another life blog

For the past month, I spent a tremendous amount of time playing Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion on the XBOX360. Rated as one of the best role playing game by critics and players worldwide, it boasts hundreds of quests, miles of walkable area, non-linear gameplay, kickass graphics, and fully voiced dialogues. Since I’ve logged at least 130 hours in the game, I think I am eligible to write a little something about Oblivion as well =) In short, I had a lot of fun with the Oblivion, and I think most people would have fun with it too.

Let’s begin by reviewing the most important aspect to any videogame ~ the gameplay.

I played Oblivion mostly in the first person perspective. It really plays like a first person shooters, like Perfect Dark, Ghost Recon, Doom, Quake, etc ~ however, in any FPS, melee weapons are rarely utilized, because it’s a pain in the ass to hit anything! The combat in Oblivion is not quick, and at times, you must slash your foes over and over and because the AI is smart, they’ll run away and heal themselves! Well, I suppose this can be a good thing or a bad thing, since you must play it smart by 1) Silencing your enemy so they can’t cast 2) Frenzy your enemy, so they don’t run away 3) Burden your enemy so they start stripping to reduce weight 4) … etc etc. So, what happens to pure warrior characters? Screwed.

Any long range attacks, like fireball spells, bow and arrow, and … wait, that’s it. Spells or archery - either one, must be aimed like firing guns in FPS. You can imagine, this doesn’t work well on Xbox 360 controllers if the enemies start to move. For me, attack spells are more of an augmentation to my melee attacks ~ but usually, I miss.

So, what’s a man to do to kill enemies easily?! Sneak! Usually, you want to take out all enemies with a couple hits (but this is impossible if you raise the difficulty to max). By sneaking behind an enemy, and striking them on their back, you deal out 6x the normal damage. If you master the art of sneaking, your attack will ignore the enemy’s armor! WOW! Isn’t that great?!

The mechanic behind the game isn’t really difficult, and soon, you’ll find ways to exploit the system and make yourself rather impervious to attack as well as godlike. For example, you can imbue your armor with spells ~ and there is a particular spell called “Chameleon” which allows you to blend yourself into the environment. So if you enchant all your armor, you can have over 100% chameleon, rendering yourself completely invisible while retaining the ability to sneak and whack people for 6x damage. The gameplay is broken if you do this though…

Another way to exploit the game, which is what I did ~ is simply not levelling up. The people behind Oblivion thought it’s a great idea for the enemies to level up with you indefinitely - so the challenge is always there! However, your strength lies not in what level you are, but how skilled you are in 21 different abilities. From the beginning of character creation, you choose 7 abilities to be your “major” ones, and whenever you gain enough skill in these 7 major abilities, you can “level” up by going to bed. So, I simply chose not going to bed ~ ever. Thus, for the longest time, I played as a level 11 hybrid class, with the abilities of a level 30 character. I can kill anything with a couple swipes of my blade (I ended up moving the difficulty slider up so they put up more of a fight).

In Oblivion, you basically talk to people, get quests (fetch this, kill that, steal this, assassinate that), and listen to the NPC talk to you. The difference is you can talk to anyone, and try to kill anyone. If you get a quest you don’t like from a non-major NPC, you can kill the NPC, and that’d be the end of it! For example, nearing the end of the major quest, I accidentally talked to this lady who needs help finding her daughter who gone missing, I didn’t want the quest to be on my log, so I whacked her from behind. Fun! ^_^

The story of Oblivion, is fairly straightforward. The world is protected from the denizens of Oblivion by an ancient pact between a god and a king. As long as the king wears an amulet which signifies the pact and light the dragonfire with the amulet, then the protective barrier will be there to keep out the evil. However, some crazy people wants to ruin the peace, so they steal the amulet, kill the king and his heirs, and went around opening gates to Oblivion. It’s up to you to stop the madness!

One sentence summary of the story: The world is ending, only you can help!

