up after that, i'll try again another time. There was this hagraceven thing that owned me but I was being stupid the first time around and didn't deal with the witches that were around the thing.
Also I can't wait to go into a dwemmer ruin, I found one but I was trying to get to a marker on my map so I left it, should be fun to explore it, still I delt with the bandits that were using it as a camp, my favorite spell so far? FURY! nothing beats watching a bunch of bandits got mad on each other whilst at the same time flining arrows at them XD.

Any way, I have to agree with kwarou, I only used the fast travel function when I really can't be arsed to hot foot it which is about 5% of the time. I'm still really enjoying the game and so far have slain 3 dragons.
Actually at one point in the game I was trying to get a mammoth tusk but the only place i could see to get it from was the giants camp but guess what happen to be in the area, I tried to goad a dragon into attacking so i could get it to rampage through the camp but i kept freaking missing, hitting a moving dragon with a bow and arrow is NOT easy.

I dunno if I believe that, not after having played dragon age. and I don't know what you mean by saying the women have "manly" faces either. a google search reveals a bunch of rugged-looking head models next to a female character showing about 10 inches of cleavage. the rugged look doesn't really address the problem either, though I guess it's more realistic or whatever idrcat

I didn't mean manly, just a little masculine looking, harsher features instead of softer ones.

EDI: I forgot to mention, I found out somthing interesting, If you cast a rune you can set it off by casting same type magic at it, as in flames spell at fire rune will set it off.

There was this hagraceven thing that owned me but I was being stupid the first time around and didn't deal with the witches that were around the thing.

Yeah this was one of those places I was dying. Although I did attempt it at too low of a level as a few levels later those things were pretty easy. 

One thing I think Skyrim did a lot better than Oblivion is to give your character a sense of progress and gaining strength. I'm really feeling like I can fight and take a hit better each level.

I know you guys seem pretty into the exploration but... meh. I don't always have like 4 hours to play and I'd rather finish a quest or two in a play session than walk to one and get halfway through it. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

Dude this bothered me so much in Oblivion. Doing quest chains where one part you'd be near-death fighting rats/vermin and struggling just to finish it, and the very next part of the chain you'd just stroll through decimating every person in your way. It was just ridiculous and kind of stupid. Level-scaling areas can be OK if you make it so you are generally slightly stronger than everyone or slightly weaker to denote easy/hard areas/levels. But when it's so "random" it just feels broken.

Been playing Uncharted 3. It's cool, I like this series and their commitment to quality, writing/voice acting is top-notch like always, but the game is as short as ever, which is understandable considering the work that goes into every level but it's hard to swallow the fact that there are other multiplayer games worth playing so the Uncharted series is always more rent-worthy. Plus you have to buy an online-pass, even though you legit bought the game? That's fucked.

Mainly still playing Dark Souls though. Took a long break from it, but I'm going back and trying to avoid using the guide. It kind of spoiled it, well not spoiled but it got to that point where I'd spend more time reading the guide or looking at the weapon/armor stat charts more than playing. So I'm going back this weekend to suffer through it like it's supposed to be.

I bought my brother a PS3 earlier this week... he hasn't even seen the new generation of games much less played them, so he's pretty awe-struck at Uncharted 3, which is the only game he has at the moment. I'm going up there for T-giving and I'll set up a wireless router and get him a couple more games. I'm mostly excited about Red Dead Redemption because the multiplayer is really fun with friends/brothers and it's one of my favorite current-gen games. Plus I know he'll dig it big time.

Uncharted 3 you don't need to buy it if you own the Original Game as long as you buy it new it has the code to download the multiplayer on the back of the instructions.

