Another good review, hints of The Escapist within your mind I feel. A good thing to be sure. ;-)

I agree with all you said; I’m just thinking of adding that TES3 Morrowind and TES4 Oblivion are much the same regarding a main story that disappears into the background.

I love the world Bethesda has created but the free-roaming nature of the games more or less kills them both (I haven’t played TES1 or TES2). There’s too many ways to get disatracted and utterly forget about a campaign or narrative.

At least Oblivion’s graphics are superb and beautiful (with a powerful enough card or two). As you said of X3 though, that’s about it really.

The worst thing about this type of game is that the “infinite replayability” the developers gibber on about makes playing a game a second time and building up a character again a boring endeavour. For example, I lost a Morrowind save game once having put about 25-30 hours into it seriously trying to follow the story… after attempting to restart said lost file for about an hour I haven’t played it since. That was a year ago. I haven’t even bothered re-installing Oblivion yet…

Games that are too rigid in their story tend to fair no better either; Doom 3 for example. Good but nothing to shout about after a few hours play.

KK