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It always amuses me when people pretend that RMTs did not exist until Oblivion. Even contemporary games like Neverwinter Nights had already been selling DLC campaigns/“campaigns”. Let alone the early digital distribution games (Strategy First can fuck themselves for the price they sold stuff at but…)
And that also ignores how many “dos” games would have a kill screen that was basically “Send a check to this PO Box and I’ll give you access to the FTP server with more missions”
Yes but they are quite different. For starters, the horse armor was purely cosmetic. Second, Oblivion was the game that really made it normal and mainstream. Oblivion was far more popular than NWN and almost any other fantasy game of that era that I can remember. It certainly commanded a huge audience as the successor to Morrowind, and a technological breakthrough in terms of look, polish, mechanics, and scale. I think it was really the first of the AAA first person fantasy genre, and for them to normalize cosmetic only DLC was different.
For starters, the horse armor was purely cosmetic.
So… you would rather “So yeah, if you want to find out what Roman Alexander did after he was abducted by this ship, send me ten bucks”? over purely optional RMTs?
I think it was really the first of the AAA first person fantasy genre,
First, Oblivion was very much NOT “AAA”. I know that term has grown to basically mean “anything from a major publisher or that looks pretty” but, for the era, that was games like Medal of Honor (with god damned Steven Spielberg) which tried to “transcend” gaming.
Second: Everyone who even knows what Myst is are either arguing over the definition of “fantasy” or grabbing socks full of nickles to beat you to death right now. You… got some time.
But you more or less keyed in on the reality of it. In the early 2000s, games media was still primarily console based. In large part because most of the PC mags had already gone out of business or went from “Hey, just in case this article on DOOM 2 wasn’t good enough, here is Kerri Hoskins in her panties” to “When you finish wanking to all the girls in this magazine you might want to try out Warcraft”
Its why people think Halo invented combined arms gameplay or… almost the entirety of Nintendo’s “innovative gameplay” even to this day. Release a game with light survival mechanics and aimless progression in the late 2010s and EVERYBODY forgets the entirety of the Eurojank Genre.
And Oblivion is probably the first console game that had RMTs.
What an odd and unnecessarily hostile response to horse armor discussions, full of rebuttals to things I didn’t say. If you’re looking for a meaningless fight you didn’t find one.
What really bothers me about it, is that the horse armor looks ridiculous and is practically worthless in terms of gameplay. Like, it could have gotten to the current point by the content gradually getting worse and more expensive, but no, they fast-tracked right to complete garbage.
