Oblivion - LARGE IMAGES

I've been playing this with pretty much all of my free time ever since I bought it on tuesday.

As far as I am concerned, it is the best game ever made.

I will start by bringing up the few things that I do not like about it so far:

First of all is the character customization. There are literally hundreds of aspects that can be changed on your characters face. There are dozens of options for customizing the exact size and shape of your character's nose, for example. This causes a problem because I spent hours messing with all the options trying to create a face that I thought looked cool, but I ended up with a pink-haired alien. Having all these options makes it nearly impossible to get your character perfect, because there are so many things that can be wrong. I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to games, so this really bothers me.

Furthermore, when it comes time to actually assign your character's skills and stats, you are once again given the option of picking from about 30 classes, or creating your own custom class. As a perfectionist, I constantly worry about rather or not I made my character correctly and it just itches at me. Also, I am a completist. I want to do and experience everything in the game, in every way possible. Right now I am playing a thief character who snipes people with a bow. It's fun, but going with a heavy armor melee character or a magic wielder both look like tons of fun as well, and I constantly get the itch to reroll. Basically, I just get into situations where I wish that I had a different character, just for the time being, and it really bugs me. But I know that if I did go with another character, I would get to points where I really wish I was on my thief, so I am just stuck pretty much. The good thing is that with the skill system, any character can learn to do anything, it just takes time.

Another thing, which is both good and bad, is how difficult they made it to get money in this game. In morrowind, I could have thousands of gold, a great magic sword, and a full set of armor all within about 10 minutes of starting the game. There were ways to stand in a certain spot and exploit a merchant's blindspot and then use telekinesis to rob him of everything in his store, and then walk next door and sell it all to his competitor. If you had a levitation scroll and knew where to look, you could get the best bow in the game in about 15 minutes without having to kill a single enemy. There was basically just loot laying around everywhere that you can collect. This made the game way too easy if you just knew where to look. In Oblivion, though, I have not found a single remarkable item, and I have robbed at least a dozen stores and many more houses. It gets boring to break into a new house and the only thing in it is random household junk. It is more realistic and balanced that way, but I am starting to get jaded as a thief because I can never find anything worth stealing.

Also, I have heard some people complain about the interface. When I first started playing, I thought that the interface was akward and the character movement was clumsy. After playing for a while, though, I have gotten completely used to the interface and have realized how efficient and awesome it is. I really like it now that I am used to it, and I LOVE the fast travel option. Also, I said that the character movements felt clumsy at first. That was because my character WAS clumsy. As a newbie, you have a 5 in acrobatics and athletics, and I think a 30 or something in speed. Once you pick your class and race, these start going up pretty quickly. Speed is one of my main stats, and atheltics and acrobatics are both class skills for me. I move quickly and jump high, and I can be pretty slippery. A story to relate:

I was on a quest where I had to steal a ring from one of the lord's wives. The problem was that she wore it at all times, except when she was sleeping. When she slept, she locked it in a box with a very high difficulty, which was in her bedchamber. Her bedchamber had a door (also locked) which lead into a little receiving area, which had a door (again, locked) leading into the hallway. There were guards standing right in front of each door (guards are HARD in this game). It seemed impossible to get in there, so what did I do? I waited until the lady woke up and went to the morning services at the chapel, at which point I pickpocketed her and stole the keys to the doors and her jewelry box. That night, when she went to sleep, I tried sneaking in, but I just couldn't get past the guards at the door. So, instead I just ran in there, right past the guards, and grabbed the ring out of the jewelry box. The lady and her husband woke up and started chasing me. So, I ran my ass out of the castle with about 20 guards in tow, then ran all the way down the streets of the town, collecting even more guards along the way. Every time I turned a corner, there would be a new guards to rush me with his sword, or try and shoot me down with his bow. I did my best to weave past each new guard, and tried to gain a little extra distance by leaping over low fences and hedges. My goal was to make it out of town, because I thought that they would stop chasing me once I got outside the walls. I was wrong. When I got outside, they were still chasing me. On top of that, there was a highway guard on his horse. He dismounted and charged me from the front, while about 30 more guards were coming up behind me. So, I dodged the new guard and stole his horse and rode off. As I was riding off, I saw an arrow whiz past my face and thud into a tree. Pretty awesome, imho.

There's plenty of more great things to write, but my lunch break is up so it will have to wait until later.

The other night when Mike discovered he could steal horses, he was laughing so hard I turned around to see what he was dong, which was just riding the horse. /shrug He was so pleased with himself though, it was hilarious to watch.

So I just played it for another 9 hours straight, and it definately is the best game I have ever played.

Leaps and bounds beyond that of Morrowind. Major changes I can note:

-Daggerfall type stealing is back! yay! There is now a reason to rob houses, and now your stolen goods can no longer be sold to Joe across the street (and have to be sold to the thief guild fence). Now this also means some houses have junk, and others have good shit. Obviously, don't waste your time robbing poor_fool_01, hit the rich houses (I think loot is also level determined) or the jewelry store.

