The Oblivion of Western RPGs

1up has a piece looking at how Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion may just be what the western RPG genre needs to spring back from the brink of nonexistence. From the article: "Western RPGs focus on the characters, and the world around them is a tool to let the player-as-character do and see more. Eastern RPGs focus on the events unfolding around the characters, and how the characters affect the world around them. Western RPGs are based on the experience of tabletop role-playing games, limited only by the imaginations of the players and the game master, where Eastern RPGs are more re-creations of traditional storytelling. Oblivion has taken huge strides toward meeting fans of MMOs halfway by building A.I. that really lives alongside the player and ensuring that the actual missions are easily pursued."

nice link

i was kinda confused when i started out reading the second page of the article.

try this [1up.com].

"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?"

What's this crap about Western RPGs being on the brink of nonexistance? I guess all those games by Bethesda, Bioware, etc. don't exist?

Re:"spring back from the brink of nonexistence?"

Instead of the term "Western RPG" I'd use "traditional PC style RPG". The kind of rpgs you don't play with a joypad and that don't require massive amounts of mouse-clicking. I'm talking Betrayal at Krondor, Baldur's Gate, Fallout, Wizardry, Albion, Bard's Tale, the old SSI games, Planescape Torment; those kinds of games.

Don't get me wrong: I've spend a significant portion of the past four years playing Morrowind, I had a lot of fun with Diablo (the original more so than the second one) and I've enjoyed all the Final Fantasy Games for the SNES (and Chrono Trigger... wonderful Chrono Trigger...), but I long for another Baldur's Gate or BaK.

The more recent Bioware fare really isn't in the same genre; Neverwinter Nights felt like Diablo, only without any of the atmosphere. Bethesda makes some of the greatest games in the rpg genre, but they've always leaned a bit towards being action games (remember how you had to make hacking gestures with the mouse to hack with your sword in Arena?) and I fully expect them to move more into that direction as console gamers make up a greater part of their audience. Not that I blame them, mind. It's just that noone seems to be making games in a subgenre that I love so dearly anymore.

Personally, I like Black as a Western RPG

Because, when you come down to it, using your gun to make big holes in people in buildings is what I play Western RPGs for.

Western RPGs ARE RPGs!

Eastern RPGs are just a book written as a video game.... a story is told, with no major twists to what the end is...

Western RPGs is where YOU make the story, and how you want to do it.

heh. Oh, please...

"No kidding. There IS no such thing as an "Eastern RPG" - they're NOT RPGs! The best description of them I heard was "rail-playing game". They're cliched stories which are viewed by repeatedly hitting the "Action" button."

Let me remind you what table-top role-playing used to mean, at least with a good group and GM. It used to mean just that: playing a role, as in a theatre play. The whole point was taking part in an interactive fiction exercise, sorta like being co-autor in a theatre play. The stats were _not_ the whole point of the game, and in fact they were just props in that interactive fiction. What made one a fun guy to play with was _not_ accumulating the most loot or levels ("woot! my char is level 60 and PvP rank 14 before yours!"), but coming up with interesting lines for your character and/or interesting ways to solve a situation. Even if that character was level 1.

So making a game that's all about the props (stats, levels, whatever) is _not_ an RPG. And that pretty much sums up most of the Western games that some marketroid called "RPG" in the last years: some action game (be it arcade-like, action/adventure, or FPS) with some stats strapped on. You'd be surprised what got called an RPG. Let's just say even Daikatana claimed to have "RPG elements.

And turning it all into a fast-paced action game where all you ever have time for is mashing the attack button, and occasionally blocking, is _not_ what makes an RPG. _The_ thing that made table-top RP fun was having the time to come up with some smart and innovative solution. Having just enough time to reload and aim for a headshot before the enemy finishes charging you in real time is not exactly making that possible, even if the game actually gave you the possibilities. Most don't.

