This topic has been created to discuss the poll below on tessource.net.

How are you finding Shivering Isles?

It's good

It's ok

It's bad

It's meh (no opinion)

It was much better than I thought it would be. I wish that the whole game of oblivion had more the feeling of the shivering isles expansion. For one thing the graphics seem better, (could just be me though) and the landscapes have a feeling of greater immersion. I also love the large array of wacky alchemical ingredients.

All in all a very satisfying experience. I have been playing a lot more since its release!

I might get booed off the forums for saying this, but I voted bad. It was a good game and everything, but it has so many bugs that totally offset its awsomeness. And the new "patch" creates more bugs than it fixes. I dont think Bethsoft will ever live this one down.

I intend to wait until they've fixed the CS to get it.

I know what a big bummer bugs are, I was lucky enough to encounter no debilitating bugs and I played through the entire shivering isles main campaign. Had I encountered serious troubles my tone would likely be much less praising

I found no bugs. I love this expansion.

I played it without problems doing both possible options. It has some very entertaining characters which adds to the appeal. However it does not completely remove the general Ob criticisms of being short on replayability. (The 'player choices' effectively change only one quest within the main quest and are more in the developers hype than fact.)

Having introduced 28 new dungeons of two types, the designers shot themselves in the foot (IMO) by combining both types in the majority of dungeons. It leads to a sense of repetition it would have been easier to avoid if they has only combined a few. Nevertheless several of the non main quest dungeons have been given a unique feel by the docs found inside. And they are at least more colourful than the Ob dungeons.

There are still too many characters that talk only of rumours and I sigh for the absence of unique artifacts cunningly placed in non quest dungeons that made exploring in MW such fun. Although here, unlike Ob, most of the dungeons are used in the quests.

Overall SI does give a greater sense of immersion than Ob but if ever a sequel tesv emerges, I hope the developers will go back to having factions that are in opposition preventing you from joining both. One quest is NOT enough!

Without wishing to spoil too much I did note that the concept of a realm being invaded by an alien daedric god who opens portals to send his minions ahead of him was not an entirely novel idea. At least it plays out rather differently and closing the portals is a lot easier - if no less tiresome - than Oblivion.

The unusual feel to it makes it more fun than Ob to play but it is hard to vote 'good' to a game that has no real replayability.

well I dont know if i would call them artifacts, but there are various oddities for you to discover and sell to the museum of oddities in Crucible.

I think it's ok. I completed the primary quest and i think al the dungeons look the same.

I voted ok mainly becuase of the bug issue, both with the main game as well as some of the mod crashes I had, I'm sure there are a lot of annoyed modders out there that are looking into their mods.

I've had no problems with the bug, and Sheogorath is the balls.

Makes trouble with some of our mods.

I voted ok... Besides the bug issue(s) , I really enjoy SI. The thing is I really don't want to have to get a patch thought... I have dial up, so downloading things is a pain for me... ugh. But if i want to continue playing... well. Anyway I like the way it looks a lot better than normal Ob. I love the bugs that fly around. I'm also a big alchemy freak, and there's lots of new ingredients... Besides the wonderful bug, ii think it rox...

I thought it was really good, and really benefitted from the detail and attention that, in my opinion the original Oblivion lacked a bit (questing with plenty of choices and as a result, replayability). The wacky sense of humour and weird scenery is also refreshing.

As far as the Big Bad Bug goes, it's a pity, but it really doesn't bother me... it will be fixed. (Is already thanks to talented modders out there).

I'm one of the lucky ones who has never ever run into a game breaking bug in any quests at all
(and I mean, ever - not in the original either)
Perhaps I would feel differently if I had.

This is to everyone who has said that they have found no bugs:
There is a serious bug in ALL SI games weither you noticed it or not. It is called the Form ID bug and you should download a fix for it as soon as posible (either the official Beta Patch or one of the player-made fixes)

If you already knew about it I appoligse, but it seems like you guys didn't.

