Oblivion Succeeds Where Morrowind Failed

Due to a large amount of not-going-to-play-again games sitting on my shelf and some rainy day free time, trade-ins resulted in a free-to-me purchase of Oblivion over the weekend. Since my PC would likely be locked into 1024x768 with maybe 2x anti-aliasing, I opted for the 360 version at an extra $10 not directly drawn from my pocket.

(plus I get to sit on the couch... such an improvement from cramping over the keyboard and mouse)

This purchase was an interesting one since I hated Morrowind, the last entry in this series. Yet I'm glad I did, since Oblivion is a much better game. Here's what I see as the improvements that were made, and some that weren't, through the first 10 hours of play:

Things Oblivion Fixed

• Missing with sword swipes. In Morrowind attacks were governed by a D&D-like die roll... there was a good chance you'd be 1 foot away from your enemy, swinging with a giant claymore, and miss completely. This is a horrible system for an action-RPG, or one that purports to be an action-RPG. Don't put me in first-person, allow me to SEE the blade swing at the target, then tell me I missed. It's a giant crab; kind of hard to miss, no?
• Gradual increase in difficulty. I was able to run around through random environments for four hours right off the bat and not have to run for my life every time I saw an enemy. Perhaps this is because I could actually HIT them (see above), but I never felt that the system was out to get me. Nothing worse than wandering for hours just to be slaughtered by some random harmless looking animal in the forest. Now at 10 hours, and up to level 5, I 'm starting to come across stuff that can really kick my ass. Feels about right to me.
  
• Abbreviated travel. Oblivion allows you to click on a location and go there immediately if you've been there before. Getting from place to place is not as laborious or confusing as it was in Morrowind.
• Useful Journal. It used to be that you'd spend twenty minutes re-reading a ridiculous amount of information in your journal just to figure out where you should be going. Not so in Oblivion, where the nicely updated Journal information is concise and nicely arranged. Add to that the ability to switch the Active Quest and get a marker on the map for where you're supposed to be going next. Hallelujah I can find what I'm looking for!
• Interesting environments. The Elder Scrolls series should have just waited until the graphics could handle what they intended them to. Wandering around walking into random caves/abandoned forts/mines/etc is, simply put, more enjoyable due to the beautifully rendered environments. Gone are the muddy, boring textures of Morrowind and its predecessors. Hello HDR and individually modeled blades of grass! I spent two hours just walking through the mountains, accomplishing absolutely nothing.

Things Oblivion Did Not Fix

• Useless third person view. It's surprising that the designers can watch excellent uses of third-person perspective go by (Resident Evil 4) and think that what they implemented is anywhere near sufficient. I'd love to see a real person move around mirroring how the main character animates -- it'd be ridiculous. You float along with apparently no regard to the terrain and look like you're on rollerblades. Oh yeah, and it makes me dizzy moving around in this view. Not a good sign.
• True interaction with the environment. Don't impose limitations on me based on the slope of the ground... there's a "grab" button, let me claw my way up sheer rockfaces and such. Let me clamber up onto ledges. Make my presence felt on the ground by having it deform to impacts and slush in heavy rainfall. The little things that make it even more immersive.
• Real impact of good deeds versus bad deeds. You can get through the game, albeit playing in a completely different style, no matter what you choose in terms of morality. Something as open-ended as this series is screams for a main story that is truly affected by what you do in the game. Sure, people react to you differently if you're a notorious murderer versus a famous hero, but in terms of the main story nothing different will happen. A fine and possibly some jailtime don't do much in the big scheme of things.

I'd love to have Bethesda, BioWare, and the Capcom team that did RE4 combine their powers Captain Planet-style and create the ultimate RPG, thus offsetting much of the gripes (albeit minor) that I have with the design of Oblivion. What is here is fantastic and very involving, and after only 10 hours I'd recommend it to anyone with some free time that they'd like sucked away from them.