-The npcs! Unlike morrowinds npcs who did nothign all day, these people have schedules. Also the dialogue between the people is pretty awesome. Sure you might wonder why bandits in a cave are talking about the other provinces of the empire, but they get bored! Anyways, from npc conversations with each other (not with me) I learned how to find the thieves guild, how to get into the Dark brotherhood (they conversations the brotherhood members have with each other blew me away).

- Difficulty: Morrowind was pretty easy after a certain point. I can't say the same thing here. Mountain lions are a bitch, and ghosts and wisps kick my ass. Undead in general are tough. All in all, its refreshing to have a good challenge, with an awesome combat system. Taking people out in stealth with a bow makes me happy. I was fairly sad when I got my ass kicked in the Arena by assholes with glass swords.

- Shitload to do. Just trying to explore the circle around Imperial city will level you up super fast. I think it slows down after a point, but its still fairly neat. There are tons of well designed quests which I'm sure you'll find and love. Most quests so far seem to have an evil choice and good choice, which adds a huge amount of replayability and makes them seem more realistic. (I think the leveling is too fast atm, but I guess it depends on builds) Also, humanoid mobs, like bandits and raiders, always have the best type of loot for your level range, so gearing up is not a problem (after awhile I assume you'll be tripping over this shit).

-Vampirism. Vampirism has always been in the Elderscrolls game, Daggerfall and Morrowind had it (and Werewolves) but at least in Morrowind, it pretty much shut the game down for you. You couldn't quest and you were KOS to guards. Some rpers made shitloads of mods for it though, which if you were into it was pretty neat (everything from feeding to fucking). In Oblivion, when you become a vampire you gain a minor boost in stats, and have slightly paler skin and neato eyes. You can runaround and play in the sun and make friends with guards and so on. If you go without feeding however, you become more "vampiric". So after like 1 day without blood you take sun damage, but have increased stats, abilities, resistances. Same thing happens after day 2 (more sun damage, more stats, abilities etc) and on the third day you have fairly awesome stats and abilities, but people run and flee from you, and going in the sunlight is pretty much instant death. (you feed on sleeping people)

-Alchemy: still the best skill to take. Harvesting is much quicker and with the added bonus of poisons, and that rocks against anything alive (undead are immune). Armorsmith is a must have for long adventuring (and makes you second guess wearing magic armor). I cannot comment on enchanting or spellmaking, since its apart of the Mages guild functions now.

-The dungeon crawl: In morrowind this was well done, as they all were hand crafted, had secret nooks and crannies, and were generaly fun. The same thing happens here, with a few additions, the most important is traps: Traps makes these dungeons seem so much beyond that of randomly generated dungeons, and a ton of flavor to your dungeon crawl.

I agree 100% with everything Elvaiz posted.

My only complaint so far is that I just can't stick with one character. My first character was a thief, so I went into the thieves' guild. The thief quests are fun, and all the stealth aspects are really well done. However, fighting as a thief is annoying because it mostly consists of running backwards and firing arrows until the enemy eventually dies. It gets tedious after a while. So, I decided to make a fighter and give the arena a try. I did well, and it was pretty fun, but I got jealous whenever I fought an NPC that had magic, so I decided to give the mage class a try. It was really powerful and fun at first, but once I got to around level 10 or so, it would take most of my mana bar to kill one enemy, so if there were two enemies I would pretty much just have to run in circles and wait for my mana to recharge.

So, in the end, I decided to just make a character that could do it all.

Dark Elf

Sign: The Lady (+endurance and +willpower)

Stealth Spec

+Willpower
+Strength

Skills:

Alchemy
Marksman
Blade
Light Armor
Athletics
Sneak
Destruction

The dark elf base stats and skill boosts fit perfectly for a build like this. The general strategy is to poison my weapon (hence why I took alchemy) and open with a stealth attack, and then just finish it off with my blade and touch damage spells.

I'm loving it and have no regrets. I think a big key to enjoying this game is to make a versatile character that can do everything, that way you don't miss out on anything.

Hey, that is pretty much what I started out as....

You guys got me seriously considering this game now...although the last thing I need is another game to take up my time lol. Is it possible to "multiclass" wizard and thief together? I always liked that combo. In fact, Mylec originated from my 1st Edition D&D days and is a half-elf wizard/rogue (Now in version 3.5 he converted to 3 levels of rogue, 5 levels of wizard, and 4 levels of arcane trickster). If some kind of possibility like that exsists, which it sounds like it does, then I may have to give this game a look.

You would think a game like this would allow multiplayer via LAN or over the net. Certainly not a full blown MMO, but it would be nice to be able to put together a small group of friends.