Honestly, I had more fun playing SI that Oblivion... and I loved Oblivion!!!
Sheogorath is one of the most fascinating characters I have ever found in PC games (The Prince of Persia still is the best! UBISOFT SOFTWORKS RULZ ) and the quests are quite different from what you'd normally expect from OB. Sheogorath has some awsome voiceovers; Beth couldn't have chosen a better voice and dialog lines for this character. I loved the general feel of the SI although the NPC personality isn't very well defined; you can categorize most of them in maniacs or demented but thats it, most of the maniacs/demented have the same dialog lines.
Overall I think that SI introduced some great new stuff while, sadly, keeping some of the flaws from the original game. I would give it a 9.5/10

NOTE: Although the FromID bug is a nasty one I can't criticize Beth that much. I never wrote a script for OB but I have some programming knowledge and trust me, it's very easy to make these kind of mistakes while writing a script/program!

This is Bethesda's biggest blunder.......Modders should not be their Beta testers.

If it were a mod, it would never get Mod of the month ! 2 many glitches ! 2 bad !

Only gets a 5 out of 10 from me.

Old Dog

Yeah, I know about the FormID bug (have it covered, thanks). My PC was (thankfully) slow enough FPS-wise that I had many hours to go still by the time the news broke in the community. What I was referring to was the quest-breaking glitches that seem to affect many people such as in the Duchess of Mania quest.

I have reinstalled the entire game (Oblivion) several times, plus the shivering SIles expansion I got here. but when i get to the island that allows you to go to Shivering Isles - its not there.

Just a bunch of yellow excalamation marks and NPC characters either floating in the water or in the air.
No door though. I used existing saves - no joy.
I then played all the way through the first Oblivion level with a new character and then went to Niben bay - still no joy. Same damned yellow markers.

I then applied the latest beta patch to no avail. No door, No Island and still those yellow exclamtion marks.

I'm stumped - can anyone help me by giving me their Shivering Isel saved games (preferably early in the campaign) If so i would be eternally grateful.

email is seti@internode.on.net

Im sorry to say guys but i was really disappointed in this expansion, there were some awesome designs in this( good work artists) but the main quest was way too boring and repetitive. I just wished they added some variety to the main quests, rather then, "Go here, get this and then bring it back". Other the the quests its actually pretty fun to just walk around looking at the environment, although i have a budget computer so i can't appreciate the awesomeness. I just wished they put more effort into the quests and story. Hte end.

This is a really good add on. They certainly added some excellent new characters and races to the game. Some of the new gameplay elements were very effective. I think it's good value for money.
I'm also glad they added a little humour to it and can't wait for them to release some more quests for Elder scrolls 4.

Mania is certainly vibrant (when I first saw mania proper, I went "Ow! My eyes!"). And the people... Each and every one worthy of being comitted. Fantastic fun. The forces of Order are a little dull, but as shiny as shiny can be. Fun to fight also. Sheogorath hisself doesn't seem too insane to me though. Having a Scottish accent can hardly be considered insane (unless he's secretly from Glasgow...). Anyway: Fun new stuff! Fun new places! Fun mad people! Fun RAI incidents!

of cource they are, they are ordered and order is boring.

If having a fondness for word play, and a scottish accent, are signs of insanity...
He hardly ever shows his dementia side.

I think it's the best expansion I've seen for a TES game. The architecture is incredible, it definitely feels more involving, the characters are memorable and so is the experience as a whole. I also think it has some of the best weapon designs ever in a game like this. It has a certain unique feel to it and I applaud the amount of imagination that went into it. As with a previous poster, I encountered no bugs at all, which apparently seems to not be the norm.
Even so, I give the Elder Scroll games a certain amount of leeway without getting pissed off about bugs for two reasons:

1. The creators are human and thus will make mistakes like the rest of us, and

2. With worlds as big and interactive as TES games have, you can expect there to be bugs somewhere along the line.

Aside from all that, these "bugs," while they may irritate many, haven't stopped the games from becoming favorites of many of the people who encounter them. Sorry, but I'm not ready to crucify the developers because Balmora crashes 1 in 5 times I enter it or because Oblivion freezes every great once in awhile.

