8 "Awesome" Video Game Mechanics We All HATED

8. The Persuasion Mini-Game - The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

If there's one thing I'm an absolute sucker for in video games, it's systems and mechanics that focus on talking your way out of problems as much as I end up finding myself talking my way into them.

Any game with a charm or charisma stat that has real influence on the gameplay will usually mean I lean heavily into that through my play sessions, wringing extra loot out of NPCs, sidelining boring quests with a turn of phrase, and even getting bosses to back the hell down when they see my razor-sharp wit.

And yet when it came to Oblivion, an otherwise absolute masterclass of a game, Bethesda managed to bungle their persuasion mini-game in such a way that it's still perfectly functional and oftentimes useful but is just so uncannily horrible to use over and over.

The idea behind the mechanic is sound, use a rotating wheel with different values in order to charm whoever it is you're speaking to, but the implementation and accompanying "panopticon of pain" seems to be the animator's attempt at conveying base emotions of pleasure and hatred, all make for an utterly ridiculous experience.

You're basically chatting absolute !*$% to them while hoping that your Trivial Pie-alogue of Persuasion matches up to what they like. There's no skill, there's no finesse, it's basically the same as the lockpicking mini-game but the lock is someone's face and it's not always happy with you pocking a metal rod up its nose.