Oblivion!

[Mr_Pleasington]

Well, I'm about 10 hours in and so far this has to be one of the most astounding games ever created.  Bethesda did not disappoint.

Anyone else pick it up?

[Fellfrosch]

Bethesda is sending it to us, so we should have a review eventually.

[Gemm: Rock & Roll Star; Born to Rock]

Wow, they're really sending TWG a copy to review? I guess they'll run to anyone for a good word on IV. Add other insults and such here.

But yes, hooray. I do wonder however, who will be able to play it? Does someone have a 360 or a computer that can handle it, or will they be sending the hardware to review this with it?

[Spriggan]

My computer will run it easily, I even upgraded to 2 gig of RAM to improve the experience.  Hopefully Bethesda will have sent our review copy by the time I get back from Idaho.

[Mr_Pleasington]

According to this site: http://www.srtest.com/bonus/a/register/t/analysis.tmpl#


my computer would run it okay...but that's why I have a 360.

Can I just say it's freakin' fantabulous!

[Spriggan]

Heck the Lappy almost can run it, if I could upgrade the Videocard it would be good to go.

[Spriggan]

Got the review copy Friday.

It runs quite well on my PC, have everything on except Self Shadows (they look crappy on my Videocard) and grass shadows (would cause my PC to run really slow in outside combat).

Few notes:

Combat-  I either love or hate it, I haven't decided yet.  It feels very realistic in how your attacking, blocking and jumping around yet it takes forever and I can rarely kill things without using poison.  I actually had a battle with 2 Goblin Berserkers that went for 10 minutes last night.  Unless there's a trick to combat I haven't figured out yet it just takes too long and would be impossible to do without healing magic or a LOT of healing pots.

Magic Weapons- The effects are cool but they no longer recharge over time, so your cool weapon is pretty much normal after a few fights.  You can recharge them with souls, but I've yet to find anyone that sells the Soul Trap spell (it's probably a mage guild exclusive spell).  Now all weapons are cast on strike and all others are constant effects, the only cast on used are staffs and I don't think you can make those.

Commerce- This is a little different, now when a merchant has 800gp limit it that they don't have 800gp total (which goes down as they buy thing from you) but they max they'll pay for anything is 800g.  the max any merchant can have is 1200gp (2200 if you have 100 in your mercantilism skill) and the down side is there are lots, and I mean lots, of magic items worth more then that.  So you'll never be able to get a decent price on any of them.

NPCs-  While they're not as cool as all the videos have shown (I have yet to see on talk to itself, or walk around and practice skills as was shown in the E3 video) but they're still pretty cool.  When walking between cities a Highway man was fallowing me, and whenever I turned around he would run off and hide behind something until I turned my back to him.  The only complaint I have here is that they all have the same voices, there's only like 2 per each race (one male and one female) and honestly they should have added more voices.  Its very annoying to hear 3 people having a conversation and they all have the same voice.  Also there aren't many young people in the game, the average age has to be 50 for females and 40 for males.  I've only seen two in twenties, both male.

[Mr_Pleasington]

I've only seen teh NPC practicing skills once or twice, but it does happen.

It's pretty cool when you can think, "Man, Ogmar the World-Weary isn't home.  It's 9 o' clock and I really need to fence some hot property.  Y'know, I bet he's down at Olav's pub."   and you're right.

[Spriggan]

ya they do wander around a lot which is cool, though it seams pretty scripted.  Mostly they just walk around, eat and talk.  The random conversations are cool at first until you realize that 80% or so of those conversations are the same in every town and that they're a little too random so they don't seam like real discussions lots of the time.  Like when one person asks the same question 3 times and the other person answers differently each time.  Considering the scope of the game they probably didn't have the resources to expand this part.

Magic-  I'm not sure about this one but it seams like you occasionally get free spells as you level up any magic schools in your major spell list.  It could work as you level up any of the magic school but I only use illusion so I'm not sure about it.  

Houses-  I like how you can buy, or earn houses in each big city, but it's disappointing you don't have any say on how to decorate them considering you have to buy furniture sets.  Those sets are predetermined where they go after you buy them.

Just in case it seams like I'm being overall negative I'm just mostly pointing out things that aren't usually mentioned about the game.  I could talk about how awesome the scenery is or how the npc's eyes move as your talking to them and their mouths sync pretty well.

[Spriggan]

Some more thoughts as I sit at work:

Interface-  I love the look and feel of the new menus and interface, it's much more artistic and streamlined.  However, you can easly tell it (and most of this game) was designed with the Xbox in mind and then ported over to the PC.  Gone are all the hotkeys to bring up menus, you have to hit either f1-f4 to bring up the appropriate menu group the click through to where you want to go.  In fact there's no real key mapping for the game at all, you can change the few actions that area already mapped (attacking and moving) but that's it. There's also no map zooming at all, and you cannot sticky menus like your spells or the map so they're always up.  I'm not sure why this is except for it wouldn't work on the Xbox version so they didn't even bother to add it.

Scaling- The game's difficulty change based off your level.  And while I generally like this (I hated how in Morrowind after I got a certain level I could one hit kill anything) it does have some problems mostly dealing with how some monsters disappear entirely once you get past a certain level and that all the best items in the game appear on random bandits and such once you get past a certain level, so there's no rare items.  Also quest rewards scale, and there are no places that would be too hard for you since they scale to your level.  That bugs me since there seams to be nothing to work towards level wise.  This is why I probably havn't found soul trap yet, I'm probably noght high enough level for it to exisit in the game yet.

[Entsuropi]

I hear that if you put off going to Kvatch, all the NPC's that help you don't level with you, so die instantly if your like level 10 or whatever.

[Spriggan]

They're supposed to since every other NPC in the game levels up with you, but if that's the case I'm screwed since I'm level 11.

I think combat will go easier on me once I actually find some demoralize or calm humanoid spells to "sleep" extra mobs so I might have a chance in Kvatch.

[Entsuropi]

My first character was a fighter, using the Knight class. Big mistake - I never used the illusion school, but always used the restoration school which the knight didn't get (for some unfathomable reason). Also it had both blades and bashing, which was a waste of a skill slot. Anyway he got to kvatch at level 2 and boy, was it hard. The castle took 40+ quickloads to do.

Current character is 10 and wandering around doing Dark Brotherhood and Thieves guild quests. Loads of fun.

[Spriggan]

I'm a custom class.

Swampbow (only name I could think of that would fit the 8 character limit)

Focus: Stealth (though I maybe should have take combat)

Major Skills:

Marksmanship
Security
Stealth
Light Armor
Illusion
Athletics
Acrobatics

My race is Argonian

Birthsign is The Lord.

[Fellfrosch]

I just got a press release that had some cool tidbits in it:

"In North America, Oblivion has become the fastest selling game released on the Xbox 360. The NPD Group Inc reports Oblivion PC as the best selling PC game, while the Oblivion Collectors Edition is ranked number 2. NPD reports that Oblivion represented approximately 13% of all PC game sales in the first week of it release, more than four times the sales volume of the next best selling title.  (The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind®, the highly-regarded predecessor to Oblivion, remains one of the top 25 best selling PC games nearly four years after its release, according to NPD). European results have been similarly strong with Oblivion quickly becoming ranked the number one selling title in the UK, Germany and France."