GregHowley.com

Well, I've been playing this game for a while now, it's probably about time for a review. I never played Elder Scrolls 3: Morrowind, so I can't compare. But I'll also say that the last time I put this amount of time into a game was probably Fallout or Baldur's Gate. In fact, I may have already put as much time into Oblivion as I did into either of those. Probably the last game I put more time into than this was Ultima V on my Commodore 64. This review is going to be primarily geared towards people who haven't played the game, and I imagine the review will be quite long.

You're introduced to the game's main plot right from the start: you begin in jail for an unknown reason, and the emperor (The freaking emperor!) comes by, since the secret passage he's taking out of the city goes through your cell. The emperor, who is unfortunately very ugly, is voiced by Patrick Stewart. I don't want to reveal too much of the plot, but as events progress, gates to the hellish realm of Oblivion begin opening across the land. You'll soon begin to learn how to close these gates on an individual basis, but they begin to pop up faster than you can close them.

The main plot is interesting, and has some phenomenal scripted events, but you can easily ignore the main plot entirely and go your own way for as long as you like, which is part of the allure of the game. You can join the fighters' guild, join the mages' guild, fight in the arena, join the dark brotherhood, or locate the mysterious guild of thieves. All of these have a series of missions you can undertake. And there are Daedric statues throughout the land, each of which will assign you a quest if you have the proper offering and are high enough level. In addition, random people will assign you quests, whether it be the man in the tavern who asks you to help his son fend off goblins, the crazy paranoid guy in town who asks you to follow people and see if they're watching him, or the society of vampire hunters who wants you to join. And yes, you can become a vampire if you're bitten by one.

Throughout the land, there are caves, mines, abandoned forts, and old Aeleid ruins to explore. Some are populated by vermin like rats and crabs, some by goblin civilizations, some by necromancers or vampires, some by ghosts and zombies, and some by trolls, minotaurs, or ogres. You can easily spend hours clearing these different types of dungeons, leveling up, and hauling loot back to town to sell. But the way you level in Oblivion is unique.

The first thing to keep in mind is that enemies in the game level up with you, and so do rewards. A quest done at level 5 might have you battling imps and goblins, whereas the same quest at level fifteen would have you battling ogres and my least favorite - spriggans.

When you first create your character, you pick your race and go through an incredibly detailed process where you design your character's face. There are a number of class templates, but they're all worthless in my opinion. You then pick a focus - fighting, magic, or stealth. Apparently based on what focus you pick, certain skills will improve more quickly. You also pick favored attributes and major skills. The seven major skills you choose control how you level up. In Oblivion, skills improve through use. Get hit a lot while weaing light armor, and your light armor skill increases. Use fireballs and lightning a lot, and your destruction skill increases. Pick a lot of locks, and your security skill increases. When your seven major skills go up a total of ten points, you go up a level. This system creates an odd situation, since choosing skills like athletics or an armor skill can cause you to level up too quickly, in which case the game's difficulty grows too hard too fast. I wrote about this a while back. The other factor here is how your attributes, such as strength and agility, increase. Each time you go up a level, you can increase three attributes. Since there are three skills associate with each of the seven attributes, (There are a total of 21 skills) the amount you can raise an attribute is directly linked to how many points you've increased skills related to that attribute over the course of the previous level. Even minor skills are counted in this. If over the course of the last level you've increased your marksmanship and sneak skills, you might be able to raise your agility as much as five points. But if you've only put a point or two into your blunt and blade skills, you might only be able to add a point to your Strength. It's a complex system, and there's a lot to consider.

Although skills usually go up from use, you can also pay someone to train you in a skill. You can only train five points per level, but it's a way to raise skills you don't use often, even if just to get the corresponding attribute increase. The trick is to find a trainer, and find one who's better at the skill than you are - this gets more difficult as your skill increases. And although training is expensive, I'm finding that as I go along, I'm ending up with more money than I know how to spend.

Oblivion's skills are very well designed. Aside from the standard combat and magic skills, there are skills like acrobatics, which lets you jump higher. I think that's damn cool. And when a skill level reaches 25,50,75, and 100, you gain certain bonus abilities. For example, when your marksman skill reaches 50, you can zoom in on targets. When your armorer skill reaches 50, you can repair magical items. When your acrobatics skill reaches 100, you can actually jump off the surface of water if you time things right.

