Oblivion - First Impression

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I probably won't bother. It's taken me so long to try and work out the main rules that are used in the BG / IWD / NWN games and from what I gather above, this uses a completely different set of rules. I'm not sure I want to set aside everything I learned about those other games and start all over again learning about a whole different set of rules. At least the BG / IWD / NWN games use the same basic rules (even if there are subtle differences between the way they are applied, Magic Missile is still Magic Missile).

 

@ Harbourboy

Don't worry; you don't necessarily miss anything. They have heralded "Star Wars: Empire at War" and "Galactic Civilizations 2" as 10/10 super-hits too. It's just hype before the crash.

Hopefully, though, ES4 does fare better since the markets could use a really good RPG among the cadre of mass-produced FPS/RTS games. I'm a bit curious: if the graphics are almost as good as in HL2, then why the requirments are so much higher?

 

I've been playing or rather 'trying' to play the game. It appears that even though on the box the game 'supports' the FX series of video cards - it doesn't.

After playing around with the ini. file I got the game running yet my water is 'purple', there are no dark areas, no shadows, everything is illuminated, no reflections and occasionally the game resets my computer. I think I'm going to need to buy a new card and I think come next week, I will.

 

Best game ever.

I've played it for almost nine hours so far today; it's 7:25pm. So far today, I became a knight-errant, entered the nightmares of a mage, explored a shipwreck, was selected for the thieves' guild, protected some rats from mountain lions, raided the home of a drug-dealer, killed a "vampire hunter" who was actually murdering people, and acquired my first magic weapon. That's not mentioning the less intriguing sounding things of exploring ancient ruins, destroying bandit gangs, putting a man's soul to rest and others. The quests have a lot more story to them than in Morrowind; far less "Escort me here", "Deliver this shirt", "Kill this man" and all that (although those do still exist).

The game rules are very simple. If you swing and it looks like the blow connected, it did. If you've swung swords a lot, you'll do good damage when you hit. If you've thrown lots of fireballs around, you'll be better at casting destructive spells. Simple, and it works well.

The compass system works far better than I'd imagined, but it's a little hard to describe and do it justice. When you're near somewhere of significance, an icon appears on the compass with its direction. The closer you are, the less faded the icon. You also get pointers about where to go next for your current selected quest. Fantastic.

At first I was overwhelmed by how much there is to do. I haven't even touched the main quest apart from the intro, but it's been amazing fun. It's far more stable than Morrowind; one CTD over the past two days. One too many, but about fifty less than Morrowind would have had.

This game pwns so, so hard.

EDIT: Have to mention the load times. They're shorter than in Morrowind on the same system. There aren't any loading screens in the same area, although the words Loading appear every now and again for some reason, despite there being no slowdown when they do. There aren't any slowdowns or jerky bits at all, despite my AGP graphics card.

 

Bought a ATI x800 videocard just for the game, last time I will buy anything ATI.

The game is awesome, I'm playing a lvl 3 spellsword currenly exploring Fort Ash northwest of the Imperial City. The Imperial City is somewhat.. boring, like Mournhold was, mostly because the only guild there is the Arena.

 

Good going Alavin!

I've decided to try and play it on my computer barely reaching minimum requirements. Athlon 2000+, GF 6600GT on AGPx4 and 512 333mhz RAM.
I play on 800x600 with as little graphic-intense options enabled as possible, except for viewing distance of general objects.
It's fairly smooth in wilderness, with occasional lag. Suprisingly, the fps are quite good there, i'd judge 40+. Cities are another matter. Freezes for a second or two, otherwise around 10fps.
All in all, playable, if you've the patience to wait


Otherwise...
Currenty around 13h playing time, lvl11 mage. Traveling around the cities, earning my station with fighter's and mage's guilds. Explored some ruins for dwarven heavy armor and Feather boots, extremely useful. Otherwise, i'm not too keen on dungeon delving. I spend a lot of time roaming around the country, looking for alchemical components. Currently skill of 85, expert. Alchemy is in fact easier to advance, as you progress in it, since you identify more properties in the various plants and components you come across. As two of these properties from at least two components must match to create a potion, there's a higher chance to find matches, when each component has more properties.

