Elder Scrolls: Oblivion

I played daggerfall a long assed time ago the one before morowind. Assuming this is in the same series ?

Game was buggy as hell, but it was pretty fun for the time. I used to steal stuff from the shops, then ride around the citys backwards on a horse with a ton of arrows shooting the endless stream of guards that came after me. Gathered up a ton of loot and gear like that

No clue what this games like though

 

oh and come play daoc tard ;p

 

I've played them all, except the new one (preordered and eagerly awaiting delivery). I probably logged a thousand hours in Morrowind alone.

The games are unique in that they are completely open-ended RPGs. You can go through the entire game without ever bothering to complete the main storyline. Or, if it's your thing, go all the way to the end boss fight immediately. You'll probably die (and you only get one life) but the game won't stop you trying. Because it's so open-ended, it allows you a lot of freedom to immerse yourself in your role. Want to lead a quiet life as a merchant? Go ahead. Want to play a psychotic loner with an uncontrollable impulse to murder everyone with the audacity to wear a red shirt? Hey, if that's your cup of tea...

My character in Morrowind was a conflicted mage who believed that good and evil needed to remain in perfect balance in order to preserve order in the world. If I helped an NPC in one quest, I made sure to kill another NPC during the next quest. I was a member of the local temple and a secret order of assassins at the same time. I played the role down to the spells I learned (I learned only the purest healing spells and the most vile necromantic spells, and I would go to the point of summoning a powerful demon to defeat an enemy and cast healing spells on the enemy while the demon was fighting it.

The game engine is perfectly happy to allow all of this, and if you happen to find some combination of things that it won't let you do, the included modding tools will allow you to change any aspect of the game, period. Oblivion has a new AI system that I'm looking forward to playing with. It was designed in a way that every NPC is given some general objectives to complete, and the AI tries to complete them. I read an article that talked about some things that happened during development. In one case, an NPC was given the objective of cleaning his porch, but the developers neglected to put a broom in his house. His solution was to grab his trusty axe, murder his neighbor, and take his neighbor's broom. The AI needed to be toned down a bit. In another case, a developer was testing a dungeon he had built, and made himself a powerful sword that, upon being used, would spawn a doppelganger of whatever it struck which would then attack it. A powerful demon in the dungeon defeated the developer by knocking the sword out of his hand, grabbing it, and using it on him. Then he had to fight himself, and was killed.

All in all, I think this is going to be a great game. It looks amazing graphically, and they are using the Havok physics engine (the same one used for Half-Life 2) to increase interactivity with the world (one of the neat things about the series is that the game allows you to pick up literally every item that isn't nailed down and do what you want with it. In Morrowind, you could put the items someplace else or sell them, now you'll be able to throw them at your enemies too.)

The only thing I didn't like about Morrowind was that it was too static. Each NPC would stand around his shop or guildhall for all eternity and mumble the same thing to you every time you walked past him. It looks like they've solved that problem with the new AI, though. Supposedly, merchants will close their shops at night and go to sleep, the NPC you need to find for a quest might have wandered off to the local tavern for an ale, the world is dynamic. I'll be interested to see how well it actually works, but it sounds really neat.

 

I'm stoked for it (hits stores tomorrow), I've got a pre-order and everything, I can't wait!

 

i have it ordered too.. cant wait!
*edit
arg, gotta love it when the shipment gets sent to the wrong state!

 

The postman hasn't brought mine yet.

 

Saw some post over on TW about it, graphics definatly look pretty cool Almost makes me want to go pick up a copy. It seems its setup just about the same as Daggerfall.

If your like me you can totaly ignore the story line, and just wander around world killing, stealing, finding loot, getting lost, and doing little side quest here and there. Realy no purpose at all to it other then taking in the scenery and just burning time. If its like daggerfall, the world well probably seem to be pretty empty without alot going on, unless you get into the storyline/quest subject. looking back strangely in someway I used to be entertained by just wandering around and not doing the quest stuff.

Or you can actualy follow the storyline and do all the quest if thats your thing, wich is probably more along the lines of what id attempt to do if I ever played a game of that type again. Of course id probably get bored of reading after about 2 steps, then just go back to killing everything in site ;p

Or you could always build an old dos6.2 box and play Ultima7 to wich is probably about 10x better ;p

 

well I would give a review but I just got my copy today and I borked the install so it CTD when I start the game and also the unistaller is giving me an error.... bit of a pickle!

 

yea ultima8 the pagan one or whatever was the red lava like box, U7 was the black gate, was black with some big key on it ithink. U7 was just awesome, just about every NPC in the world was scripted, went around during the day doing there job, went to eat, sleep whatever.

The whole world just seemed very alive, and the main storyline fit in realy well with all the subquest and such. I never even intended to go through it, I just adventured around finding cool swords, stealing all the gold out of peoples houses, running from gaurds, and it all just naturaly progressed along.

At one point I think I ended up breaking the game though. I killed the royal tresurary lady or whatever you want to call her, stole her keys and stashed all my own gold inside the buildings. had piles upon piles of gold coins inside there, along with the holds of every ship I purchased docked there in britania all full of gold coins I think after a certain point the massive 16 megs of ram in the 486 ran out of storage cause half the city of britania literaly dissapeared lol.

 

From what you guys are saying, this looks kinda' cool. So what's the verdict? Anyone get it yet?

 

I've been reading a lot about it past day or so. Sounds like something fun to play around with. I really like how the AI sounds.

 

I have it but have yet to play it. I'll have to let you know. That damn warcraft takes most of my game time, as some of you are well aware. I played Morrowind and loved it. That game was a lot of fun. On the last game alone I would say get it but I'll let you know how this one is in a while. Sorry if I ramble but it's late for me.

 

I'll let you know now dont go around pressing your space bar. If the hand comes up Red it means your stealing what ever it is. I happened to just be learning the game when i click on a horse to see if I could buy it. Instead I mounted on it had 2 gaurd come after me, ended up killing them with some help with mobs and had a 1k bounty on my head.

Also make sure you save cause I didn't and wanted try another race and it i only did the auto save which was wrote over.

 

Ok, this game made a great first impression on me. My favorite thing so far is the combat system. I have always hated automated combat and time based attacks but Morrowind was the first melee combat system for rpg's that I liked. But Oblivion takes that up another level and really feels like brutal interactive combat. Even the little rats in the tutorial dungeon have a fairly disorienting power lunge but if you block their attack if give you a nice window to smash them. You can really get the momentum going and sometimes your thrashing them so hard you don't realize they died 4 attacks ago and your just pounding on their ragdoll corpses :evil grin:. Also if you have a torch equiped you can switch from weapon to torch easily while navigating the dark dungeons.

The game looks really perdy too although my settings are set to medium so I am not getting the best look at it. Actually I think Morrowind looked clearer and more colorful on my computer but the lighting and environmental effects in Oblivion make up for it.

In the main city I was met with a few perks that I heard about and also a few suprises. For example stealing isn't so easy anymore... not only does everything that you steal get red-flagged (can only sell in the black market) but when your in a store or house the npc's will keep an eye on you and follow you around corners or to stairways so you can't pick-lock in peace. Picking locks is interactive where you have to mess with the tumbers and time it right, also Persuasion and haggling is a bit more interesting.

there is more I like about it but I've got to go

all in all I am happy

 

Woohoo! It came!

Installing now, I'll let you know how it goes...