The Witcher Compared to ES IV:Oblivion and Others

[dyrestraits]

The Witcher Compared to ES IV:Oblivion and Others

First, let me start off by saying how much I love The Witcher. It's a great game in its own right from the standpoint of how well it develops the overall story and keeps the player involved. I'm already on my 4th time through the game -- even as I await the upcoming Enhanced Edition. On the other hand, I'm also a very avid fan of Oblivion and its predecessor, Morrowind. Prior to that I greatly enjoyed Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic; Neverwinter Nights, Shadows of Undrentide and Hordes of the Underdark....just to name a few. With Oblivion alone I've logged nearly 700 hours of game play. So, I do believe I have some experience when it comes to the other games and have some authority when it comes to doing some comparing between them all.First About Oblviion:1. One of the main aspects of enjoyment for me with the Elder Scrolls games is their almost completely wide openness and accessibility to all areas of the map. If the gamer comes to a fence or wall, s/he can climb or jump over it. If s/he decides to get to the other side of a river or lake, s/he need only to swim across. There are very few restrictions in this regard when it comes to these games. This makes the overall gaming experience much more immersive and a lot less frustrating. For all practical purposes, the only restrictions are the extreme boundaries of the entire gaming map. Exploration is a given in this type of environment.2. In Oblivion there are so many side quests that can be done without ever focusing on the main quest. To this day, I can still start up the game and feel right at home while still often discovering new areas previously unknown.Now About The Witcher:1. The Witcher does NOT claim to be another Oblivion. This should be very clear to anyone who plays RPG games and should be considered a positive. The story development in the game is handled with great care. It's really the BIG PLUS for this game. So, one could say that The Witcher is mostly Story Driven whereas Oblivion is mostly Quest Driven. However, unlike Oblivion's openness, The Witcher has way too many restrictions upon movement and accessibility. A fence or low wall could just as well be a huge mountain. An open stairway doesn't always mean the player can utilize it. Want to go across the river? Sorry, you must go the long way around. This type of restriction upon the player, in this particular game, completely removes the immersiveness of the game...at least temporarily. I really would like to see more openness and accessibility in The Witcher. For example: When Geralt is down near The Mill outside of Vizima, if he wishes to go see Mikal at the city gate, why can he not climb the small knoll near the city wall and take the shortcut? Why must he be restricted to taking the long way around? Or, why could he not swim across the river if, for some reason, access via the knoll is not realistically available? These unrealistic restrictions are my most greatest frustrations in the game.2. The Witcher has a much, much better combat mode than does Oblivion. I'm sure most of us would agree on this. I'm eager to see what improvements have been made in the Enhanced Edition because, to me, the current combat is quite acceptable. 3. The Witcher seems to have a more .... how to say this .... "linearity" in the story that focuses toward the main quest. There are very few quests that are totally unrelated to the main theme of the story. And those are very, very quickly completed. This compares unfavorably, in my opinion, to the many dozens of quests totally unrelated to main quest in Oblivion. For the most part, Geralt could well use some more of these unrelated quests to aid in leveling his skills and gaining fame/notoriety, etc. Conclusion:As a fan of both games, I feel it's quite fair to give a comparison between the two games. They don't claim to be like the other and shouldn't actually be thought of as such. However, I really don't think I'd be able to say a year from now that I've spent nearly 700 hours playing The Witcher. There's just something a bit more compelling about Oblivion that keeps me going back for more. I just wish it had a better combat mode like The Witcher's. And, I wish The Witcher was much more open like Oblivion. That would be the best of both worlds/games.

 

[Evolution101]

700 hours, Jeebus The environmental restrictions are mostly a result of the engine. Since it's built on the original Neverwinter Nights engine it is essentially that game with a very, very nice facelift. Oblivion (and all the Elder Scrolls games) are designed to be free roaming, open worlds. I also believe their staff levels are significantly higher than CD Projekt. The same can be said about the quests, the design philosophy of Bethesda is more sandbox-type, where you can ignore the main quest forever if you want. The Witcher is more of a traditional rpg.