I never bothered with uncharted, and now i can't even if i wanted to, my ps3's laser burnout so it can't read no more disks, which is pissing me off as it happend the exact same day my import of rocksmith came in ​;

I'm serious. it's probably all stupid, but in other games I'm like ugh why do I care there's nothing unique about any of this/it's just a video game why care about any lore? eg dragon age is awful. and I can get into NV but even the majority fallout lore in NV is pretty dumb like heh, take THAT still relatively shallow interpretation of contemporary society...exploitative and imperialistic military powers and chemically unsafe artificial sarsaparilla, zing

the 2012 forgotten realms game doesn't sound that great though. for one it's an MMO. and the story sounds kind of dragon age/300esque and there are only 5 classes I think? what of spending hours poring through game manuals reading all the strengths and weaknesses of different races/classes/prestige classes and formulating different combinations?? plus doesn't D&D 4 make most of the Realms lore useless anyway. *ramci gleams welcomely to Drizzt Do'Urden, but his expression turns to one of astonishment as it is met with drizzt's smug grin...bruenor and wulfgar appear from behind, though we had thought them dead... sorry ramcy this is your thing and I'm stinking it up

ahahahahahahaha you can't since i was jumping in my chair hella mad, wooopp w ooopp!! i'm honoured, 'tis was only I who could have understood that joke/that's an honorary joke/it's really good holy shit. ramci leans forward and earl leans backward unnerved, george clooney starring ramci pulls the suit's jacket slightly to reveal a diamond encrusted dagger hanging from a hypnotizing ruby neclace, holy shit!! earl is pale, george clooney winks... it's inevitable.......... earl's gonna see his moonblade in action aaaaa sorry that was low.

also actually i agree with all you've said! but i really have no other experience with d&d classes apart from Baldur's Gate series in which the balance was for the most part pretty engaging and interesting even though some combinations just killed the game (kensai/mage dual in bg2... fighter/mage multi or bard in bg1...barf...). and i guess the lore is good enough to be a background/a sandbox for whatever goofy fights against floating tyrant jelly cubes/eyeballs (fucking xvarts from bg1 aaaaa. gimme all kobolds, goblins, xvarts, gibberlings, troglodytes...) and social conspirancy stories to work within the lore-logic of the series. the interesting classes and restrictions pretty much defined all the NPC's a whole lot, which is propably a crime in year 2000 and mturk looks scornfully at the old bg's.

(finding a pack of small little blue, balding children (called svarts) with small swords wearing just leather waistcoats and boots trying to kill a cow in the middle of nowhere/wildreness, hell yeah!)

idk we're both talking about for the most part a pretty garbage semi-massmarketted genre of an for the most part an awful medium (games) but still, i think the things to be said for eg baldur's gates that they could really be pretty engaging and immersing games as exploration games and that they were pretty fun and interesting to check out for the most part. the battle system actually worked and proved out to create interesting NPC's or fights in themselves with a lot of tactical-control side of the battle (for a real-time battle systems at any rate) with not so much grinding elements/number crushing, unless if you spent your time checking out all the areas besides the main storyline. the lore was just good and the level of writing was good enough to not to be hollow or patronizing or just a illusion/shell of a world.

man fuck me here i go ranting about baldur's gate again. hundley AND ramci look gloomily into space at the bar...

I bought my brother a PS3 earlier this week... he hasn't even seen the new generation of games much less played them, so he's pretty awe-struck at Uncharted 3, which is the only game he has at the moment. I'm going up there for T-giving and I'll set up a wireless router and get him a couple more games. I'm mostly excited about Red Dead Redemption because the multiplayer is really fun with friends/brothers and it's one of my favorite current-gen games. Plus I know he'll dig it big time.

nononononoNONONO GR NO- oh wait how old is your brother?? is he young? i mean every child should NEVER (*ramci's voice is hoarse/haughty, stares shocked/seriously at the startled GR*) be dumped into PS3/XBOX 360 straight away, instead you MUST give them all kinds of older consoles first. nes and spectrum/c64, PC-88...then pentium II windows 95 with soundblaster 16, this is important!!...then snes, genesis...slowly, slowly!! now now, careful... then blast his mind with N64 and maybe some couple good games on PS1, dreamcast and saturn even... . this is the official uh statement/rules/manifesto/laws/OPINION yes opinion of Salt World (tm) (c). You Fucked My Dreams plays is ramci's anthem/fuck your children up...

if he's older then nevermind, empty post, garbage post. a tilde... or a dildo? hmm the writer's dilemma...

in japan, they have usb connected sex toys for when playing their weird games.
I want someone to program it up for a rougelike.