So basically there never was much RP in either Eastern or Western games. All they could offer was a good story, with some (different) ways of pretending that you're a part of it. Actually, in the Western most games didn't even offer that, as they focused mainly on having an action game with some stats thrown in. (You can feel free to point at Bethesda and Bioware games, but they're not the majority by any kind of counting.) So basically if you want to define RPG as "If you don't play a role in the story, it's not a role-playing game", then most western games didn't even _have_ much of a story to play a role in.

And even those exercises in storytelling, on both the eastern and the western sides of the map, are on a path to extinction, as more and more companies turn their games into MMOs (even Bioware announced one) and the afore-mentioned action-games-with stats. Presumably to catter to the large mass of CS kids who don't actually have the attention span for a story ("Auugh! It says 'press START to continue'! If I wanted to read that much text, I'd get a book!") or the interest for anything that doesn't involve willy-waving ("I managed to head-shot you, so you suck and are gay too! Oh, and your mom is a fat whore!") Though the western ones seem to have a head-start there.

"If anything, Eastern "RPGs" are going out of favor. Japan may love FFXII, but other than that recent fan-boy "defence of FFXII" article on Slashdot, I've yet to hear ANYONE in the US who's at all interested in that game. Oblivion, on the other hand, had/has people saving up money to purchase. Can't wait until I can afford a new computer..."

It might also be worth noting, that the western RPG that you so seem to cherish also is a pretty recent invention. Having much of a story in a RPG didn't even exist in the West until the mid or late 90's. Before Bethesda's "TES: Arena" and Interplay's acquiring the rights to D&D, there was no such thing as a western RPG with enough of a story to play a part in, or any freedom in playing that part. E.g., SSI's D&D exercises swung between being some kind of squad-based tactics game with D&D rules in the beginning, and some kind of dumb square-based proto-FPS in later games like the "Eye Of The Behold

Re:Western RPGs ARE RPGs!

This is how I've always made the distinction:

Eastern RPGs - and for that matter, a good chunk of western ones, too - give you a role to play. At best (i.e. the western RPGs like KOTOR and Jade Empire that are much closer to the console RPG style), you get to decide wether to be a nice guy or a jerk along the way.

Western RPGs - the breed of them that's truely dying, even in a world where KOTOR got game of the year - you're given a stage to play on. Everything else is up to you. I'm several hours into Oblivion right now. I'm not even sure if I'm on the main quest or not, but I love it anyway. The Ultima series are the only games I played much of that I can really compare to Elderscrolls in terms of sheer freedom.

I love that I can just blow off the main quest givers and go do whatever. Become an assassin, a thug, a knight in obligatory shining armor, (Or if I invest enough time raising my skills, all of the above), or just blow that stuff off and spend an hour picking flowers in a field.

Or even doing something completely pointlss and weird. In Morrowind once, I had a weekend off and nothing else to do, so I set about stealing every last spoon in the game (I think - I may have missed a few, but I had a good couple hundred of them), and then writing "I AM THE KING OF SPOONS" with them on the roof of the Underskar... Just because I could.

Re:Western RPGs ARE RPGs!

> In Morrowind once, I had a weekend off and nothing else to do, so I set about
> stealing every last spoon in the game (I think - I may have missed a few, but I
> had a good couple hundred of them), and then writing "I AM THE KING OF SPOONS"
> with them on the roof of the Underskar... Just because I could.

Wow. You are the coolest person I've ever met.

They are called adventures

The sad thing is that we, the human race, always try to pigeon hole everything. What is worse is that we often get it wrong.

Hands up if you ever seen a game claimed to have "rpg" elements when the only thing the game has is that units can gain "level up"?

For some reason some people have come to believe that levelling up == RPG. It of course does not. Many games level up. Being allowed to fly bigger aircraft in an aircraft sim is a form of levelling up. Getting a bigger gun in Doom is.

Take away the levelling up from games like FF and you will see that they play very much like the adventure games of old. In fact the old "Indiana Jones: Fate of Atlantis" also had fights in it.