I think the most amazing thing about Oblivion is the graphics. A picture will help here…

There are times when I would just stand on top of the mountain, and watch the sunset over the distant horizon ~ it’s really that great =) Oh yeah, there are times when X360 couldn’t handle the graphics! But that’s a bit rare. Ah, another thing is, most NPS faces I see are fugly (so is my character’s…).

Vocal dialogues ~ this is one department that they need to work on. I think in total, they only got like 6 people voicing thousands of NPCs! It’s a shame really, and detracts a bit from the experience.

Now, for the real problems that plague the game:

1) The dungeons - you see one, you see them all. I come to dislike dungeons, and speed through all of them rather quickly. Theres only a few puzzles (like the one where you rescue the painter), which is a great disappointment. And most difficult part about dungeon is finding the switch to open the door (kinda stupid I think).

2) The Oblivion Gates - I think there are 7 variations of the gates - but each very much alike in construction. You get to the main tower, and grab the sigil stone. The trick to get to the main tower, is usually extremely simple and straight forward. BOOOO!

3) The night vision - I really hate having to choose between the green vision, or the blue vision. Both put a strain on my eyes.

4) If I think of more, I’ll put it as comments I guess.

Mmm, I think that’s about it for reviewing the game in general. Now for some more specifics ~

Although Oblivion contains hundreds of quests, there are only 6 major quest threads that you can do (far as I know anyway), and one arena to complete. The first is the main quest (save the world), then there are 4 guild quests (become master of each), and then there is the Daedric quests. The main quest took me around 15 hours to complete ~ but I saved it for last, so when I went at it… I pushed through it all rather quickly. The guild quests… well, let me elaborate on those.

There are 4 guilds in Oblivion. Fighter, Mage, Dark Brotherhood, and Thief. I’m going to post up some spoilers, so if you’re thinking of playing the game, … well, just stop reading, cause my opinion means jacksquat anyway.

In the Fighter’s Guild, you get missions from the head honchos of various guild houses ~ basically, help out the citizens. Most missions are rather boring and straightforward. Near the end, you find out that another up and coming competitor of the Fighter’s Guild, is using an evil way of making their fighters stronger, so you end up taking them out ~ completely. After that, you’re the guildmaster!

In the Mage’s Guild, you get missions from one head honcho (after you complete 7 mini city recommendation quests). They’re all pretty simple, and for the last few missions, you just need to kill the evil necromancers trying to take over the world or something. After becoming the Arch-Mage, you can have follow ya ~ kinda cool.

In the Dark Brotherhood Guild, you get missions to assassinate people. This is the best guild in my opinion, and without them, I wouldn’t have known that killing people really have little consequence. It’s funny that after the DB Guild, I started whacking people who gives me silly quests. As long as they don’t have a crown as the cursor when I talk to em, I get to whack em! Yeehaw! Anyway, some crazy dude tried to take out the DB Guild, and you become the master after killing him. After becoming a master, you also get a follower!

For the Thieve’s Guild, you steal things. It’s fun, but can get tedious. You end the quest by thieving from the Imperial Palace and getting the Nocturnal Cowl.

For the Daedric quests, you have like 15 Daedra Princes, and each of them want you to do something for them. It ranges from fun (like fulfilling a prophecy of raining dead doggies), to crazy fun (casting a spell which strips everyone in the room), and to really evil (desecrating grave to piss off a guy).

For the Arena quest, you just go in and kill people, eventually becoming the champion.

All in all, there are a lot to do! And you can do any of em, in any order! But then, to say it’s non-linear, isn’t really accurate, cause every quest requires you to do it in a certain way (unless it’s not a core quest).

I wish there is a romance aspect to the game ~ but alas, I found no wife to marry. I wish the levelling system is more stringent (so they don’t let me get away with making a super character). I wish there’s online play involved (like bring your character to an online arena to duel).

I think that’s about all I want to say ~ it’s a fun game, but I wouldn’t play it again =)

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 19th, 2006 at 9:52 am and is filed under Games. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.