The Oblivion thread

[john williams]

I've been playing Oblivion for since March and clocked up around 300 hours. I'm on my second game, the first was really a test game and I never finished the main quest. I'm much happier with my new game I have some questions for other players (Brian and SDL).

1) Do you "Fast Travel"? If so, how much?


2)Do you put much thought into levelling up? Do you plan the skills you train or emphasise to get maximum attribute points. I still find this a rather complex part of the game and I rarely seem to get the total five points extra when levelling up. I've been holding up my levelling up lately. I have about three level ups in the bank and have stopped sleeping for awhile.


3)The game will play very differently depending on how quickly you level up. Do you work on levelling or just play the game with giving it little thought.


4) Do you bother using a horse? Are they more trouble than they're worth?


5) Do you systematically work on/explore areas on the map or do you just follow you nose. I'm talking about general adventuring non-quest parts of the game here.

6)Do you use alchemy?


7) Are there any skills you love and use a lot?


8) Are there any skills you ignore and don't bother with?


9) Do you have a custom character or a standard one?


10) What's yer sign? Seriously though this can make quite a bit of difference. I picked a completely useless one first time through. I'm Atronach now which has completely altered the way I play.

11) I stumbled across that picture above on another website. I've never seen that location. Have any other Oblivion players found it?

[Brian Olewnick]

About a month back, I finished my first game. Took my time. As I've generally found in my limited experience with these sorts of things, the central plot and its denouement were far less interesting than simply inhabiting the world. I'll be curious to see how they continue to push the realism boundries with their next one. I began a new one (female orc character) but haven't played it much.

1) I got to using fast travel when I was revisiting places. Didn't feel like wasting weaponry on the odd field encounters I'd get otherwise.

2-3) No, I don't think about levelling at all. When it happens, it happens. Though it exposes one of the games odder points since NPCs and their equip generally level up with you. So you get weird things like bandits demanding 100g while wearing 10,000g worth of armor and weapons.

4) No, I acquired one through the Dark Brotherhood and I guess it was acompanying me automatically, but somewhere along the way I lost it and didn't care. Was thinking of taking it up into the mountains and jumping off for fun.

5) A little of both. Sometimes, I'd look at the map and realize I hadn't been anywhere near a large area so I'd mosey up there and do some non-quest based exploring.

6) I collected ingredients and made potions but just to sell for cash. I find I tend not to use magic much, preferring the old hack 'n' slash.

7) I got real into Archery. Sneak is also pretty cool early on, though it gets a little ridiculous when you become seriously good at it.

8) Like I said, I only use magic as an afterthought.

9) Standard (Argonian)

10) Thief, iirc.

11) No, never seen it (sure it's not a mod?). One of the cool things about the game, of course, is its sheer size. I'm sure there are tons of places I never got to.

[john williams]

You're right about games generally having poor endings, or at least not living up to any perconceived ideas about what an ending should be. Even Half Life 2 which was considered a masterpiece in gaming had a shoddy ending.

Thanks Brian. I wasn't sure if I'd get anyone to respond to such a nerdy thread. One of the interesting things about the Elder Scrolls games as opposed to most other "on rails" games is the freedom. The GTA games are similar but I never really got into that particular world. I can't argue with the execution of the series but they weren't for me.

I probably fast travelled too much in my first game. I'm hardly using it at all now and yes it is a much more costly way to play. I'm also discovering things I never saw first time through (The Unicorn and another priory in the middle of nowhere are two such recent examples).

I got the Dark Brotherhood horse in the last game. Apparently, it is indestructable (can only be knocked out) so you jumping off the cliff would have been fun. I lost the horse too but thought it was because I accidently whacked it during a fight. One of the annoying things about Oblivion is the way friendly NPCs get in the a way and become enemies when you accidently smash them in the back of the head. You can do the Block/Talk/Yield thingy but that doesn't always work.

Sometimes I think I'd have been better playing a hack and slash character but always get attracted to the Assassin/Ranger/Thief/Magic user type. I love the Sneak/Marksman/Acrobatics for which you need magic as a backup to get out of sticky situations. Acrobatics is an almost useless skill but I love it when you get to ridiculously high levels and can leap all over the place like some sort of spring loaded lunatic. Jumping off high places and surviving within an inch of you life is kinda cool too but that might just be a personal sickness.