Adventures however are not RPG's most notably because you do not choose a role to play but rather follow the lead character through a pre-determined story. Adventures are as much about roleplaying as a FPS. Sure, you can roleplay in Doom. Just as long as you roleplay a guntoting silent marine who shoots everything on sight.

FF does not give you a role to play.

So where does this leave oblivion? Well in limbo. The thing that is missing from the elder scrolls is choices. You can join any guild you want even if they seem mutually exclusive. Only a hand full of quests even have a choice in them as to how you complete them. Usually either giving an item to the cops or the criminals. You can very easily however complete both quests for the dark brotherhood (evil assasins) as for some noble band of knights.

The old taking a side in a quest is not part of the Elder Scrolls and I miss it.

Oblivion ain't a bad game, just that it is RPG light compared to the real stuff like baldur gate, KOTOR, planescape torment etc.

Oblivion is free as those games but the individual quests are pretty much on rails. I would have loved to have been able to choose a side in the whole dark brotherhood deal. Not in this game.

To some this makes Obilion a union of the worst elements of eastern and western RPG's. The "feeling lost" of western RPG's and the "on rails" of eastern adventure+levellingup games.

It almost reminds me of Doom3. Nice engine. Now can a real game company make a proper game with it? For me Oblivion is only acceptable because there the lovers of western RPG are not exactly swamped with choice. When is the next company going to revive the genre like Baldur's gate did?

Character Development

I find it interesting that they talk about how character development is the big thing for Western RPGs. I never realized that RPGs were ever really that commonly created in the Western Hemisphere. I would have to say that the change to having the primary focus on character development is more a general revolution in RPGs. All of the table top RPGs and such were extremely story oriented as well. No one wanted to play a game of D&D where the master was a bad story teller.

Also, the fact that technology has increased so much is the only reason that the character development can take place. Eastern RPGs seem to be a continuation of the classics, which took place when they could only have so much and the best thing they could do was tell a story.

But do Western RPGs have..

Chicks with big breasts? And all the girls wear next to nothing?

Single Player glory!

I can identify with the player mentioned in teh article who dislikes playing with other people. I have been quite bored with the glut of MMO & RTS games that have come to dominate the swords and spells genre of gaming. I have been playing Oblivion for about a week and it is so wonderfully full of single player greatness I can barely stand to go to work and wait 10 hours before my next hour of exploration. Every character I meet in the game is absolutely in-character and free of the slightest hint of l337speak of griefing behaviour that permiates the online worlds. I can come and go from the game at will and know the world has waited for me to return to it as if I hadn't gone to my job all day. Best yet, the NPCs aren't just manequins anymore- they are completely entertaining to watch as they attempt to live their lives and deal with each other. The first time I saw a pickpocket get attacked and killed by city gaurds- I was delighted. He was someone I had met and talked to and now, due to his unscripted actions, he is dead and gone from the game. The actions of the NPCs impact the world permenantly. I imagine that, just like in GTA, after my initial wonder of exploring the world starts to wane- there is an abundance of non-save-game fun to be had by simply messing with the locals to see how the game's AI reacts.

Re:Single Player glory!

there is an abundance of non-save-game fun to be had by simply messing with the locals to see how the game's AI reacts.

I agree there. The AI is so buggy you need to do very little messing about to make it do hilariously stupid things. Like when I got in Jauffrey's way and he jumped up and down on a candlestick for a minute then fell through the wall. Brilliant!

Or when you beat up a quest-vital NPC (they're immortal, so much for freedom), then kill all the guards that come for you, then surrounded by corpses you go buy your groceries from the NPC who just woke up and has forgotten everything that happened.

Or when you assault some innocent and if you don't kill him in first blow and he sees you for a second before dying, a guard comes running from the other side of the town at mach 3 - so you jump over a wall into an alley and he starts running around the block, so you jump over again and he turns around and goes back around the block.

