Elder Scrolls Oblivion review

Post by **Mr Bean** » 2006-03-26 05:41pm

Let me say, Cloud Peak Fortress? I want it, if it were not for that pesky main plot line.... Ahh I want that Fortress, it is the most cool thing ever and I saw want it.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-03-26 06:31pm

Hmmm... The remove messages mod caused my game to crash when entering certain areas (such as the southern most city's chapel).

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-26 06:50pm

DPDarkPrimus wrote:Nice... so if you catch a disease, you won't know!

]

Are you serious? There's the noise, the flash of light, the big 'disease' icon in the corner... not that I've ever, ever had a disease, of course.

The setting (Cyrodiil) has made some skills largely useless. I took Alteration as a primary on my first character: my experience in Morrowind of the common, huge and deadly water areas led me to desire unlimited water walk. However, Cyrodiil has very few water areas, the slaughterfish are rare and incredibly weak, and all around all I use it for is unlock spells. Needing 99 Alteration to unlock a very hard lock is the lamest piece of gay I've ever seen.

Just like Morrowind, there are skills you want kept out of primary. I'm actually thinking now that neither armour should be a primary: it seems to do jack shit for boosting protection, and only gives you the IMO useless 'degrades slower' shit. Goes up too fast anyway. Althletics/acro of course go up too fast, restoration is used too commonly to be a primary, etc. The skill system is horribly broken: since I've started seeing ebony everywhere, I decided to wear a single piece of ebony to passively improve my heavy armour. It's working extraordinarily well, 5 to 25 in about an hour of not really getting hit. Pfffft.

Mod wise, I'm using spell and arrow velocity boosters, removing the constant enchantment glow, removing the console messages, a tiny red-dot crosshair, and the UI overhaul with 15 line inventory and fullscreen map. No problems, no crashes.

Now all I need is a MMORPG-style character management system, and the game will be at a condition to ship to the public. What's that you say?

WTF EDIT - What the fuck is THIS?

So not only is Oblivion one of those fucking irritating games that puts saves in my home directory, but it makes a 'my games' directory off root and puts the config in there! Could it sprawl out a bit more?

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-03-26 07:53pm

Stark wrote: WTF EDIT - What the fuck is THIS?

So not only is Oblivion one of those fucking irritating games that puts saves in my home directory, but it makes a 'my games' directory off root and puts the config in there! Could it sprawl out a bit more?

If you modify the INI there, you can take screenshots.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-26 07:55pm

Ironically, no I can't. I have changed the ini significantly, and none of it works. I turned the opening movies off, for instance: they're still there. Fuckers.

So they did this to everyone? Made a fucked up folder off root with a stupid, non-standard name? I hate them.

GuppyShark · Post by **GuppyShark** » 2006-03-26 09:38pm

Nope. That folder is in my My Docs on my machine.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-26 09:55pm

Mine has a folder in my mydocs/user/locla/app/oblivion directory... but it's just got DLClist and plugins. WTF?

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-03-26 11:56pm

Stark wrote:Ironically, no I can't. I have changed the ini significantly, and none of it works. I turned the opening movies off, for instance: they're still there. Fuckers.

So they did this to everyone? Made a fucked up folder off root with a stupid, non-standard name? I hate them.

There's also an INI file in the Oblivion install directory. You may have to tweak both.

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-27 12:04am

Oblivion bloat = the suck. The 'oblivion_default.ini is the one that works: I can delete the other one. What a fucked up install.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-03-27 02:27am

I got the game today- it'll run like shit on my PC (I only have 1 gig RAM, a 1.3ghz AMD 2100+ (it's supposed to be 1.7ghz but the fucking thing runs too hot because my fan sucks) and a 6600GT.

Knowing my luck, the game won't even work because of my ever-present VIA chipset/ 6600GT conflict.

Anyway, so can I just delete the non-standard POS folder? I hate it when games do that. Who the fuck wants that shit all over their computer? One folder, goddamit.

wautd · Post by **wautd** » 2006-03-27 03:04am

I'm thinking of buying it this week. My system specs should be allright. Infact, freeing some HD space will be my biggest issue

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-03-27 09:00am

The tutorial was too long, or maybe I just liked Morrowinds quick start.

However, my biggest annoyence so far with this game...ironiclly the atmosphere. I don't see the graphics wowy to justify the 15-40FPS. I'm running 1280X1024(No, thats not changeable) and trying to run with a mix of high/medium settings, can anyone offer a graphic settings for the 6800GT that will run normally?

Next...some mods, then I'll actully start the game.

Rye · Post by **Rye** » 2006-03-27 09:05am

I got it on Saturday, been having fun, the Oblivion level was pretty, though still way behind the doom 3 hell levels.

Some things I've noticed:

1) You can repeatedly mug the guards at the beginning and they won't attack you for it.