My favorite skill has got to be alchemy. Oblivion's alchemy and potion mixing system is one of the best parts of the game. When you first start playing, you'll find that you can pick mushrooms caves, take meat from rats you kill, and find bags of grain or rice. You'll then find that if you have a mortar and pestle, you can mix them. Each ingredient has a function. For example, damage fatigue. Mix that rat meat with mort flesh off the zombie you just killed, and you end up with a damage fatigue poison, which you can then apply to your sword. As you find better equipment (mortar and pestle) and your skill increases, your potions are more effective. And at skill level 25,50, and 75, you'll uncover additional uses for all your ingredients, meaning that you can create multi-function potions. My favorite? Mixing Fennel Seed, Imp Gall, Steel Blue Entoloma, and Harrada. You end up with a poison that paralyzes your target, damages his magic and health, and does fire damage too!

There are also what you could call "mini-games" for lockpicking and for conversations with NPCs. The lockpicking minigame has you moving your pick to push open the tumblers, and you have to click the mouse button at just the instant the tumbler raises, which is difficult since the tumblers sometimes move quickly and sometimes slowly. If you're not right on, your lockpick breaks. Thus, you'll usually carry dozens of lockpicks. Luckily, this becomes easier as your security skill increases. And when you get an unbreakable lockpick either through a thieves' guild quest or Daedric quest, it gets even easier, since you'll no longer worry about lockpicks breaking.

The conversation mini-game involves a wheel divided into four pie slices labeled "Boast", "Admire", "Joke", and "Coerce". Each character will react differently to these behaviors: They will love one, like one, dislike one, and hate one. The character's disposition is shown in the center on a scale of 1-100. Each round, you must select all four of the options, and as you do so a colored wheel rotates one notch per selection. So the trick is to pick the good options when they're lined up with fuller pie wedges, and the disliked options when the smallest possible pie wedges are lined up with them. You can tell which options are good and bad by the character's facial expression when you mouse over that option. And do all this quickly, since the entire time you're playing, the character's disposition is slowly falling.

I've overheard some pretty entertaining conversations between NPCs in towns. Just yesterday I was in the imperial city, and I heard someone say "There's lots of guards in this town. And lots of sheep. Of course, I prefer the taste of sheep." Another time, an Argonian in Leyawin by the name of Otumeel began excitedly talking to me in a conspiratorial tone about his mischevious pastime. He breaks into peoples' homes, takes things from their tables and cabinets, and puts them in barrels around town. This was particularly funny to me, as it explains why in so many games you find random objects around town in barrels. Finally, a quote from Weebam-Na, who's apparently as into rat cookery as Forrest Gump's friend Bubba was into shrimp. "Rats in a Cream Sauce. Rat Flambe. Rat Necrom, with Bone Meal Gravy. Deep Fried Rat. Lemon Rat and Wild Rice. Rat Ragu, with Powdered Deer Penis." Personally, I'll pass on the rat dinners. Sounds like he enjoys the stuff though.

If you play Oblivion, there are a number of excellent community mods out there you should try. I personally will never play again without the BT Mod, which reduces font sizes to fit more onscreen and increases the viewable size of maps and inventory screens, as well as adding a lot of small onscreen niceties.

My complaints about the game are few and far between, but the way they've implemented horses is kind of stupid. I wish horseback riding in Oblivion worked like horseback riding in Shadow of the Colossus. Instead, the horse steers like a tank. When you release the move key it stops almost instantly, and it moves barely faster than I can run, since I have a good speed rating. On top of that, when you're riding a horse your athletics skill won't increase from running. Someone gave me a horse a while ago, but that horse must be awfully lonely, because I only ever rode it twice.

I did however buy a house, which is nice. It gives me a place to stash all that junk I don't think I'll ever need, but might someday find a use for. I've got upwards of 50,000 gold now, so I think I might just start buying houses as an investment. I won't be adventuring and closing Oblivion gates forever. My character needs to start planning for retirement.

I'll be playing Oblivion for a while, at least until Half-Life Episode 1 comes out. Then, I suppose I'll play through it and then go back to Oblivion. This is the review, but I'm certain it won't be the last time I post about this game.