Or when you tapdance on a storekeep's desk throwing all the goods around the room, then take out your claymore and play golf with the remainders. Then you lift up an apple and set it down again and 200 city guards suddenly enter.

Also got a kick out of how a guard gave me permissing to investigate a murder scene, so I lifted up a parchment in the basement (not knowing about the red cursor yet) and "Boromir" yells Stop stealing from me! despite us being far away from his home in another person's house where I had permission to be.

And it started out nicely when I got accosted by the guards for horse theft in a far away town when I went up and talked to them after being given the horse at the priory early on.

At least the AI is nicely forgiving. Early in the game you can attempt to assassinate Captain Jean-Luc Picard of the USS Enterprise and pick the pockets of his bodyguards, and if you get caught you only have to say you're sorry and they forget all about it.

And if you decide after a mad killing spree leaving the streets filled with slaughtered townsfolk that you regret this, you just have to hand over a few gold and all is forgiven and you're once again lauded as a hero.

I love this game.

hrm...

I would honestly change 'Eastern' to 'Console' and 'Western' to 'Computer'. After all, the great 'eastern' RPG series' are all primarily developed for consoles, and sometimes the best of the best ported to PC. the 'western' RPG of character development and creating your role originated with and continues to be the domain of the personal computer, from the early Ultimas, Questrons, Phantasies and Alternate Reality: the City and The Dungeon on the Apple and Atari 8-bits and Commodore 64 to the more modern Elder Scrolls, NWN, Fallouts etc all on modern PCs with some portage to consoles. Its only with the simultanious launches of TES III and IV to the Xbox as well as the PC that the 'western' RPG has been developed at all with consoles in mind. SO I say it's Console RPG vs Computer RPG, and many an arguement about which is best will be waged, but in the end, it all comes down to taste. When I want to be fed a good story i'll play the latest Final Fantasy. When I want to MAKE the story, i'll play Oblivion.

Not a good time for Westerns

Is this a good time to be doing Western RPGs, what with Brokeback Mountain coming out on DVD? Think of all the horrible jokes!

WoW

Should count as the one that brought back the western RPG...

Re:WoW

WoW is *not* an RPG. MMORPGs have only the barest of elements in common with traditional RPGs. In MMORPGs, you're not really a hero, just another person. You don't impact the world in a meaningful way. There is no real progressing story that you contribute to. There almost no real sense of immersion when you have people running around spamming "WTB [Wang] x3!"

MMORPGs are a completely different genre and can't be placed in the same category as games like Baldur's Gate, Icewind Dale, Fallout, Neverwinter Nights, Morrorwind or Oblivion.

When people talk about CRPGs, they're generally not talking WoW or EQ or anything like those, they mean the singleplayer games that are closer to pen and paper RPGs.

And I thought...

And I thought this was about nobody making a good RPG settled in a Western environment. You know, like with six-shooters, silly hats and indians.

Yee-haw, that would be fun :)

Uh-huh...

Western RPGs focus on the characters, and the world around them is a tool to let the player-as-character do and see more. Eastern RPGs focus on the events unfolding around the characters, and how the characters affect the world around them.

So what you mean is, "Western RPGs focus on the characters' relating to the word by 'doing and seing more,' and Eastern RPGs focus on the world around the characters and how it is seen and is interacted with by the character."

Wouldn't it be easier to say "Western RPGs are more easily described by active-sense sentences, and Eastern RPGs by passive-sense sentences. Otherwise, they're exactly the same."

Sheesh, I thought we got away from all the groove-speak after 1980.

Western RPGs? Cowboys? Gunslingers?

Oh you mean... Western company's making rpg games... I thought we were talking about Cowboys and Indians type of role playing game.

Seriously, when I read the headline I was wondering what Oblivion had to do with Western 1800's era RPGs which I know were non-existant. Unless maybe there is a Oregon Trail mod out for oblivion? Hrm... Now that would be cool.