Brian, did you dabble in vampirism at at all? I always went for cures if bitten and didn't take up the offer from thingybob at the assassins guild.

I think that picture was from an early pre-release preview version of Oblivion as it was from an game review page.

Did anyone play Morrowind? Which was better Morrowind or Oblivion? I started a few games of Morrowind but found it difficult to get very far but I think if I went back to it I'd enjoy it more after playing Oblivion.

[Brian Olewnick]

Originally Posted by JBW

Thanks Brian. I wasn't sure if I'd get anyone to respond to such a nerdy thread.

Are you kidding? This is Jazz Corner!

Originally Posted by JBW

Brian, did you dabble in vampirism at at all?

Once, unintentionally. Pain in the ass to get rid of it...Didn't pick up the hints I had contracted it until it was too late for a simple cure.


The freedom aspect is my favorite thing in the game (and all the previous ones in the series). I do enjoy just wandering around, running into the odd person needing an errand performed, etc. I wasn't too crazy about the leveling of areas in Oblivion. In Morrowind, there were plenty of places which would be suicidal to enter with a rube character. You sorta marked them down to return to later when you could handle it. Alternatively, you could attempt to finesse them, maybe in a madcap rush, to pilfer the high level valuables inside. Here, any cave or ruin is leveled to your character, including the loot, so it makes no difference. It's a tough balancing act for the designers but I'm hoping they come up with a better solution next time.

otoh, I've never before played a game where you could simply stand around in a field and watch the grass blow in the breeze and be pretty well satisfied.

[john williams]

Originally Posted by Brian Olewnick

I wasn't too crazy about the leveling of areas in Oblivion.

This has received a great deal of criticism from Morrowind veterans on other forums.

Others have even gone as far as to claim the books are all dumbed down. This might be true but I did get a laugh out of "The Lusty Argonian Maid". I stumbled across a website that was like and Elder Scrolls Library and some guy had left in a big huff because he didn't like that books in Oblivion.

otoh, I've never before played a game where you could simply stand around in a field and watch the grass blow in the breeze and be pretty well satisfied.

Yes, there is a beauty and richness to the landscapes. I've played a few games but the lighting in Oblivion is the best I've seen. The developers seem to have captured different times of the day pretty well.

[moneyp]

Picked this up a couple of weeks ago, and so far enjoying it, although some dissatisfaction is creeping in. Leaps and bounds better than Morrowind, and the combat is fun (but occasionally frustrating). I can't believe that they bothered to trumpet the "Radiant AI," which I don't find noteworthy at all, although it's neat that NPCs keep to schedules even when you're not around. I think the most fun I had in the game was a quest where I had to tell an NPC about something going on in a city all the way across the map. For the hell of it, I followed him all the way there, the two of us fighting every creature and criminal that popped up along the way.

The dialogue is pretty blah, especially the choices you get. Just like in Morrowind, I feel like I'm talking to robots (although much better-looking robots). Bioware, maker of Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter Nights, etc. is much better at this sort of thing, making the virtual world more immersive even if the game is more linear.

Hate the autoleveling, it really takes something away from the game. The lockpicking and speechcraft games are pretty disappointing, way too easy even if you haven't developed the requisite skills. Can you do anything with the various paint brushes/palettes you find along the way?

So far I have two characters, a Nord Warrior and a Kashit (or whatever, the cat people) custom class, stealthy fighter type. I created a female Imperial character as well based on Inarra from Firefly, but I haven't done anything with her yet (I was more impressed with how I managed to make her look). Like Brian, I'm not really into the magic-wielding.

[Scott Dolan]

How powerful of a system is needed for this game?

[Daniel]

too powerful for me, i presume

[Brian Olewnick]

Don't know the exact PC requirements except that they're formidable. I figured it was worth the purchase of an XBox 360, not just for this game but for the next x-years.

I still haven't played almost at all since last posting--just no time.