Choosing a class does not lock you into any one set of abilities. Rather, it locks you into the skills you need to increase to level.

My main character is a sneak/marksman with magic and alchemical abilities.

Required


Operating System: Windows XP
RAM: 512 MB System Ram
Processor: 2 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
Video Card: 128 MB Direct3d compatible video card and DirectX 9.0 compatible driver. Supported Video Card Chipsets: ATI X1800 series; ATI X1300 series; ATI X850 series; ATI X800 series; ATI X700 series; ATI X600 series; ATI Radeon 9800 series; ATI Radeon 9700 series;
CD-ROM: 8X DVD-ROM drive
Hard Drive: 4.6 GB free disc space
Processor: DirectX 8.1 compatible sound card; Keyboard, Mouse


Recommended


Operating System: 3 Ghz Intel Pentium 4 or equivalent processor
RAM: 1 GB System Ram
Video Card: ATI X800 series, Nvidia GeForce 6800 series, or higher video card


My PC meets or mostly exceeds all these except one. I am running an older video card (5700 256MB). Do you think I will have problems with chop if I get this game? I run an Athlon 64 processor (@2.8ghz) and 2GB of RAM, but the video card worries me a bit.

it runs on Temps system in low quality on the Geforce 5700 128 mb card, so you should be able to use run it even in low quality at the very least.

Now of course, Oblivion is not without its faults. Don't worry too much about what I have to say (unless you are dumb and have an xbox 360), since these can all be fixed via plugins.

NPC leveling: all npcs, whether they be guards, goblins or simple townsfolk (not beggars) level with you. This is good in that the game remains challenging, bad in that it breaks alot of what was fun in Morrowind.

In Morrowind it was fun to one shot gimps in chitin when you had all this uber Daedric gear. Sure there were leveled npcs that leveled with you, such as Daedra lords and Blighted animals. But not all of them leveled up with you. Rats were still as weak as they were in the start, Bandits and other humanoids generally capped off at a certian point in difficulty. (unless they leet daedra worshippers, which had higher level caps, or just specialy placed npcs with fixed levels). This allowed you to grasp your characters power, and a get a sense of your accomplishments. Some caves for example had weaker npcs, and others had more difficult ones. This you had some "oh shit" moments when you spawned a Daedra of asswoop.

In Oblivion however, NPCs level with you always. It is no wonder I would get my ass kicked by Mountain Cougars at later levels, Bears, and goblins since they became as tough as you. It gets crazy stupid the higher level you go, and npcs seem to get tougher, and fights last even longer as they gain a shit-ton of hp. What also is saddening, is that unless you find a rare specialy placed npc, you get no "oh shit" moments when you spot "uber mob x" at level 3. As I found out in later levels this kills the dungeon crawl.

The good news? Theres a plug in out to limit npc caps, and the mod community is working hard to make a real fix.

Item leveling:

In Morrowind items that you found on mobs and in chests leveled with you. So at first Bandits would have iron and what not, and slowly as you leveled they were given better and better loot. They rarely had fantastic armor (Orcish, Dwarven maybe) and it was a nice gradual progression. The good items, like Glass, Ebony, Daedric were found sparingly. You had to work hard to get a full set of Daedric, and often had to search high and low in Dungeons for the loot you wanted. Weapona and uniquely awesome magic weapons too were hard to find. You either found them (most of the time) or scored them from a quest (rarely).

Oblivion has a nice leveling progression.... for awhile. The later levels its just plain crazy. At level 25 you get hit up by a highwaymen for 100 gold, when he has over 20k in equipment on him (Ebony Armor, Glass weapons). The progression is too fast, and due to npc leveling, you HAVE to get loot or you get your ass kicked. If you spent a few levels in town leveling non combat skills, you are going to get a fucking beat down in a dungeon. Theres no sense or "rare" items, since npcs always have all the previously rare and uncommon shit. Its stupid easy to get a full set of Daedric armor. In dungeons too, I have yet to see any specificly placed (excluding artifacts) like in morrowind. This is managable, but after you hit 20+ theres no reason whatsoever to hit up a dungeon without humans. None. The magic leet items you do get are fairly common off the "bosses" of the dungeons, and come in a stupidly quick fashion from quests. "Oh you saved my child! heres a sword of assrape!".

Good news? Fixes and plugins! Like NPC leveling the community will fix this soon enough.

So what you can do in the meantime is pickup some of the in beta Leveling fixes and a few other plugins to help:

What I recommend:

Slower time passage mod (go for 1:10)
Faster arrows, more damage froms bows
Leveling fixes!

My god the quests in this game kick alot of ass. This one Dark brotherhood quest you are invited to contest where everyone is searching a house for a key (to phat loots). Queue some reality TV drama, and the fact that your orders are to kill them each one by one, you end up with an awesome game of "whodunit".