I prefer Polar RPGs

In Polar RPGs, from countries like Russia, Canada, Norway, and the like, oh and Australia and South Africa, you get richer art content, more humor, and insane pop songs that richochet in your head.

Oh, and igloos and caribou.

Plus penguins. You can never have enough penguins.

Character development

The problem with both is that they each only have one or the other essential components of a real RPG- character development and self-determination.

Console (eastern is a stupid, overinclusive category) RPGs generally have a lot of the former- characters are vivid, plots are involved and very party-driven. Problems evolve with this because there's little self determination ("Whee! I get to chase sephiroth to YET ANOTHER RANDOM LOCATION!"), character development is often superficial due to the maturity of the audience ("I'm, like, totally not caring about this village I'm risking myself to save") and general lack of choices. There are some advantages! SO3 makes fantastic use of facial expressions and voice acting, for instance, because the game knows generally people's relationships, etc. SO2 lets you simply NOT TAKE annoying people along (Precis!!!).

PC RPGs (again, Western is a stupid descriptor) we get "sandboxes." The advantages are that the player has more control over his characters, more options in interaction, and more opportunity to change outcomes. The downfall is that these sorts of abstractions lead to anemic central plotlines and shallow characters.

However, these two styles are not incompatable! There is a fantastic middle ground that no one has discovered. In order to fuse the two, the game must have a large cast of characters, a strong central plot (but not be on rails), and a crapload of so-called "mini-quests," mostly character-based. When the player cannot control every aspect of his main character, at least give him the option of adding that "aspect" of that character by adding party members that conform. To facilitate this, a huge cast of optional party members allows the right level of customization. This large cast can still be used in general "main plot" development, however, by separating characters into groups (mage, scientist, cleric, etc), and write flexible (or modular) dialogue so that for purposes of the main plot, characters are interchangeable.

Next, character development/sandbox. By putting in very character-specific, optional subplots/subquests, you allow these characters to grow without hindering the main plot with too much generalization. This also streamlines the game by omitting character development for characters not used by the player, or if they just don't feel like developing that character in that direction.

All this allows you to separate characters from the central plot. Stories are generally about internal development of the cast (the modern novel concept), but often (Ulysses, for instance) the plot of the story is secondary to character development completely unrelated, on the surface, to the main action. In this way, you can have a strong but not entirely character-driven plot.

All these allow the player to go through with as much or little freedom and character development as they choose, while maintaining the "epic" story required to make the story itself fulfilling. It's a good system, and I wish people in the industry were trying to explore this area rather than simply throwing their lots in with either the entirely linear or entirely nonlinear camp.

Hmmm.. Western, eh?

That word brought to mind images of a massive MMORPG filled with horses, pistols, and saloons. Imagine moving up the ranks by being a better outlaw or lawman. Having your skills at drawing your gun improve accuracy and speed as you gain experience. And after a hard day of fighting bandits, you kick it in the local tavern and hook up with some bar maids... ah yeah.. good times...

Almost as good as Deus Ex!

I bought Oblivion over the weekend on a urge. I was suprised the game is totally addictive. I have to say that the only thing that Deus Ex has over it is the real world links (half of the consperiacies are real) which made it all the more immersive. But for a fantasy RPG. It rocks.

Naked elves

Now that I got your attention, this is offtopic but on the subject of RPG's.

I remember a western RPG that had actually nude paperdolls of your avatar on your inventory screen. Purely for gameplay reasons of course. Not to oggle your female elves boobies.

Just can't remember the game names. I always thought it was one of the Elder Scrolls series but that don't seem to be it.

Anyone know the answer?

Oh, and to be on topic. The western RPG has died and reborn so many times they put a revolving door on its tomb.

False Dichotomy

The east/west dichotomy is simply wrong.

Certainly, Bethesda's earlier games fit the bill. You were a character in a completely static world, the only thing that changed was you. But that's Bethesda. (And, frankly, that's their *technology*. I think they would cheerfully make their world's dynamic if they didn't need to write the code and build the content.)

