On the XP / level cap subject, I think perhaps that they should keep the cap but slow the levelling up process down. It took me approximately 280 hours to hit level 50 in Fallout New Vegas. Perhaps it would have been better if the game had been designed so that it would take, say, 400 hours to max out ? I don't know whether that's the right number of hours but I wish I still had at least another ten levels to hit : levelling up is one of the enjoyable things about playing RPGs.

I had no idea that you could affect Oblivion gates via the main quest line. That's valuable info for my next playthrough, thanks :) I remember DREADING seeing yet another Oblivion gate in the distance, it made me think, "Oh my God, not this tiresome routine again !"

I forget exactly which quest, but I basically ignore the main quest right after I leave the sewers until I'm ready to start dealing with them.

If memory serves, closing the gate in Kvatch starts them spawning in the world... but someone can certainly correct me if I'm remembering wrong.

Yes, and at certain other points the gates escalates in appearing.

My tactic last time was to rush through the main quest line first, so I could enjoy the rest of the game in peace.

Interestingly enough, the Kvatch gate is always open, and you can do the whole Kvatch gate-and-reconquer thing without even dropping off the amulet first. None of the other gates will open until after you bring Martin back to the priory, but if you haven't delivered the amulet then Martin doesn't have anything to say yet.

Normally I'll do the Kvatch quests very early so the defenders don't get instantly annihilated... and then come back like 10 levels later when I'm doing the main quest. This prevents millions of gates from opening everywhere before I'm willing to deal with them, and lets me better control when and where they appear. Because honestly, Oblivion gates are super-dull to clear before level 12 or 15. I actually enjoy them at that point, but after I've closed 20 or so on a given playthrough, I generally just start speeding through them while invisible, only stopping to loot containers.

Oh man, Oblivion has sequence breaking? Stuff like that always fascinated me with games like Metroid, but hearing this makes it sound eight kinds of crazy. I love it!

One thing Oblivion had over Skyrim... the questlines.

Seriously, though I don't play Skyrim much I was watching as my friend started the companions questline. Later on the day, I went back and found him doing a random quest. I asked why he wasn't doing the companions and he said he had completed it....

Also one criticism about Oblivion: When I powered through the main questline to both prepare for Skyrim and get rid of those annoying Oblivion gates, none of the NPCs talk about random lore anymore and instead decide to repeat the same lines about the main questline ending...

It's not really sequence breaking, honestly. You can't actually skip anything, and it even makes sense from a story perspective to do them that way. (As in, you just happen to stumble across Kvatch as it burns, but you don't know why it was sacked.) There's simply some small variation on which things can be done in which order. Technically the quests "Breaking the Siege of Kvatch" and "The Battle for Castle Kvatch" aren't even part of the main quest. Breaking is a required side-quest that can be done beforehand, and Battle is completely optional.

Well in not doing the amulet portion, and saving Martin just leads you to a dead-end, because he has nothing to say. That's the part that you're breaking, where I meant it in that sense. I just love messing with things in open-worlds that causes the game to show its seams, in the most obvious of ways. And of course, GTAIV's Swingsets of Death, which are always a good hoot.

Oblivion is a deeply, deeply flawed game. but I think it's a bit underrated nowadays (it may have been overrated around the time of its release, but certainly not these days) . One thing that I did enjoy about it were the side quests. While the main questline is repetitive and dull, the side quests are very interesting and fun to do (I particularly enjoyed the Dark Brotherhood questline). It's like the developers essentially made all the side quests first, then hastily threw together a main questline at the last minute.

In general, once you've escaped the Imperial Prison, Oblivion is best played by simply picking a random direction and proceeding that way. Actually pursuing the main quest will just put you to sleep.

I agree that Oblivion is deeply flawed. When I've discussed it with other gamers in the past I've always described it as a flawed masterpiece because even though it's not perfect it's still a thing of great beauty. Was it Burns who said "'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view" ? I think that sums up what I find so awe-inspiring about both the Oblivion and Morrowind gameworlds. Also buildings - viewed from both the outside and the interior - are really excellent artistically, with lots of attention to detail. I still think the dialogue and the NPCs generally need a LOT of work and the inventory system and the interface generally don't make for a smooth gaming experience : the inventory system, especially in Morrowind, is SO damn fiddly !

I think the next time I play Oblivion I will selectively mod the game. I will definitely download the awesome graphics overhaul mod - I forget its name but it makes an already great-looking game into an absolute stunner ! There's also a mod which changes the Imperial City, making quite impressive additions, though again I forget the name of the mod. And I will also side with the Dark Brotherhood this time. I avoided it last time because I was trying to be too "good" (morally) and it seemed like a pretty radical decision to make.

Oh, and the voice acting is not great. I feel bad saying this but Oblivion uses one guy for voices far too much and I'm not overly keen on his voice - but that's just my subjective experience I suppose. These memories of mine are quite misty though because I haven't played Oblivion for a while and my memory is pretty poor, which can actually be quite an advantage when you replay a game because it's almost like playing the game for the first time.

That's why I said that next time I will be selective about which mods I choose to installl because last time I think I installed too many and this resulted in some very weird - and sometimes hilarious - bugs. Hilarious but annoying too because I couldn't work out what I'd done wrong. I seem to remember that my horse also disappeared : funny but kind of not funny as well :) I'm sure the info on how to correctly install these mods, mod conflicts and mod install order is available but it is not always easy to track it down.

Edit : I've just remembered another bug which I encountered : purple doors ! One of the mods - I think it was one of the major ones, perhaps the graphics overhaul mod I was mentioning - caused some doors in the game to turn purple ! In the end I got used to them and they even looked quite funky but I would have preferred normal coloured doors. I couldn't find a solution for this anywhere.

I had only that one mod installed, for saddlebags. My first frustration came when it didn't work. i opened readme, and it said "this mod requires blabla which obviously is not included in the package"

so i downloaded and installed this shit, but still couldn't find saddlebags in the game. So I read further. "If you can't find any saddlebags, enter this and that command line"

my frustration was HUGE.

but it worked, so I packed half of my shit there and when onto speed travel. After speedtravel, my horse disappeared. So I read "in case your horse disappears, do this and that to retrive your items"

I SNAPPED and uninstalled this fucking mod and I will never install any mods on Oblivion ever again. This mod was recommended for saddlebags on Nexus, so I don't want to know how buggy other mods can be.

The usual hilarious bugs, like two headed horses (two horses spawned at the same exact location), guards stuck inside the walls etc are coming from vanilla game :P