I...mostly agree with you. I do think that people over-react from simple bugs...however SI was not the best TES expansion. While SI was great fun, both Tribunal and Bloodmoon were better.
I too experienced few bugs in SI. I only encountered one with overly intense shadows that brought lagging to a whole new level, but that was easily fixed.

Haskill is my favourite character. He's so very droll, so very much the household butler from the movies. I applaud Bethesda for moving the Oblivion franchise in this direction - breathing some life into the characters and telling a good tale.

I entered the Shivering Isles with a level 2 character and I've done a lot of running away to fight another day. I'm now a level 5 but I'm still too slow to escape everything that needs to kill me. I also believe that I'm having more fun playing this expansion, than I had with the original Oblivion. Part of the reason, could stem from the underlying thread of depravity that courses through Sheogorath's world. This provides a better reason to purge everything with fire and steel. I truly feel hatred for the two sorcerer tribes, and although I've had ample opportunity to stealthily bypass the blood-letting many times, I'm not happy 'til I've killed 'em all. This new "darker" side of Oblivion appeals to my Crusading Knight personality while at the same time providing a backdrop of superb artistic rendering and a logical and entertaining story-line.

I am impressed with this expansion pac, and I'm hoping for more. Morrowind / Tribunal / Bloodmoon has set a very high bar in the story-telling department. Hopefully, once the graphics/game engine mechanics are dealt with, Bethesda will return to it's core strengths of the old days; the telling of good stories.

Yeah... When it comes to the story Morrowind is slightly better but Oblivion still remains my favourite TES game! It's too bad that Beth left out some important stuff (why did they reduce the skill number from 27 to 21, it gave the player more choices of character development, and crossbows?) but overall I think it's better then Morrowind. I hated the fact that you missed a lot when you tried to hit anything with any weapon if you didn't have a decent level (marksman with anything else then a bosmer was a pain in the a**). But the skill "tree" (if I may call it that way) was more interesting (major, minor and miscellaneous skills). The characters from Morrowind also had a well definded personality and those form Oblivion don't (Beth really screwed up here).
But one thing is for sure... Beth is one of the best game designers out there and for that I greatly respect the people at Bethesda Softworks. I hope those people will continue working in the gamming industry...

Part of the reason BethSoft fudged on certain parts of the development of Oblivion stems from their age - most if not all the devs that worked on the game are over 35 (some are over 40 ). Not only that, but by the time the release date for Oblivion drew near, the devs weren't quite finished, how shall I put it, "tweaking" it.

Anyway, despite Oblivion's flaws, it still is perhaps TEH BEST role-playing action/adventure game to date, and "Shivering Isles" has made it even better. If it does extremely well, as I know it will, BethSoft has to release another expansion. This is only the first expansion (KotN isn't really an expansion per se), so we can expect more from BethSoft in the near future.


BTW, I believe the one who does Haskill's VOs is the one who did the Imperial male VOs on Morrowind, altho I could be wrong...

I have to completely disagree with you here. Oblivion is only rpg in theory, and it is definitely not the best one to date. Fable, while buggy and unoriginal, was a much better rpg. You actually could choose to be good or evil, and there were benefits and repercussions for both. Shivering Ilses did make the game better, but it's still not good enough. Oblivion will never be able to stand up to Morrowind.
Also, the chances of Bethesda releasing a second expansion for Oblivion is very dim; they weren't even planning on releasing the first one.

An RPG is more that just good/evil choices. I played Fable:The Lost Chapters (Yes, the expanded version that came out only for PCs; PC 1 - Console 0 ) and I really liked it but I still feel that Oblivion is better.
Is Oblivion the best RPG? Hard to say! There are a lot of good RPGs out there and, like I always said, it's a matter of taste. It's the best I ever played but that is my opinion...

No it wan't.