In general, game design is a struggle between richness of content and quantity of content. Ideally you want both, but practically you tend to settle for one or the other. Some "eastern" games, such as Final Fantasy VII say, try to give you the feeling of a very rich and varied setting, but in fact are "tunnels of fun" where you have very few real options at any given time. Some "western" games, such as Daggerfall, try to provide the illusion of an entire world in which you can do anything, at the cost of the entire world being essentially static and boring. It's a tradeoff.

I've played Western RPGs (e.g. many of Bioware's games) and *designed* games where the character(s) are simply part of larger events. I can't speak sweepingly of "eastern" RPGs, since I haven't played that many of them, but I suspect such sweeping generalizations are probably just as wrong there. The fact is that if something you do has some large effect (e.g. destroying a town) either you need to create the entire town before it's destroyed AND the entire town afterwards, or contrive a far more linear story where, say, you only see some parts of the town before it's destroyed and some parts after. You'll see "western" (and I suspect "eastern") games which take different approaches to this omnipresent problem.

The Final Fantasy games that I've played (VII, VIII, IX, X) are all kind of samish in their plots, but is that an "eastern" thing or just Square sticking to a successful formula?

Anyway, I'm rambling... Mod me incoherent!

What's the big difference?

I've played RPGs all my life. Pen & paper, computer RPGs back since the old SSI/Ultima and the early Final Fantasies games. I like 'both genres'. And I see so many closed minds when people discuss them.

Face it, there's not such a huge difference between Oblivion, Baldur's Gate and Final Fantasy. There's a big focus on character development and their stories in the Final Fantasy games. So was there in Ultima 7. But the core of the gameplay is the same. You have a quest that takes you from A to B. Along the way you can take time of to do sidequests X, Y and Z.

There's more sidequests in Oblivion, that is true. They're also tightly scripted and though you have some leeway in what you do it's far from the free choice people pretend is there.

You can assault people, empty their pockets and rob their stores. That is freedom. But what do you gain from it? Either you pay the guards/thieves' guild to erase the record and it's as if it never happened, or you keep running from the law who somehow know your face on sight - unable to continue with the main story that is there.

It's not really an opportuniy to change the story, it's just a pastime. It's far from anything revolutionary either, and it has about as much ultimate effect as if you set your characters in FF to attack eachother.

They're just games. And the AI in Oblivion sucks immensely. It's still a good game. Overhyped, which was fuelled a lot by Bethesda's bullshit (they're good at propaganda, I'll grant them that) but still a good game. Mind you, I enjoyed BG2 more and I will definitely remember BG2 longer.

Did you know Torment, one of the most critically acclaimed western made RPGs ever and using BioWare's famous engine, included a thank you note to Squaresoft for Final Fantasy in the credits?

Oblivion is not all that special and definitely not very innovative - and in places horribly designed. It's a good fun RPG though. And so are Final Fantasy, Fallout, Pools of Radiance, World of Warcraft and countless others.

has the article writer even played the game?

Oblivion has taken huge strides toward meeting fans of MMOs halfway by building A.I. that really lives alongside the player and ensuring that the actual missions are easily pursued."

I've played this a total of about 25 hours now, and I must say the answer is NO, it has not. The AI is horrible makes amateurish mistakes and isn't a stride towards anything good. I've seen countless enemies stand there and do nothing while I spend 2 minutes shooting fireballs at them. I've seen them ignore comrades being attacked from range, and get caught on crazy terrain features like stairs.

Xbox360 AI developer comments [typepad.com]

read up on this and you can see how the xbox360 gimped the AI, and since this game is a port with no real improvements being made on the PC its quite telling about how the game was put together. The AI isn't even the worse part of the game. The level-scaling is attrocious and completely removes the feeling of immersion since every enemy you face is either leveled or replaced with a more powerful version. You only get ahead of meta-gaming and power-leveling.

Is the game enjoyable? Yes it is.

