Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion

[Quirinus]

I've just spent the whole weekend playing this game. The lag was pretty annoying at first, but after turning down the graphics specs it was alright, though battles in the forest are still a nightmare.

I'm loving the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves' Guild missions so far, though I've been expelled from the Fighter's Guild for accidentally killing a member of the guild.

[rajpoot]

Great game isn't it, , what kind of charecter are you playing? All the times I've played I end up as a sort of uber battlemage charecter.

And if you don't have them, get the plugins, specially, the Vile Lair and Mehrunes Razor. Those two are a must for any one who likes Dark brotherhood and Thieves Guild stuff.

[CountArach]

Its a great game, but it has nowhere near the longevity of Morrowind.

[naut]

If the lag is getting to you open the console and type tt and tg, it'll remove the trees and grass respectively and that should increase the fps.

[Mikeus Caesar]

I saw a mudcrab the other day...

[Veho Nex]

I saw a mudcrab the other day...

mud crab huh? I saw a mudkiep

[Quirinus]

Some complaints so far:

On the characters-- The voice acting is a mixed bag. Some of them are spot-on, but some of them, especially early in the game (such as Jauffre) are awfully flat. When talking to you, the eyes of the characters sort of dart around even as their face remains static, which really makes them look dodgy. The dialogue system is pretty cool, but I don't like how they have the same words for everyone sometimes. Given that it seems that most of the time they get different vocalisations, whould it have been too difficult to get them to speak slightly different things, befitting their character? It's off-putting to see a grumpy orc suddenly adopt an admiring tone about me being the Hero of Kvatch, and then telling me to piss off when I end the conversation.

The guards and the criminal system are messed-up. Sometimes when you murder someone in an alley in broad daylight, nothing happens, but you kill someone in the dead of night after breaking into his house, the guards will be on to it immediately. The same action button for speaking to characters as for picking up stuff also leads to a lot of inadvertent stealing. The first time I got arrested, I accidentally picked up some food or the other on the tabletop when I was aiming to speak with the innkeeper.

Still an awesome game though.

I saw a mudcrab the other day...

Vile creatures, though I hear they're good eating....

By the non-scaling combat system, I assume you mean the fact that monsters are matched to your character's level, so you can dutifully level up using lockpicking and alchemy only to discover your level 20 bookish cleric who can't swing a sword to save his life is constantly coming up against massive ogres and minotaurs who can squish him flat in one hit? Yes, that is pretty annoying (not to mention opens the door to some rather egregious abuses of the levelling system, like keeping your character at level 1 the whole game so you never fight anything tougher than rats). I thought monsters were levelled in Morrowind too though?

D: I didn't know that! No wonder some of the guides were always going about how you should pick the skills you use the most as minor skills (i.e. so they level up slower). No way I'm gonna do that, I'm just gonna play the game like it was supposed to be played (for the first time anyway). So far I've resisted checking out anything but a couple of guides about character creation and skill sets.

If the lag is getting to you open the console and type tt and tg, it'll remove the trees and grass respectively and that should increase the fps.

What I did was to scale the grass and tree distance all the way down, which improved outdoor fps considerably. But now I can't see grass (which is alright to me), and trees look like **** (which is..... okay if I concentrate on other things). Won't you bump into invisible trees if you remove them from sight? Or does it just remove the trees from existence per se?

Great game isn't it, :) , what kind of charecter are you playing? All the times I've played I end up as a sort of uber battlemage charecter.

And if you don't have them, get the plugins, specially, the Vile Lair and Mehrunes Razor. Those two are a must for any one who likes Dark brotherhood and Thieves Guild stuff.

I'm a sneaky archer/light armor type. I just dig getting a critical hit on the target's back. =D There's an item that I've found to be very useful in sneaking missions, especially indoor sneaking missions-- the "Eye of Sithis". It's expensive as hell, but it's worth the money.

I didn't actually figured out how to cast magic until yesterday... so...

I've heard that the plug-ins come with SecuRom, I'm not going anywhere near that. </3

[Morrowind] also felt and played much more like a true RPG than it's sequel.

Yah, well, compared to the non-RPG games I've played, the RPG elements of Oblivion are just... through the roof. I plan on trying the hardocre RPGs at some point in time, but for now Oblivion is the most awesome game in the history of the universe.


EDIT: swear words must be entirely blotted out or not used - froggy.

[pevergreen]

I saw a mudcrab the other day...

i c wat u did ther.


I really didnt like the idea of having half the gameplay, and most of the time where you converse with people damaging me in the later stages, so I avoid vampirism.

[PBI]

Its a great game, but it has nowhere near the longevity of Morrowind.

Tricky one, I'm not at all decided as to which I prefer. Certainly I see your point about longevity; in Morrowind you could keep busy for months without ever bothering with the main quest; whereas in Oblivion I seem to have zipped through all 5 factions and all the Daedric shrine quests in no time. The faction quests are engaging, and most are not as repetitive as Morrowind's could be, but they are too short and seemed to end just as I was getting into them. On the other hand, the simpler, more polished feel of Oblivion can be nice; I definitely like the simplified skills system, most of the useless skills have been cut out (Medium Armour, Spear, Enchant) while the remaining ones have been made much more useful and easy to level (e.g. Expert armourer now meaning you can "repair" weapons above 100%). Plus, you can poison your weapons in Oblivion which is great fun (and means that the Alchemy skill is actually useful).

[CountArach]

Tricky one, I'm not at all decided as to which I prefer. Certainly I see your point about longevity; in Morrowind you could keep busy for months without ever bothering with the main quest; whereas in Oblivion I seem to have zipped through all 5 factions and all the Daedric shrine quests in no time. The faction quests are engaging, and most are not as repetitive as Morrowind's could be, but they are too short and seemed to end just as I was getting into them. On the other hand, the simpler, more polished feel of Oblivion can be nice; I definitely like the simplified skills system, most of the useless skills have been cut out (Medium Armour, Spear, Enchant) while the remaining ones have been made much more useful and easy to level (e.g. Expert armourer now meaning you can "repair" weapons above 100%). Plus, you can poison your weapons in Oblivion which is great fun (and means that the Alchemy skill is actually useful).

That pretty much sums up my thoughts, though I preferred having more skills and the non-scaling combat system.

[PBI]

That pretty much sums up my thoughts, though I preferred having more skills and the non-scaling combat system.

By the non-scaling combat system, I assume you mean the fact that monsters are matched to your character's level, so you can dutifully level up using lockpicking and alchemy only to discover your level 20 bookish cleric who can't swing a sword to save his life is constantly coming up against massive ogres and minotaurs who can squish him flat in one hit? Yes, that is pretty annoying (not to mention opens the door to some rather egregious abuses of the levelling system, like keeping your character at level 1 the whole game so you never fight anything tougher than rats). I thought monsters were levelled in Morrowind too though?

Certainly it was nice having more skills in Morrowind, the problem was just that they weren't all balanced particularly well. Either they took to long to level up and often failed at low levels (armourer, speechcraft, enchant) or they just weren't that useful in the first place (alchemy, hand-to-hand, unarmoured) or they could have been useful, but the weapons or armour they governed were inherently underpowered compared to other types (spear, medium armour, polearm).