 

[Esett]

It really matters what do you want from a game. I want a cinematic experience. So that basicly means that games that are not story driven are basicly boring for me. The Witcher delivers while Oblivion doesn't. Oblivion on the other hand will always appeal to people with to much time on their hands. It's a free roaming beautifull world but it is kind of lifeless. The houses all kind of look the same depending on how rich the person living in them is suppose to be. The characters are shalow and unremarcable for the most part. There is an obvious lack of detail in Oblivion. Everything is so clean and tidy. Many won't care about these things and that is ok. But as an old veteran of the genre i must say the most important aspect of an RPG is the story development. The Witcher delivers.Now the shalowness of Oblivion is understandable due to the size of the world. The lack of detail especialy in the Imperial city however is imposible to forgive. The city practicly looks the same wherever you go with a few exceptions. Basicly you really can't see a personal touch of a designer anywhere. Coupled with the actual lack of interesting lore, no actual dialog, extremply poor voice acting, extremly poor combat, and the gamebreaking leveling of everybody in the world of Oblivion my actual experience with Oblivion ended after 20 hours.In the end there will be people who love the open ended nothingness of Oblivion. And there will be people who will enjoy the depth of The Witcher. I prefer depth.

 

[Wabey]

I can assure you that at the Oblivion forum nobody has written a post wondering if Oblivion compares favorably with The Witcher. There's a reason you've chosen to mention Oblivion - because you know how great it is. That everyone always chooses to compare such and such an RPG with Oblivion is just further evidence that Oblivion is the greatest RPG ever made.

 

[AeonGrey]

First off, I don't really know that the two games can or should be compared....as you've pointed out about the only thing they have in common is that they're fantasy RPG games. Oblivion is a fine game, but I actually don't think it's all that great....sure, it looks really wonderful and is very polished, but I don't think the plot or the voicing is very good. I can remember a few of the characters, but I don't think I really cared about any of them. It's sort of a game that has the typical "You are a random person thrust into the middle of a story about reluctant ruler X trying to stop bad guy Y from getting / doing Z" story, which I find very derivitave and tired. To be honest, I think that Oblivion would have been a WONDERFUL rpg if it had been created with a basic diablo-style 4-player multiplayer function built into it. With this style of combat it would have been really fun to be able to have an archer friend and a mage friend and just....go do some pointless dungeon-diving in that huge world.It's just my personal opinion, but I think the Witcher is a better game (or I guess what I'm really saying is I enjoyed it more) because it isn't all built around just leveling up and exploring dungeons to find hundreds of random pieces of armor...all built around a derivitave LOTR-esque plot. You are Geralt....Geralt is a specific character who is in this story for a reason, and I can appreciate that aspect of it.

 

[Evolution101]

Sounds like you need to play more RPGs WabeWalker

 

[steelwizard]

^ +1I also find myself in the camp that was utterly disappointed with the dreariness of Oblivion. Fact is, I rate Gothic 3 far higher - and from a game that I was also sorely disappointed with, that says a lot. To me, the changes between the games in the Gothic series serve to emphasize what it is that I enjoy most when playing an RPG. Rather than get into specific details; those who who share a similar opinion will recognize it immediately: A series that was taken from a rather strict story-driven setting to one that had its boundaries almost completely removed. It's a precarious balance that no-one has come close to mastering thus far. How to create a free-roaming, large living environment, whilst keeping a player interested in a singular goal; the completion of the story. Unfortunately, as we've seen with Gothic, only by sacrificing a good story were the developers able to offer the player complete freedom. The opposite is true for The Witcher. Which do I prefer? It's a tough one but I'd have to say that I'd take a good story over hours upon hours of ultimately pointless dungeon crawling. NB: I never finished Oblivion.

 

[ifayra]

Oblivion is a good game no doubt for me, but it's disappointing when you get through one of the oblivion gates and find the same style of tower everytime. You now where you have to go to reach the top and destroy the gate. So I was bored of getting through the gates! The wide open land, the settings, the weather effects and a lot more are fantastic! But I missed the atmosphere!

 

[username_2070292]

Guys, i bought Oblivion immediately it came out, i played it and i thought "Wow, the Best RPG of ever!"But, the world, with its openess, was beautiful, but very boring after some hours: the variety doesn't exist, all the wood it's very similar.In Oblivion the quest are very linear, you speak with a NPC, than go there, do that specific action, and come back...the Story was great, but no chioces.In The Witcher, and EE will be better, the player feels a great responsability in own hands, the story can be solved in different moods, and i love it!Of course, the witcher hasn't a open world, but it's no boring, because every chapters of the adventure it's exaiting, you want to discovery that deep place!