2) Turning invisible as your birthsign trait = wins. Not only do you look like a predator, but you can steal the white horse from the stables outside the big city and the people don't notice. It also helps you steal other shit relatively easily. It turns off when you do it, but usually, you can get away with it.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-03-27 10:22am

Wow. The game runs surprisingly well. I'm sure to have fun.

White Haven · Post by **White Haven** » 2006-03-27 10:23am

Chameleon. Get to Apprentice in the Mage's Guild. Get enough Illusion to make a 100% Chameleon spell for as long as your mana pool can take. Congratulations, you now have a perfect invisibility spell that won't break on actions. Yes, that means you can walk up to something, steal it, then walk away. You can beat someone in the face with a sword, and they just run around shouting. With High Elf+Apprentice+100 Int, I can hold it for 87 seconds.

Also, when you're making spells, if you put an invisibility effect for, say, ten seconds at the END of your spell...you cast the spell and immediately turn invisible again (If you can't handle Chameleon 100%, that's not easy). My standard attack spells are 1) 100% vulnerability to Magic, 100% vulnerability to Fire, 30-ish fire damage on touch for 6 seconds, 10-second invisibility and 2) 50-75 (Depending on skill and mana) fire damage on touch, 10-second invisiblity). You can strip out the invisibility components if you're running a Chameleon spell.

Arrow · Post by **Arrow** » 2006-03-27 11:22am

I really need to finish the mage guild recommendation quests, but I'm having so much fun beating the ever-loving shit out things with my three enchanted longswords (Akrivia Katana with 10 pt shock damage, Dwarven longsword with 15 pt frost damage, and an Ebony sword with 20 pt drain health). And I've got another ebony longsword and glass longsword that I need to get Sigil stones for!

Luzifer's right hand · Post by **Luzifer's right hand** » 2006-03-27 12:04pm

Stark wrote: Mod wise, I'm using spell and arrow velocity boosters, removing the constant enchantment glow, removing the console messages, a tiny red-dot crosshair, and the UI overhaul with 15 line inventory and fullscreen map. No problems, no crashes.

Where can I find this UI overhaul mod?

Ace Pace · Post by **Ace Pace** » 2006-03-27 12:06pm

At a guess, he is talking about This mod.

Luzifer's right hand · Post by **Luzifer's right hand** » 2006-03-27 12:25pm

Ace Pace wrote:At a guess, he is talking about This mod.

Thanks! An awesome mod.

DPDarkPrimus · Post by **DPDarkPrimus** » 2006-03-27 01:35pm

The second I'm able to repair magic items, I'm enchanting my Glass Shortsword with a Sigil Stone so it Drains 25 Health on each hit.

Oberleutnant · Post by **Oberleutnant** » 2006-03-27 01:56pm

My primary character, an Imperial knight skilled in speechcraft and blade weapons. The armour is very outdated. I was going for a realistic look of a warrior, not the stereotypical poster boy one. Notice the double jaw.

With my secondary character, who will become an evil thief / assasin / all things malicious, I took another route. I totally fell in love with Indian girls while visiting London and this is the result. So what if it's incredibly nerdy?

I think I managed to make her quite good-looking, don't you agree?

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2006-03-27 02:06pm

Oberleutnant wrote:My primary character, an Imperial knight skilled in speechcraft and blade weapons. The armour is very outdated. I was going for a realistic look of a warrior, not the stereotypical poster boy one. Notice the double jaw.

That's what pisses me off about chainmail being Light Armor. It's a warrior's armor, damnit, not a thief's!

And you definitely get an Internet Dollar™ for that Bosmer. I've found them to be the most co-operative of the elven races in terms of making good-looking chars.

Netko · Post by **Netko** » 2006-03-27 04:27pm

I kinda like the fact that the game saves its data in my documents. Today, my install of winxp finaly imploded (considering that it went thru 2 HD faliures plus had all sorts of crap installed over its 2 year lifespan it's not too surprising) and one of the things that I'd forgotten to do before doing the great wipe and reinstall was backup my games. I was plesantly surprised to find that Oblivion, along with some others, maintained thair settings and saves thru that (my My Documents folder is on my data drive).

As long as they keep within one standard place (My documents/My games/) I don't mind. Plus, with such a setup, the game is more compatible with limited accounts and general good programming practices on Windows (one of those is that a program should not expect to have accsess to its instalation dir).

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-03-27 07:16pm

Software that installs shit outside the folder I specify shits me. Games that crap their pants when your home director is a network drive and anything wierd happens to the network at all shit me. Further, *none* of the ini files on my computer change anything in game, it's reinstall time.

The armour thing is stupid. Mithril and glass are light? Fuck off. Stupid dumb-it-down-for-the-consoles skillset. My friend is playing a pure thief (which worked surprisingly well, at least until the mainquest missions that FORCE you to fight) and he was 'wtf hax' when he found he could wear Kvatch guard chainmail AND SNEAK AROUND PERFECTLY. Bfffft.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-03-27 07:51pm

Glass was light back in Morrowind too, Stark