It’s very different to Oblivion, it feels much more like a restricted dungeon crawler to me. Or, I guess, very similar to a conventional FPS. Spending time and doing side quests in the various little hub areas didn’t seem very rewarding either, the few I did just revolved around the same old boring areas, so I just moved on to the main story.
The main story so far is just a series of go from A to B sequences with minimal character interaction, I’m not impressed. Perhaps it picks up pace after we find the father though…
The world is more boring than Oblivion’s, I doubt people will wish to visit the same area twice therefor making use of the fast travel whenever you need to backtrack at all and, like myself, likely spend less time looking for side quests and just move on to the next plot point and area hoping for something cooler to show up.
The landscape initially seemed cool and littered with buildings and structures and such but then I was constantly blocked off and led down a particular path due to insurpassable obstacles… Which is why I spent so much time in “dungeon” areas as huge tunnels and such connected different areas of the world together, that you couldn’t get to just using the “overworld”. It’s also filled with the same old rundown buildings, most of which you can’t enter and explore, at least in the rundown city areas.
The combat is much better than I expected, but not that great. It’s a little more interesting for me to restrict myself to “small guns” and a little melee since things like the fat man (that portable nuke launcher…) seemed waaaaaay overpowered and I’m sure I’d be tempted to keep and use it for some really tough boss or something, even though I haven’t even picked that type of guns as one of my main skills.
I was sad to see melee only didn’t seem a viable option with all the powerful ranged attacks enemies had, for example the fire ants in particular as far as the beginning areas go.
The inventory is insultingly bad, unless I just haven’t figured out how to sort items by value or anything else. Similarly for other HUD elements, like the dialogue options. Why restrict it to only show 3 responses and require scrolling for the rest, why not just show all of them together?
Some of the skills are nicer in that your character is required to have a particular skill level before even attempting to lockpick or hack. Mini games are still used but are easier than Oblivion’s since the main focus here is your character’s skill, not yours.
I guess I agree with a lot of what you said, except the part about not being anything really new and innovative compared to its older brother as Oblivion to me doesn’t fit any of these descriptions either.