I'm still getting impressed by the game. Ownership for example. In most places, taking anything is stealing and you're getting harassed by guards at every turn, until you pay the fine or go to jail. In other places, food and alchemical components are available for the take. Right now, in any mage or fighter's guild house in any of the cities, any item can be taken without consequence, probably because i've advanced far enough in the guilds.


The only shortcoming so far is the interface. Console influence, i really dont like it, it's too simplified and limited.

 

Are the guards spammed or can you just slay them and then loot the towns?

Hate spam.

 

Wow, you've been going fast. I've been playing for the same amount of time and I'm level 4... I've been taking it really slowly. I haven't bought any training, and I've walked around a lot.

Dungeon crawling is too tense for me. I did one, but I was inching through (as a thief) paranoid about traps.

The traps are amazing. Not like in (for example) BG where a trap is a red rectangle on the floor. These are proper traps. Tripwires and big spiky balls on chains. The best one yet was the floor panel with small holes in it. When someone steps on it, it falls down onto a bed of spikes which come up through the holes. If I hadn't fired an arrow at some skeletons who then charged and stepped on it, it would have got me.

AI in combat isn't fantastic. If you attack someone, a person standing 10m away won't notice unless they can see you. AI out of combat is fun, though. Watching people training their skills is nice. Part of my time-wasting involves shooting arrows into every target I find, and also into anything with physics applied to it, like the bucket in the tutorial. Such fun...

Just entered Oblivion for the first time, and I'm surprisingly not being totally pwnd. I've reached one bit where I've died twice though. I keep neglecting to buy healing potions, so dremora churls aren't fun; especially when they summon scamps.

One thing I like about the combat is that fighting two people is so much harder than fighting two people in sequence. In Morrowind, and in many RPGs, it isn't like that at all. But when even blocking a foe only reduces the damage you take, and enemies like nothing more than to let you get occupied with someone else then stab you in the back, it gets much harder.

Second rant about how great this game is in only a few hours.

Regarding spamming guards, I don't know; but I suspect there's no spamming. Bethesda have made a lot of their radiant AI and NPC scheduling, and I think they applied it to their guards as well. But I haven't gone on any killing sprees, so I can't say for certain.

 

I typed like a page of text, but then pressed ctrl+a, and another a. Replaced it all with one a.

In short...

One level higher (did sleep for 3 hours after all), with alchemy maxed at 100 skill. Master level enables you to make potions out of a single component. Doubles the money income. Currently i have 14k, but with this new improvement, i could easily double it in an hour or two. All potions sell for same money, just depends on the quality, so i dont have to see what kind of an effect the potion will have, i just brew and sell it.

My high level is a consequence of having all mage skills as Major ones. I cast spells all the time, for exploration, sometimes for training, so i have Conjuration and Destruction colleges at journeyman levels (50-75 skill range) with Alchemy at 100, this formed the bulk of my advancement. I've yet still only explored three dungeons, and i like it that way. I'm more of a scholar, and i'll go to the dungeons for rarer alchemical components, armed with my spells to the teeth.

Magic skills combined with Alchemy is a real killer. Restore Magicka potions are fairly easy to make, and spells do a lot of damage, add these two together and you rock. For any tougher fights, you always have a million other spells and potions to back on.

I'm still annoyed with the inteface. I use it a lot, and every time i do, i have to click one, maybe two extra times, for no good reason. It may not sound much, but it's constantly.
Ever more so irritating are the hotkeys. There's 8 of them. Hugely 8. Lets do the math for a spellcasting explorer. 2 or 3 for damage spells. At least one conjuration spell (provided you dont use conjured armor), 3 or 4 protection spells and about 4 exporation ones (Detect life, Feather, Light,...). That's just for spells. A spellcaster need potions for harder fights. It kinda disrupts the atmosphere, when you interupt a hard intense fight to go browse your inventory to find a bloody restore magicka potion

 

Ok, my views are wow...this game is awesome, unlike morrowind I haven't even restarted my first character, a hunter I made myself, and I am prone to doing that in sooooo many games!

I've actually made some progress through the main quest, and am enjoying it, and I think its because its such a gripping storyline. Action was something Morrowind lacked for me, but Oblivion has it in bucket loads!

My hunter is pretty awesome, he wields a nice Fine Steel Bow, an enchanted Dai-Katana, and wears fur armour. I think this games character creation is awesome, I spent about an hour or two just making my guy look cool!

