The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Part Five- Screw it. Willpower.

This character build isn't going to be one of those mega custom builds, but it should be fun- and with that in mind for my major skills I choose all the schools of magic for being a bad ass wizard, and alchemy so I can make an insane amount of gold. So, it's exactly the default mage build they offer you, but I made it- so it's better. Yeah.

After setting my skeleton minion on a few hapless rats, and draining the very life out out a couple of goblins I see the exit to the sewer. Activate retcon mode, at this point in the game Bethesda gives you chance to change anything and everything that you might not like about your character. I, of course have created the most bad ass wizard in all of history so such a function is useless to me.

I haven't played a default build since I first played this game on release, but I've got to say so far I'm really enjoying the mage. Some of spells seem a bit superfluous, but I really do get the sense that my character is quite powerful already.

Before I start getting into why I'm not going to do the main storyline for at least 4-5 hours I wanted to briefly touch on the levelling system. Personally, I used to be on other side of the fence than I am now. Consequently I can see where the complaints for the system come from. If you dive into this game without knowing how it works, you can get yourself stuck in some rather hard battles. Before I picked this game up I wanted to do a little bit of research into the best builds, I did that and there are pages and pages of how to create the perfect character. This can be very daunting for a new player, even if you choose a basic build like I did. You've got to decide how you're going to play the rest of the game, after the first 20 minutes of it, and I've spoken to a couple of friends and they've all ran into the same situation as me. They never got far with their first build. They either choose the wrong perk, or a slapdash attempt at a custom class, tagged terrible skills like speech craft or mercantile. The levelling system is very involved, and the player pretty much needs to do research before they can choose a build that will work for them and that isn't fair on gamers new to RPG's. I would love to go into this further, and have this current paragraph to be more than rambling but this is a lets play. So lets play.

I step outside and I'm greeted by a sprawling landscape, a tutorial tool tip pops up and obscures my view, I can't help but think that this moment could have been so much more than it was. To compare this introduction to stepping outside the vault for the first time in Fallout 3, it just doesn't have the same dramatic effect. It looks lovely, a nice green meadow, flowing river, ruined temple a forest off in the distance and a little boat in the foreground. However, it's just dumped in your lap. “Here's your world, go do whatever.”

Anyway, I've been tasked with saving the world or whatever- but screw that. I can fast travel to major city’s without having to visit them and I've got a bunch of junk I need to get rid of in the market district.

I think I'll set some mud crabs on fire before that though, then we'll see if they're more fierce than I am...

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Part Four- In your secret passage way, killing your Emperors.

Skipping the tutorials and giant rats, that can destroy huge stone walls we reach the point where the Emperor asks us about our star sign, or rather what perk we want to take. For my star sign I'll choose the lady, a ten point increase in both willpower & endurance. On an unrelated note, this opening act is where most of problems with the game come to light. A huge immersion breaker for me here is how forced the dialogue is, say I want to role play a bad ass that doesn't care about anything but his escape, I can't. I'm forced to ask the Emperor “Aren't you afraid to die” my character doesn't care at all, or at least I don't want him to care.

Skip a few more rushes by those pesky Mystic dawn fellows and myself and the Emperor and left in a room together. For some reason the guards thought it would be a good idea to leave the Emperor with the person they wanted to kill 5 minutes ago under suspicion working with the assassins. The player is glued to spot whilst they helplessly watch the best voice actor, and Emperor in the game assassinated.

Barus checks the Emperor's foot and confirms the worst. He's dead.

Just before Picard passed away he gave us our first MacGuffin- the amulet of kings, and after rubbing the Emperor's foot Barus knows that he doesn't have it any more. Instead of doing the logical thing and accusing THE MAN THAT WAS IN PRISON of stealing it, he simply asks us where it is. I calmly explain to him that the Emperor gave it to us because I have to take it to his illegitimate son, by way of Jauffre. Barus believes everything I say hook line and sinker, it's not like I'm a prisoner and would say anything to be let off Scott free.

An interesting part of this game is that you don't get to decide your class up until now, they give you a taste of the main classes, mage, archer, thief and boring- I mean melee but you don't have to commit until say the 15-20 minute mark. I pretty much hate all the default cookie cutter classes and always build my own and it nearly always turns out exactly like a default class.

I choose magic as my combat specialization partly because of how over powered and fun it is, but mainly because the picture is freaking awesome.

For my first favored attribute I choose intelligence, due to the boost in total magicka and spell skills but for my second choice I was stuck between willpower or endurance. Willpower would be useful as I would be able to cast more spells, and regenerate my magicka faster. However more endurance will increase my health, and how much my health increases as I level up. More health means I can take more of a beating, and judging by how much of an ass I normally am in Bethesda games- it should prove very useful. That being said, I do plan to make a mage that could go firebolt to firebolt with Gandalf himself... Also, I feel bad for the post name too- dirty even.

Guess who's the Wizard?

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Part three- Adventure plunging

Time to plunge into our adventure!