Is the game everything it was reported to be and should be? No, not by a long shot.

Thief had better AI awareness 8 or so years ago. Enemies reacted appropriately to things happening around them. They only react now if you're in range. You can stand there outside their response range, which is not outside your sight range and rain holy fire down around them. Unless you hit them, they don't care. You can do the same thing in a town.

Elder Scrolls

I suffered through Daggerfall and managed to enjoy it despite the bugs. One of the things I really enjoyed with the random quest generator which I found sorely lacking in Morrowind. Back when my friends and I were all playing Daggerfall, I found it highly enjoyable to trade stories about what our characters were doing. We could all come up with unique encounters that made for entertaining stories, even if it might have been little more than an exercise in adlib. I was on a quest to go into a dungeon and get (mummy wrap) when I encountered a (lich)! I (ran like hell back to town) and (bought a scroll of Spell Immunity) only to find (my weapon was useless against it!) So I reloaded and then (went back into town at night) to (steal an ebony blade) only to make it back and find the (lich) was stuck inside a wall which made it pretty easy to finish it off.

Morrowind, of course, had entirely static quests and dungeons, and once you cleared them out, they stayed empty. While this made for more of a believable world, I found it detracted from the uniqueness of the encounters. We were all basically stuck in the same cookie cutter world, and while we might use different spells and equipment to accomplish it, we all basically ended up in the same place. Not to mention I found the main story line in Morrowind to be teh complete suck, and the 'ending' was even worse.

How does Oblivion stack up in terms of random quests?

Re:Elder Scrolls

So far I have found the random quests to be really entertaining. Most of the ones I have encountered have been fairly self contained (not taking you all over creation) and can be completed fairly quickly. Also, there seems to be alot of them. I have all kinds of rumors to follow up on that should lead to another quest. All in all, 4 horus or so into Oblivion I am enjoying the hell out of it. I am really enjoying the complete lack of chat, tells, and having to deal with anything that anyone other than me wants to do (like I do all the time in WoW).

Truely Open Gameplay

Being able to do what you're "not supposed to do". Ever since the first TES game, Arena, I've loved this aspect and looked for it in other games.. If I wanted to, I could kill a guard and the game actually planned for that sort of thing.. I didn't instantly lose, the guard didn't kill me by looking at him, I was able to loot his body and the towns affection for me dropped... If I talked to a quest giver and realized that the quest was a sham (he was a guilty thief and was trying to frame someone else get me to kill them or something like that) I could kill him on the spot and achieve the goal without having to go through the story.. likewise I could kill a legitimate quest giver and never be able to recieve the award. I've often looked for that kind of aspect in all the games I play. I'll go to do something "I'm not supposed to" just because it seems like it would be fun, only to find that the developers had taken the extra step and planned for that sort of reaction and gave you a result you wern't expecting. Eastern RPGS don't have any room for that sort of open gameplay... you follow the story and if you don't then you're staring at a brick wall.

Startup sequence...

(zoom out)
    IV
  LIVI
BLIVIO!

It's a good game, however...

It's a little too open ended. I can't stand playing games where I know what's going to happen, or having to go down a static route to achieve my goal. However, Oblivion kind of just throws you in the role, without any training or walkthroughs, or DIRECTION. The weapon & armor system is confusing, the leveling is equally as confusing, and the training system leaves a bit to be desired.

Yes, I'm one of 4 people who don't strongly love this game, but it does have some glaring problems.

One of the worst bugs i've encountered has to do with a horse you acquire during the game. The NPC's in the game do not understand that your horse isn't stolen, so they chase after you (even important quest NPC's, Martin did this) until they kill either you or the horse. This obviously is a game breaking problem, you could wind up dead or in jail because of something you have no control over.

Otherwise, it's a good game - just add some tutorials and make the interface a little more user friendly. I've been playing it for 3 days and I still can't figure out what dictates weapon power, or how I fit in to the 'thief' category while i'm running around with a long sword & shield.