My GeForce 6600 graphics card doesn't run the game on full graphics, but even so it comes close, and this game looks fantastic even on the medium/custom settings I have it on. I don't think the CD has left my CD tray since it first got put in there!...thats how awesome this game is

EDIT: New Gem yay!...another reason why Oblivion Rocks!

 

This game is awsome! I'm playing a wood elf thief and I love sneaking around sniping baddies with my bow

You can even ride horses!!

Do anyone know where the thieves guild can be found? I also saw a house at Chorral that had a for sale sign outside, is it possible to buy it?

[ March 26, 2006, 16:43: Message edited by: Elvenblade ]

 

Elvenblade: Beware, *spoiler* ahead:
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The entry to the Thieves Guild is connected to the posters of the Gray Fox. There are posters around the Imperial City, and if you start searching for him, you will find someone who will ask you if "you wish to work for him." Say "yes" of course.

 

I got the game on the 23rd, any time I haven't been spending playing the game I've either tweaking the .ini file (I might post a guide on this as it does improve graphics), finding mods (I'll start making some when I've completed the game) and of course some essentials of life.
The game really is amazing, I've been playing as a MagicThief (damn character limits). Almost everyhting about Oblivion is just brilliant, the only real complaints I have is the UI (although this is really an improvement) and an occasional sound glitch which makes certain sounds very fuzzy.
Overall, as many thumbs up as I can find.

 

That UI fix looks really good!

*downloading now*

 

Until now, blood sweat and tears. It all started when my bios changed overnight in a spontaneous way. No big problem. so I was al ready for big saturday to hit the shops. I live in a county which has stores, but the special edition is a myth.

It took me 9 stores to find it. It was sold out whitin a day, thy said but I found it at the most unlikely place. A store wiht overpriced PC's and lots of experts in suits still had one behind the counter. so far so good.

At home my dvd player refused to play the dvd. i played the other disk with the extra's, I played other games, movies you name it. But still no Oblivion. Open with the case and look for a hidden problem. Lastly I took out the dvd player.

Sunday, thankfully some store are open in Rotterdam so I went again to the far and big city to fullfill my addiction and got my a new player/burner. I build it into my pleasuremachine and found out it did not work. It took me an hour to realise someone had switched the drives. My old one was in the pc and not the new one.

Well, it runs now. I have an amd ahtlon xp2600 with 1,5 gig memory on an asus socket A board and an ati 9800 pro, and it looks good. The game suggested a resolution of 480 with the other specs on medium/low.

Have fun, and know that it is worth it.

 

Got my thief character up to level 6 now. I'm in the thieves guild and im about to join the dark brotherhood.

 

Finally got the game working on my FX card. Had to download some guys .ini file and a program he designed specifically to remove the 2.0 shading. You can get all the info on it here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=296049 and the modified .exe file can be found here: http://www.elderscrolls.com/forums/index.php?s=f9273a689b4adc7d327bc63389a833de&showtopic=296049&st=40 look for oblivion.rar and download it but be sure to BACK UP YOUR ORIGIONAL OBLIVION in case they release a patch.

Take note that after applying these changes the game will run very smoothly yet will be more ugly than Morrowind. At least it's playable though.

 

I have my Hunter up to level 7 now, and I just joined the Dark Brotherhood...but I need lockpicks! I can't get a missions until I find some...dammit, I know there's a thieve's guild guy who sells them, but I haven't joined the thieve's guild so I don't know where he is...so I'm off to become a thief

I also pickpocketed the key to the "A fighting chance" shop in the Imperial city, now I get discount weapons

 

Ahaha! This game is most awesome. I've only got three characters so far primiarily because of the Byzantine character creation process (the face making takes forever). One an Imperial mage, one a dark elf thief-type, one a Redguard warrior. Great game. It's most tempting to use fast travelling, but...

Is it just me or does this world seem a bit smaller than Morrowind's? I certainly hope not. Also, I seem to be experiencing a bit of lag in the initial part when the assassins die and they spray blood everywhere. Didn't have this problem before, only got it when I turned all the graphics setting higher. Any ideas on what it might be?

 

The world IS smaller than Morrowind's if you measure it in distance but that's because it's simply more crowded.

One of the main beefs people had with Morrowind was that it just took so damn long to get anywhere. With Oblivion they have MORE places for you to go to but they've just compacted it into a smaller space.