 

[username_2064476]

Oblivion is an overyhyped piece of garbage. Plenty of flash and absolutely no substance. I want a story-driven experience, not the shallow simplistic sandbox of Oblvion that bored me after a couple dozen hours of doing the same dungeons, fighting the same level-scaled enemies, and listening to the same braindead NPCs.It is appalling that that game got all the praise it did. The least review sites could have done was labeled it as anything but an RPG; I for one found it to have nothing in it that I could make a connection to, no role-playing, no sense of consequence. It was more of an FPS than it was an RPG. The Witcher, for me, was the best RPG to come out since Planescape: Torment. Perhaps it's a sign of my age, but I prefer a game require me to think about my actions, not simply hack and slash at everything that moves. I'd still play Diablo if I cared for that. ...And WabeWalker, you really need to play more RPG's if you a) consider Oblivion an RPG and b) think it is "the greatest RPG ever made." I groaned irl at that.

 

[username_2075316]

I have a very different take on Oblivion. I also spent a lot of time playing Oblivion - though only about 500 hours over 5 months to your 700. And I only enjoyed the first week and a half of that - the rest was increasingly un-fun and boring (only 1 character and 1 playthrough, btw). The only reason I toughed out the rest was because I never finished Morrowind and I always felt like I left something major undone, and I didn't want it to happen again. Over those 500 hours, I did every quest in the game (except the Dark Brotherhood/evil alignment/vampirism cure quests because I never play evil or infected characters) and exhaustively cleared every cave/ruin/POI on the game map . The questing took about 10% of total play time. The cave/POI clearing took about 90% of that time.

2. In Oblivion there are so many side quests that can be done without ever focusing on the main quest. To this day, I can still start up the game and feel right at home while still often discovering new areas previously unknown....So, one could say that The Witcher is mostly Story Driven whereas Oblivion is mostly Quest Driven.

I have to vehemently disagree with you on this. IMO, one of the biggest problems with Oblivion was the lack of actual scripted story/content. The world was huge with lots of cities and places to explore, but there wasn't really much in that world (making all that freedom to explore it kind of pointless). There was the very very short main quest, the guild questlines with like 10 short, crappy quests each, the Daedra shrine quests, master trainer quests, about 3-5 stand-alone quests per city except the Imperial City which only had a few more, and maybe 10 or so other quests in the wild. That's it. That's all there was in the entire game before mods. I spent most of my time clearing random caves/ruins and sorting loot which was boring as hell. It's about as much scripted/story content as your average 20 hour RPG - or maybe less even. And the experience was far less cinematic and fulfilling to boot. According to UESP there are only 181 quests in the original Oblivion. I say only because a lot of these quests are actually very brief stages of bigger quest chains, which aren't really that long either. So it's more accurate to say 181 quests or stages of quests. There are probably only about 70 or 80 actual, full-fledged quests in the game. 181 quests/quest-stages isn't a lot when you consider that most of those quests are extremely brief and that World of Warcraft had over 1,000 quests of similar or better quality at launch. Even though WoW is an MMO, Oblivion's quests aren't much better or different. In order to sufficiently populate a world like Oblivion's with content, you really need a quest count on the order of WoW's and that clearly isn't the case. And it really felt like a lot less than 181 or even 70-80 quests (there were actually several more quests in my game due to mods). The bulk of the game's quests is in the guild questlines. Each of those can be blown through in half a day, even at my slow, methodical pace of play. I think the entire arena took me less than an hour (not counting the quest the orc there sends you on). After I did all the guild quests (except Dark Brotherhood), I went to each city, expecting them to be massive quest-hubs like the quest-hubs in a WoW. Instead, they only had a few quests each. I was done before I even really started. The vast majority of locations in the game (caves/ruins/POI's) are completely devoid of quests - filled only with boring, random monsters and treasure (in a game with a leveling/stat/loot system that made leveling/loot acquisition boring and unrewarding). And that is the supposed meat of the game (and what took 90% of my 500 hours of play time). Only a small percentage of those were made slightly more interesting by mods like OOO. All told, I'd say that Oblivion is neither story nor quest driven. Oblivion's great if you like clearing random mobs in caves, but the actual content is lacking - only about as much as a typical 20 hour game. IMO, having a huge world to freely explore is useless if that world doesn't have that much in it as was the case with Oblivion. Now, I'm not saying that the Witcher has more content than Oblivion. It probably has about the same amount of content or slightly less. I don't know for sure yet because I still haven't finished the Witcher (currently on Act II - but I'm guessing the Witcher probably has around the same amount of content as, say NWN2). But for the kind of game Oblivion is, with a supposedly massive world to freely explore, it SHOULD have a World of Warcraft level of content, and it falls far, far short of that. And the story and content in games like the Witcher are far more enjoyable to boot. Not only is the presentation more cinematic, but the linearity of the game allows all of it to be set in the context of the overall story arc and thus more compelling.

