The Oblivion gates are super boring. Before dropping the game, try the Shivering Isles expansion - it’s a really different experience from the base game and I personally like it much better. It starts here:
Comment on Is The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion still fun for a first-time player in 2025?
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
I finally started playing the original release on Steam since I don’t have a powerful computer.
It is fun, but it’s much smaller than I imagined. People always complain about the drauger ruins in Skyrim as being repetitive, but damn those oblivion gates are just the same thing again and again. Hardly any variety between them.
I’m pretty close to just dropping this game and starting up Skyrim again.
samus12345@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
Yeah imo the gates were kind of a chore, seconding the shivering isles
madame_gaymes@programming.dev 3 weeks ago
Buelldozer@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
It is fun, but it’s much smaller than I imagined.
It’s a product of its time. Oblivion’s game size was right at the 4.7G limit of what would fit on single layer DVD-5.
Oblivion Gates
Ugh, arguably the most boring and repetitive part of the game. Such a wasted opportunity too as they could have made each Oblivion gate be a hellscape mirror of the area that it spawned in (including towns). That would have been a fairly small amount of additional data for a huge gain in game play.
They suck, don’t do any more of them then you have too.
SteposVenzny@beehaw.org 3 weeks ago
If you limit yourself to only going into dungeons that quests send you to, you’ll have a better time. Legend tells it all the dungeons in this whole game were made by one person, so blundering into random dungeons tends to be really underwhelming compared to Skyrim. While that is charming for me in its own right to wander into a random dungeon and not know whether there will be anything interesting about it at all, all my best memories of this game are of the quests and the dialogue.
Ephera@lemmy.ml 3 weeks ago
Yeah, Bethesda loves to ruin their game worlds with weirdly repetitive additions. Morrowind constantly spawns assassins on you, Oblivion does the Oblivion gates, Skyrim has the dragons. In the latter two, I think, it’s best to just not start the main quest, which prevents the Oblivion gates and dragons from appearing, at least if you replay the game.
Walican132@lemmy.today 3 weeks ago
Yeah I definitely remember oblivion gates being a drag, but I only ever did the main campaign on one character so I never bothered with them on subsequent plays. Anyone know if the new version modifies the gates at all?
neon_nova@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
As far as I know, the new version didn’t change a single thing other than graphics and maybe some bugs. Right now, I am doing an oblivion gate and I am just running through without fighting anyone. I actually just turned my steamdeck on and was in the last room. It was too easy and much better that way.
Gabadabs@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 weeks ago
Yeah, but you really don’t have to engage with every oblivion gate you see. There’s a lot of really great quest lines to engage with, but the main story is one of the least interesting the game has to offer.
werebearstare@lemm.ee 3 weeks ago
100% agree. The thieves guild, dark brotherhood, overall mages guild (minus the recommendations and lackluster manimarco) are all better than the Skyrim faction questlines. Even some of the standalone quests are just a master craft of storytelling
Sylvartas@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 weeks ago
A lot of daedric princes quests are much more interesting than in Skyrim imo