Agree pretty much with mone. Early on, in my first game, I did a quest that netted me an automatic, never-ending lockpick. Probably shoulda tossed it but one gets greedy...killed the lockpicking experience for me, though.

[john williams]

Originally Posted by Scott Dolan

How powerful of a system is needed for this game?

Minimum:
Windows XP
512MB RAM
2Ghz P4 or equivalent processor
128MB GPU

Recommended:
3Ghz processor
1Gb RAM
ATI X800 or NVIDIA GF 6800 series.

My second game is better in many ways. I'm relying much less on magic and do almost all my killing with a bow; which gets very effective later on. I only use magic to get me out of the shit. My character is pretty weak physically and has to rely on acrobatics, stealth, distance etc to stay alive.

There is a mod that alters the autolevelling/scaling and makes it much better than the vanilla version. It keeps the good and throws out the bad IMO. There is a detailed explanation and download options below. I think there's a site somewhere that you can download without registering but can't remember where.

http://www.oblivionsource.com/?page=...project_id=358

I didn't mind getting the skeleton key. That and the speechcraft mini-game are my least favorite aspects of the game. Lockpicking was done much better in Thief III and the speechcraft thingy was very poorly developed.

[Gary Sisco]

"Oh, Blivion!"

"Osiris! What has happened to your nose?"

[moneyp]

Thanks for the link, JBW. I'm going to give it a shot. The autoleveling is my biggest issue with the game. I can just auto attempt the locks (and I'll be sure to leave the skeleton key where it is) and avoid the speechcraft. Otherwise, not at all a bad game.

[moneyp]

Have been playing for a while now with the mod JBW suggested, and I'm loving it. It's a whole new gaming experience. The game is much more challenging as you risk wandering into an area where you can get overwhelmed.

My wife, who is way ahead of me in the game, found the place pictured in JBW's first post. It's a sunken pirate ship. I suppose you can do a search or else I can ask where the heck she found it.

[john williams]

Nice to hear it Mone. The vanilla Oblivion leaves a bit to be desired. Oh yes, that's the thieves den which is a mod. You can earn a weekly minimum of 1000gp a week by sending out your staff of thieves and after 1 week they bring you back the cash. You can also buy cool stuff there including archery gear which is a bit thin on the ground in the vanilla. I'm level 37 now and still haven't begun the main quest yet. Going to complete the guild quests first.

The Methune's Razor mod is highly recommended. Not only is it a good quest, it continues to respawn high value items. My wealth increased dramatically after installing this mod but it costs a couple of dollars US.

http://obliviondownloads.com/StoreCa...ubCategoryId=1

[john williams]

I'm currently playing the new Shivering Isles expansion for Oblivion. It's a worthwhile addition to the original game. There's about 30 hours worth in the main quest.


More info here:
http://www.elderscrolls.com/games/sh...s_overview.htm

[Jason Bivins]

I finally started playing this a few weeks ago, as a reward for getting near the end of a *major* work cycle. And I have to say that I'm overwhelmed and just love this game. My wife's been raving about it since last August or something, and I can really see why. WOW.

[Gary Sisco]

"Oblivion!"

"Osiris! What has happened to your nose?"

[john williams]

Originally Posted by Jason Bivins

I finally started playing this a few weeks ago, as a reward for getting near the end of a *major* work cycle. And I have to say that I'm overwhelmed and just love this game. My wife's been raving about it since last August or something, and I can really see why. WOW.

Yes I agree Jason, despite the flaws mentioned above it's a great game. I am on about 200 hours into my second game and still haven't started the main quest. I recommend the official Knights of the Nine and Shivering Isles addons too.

some handy user created mods:
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.co...s.Detail&id=41
http://planetelderscrolls.gamespy.co...ds.List&game=4

[Jason Bivins]

Thanks for the links, John. And yes, we downloaded the new stuff after seeing your initial post above.

I'm just cruising around Cyrodiil right now, doing some of the Mage's and Fighter's Guild stuff (haven't yet even joined the Thieves Guild or the Dark Brotherhood). The visuals are really pretty stunning. I just saw snow for the first time.