In Defiance of Classification

I don't plan for this to be a game review site. That market is pretty saturated, and has people with more resources than I (ie, the ability to consistently buy new games as soon as they hit shelves rather than waiting for them to drop to $10). However, periodically when I feel like there's something I *really* want to say about a game (or I don't have a rant prepared about dumb stuff) I will write one. Like this!

Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, is an interesting game because I don't know how to summarize. There are good games, there are bad games and there are games in between. Oblivion is neither good nor bad. One would think this means it's somewhere in between, in the realm of "average," but there is nothing average about this game. Every part of it is either really, really good or terribly bad.

I'll be nice and start with the good. It's a fairly beautiful game. The characters, monsters and environments are all beautiful. There are dozens of sliders for customizing your character's appearance, for those who are into that sort of thing.

Every inventory item has a 3D model associated with it, and there's quite a variety of them. If you drop an item it falls to the ground with that model. Also, many of the decorations are actual items. All the cups, plates and food sitting on a table, or the rows of books on a book shelf are actual items you can pick up or push around (they all respond to physics). I know that sounds like something silly to be excited about, but after all the games where dropped items either vanish or adopt a generic bag or box model, and books in bookcases are just a decorative texture, I thought it was really cool.

It also has neat systems for procedurally generating items and spells. There are tons of alchemy components you can use to make varied potions and poisons. For spells, once you know an effect (such as fire damage, restore health), you can make a spell with that effect, select the target type (self, target, touch, ae), duration and magnitude and the game calculates the magic and gold cost for it based on that. You can make some interesting stuff.

The voice acting is generally pretty good, though there were a few cases where it was kind of bland. I expected The Gray Prince to express a tiny bit more shock when he learned his father was a [spoiler].

The world is vast and you can wander around and explore, but there is a fast travel option when you just want to get where you're going. The world is also full of unique NPCs. Other than guards, most NPCs in the towns have specific names. Also, (except for essential quest NPCs) if they die they are dead. Sucks if a shop keeper you like gets killed somehow, but I think having a mutable world is generally neat. It also gives you an incentive to try to keep allies alive. Keep that guy alive in this quest and he might help you out later on.

There's also a fair amount of content. Lots of dungeons, and plenty of quests. Some of the side stories rival the main story in length and complexity. There are lots of options, which can be overwhelming but overall is neat.

So. The bad. All of the awesomeness above is marred by Oblivion's leveling system. Now in fairness, the "enemies level with you" paradigm does have some merits. It means everything is theoretically level appropriate. It also avoids the problem of "missing" a dungeon at the right level range. In a few MMOs I played, I've totally missed out on dungeons on my main character because by the time I found out about them I was too high level for them, so I usually have to make an alt if I want to do it "as intended."

However, this system carries with it a host of new problems. For one, if enemies get stronger as you do, it diminishes much of the point of leveling up. One of my favorite things to do in Everquest was go back and solo or group old raid mobs, which you can't do if they get tougher as you do. It also poses a problem for those who make sub-optimal characters. It's easy to make bad choices in a new game that you don't know everything about yet, especially one as complex as most modern RPGs. If you don't get new/enchanted gear and allocate your stats efficiently, the game can actually get *harder* as you level up. Leveling up should be cause for celebration, but in games with enemy scaling (Oblivion is not the only game guilty of this) it's almost a source of frustration. Since you only level up when you sleep in Oblivion, some players simply never sleep, remaining as low level as possible for the entire game. That's kind of a red flag.

The way leveling up works is interesting, but also causes problems when coupled with the enemy scaling. There are 21 skills in the game, in 3 groups of 7: Combat, Magic and Stealth. Each class has 7 major skills, and can specialize in one of the 3 groups (specializing means they go up faster). Major skills also go up faster, but more than that, determine how you level up. Every 10 skill levels worth of major skills you gain, your character goes up a level. Now, in an RPG with static enemies, this would be really cool. In unmodded Oblivion, it means that the way to make the optimal character is to pick a class with major skills you never plan to use, so that you can increase all of your useful skills without increasing your level. It was kind of jarring when I realized that picking the Warrior class for a melee type character would make the game harder, rather than easier.

All of this boils down to one main problem: If you encounter a boss or area that is too hard, there is little you can do (short of turning down the difficulty slider) to make it not-too hard. In most other games, you'd go gain a few levels, come back and beat it up with your new abilities. For example, I'm pretty sure every Square RPG ever could be beaten well before max level, so those who just sucked at the game or had a hard time could over-level and use more muscle. You can't do that when enemies get tougher with you, which makes it unforgiving for anyone who made mistakes developing their character.

I think there are two solutions that blend the best of both the static enemy and auto-leveling enemy worlds. One is to have enemies level up to an enemy specific cap, and the other is to only have them level once. The former is more appropriate for overland enemies, while the later better for dungeons.

With capped enemies, when you are level one, all enemies would be level 1 (or slightly higher if their level is PC + 1 or 2 for harder enemies). When you are 2, everything becomes 2. When you reach 3, everything is 3 except for rats and similar weaker enemies, that would stay 2. Oblivion sort of does this for non-dungeon enemies, since you face new creature types as you level up. In a way, I don't mind that as much, since you're not fighting a level 20 rat. You're fighting a level 20 minotaur where a rat used to hang out. Also, overland enemies can be easily avoided either with a horse or the fast travel option, so I'd say that could be left as is fine.

For dungeons, I think the optimal solution is to have them scale to the player's level the first time the player sets foot in the dungeon, but then stay there until the dungeon is cleared out. That way, any new dungeon the player finds is level appropriate, but if it proves to be hard, they can go get a level or two and come back.

Of course, really I'd like to see more RPGs do away with "levels" entirely and go entirely by skills and gear, but that's a ramble for another post.