 

[dyrestraits]

First of all, I appreciate the thoughtful replies to my post. Dialogue is a very, very useful thing and it should be open and respectful.However, for anyone to deny that Oblivion is an RPG simply has no real understanding of just what an RPG really is. Maybe it's not YOUR favorite RPG, but, it IS, after all is said and done, and RPG game.Rather than quote any of it, here's a very nice link explaining in general terms, just "What Is an RPG?"http://www.mjyoung.net/rpg/Multiverse.html

 

[username_2075709]

First Oblivion gate shut - cool.Tenth Oblivion gate shut - hmmmm.Twentieth + Oblivion gate shut - run straight to sigil stone with a big train chasing you.The very essence of the game - Oblivion itself, is the most boring part.The most fun I had playing was player created mods 'Tears of the Fiend' and 'The Butcher of Somethingorother' with 'Cleon' in it.The real game makers could learn something from that mod team.The NPC's in Vanilla Oblivion don't even come close to TW NPC's.I never really got a feeling of bonding with Jauffre or Baurus or Martin, they call you friend but just want you to do their dirty work.My Buddy Zoltan on the other hand is there if I want to drink with someone or play dice or have a chat and doesn't expect me to solve his problems.Would you rather spend winter with Hannibal Traven or Vesemir?When you finally reach the top tiers of guilds and get someone to hang out with you they don't even have a name! You get "mage apprentice" and "Dark Brotherhood murderer" random nuffies.The bad guys? The bad guys in Oblivion suck, they're more like weird and crazy eccentrics. Rammsmeat, Javed, The Professor and co are for more interesting and are real bad guys.

 

[qbert123]

M.R. brings up a good point. the vanilla oblivion straight out of the box with no mods will rapidly lull you to sleep. The community mods make the game. That is where the witcher is lacking.The Enhanced Edition is a great gift from the Red Team and we all appreciate their efforts in this, however if the community had better access to the sources the same sort of release could have been made much sooner by modders. There is a huge potential to become an ever growing RPG, but we need more access to the source. Something as simple as the models meshes ,for example, would be huge. The ability to create UV maps to customize clothing, skin texture and the like... having thousands of people working on the project around the clock vs the few that are currently doing so. There are a lot of people willing to put in countless hours to produce and share with the rest of the community their own creations and their own views on what the game should or could be. That , IMHO, is the difference between a good stock game and a great limitless RPG.However, I could be wrong. Peace!

 

[serdinq]

Giving The Witcher to an Oblivion fan is like giving pearls to pigs or what know a pig of what a melon is? Ok I'm a little rude, it's just for joking. The more disappointing is how many from the young generations seems enjoy use Oblivion as THE standard to compare anything.

 

[thurauh1]

The Witcher and Oblivion are two different type of games. Oblivion is a free roaming game as has been said before; The witcher is very story driven game with a beginning, a middle and (different) endings. It's like asking whether you like apples or oranges - when you like them both

 

[serdinq]

One more Oblivion fan! Why spend time to prepare a delicious meat when most guests will be happy with few rocks as soon as there's a ton of them? ;DAnyway tt's not as simple than black and white. Both games have some free roaming and both have story driven parts. Yes one is much more free roaming than the other and one is much more story driven than the other. But comparing Oblivion and The Witcher isn't comparing story driven CRPG and free roaming CRPG. I enjoy game with free roaming but not at all Oblivion because of many reasons.But I agree that it's a different approach that makes the comparison less easy. One more quote that shows how one of the most superficial CRPG has becoming a standard to compare with. Times are dark, perhaps it's another effect of the weather change? ;D

 

[qbert123]

yep, global warming. People expect more from a game than what is just handed to them out of the box. They want it their way, and if they don't like the way something looks or acts, they want to change it. Why not, it inspires creativity!

 

[username_2075709]

The community mods make the game. That is where the witcher is lacking.

The Djinni Editor is out now and some teams are working on mods for TW.

 

[serdinq]

yep, global warming. People expect more from a game than what is just handed to them out of the box. They want it their way, and if they don't like the way something looks or acts, they want to change it. Why not, it inspires creativity!

Lol THAT is pure rhetoric! I wonder how you'll explain the link with your argument and mass of players that don't like anymore use their brain in games? For the creativity of very few people I agree but you simulate to pretend that players of a game with mod = modder. I hope you know what a lie it is. At best modders are 0.1% of the players of the original game and the percentage of those that achieve something really interesting is a lot lower. People are crazy about this mainly because it adds much more free rocks to eat not because it will allow them develop their creativity! ;D ;D