It's to short. (I finished it in 10.5 hours)
There is only really a choice on the mojor bits (Like 'Take sword and kill your sister or throw it away' or 'wear Jack o'Blades mask or throw it away' )
No replay value.

Plus sides:
Chicken Kickin'.
British Accents.
Being able to name your char 'Arseface'.

Does the name "Daggerfall" ring a bell? 20 patches within 2 months and it still had major problems. I never did complete that game and swore I would never buy anything again from Bethesda. That changed a few months after "Morrowind" came out and my confidence was restored. You would think they had learned their lesson by now. " Don't release a game till its ready!!!"

When you have a game as masive as this it's really hard to repair all the leaks. but overall it's a good game.

I think Sir Frank failed to realize that when major game developers make their games, not only do they have deadlines for themselves, but the publisher also sets deadlines. A game publisher, or any publisher for that matter, won't waste precious time and $$$ waiting for a game dev to make sure that their games are, shall I say, "perfect". It's not gonna happen.

If they are any bugs still left in the game by the time it's released (usually minor ones, but sometimes game devs, in their haste to push their game to market, might forget about a major bug), then the devs just release "patches". However, game devs aren't gods, and bugs may still exist within the game even after it's been patched. Which is why we see more than one patch every so often.

I think we shouldn't put the blame entirely upon the devs for overlooking a bug that someone else might see. I think we as gamers should at least cut the devs slack, and let them know about any bugs that still exist in a patched game. That's just my 2 cents. And BTW, "Fable" wasn't what is was hyped up to be, and I agree with Ginji on that.


Anyway, I haven't noticed any bugs with SI so far (even after patching it), so my game is OK for now. It really exceeded my expectations.

Definitely in disagreement with this one. I'd argue that Planescape Torment, Baldur's Gate II, Fallout 1/2, Icewind Dale 1/2, and maybe Arcanum are much better games than Oblivion. Not to mention its prequel Morrowind. People who love Oblivion won't necessarily like any of those games, however.

You're comparing two different genres of games. Oblivion is not a RPG at it's core; it's an open ended action/adventure game. Drawing comparisions between Planescape Torment and Oblivion is like comparing deep sea fishing with making spaghetti, there's no basis for it.

As for rob_b comment, Oblivion is rather remarkable game, and accurately categorizes it in his description. It's a horrible RPG, but it's not meant to be one. As for being the best, I find it had to compare Oblivion to Morrowind, or even a similarly interfaced Deus Ex, which surpases both in leaps and bounds. As for Shivering Isles, it does add some interesting dimensions to the game, and I was enthralled to see some more fantasy driven environments and monsters. However, Oblivion is a long way off from reaching it's potential, and thankfully, in small steps, the modder community is improving the game. Bethesda's first mistake, level scaling the world; it's second, releasing a game before it's time. I can't tell you how long I waited for STALKER, and I'm glad the developers cared enough about their product to make us drool for a couple of years before we got to sink our teeth into it.

Oblivion unfortunately proved that the trend in the gaming industry is to release unfinished products and come out with the fixes later. I could have waited until 2008 for Beth to get it right rather than rely on its fanbase to fix their mistakes.

It was ok an ok game, but the Isles should have been the size of Solstheim. The main quest was excellent, however I found the side quest to be limited, and I needed more land to explore. The weapons and armor lacked varieties unlike Morrowind and its expansion packs. All in all I want another expansion pack to hold me off until The Elder Scrolls 5 is released. Until then I’ll have to try Fallout 3(the series is new to me).

To sum up Oblivion, Knights of the Nine, and The Shivering Isles, thou there was numerous improvements in graphics, quest tracking system, combat system, and character interactions compared to Morrowind I felt like something’s are lacking resulting in less overall hourly game play. More toys give us more toys Bethesda.

Result: 8.5 for a RPG, still the best out there to date, and Bethesda games get better every time.

Please look at the date of the last post before posting, if it over 30 days old it is considered to be dead, posting resurrects it and is considered thread necromancy.

Buddah

This is now closed.