My character wakes up/spawns in a jail cell, you're given no plot exposition as to how that came to be, now already we're thrust into a situation that I've seen both praise and criticism for. Personally, I like this- it provides the player a lot of wiggle room in terms of role playing, you get to set up your own back story. Why are you in jail? How long have you been in jail? What did your character do that was so bad that you ended up pissing off enough people to end up in the prison of the biggest most important city in the game? Answering these questions yourself and devising your own little back story as to why, can be very time consuming- but at the same time very rewarding. However, if you don't want to role play or aren't a fan of role playing then it can easily seem like lazy writing on Bethesda’s part. Bethesda's could easily be found guilty of being lazy with their writing, but here I feel it would be smarter to accuse them of alienating part of their audience, not being lazy. In their defense though, I can't think of way to please both groups of people with once choice.

I don't want to waste time talking about the extent of the back story I created, but the jist of it is that my character is a mage, and he may of dabbled in some less than legal magick to further his own personal wealth. It doesn't sound terribly interesting as a foot note, but hopefully it'll explain some of the choices I'm going to make.

So, I'm in jail and some prick decides it's high time the entire Breton race got what’s coming to them. I'm not going to quote everything he says to me but apparently we're notorious for our pale skin. I'm not that well versed in the lore of the series, but based on just looks Breton's should be mocked for their striking resemblance to, say a tangerine. After the extreme verbal beat down and death threats, this bastard informs me the guards are coming- for me!

Picard (despite the protests of his guards) loudly states, in what I'm sure is a completely gossip-less prison, that his sons have been killed. Septim steals my camera away from me as I'm told how I've been in this old chaps dreams, the guards and Septim leave via a secret passageway in my cell and leave it open. However, they do tell me not to leave! Totally quelled any escape plans I may have had.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Part two- If you're not greedy you will go far

In the opening cutscene I'm introduced to Captain Picard, I mean Emperor Uriel Septim VII he tells me he's old, and he's been a king for 60 something years. He warns of a darkness sweeping the land, and a lot of strange words are thrown our way- like third seed. A fantastic score starts up, and we're treated to the camera panning around a city the player can only assume is important, soon after the player is thrust into a sub section of the city and Bethesda's name appears. Now begins the hardest choice you'll ever make. The character creation screen.

So here is where I spend 20-30 minutes each play through, deciding how my character is going to look. Sadly, I don't have a capture card and my rigs graphics card is terrible at the time of writing this so you won't be able to see how poor Isrisuir is going to look. I will however, do my best to describe him to you. I think I'll choose a male Breton for starters, due to the decent Magicka/ Magicka resistance bonus. After 5 minutes of fiddling with the skin colour slider Isrisuir looks a lot less like an Umpa Lumpa and a little more like a human, er, Breton. I've decided on a long dark brown ponytail, gaunt- long prison sentence-esque face, blue eyes, ears that look like they've been glued on and that ever present vacant Bethesda stare and over sized forehead. Since Bethesda saw fit to give us a slider for our characters age and not a number, I can tell you he is about 2/3's of the slider old. I would love to of given Isrisuir a beard, to add to his already, powerful, looks but instead of facial hair we're given black/brown smudges instead.

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Part one- Haven't even started the game yet.

So, here we go this is my first “lets play” I've chosen to do on a game that I've never completed, much to my own shame. Elder scrolls IV: Oblivion. Before I get into what can only be described as a more or less a “blindish LP” I think it may be useful to say why I've never completed this game. It can be summed up in 2 simple words. Side quests.

For all the problems that this game has, and believe you me this game has them by the metric fuck tonne, the side quests are the main attraction for me in Oblivion, and indeed pretty much all Bethesda games. Bethesda's newer games, fallout 3 in particular, seem to suffer from the designers being worried you won't see all their cool content- consequently the game just dissipates into, well, nothing. As all the interesting stuff is front loaded onto the first 2-3 hours of the game. Fallout: New Vegas somewhat remedied this issue, but that's a completely different story. I've heard that this game is quite polarising, I've never met anyone that said it was “okay” you pretty get much people that will die defending this game, will all its flaws (do paint brushes with no physics, ring a bell?) or people that hate the game and give a vast ocean of (valid) reasons as to why. Normally I would defend this game to the death, but this time round I'm going to do my best to present both sides of the great Oblivion divide.

I'll often enjoy a bit of role-playing in my RPG's, but I've never role-played Oblivion before. I just don't feel that this game allows me to do it, I'm just not interested in the main story line.

Breaking a much honoured tradition of mine, and for lack of a better word other “gamers” I shan't be naming my character something awesomely terrible like Cock mongoloid or Meg Ryan. Okay, maybe I will. I'll give my character a chance though, it'll be abhorrent but not offensive. I'll use one of those fabled fantasy name generators. Rule is, the first one I find I have to use, and we've ended up with Isrisuir! Just rolls off the tongue.

Posting to the void.

Hey, the plan here is to pretty much fill this blog with my musings on games. Both new & old, most likely old due to my current financial situation. At the time of posting this, I'm about 1/3 into my Oblivion: Elder scrolls written LP. I'll (hopefully) post a steady trickle of updates. The majority of posts here will be game related, as twitter will be where my brain melds with the online world and spouts endless fountains of nonsense. Well, when I update it that is. The first part of my Oblivion LP will be up soon. I hope you guys enjoy it.

Test

Test. Test. Test. You're testing my love for you! Check check, you're checking to see if I'm true. Test 1, test 2, test 3, test 4. You test me like the water in El Salvador!